 All right, 21 convention 2014 in Tampa. And today we have somebody who is a pretty amazing guy. I know him personally. He's gonna talk to you about self-defense. He's gonna talk to you about mindset and the killer instinct. He gave a speech in 2012 in Austin, Texas on the killer instinct and tapping into your masculine power when it comes to violence, intense situations, and even transitioning into business and being the better expression of yourself. His first degree, black belt under William Vandery. He also has trained with Paul Vunak, certified JKD instructor. The list goes on and on. Mr. Ed Akin. What's up, man? All right, thank you. All right, all right. So this is my second time at the 21 convention. So if you're wondering why there's 22 speakers, it's probably my fault. I think I had a strong arm, Anthony, into making me talk today. So anyway, I hope you guys' trip was good as mine. You guys got felt up at the airport like we did. But I always opt out. You guys should opt out. I know some guys are from another country. Where are all the guys from? Where's, I know someone's from Moscow, Australia. How's the TSA there? Good. They're just fine. Well, I bring it up for a reason. We're gonna talk today a little bit about extreme violence and not that the TSA is doing a great job or anything like that. But I represent the TSA and I bring them up because if you think about why they were created in the first place, right? They're created as a system to keep us safe from terrorism. So part of that system is they create some rules and some things of prohibited items that we could no longer take on the airplane, right? And so the idea being that we can't use those items as weapons. And so I kind of did an experiment this time and I didn't bring it down but I didn't wanna show it on camera either. But I went through the security TSA and they allowed me to go on, went through all my stuff and they let me go on with at least six weapons, right? All of which in my opinion are more deadly than box cutters and these aren't overt weapons. They're everyday items, they're perfectly legal. But I bring it up because hey, we're gonna be talking about systems today and systems in and of themselves whereas the system of government, of religion, of martial arts, systems are limited, right? And if we think of the truth, no matter what context that is when it comes to violence or terrorism or the truth of life, it's limitless. And so we can never really, we can have systems that help lead us to the truth but when they represent the truth in and of themselves or claim to, we find out that that's false. But more importantly, there's also another element in this and we're gonna go back to it but the creative motivated individual is always gonna find a way to utilize systems to his or her advantage, right? They'll always flip the system or to even circumvent the system. And so we're gonna use that because what I'm gonna be talking about today the title of my speech are the three reasons why I believe every man needs to train for extreme violence, right? The three reasons why you sitting out there need to train for extreme violence. And I don't want this to kind of be like hey, here's the three reasons why you need to eat more leafy greens or here's the three reasons why you need to drink more water or do Brazilian jujitsu. What I wanna do is give you concepts and I'm really big on universal concepts and kind of looking at the bigger thing. I think everything obviously is related but if we can step back enough and be abstract enough, then we can take the concepts even if they're presented to you in a way of dealing with extreme violence because I believe that's very important but it's the concepts that you'll be able to plug into other areas of your life and you guys can get that, then I'll have done my job, right? Because not everybody's gonna go and get ready for the zombie apocalypse after this. Some of you guys might but hopefully you'll be able to take some of those key things with us. So with that being said, we have to, what would the first reason be and we have to identify this because the second reasons, two and three, these are really steps and they're byproducts of answering the first question because my idea is that once we set up, once we would honestly answer why you as a man need to train for extreme violence, then we have to prepare for it, right? Well, how do you go about doing that? And I'm gonna lay out some principles. So even if you don't train in martial arts or you train in different martial arts, you can apply these principles. And so in order to realistically answer that question and why should you, it's a pretty basic reason. The first reason is pretty, it's a no-brainer, right? And the first reason is this, it's survival, right? The idea is if you as a man are gonna be in an extreme violent situation, right? Pretty simple. You wanna be able to go home at night and take your body with you, right? Maslow's hierarchy of needs, what's the first level is like physiological. So I think taking your body home with you is pretty physiological. So that's pretty basic, right? That's a no-brainer. It's like, hey, if you walk out of here today and somebody sticks a gun in your face or somebody attacks you, you wanna be able to go home at night. And so this gets to our first concept and in order to really say, okay, well how, how do we need to prepare for that, right? We have to do the first thing and this is a great, great thing that most people don't do. They think they do it, but they don't. And we have to analyze reality, right? We gotta look at what's really happens. How does shit go down in the street? How does, you know, somebody breaks in your house. How is that scenario likely to unfold, right? And what types of scenarios do you as a man walking around in the world do you have a chance of getting into, getting involved with? Even if you're trying to avoid it, sometimes bad things happen, right? And so we have to analyze reality. We don't wanna guess or pontificate as to what we think is gonna happen or what somebody told us is going to happen. We have to investigate reality and what we find is that when bad things occur, when extreme violence occurs, it can happen in any number of ways. It's, you know, so we kind of are at a quandary. We're kind of at a roadblock because how do you prepare for the unexpected, right? How do you prepare for something that can unfold in an infinite number of ways, right? So we're gonna get there and I'm gonna give you a set of principles. We're not gonna get a system, but we're gonna give you a set of principles and concepts of how to break that down and how to look at things differently. And this concept right here can easily transfer over into other areas, right? How many of the best marketers do, what do they do? They analyze markets. They see what the market wants, but how many companies create products or somebody has a great idea for a product, they create the product, they put a bunch of time and effort and marketing into it, they release it and nobody buys it because they didn't analyze reality. So even though it's a pretty simple concept, how many people actually follow it? And if we're talking about the seriousness of surviving something really bad happening, then we've gotta start with analyzing reality. So how do we do that? Well, when it comes to violence, we live in the information age, so we have hundreds of thousands of hours of actual fights that we can go watch, right? We now have video of cage matches where we actually get to see what techniques work and what don't in a pressure situation. We get actual violent crimes, we can see mass attacks, the knockout game, we can see flashmiles, we can see rioting, not that you wanna look at all that stuff, but you wanna be prepared to see how different elements and things come together when it comes to violence because that's the first thing is we analyze reality, but we don't wanna stop there. We have to use reality as our feedback, right? And that's the second concept really. We're still on the first reason, but we're gonna, and I'm gonna spend more time on this survival setup because what I'm doing is giving you a framework of training. And it's through the training that's actually gonna change you physiologically, right? It's not, you're not gonna be buff or all this stuff. You will if you do certain strength training. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about your filters and the way you walk through the world and you carry yourself, right? It will change you, but we need to use reality as your feedback mechanism, right? Extremely important, especially when we're dealing with violence because people get caught in their paradigms and people get caught in systems and their stylized way of being, right? This is a lot of the concepts I'm giving you come directly from Bruce Lee. He was a pioneer and a master and a philosopher, but using reality as a feedback, a lot of people will get caught in their paradigms because they'd also need to have a proper outlook and a proper approach to deal with their context. And our context is extreme violence. So what do I mean by that? Okay, well, we haven't a good idea of how violence can unfold and it can unfold in any number of ways, right? So now we can say, okay, well, let's look at reality and let's look at some solutions. So some of the solutions are, well, let's look at cage fighters. Those guys are pretty tough, right? So we look at MMA and there was a fight in Vegas not that long ago, like just this last month and a fighter after his fight went out to the bars in Vegas and he ended up getting an altercation. Now he was a smaller guy. I think he fights at 155, but he ended up getting in a fight with this big dude. And just as he was telling the guy who was saying, Google me, bitch, I'm a fighter, the guy clocked him, right? And hit him hard. Now to his, you know, he's a trained fighter, he's a really tough guy. So he took the punch, right? And what did he do? Well, he did a pretty smart thing as he went for a double leg because if you know anything about Jiu-Jitsu or if he has superior grappling, you get the guy in the ground, you can beat a bigger opponent. Not that you can't beat them standing. But what happened was he was in a bar and there were multiple people there. And so when he went for his takedown, somebody else jumped in and grabbed him and pulled him off and then a bunch of people got into the fray, right? Luckily it got broken up. But he's even more lucky that the guy's friends didn't have a gun, a knife hit him in the head with a chair. So this is where we can run in and we go, okay, let's look at this. And there's really two camps when it comes to violence. There's the guys really doing it in the proven combat martial arts and then there's self defense and traditional martial artists, right? And so the traditional martial artists are the self defense expert who deals with weapons, who deals with multiple opponents who can do 50,000 neck breaking moves. We'll look at that fight and go, yeah, see MMA is bullshit. It's a controlled environment, right? Yeah, those guys are tough, but they're on a soft surface. They're not on concrete. They're not striking vital organs and vital, going to the eyes. They can't hit the groin and do all the stuff that we can do. So they'll just scout MMA and they'll go, okay, it's bullshit. Meanwhile, the MMA guy is over here and he's listening to this dude and he's like, all right, dude, let's go prove it, right? Let's go fight right now. And if they end up fighting, provided there's no weapons, the MMA guy is gonna dust him with a basic jab cross hook and leg kick most of the time. But remember, there's no superior styles or martial arts. There are superior training methods and superior individuals, right? So there may be an individual over here who can take them out, but what we need to do, if we were to answer this question and we were to survive, we have to get the best of both worlds. We have to look at this and go, no, it's not that MMA has a superior training method when it comes to certain things, when it comes to one-on-one fighting, right? They're pressure testing, they're in the cage, they're getting punched, they're seeing what works, they're learning what works and what doesn't. They're getting taken down. This guy is doing more training and he's covering more areas, but his training method is lacking because he's not sparring, right? Sparring is when you get to really find out if your stuff is worth it, right? If you don't, but that's the framework. If we can have a good framework of good functional training methods, then we can add the other stuff on top of it. See what I'm saying? So what this does is now we get into, we gotta have a concept of how to approach systems, right? And I'm gonna get back to this, because this is really important. Remember, these are universal concepts that I'm giving you. This doesn't just have to apply with violence and I really want you guys to think about systems because we wanna have an approach and before we can have an approach, we need to have an approach of how to break down violence, because we have this thing that's basically, and this is a way to look at anything that seems really complex, but we have this thing that can happen in any number of ways, right? And so we need a way to look at that and to break it down into different parts, moving parts, albeit, but we have to have a way to understand it so we can structure our training and utilize the right systems and right parts of the systems that we need. And so the first thing we could do, and this firstly was master at martial arts. He was master at looking at breaking down different martial arts and in a time when people were stuck in styles and systems, he was looking at the fight as this all-encompassing thing where anything can happen. And what he said was, well, a fight can happen in any number of ranges. So he began to break fighting down into kicking range, which is your longest range because your legs are longer than your arms, boxing range, trapping range, which is in close, and then grappling range, which is like combination of throws, clinching, and groundwork. And so we can start breaking things down, breaking violence down into different ranges, right? Because we don't wanna just stop with the empty hands fight, we wanna get to the extreme violent outcome, right? We wanna prepare for that. So if we look at violence, how can things happen in the street? What's the longest range? The longest range would be a long rifle. If somebody popped in here with an AK-47, that would be the longest range, right? Chance of survival, probably not very good, but that's the longest range. Then of course we go to medium guns, and short guns, and hand guns, and it can be a long range, but you can have a gun fight in close, right? So then we can look at our other weapons, or we can go to projectile weapons. Somebody can come in here and throw a hatchet, or a chainsaw, or a squirrel. Where's Brian? Yeah, see, you got squirrels flying. It's a story for another time. But it can happen. You gotta be prepared for anything, or I'm prepared for that big pod in the Halo games to come down and the guy jumps out, and you gotta be ready to go with it. But it's true, it's a mindset. And so we look at ranges, and then we break that down into weapons ranges. We have long weapons, right? Staffs, chairs, boards. We've got blunt weapons, sticks. We've got knives, long swords, short knives, right? So we're breaking it down to different ranges, and of course our ground fighting, all that stuff. But then we have to, we can't be done there, right? Because we saw that the ranges, in the MMA fight that guy had in the bar, that wasn't a bad tactic, but it was a bad tactic because the elements were different, right? There were multiple opponents. So we break it down to ranges and elements, right? And so the elements can be what? Can be there's two guys, three guys, 10 guys, bunch of honor workers, some kids, your wife. We've got the types of weapons. We can kind of bring them down. Two guys had a knife, one guy had a stick, and another guy was just ugly. So we've got the elements, but one more thing is we've got environment, right? The environment can change your tactics, right? Because we want to get to a point where we're able to spontaneously adapt to what is, right? And the what is can take many forms, but if we have these principles to kind of guide us, then it's a way to kind of chunk large bits of information, right? But our environment, you can be in close. You can have tables and chairs that the surface could be wet. You could have broken bottles on the surface. You could have a lot of room to move, right? You can be in a jail cell. You don't know, you might be in a church. It could be any number of things, and we have to be able to adapt with our ranges, our elements in our environment. And so this gets us back to systems. Now we have a way to kind of break violence down, right? And you can do that if you train in the martial arts and you start looking at the specific style that you're training in, look at where it's limited, right? Brazilian jujitsu is great for what? Ground fighting, right? There's a few things standing up and they do train against the other ranges, but for all intents and purposes, it's a ground fighting art, right? They don't, the last time I was in jujitsu, we did not wrestle with a knife, right? Some places do, but that's where you can start to look and say, okay, where is my system? Where is my, what I'm relying on, where is it limited? And you start filling in the holes with those things, those other systems that work, right? But we need a philosophy. And this is where, this is really important. So what we wanna do is we wanna be able to absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add specifically what is our own, right? And what that means is we basically, look at the system, look at all the elements, look at the ranges of what we're preparing for and we say, okay, in this particular scenario, we're gonna take this, these particular techniques, these work, these don't, throw those out. But then we wanna add specifically what is our own, right? Because Bruce believed that the individual was more important than any system or styles. I think we can all agree on that, right? The individual, the living, creating individual is more important than system or style. So you don't wanna have to change yourself to be a part of a system, right? That system should be flexible enough to change to suit you. And if it's not, you throw it out, right? If you're a 300 pound man with limited flexibility, you're probably not gonna be doing jump spinning kicks in a fight, right? Doesn't mean you throw out kicking altogether, but you might pick one or two kicks and then have to change the way you throw them based on your body type, right? So you're getting those things that are effective, throwing those things out, but you're now honoring your expression of who you are. And so this is very important when it comes to life, isn't it? How many times do we not do that? How many times do we try to fit in? How many times do we stifle our expression because of a system or something that other people are saying that this is the way, right? So this is very important. I'm gonna share a story of how this philosophy is universal. Has anyone ever heard of the gambler Don Johnson? Not the actor, but the gambler. He was one of the most famous high rollers in Vegas. Anybody ever heard of that guy? Yeah, there's a documentary, I was pretty short. I forget what it's called. Anyway, this guy used this to a T. And what he did is he analyzed casinos for weaknesses, right? He looked at the systems of the casinos and he analyzed them for weaknesses. And what he said is he identified the best game that would give them the best chance to make money. And if you know anything about casinos, it's all statistical and it's always in the house's favor, right? That's how they exist. And what he was able to do is take their entire PERC system along with everything else that makes the casino money in conjunction with the rules of Blackjack. And he identified all the rules that he needed to make this thing work for him. So he absorbed what is useful. He said, I'm gonna keep all these. Then what he did is he went through all the rules and identified the ones that he needed to get rid of. And you did it at a time where the casinos took a dive and they were courting him. They really wanted his business because they thought that they could get millions from this guy. So he said, okay, I'll come play at your casino, but you gotta take out these rules. I wanna do this, this, and this instead, right? Because what he did, once he absorbed what is useful and he rejected what is useless, he got rid of those rules that weren't there. He calculated the chance, right? He calculated the advantage. And he got it all the way down to like 0.0025, still in favor of the house, right? That's not enough. You know anything about, that's all the house needs to still get money from you if you play over a period of time. Doesn't mean you can't win in different settings, but statistically if you play over a good amount of time, you're gonna lose your money. So what he did is he then added specifically what is his own. And he said, okay, well I want this rule. I wanna surrender rule where all I need to do is do that with my finger and I can surrender half of my bets, an insurance bet. And if the dealer doesn't see it, then I get to have a free hand. I basically get to play with your money and they agreed to it. And that tipped it back into his favor because that was an element where he was very smart. What he did is he hired a bunch of adult film stars to sit with him when he played to distract the dealers and he was able to swing the bet more into his realm. And what happened was over a period of, I don't know, three or four different sessions with different casinos, he won $15 million before they ever pulled the plug on him because he was going with a system that he created but he did it in a way that worked for him. And he didn't do anything illegal, the casinos agreed to this, he simply tipped it into his favor. And that's the type of thinking that I wanna get to you that you can get out of this. These are universal things. So we get to this and now we have to get to our training. We're still on the first reason, we still need to survive. And so what types of training do we do? Well we know that we have different systems and they have ways of training that we wanna take. But also we need to add a couple other things. I'll just do it up here because I don't see a washer. Oh, yeah. We're still on survival, but this is what we need. We need to do scenarios. We need to have spontaneous scenario sessions, right? In other words, we're gonna do something where we set up a training session and we don't really know what's gonna happen. And maybe the opponents know where we have one person approach us and they're gonna talk and then the next thing we know we're getting attacked from the side. And then we go through these different scenarios. If you fall on the ground, maybe somebody throws in a knife and you're flowing from scenario to scenario, right? Because we have to cultivate spontaneity. We have to have responsibility. We have to be able to respond to what is. And see through this training, having different scenarios, you're never gonna know how you're gonna respond unless you do it in a way that's unexpected, right? Isn't life like that? You think you know and then it happens and you respond it in a totally different way, right? This happens probably with pick up. You go, you got all the lines, you do everything the first time you go to talk to a girl, you follow up, right? It's just, that's the way it is. Because the scenarios, we've gotta do another thing. We've gotta train different scenarios because you wanna flow from range to range in art to art without getting stuck anywhere, right? You even need to make mistakes and recover from your mistakes. So we have to do scenario training. But then we have to pressure test everything. You gotta pressure test everything. Because if you don't, once again, you might get caught in a paradigm, you might get caught in a system, in a system of false belief. You can do a million different disarms and have some really good training methods to deal with the knife and taking a knife away. And in fact, there's a lot of knife arts that are highly evolved and you see the top guys and they're moving really fast, taking knives away like that. And you can get to a high level, but a lot of times they don't add pressure. And what pressure is is getting a guy who's gonna really stab you. He's not gonna go along with you. You don't know what angle it's coming at and he's just gonna come at you with intent and pressure and you have to try that disarm. And if it doesn't work, what do we do? We throw it out. But it becomes a process of self-discovery, right? So we're constantly running into the cause of our own ignorance, right? You're constantly refining that which doesn't work and throwing it out. And you're probably gonna get down to the one or two things that work best for you. And you'll find that in certain scenarios and certain environments, what you thought worked before doesn't work and you have to change it up, right? But it's the thinking and being able to change yourself on the fly that's changing you, right? The ability to change and your thinking on the fly is what changes you, right? Cause we're pressure testing, we're moving from everything. We have to do one more thing. We have to get aliveness in our drills. You still need to drill your techniques and your basics, right? But we wanna do it in a way that's alive. And what we mean by that is we wanna add movement, right? If you're just working your jab, cross and hook and you're just standing still, that's not realistic, right? We have to work out a movement. So we want our partner, if they're holding pads, to move. And what this does physiologically is you're training your visual cortex, you're training your spatial relationship, right? And this whole thing, training in this way no matter what the style or particular scenario is, teaches you and forces you to change your focus, right? It keeps you in the present moment. So by going through this type of training all of a sudden you're forced to be present because if your mind slips at any moment when you're with a partner training partner they're gonna punch you in the face. So you get immediate feedback and it forces you to train your focus to be in the present moment, right? Because I was saying that the past and the future don't exist, they're mental concepts because you can only experience the past and you can only experience the future in your mind, right? It's not to say that the past and future don't exist but if you look at the truth of the way of things everything is one continual present moment, is it not? It's just constantly changing. It might have the illusion of being still but if you break things down we know that everything's constantly changing. And so by training in this way you're training your focus to be more in the present moment and as society, the way it's structured now all of us are split when we're going from the phone to this screen, to this screen and it does something to your attention. We are finding it harder and harder to be present and my contention is that the longer you train because it's not a state you can train nobody can be in the present moment all the time, right? We have to think and we think about things in the past and in the future but if we train it we'll find that we are actually have our focus in the present moment more often, right? So we have the present moment and we have our responsibility. So now, right? So now we are increasing our responsibility and there's an inverse relationship to this. So this just means that there's external stimuli something changes we adapt, right? You move like an echo, you respond like an echo it moves you move, whatever that song is, right? You're increasing your responsibility and this has an inverse relationship to what in gun training which originally came from fighter pilot training is your Oda loop or Oda loop, right? O-O-D-A, it's an acronym. So it's observe, orient, decide, act. You observe the threat, you orient yourself to it you decide and you act and we're decreasing this and we're increasing our responsibility and what I believe is that we're getting more out of our left brain if you wanna use that model we're getting more into your right brain and that kills your internal dialogue it kills the critical mind which kills your responsibility, right? How many of us get caught in analysis paralysis and then the opportunity passes us by, right? Everybody, everybody. That's a function of getting stuck in your left brain and looking at all the different possibilities instead of just making a move even if that moves a mistake now you have a feedback and you move off that, right? So we're getting into the right brain so all of this we get to our reason two and I've experienced this constantly not constantly but I experience it in direct proportion with the amount of training that I'm doing in this particular manner which I've laid out for you because I go through periods where I'll just do my jujitsu and I'll just work my striking and it's not the same because although there is spontaneity in it it's not flowing and the pressure isn't there it's not from scenario to scenario so the focus is different, right? You might be isolated and using more body focus rather than your focus out there but you get in the zone what I call the flow state more often, right? And everybody in this room I would suggest has been in the zone in something, right? You're like, man, I was in the zone it could be a video game it could be picking chicks up it could be at work, at a business presentation but you're in the zone and there's a certain phenomena of certain because it's gonna be different depending on your context, right? Being in the zone in a business meeting is different than being in the zone in a street fight, right? But being in the zone there's a good book called Flow it's on Flow Psychology it's been around for years but that's a good book to pick up and there's a certain characteristics in this and what we find is that we've already talked about it but you're uniquely in the present moment the past and the future are of no consequence you are at one with what is you're at one with the activity, right? Surfers say this all the time they're at one, they're in the Zen, right? They're in the zone, they've got Zen they're at one with the waves and everything and that's because you're in the present moment your focus is on the activity and you're involved with the activity and I have a saying I have a saying that how you do anything is how you do everything how you tie your shoe is how you fight, right? If you're abstract enough to think it how you express yourself as you tie your shoe is similar in some way to how you actually fight is similar to how you go get groceries, right? Because you are constantly expressing who and what you are about at all times you cannot not communicate, right? You can sit there and not say anything but you're still communicating and expressing yourself and if you're abstract enough to kind of see what the correlations is then you by changing one area of your life you change the others, right? And what we find is that we find ourselves in the zone more often you're in the present moment you're responding like an echo I had this experience in the club once I was just picking chicks up left and right and I said the exact right thing that they needed to hear every time, every turn doesn't happen all the time, right? I'm married now but I was in the zone and I was flowing but it's that ability to recognize what they need what the situation needs and give it to it, right? You're responding like an echo but this is the biggest thing this is the biggest thing there is no fear for some reason we live in a fearful society I don't particularly think I'm a fearful guy sometimes I don't like to fly and I don't like heights but I believe and I never noticed I don't walk around afraid too often there are some people that walk and carry more fear but I believe we have a fear programming society there's a lot of fear that's artificially programmed into us and you don't even notice it but you do notice it when it goes away because you're all of a sudden you're taking accepting challenges and I don't mean fights but you're accepting challenges and taking care of problems because the fear is no long you don't fear the consequences it's not there and you can feel it it feels like a drug like you feel you could jump off a building you're not gonna do that but you're not afraid of it there is no fear and that is the biggest thing and this is where we get to reason three and this is kind of strange after time we're training right we're training we have a pretty good reason for training we wanna survive we don't wanna be a victim of violence and so we structure our training that way and through the training it changes us and you find yourself in the zone more often in more areas of your life after a while my contention is that those changes get locked into your identity right and now all of a sudden this is the third reason it's like somebody switches you on you've reached a new level of the game right I call it the actualization of your intent or you could call it the actualization of being a man because it does awaken certain primal instincts within you right but your actualization of your intent now you're walking through the world more in the present moment you're more in line with what is right because you're used to responding your focus is different and what you find is the first thing you'll notice in my experience I notice this you start influencing people in advance simply with your intent right this isn't persuasion but you're influencing people in advance just by showing up right and it's almost as if you show up the door opens right as you get to the door and sometimes there's a hot chick there and she baked you a pie and you get other goodies with it but it's you influence people in advance simply by showing up right it's a kind of a weird thing and I'll kind of explain why I think that happens I mentioned before but you cannot not communicate and people the way we're designed are subconsciously picking up everything around us and we're assimilating a tremendous amount of information so you are aware of everything that the person next to you is about not consciously but we are constantly broadcasting everything we are about who we are what we've done all that and you're picking it up on some level and when you start making these changes what happens when you're when you're switched on by the fact that you're spontaneous you're responding you start solving more problems right in other words you're at the business meeting you're your managers like you know he's always got something that you need somebody to take care of and you just pass on it because you don't want to want the extra work right and that's really a fear-based response because you're fearing missing out on something else well suddenly you just start that when that fear is gone you just start solving problems which creates more opportunities in your life right so you just automatically solve and when you solve people's problems and and they unconsciously pick up on it they start looking to you to solve problems and the more problems you solve for more people there seems to be a mechanism at work that you get more opportunity and good things to happen for you right that and that's the truth but you solve problems and by default you become a leader right it's it's once again it's not something where you're like I'm gonna lead you guys or you're just you know but because by default that you're a problem solver people will put you on that pedestal right and don't the best leaders solve problems high-powered CEOs they walk into a place they have no fear and they turn companies around right they're the go-to guy and through this train I've experienced it it's a direct correlation with training in a specific way because you're training your focus you're now carrying yourself differently people unconsciously notice that and they just treat you that way and so you're influencing people simply by showing up it's a weird thing and it is if you stop training you can go back and it doesn't happen as often but you're a leader and this is the weirdest thing and I debated about bringing it up but I don't care what I find is that when you're switched on you have this thing called synchronicities happening more often and I'm gonna share a story about that but synchronicities I believe are a function of you functioning at a higher level right and they've done studies basically all synchronicity is if you were to calculate the probability of an event that event happening in that particular way there's no way it could happen it just it's like events outside of yourself have coincided and there is no physical way you know you think of somebody you haven't thought about in ten years and they call you at that instant everybody's had that in some form but synchronicities go a little bit beyond that and I'll explain what I believe happens but I had a I was in Vegas with a friend of mine and she was in real estate this was years ago and I had an idea for a company called that I was gonna market to Elon's it was a valuation online company and I was gonna market specifically to Elon's and so on our way back from the hotel we're on the side street we're driving back to LA I told her and pitched her my idea cause I wanted her feedback right she was also in real estate so we had a ten minute long conversation about this company and as we're pulling onto the freeway this car was already on the freeway and it pulls in front of us and it's vanity license plate from California the one and only person who owns this license plate said Elon on it right and we both and I share this because I have a witness and we both went that's you know that's beyond coincidental that's pretty crazy but I have a theory about that there was a study in Cornell and what they found is they found that a certain percentage of people perceive in the future albeit a couple seconds right they've done a replicable study that people have duplicated and what they found is they got different control groups and I believe they did nine tests the eight of the nine showed that they flashed them different images and some of the images were erotic and emotionally laden right and they were random randomly generated and they tested people's physiology their physiological responses and what they found is that a large number more than what should have been expected started to respond before the erotic images two to three seconds before even the computer selected those images right so what if as a side effect of me training for some reason my mind perceived a little bit further in the future saw a flash of Elon which prompted me to have that whole conversation ending with the thing that triggered it in the first place right so I'm not saying there isn't a logical explanation to this but I do believe that through the training it changes you physiologically and you may or may not experience this but I have and many many times and I believe that that's part of the mechanism but I wanna end with a story actually which I believe is perfect for the actualization of being a man and it's a good example because I do believe in a recent past that men were different just by the fact of how society was right my grandfather is a farmer so he was used to getting his hands we didn't have all the distractions life wasn't as hectic right we didn't have all those distractions but my grandfather he grew up in Nazi Germany he died before I was born I never met him and when he was a kid during World War one he was playing in a tavern and he wasn't supposed to be there at night and some soldiers brought some of the locals down into the basement where he was playing so he had to hide and as he was hiding right in front of him they proceeded to torture these guys and cut their tongues out as a sign for them for the town not to talk so imagine being a kid a few feet away from this horrific thing and on top of that having to be quiet so that you're gonna get discovered and probably get your tongue cut out I can't imagine that well years later during World War two my grandfather was older he recognized what was happening when Hitler was coming to power so he grabbed my grandmother he grabbed some family friends and some other family members they fled to Mexico right and while he was in Mexico he started a farm there some he employed a bunch of the locals to work the land right and one day the bandidos came into his farm right and they started beating up his workers and extorting money from them so the story goes there was about a dozen of them and he went out he grabbed a hoe it wasn't my grandmother but he grabbed a hoe right she was pleading with him not to do this but he said no I have to go out there it's my duty these are my many he went out there and whatever transpired right he made such an impression on them I daresay with his intent right to put himself in harms away he went out there and not only backed them all down they returned the money and they never came back right and I thought man what an amazing person if that's not enough of a testament to the character of being a man right shortly after that he uh... he and his workers were carrying like um... they had a cart but they were carrying it on their back and it had wheels and they had I don't know if it was fertilizer or what but it was probably between six hundred and thousand pounds took six men to move this while they were moving it the wheels broke right so my grandfather held up the uh... this uh... six hundred to a thousand pounds by himself and so everybody could get out safely breaking his back in the process and I was like you know holy shit I would have just dropped it right but you know I it's in this day I'm I'm upset that I never got to meet the man but I'm like wow what an amazing human being and but something about those stories always bothered me right and and something about me is like I wanna I wanna understand things I want to understand how people understand and something about the stories always bother me and I thought to myself well you know how different with the world of men if men like my grandfather and other men like my grandfather stood up the Hitler and they didn't they didn't flee right would world war two would have stopped because obviously my grandfather wasn't afraid of adversity he'd stand up the twelve guys probably not the best thing for a street fight right but he fled when Hitler was coming to power and so I always pondered that and I thought man what you know why would he do that and so one day I was a jogging this is a true story I was jogging in Manhattan Beach and you get kind of meditative state sometimes when you're running and this voice popped in my head and it wasn't like I was hearing voices right I know the difference but it was a thought and this voice said to me and said if you happen upon an injustice or a problem in your immediate world right if you happen upon an injustice in your immediate world and you're strong enough to handle it or you're strong enough to take care of it it's your responsibility and I thought man that's a pretty profound concept how often how different would the world be if men just stood up to the plate and took care of shit as it happened right how different would your world be even if it's just a little problem but think about governments as corruption wouldn't be able to exist right so the voice went on and said this if you're if you're you know there's an injustice in your immediate world and you're strong enough to handle it's your responsibility if you're not it's not if you're not strong enough it's not your responsibility so my grandfather as a child uh... what he can do anything to stop those men he was strong enough to not not speak out let an effective adversely later on but you know one thing about trauma in children is that it'll happen it'll either become victimized their entire life or I'll strengthen their character and so I believe that my my grandfather's character was strengthened and so this voice said you know realistically what would what would he have done in in uh... uh... nazi germany what could he have done he was a farmer was a simple man so really you probably got himself killed he said but uh... and it concluded with this and remember this is just a thought these are probably my thoughts but it concluded with this and it said and don't let the fact that although some things might seem too much be too much for you to handle don't let that stop you from doing amazing things because you're certainly stronger than you think you are even in times when your body tells you you're not so think about that guys i think uh... that's about our time or we can do some q and a guys do we have any questions one second here you can read it this is pertaining to uh... what what you talked about my shards and throwing out techniques that you think don't work so it says when certain techniques don't work in a pressure scenario sometimes isn't it worth it to tweak the technique yeah rather than throw it out yeah don't throw it out before you know it doesn't want to work you know before you you come to that anytime you come to a conclusion you you're deleting something and so you have to uh... you have to uncover the cause of your own ignorance and oftentimes people will throw things out before they really work on so you really have to it's a process of discovery you have to figure out when you're throwing things out too soon or when you're sticking with them too long right and that's that's very difficult to do it's a discernment and it's something that you'll get from your experience but uh... it's it's also a very it's human nature to do that a lot of times we'll stick with things just out of stubbornness because we want to do it or because we see no other solution whereas other times we don't stick with it long enough right there's always see that meme of the the guy that's chipping away and he's building a tunnel and then he turns around right when there's there's all these diamonds you know a few inches away right but sometimes you know when it when it comes to being spontaneous and creating more action it's sometimes better to just drop it and and come back to it later and do something else right and LP what they say like if what you're doing is it working do anything else so depending on the context you know be careful not to throw things out too soon but at the same time if you're in the shit and you in any working change it do something else come back to it later on and that's a that's a good philosophy for jujitsu and other guys that train okay there's three more questions here how do you choose slash identify a good coach for martial arts what makes them a good coach well uh... once again it's uh... that's depends on you all we're all individuals and you can have the best coach in the world but he could have the personality of a diet crouton right and if he doesn't jive with you that's your first thing if you feel uncomfortable around somebody you know that's good but also one of the things you can do is is look at him if you if their training method if it and if it has the pressure testing right if they're spontaneous if they do real if he if he has an eye for reality and also if the coach himself is he's not just there to teach classes he's there to help you progress right that's that can be a rare thing sometimes guys are just clock in the clock they're just clocking in but you want to find somebody who is genuine who who uh... and look at his students look at his senior students if those guys are good in their particular area you may maybe you'll just go to somebody for boxing if you look at his students and they've got skill then he's a good technical trainer and then the rest of it is personality right and that's something that you have to decide because i've done this and i've spent years and years with people who are not the best to be around for other areas of your life but as long as you're clear on that uh... there's no problem with going with somebody just for their technical skill but once again it depends on what you're you know what areas are you trying to shore up and how good is that guy in that area in my opinion you want experts in each area i'd seek out the top guys for everything right and it doesn't matter for its martial arts you want the best guys so uh... you know over time you'll get the edgy i can look at somebody and see if they're good i mean i've got to see him move or do something but within a short time i can tell if they're if they know their stuff or not okay one uh... well two more questions here how do you spar without getting punched in the head so much you lose IQ avoid number one avoid injury yeah number one don't ask steve he is not does not know how not to get hit and punched in the face uh... it's uh... you can spar with pressure without getting in the kitchen and and being rock'n'sock'n robots right you don't have to put on the headgear but it requires good training partners and there'll be some contact but you kind of have uh... in certain ranges when you're close and you're throwing an elbow you're simulating elbow you're not really going to throw it and the same thing with the punches you'll somebody's got to have a certain level of skill so they don't really knock you out and if you're going to go that route because you do need to experience that at some point you will never know how you're going to react to a punch until you get punched i don't care i don't care what you say or what you think if you've never been punched you don't know how you're going to react everybody reacts differently albeit similarly in in different ways so uh... you know though those are some of the few things but how do you train you can you know improve their drills to improve your head movement and get somebody who has boxing gloves and start slow do it out of movement move your head and and and you'll start seeing things sometimes a student's problem is they're not there line familiarization their visual acuity is in tune and so you have to uh... do attribute training do weapons training to get them to start seeing different lines of attack and sometimes the training method doesn't train lines of attack like brazilian jiu-jitsu doesn't train uh... isn't going to attack you with all this crazy stuff standing up so you're never going to develop that visual acuity and that and that's part of the attribute train okay this last question is actually a combination of two one said how do you increase your in the zone moments and the combination is so i'm artfully doing is what is it about violence or sex or extreme situation that taps us into that flow state uh... first question was uh... how do you get in the zone more often ecstasy that's very good no it's training that you gotta do the training methods with uh... you gotta be in situations that force you to be spontaneous that put you in the pressure uh... and you have a liveness you have to have a lot of movement spatial relationship right because it's the train the focus it's being able to see and move and respond to all the different stimuli in your environment that requires being present uh... presently focused so a lot of sparring a lot of uh... knife sparring stick sparring uh... sparring on the ground movement drills where you're you're you know your opponent moves and you're just maintaining a certain distance anything with movement and and it also you can get into a very good meditative state while you're training inside we call you know thinking without thinking you there is no thought and you will notice it there is no internal dialogue and uh... and the last part with what is about extreme sex and violence those are primal drivers we are we are programmed as men to go out and procreate and continue the species and part of that is once you get a band once you get your tribe you're gonna have to protect it against other men because we want to be the top dog biologically so fighting and fucking are tapping into this very similar types of primal instincts that are in us biologically in my opinion and so we're we're tapping in these primal drivers like we probably have a species memory of just you know fighting for your life on the battlefield and and or fighting off tigers and it's ingrained in you and what i do suggest is that once you get actualized these drivers become activated as well and so you'll feel more confident as you walk through the world right because i'm not i'm not a tough guy but sometimes i feel like you know my balls are this big just because of the feeling and i don't really know where it comes from but i i suspect that it's it's something that's ingrained in us we kind of turn it on you know and some people have it more naturally and also i think it's being purposely shut down in in men you know through through all sorts of mechanisms so we gotta fight to get it back it doesn't mean you have to be the alpha male and be all this but you want you don't want to negate that side of yourself you don't want to overpower you be as much in touch with your feminine side as your masculine side and balance the two but if you're short on the range in any one area there's some guys who have never been in a violent angry rage and there's some guys who are always in a violent angry rage you need to have that balance but you'll have the behavioral flexibility through through doing this type of expression because also with this training goes back to my first talk you have your force to turn the killer instinct on and off that means you're channeling your emotions all of your intent all of your fear your anger goes right into killing your opponent and you have to have that commitment but then shut it off because the moment your past doesn't work you've got to go back to to okay I've got to change my focus that I watch out for multiple opponents but when you decide to make your entry your your killing shots you go with a hundred percent intent and that in turn that wakes up the the real primal drivers though if you haven't watched my first speech it's all about that it's all about that I really believe it we still have a few more minutes does anybody else have another question being a beginner in this kind of thing if I want to go down this road of martial arts or MMA are there any particular systems you would recommend or how would I start down this route well first of all get clear on what you want as you know for me I'm a lifelong martial artist so I'll do I'll do some martial arts just because I want to um you know I'll do Tai Chi just to experience a different thing and I know that it's not directly translated into the street although you can push somebody and there's about one percent of Tai Chi that you can use in the street but there's so many other benefits so you have to get clear on what you want if you say okay well I want to be you know because some guys are martial artists and their competitors right some guys want want the experience of getting in the cage if you want that experience you want to compete go to brazilian jiu-jitsu for the for the grappling do competitions if you want to get in the cage do MMA if you want to really get good at your kickboxing do sava and do tai boxing right um find a really good jikendo instructor is going to have pretty much everything for you right they're rare but um they they are out there so good jikendo and a good Krav Maga instructor will have um you know provide this school they if they spar and they they do sometimes it's really watered down they'll they'll look at they'll take like two things from jiu-jitsu and then they'll add it and they'll go okay we're a complete art but they don't actually develop the good ground fighting you've got it in every particular range look at that range and look at the arts that are sparring within that range right and if they can actually apply it then that's what that's where you'll go to get that but you have to get clear on what you want some guys they want to compete some guys are really you know they're lifelong martial arts but they're going to take a certain period just focus on brazilian jiu-jitsu or certain period where they're just going to focus on their striking you know or or their MMA or even wrestling and judo so all those things combat arts sombo judo wrestling tie boxing savat boxing western boxing brazilian jiu-jitsu uh... catches catching wrestling shoot wrestling all those and if you get a good jkd guy he's going to have most of that stuff makes sense all right let's give it up for ed awesome guys thank you appreciate it