 Well, let's just jump right in. And Johnny and I, first off, would love to know how the book series came about and a little bit of your journey to get here. So how the book series came about was I can't stand personal help stuff. Like a fucking hideout. Like it's like, I'm like, I'm like, I look at all, I mean, this is very kind of sweeping, but I'm going to fucking straight anyway. So I look at the whole thing, like it's just audio speed wagon. And I'm the sex. Right on. I love it. Love the analogy already. Right. So I, it's two, like, none of it that does in it. And for me, like it doesn't work for me to someday tell me, unleash the end of Tiger or some shit. You know, I'm like, what, what, what? I'm not a tiger. Um, but, but if you tell me, like, well, you know, like examine your own thoughts and write them down. All right, I can do that, you know. But, but the journey started for me, um, probably 14, 15 years ago when I started to do work on myself. And that, that kind of got me on this pathway of, because before then, if you talked to me about personal development work, I'd have just rolled my eyeballs, you know, I'd have just been like, well, come on. And I was, I was, I was very much like a hands on guy. You know, it was like, give me a problem. Let me fucking fix it. Right. So, so everything that I did in my life was all circumstantial. I never did much by way of investigating or trying to understand, I just acted on what was in front of my face, you know. And then, so, but getting into that actually led to me. Eventually I became like a facilitator and I traveled all over the world delivering these transformational programs. And I became a senior program director. That's really big personal development company. And then I quit that and kind of got any, my own little private coaching business, which had like a very kind of limited number of what I would call exclusive clients. People might think they were assholes, but I thought they were exclusively. And then, and then, you know, my marketing person said, you should write a book. And I was like, why would I write a book, you know. But then the more that I looked at what was out there, I'm like, well, that's why I should write a book. Because it seemed like there was just a lot of people coming up with these theories and, you know, it was like this hodgepodge of like psychology and spirituality and fucking voodoo. And I'm just, I just thought, well, why can't we just look at some of the world's great philosophers and the ones that I enjoy and love and read into what they're saying and find like applicable ways like, you know, as I like to say, if I'm, if I'm in Philadelphia and I've just lost my job, how does Heidegger help me? And I'm interested in that shit. Well, like, how does Heidegger help you at this time? And I really, that's, I've been on a one-man mission ever since. I love that. I was just telling AJ that before you had gotten on that there was a lot of philosophical questions I found that you were discussing in this book and looking at it through the lens of modernity. Here we are. And you're not calling anything back to these, but if you follow some of that stuff, you can see the hands, you can see the questions there. But without bringing anyone to those places, like, here's the question, here's where you are right now, here's what's going on, and how do you want to move forward? And I appreciated that because I felt it was, it was frank and just left you having to deal with the question or the idea or the concept rather than any other thing to soften the blow. Well, you know, like, I relate to human beings like they're big people, you know, I don't, you know, and I really mean that. I mean, even the most wounded or whatever, like those that have been really through it, you know, I still relate to you like you're a big human being, you can take it. And as long as you keep getting my context, right, so my context is that I support you, that I want to empower you, and it's some human level. I love you, right? Like it's some kind of base human level. I love you as a human being, and I want you to win. And if you just take every single word that comes out of my mouth from that context, then it all works, right? Now, unfortunately, sometimes when you're talking to people like they get jarred or upset or triggered, which I actually think is really good, because you know, you're learning something like what do you learn it? Now you can just indulge the trigger, right? You know, or you can be like, oh, hold on a minute, why am I getting triggered here? What's that all about? And what's that connected to? And how come and when did that start? And how long has it been going on? And what's it been like for me to love with that shit and on and on and on? Well, I think many of us love to assume that our problems are unique or special to us. And there are personal struggles, but borrowing from the ancient philosophers, these are human conditions that we all face, fear, love, loss and, of course, we can't go without saying now in the face of a pandemic, many of us are realizing just how unprepared we are for life's shitstorms, so to speak. Look, I like to say to people like, first of all, you didn't you didn't learn wisdom, you know, you might even go through school and people are like, OK, so let's get into your, you know, the phenomenology of wisdom or some shit, you know, like nobody ever sat you down and gave you like this hands-on application of how to get how to kind of navigate failing, right? You just have to kind of take the punch and somehow come really back from it. And, you know, I as a kind of as a species, we love we're just addicted to the whole notion of things being certain, like, you know, just they have to have some kind of foundation to them, and which is why, by the way, people have shitty lives and don't change them because they'd rather have the shit they know than the shit they have no idea what's coming, right? So they'd like and it's a horrible thing to say, but that is how we live. We can live in that crosshairs between I want things to be different, but I need them to be stable. You can't have significant upheaval in your life in a stable way. You know, it's like trying to move house in a peaceful manner. Like, it's not. Well, you write that we all have the life that we're willing to put up with. And many of us haven't even really thought about that, that we're putting up with it and we're just following these patterns that have become ingrained in us and our responses and reactions to things are usually the same and it takes us changing our behavior to change the end result of our life. Well, you'd first have to get that it's actually a problem. See, we are unbelievable. Human beings are just amazed and overcoming, right? But they're terrible at letting go, right? And just terrible at letting go. They'll just overcome something. They'll just get themselves in a shit storm and then just keep paddling, right? And so people are in like terrible marriages, careers they never wanted, but a body they don't want. The finances that are shit show. Like, it doesn't matter what it is, take your pick, it could be all of them. And yet they keep paddling. And it's kind of sometimes you find yourself, well, I find myself at times trying to, like I'll argue with somebody about their shit show. And like, they'll say, oh, yeah, I want to change. And I'll say, well, this is what it takes. And then they'll defend and I'll change it. And they'll be like, oh, well, you can't do this or you can't do that. Well, I wouldn't be able to. I'm like, well, why not? You know, why can't you? So it's amazing how like as a kind of common theme throughout humanity, people get themselves in their lives that they really don't want it. And then complain about that life and then never change it. Like it's until somebody like me comes along and then they get annoyed by me and intrigued by me. And then they start making changes. Well, it's about if you're not getting rocked to your core regularly, you're not growing. And now some of us find ways to search that out where it's where a getting rocked to our core comes from to seek it out and we're ready for it. And that is one way, but it is the getting rocked to your core that comes in blind side you is where a lot of the big growth is. And I have to remind myself when that does happen that this is a good thing. And I've been through enough in my life to be able to work through that. But of course at first I'm cussing out the world and what's going on and I'm upset at myself and I'm upset at whatever I placed blame on for rocking me to my core. But once I get through all that, I can start to look at, okay, what can I gain from this? How do I gain from this crisis? What can I change fundamentally to get the most out of this? And that takes a while and as I get older I've gotten more comfortable with that. But yet I still find myself when it happens having to go through that whole process. And in fact, AJ and I both have tattoos. This says B over A, we both have them. As a reminder that if we're stuck in any position that we're gonna, and we want change, we wanna get unstuck that we're gonna have to do things differently. And what comes with that made it is not going to be comfortable and it's going to be a fight. However, it is going to be what we have to do to make that change. Right, and look, so my firm, this is like a firm belief of mine and I've come to accept it actually as a belief of mine as opposed to just an opinion that any great transformation requires pain. So it requires pain. So like, you know, a number of years ago I got the news that in my wife, I was the asshole. And that was like shocking. I'm like, no, but what a bit, but yeah, but what a bit. And then those, but then what about all the times that I, but I've been, I mean, what the hell? And then once I kind of got through that, the great news was that I was the asshole. Like, I was like, hey, I'm the asshole. Because then I can change that. It's solvable. Exactly. I know I can impact that. I can impact when you're the asshole, but I can impact it when I am. And so it allowed me to kind of take, see, it was like a gestalt switch or something, you know, like, you know that when you see two images, an image and it's got two images, and then you can all see one, then you can see both and then you can't fucking unsee it. That's what it was like for me. It was like suddenly I got like, what it is to steer this thing myself as opposed to trying to navigate things that seemed like other people were presenting me when in fact what I was getting presented with were all my own obstructions that seemed like other people are other things. And I never looked back. Like my life was never the same. Like I went on just like it was, it was that switch in my mind where the word responsibility was like the holy grail in me. I was like, oh my God, it's me, you know? And even all the shit that didn't happen, the childhood, which I don't even talk about in my work itself, fucking boring. You know, I'm just like, oh, who cares, you know? And I know I'm not a lot of people at that point, but I want people to know you can get to that point. You can sit at the point where your past is like nothing, not like, because some people are very triumphant over their past, which means you're not over it because you're still hanging on to the trial. When you're truly over your past, you know, it's like it's not even a subject. It's like, it's like marshmallows or some shit. You're just like, whoa, I don't know. There's no juice left in it. There's nothing left to be said about it. There's no fire, there's no apathy. There's just nothing, it just sits there like an old t-shirt. One concept that we focus on in all of our coaching programs is this idea of taking responsibility. And for many of us, that's scary because it feels like more pressure's being put on us, not less, but in actuality, when you take responsibility, it frees you from old behaviors, from old outcomes, and from this victim mentality. And I'd love to unpack that because I'm sure there are some in our audience right now with everything going on in the world and their shitstorm who feel like they are the victim. And it's so easy to say, it's this person's fault, it's the economy, it's COVID, X, Y, and Z. How do we overcome that? All right, well, the first thing is, it's obvious to me just the way you explained responsibility, I can tell that you got that word in a way that's distinct from the way that most people connect to that word. So you can tell there's a freedom around that word for you. Like you can hear there's a visceral response there that just enlivens you because you get what responsibility really is, right? And what you're talking about is the struggle to get other people to get it the way that you get it. Not like the dictionary definition or some shit like that, but that you're sitting there and it grips you when you get responsibility that way. Like in the way that love gets you. I mean, I could look up the dictionary definition of love, but that doesn't get me along. And that's the same with this whole world and it's a world that you get yourself into this world of responsibility because people automatically assume that it's something to do with who's to blame, right? And so anytime you hear about the responsibility like, you know, they can't even because they can't get past like that wasn't me. And because we, you know, we're very tribal. So the worst thing you can do is piss the tribe off because you'll get kicked out, you know? So you don't want to be the blame, but what you don't get about responsibility is and you started to think of it in these terms like try on the idea that you've been spending your whole life trying to drive the car with a rear view mirror. And you're kind of, you'll get the straight bits and it seems like you're in control, but the car's just kind of driving itself. And then you'll have a little curve or killing off the road you've got. And the responsibility is when you finally, finally realize the presence of this thing called a steering wheel. And you're like, oh, shit, I actually have a say in how this goes. I have a say in how this turns out for me. And it's not like a little say. It's like, I have the say, right? And I can be responsible. One of the things that I ask people is, tell me your most negative state when people say, well, I don't know, I get angry or I get depressed. And I say, when that comes up, can you be responsible for it? And then they're like, what do you mean responsible for it? And I'll say, can you be responsible for that that's present? And now you must continue to operate in a way that's more consistent with who you would say you are. So that is like the responsibility becomes bigger than the experience, but not like a burden, like the opportunity, like you actually have a say in it now. And so it's, I love, I mean, all existentialism is built on a kind of general foundation of responsibility, personal responsibility. So, you know, I can't have a conversation right until I get into that. But I mean, I would say it's probably the single biggest thing that set me free as a human being was when I finally got walked upside the head by this notion of what it is to be responsible. And it's getting out there, do you pay your fucking credit card bill one time? All right, I always, when I'm explaining it for our classrooms, I always bring that up. It's like, you might think that responsibility is making your bed when you wake up and getting to work on time, but we're gonna dig into it because it goes a lot further than that. But once that word, and you mentioned it, you saw that AJ had a different definition than the regular Joe on the street does for responsibility. And once you realize that there was a deeper meaning in that word, and that's usually the first one, then you start looking at every other word that starts to define your life. And now a little of a sudden, from the big pool of culture and society that has agreed upon broad definitions, you're now separating yourself from the herd with your own definitions. And now you have to find people who identify the words, the way you are identifying with them so that there is a bond and a camaraderie and goals in the way you're going through life so you don't feel so alone. And it becomes incredibly difficult. It becomes scary because every time you define a new word you've just separated yourself from another stack of the herd. Right, I think one of the things you need to get though is, and this is one of the things that really inspires me is that I've really taken on that, that I'm leading the way for some people. And that that's really what I'm here for. I'm just here to lead the way. I love it. On a pathway that I already know and I'm familiar with. And all I need to really do is just work with you until you see your own and it can inspire you the way that mine did. And so, I mean, that really is like my kind of, I mean, that is my purpose. I'm here to empower people. It's so, and I'm inspired by that. You know, I don't, I often say that, you know, the more I develop myself, the weirder I sound to other people, like they're just like, you're fucking weird. And I'm like, yeah, I can get that considering where you're looking at it from. That's okay. And that's absolutely okay too. And you know, one of the things I love a bit personally development, it's not a pyramid, right? I talk about this in some of those, it's not a pyramid of development, right? It's not like I'm up the fucking pyramid and you're down the pyramid or I'm more advanced. We're just in different spots on the same map. And I can get you pretty easily just to hop over here and take a look from here and what do you see now that we're standing here? And you can jump back over there if you like, but usually what I find is when people see what I'm seeing, they're like, fuck going back over there. That was terrible, right? I want to stick over here and start kind of branching out from this spot on the map. There's nothing wrong. I never look at somebody's development like it's a problem. It's not that I'm more advanced or more like any of that shit. It's really like, I'm seeing it put over here and if you come and take a look, I think you might find something really interesting here for yourself. But if you don't want to take a look, then that's fine too. It's not my job to fucking beat your own head. I think that's a really important point because many people listening and who've probably read your book think, oh, your life is uneft. You have it all figured out. In actuality, there are going to be more problems. You have a higher resolution of what the problem is that allows you to find the solution faster than others who will stick to the victim mentality blaming others and not taking responsibility. But it doesn't mean you're uneft for the rest of your life. Does it work that way, unfortunately? No. So one of the things that I've always been at great pains to do, like that's another big problem I have with a kind of person development industry is most of the people who talk about it, they present this image like they sleep on a fucking marble blimp at night, right? Yes. And I'm like, how unreal is that? They're like, if I'm following this person reading their books, what a fucking mountain for me to climb, like I'm fucked. You know, I can't live in that mansion and drive that car and sit there like fucking with an aura. And then my partner behind me gazing at me like I'm like the fucking saint, I'm in the saint Peter or some shit. I can't even imagine what it would be like to look at somebody like that and then examine my own life and be left just to blade it. So I've always been at great pains to really get people to connect with people in a really authentic way. I'm, you know, I want people to get, I'm a human being too, you know, I'm the same shit coursing around in my fucking head that you do, right? The only difference between you and I is I've worked in some of those things, I've taken ground with some of those things and I continue to wrestle with the whole notion of what it is to be a human being and life is constantly presenting me with things like, oh shit, what about that? Then, you know, and then back to Godamard or Husserl I go, you know, like a jump back and again, trying to find something that'll help me uncover something. So it's critical that people laugh with the experience in my view that it's doable, that this can be done, that it's not some impossible thing and that are amazing things that people can fulfill on. And if maybe, you know, like from a few pages of one of my books, it helps them kind of, you know, like put a bit of WD-40 on the hinges of that door, then awesome, that's really the ultimate aim. Right, and why in your mind does it start with behavior change? Yeah. We're big on it as well. Why is behavior change such an important part of this process? Well, I'll give you the kind of like, I'll give you a brief history of it, right? So once upon a time, it was all about what you're doing, what you don't do, okay? And it was that way for thousands of years, what you're doing, what you don't do. The problem with just focusing on that, man, especially in the 20th century, but even in the 19th century, it was this growing concern for you about how do I feel? So I had this like, so I was just being this kind of burgeoning conversation for dealing with my internal state and then in the last 50 or 60 years, that's all we fucking talk about now. It's all about, get more of this, get more of that so that you can then do this, right? So, and then the reality is you can wrestle with us as much as you like, but life only ever changes in the paradigm of action ever, right? You might work on your positive thoughts and your fucking chakra and all that stuff. That's fine. You can do that. But if you'd expect in that to change your life, you're grossly mistaken. And in fact, you change your life the minute you step off the sofa and do differently than you did five minutes before. The, what we've kind of been, and I don't want to say we've been fed it, but we've been this growing opinion that to get up off the sofa, I need to feel different. That is my internal state, my physiology, my psychology. It has to align with what I'm about to do. And that's just not fucking true. That is not true. That is, that is in fact a lie, right? I don't, some of the greatest victories of my life were done when I was in a negative mindset. Absolutely. People say, oh yeah, I get a fucking positive every bell. Fucking shove the positive every bell up your nose. I don't care for that shit. I don't care. I'm more interested in what's your vision? What are the actions? And then notice all the states and emotions and moods and feelings that arise. There's nothing wrong with those things. I'm not diminishing those things, but I think we have to start putting them somewhere where they're less likely to impede what we're up to as a human being. One of the parts in the book, when it's talking about this behavior in action, that there is fear that comes with it. You're going to be doing things new for the first time differently and the two go over this, the B over A thing again. For in our classrooms, we talk about the three things that you get every time that you do something out of fear. You get experience that no one can take from you. You get a story to tell your friends and you learn something about yourself that you previously did not know. Those three things are enough to fling yourself into fear all over the place because you know what you're getting out of it. And regardless of what you're feeling in that moment, if it's aligned with you having everything be perfect to do it, regardless of any of that, you are gaining from this experience. Yeah, for sure, I mean, if you look, there's a lot to be said for just jumping in because people have, as well as this ability to kind of overcome, people have a tremendous capability for making shit work, right? And on the fly, right? They're just brilliant, right? Just in a really brilliant way. But my approach with people is I say, if you think of yourself like a character in The Simpsons or something, right? And your whole persona is like a character and you can even imagine your little drawing what it would look like, right? Your every predictable brain pattern you have is only entrusted in perpetuating that character. So you reach points that would require you to go beyond that little Simpsons character and The Simpsons character is going fuck no, right? Because out there in the unknown, that character is useless. So the persona that you are that is interested in perpetuating itself, that's why they get hung up and they're solving the same kinds of problems over and over and over again. But we don't realize that we're creating them too to kind of fascinate our own persona to keep it rolling the same way. And then you get presented with new things and that's when things like self-sabotized command or fear comes in, I can't do it. And so I love the idea of stepping into things that require me like, well, demand that I become someone that I currently don't think I'm capable of being. I'm interested in that. Like that's fascinating to me like, oh shit, who would I have to be coming? How would I have to handle myself? And what are the things that I would have to start taking on that right now I seem to be resisting? To me that's the land of milk and honey. We tend to over index our positive qualities because we're chasing the respect and adulation of others. And of course we want to fit in and we don't spend enough time really thinking about our deficiencies or the areas that are weaker. And I love your Simpsons character or a video game character. If you think about being level 99 at certain attributes is great, but you want to level up your character and those other attributes to get them to 99. That's the journey. Yeah, yeah, I say to people all the time, a great way to see that by the way is in finance. You say to somebody, give me your number. What's your number for next year? What do you want? And then they could say something great, like whatever fucking half a million dollars, a 230, whatever it might be. And I would say, well, what the fuck did you get that number? Like that's based on something. That's not just randomly plucked at the air. And if you investigate and you look and you get under the layers, you'll see that it's based on something called what you think you can do. Right, it's based on that, right? So people would say, I want to double my income and I want to triple my income. But you notice they don't say 20 times my income next year, why? Because they don't think they can do it. No, maybe they can. But what I want people to start to see is those limitations that for you don't seem like limitations. That's the problem with self-limiting beliefs to you. It's not a self-limiting belief to you. It's true. And then something that takes somebody like you guys or myself to come along and say, but where did you get that? Like how did you, like even people who went to college, why that pathway? Well, because at some level you thought you could do it. You never went the pathway of what you thought you couldn't do, even though that's the more interesting one. You went for what I can do. And that's, I just find that fascinating, our whole notion fascinating. Now, one of the distinctions that you talk about is the difference between assertive self-talk and narrative self-talk. And I think many of us fall into this trap, myself included, I'm trying, I'm going to, I'm going to try, and it works against us. It actually limits us in ways that we don't even realize our language comes into play. Let's unpack that for the audience, because I know many are trying to lose weight, trying to make that change. So I've got this, I'm on this little mission right now. I've got a war on words, right? Man, it's a war on words and phrases, right? So shit, like I'm getting there, like getting where? You're only ever fucking here. Like where are you going? Like tell me where you're currently at. So, and if I use that as an example, right? Like I'm getting there, what does that provide you with? Provide you with the illusion that you're somehow, and it's kind of this nebulous place that you had, right? But it's not measurable, really. It's not like, rather than saying, this is where I'm at. I'm working on myself, and this is where I'm at. Now that's real. That's very real, right? But words like trying, or my current one that I want to set fire to, or it's easier said than done. Ugh, oh. Like fucking blinking is easier said than done. Right, farting is easier said than done, right? Like everything's easier said. Saying it's easier said than done is easier than saying fucking easier said than done twice, right? So it's absurd. Like of course it's easier said than done. So what? So what? Like running a marathon, easier said than done. So what? Climbing a mountain, easier said than done. So what? Saying sorry, easier said than done. No, not actually. You actually can say sorry pretty fucking easily. So there are these kind of like little prison bars we set ourselves up with, with things like trying, or I'm getting there, or I'm gonna, which is, I mean, that's a phrase I don't say, right? I used to say I'm going all the fucking time. But I noticed that the more I said that, I never quite got there. So if I'm not doing it right now, it's not happening. So I'm gonna, it's just an illusion. For myself, I never thought of myself as a writer or somebody who was getting into writing, or it wasn't just, it wasn't something that I wanted to do. It never came into my vision. And it wasn't until I learned that very trick that the way you speak, the words that you use is dictating your world. And it was at that point that I began to keep a pages open on my phone and write thoughts out so that I could see exactly what they were and help myself out of my own prison that I've created by the language that I've used in that language is so ingrained. Of course, we're not gonna think anything of it. It's what my dad has told me. It is what my best friends had always said that I had been. And then you start to realize how easily influenced you are and how you pick up these ideas, these concepts and the words that you use and how they have impacted your life. It was at that point that I wanted to be a writer that I started to write more, to look at the words that I would use to explain ideas or situations. And my favorite was to travel alone. And especially in Europe where you see things that have been made hundreds or thousands of years ago and you're standing there awe inspired and to write down the thoughts and ideas that are flooding, that are just flying in so that I can see what true inspiration and something to aspire to actually looks like and defining it for myself. So I can truly understand and relate to the idea and the power of words and their impact and it's a beautiful thing. In fact, some of our classrooms, I dig into some of our clients as the words they used to describe their experiences. And at first I could see them getting annoyed with me that I'm being a bit of a dick about it. However, it's not until they opened up and examined it or like, holy cow, this is the block that has been impeding me for years because it's how I explained my experience. Right, right. And so the best notion like, like if I asked somebody right then the life story and someone had lived their life alongside that person and I said, you should write yours too. They would not be the same even though they had both been there for all of those events. And then so people say, well, why isn't the story exactly the same? Because they're writing it from a very distinct place from a perspective. And we never relate to our life like it's a perspective. Like I'm just sitting in a certain place looking at it and describing it and language is the key. Like, you know, Wittgenstein said this but there was many, many, many philosophers talked about language is everything. Like, and people think it's fucking semantics and it's not. It's words live for you. You have an emotional attachment, a psychological attachment. You have a physiological experience of certain words. People say, well, words don't matter. Yeah, they don't matter until I say something that pisses you off and then some of the words are a big fucking deal. Right? Oh, yeah. Right, so what I want people to get is I don't want people to be careful about what they say. I want them to be curious about what they like. What are you saying? How are you saying it? How do you talk about yourself? Like a simple one for me is people who say like they ask for something but they can't barely get a sentence out of their mouth and they're given the person a reason why they can say no. Right? So it's like, you might not want to do this. You're probably really busy anyway but I'm having a party inside. I know you said you're having a party and if you want to come it's like they're really what they're saying is please don't fucking say no. I don't want the discomfort of looking you in the eye and you say no. So let me get this in first. I'm creating a whole world there for myself rather than I'm having a party at seven on Saturday. Are you coming? Which just seems like a, you know so all the language that we're using it's constantly shaping our experience of this life. So your experience is shaped by the language you're using and it would be who viewed it kind of start paying attention to some of that shit. Well, the narrative self-talk as I've realized about myself is it's an excuse. We don't realize it but by verbalizing I'm doing something it lets us off the hook of the end result because we're telling ourselves and we're trying to share with others. Hey, there's effort here. You may not see it. It may not actually be appearing in my behavior but just so you know mentally for me there's a lot of effort going into not doing the thing that I said I was gonna do versus assertive self-talk I am you are stating who you are presently or who you want to become in that next present moment and it's not letting yourself off the hook and it's not pontificating to others which is so such a false mindset for us to unravel potential success. We don't realize that we're doing it. Assertive language is all about the current moment. It's right now. It's like, it's not who gives a fuck up at 10 minutes from that? It's like right now, I forgive you. That's an assertive statement, right? I forgive you and I'm forgiving you right now. People say, well, I don't feel like I forgive them. Well, get the fucking words out. We'll take it from there. I'm probably gonna be waiting on the field and he had to get the words out. So assertive language is almost like you acknowledge, you might feel one way. You acknowledge whatever way you've been but it's a current, it's like an end the moment experience of yourself or you like draw a line in the sand. This is who I am and this is what I'm standing for and this is what I'm about right now because again, that British philosopher Alan Watts talked of a time in a really brilliant way way more eloquently than I ever could but we live with the illusion of time. It's not a thing, right? It's an illusion of time that we have come up with. It's a construct to help us make sense of a reality. But the reality is there is only now. Your experience of now is now but you have brain patterns, you have thoughts. So people think I'm still in the past. No, you've got repetitive neuronal patterns that when they come up, there's an experience that's very familiar to you and similar to one that you had in a previous moment of now except now you're having it now. And so it's always something like a challenge for me to keep rediscovering the present moment because my brain wants no part of it. My brain wants automatic, my brain wants predictable, my brain wants... So I gotta keep away from myself to the slumber. Now the new book, Y's AF, wisdom being wise, many of us envision comes with age and a lot of experience. And again, we will use that as an excuse. I'm inexperienced, I don't have enough information. Again, to keep us from our goals, our dreams, our beliefs, how do you define Y's and how does one become Y's AF in an environment like today where we're inundated with information that we're not acting on? Yeah, so I think the first thing you gotta really realize, there's a lot of things that you've experienced in your life and there's a lot of stuff that you have done and made mistakes with and yet you keep doing it. So it's not experience, right? Because if it was, you pretty much have the things squared away by about 25 because you've made most of your big blunders by then. There's probably still a few to come but you've made some of the big ones by then about love and loss and rejection and all that stuff by the time you're 25. I mean, there's habits that you have, those things that you do that you know you shouldn't, those things that you know you should be doing and you know that and you know it to your core and yet again, here you go. So wisdom doesn't necessarily grow with age, right? There's a lot of people way older than me are reading my books to get something for themselves, right? And I'm hardly a spring chicken. And then most, like I said, there's this idea like, well, like I won't do that again is some kind of wisdom. You know, as I said in the book, I got a five year old who practices that, you know, not doing that again, right? And that's actually a really bad practice. Like, you know, for instance, if I get in a relationship with someone and I say, well, I'm never gonna date somebody like that again, well, how would you know that like that? You're only going on that one person. Like now you're gonna use this as the template, therefore the past lives on. I would recommend you just go and get to know people newly and keep discovering people and finding out new things about them and come from a different perspective and see what's there. And if you wanna be in it, do it, if you don't, you don't. So for me, wisdom are the things and we talked about this kind of thing again and that you've wrestled with them, that you've thought about them, that you've applied them. And when you put the wisdom in your life, the wisdom gives you clarity, but it makes some ass because you see all the things that don't match up with it. And then you're like, oh, damn. Which is why a lot of people say, yeah, that's not my kind of wisdom because you're suddenly getting confronted by shit that you need to handle. And you're like, well, there's gotta be another way. Is there another Scottish guy out there who writes books that I could read, right? But I really come to the place for people that I say, a good wisdom soaks the mass up. Like you can see it, it doesn't make it easy at the beginning, right? But you can see like, oh, shit. Yeah, if I do this and do that, like that will straighten that out. There's some difficult conversations I need to have. There's maybe some big choices that I'm gonna need to make in my life, but I can see how that strengthens the pathway for me. So it starts to live for you and it's an ontological thing. It changes your experience of something. You start to see something in a different light and in that kind of seeing of it, as I like to say, when you see wisdom in your life, there's no unseeing it. It's there, like, oh, shoot, you can't ignore it. Like, as I said to you guys earlier, when I realized I was the asshole, it was hard to go back. All right. You know, right? And that just rung my balance. When I knew what responsibility was, I just couldn't blame anybody anymore. It wasn't even an option. It was like, I can't, no. Now I'm giving away all my power for what? No, not doing it. So like you said, you know, you need to wrestle with it. You need to think about it. You need to apply it. You need to distill in it. And you need to see it through. You don't just, people want to take things like this and just apply it to the life like an app. It's not like that. You know, it's, you gotta come from it, right? And life sucks itself out from there. I believe that was Heidegger's partner, Hannah Arendt, who said that philosophy is not to be just thought about in a cave or a candle. And it is about playing it out in life and see how it unfolds. Without that, it's just pontification. I wanted to ask you, I think a lot of people conflate the idea of getting older and wiser with becoming bitter or salty or hardened. And in reading your book, I felt that you have stated very well of about love and staying open to that and put in some ideas to keep from becoming hardened through life as life is a full contact sport. Could you speak a little bit about that and to your experience of doing that? So love becomes like a pursuit for us as human beings. It becomes something monastic. And that's really contradictory because you are all the love that you'll ever have. Your real job is to find something that you'd like to express that with, not find it in. So the minute you start trying to find it or pursue it, you've lost it, right? It's like, it's like meditating. You only realize you were meditating after it. You're not in it when I'm fucking meditating. Exactly, like if I fall asleep, I think I was meditating. I was doing it, I was doing it. It's after it. So love's kind of like that. Love's like the minute you put it out there as a target, you're done, right? It's a place that you can come from. And it's really easy in this life to get sour because we think love is a disappointment and it's not. Love is fucking amazing. Disappointment sucks, right? It's disappointment. But it should never be confused with love, right? Like hurt should never be confused with love. They're not the same thing, right? Sometimes you end up with this experience of being hurt and I get that. And something you end up with this experience of being disappointed, that's right. But you should never let that stuff get in the way I love because ultimately that's your greatest expression as a human being, right? I mean, it doesn't get any better than love, right? There's nothing else. I mean, roller coasters and Rolex watches or whatever your thing is, party in your asshole and you can never get any better than love, right? Because that's when you settle as a human being, when you authentically love another. I think many of us right now going through this pandemic are encountering our first, what I would call a shit storm. And we sort of touched on this earlier that humans crave certainty. And I would argue that a shit storm is really when uncertainty hits you in the face because your plans go out the window, everything feels chaotic and you don't really have an option to move forward from. So you are lost and many with the pandemic are now facing job loss, family loss, health issues, fear that they've never faced before. What is your message to them right now who are experiencing their first shit storm in life to develop that wisdom? So, you know, I subscribe to the notion that we are constantly living in complete chaos with an illusion of certainty. But it's always a shit storm. You've just got your little milestones here and there that you cannot, all that's still there, good, that's still, that's why, another reason, by the way, why you don't like people changing because it fucks with our certainty. You get like rocked by like, what do you mean you don't believe that anymore? Like it rocks people, right? Because that's your little milestone. But what I invite people to get is, look, you've always been great in uncertainty. You're thrived in uncertainty. You're fucking master, you're a survival machine. You're designed for uncertainty. You're designed for walking in the middle of a fucking forest naked and coming at the other end, right? Like you're quit for that shit, right? You've got the lessening in the eyes and the brain and all that shit. It might take you a while to work it out. So what I invite people to get is what we're doing right now is we're trying to have this reality, this like the scale is getting peeled off at eyeballs, right? And we're trying to get a match up with the certainty that we had. And that's the big upset. The big upset is this is not what was. So what do we do? We automatically try and make this, that, but it's not. It's a different world. So I say to people, look, why don't you get your nose out there and see what's actually happening and start to snap out the opportunity that's there, right? How do you say the world is filled with opportunity, right? Filled with opportunity that you're either adopting as your own or ignoring. Try on the idea you're ignoring. You're currently trying to get what's been revealed to match up with what's been and it doesn't match, they're not a match. And have a little more faith in yourself, a little more faith in your ability. You're, you know, and I really want people to get this. You are a quest for this, right? You're a quest. Sure, you might want to read a book or do a class or to empower you to enliven you for sure. But don't start to relate to this like you can't do this or, you know, this is impossible for you. The only thing that's basically impossible is trying to recreate what's been, right? That was all an illusion anyway. And really you got to look out there in your future. The future is unwritten. There's people, by the way, are going to come out of this and change society that if this never happened, they would never have done it. Absolutely agree. And taking that perspective into the future is more powerful than living in the past and hoping as a strategy that things will return to the way they were in 2019. We love having a challenge for our audience each week to unlock a new mindset or a view or perspective that they could apply in their life for meaningful change. And I know all of your books are filled with these exercises. Can you share one with our audience that could help tilt the scales towards them being more positive about the future? Yeah, there's one that I've given out, I know, but at times, but I keep giving out because it's so fucking powerful. Your future is always waiting to be created, right? So tomorrow right now hasn't been created in your mind, right? And there's lots of different ways it could go. And that people often can attempt for that future based on the past. And what I say to people is strike for the bold future, strike for something big for you. So it might mean, like the example that I like to use to people is to say, do you think it's easy to make 200 bucks a week or hard to make 200 bucks a week? And it depends who you're talking to. And somebody might say, it's hard to make 200 bucks a week. And I say, but it's no more difficult to make 2,000 a week. You're just in that world of 200, trying to solve all those problems. And you'll solve them and you'll make that two bells and that'll be it. So what I like to say to people is, first of all, strike a blow and make it a big blow for yourself. One that's beyond where you think you can get it done. So it might be something simple. I'm gonna go to the gym every day this week or I'm gonna work out every day this week at 6.30 and I've never done that, right? I'm gonna do seven days in a row, right? The job now is not to stay positive. The job now is not to find well-powered at some other shit like that, but it rather realize that what you promised yourself needs to be bigger than how you feel on any given day. And so the practice that I invite people to take on is the practice of relating to what you promised is being far greater than anathon, but particularly what you're promising yourself. What you're telling yourself you're gonna do or I'm now getting myself on the hook for, that's a bigger deal than any promise you'll ever keep to anybody else. And in fact, the damage done by constantly breaking your promises to yourself is you're constantly relating to yourself and someone that you'll say something but back there, you know you won't do it. So take on a practice a week or two weeks or a month of holding yourself to something and then noticing like all the resistance, all the pool, all the circumstances that come up that seemingly are getting in the way, but hold yourself true to the promise. And you'll realize that your life and your success is only ever, ever, ever a series of promises that you fulfilled on and that's it. It's a beautiful, beautiful exercise and it's often easier to share those promises with others and feel good about it than it is to hold that promise and that discipline to ourselves. So it's a very worthwhile challenge for our audience. We love ending every great conversation with our guests with a simple question, what is your X factor? That is, what makes you extraordinary? That I'm an ordinary man with an extraordinary purpose. Beautiful. And I love that you're sharing that purpose with others. And it's a really powerful message in a no-nonsense, no-BS way that Johnny and I absolutely loved as fans of self-development and not hearing this voice as much as we should. So thank you for joining us and having this conversation with us. We really appreciate it. And best of success with the new book, YZF. Awesome, thanks for having me, you guys.