 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, for the first 15 minutes, Adam, Justin, and I 50 minutes have our introductory current events conversation. I talk about pumping iron in 1975 gold's gym. Classic. Wow. Such a great time. It's probably the fifth time you brought it up. We talk about the last breath of blockbuster video. I didn't even know these things still existed. It's crazy. Great find by Justin there. We talk about China's social credit system to be implemented in 2020. Black Mirror's here. Scary. It's playing out. We talk about low calorie sweeteners and metabolic damage. New study just came out. We talk about Justin's St. Patrick's weekend or basically what he remembers from that weekend. Haiti tai. And we talk about my religious adventure again. You're so enlightened these days. We also, we mentioned in this episode our sponsor Organifi. They're the makers of organic protein powders and supplements like the Gold Juice, which is great for anxiety and stress. If you go to organifishop.com, enter the code Mind Pump, you'll get a discount. And then we get into the first question. The first question was, what are our most effective ways to combat internal negativity? So we talk about actual techniques, exercise, nutrition, herbs, mental states. But we also mentioned using infrared sauna. Adam has actually found it to be quite effective for helping him with his anxiety and stress. Now we do work with a company that makes probably the best infrared saunas you can find anywhere. Definitely. Sunlighten. If you go to sunlighten.com forward slash mind pump, you get free shipping, which is usually like, how much is shipping normal? Like 600 bucks, bro. Dude, you can save yourself $600 if you just use our code. Sunlighten.com forward slash mind pump. The second question. In one of our episodes, we talk about tracking. How do we recommend people learn how to track without it becoming an eating disorder? Does tracking lead to an eating disorder? Or is it just a tool that can make an eating disorder worse, find out in this episode? The next question was, do we think that entrepreneurship is just becoming the cool thing now, like everybody just wants to do it? Or is it something that's good? I'm an entrepreneur. And the final question, how did we all meet our significant others? I hope we all get it right, by the way. I know our girls are gonna listen to this. If we mess up any details, we're fucked. Oh yeah. But they get the whole sentiment, right, the love. Also, this month, listen, this is like our best promotion ever. Whenever we run this one, people go crazy. You can get access to our forum for free, okay? All you have to do is enroll in one of our maps bundles. Now, the Super Bundle is the biggest bundle that we offer. It combines several of our maps programs and gives you one year of exercise, training, and programming. In other words, you have your whole year planned out for you, changing your goals, changing your workouts. There's videos in the demos, workout blueprints, everything set up for you. Now, if you want an individual maps program, here's some advice. If you wanna build maximum strength and muscle, that's maps anabolic. If you wanna move like an athlete, if you're into functional fitness, that's maps performance. If you want to sculpt your body, or you wanna compete like a bodybuilder, physique competitor, or bikini competitor, that's maps aesthetic. Or if you wanna work out without equipment, you wanna work out at home, or on the go, that's maps anywhere. And finally, if you have any pain in your joints or your body, or you wanna move better so that when you squat and deadlift, you get more out of those exercises, that is maps prime and maps prime pro. You can find all of these at mindpumpmedia.com. T-shirt time! How do we do? How many reviews? 18 reviews, we're giving out five T-shirts. See, every time we sell people how to do it, they go, well now, I mean, we've been pushing 20 plus. I mean, we've had some 30s and stuff, so. Yeah, for sure. So the five winners this week are Emily Fisher, Nasty Mardo, J.M. Hobsey, The Richie, Cop 198123, all of you are winners. Send the name I just read to itunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Send your shirt size, your shipping address, and we'll get that right out to you. I sound better, don't I? You still sound kinda shitty. I sound shitty-ish. I wasn't, I'm not as bad as I was. It's funny, when I get sick, it attacks my strength. Shitty, shitty bangbangs. It's to my voice. It's funny, we got a message from a fan and they're like, you always talk about listening to your body and not pushing it too hard, but then I heard you on the podcast and you sounded terrible because you're sick and you're not taking- Boom, gotcha motherfucker! You're not listening to your own advice. You know, let me tell you something about podcasting. I'm not breaking rocks, you know what I'm saying? Literally the easiest job we've ever done. One of the coolest things about podcasting is I can sit on this couch and talk. So unless I'm dead or literally dying, like I can still podcast. In fact, if I'm on a hospital bed and some shit went down, like you guys find out. Well dude, even if you can't talk, I'm gonna hook you up to one of those, you know- Stephen Hawking kind of- So are we gonna be like the golden girls of fitness, like in the next like 40 years? Is that what you mean? The golden girls, yeah. Is that what they mean? Is this one of them Blair? I don't remember their names. I'm a golden guy, Blair. Yeah, I remember the name. But no, if some shit- I'm the feisty one. I thought about this like, because I think about weird shit like this, like if something happened and I was terminal, I'm in the hospital and I'm like hooked up to machines. For sure, you guys would bring the mobile mics over to me and I'd put it on and just talk about- Totally. Talk about, you know- Just speculate. Farts and fitness. Maybe one of the only- Give me a topic. Maybe one of the only jobs that you could do that with, right? That's what I'm saying. So I'm not pushing my body because I'm talking. I'm not that fucking sick. Jesus Christ. Although I will say that I remember when we just did a, it was I think two LA trips ago, when we did that one, we did like 12 or 13 podcasts in two and a half days or something. Yeah, that's different. It was draining. Oh yeah. I can't remember the last time that I felt that exhausted from not doing something literally physical. We sat down and we're just plugged into- That's different though, right? Because we were going from podcast to podcast. In between them, we're stuck in LA traffic so it's like an hour in between them. Then when you're on a podcast, you wanna be your best, put up your best energy. So you're doing five in a day of doing all that. Then yeah, it does get tiring. Yeah, that was totally different. Yeah, that was a different type of yourself. But we're just doing like one episode. Dude, you know what I did this weekend? What? So me and Jessica were up watching TV and- Besides laying around and be sick. Yeah, besides do that, we were watching TV and I was on Netflix. She falls asleep. So I'm like, huh, what do I wanna watch on Netflix? You know, she's sleeping, so what am I gonna- You know what I hadn't seen in like two years? Pumping iron. It's been two years. So long as you've gone? I feel like you always watched that. So it's been two years since I've watched pumping iron fully from beginning to end. But this time, and it may be because I was a little under the influence. Maybe that's why I had this thought. I've never watched pumping iron high or whatever. Medicated. Yeah, I never watched it that way. So I'm watching it and this time, cause I've seen it so many times, I could literally recite from beginning to end every word that's said in that thing. I know exactly what's gonna happen is this time I watched it and I didn't watch the main person on the screen. I watched the background. So I watched all of pumping iron but I didn't watch Arnold and Lou and Franco. I watched all the stuff that's happening in the background. And I paused it and I got to study Gold's Gym, 1975, you know, during that era. That gym was shit. It was great for this time. But if you look at it now compared to now, What are they doing? Like what exercises? First of all, it's a bunch of, like it's literally a dungeon. It's small. People don't realize Gold's Gym Venice compared to gyms nowadays. That was a fucking small gym. It was a little gym. They have benches, a bunch of benches, dumbbells. The barbells, like when you're doing bench press and stuff, you couldn't unrack one side without the bar flipping over because the bars were close together. Because Joe Gold, I hadn't figured that out yet. Well, so Gold's Gym, most of the equipment in there was constructed by the dude that founded Gold's Gym. I think it's Joe Gold, if I'm not mistaken. And so he made a lot of equipment. So I'm studying the equipment in the background. I'm looking at the cable machines and then I'm seeing like dudes working out speedos over here. This guy over there's got his shirt. It's like totally, these guys over here are barefoot, like totally different environment. It's like chaos. Yeah, totally different environment from what we would have experienced. And you know how, and as I'm watching this- It was so niche back then, dude. Yes, there was, I mean, you were different if you did that. So different. Yeah, you were- It was a weird world. But at the same time as I'm watching this, I'm just like, I wish I could go back in time and work out in that fucking gym, dude. Especially at that time too. At that time with all those guys. Can you imagine just being barefoot in your gym right now? Like someone would freak out. Well, it was all the liability and shit. Well dude, there's scenes where like Arnold's doing reps and like four other people in the gym are counting for him. It's just a small group of dudes. Go, go, go. And they probably see each other, you know, every day. Arnold was in there twice a day. So he was doing a double split routine. He was sitting each body part three days a week, two or three days a week, three days a week when he was getting close to contests. So yes, Arnold did do a body part split, but he did a lot of frequency too. So he was in there for probably one and a half to two hours twice a day. So he's in there for three to four hours a day working out, these guys are just hanging out. And then afterwards they'd go and eat each other, right? They lay out on the beach and do all that shit. He's crazy to me like when you think about that, like some of the things that I wonder if they like naturally just did that or if that was stuff that they read and they were like actively trying to do that. What do you think? Well, you have to imagine, because you're working out on Venice Beach. A lot of it had to be intuitive. I think so too. I feel like it was just kind of intuitive. What do you think? Well, so I'm watching Franco, the segment with Franco Colombo. So they're interviewing Franco Colombo, that whole famous scene when he's moving the car, he's lifting the car and he's punching the punching bag and all his Sardinian people are watching him in amazement. And he says this one line that I memorized when I was a kid, but I didn't really understand the impact of it. And so he says, where I'm from, he says, people don't say go to hell. They say, go to California. But it's not because California is hell because California is like this magical place nobody ever goes. So they say it as if like, oh, get out of here, go to California. Like if I say go to Mars, you know what I mean? So I think what happened to a lot of these people is they traveled to California and it was like, think about Arnold, Franco, they're both from Europe. You've got people from other parts of the country who went to the special place where you could see other bodybuilders because Lou, if you look at the gym that Lou worked out at, so that's the other thing. I'm watching this segment on Lou and I'm looking at this gym. This gym was so fucking narrow that when he's working out, you can't pass, you can't move by, it's like a big hallway. It's what the gym looks like. Like that's how small, because he's on the East Coast and he's the only bodybuilder. Like if you looked at the guys in that gym while he's working out. He's totally all alone, huh? By himself. When he's working out, look at the guys in the background when he's working out and they're all a bunch like nobody works out. He's a fucking cartoon character. Just a spectacle, everybody's just watching him. Yeah, so these guys go to Venice and it's like this, they call it the Mecca because that's where you could meet other, so I think they were just like, oh my God, it's sunny, it's beautiful, I get to hang out with bodybuilders and work out, let's go lay up by the beach. Fucking cool time. I bet you a lot of them were poor too, I'm sure a lot of them didn't have much money. Well dude, that's why it was so new, like nobody really knew, like remember all the cartoons, like all the movies were kind of emerging around like muscular, big muscular like characters because it was like such a novelty back then. Crazy, and when I was a kid, when I watched it, I remember thinking like, oh my God, these guys are so massive and muscular, but now I haven't watched it for two years, so it's like, when you separate yourself from something long enough and you watch it again, you kind of see it with new eyes a little bit. So, and I know what pro bodybuilders now look like and we're obviously in the industry, so I'm looking at them like, yeah, they were big, but Arnold was six foot and he would hit the stage at like 220 something, 230 maybe, at his heaviest. That's not that big compared, like bodybuilder now, six foot bodybuilder, will hit the stage at 300 pounds. Now we got turtle shell eight packs. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, so I'm looking at them like, oh, you know what, these guys are, they were big, but they're not nearly as big as the guys are now. They're way more functional. Lou, if you listen to Lou when he's walking towards his gym, and now Lou was a big guy, right, six, four, six, five, two, seventy, five off season, when he's walking there, he's talking to his dad and if you listen carefully, you can pick up on what he's saying and he's like, oh, I think I'm gonna start running a mile every day because it's really good for the legs. Like a bodybuilder, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because they weren't, they're not so, it wasn't so crazily grotesquely. Like it was still functional, like they still, To some extent, right? To some extent, they still wanted to move, you know, yeah, with their muscles. Yeah, that's the thing, it became so isolated. Everything was just about like building, you know, each individual part. It's just crazy. Did Arnold go for runs? I don't remember if I read that or something. Not Arnold Lu. I know, I know, I know. That's why I'm wondering if Arnold. I don't know if he did, but they, Cardio wasn't necessarily, I mean, they all did dancing, right? They ballet, ballet to learn how to pose. That's posing though, right there. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, that's, that teaches you to pose, which a lot, I mean, I feel like practicing men's physique is like being in a baller. I mean, that's what I felt like. I remember thinking like, this is, right, I was like, this is not for me right here, but in quarter churn. But I think a lot of people don't realize, I mean, you see it now on Instagram where people are showing this like flex, not flexed like pictures and looks like so much of the way physiques are presented for magazines and photos and what we see in TV. Like, I mean, aside from just lighting and all these other ways that you can manipulate it with filters, the, how you present it and how you pose is like, is everything. But you know, the work ethic that the bodybuilders then had is just because back then it was, training was still such a, it was still such a secret or like a big part of it. Whereas today, yeah, you have to work out if you're a bodybuilder, but nobody really, it's not about the programming or not about like a, oh shit, try this out or whatever, it's all about the drugs. Back in the seventies, it still was and they were pushing the limits of their body because they were experimenting, trying different techniques. And when you watch these workouts that Arnold, especially that scene where Arnold and Ed Corney are doing squats and Ed Corney is just, he collapses after he does the squats and Arnold just fucking steps over his lifeless body and you know, re-racks the weight. But he's squatting with three plates so it's not like super heavy, but they're doing like set after set after set of just all this volume. Fucking crazy, man, it was really cool to watch. It's a great movie, man. Dude, you got, what's the last time you guys watched it? I haven't seen it in a long time. Watch it again and watch it like that. I swear to God, it's so entertaining. Well, I watch it almost every year or two. It's probably been about two for me too. I'm trying to think the last, I know for sure since we've had Mind Pump going, I've 100% at least watched it at least once or twice. Cause it's a classic. It's in my collection for sure. It was a VHS for sure. You know what's hilarious? Okay, so like one of the sole remaining blockbusters just closed. Right now. There's a blockbuster store. There was still open? Still open, there's three. And one of them was up in like the North Pole. Yeah, because there's no internet access. I did not know that there was. Super depressed. This community is super depressed like that they closed. I had no idea there was still blockbusters out. I didn't know that. What the fuck? How does that even work if a company files for bankruptcy and they're done and they, but they still, that must be like a franchise owner. Yes. It was still just like keeping the lights on, I guess. Holy shit, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. They're like one in Texas, I think and like two. Doug just pulled up right here. There's a handful of remaining blockbusters in the US, but they're moving closer to the edge of extinction. That is so funny. Yeah. I thought for sure they were stink. You know what I miss about blockbuster and, you know, which one did we go to? One hour drive up, it was called or something like that. And San Jose, you know what I miss about it? Is that, you know, when you're hanging out with your girl and you're like, hey, it was like an event. Yeah. Friday night. You don't look at them like. You know what I'm saying? That was, I can vividly remember that. You know, posters and everything. Very normal date night, dude. Just it's Friday night, you go to blockbuster, you walk around the store for like 30 minutes looking at all the titles, the new release. Maybe buy some ice cream on the way. You grab your popcorn or yeah, exactly. Some kind of shitty candy. It's like a big deal. And then because you're there, you're kind of committed. Like you're like, well. I haven't seen horror in a while. You're like in the horror section. Yeah. You see like critters or something like that. That makes sense. But you know, you're committed because you're there. Like we got to rent something. Let's go watch. Now when I'm on Netflix, there's so many fucking choices. Sometimes I don't watch anything. So I'm like, eh, too many, whatever. But if I had to drive somewhere, I think I'd probably pick something. Of course. But I think of that too, like from the health standpoint, how important that, and I feel like there's so many examples of this that we start to eliminate that process of getting in the car, that's the experience, that you're communicating to the person who you're about to watch it with and you're walking around and you're talking. You're moving, you're burning calories. You're present with that person while you're doing that. We're with Netflix now, man. It's so easy to turn into just a zombie. Oh, a zombie. I mean, even to the point where fucking Netflix is already suggesting me what I know I'm already gonna like. And then plays the next episode before you even have a chance to get up. I have to stop it. Oh, fuck, I was just gonna get up. The most amount of work is playing it and then stopping it. And kids will never know the fucking anger of seeing the movie that you want to rent. Like it just came out, like Terminator just came out. It's like a box for it, but it's not inside. Yeah, and you, oh fuck, now that's just a display. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen when Netflix, Hulu, all these streaming places start putting out movies that rival our blockbuster movies that are in theater right now? Are we just gonna stop going to theater? Yeah, it's all about the experience. I'm pretty sure it will, yeah. It's all about the experience. Like, you know how many theaters now are changing their seats? So it's like a recliner and they're serving food and alcohol. You got it. You're like, here, it looks just like your house. Right, yeah. You gotta do that though. But it's crazy because you think they're putting all this money in to do that and then you see like Netflix, for example, where you can rent some of these movies for $3.99 or $5.99 or buy it for $9.99. It's really tough to justify going to the theater and spending a minimum of $20 with it, even though it's a great experience. I think my kid would be rad. Like I just came up with this idea in my head. Right now? Yeah, just now. It's probably gonna be horrible. Well, if it's a great idea, we have to edit it out. I don't wanna share it. Think about exclusivity. You're talking about watching movies in your house. Like what if, there was some kind of, it was like pay-per-view, but it was like only for like a specific window. Like you could watch it. So it was like, everybody had to be at home to watch that movie for then and then it was gone. And then they'd bring it back and so it's like, the scarcity of it, you'd only be able to watch it in that one time frame. You know what you're seeing? We'll leave that in there. And it's like, yeah. Fuck you, man. Not that brilliant. You know what you're seeing now is a lot of these movie theaters are doing like, which I think is really smart. Just cause the setup is cool. It's like your March Madness or like, you know, the World Series or like these big televised event UFC fights. So a lot of these theaters are selling tickets to come watch these. They're sweating, man. Yeah, oh yeah, I know that you can see them. You can watch the opera. I'm actually gonna go watch, you can actually watch the opera at the movies. Like the live opera? No, no, no, no, no. It's the theater opera, but it's the experience. Oh, okay. I'm gonna actually go, yeah. Okay. I'm gonna do that. You would choose that over. Yeah, I know, of course. I've thrown out like all these cool things. I don't know, I basically just gave you my underwear to wet you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys, give me a wedgie real quick. Pull this over my head, please. Give me one of those. No, you know what I think? I think my kids' generation will be the, will be the generation that kills movies. I really do. Cause my kids don't, I mean, your kids, they don't give a shit about that kind of stuff. I like the event of going to the movies and sitting down and getting the popcorn and everybody's together type of deal, but I think kids, when they become adults, they're not gonna take their kids to the movies. Yeah, I mean, you just like that it's new, that it's novel. You know, that's the only reason to go. You know, if you don't have access to it at your house yet. That's right. Once they make it where you have access to your house, what's the reason? Dude, I'm a solo moviegoer, man. It's still a thing for me. Cause you like the experience of it. Right, yeah, I do. I get what you're saying. I'm the same way. Yeah. But I feel like we might be the last, cause, okay, I'll give you an example. I hope we are. So I get more seats, you know what I'm saying? Cause I hate sitting next to me at the theater. Well, here's what I'll give you an example. So I had this trainer that worked for me at my studio and she's 54 and she was so angry that the San Jose Mercury newspaper was getting thinner and thinner and thinner and smaller. It used to be one of the number one newspapers in the country and she was so mad, but she would still get it and she'd love to read it. And I sat down with her one day. I'm like, what are you doing reading the fucking newspaper? I'm like, all that information you can get online. Shit, the San Jose Mercury News has an online site where you could read all this stuff. Like why? She's like, I like the experience and the feel. And I'm like, oh shit. It's because it reminds her of like what she grew up with just like us with movie theaters. I think our kids are gonna be like, why are you driving somewhere to spend a lot of money to watch some shit you could watch at home? Like no one's gonna wanna do that anymore. Well, it's like driving a car, you know? Nobody's gonna give a shit about driving a car soon. So there we are, you know? So in 2020, 2020, the Chinese government is gonna launch its social credit system. It's actually gonna fucking launch it. No, dude. Did it remember what I told you guys about? What's that gonna look like? Explain that. So this is a planning outline for the construction of the social credit system. So this is how the Chinese government is gonna give you a score based on your credit, based on the decisions you make, based on your education, based on the friends that you have in your network and their scores, based on the articles that you like to read, if you play too many video games. It's just like a whole new cast system. Bro, and it's a, yes, and this is gonna be literally- Isn't that like that Black Mirror episode? 100% Totally, yeah. With a 100% ranking system. Yeah, some kind of weird. It's 100%. So check this out. So let's say we're friends, right, Adam? And Justin, we're all friends, right? And all of us have good scores. Impossible. Because we're good communists. Like we do everything we're supposed to. We don't play too many video games. We work hard. We tell on people we're doing it wrong. Right. Let's say then I'm like, yeah, you know, you start to see me and you guys are like, Sal, what are you doing? I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna go do this little protest over here because you guys are gonna say, no, don't fucking do that. Your score's gonna get down. Dude, that's a negative 100. Not only that, I'm gonna fuck my score up. I'll fuck yours up, because you're friends with me. Oh yeah. So all your friend's scores are gonna be calculated in your score too. What? So you hang around with it. What a fucking nice mirror. People will become ostracized. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's a nightmare. Like all of a sudden I'm not returning Justin's phone call. He's like, why don't you call me back? I'm like, listen asshole, you fucking lost your job. I never even met you. Yeah, I can't hang out with you too. You get a job. Do you think it'll go that extreme? What do you mean? Yeah. That's what's in the system. Of course. That's what's in there. I'm already reading about it. That's so crazy. Yes. Yeah, people, yeah. They must be worried as hell. Yes. So they already have private versions of this that Chinese people have already voluntarily signed up for and people are already boasting. Oh, and boasting their scores like, oh, I got a 500 or whatever that, you know, whatever their good scores. Here's the other thing. If you have a good score because the government controls everything, you get special deals on loans. You get special deals when you buy things. Of course. You don't have to wait in the lines. So when you go rent a car, they don't ask you. So manipulative. They're not gonna ask you for anything because you got a 800 score or whatever your score is on this particular. So you are literally ranked in society based on whatever algorithm you want. I mean, you could almost argue we kinda run our system like that in a way without just announcing it all over the place. Think about it. Well, hierarchies have always existed, of course. I mean, if we do that ourselves. If you don't have a good credit score in America, bro, it's life is fucking tight. It's really tough if you're somebody. Once you fuck your credit up, man. But here's the difference. The difference is you hanging out with me doesn't affect your credit score or whatever. Yeah, or does it indirectly? Because we talk about you're a collection or an average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And so indirectly, if you guys are, my five closest friends are kind of shit butts. And in a sense, they are gonna kind of weigh me down or they are gonna in a sense, gonna hurt me in those areas because they're not pushing me to elevate as a person. So I mean, are we kind of already doing this? So here's the difference. And this is why it's a problem. The difference is hierarchy ladders have always existed. Like we always, whether you like it or not, you rank people based on everything. We've seen them in animals. You rank them by the, you can rank them by their job, their skin color, their money, whatever they're wearing, male, female, their attitude, the car they drive, how much money they earn, what their job is like, we all do that, right? The difference is the Chinese government controls us. That's the big fucking difference. So you have a central agency now that can fuck with people or manipulate things to get their populace to do what they want. That's the scary part. Imagine if you walked around and you had a score that was determined by some algorithm that you had no control over or whatever, that could go bad. Like if that was just an app everybody agreed to or something and like it was just randomly controlled by everybody that was just using it. No, this is the state, this is the state, the Chinese state will be doing that. I mean, is our 2020, how different though is, I mean, if our credit score, that kind of is like facing, you know how different is our credit score? I mean, we don't control that. That's based off of some algorithm. Heaven forbid you missed some credit card payment when you were 19 years old or some shit. It's similar to a credit score, except a credit score is, you know, it is appropriate information for financial institutions, but this social networking system that they have is gonna rank anything and everything that they want. So if you ever... If you have like a lot of Facebook friends you get extra points. Or less, or less. Maybe you spend too much time on social media. Maybe you, you know, maybe you get a haircut. Yeah, what are all the stipulations? Do they have like a manual that they're like giving everybody for this? Dude, if you even know. What if you type in Tiananmen Square, which is highly, highly controversial in China, even say, oh, you lost 500 points right there. What if you disagree with the government? What if you, I mean, anything they want, they could fuck with you over. It's just another form of control. It's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. It's scary crazy. It's for sure being implemented. 2020. Oh wow. 2020 dude, that shit's gonna happen. That's crazy. That's real lie. This is why communism and shit, like that's so fucking scary. Like don't ever give them. Because again, we're talking about a government that legally has the authority to throw you in jail or kill you if they want to. So that's why it's a problem. You know what I mean? If it's just a voluntary thing and nobody could kill you over it. Well, I guess that's fine, you know, up to you. But if it's your government, what happens when you get a really low score? What if one day, imagine this, here's a scenario that sounds crazy, but it's not because we have plenty of examples of this in the 20th century. What if the Chinese government comes out and let's say the system has been in place now for 20 years. So now it's the year 2040. Everybody has scores. It's totally implemented in society. And let's say a new leader comes forward and he says, look, we need to move China forward. We need to move in advance the people and the masses are more important than the individual. This is the whole premise behind communism, right? Like the benefit of the many over the benefit of the few, right? And they say, this is what we're gonna do. Anybody who has a score under the 150, you are gonna be thrown in jail. Like we need you out of society. You are not contributing to society. For sure that could happen. For fucking sure that could happen. I'm gonna buy stock in Fitbit. Cause they're all gonna be like scoring themselves every day, you know? Like anything that has metrics. Actually, someone just told me Fitbit took a big shit, bro. I meant to tell you that. I meant to tell you that. My buddy messaged me and said, am I asked if I was watching what's going on with Fitbit? That was just a couple of days ago. Really, the old Fitbit shit. Yeah, I don't know. The Fitbit shit. I don't know what's going on cause I don't know if the markets just become so competitive. I mean, I thought they were carving themselves out a nice little slice. They partnered up with some of the professional teams. I thought that was pretty smart. I thought they're giving Apple kind of a run for their money as far as aesthetically what it looked like. But somebody just. Just some news that came out and their profits are. I don't know or the technology isn't evolving that much. Like what else are we getting with our Fitbit than what we are getting from our Fitbit for, you know? And real soon here, companies like Apple and Apple. I mean, real soon here. I think that's what it is. It's all the incorporation. Like yeah, the bigger companies are moving in the space finally with Google and Apple. Right. And then at that point, I think almost every digital watch will have all the. It's going to be in there. It's just like having the flashlight, remember the flashlight app? Right. Dude, how much will that suck? You're like, I'm killing it. Then like the next year, Apple's like, oh yeah. You put it in it. And this is me totally speculating. I don't know if that's the truth behind why it's suffering or not. But I would definitely speculate that. I always think that's the worry. Well, it makes sense because the way we can do things, like you can't patent anything really. You know what I'm saying? Not with tech like that. I mean, you could just reverse engineer. It makes it very similar. And now any of the technology that's really in a Fitbit, what's to stop Apple or every other digital watch for that, making it also a Fitbit. And when they price it from 50 to 100-something dollars, you can get digital watches for that or less. And then it may as well have that feature built into it. Well, even then they'll sue them, but like big companies like that, they don't give a shit. They'll just like bring more lawyers. They'll just drag it in the courts forever. Right. So it'd be interesting to see whether these guys all shake up in the next few years. New, some more interesting information that came out. So another study came out showing that low-calorie sweeteners, like sucralose in particular, promote additional fat accumulation within cells compared to cells who have not been exposed to these substances. So basically the headline of this is that low-calorie sweeteners may promote metabolic syndrome. This was presented at the Endocrine Society recently. More news showing that artificial sweeteners are probably connected to insulin resistance, metabolic disease, and that the whole calories in versus calorie out paradigm is not the end-all be-all. That there is, you know, there's more to, you know, I heard Dr. Hyman, who's a functional medicine doctor, say it actually rather eloquently. He said that food isn't just calories in versus calories out, it's information that tells your genes how to express themselves, tells your body what hormones it should produce, and which ones it should be sensitive to, and so on and so forth. So there's a lot more information that food gives your body aside from, you know, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and calories, and even micronutrients like vitamins. There's a lot more that goes to it. And artificial sweeteners, man, these low-calorie artificial sweeteners are, they're more and more evidence coming out that they're not what they're all cracked up to be. And it's funny, we've been saying this now for three years, and we've been, you know, people have argued with us and fought us over this, primarily because in fitness, so much of fitness is driven by supplements, and so many of them are artificially sweetened. Well, when we first started saying this, it was hard to find a non-artificial sweetened protein powder. It was almost impossible. I remember I found like one or two, and they were hard to find, and you know, they were really expensive, and everything was with sucralose. And it probably over aspartame, because aspartame got a bad rap in the 90s and early 2000s, so everybody switched to sucralose, which was not a great option either. But they were hard to find. Now, today, you're seeing more people switch to natural, and we've had a lot of friends in fitness who own supplement companies, and we've communicated the same thing to them. Like, every single time I talked to them, I'd sit them down and be like, look, start switching over. Make your pivot. Start making your pivot now because it's gonna, when more and more of this information keeps coming out, you're gonna have a tough time making that pivot when people are like not buying that shit at all. You know what I'm saying? It'd be really interesting to see somebody's numbers like Joe Donnellies, who we spoke to almost two and a half years ago, three years ago. He laughed. I told him, I'm like, dude, go non-artificial. He laughed. He's like, ah, nobody wants that. And I'm like, dude, trust me with this. Organic markets exploding. People are moving more to that direction. It's a matter of time that the fitness industry go there because fitness is tied to health. As much as we try to separate it and say it's aesthetics and people just wanna look good, there's an element of health there as well, especially when fitness fanatics get a little bit older. All these kids that are in their 20s who don't give a shit and just wanna look good, when they're in their 30s, they start to pay attention to their health also. And they start to say, oh, wait a minute, I wanna be healthy too because that makes me look good as well. And it feels better and all that stuff. That's when they're gonna move away. The consumers in their 30s, or those are the big consumers, they're the ones that have all the money. They're not gonna wanna buy. Organify was, that's one of the reasons why we were even listened to Organifers. I'm not gonna even listen to you if you guys use artificial sweeteners, which they don't. So that's one of the reasons why we even listened to what they had to say as far as their supplement. Do you think though, we're gonna just see this kind of game of charades though where it reminds me of the supplement game where we used to take like a pro hormone or your designer steroid. And we would put it out there. Then all of a sudden FDA would get ahold of it because all of a sudden people are telling you that, oh my God, you're getting hormonal changes from this. And then they get their hands on it and they say, okay, it's banned. And then all they do is they take that and they compound on a change. Do you think like we're gonna see that of, because we're already doing it now. Every time I see a new artificial sweetener name pop up, it's one I've never heard before. Do you think we should be playing this game of charades? It's a new plant, it's an exotic place. Always, at the end of the day, that a lot of them are, Here's what I think will happen because Stevia is the largest non-artificial sweetener that, or the biggest piece of that market, right? That's not artificial. So manufacturers who are like moving away from artificial sweeteners are moving towards Stevia. Now Stevia, it doesn't mean Stevia's like the safest thing in the world either. Stevia's probably likely much better for you than the artificial stuff. But what they're doing is they're taking Stevia and then they're standardizing it and processing it to shit and calling it something else. And then they can say not artificially sweetened, but that doesn't necessarily mean now it's okay is they've taken, because you can take something natural and process it to hell and turn it into something that isn't great but they'll say it's natural. Is that what I'm saying? Right, right. So they'll do that with Stevia too, 100%. I think they're already doing it. I think there's a sweetener called Reb A, if I'm not mistaken, I'm gonna look it up right now just to make sure that is made from, yeah, it's a glycoside from Stevia that is 200 times sweeter than sugar. So what they do is they extract this, it's called Reba Diocide A that they take from Stevia and then that's all they use, but now it's natural because they took it from something that might not be good either. There's a lot of things that are natural that if you concentrate the shit out of them have weird effects in the body. So it doesn't mean you're safe just cause they said, it's not artificial. It's crazy that all these things, how you start thinking about how we were designed, like how we evolved, how we came out to be and then technology comes around and we have this ability, like a few hundred years ago we didn't even have the ability to do this. And so this wasn't a fear or a problem. It's like, we come out with new technology that allows us to do certain things, like concentrate something to the 200th power. And we're so excited because it's like, oh my God, this means we can make X amount more now and this means that we no longer have to use this and it'll taste that much better. And it's like, no one stops to think like, if it wasn't found in nature like this and that's how we've evolved over this entire time, has anyone thought maybe it's not a good idea to consume it like that? And then if you are going to, cause I'm also the other side of that too, I'm like, well, these are some of the, I think you and I were talking, I'm like, man, it's such a double-edged sword that where we've come with like food and taste and like, man, some things are just so amazing. There's nothing, I don't, I mean, I love going to an incredible restaurant and biting into a steak that's been seasoned right and it's been combined. Which is part of, which is a form of processing. Right, it is when you think about it. I mean, we don't eat steak the way we were eating steak a few hundred years ago. So, you know, there's definitely things that I 100% appreciate, but I think that's the takeaway from all this is learning to have balance and then understanding that much of the engineering behind all this is designed to hijack that palate and get you to not just eat one. Bro, that's the, it's like the existential human condition is that we discover something and then we go too far with it before we say, oh, I need to moderate this, you know, or I need to slow down. Yeah, like that's just what we do. We do that with everything. Like we go crazy with something, you know, and that's all you can look at, you know, weapons, you could look at science, medicine. Look at germ theory, you know, we discover germ theory and we're like, oh, if we clean things and disinfect them, then we're not gonna spread illness, which is great, you know, and then we discover antibiotics. Oh, it kills germs. Let's just fucking prescribe antibiotics like crazy. And now we have issues with that. So that seems to be one of our issues and we've done it with food. It's like we started by combining foods and making them taste better and seasoning them and doing that, which is a form of processing. And then we just took it to a whole other level where you buy a product, you buy a Twinkie, which I don't even know if they exist anymore, but you buy a Twinkie. I think there's one natural ingredient in a Twinkie, one. I feel like they came back. They might have. What is that, corn? No, it's like a banana puree or something like that. It's like one natural, out of 25 or 30 ingredients that are all, exactly. Which is like, it's a fucking, it's a marvel of science, that's for sure. Can we talk about how good they are too? I mean, they hit every sense in your body. You had a fried Twinkie? Oh! I'm in the Midwest. Dude, are you serious? You've had a fried Twinkie? Oh yeah. Of course you have. It was horribly good. I ate at this place called Unami Burger. You guys had that before? It's in Palo Alto. No. For a second I said Punani Burger. It was super confusing. Katrina and I were down in Palo Alto this weekend and we were at this place and I'm like looking at this place. So it's Unami, so it's obviously Asian. And then you have a, it's built, the decoration, the decor looks like you're in this library. And then you've got on the wall this huge cover of the Grateful Dead and mushrooms and psychedelics. Yeah dude, just a real weird, weird combination of incredible burger though. Incredible burger. Are you looking up right now? Oh yeah, there you go. Oh that's fun. You guys have to check this out. What kind of burger did you get? So I got their California something, I forget what it was called. But they also have the, they do the Impossible Burger there, which is the burger that is like, I think soy, I don't know if you can look it up Doug where you're at right now, but they have a burger called the Impossible Burger. Oh so it's like a no meat burger? Yes. Which of course I opted not to have that. I'm like, I came here for the meat, not the Impossible Burger. Dude, you ever taste some of these vegan concoctions that are supposed to taste like meat? Oh they taste, I think I did once. I mean you can tell, but I'm still blown away by that. Yeah, I match it pretty well. I know, I'm like, Jesus, what the hell, how did they, the science that went into this fucking food to make it taste like meat is crazy. Oh yeah, yeah dude. That's actually where I was heading with this was explaining that, like the way they make this burger is like you would never ever guess that it's not. You know what, so I'm sure I'll piss off some vegans, but that's okay, it won't be my first time. So if you're a vegan because you're against the killing of animals for moral reasons, which I totally respect and appreciate, but you also want to create a food that tastes like the flesh of an animal. Like I don't want you to create, like I don't want a beef that tastes like human flesh. Yeah, how weird is that, right? You know what I mean? I don't want someone to create like a, hey, this beef we've engineered to taste like human flesh. Like oh yes, cause I always want to eat a human flesh, but I can't eat a human cause it always made me. You know what would be great? I think we made like a sculpture out of tofu that looked like a cow and then just like sacrifice it, you know? Start making burgers out of it, that's fucked up. Here you go. That's fucked up. So you want to hear some more fucked up shit? Yes. Ready? Yes. This is probably one of the most infuriating things that Congress has done in a long time for me, at least. So I'll read you the title of the article. I don't know if you guys are familiar with these things that they're trying to pass, but the House rejects a bill so they put a bill forward, didn't get passed. The bill was to give patients a right to try experimental drugs. So let me explain what this is. And you guys, let's see if you guys will share the same fury. The bill was if you're a terminally ill patient, so if your doctors have- You have a death sentence. Yeah, if your doctors have said, Justin has three months to live or there's no treatments we have, nothing that can help him, he's terminal, he's gonna die. That the bill says that you, who have been deemed terminal by your doctor, you have a right to be able to take whatever drug you want to try to help yourself, okay? And they defeated it. They said no. Oh, they turned it down? Well, the Democrats did. What? Yeah, the Democrats voted it down. And both parties have their issues, but the Democrats really fucking love controlling people. Holy shit. They love controlling people. Well, dude, if they were to open that up, they would give us so much more research and study on all these people that are trying it anyway. Well, bro, here's the bullshit. Here's the statement from the Democrats. It's unregulated. Here's the statement from the Democrats. By defeating this bill tonight, we protected patients and supported the FDA's continued role in approving experimental treatments that may help save a patient's life. They say that they are protecting the patients from having expectations, like not getting their hopes up. Oh my God. These are terminal patients, you fuck. I don't think their hopes are very high. What are you protecting? You want to save them from dying? They're gonna die. How is that? How is that even? That doesn't make any sense. How is that morally possible to even think? You imagine you're looking at somebody who's got three months to live. All the doctors, by the way, have said they've been- The ironies, they're gonna go do it anyways, but now we can't measure it and track it and pay attention to it. Well, no, how much better would it be if it was through the hospital? That's what I mean. You know what I'm saying? If it's through the hospital, again, we can measure it. We can track it. Oh my God, look at all these people. You can, all these studies can be done off of it. And if I'm, I don't know about you, but if I'm three months terminal and I'm looking at experimental drugs that are in the FDA process, I'm looking at experimental drugs from overseas. I'm reading studies and I'm like, look, I'm already gonna, I know I'm gonna die. I want to try this drug over here because I saw this animal study or whatever. It's my fucking body, first of all. Fuck you for telling me, first of all, you should not have the moral authority to tell anybody what they can do to their body. Think about that for a second. Who owns your body and who owns your mind? Obviously you don't because there's shit that you get thrown in jail for doing to your own body. It's my fucking body. I go to jail for doing it. So that alone is fucking ridiculous. But let's add another layer of insanity to it. I'm terminal. Like all the doctors in this, my doctor has now said- You're gonna die. He has intractable cancer, whatever. Yeah. Gonna die. And I still can't do whatever I want to my body. The government tells me basically, sorry, we own you until the day you die, even if that's a month from now. You can't. Fuck you, man. The truth of the matter is they're still gonna go do it. They're gonna go do it still. You know what I'm saying? They are, but at least this way, if it was the bill- No, I agree with you. If the bill was passed, then their doctors are a part of it and maybe what would happen, and this is probably what would happen, if the bill passed, then you would get access to all these experimental drugs. Like then your doctor could say, okay, since we have no other options in your terminal, let me help you seek out and find experimental treatments that are- That was more like competitions to me. Fucking bullshit, man. I was so angry when I read that because I had a family member that went through something like that. And I remember thinking like, wow, you know, she was able to apply to be in a trial, but she had to apply to it. There was a trial drug, but she had to apply to it, whatever. I thought to myself like, this is ridiculous. She's a terminal. We should be able to give her whatever she wants, even if it's just, fuck, even if it's cocaine, like, hey, man, I'm gonna die anyway. I just wanna be happy until I die. Go for it. It's your body, here you go. Don't ask me to pay for it. I get that, you pay for it yourself, but it's your body. How crazy is that that they defeated that? It is crazy. Insane. That was just recently? Freshly. That was recently, yeah. It feels like a no brainer, too. I don't know why they would even, whatever, man. No. What'd you do this week in, Justin? I worked on my house a bit, what else? I went to downtown Santa Cruz for St. Patrick's Day. So. Oh, did you green beard up or what? Not really. I mean, just with the kids, we were just kind of dancing around and like, you know, just checking out like what was going on downtown. But yeah, me and Courtney, we had a little bit of that. She made some corned beef and cabbage and then we had some beers. But yeah, it was pretty low key for me. So I wasn't like raging or nothing. You didn't drink salad, did you? I did not drink anything. And I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day. And then I went to, where were we? Oh, so me and Jessica went down to, we went down to Gilroy, the Gilroy Outlets. So I could buy some shoes or whatever. And then on the way up, we ate at Applebee's. Haven't eaten at Applebee's in years. It's the last time you guys ate at Applebee's. I shared that story with a little, that's when I found the little digital thing on the table. Remember last year when I was like, you guys know that they have these, before that I hadn't been to like- The food quality improved at all. You know, it's okay. Like Outback is way better. If you're going to go that direction, I like Outback way better. But yeah, I went to, we went to Applebee's and then I'm in there and I see everybody in like green bow ties and shit. I'm like, yeah, St. Patrick's Day. I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day. We went to Katrina's work event. They do this at Boca de Pepe. I think that's Boca de Pepe's. Is that what it's called? I used to work there. Boca de Pepe. You worked there? Yeah. I got kicked out of there. I didn't know you worked there. Yeah man, I worked. One of the first ones that opened up in Palo Alto, I was working there. While I was at school at San Jose State. Oh no shit. Yeah. Way back. That was the one, I think a long ass time ago on the podcast, I mentioned a story of some guy that would like come in and roller skates. And he would always request my section. And he'd bring his buddies. It was, they were very flaming. And they really liked me. And they liked you? Oh, you know what you're talking about? Did you flirt with them to get a bigger tip? Of course. I'm talking about not Boca de Pepe. What's the one with the bocce ball? Oh, bocce. Oh, you up in Los Gatos. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, so Boca de Pepe is the freaking team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I just said that I'm like, I didn't know you worked there. You went to Campo de Boche. Campo de Boche. Oh yeah. You're a fucking same shit. No, it's not. All you're going to add is a boop-a-da-bam, but it is. That's what it is, yeah. What are you and do you call it? I had to get at you because you're coming out in my national holidays. What? Yeah. St. Patrick. Oh, I was like, whatever. Green, blep, blep, blep, blep, blep. Didn't they die a river or something? They do every year. Chicago, man. That was the, oh, man. What the fuck? That was the jam. Is that like, you're just going to. Probably terrible for the environment, but it's awesome. What are you guys doing, man? Oh, we just, we, oh, we. Imagine if you're the fish in that fucking thing, like, oh, what the fuck? Everybody's throwing up in it. It's just food coloring, isn't it? Yeah, it's just food coloring. It's orange. It's orange dye, and they just throw it in there. Is it really orange? It's orange. It turns to green. Orange dye turns to green? Yeah, because it's water. It's like kind of got a blue tint to it, right? So it's just blue. Oh, OK. I know science, bro. You just got science. I got schooled. I thought he messed up. I'm like, no, it's not, Justin. It's green, idiot. And then I got schooled. There's a lot of people that come down for that, though. It's huge, right? Oh, my God, it's a big deal. Like, honestly, that was a big deal. But even in Milwaukee, like, people will go off there. It's crazy. We went to both one time on a St. Patrick's Day. But yeah, they do it big. It's a big deal. Is it one of the biggest in Boston? Those are the two biggest. Yeah, Boston's, I think, is bigger. I've never been to the Boston one. I would love to do that one time, because just to compare it, you know? Just a bunch of angry whites. You just get fucked up, right? Just a bunch of fucking, bunch of house of pigs. Drunk and assholes everywhere. Yeah, house of pain all day. A bunch of sunburns. Yeah, sunburns and, yeah, gurgly throw-up. Oh, no. No. Hey, so I've been doing, you know what else I was doing this weekend? God, I love the internet, man. You can learn anything you want. So I'm, like, on this kick of learning the histories of religion. So I was on YouTube just going crazy. And there's some incredible speakers on the different religions that you want to learn on. People showing up at your door. No. Hey, I saw you were looking us up. Can they track it? Yeah. No, but it's great because I don't want the, like, I'm not trying to, you know, get converted or anything. I just wanted the history, right? Yeah. And I found this guy on YouTube, Bishop Barron. I think his name is. Maybe Doug could look it up. I hope I'm right. Sounds like a badass. So, no, he's a super charismatic priest. And he did this series called Catholicism, which is... Was he the same one who interviewed or did a, yeah, interview with Sam Harris? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Older, heavy set guy, white hair. No, no, no, no. OK. But super charismatic dude. And so he's talking about the history of the Christianity, you know, Christian religion. Really, really good job. He did such a good job. And it's just fascinating that have access to something like that. So I'm diving deep into that. I'm going to go into Buddhism next and Hinduism and Islam and Judaism. But I just love that I can do that. Because before it would have been much more difficult. I would have gone to the library and much more difficult. Or hear it from somebody who is a bias, right? Or just trying to convert me. Right. You're not going to, you know, the harder you push, the harder I'm going to push back. I just want to learn. I just want to learn the history of all these things. But yeah, really, I hope that's his name. Now, when you do this, is this kind of like your time where you just kind of plug in, put headphones on, sit by yourself or? You know, dude, one of the things I love, there it is. Is that, is his name Bishop Barron? Yeah, dude, this is a great professional website. It's a fucking great, he's like super charismatic. He's made for social media. I'm watching this, I'm like, dude, if you weren't a priest, you know, this guy's like super talented. But anyway, one thing I love most about my relationship with Jessica is that she has the same insatiable thirst and annoying, because I can be very annoying when I get on a topic. Because that's all I want to learn. Quality of finding a topic and then just becoming obsessed with it, she's the same exact way. And luckily, we're in the same shit. So we're both hanging out and we got home and we had some time. And she looks at me with this look on her face and she's like, hey, I'm like, what? She's like, you want to learn more about religions? I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? I could make love to you right now. So that's what we did. Actually, we had sex first, you know why? Because I thought to myself, I'm like, you gotta get out all the demons. Yeah, you don't want to feel guilty. I don't want to feel weird. Exactly. He's like, let's get this sitting out of the way real quick. I don't want to feel weird. I can see clearly again. Remember, there's still that deep, you know, hard wiring you get when you grow up, right? I don't want to, after watching this have sex. Although it could make it more exciting that I think about it. Oh, god. Oh, we're sitting. Getting like a handjob at you. Oh, dear god. Bird, save us. No! This clause brought to you by Organifi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, Organifi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try Organifi, totally risk-free for 60 days by going to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com and use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. First question is from Maddie Lee, 217. What are your most effective ways to combat internal negativity as it relates to anxiety? Oh, wow. I think the first step is being aware of it, right? I think sometimes people become overwhelmed by all that stuff and they don't even realize. It just keeps amounting and adding up and adding up. Right, I think we get so caught up of looking like right in front of us versus like the big picture of things and you get overwhelmed by it and then it just compounds. So I think the first step is to combat it is to have awareness that it's even happening, right? Yeah, the way I look at it is so being sad or depressed or anxious or stressed, those are all natural things that we feel. They're all emotions and they're all there for a reason. So the reason why I'm saying that is, I went through a very, very, very challenging. I went through a few challenging times in my life like back to back, all culminating and ending with a divorce where it was very, very stressful. And part of me is almost like, I can't be negative, I have to be positive. I gotta be out of this thing. So it's like, I'm fighting this feeling because it's bad and I can't be in this feeling which I realized added a layer of negative to the negativity. So now, not only do I feel bad for a real reason, like if you go through a divorce and you feel bad, well, it's not because you're a depressed person, it's because you're going through a divorce, right? If you're terminally ill or something bad happens or you lose your job and you're sad, you're sad for a reason, something really happened to you. What you don't wanna do is feel sad or angry or bad about feeling sad or angry or bad. That is a second layer and I was doing this to myself. I was feeling bad for feeling bad and that was causing a lot of problems and it actually prevented me from actually dealing with why I was feeling bad in the first place because all I was focused on was feeling bad, the fact that I felt terrible. And I had to learn that the only way to get on the other end of something like that was to go through it. I couldn't avoid it, I couldn't, you know, positive my way out of it. I had to allow myself to go through it and not judge myself for feeling these ways and once I was able to do that, a huge portion of the anxiety and stress that surrounded feeling bad was lifted and part of the reason why I felt bad was I felt like I was letting everybody down around me. My partner, like, oh, fuck, I'm depressed or I'm anxious and they have to deal with me this way. So now I'm adding a layer on top of that. Oh, fuck, my partners, my business partners, I can't do, I can't be my normal self. That's gonna suck and that adds another layer on top of it and, you know, all of these, you know, my kids and all these other things and so I had to understand and learn that it's, I have to let myself go through it and deal with them in order to get on the other end of them. Yeah, that's interesting because most people want to redirect that feeling, you know. They want to distract. Yeah, they want to do, like, that's something that they know is there. Like, so they are aware that that's there but they're gonna try to avoid it or just be more positive as a result. Like, that's gonna eliminate it which really what you're doing is you're not dealing with it directly. Well, you know, I know it's cliche to say this but there's no such thing as big problems, only problems that we make big, right? And it's funny when you start to unpack these things that give us all this anxiety and all this negativity and it's like, you talk about divorce, you talk about losing your job, you talk about these things but really when you unpack that, like, why is that such, why is that such a big deal? Why is that a bigger deal than any other hard time or struggle in our lives and is it really that hard? Are you gonna die? You're not gonna be able to, are you not gonna be able to? And sometimes you might. Right, right, you know what I'm saying? But I think that people get so overwhelmed by these things that and when you compare it to hundreds of years ago, like, people would laugh at us if that's what we're allowing to create all this anxiety and depression and anger or hurt or cause suicide and do these things. It's like, oh my God, it's like, is it really? I feel like we formulated this expectations of what life is supposed to be like for us and I think when they don't live up to those expectations, we freak out and we freak out. And so I think when you have these moments, these are the times to look deeper into yourself and why does this bother me? Like, for example, let's use losing a job because that could just be devastating for so many people, right? You've been in a career 10 years, you own a mortgage and all of a sudden you lose your job and oh my God, how do you deal with a situation like that? Well, first of all, why do you identify with that being, what makes you you? Because you work for somebody else who provides an income who then you help you pay off. Isn't it most anxiety and stress is based off of like, who you identify yourself to be and like how that's attached to that sort of thing. For sure. Yeah, that process. For sure. And so I think when we have these moments of negativity, I think the more negativity or the more hurt or the more pain it is, the more it's something that I need to dig deeper into. It's like, whoa, like why does this negate me out so much? This is an opportunity for me to dive into me and an area that I can work on and I should never identify with all these other uncontrollables in my life. Yeah, and there's also the perspective of, okay, so I have this situation that's happening to me that's not controllable, which these are usually the things that bother us the most or the things that we don't have control over, right? So I have this illness or I lost my job or you may have some control over it but you guys get what I'm trying to say here. So you have this thing that's happening to you and now you're really stressed out and sad and anxious about it. If you want to now handle and tackle the challenge that is now placed in front of you, the version of you that is most likely gonna succeed and come out of that is the version that isn't saddled with all this anxiety and stress. And what I mean by that is I can look at my situation and be like, well fuck, I lost my house and I lost my job. Now, I know what I need to do to survive out of this. Me sitting here and feeling shit and terrible about myself and judging myself over it and adding layers upon layers of how I feel about myself over this isn't going to, it's only gonna make it harder for me. I know what I need to do. So I'm gonna choose to do what I need to do and acknowledge how I feel and that's it. So this came, I had something similar, very small situation happen the other day. I was driving, I was supposed to be somewhere and out of nowhere like dead stop traffic on the freeway and it was during a time when there was no traffic so I didn't anticipate having to take a long time to get somewhere. I gave myself 10 minutes because it took 10 minutes to get there but I was dead stop traffic. I could see lights in front of me, freeways closed and I'm like fuck, I'm for sure gonna miss this appointment and I started getting really pissed off and then I stopped for a second and stepped outside of myself, observed myself getting angry and I said, okay, well, I'm gonna miss the appointment. There's nothing I can do about that. Being really angry about it doesn't feel good. So why don't I just stop? Like I'm here anyway. What are my options? You know what I'm saying? Like I'm here anyway. So I might as well put on a podcast and just chill because I have no other choice. Change your perspective. Because my other choice is to be really pissed off. Change your perspective. That's all you did. And it makes a tremendous difference. The other thing too is you want to, there are, you also understand that your emotional state sends a signal to your body for actual things to change in your body for it to become a physical state. So I can think of something that brings me anxiety. My body responds by producing stress hormones and chemicals that give me this feeling of anxiety. The physical feeling of anxiety I can get, my heart will speed up. I'll get cold, clammy hands. My mouth will get dry. I may get dizzy. This is the physical representation of this thought that I had, okay? Now the reverse can happen. What I mean by that is you could actually be anxious, depressed or stressed out because of something that's happening to you physically that you then mentally interpret as an emotion. So what I mean by that is, I'll give you a great example. Anxiety and excitement. Physically speaking. On a chemical level it's the same. Yeah, physically look the same. Physically, you have the same speeding up of the heart rate, stress hormones go up, same chemical production, same cold, clammy hands, you know, whatever. One is excitement and one is anxiety but physically they both feel exactly the same. The difference is how you perceive them. And so the reason why I'm communicating this is you may be having physical feelings of stress and anxiety that are the result of poor diet, lack of sleep, poor health that you then interpret as, oh man, I'm really fucking sad which then creates this filter for which you look, you see the rest of the world through this filter of depression, stress and anxiety because you're just reading these physical symptoms. So now because my health is poor, now I look at this potential job opportunity as not an exciting thing but as a stressful thing. I look at my marriage as or my relationships as I start to weigh more heavily on the negative stuff that happens in it versus more of the positive stuff. And they've done this in studies. You will start to see things as more negative because of the way your body physically is. So one of the most controllable things you have at your disposal is your physical health. So if you're an anxious, stressed out individual, yes, you can change your circumstances like your job, the people who hang out with whatever but you can also just make yourself healthy, get better sleep, exercise more and eat better and that'll give you the physical feedback of, I'm calm, I feel like I can tackle things, I feel better and then your filter will start to change and then you'll notice you'll be able to handle things better. This is why health, physical health is so important for these kinds of things is because it changes your mental state, just like your mental state can change your physical state. And there are medications that can do that as well, right? You could take a benzo, which will calm you down artificially, which then make you feel like, oh, cool, I can handle things. There's alcohol and drugs that can do that. But there's also herbal remedies that help with that that are not as maybe detrimental to your health but they can also become a crutch. Like you can use passion flower, which makes you feel more calm but if you don't fix the root cause, you're gonna be taking fucking passion flower all the time and eventually your body might build up in a tolerance. I know OrganiFi's gold juice is great for feeling, for giving that physical sensation and sometimes that's what you need, right? Sometimes you're like, man, I can't get out of this anxious space just cause my body feels anxious and it's a hard feedback loop. It's a positive feedback loop, right? So your physical feeling of anxiety, then it goes to your mental state, which makes you worry, which creates more of a physical response, which then creates more of a mental response as a positive feedback loop. Sometimes you have to interrupt that so like you could try like the gold juice from OrganiFi is really good for that. You could drink that, you could do something else, relaxing, get some sunlight or use like an infrared sauna, right? There's a lot of study on that. That's what I do. So right now this has been, this is close to home for me because of everything that I've been going through. So I've never been somebody who's big on like mantras or chat or chants that you do or look yourself in the mirror, like you'll never catch me do some weird shit like that. But I do have these moments of gratitude that I've forced myself into when I feel depression or anxiety or stress or like that starting to come on. And one of the things that I've found that's worked so awesome or has been great for me is, you know, I sit in this sauna at our place now, that we have this thing and I'm by myself, it's completely quiet and peaceful. And I like doing it when I have these moments where I feel like that. And then the entire time that I'm in there, all I'm actually thinking about is not the shit that's negative stress and causing anxiety. I'm looking at all the things in my life that are positive. Like what are all the things in my life that are good? Like I've got good friends. I've got family around me. I've got coworkers that I absolutely love coming to work. You know what I'm saying? I start thinking about- You change the spotlight. Yeah, exactly. I just shift over like, no, okay, no doubt. This side of my life fucking sucks. I mean, this hormonally, this is the most challenging I've ever been in. I'm in some of the worst shape that I've ever been in. Like I'm hurt more than I've ever been in my life. Like all these things are like compounding and could add to all this stress and anxiety. But then what I do is like, I accept that. Like fuck yeah, that all sucks. And it sucks to be in that situation, but it's not the end all. I've got all these other things in my life that are positive and feeding my soul in other ways. And I think learning to take the focus off of a lot of the things that- Cause once I blew my Achilles, you know, there was a learning lesson there for me what I should have done preventative heading into that, but it's too late now. It's fucking happened, right? So instead of crying over spilled milk, it's like I got my learning lesson from that. I've accepted it. Now I'm almost in a sense, I've got punished myself. I'm about to deal with this for the next two to three months of like rehabbing and getting out of it and getting back to myself, but moving on from that and not allowing it to weigh me down. And one of the ways that helps me is these moments of silence or meditation, however you want to wrap it up. But I've learned to find this like in the sauna or steam room and just sitting there and just being quiet with myself. Reframing is such a powerful, cause if you're listening and you're thinking like, oh, that's, you know, my problems are big. Like that's not effective. No, no, no, reframing is or, you know, what Adam's talking about focusing on the positive is extremely powerful. So powerful in fact that when you read books written by people who are in incredibly difficult situations like the Gulag Archipelago, which was written by a man who was thrown in the Gulags of Soviet Russia. I mean, for decades and the Gulags were just terrible, right? Terrible, terrible conditions. You read his story or you read about the stories of people who survived concentration camps or people who survived just horrible. One of the things that you do is you take and you reframe everything into smaller chunks. So you shrink your day. So if you're an extremely difficult situation, let's say you lost the family, a loved one, which is very, very difficult. Rather than thinking, you know, a week or two weeks or a month from now, just think an hour, okay. Here's my goal. In the next hour, I am going to do my laundry. I'm gonna set that goal. I'm just gonna focus on that for the next hour and then you do it and you, oh, I feel good. Okay, this next hour I am going to read two pages in this book and literally shrinking your timeframe and reframing the things you focus on makes such a massive difference in how you feel. I mean, look, the bottom line is we live in the best times in all of human history and yet depression is through the roof. So it's, can you be depressed because your circumstances suck? Yes, there's a large percentage of how you feel, have to do with just your own, you know, how aware you are of the framing you have or your opinion of things, massively. I mean, you have a, you know, you could have a roof, you could have food, you could have all these different things, but you can still feel like life is meaningless and like you're depressed because, you know, maybe someone has more than you or maybe you're focusing on all these bad things. So reframing makes a tremendous difference. I think doing, combining that with getting your physical health in order will work wonders. You get your physical health in order. They go hand in hand for sure. They go hand in hand. I mean, this is such a common conversation I feel like for us, at least for me. The strainers? Yeah, man, I just, I don't know how many people that I had to change their mindset first before we ever got in shape. Like if you don't have the right, All the successful ones, that's how it works. Right, 100%. Otherwise you can't just, you know, power your way through your health and fitness journey. At one point you've got to learn to look inside, reflect and like you said, reframe. Next question is from fitM28. In episode 699, you talk about tracking. How do you recommend learning how to track without it becoming an eating disorder? Tracking is a very powerful tool for learning about nutrition, learning about what is in food. In fact, if you want to go to a place where you're intuitive eating or you're progressing towards intuitive eating, this is where you have to go. You have to start, maybe not have to, but it's highly recommended you start tracking. Because you have to know proteins, you know, how many grams are in this, how many grams are in that, fats, carbs. Besides that, you know, calories, but besides that you also have to be able to take note of something which then you can correspond to how you feel because you would be surprised how unaware you are of your food if you've never tracked. Just being present for just that reason alone, like with your food and your eating process, like it forces you to pay attention. And you know, just like with the whole biohacking community, I mean really the value there is just being like super aware of what you're already doing, all of your habits and like how it's contributing to the health and well-being of you going forward. It's something that you need to have as a foundational sort of start so that way you can build upon that. But that's not where you wanna stay. I'm really glad that you guys went this direction with this because I remember when we first came out with the intuitive guide and we were talking a lot about it on the podcast. You know, one of the things that I really stressed and I was really nervous about was, you know, a lot of people listen to Mind Pump and they were gonna hear this message of us talking about intuitive eating that I was afraid that it was gonna give off this, oh, well, fuck it, I don't even wanna try, like Mind Pump says it's not healthy, you could have an eating disorder if you track your food. And that's kinda scared me a little bit because I don't wanna send the wrong message to people when I truly believe that, you know, the tracking piece is such a crucial piece. Now, of course there's always exceptions to the rule but I would argue damn near everybody or a majority of people at one point should start there, should start there to figure things out. And I think really the goal is always to move away and I'm still doing this today, okay? So this is why I'm so passionate about why I think everybody needs to track and then I also think everybody needs to try and learn to do intuitive. So I kinda go through these phases of, you know, and I'm going through it right now where I'm starting to track again and see kinda where my baseline is because I just came off this injury. I'm now 36 years, I'm different. I'm different today than what I was 10 years ago when I was playing this game. So my job is different, the amount of set, how sedentary we are now, we fly all the time, like I don't have the same convenience, like a lot of things have changed. Therefore for me, I'm back to the drawing board again and I'm gonna track and pay attention. And then from there, I'll take all this compounding information that I have from all the other times that I've tracked and I've paid attention to my body and how it changes and then I'll apply that. And then as soon as I feel like I've got it under control, I'm not tracking anymore. And then I'm kinda proving to myself, can I do this without tracking? And you know what? A lot of times it's inevitable, I fuck up. Or I get, you know, I'm not paying attention very much. And then all of a sudden I allow one or two things to become a habit in my life and then I start to find my health and fitness starting to slide again. And then that's always a reminder for me. Well, let me get back to kinda tracking my home base again. So I think that, you know, and I hope one day, and I feel like Sal is one of the few people I know that doesn't track his food and remains in relatively tip top shape year around. But for the rest of the people out there, that's really fucking tough to do. It's hard because people just don't, they don't know. They don't even think about what they put in their mouth. They don't have no idea. I mean, you ask somebody, ask the average person, how many grams of protein do you average every day? No idea. Ask him, forget that. How many calories do you think you eat throughout the day? How many glasses of water do you have throughout the day? They just don't know. So tracking is just an objective way to measure those things first. And let me tell you the ones that rattle off numbers and say they know, you know, every one of those people that, yeah, are off that I've made track. Like, okay, are you sure? I eat around 2,500 calories. Yeah, yeah, oh, I eat it. They heard that that's what they're supposed to eat. Right, or they tracked one day, right? They tracked one day to see kind of where they're at and then now it reminds me too, like when people talk about their finances. Like you had one good financial day, so you'd multiply that by 360 days a year and that's supposedly how much money you make. It's the same concept with people with their health and fitness. It's like, oh yeah, yeah. And I know what it's like to eat healthy is I had a day, like I ate a day of tracking and paying attention. It's like, no, I bet you if you haven't been consistent with that, you'd be surprised how far off you are. That's right, and so here's the thing now. Have, did eating disorders exist before tracking? Yes. So tracking isn't, doesn't, the cause of eating disorders, it's just a tool. That's all it is. It's a tool. Can it be misused? Absolutely. You can use it to become orthorexic as fuck where everything has to fit in your macros exactly where you're counting every single thing you put in your food and it becomes an obsession and it takes over your life. But that's not the problem with tracking. That's just the problem with a poor relationship with food. Tracking just can become a tool of that. Now, do I think everybody should start tracking at first? Definitely, there's a lot to learn there. You're probably gonna be there for a little while depending on the type of growth-minded individual you are and how dedicated you are and how fast you progress. Do I think that's the destination, the endpoint? No, it shouldn't be. I mean, that doesn't sound like a good destination to be tracked for the rest of your life always. Of course not. The goal should be to continuously learn about your body and it's not really learning about your body because, let me explain, your body's changing all the time. So when I say learn about your body, I think sometimes people get confused and they think, oh, I'm gonna learn about my body and then once I've figured it out, I have the answers. I'm gonna explore my body. Exactly. They think, oh, once I figure my body out, I've learned it and that's it, I have all the answers. Well, no, your body changes. Your body ages and your circumstances change. So it's not- A lot too, by the way. A lot. That's why I'm saying- Right now, it's different for me right now than what was just four years ago. And four years ago was a huge difference for me what I was doing compared to seven, eight years ago. Yeah, it's your body changes. So it's not really learning your body like it's this answer key that you have that you figure out. It's learning how to learn about your body or learning the process of listening to your body. Once you become, as you become more and better, more and more effective at that or you become better at reading the signals of your body, connecting how you respond, how you feel to what you eat and your sleep and all these different things, as you become more in tune to that, then you can, your diet starts to reflect it. Now when, you know, like Jessica, she's been, you know, we've been dating for two years. So it's really been about, I mean, she started her intuitive eating, you know, process way before that because she didn't know how to track and all that stuff. But really it became, when I'm fast forward, we started dating because this is something I've been doing for a while. And so now if she breaks out or if she feels a particular way, she's starting to be able to be like, oh, it's this, it's that, you know, oh, I can see now that peanuts do this to me or chocolate does this to me or when I drink alcohol, like she's identified that drinking red wine causes sinus inflammation for her. She's connected that peanuts cause skin issues for her and chocolate causes skin issues. That was a tough one because she loves chocolate. But it's a process of listening on how to listen to your body or learning how to listen to your body. And that's, and tracking is a tool, it's a fucking part of it. That it's something objective. I think the reason why we talked so much about it, turning into an eating disorders personally from my experience, right? I brought to the show this side or this perspective of what the bodybuilding culture looked like. It blew me away as it did, I think the other gentleman in this room on when we started to look at holy shit, there is actually more eating disorders going on within the bodybuilding community than there is outside in the average day. Well, I mean, it's all relative, percentage wise, right? There's a greater percentage, there's not more people because that's a small niche group, right? But there is definitely a poor relationship with tracking food because what you find in the competitive world is you're either on or off. You're either on, you're dialed, you're tracking, you're straight and then it's like all these guys and girls when they get off, it's like, ah, I don't have to track. Fuck it all. Nuts. Yeah, and then they go nuts and then they, so then they feel like they always have to be getting ready for a show in order to keep themselves. They don't know what normal health is. Right. It's either in season or off season. Which these are also the same people and what I think why we came out and talked about this early on in Mind Pump was these are also with this whole new, you know, Instagram era, you know, we have a lot of these people that are presenting their physiques and how amazing they look during this competition time that are also giving out advice to all these people. And I think that was a lot of, you know, the passion behind what we were saying with, you know, be careful of tracking because that also- Don't get stuck there. Right. Plus, consider this, the industry of muscle building and fitness and that kind of stuff. If there's a bit of a self selection bias there, right? Because people who are attracted to compete are probably a larger percentage of them have body image issues anyway. So you've already got a dysfunctional, you know, a high level of dysfunction in that case, moving into a space that then encourages more dysfunction because you got to get super regimented with your diet and everything else. And you're being judged by your appearance, which you've already got issues with your appearance. So it just feeds it even further. So yeah, to make the claim that there's more eating disorders and issues with food and body image issues in fitness than in almost any other field, except for maybe modeling and other fields that are similar, I 100%, but yeah, I would bet money on that for sure. Next question is from Brenda Farias 51. Do you think entrepreneurship is becoming the cool thing now? Seems like everyone wants to build a business. I almost hate using the term now because it's hot right now. It is so hot right now. You're so hot right now. Oh yeah. A little Zoolander reference right there. I'm an entrepreneur, yeah. No it is, it has become a very, but I mean, it's because of the time we're in. I mean, how cool is it that you could literally turn on one of these social media platforms, whether it be Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, one of them, and whether it be through knowledge, through pictures, through entertainment, you can gain a audience all over the world that are paying attention to you for whatever those specific things you're talking about. And then you can turn around and build a legitimate solid business. That's a fucking really cool time to be an entrepreneur. Exciting as hell. Yeah, I mean, it's so crazy that you see all these brick and mortars. I mean, I think the whole entrepreneur landscape is gonna look so fucking different than the next 10 years. 20 to 30 years ago, if you wanted to be an entrepreneur, this is what you did. You either got a loan, or you borrowed money, or maybe you saved a bunch of money because you wanted to open up. You stopped in mom's basement. You had to open up a shop or a store or a location. You had to buy something for the most part. There were other businesses, you could do mail order and that, but you still had to invest a certain amount of money. So let's say you're in fitness, you wanna get in the fitness industry, you wanna own your own business. You probably 20, 30 years ago, 30 to 50 to $60,000 back then to open up a store to maybe $10,000, to start something to go. And then you have to go through the regulations of your state and your city, then you're limited to the people around you because you have a physical location. So entrepreneurship in the past, that's so many barriers to enter the market. There were all these barriers you had to jump. Like you need this much money just to open a store. You need to understand regulations and taxes and this and that. You need to be able to get, reach out to all, just to the local people around you. So you're limited on that. There's another barrier. The barriers to enter the market now are so small. It's silly. Like to start a podcast, you need maybe 500 to $1,500 excuse me, 500 to maybe $1,500 for equipment and you need a room and that's it. You've got a business. Yeah, and it's crazy. And I know this is like the new buzz term, right? The gig economy, but it kind of helps to kind of define that there's so much opportunity out there now. Like you could literally just drive people around, make money. There's just so many ways to make money now. What does entrepreneur even mean? Like, you know, for me, it's more like, do you own a business? Is it a profitable business? Like even more than startup used to be the new term everybody used, which was obnoxious as fuck. You know, it's just like, just I own a business or I don't own a business, you know, I'm raising money or whatever. Well, I think why I didn't like it is because it's kind of, it used to be something that I was proud of, right? I was really proud to say I'm an entrepreneur because back when we started, back when I, the first business I ever did was almost 20 years ago. I mean, you're a risk taker. Right, I was a risk taker. You were kind of like, you were, they're rebel. Now you're like, I'm an entrepreneur. Like, you know, it's like French words. Yeah, you have an Instagram. Sal just hit it right on the head right there. Like, oh, you're an entrepreneur. Oh, you mean you have an Instagram and a Twitter? You don't say like, everybody is an entrepreneur now. So it has kind of lost its luster to say that you are an entrepreneur, but. You've got more people trying. The barriers have dropped and the, so our generation's heroes weren't these young kids who dropped out of college, who started a business. When we were kids, our heroes were athletes, musicians and movie stars. Today's heroes of kids are, if they are an entertainment, it's a YouTube star who's self-made or. Or these Gary Vee types. That's right, or podcast hosts. Or when you ask a kid today, a 20-year-old kid like, names someone like the most influential people like, oh, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs. Like, these are guys that, you know, what's his name, Zuckerberg. These are guys that started when they were kids out of their basements and started a business. So now it's cool to wanna take risks and do that and combine that with the lower barrier to enter the market. Fuck man, I think it's gonna be, it's exciting. It's, I think it's great. I think it's getting. It'll change the landscape for sure. You're gonna see more failures, of course. You see a lot more people try and fail, because just because the barriers to enter the market are lower. I think it's just. I mean, it's all easier. I think it's changing, too, what it looks like. I mean, even ourselves, like it's this, it's this race to be able to provide as much free content and information as you possibly can to your audience so that you can gain their attraction. Well, don't you already see, like, the disruption of all this old kind of formula, the way that even people talk and carry themselves professionally anymore and in positions, obviously, see Trump, how he's destroyed what a president sounds like and looks like and that on every end of being a business person. I'm not wearing a suit, you know? Oh, I don't care if I say fuck. Did someone just drop Gary Vee? I mean, that's a perfect example of that. When's the last, oh, you didn't say it? Oh, it wasn't me. No, you said Gary Vee. No, I didn't mention it. Yeah, it must have been Justin, I was just saying. Or a winding. Well, he's, yeah, no, it wasn't. But I mean, I'm a fan of everything that he's doing and I think that he's a classic example. I mean, when's the last time you've seen, I mean, in our earlier years, 20 years ago, a multi-millionaire dude walking around with a beanie on his head, talking to, you know, using the F-bomb and so like that. I mean, it's definitely completely flipped on its head. It's totally different, yeah. It's made it competitive and I think it's a good time. I think it's a good time to be a quote, unquote, entrepreneur right now. But because the entry is so low to get in and because there's so many opportunities for people, I also think it's become extremely competitive and you see a lot of failures. Yeah, of course. A lot of failures and a lot of people never really getting off the ground. But you know what? I don't, here's, in the past, when you failed, if you started a business 20 or 30 years ago, most businesses failed within the first like two years. I think it's like 77% within the first two years. And that's over 80. Okay, and then after like five years, it's like 90% or something like that, right? You probably lost, you know, tens of thousands or $100,000, you lost. Like that's it. You know, look, I've had business. I gave it a good go. I've had businesses that has failed. I've lost a lot of money doing that, right? Yeah. Today, it's time. You lose time. I don't think you're losing as much money today when you start a business because the barrier to enter the market is so low. Like again, if you want to start a podcast, it might cost you $1,000 of equipment as long as you have a decent room to record in. And you'll have a podcast that sounds incredible. Now, give yourself some time, maybe a year to build that podcast, but if it doesn't succeed, you've lost time. Now don't you think that there's kind of an illusion that's been created too that I think is false that you see because of these social media platforms, mediums like podcasting, like YouTube, like Instagram, they're part of that strategy. You still see a lot of these fake it to your, you make it. And so I think it puts out this perception for this younger generation that's coming up, they see these guys like, oh man, I want to be just like, you know, mind pump Justin and he's my hero and I'm into Star Wars and he started a podcast and, you know, look how successful he is, you know what I'm saying? And he's quite the shoes to fill. But my point is that, you know, nobody sees the behind the scenes shit. Nobody even knows what we really pay ourselves with this company and stuff like that. Nobody knows those, you don't know that shit. And it's nowhere near as glamorous as like everybody likes to make it on fucking Instagram, you know, all you see is the flashy shit. They'll get weeded out. Yeah, no. They'll get weeded out real fast. But what I think it's causing is it's causing so many people to rush into it, thinking that it's just so easy, I gotta turn this social media platform on or turn this podcast on and then I should be. Well, hey man, if we weren't all entrepreneurial minded individuals, mind pump wouldn't be here because we didn't make a dime for a year no longer than a year. We didn't make a dime. So for a year. Then we didn't make a quarter for another year. Yeah, exactly. We didn't make shit. So we literally worked for basically two years for free a lot, a lot. And we still pay ourselves very little compared to, you know, what we should or could or whatever because we see that we're, that's that mindset, right? That you have to have. So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of failures for sure. But luckily they're not, the barriers are low. So what I think of this is what I think of. I think there's some kid in some inner city who's, you know, poor, maybe he's got a single mom or single dad and he or she is like, brilliant. But they just don't have the capital to start a business the old school way. But because the barriers at the end of the market are so low now, they can fucking enter the market. They've got that mindset and they can succeed and that's what I like about it. I like it that the new landscape has opened up for way more people and that is better for everybody. And think about like people that had like ridiculously awesome ideas but they just weren't funded or they didn't have access, you know, to be able to present it. So now there's that, yeah, deaf for sure. This is why too, I don't hate on companies. Like, I mean, we used to talk shit about shreds but by no means was it hate. You know what I'm saying? I think the model that they built was they paved the way for so many of these people on Instagram now how to monetize and to do it that way. I mean, they really set out the blueprints for many, many people later. And I think we're evolving it and it's getting better already. So I don't know, it's such a cool time to be trying to build a business right now. I've had more fun building this business than almost any other business that I've ever done, Barnon. I mean, bye. So fun, yeah. Next up is Smith S.D. How did you guys meet your current significant other? Well, Justin was just sharing this the other day on the podcast. I did, yeah. Was it just recently? Yeah, it was like, yeah, one or two ago at the gym. Yeah, so I was like. You're cold colder. Yeah, I cold colder. I had this list that Adam actually gave me and it was like, you know, sort of proving grounds. Which is so weird. I didn't get to be the best man after that. I thought, what the fuck, bro? At least you're at my wedding. He assisted me. How do I not get in the wedding, dude? We weren't deep enough then. Yeah, I guess. I guess that wasn't it, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I called her and got her in and it was one of those things. I, you just hit it off as far as the rapport goes. And so. Was it like love at first sight for you? Was it one of those? Or was it more like, I don't know. I was very infatuated. Like I was very curious, like what, I was like, wow, I wonder where this is gonna go. You know? And nothing was crossing her mind at all. So it was completely a hard sell the entire way through. But yeah, that was where it all started, man. And I went through some barriers. She had a boyfriend at the time. The guy was a total asshole. And you got her shoulder to cry up. Little bitch. And I was like, oh yeah, that guy, yeah, he's terrible. What a jerk. Here, let me spot you doing the squats. Yeah, exactly. I think I made an inappropriate comment to her one time. She's wearing these shorts and she texts like what time she was supposed to come in the next day. And I was like. Please wear those shorts. I was like, I appreciate those shorts from today. Did you regret it? At first she was got weirded out but then I think she liked it. Okay. Of course, obviously she did. That was a risk though. What if she did? That was a high risk. She was here right now. She's like, you know, actually I almost never came back because of that comment. Yeah, I almost ruined it. Dude, what happened? What was that first session like where you kind of flirting and not even realizing you were trying to flirt? Yeah, it was a little awkward. I mean, at that time I was a little more, I came straight from Chicago so I was a little bit out of shape, you know? And I remember that because she remembers it vividly that when I was bending over to grab something like I had totally showed butt crack. No. She told me that later. I was like, I'm mortified, you know? So that was like my first impression. I wasn't given off a whole lot of bites. You almost shit your pants in front of everyone. Yeah. Dude, that's what you knew. I threw it all out there. This is wifey, right? This is wifey material right here. She ain't going away after all this shit. Thank you. That's exactly what I was saying. I was like, wow, this is going great. I've been throwing all my worst at her. Do you remember some of the like the first things that when you guys were first kind of dating or getting to know each other that like stood out to you that where she was so different than any other woman that you had dated before? Yeah, I think it was partially, it was her loyalty and just the way that her caring nature, like her grandma at the time was like going through a bunch and was sick and she would make special trips and like to go get her food and like, when I finally got her to date and go on dates with me, like we actually would go out with her grandma and we'd go shopping with her and we'd do stuff and it was just like, I just knew like that type of, I don't know, the way that she cared about people was like super attractive to me. Dude, that is such a, to a relationship-oriented man because obviously if you just want to have sex, you would be like, oh, we're going to hang out with your grandma. But to a relationship-oriented man, that is a huge turn-on that a woman is nurturing and caring for what it's an instinctual thing, I think. Yeah, it was weird. It was like, yeah, I mean it was that and like she was just witty. You know, like she'd throw it right back at me because I would give her some jabs and stuff and she was just like totally sharp and yeah, that was, those two things were huge for me. You would think it's biologically advantageous for you to want somebody. Of course. You know what I'm saying? Like you right away as a man subconsciously you're thinking like, oh, this is the woman who could take care of my kids and this and that, you probably, that's probably going a lot. Yeah, I wasn't even thinking that far in the future but totally now in retrospect, yeah. That's the whole stereotype where they say, you know, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach by cooking for him. That's part of it. That whole nurturing like, and it's true, man. You ever have a woman do something like that for you automatically like, oh, I think I like you a lot. Yeah. All right, all right. This is awesome. What about you, Sal? So I first, I didn't really meet Jessica at first but I saw her. So I had my wellness facility. I had sold it because we were doing Mind Pump and I knew that at some point that was all we were gonna do. We weren't monetizing really at all. We weren't actually, we weren't monetizing at all. So we weren't paying ourselves anything but I knew that was direction. So I sold the facility to a trainer that worked under me who was kind of like my top trainer. But after I sold it, she allowed me to continue training there and paying her rent because again, I wasn't making money so I needed to make money. At this time, you know, over the past, you know, five years or whatever was a slow decline of my marriage and it was just, it was terrible. It was really, really bad, no communication. It was like strangers in the same house and so it was just really bad. I'm at work, just doing my job. I'd come to Mind Pump, do that, go home, try and hang out with my kids and you know, it was just, I knew the direction it was going. At this time, I remember I came to work one day and there was someone sitting at the front desk with their back facing me but it was someone different. It's a small studio. I knew everybody that was in there. And so I was like, oh, okay, that's a new person, whatever, but they were really like, they were like nose deep in a book. They were just, their head was down. I could see the book and they were reading. So I was like, okay, so I ignored them and I went and trained my client. So as I'm training my client, every once in a while I would look over to see who this new person was. I couldn't figure out if it was a client of one of the trainers that was new or if it was a new trainer that was there because maybe the new person that owned the facility brought a new trainer on board, had no idea. So every once in a while I'd look over and I looked over this one moment and she looked up and I think she was looking up at the clock and she had these glasses on. And right away I'm like, oh, she's pretty. Well, that's a pretty girl. Is she working here? Okay, that's interesting. But keep in mind, the state of mind that I'm in that my marriage is for sure ending. My state of mind, I did not, I wasn't trying to check out women or that was actually the last thing in my mind. The first thing in my mind was how am I gonna survive this? And I just wanna take care of my kids and I just wanna do a good job with my work. Like I wanna be able to, I don't wanna collapse because I could feel the weight, like oh, fuck, this could destroy me. So I had no intentions of dating or any, I don't wanna add any fucking extra to my life at all. But I did notice this pretty girl who was fucking reading a book so deeply that she didn't even pay attention to anybody around her. So that was the first time that I saw her. Fast forward, maybe a few weeks later, I ran into Jessica a couple of the times and just said hi to her, small short conversation. And she was reading again, I looked at the book she was reading, I can't remember what it was, but it was a really deep book. I'm like, oh, you going to school right now? And she's like, oh no, just something I'm reading. And I'm like, oh shit, she's reading that for fun. That's kinda cool. So I said, hey, if you're into learning about things, I have a podcast. And at the time, we all had done this thing where we were like, listen, if you find somebody with a phone, grab their phone and subscribe them to Mind Pump because we want to download. So just fucking do it for them. So I said, hey, let me see. I forgot about this. I said, do you listen to podcast? She's like, no, not really. She's like, how do you do that? And I'm like, let me see your phone. So I took her phone and I subscribed her to Mind Pump. And then I told her, listen, if you leave us a review and everybody likes it, you'll get a free t-shirt. So if you win, you'll get a t-shirt and you have a good chance of doing it. Slowly soliciting. She's hustling. Oh, I was closing. I was just closing, right? She's like, okay. So she takes the phone, little that I know, she became a huge fan of the show. So she started, she listened to one. So this is her telling me. She listened to one episode and then she started just listening to these episodes back to back and really enjoyed them. In fact, she became nervous. Later on, she told me she was nervous working around me because she thought that I would judge her training because I'm the stuff that we talk about on the show. But anyway, so she's doing this and there was one discussion we had where she was talking to me about the carbs and she's like, all carbs are bad. And I'm like, well, not really. I mean, depends on the context. And we had this like discussion or debate, but she was very like strong with her opinion and very smart. Well, she wasn't like super stubborn, but she was very smart. And I told her, I said, wow, I said, you're really opinionated. And she got offended like, excuse me. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not, I'm not giving you an insult. I'm just saying that you have strong opinions. That's kind of cool. So that was all that fast forward. Maybe another week later, I left my house. So that was it. Marriage was done. I left. And I had my bag with me. I was going to go stay with my brother. But before I did that, I actually came to the gym because I needed some space to be quiet. So I'm at the gym, my gym or my old gym, lights are on. I'm just sitting there just thinking I have my suitcase there. And it's fucking, I don't know, nine o'clock at night. Jessica walks in and I'm like, what are you doing here? She's like, oh, she's like, well, I met someone here to go on a date. And I saw the lights on. So I just came inside and she's like, and he stood me up or whatever. So I'm like, oh, cool. So we had this great conversation. And I told her I left the house and we had this great conversation. And so we kind of became friends. And then we set up a time to hang out with a bunch of friends. And then that's when I just, we sat down, we talked for five or six hours till like four o'clock in the morning. Totally fell in love with her at that moment. And then told myself I would never contact her again. I could not have a relationship. And she called me the next day. So she was, she's the first, she called me back and then that was it. We just started dating right there. That was history. That's it. But it was definitely one of those like lightning bolt. Like I can't, like I have, okay. I gotta give into this cause I can't, I can't deny it. I remember that time, dude. I remember you going through all that. You know, I don't think I've shared, I've shared like bits and pieces of Katrina and I story. I think on an interview that where I got interviewed somewhere, I don't remember which one I got a little bit deeper into it. But on here, I don't think I've shared like I actually met Katrina before, way before we even did business together and way before we even thought about even conversing or talking or dating. She used to come into our gym and in fact she remembers us playing basketball against each other. I don't remember that cause she played ball. And so supposedly she remembers years before we even got together of playing basketball together in the gym. Where I do remember her was I had a girlfriend at the time. So I had a girlfriend that I was with for two years at that time or right around that time. And I had a good friend of mine, Paulo, really smart dude, good looking. He's an ex model, just a good ass dude. And I remember seeing the kind of the girls that he'd kind of bring around a date and be like, dude, when are you gonna date a girl like a woman at your level or above, dude? That's just gonna, I could see you with for a long time. You keep dating all these little cute girls that you and I, and what I saw, I saw myself in him because this was my ammo. I used to date girls with the sign on the back that said, fucking help me. You know what I'm saying? Like I love being- You're a captain. Yeah, like being the father figure and the teacher, so I dated a lot. Even though I dated some girls that were older than me, I went after these, the women that I needed to fix, right? And this is me obviously reflecting as I'm older of looking back now. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing back then. But I could see this in my buddy and he's talking to this girl and it's Katrina. And I don't know, I don't know who she is at the time. And he's kind of telling me about her. And I'm like, dude, this girl sounds fucking cool, man. And she comes in one day and she drops him. I think she dropped them off food or dropped them off like something nice. I don't remember what it was. But that was the first time I met her. And I said, oh, I introduced myself and I saw she was gorgeous. And I'm talking to him and I'm like, dude, you need to, like this is the type of girl you need to be with. And I'm in a happy relationship. So I'm thinking like, you know, double dating is my buddy. Like, in fact, we went on a double date together. So I was with my girlfriend at the time and Paula was with Katrina. And so that was the first time that we actually really met. And what a lot of people don't know, Katrina knows this now. But Paula as good, he was so good looking that he got all the women from how good, we'd go to a bar together, like the two of us together. And the hottest chicks in the place would come talk to us. And I remember like teasing him all the time because he used to talk like he had all this game, you know, like, oh man, he's all, no matter what, we go to the bar, I get super hard for you. Yeah, right, exactly. So that was, I was like, yeah, dude, I don't know how much game you have or that you're just fucking gorgeous, bro. You're just fucking gorgeous and you're that he's tall, he's good looking, he's a model, you know what I'm saying? So I remember seeing that and when he was talking to Katrina, he would always like show me the text messages that she was saying, hey, she just said this, you know, what should I say? And so I would give him the stuff to say back to her. So a lot of the conversation that him and her had all the time was really me sitting next to him going, like, no, no, no, no, no, don't say that, say this. No, no, no, no, no, don't say this, say this, right? So later on, this was found out like when Katrina and I had been together for a really long time, but that was originally how I met and first saw Katrina and I knew, and then they ended up not dating. You know, they only dated for a short, a real short window, like two months or so and they just went their separate ways. And he in fact got back with his ex-girlfriend at that time. And so he kind of went back to his old patterns and she had, she had moved on doing her own thing. But what I did know when I, the short time that I did meet her, I knew that she owned this massage clinic. And so at this time in my career, I've now, this is fast-forwarding, you know, probably about six months later, maybe even a year, I'm opening up the cannabis clubs. And once those things get up and rolling, one of the things that was common to do is to offer like these free services to your patients or your guests. You know, I'd had this long line of people waiting in my lobby. And so one of the things I would do to drive traffic to my facility, I was one of the first facilities to ever do this, was to, I had these chair massages. So you come in this lobby. And so while you're waiting in line, because we are busing that many people through this place, that you could sometimes have to wait in this lobby for 20, 30 minutes before you could go in and buy your cannabis. We all experienced this together just recently. We had to wait in this long line. Imagine if you guys were sitting down with a chair, getting a nice chair massage, waiting for your next turn to go up. So I did this, right? Well, I went to her company to provide these services. And at that time, she's single, but I'm still dating my girlfriend at the time. And so we actually just had this kind of friendship, business slash friendship. Her company was providing a service to my company. Once, I believe once a month, we met to get, for me to pay up what I owed her and kind of go over. Like we were kind of changing the service and the hours and the people. And so, you know, every time I go down to her office, we'd sit down and we'd chat and we'd talk business. And, you know, it was the first girl in my life that I started to fall in love with her mind and our connection and relationship over the physical aspect. Like every other relationship in my life, the hot chick that I see introduced myself. Oh, and we hit it off. She's funny, we're cool, we get along, we have fun, we're into the same things. Like, oh yeah, you're a girlfriend of mine. Like that was kind of like my past. Well, this was the first time. It was much deeper. Much, much deeper. And in fact, like I didn't have, like people ask was, oh, was it love at first sight? Like no, I wasn't love at first sight. Oh, shit, I was trying to hook her up with my buddy. I'm saying like, it wasn't like that at all. But as I got to know her, I became very attracted to a lot of these qualities that I found in her that I'd never found in anybody else. And so what we, you know, we'd meet up and every time we meet up to do business, I'd start to give her like books that I was reading and quotes or she'd share with me what she was reading. We'd share quotes back and forth. And I started to build this relationship with her that I never had with anybody else. And then I was single. And then all of a sudden my relationship ended that with this girl. Meanwhile, like Katrina and I didn't have any sort of, you know, real flirting. We're very perfect. Which is also why I was attracted to her. I was very attracted that, and I knew when I went into the massage clinic. So part of the deal we had was I had free massages that I could come in and get massages whenever I wanted. And all the girls in there, they would all fight over with who's gonna rub me down and some of that. Who's gonna massage Adam and come in. And Katrina never massaged me. So she wasn't touching me. She was the business owner. She was all business with me. And so, you know, all the girls would be, you could hear them giggling and shit when I come in and you'd hear the gossip and shit. But she was never like that with me. She was always super professional. And that attracted to me. I was very attracted to her for that reason. And so when I became single, you know, now I was interested. Now I was like, okay, well, I'd like to hang out. And we started hanging out. And she was again, another first for me. You know, one of the first girls I ever hung out with quite a few times and we didn't do, we didn't have any real physical contact. I remember the first, and she hates me telling the story because she thinks it's such a bad example. But it was, when I think of the time where I was like, I love this woman. Like this is the girl that I want to ride or die with. It was when we were celebrating an event one time and I rented this stretch 20 person limo. We were heading up to San Francisco. I think we were just celebrating a milestone with the company. I think we just hit a new revenue target or whatever. And so, you know, money was starting to come in. It was good times for us. And I was going out to celebrate. I'm totally single at this time. Katrina's single at this time. I'm talking, whenever I'm single, I'm talking to a handful of girls at a time. And I'm gonna go out to San Francisco with my best friend and where we've rented a VIP booth and we're gonna take the limo up there and party all the way there, party all the way back. And of course, him and I are gonna load it full of girls. I mean, that would be silly to load it full of dudes and go up there. So, you know, I had three or four ways. Yeah, right? I had three or four girls that I was bringing. He was bringing three or four girls and we were heading up there. And I thought, you know what? I fucking really like Katrina. Like, I love hanging out with her. We've connected, but we hadn't had anything physical yet. And I'm thinking to myself like, you know what? Let's see how fucking cool this chick is. And I remember calling her up and saying, hey, you wanna come with me? And she's like, okay, cool. That sounds fun. I said, but I have to tell you, I have to be very straightforward with you and tell you that I'm bringing, you know, three other girls there that I'm pretty sure wanna sleep with me. Okay, I've been flirting with them. I'm talking to them so that I haven't slept with any of them, but I'm pretty sure they want to. And I've now invited them to go out tonight. So just, and she kind of like laughed and there was like this little moment of silence. And she tells the story really well too from her end because she's like, I've never had somebody tell me to say that. Like just bluntly come out like, and the normal for a guy would be just don't say anything about it. And then, you know, hopefully you end up going home with one of them, right? But that wasn't my approach at all. My approach was I'm gonna be fucking radically honest. The girl that I'm, I'm now like, I'm in my, I'm 30 years old now. I'm not a fucking spring chicken anymore. And I realized that the girl that I wanna be with, she's going to respect my honesty over maybe exactly what my decisions. Like I'm not always gonna make the best decisions in my life, but if I can be honest with where I'm coming from, I wanna be able to be with a partner that respects that. And that's how she handled it. She was just like, no big deal about it. And she came and let me tell you those girls were all over me in the limo and everything. She was cool. And she was cool. And she never acted jealous about it. She never tried to like fight for, the other girls were kind of fighting for my time. Whenever they'd find me on the dance floor, one would sneak up behind me and start dancing with me. And anytime they could get alone time, they were all being competitive with each other. Katrina was doing her own thing. You know, she was fine. She was having a blast at the place. Like I'd come over, talk to her. She'd go off and do her own thing. And I was incredibly attracted to that and to see that it did not waver her whatsoever. There was no hints of jealousy. Yeah, that's independence. When you can connect with someone on a deep level, you have the base for a long-term relationship because at some point, I don't care how fit and healthy you are, you get old. At some point, shit's gonna happen. And if it's not based on- Somebody's gonna change your diapers. Yeah. If it's not based on that deep, deep, deep level, then you know what? You know, our looks are fading, bro. No matter how much I want to believe, I want to keep myself looking 20. I'll tell you what, man, like, you know, there could be something about Jessica that she hates about herself, but I'll find it charming because it's a part of her. You know what I'm saying? That's what happens when you connect deeper on someone. So I could imagine totally being attracted to this woman at the age of 80. You know what I'm saying? Because you're connected on such a deep level. So lessons you learn as a man as you- It's also why I think it's, man, and I know we have listeners that have been married since they were young and I think, you know, more power to you, but I think you're a very, very rare, rare, rare person. If you have it all together at that young age and it can actually find a partner that is on your level, and the reason- I think it can, but you both have to be so growth-minded and willing to grow together. If you're not both in that same boat, and then if resentment builds up, I'm an expert on this, okay? Because I did it for 15 years. If resentment starts to build up and one of, or both sides of the party of the relationship is not willing to go in and dive in deep with their own issues. In other words, both people are not totally invested in wanting to figure things out and work things out and be growth-minded. That resentment builds and you add years to that and then it becomes unsolvable. Well, I feel like the first like, you know, our early 20s, like, you know, 18 to 25 is centered around a lot of fun and partying and making money and kind of finding your way and shit. And it's like, not a lot of it's spent on really diving into your own personal values and like, what do you want? And like, who the fuck are you? You know what I'm saying? Like you're so caught up in running with everybody else that you don't really take the time to really evaluate like, you know, what are my non-negotiables or what are the traits that I must have in a partnership? And it's hard to do that when you still don't even fully know yourself. I mean, I talk all aware, self-aware right now about myself, but fuck, when I was going through that, I was run blind. And if you asked me what my, you know, the girl I wanted to be with, I had to rattle off all these things like the way she looked or what she's into or the things that we like, like totally different than the way I feel now. And I think part of that is just, you know, giving yourself time to really find out about yourself before you dive into this lifelong merit. It takes a reps, man. Multiple people. That's it. There's my advice for you. So if you go to the app store on your phone, you can get the Mind Pump Media app for free. And it's free. And you will be able to listen to our show, but also search topics on all of our episodes. We've got like 750 or something episodes. So it's free. Go get it. Mind Pump Media app. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. 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