Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 390 - Learning Self Love ft. Aubrey Marcus

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Aubrey Marcus is the founder and former CEO of ONNIT, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. He is a New York Times Bestselling Author of Own the Day, Own Your Life and currently hosts the Aubrey Marcus Podcast. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/power25 Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 25% off and free shipping on orders of $29! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

PowerProject Crew, thank you for checking out today's episode. This episode is recorded on May 20th, and it is with an amazing guest, the one and only Aubrey Marcus. Aubrey, of course, is the host of the Aubrey Marcus podcast, the founder and former CEO of the Onnit company. We're huge fans of them, me specifically, but we actually get into that. We ask him why he decided to step down as the CEO, and he gives an awesome explanation. Really, really good stuff there. We definitely got in deep about psychedelics. You guys heard on the previous episode, we talked about how we had some questions for him. beautifully. And if you guys are somewhat interested in, you know, whether it be like mushrooms or DMT, ayahuasca, even ibogaine, which, you know, we, we've been talking about Chris Bell.

He just had an experiment with that. Uh, you guys are going to find a ton of value in this because there's some really, really good information, uh, that we couldn't get from anyone else unless they've done these type of experiments. Uh, we also talked a lot about Aubrey's relationships. Yes, plural. The last time he was on our podcast, he was engaged, but he still had an open relationship with his then fiance. Fast forward to, you know, I don't remember exactly how long after that episode, but he and his previous fiance had broken up and he just explained about how difficult open relationships actually are and how he was basically just kind of living through hell, being jealous and envious of other guys being with some of his mates. Fast forward to now and he's actually engaged again to just one person, though. It's not an open relationship.

So a lot has changed for our boy, Aubrey. Um, we also talked about self love, um, again, just really powerful stuff. And, uh, one of the things that he left us with was, um, you know, pray as if it is already done. Uh, just really just amazing stuff. I think you guys are going to love this episode. Uh, if you guys do, please reach out to Aubrey. Um. His social media links will be down in the YouTube and Facebook description, as well as the iTunes or whatever podcast app you're listening to in the show notes. Hit them up. Let them know you guys heard them on our podcast. And then also hit us up. Let us know what you guys think at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram,

at MB Power Project on Twitter. Let us know what you guys think. Positive you guys are going to love this episode. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this episode with Aubrey Marcus. How about that perfect keto collagen, huh? Dude, I've been back on the nootropic. After taking some time off, trying to come back, I'm like, how do I press the button? So I needed a little help. I leaned on on perfect ketones nootropic in my coffee yesterday i think people are wondering how they can get beautiful nails and skin and hair like us on this podcast and one way is going to be through that collagen protein the guy to talk about here is andrew because you and i i think i don't know what's going on underneath your hat mark but

i'm pretty sure we're bald yeah no you saw me without a hat the other day. It's hanging on, but it's definitely heading for the hills. And maybe I got to start implementing a lot more of the keto collagen. But like perfect keto really does have their flavors on lock. You know, the salted caramel tastes like salted caramel. The chocolate tastes like chocolate. It doesn't taste like some weird mix of a chocolate-ish flavor with plastic. It is what it is.

Yeah, the stuff is fantastic. No artificial sweeteners. Nothing's going to jack up your stomach. It's just going to keep you on your low-carb game, keep you on point. For more information, please head over to perfectketo.com slash power25. point for more information please head over to perfect keto.com slash power 25 at checkout enter promo code power project for 25 off your order uh your order of any order of 29 or more there we go um so mark you're talking about so you were able to figure out which xbox system came more or was more recent i think so i think i got the i think i got the question right but yeah my kids

were having just a funny discussion at the at the dinner table but yeah i was watching um bart and geo on their ig and then like they posted up something where they're like flying through the air that they looked like a cartoon but it was like their face on the front of this thing and i was like what the hell is that it was kind of interesting and then after thing. And I was like, what the hell is that? It was kind of interesting. And then after I saw it, I was like, Oh, that's really weird. And I was just thinking, well, that's going to be, you know, that's what people are going to be doing. And, you know, I guess people are already doing it too. When you think about like Tik TOK and some of the different stuff on there, I'm just not on those other platforms. So I don't really, I don't really

see it. I'm not really aware of all the different things that you can do with the apps and everything. Yeah. It's crazy. There's one that I used where like, you can put your face in front of it. So it'll like, it'll age you. So the filter will make you look older. Then it'll start making you look like a baby. And then it's like, and it's on Instagram. Like you can, you can, people are creating this stuff. It's freaking insane. Yeah. The, uh, the crazy thing I remember, um, a couple of years ago, somebody paid like, um, somebody to Photoshop her in all these crazy locations, you know, like, Oh, I'm going on

vacation, you know, European vacation. So, you know, be ready for pictures. And they just Photoshop them in front of the Eiffel tower in front of all kinds of other monuments. And her followers like went through the roof and then finally she was like hey guys this was an experiment I actually didn't go anywhere like everything was photoshopped and I was like whoa that's crazy and then now like you can just do it all probably in the app I remember that too and she got a lot of heat for it too and people were pissed and they unfollowed her yeah you know now now it'll be like a thing yeah now that's just like tuesday

you know i with this uh quarantine and with sports being shut down it kind of made me think like are we gonna start watching people like are we gonna start watching like football games like video games you know like watching people play uh people play the latest version of Madden or NBA Live or something. Yeah, well, they did that in the NBA. They had an NBA 2K tournament where pro players played against each other. And it's funny because you can see who really does take a lot of time and doesn't focus on their video games skills. And they're actually better in real life. And then the ones that are not superstars

are actually really good at the game. So it carried over not well when it comes to video games. But they tried it. I didn't watch it, but it was apparently entertaining. Who knows? Sounds really funny, but everything's made up. The value assignment that we have for the 49ers. Like it's something that you, we, uh, we made it up and, uh, you know, your environment

can play into that a lot. Cause maybe your friends like the 49ers and maybe your family likes the 49ers. Maybe you played football. So you dig it for that. You like to throw around a football or something like that. But it is interesting. I mean, because people can get excited about just about anything. I mean, you ever see the drone flying championships? You guys ever watch that? That's a real thing? Dude, yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's pretty sick. It's kind of cool to watch. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I know. I the the coolest one that i've seen as far as like you know video games and stuff was uh people were betting on foot on madden but they were just like they hit simulate so like they were just letting the computer play it against the

computer right and like they were making like this like real bonehead you know mistakes at the end of the game they're screaming going nuts because nuts because they bet money on it. I thought that was pretty funny. That would drive me insane, though. I just wish there were more episodes of the Jordan doc. I'm so sad that it's over. It was so good. Did you guys finish it?

Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was amazing. It was. It really was. That was really cool. I thought they would uncover something dark, because I know Jordan was a little apprehensive about some of it, but I thought it was really good,

and I thought it painted him in a really good light. I didn't really see anything negative. He just really wanted to win. He wanted to be part of a winning team. And it looked like he landed on a winning formula. It looked like it worked well. One thing I thought was really cool that they were mentioning, I don't know if it was the ninth or tenth episode,

someone was saying that Jordan was really good at being present and in the moment and not worrying about things that he couldn't control. And we talk a lot about that on this podcast. When I heard that, I was just like, huh, that's really dope. I mean, he probably wasn't even thinking much of that. He probably just was that way, right? So I think they might have already played it, but there is an aftermath that you can watch.

There's like another episode they did with Stephen A. Smith. It was on ABC. I'm sure you can probably go back and find it on the – I think it ran already. But I saw some of like the prelim stuff to it, and they were basically just talking about how the people that watch Jordan and watch this documentary, they won't really understand how he like kind of just uh ran and changed like the entire nba you know while people were you know other people were gunning for championships and stuff he was like running everything yeah so it's like we got our guests checking in all right i think we're good you guys

can hear me fine we got you yeah cool hear you loud and clear sir it's great to have you on the show and uh a lot of shit's gone down since uh last time we've talked to you we got this uh coronavirus running around we also have uh you stepped down from on it so i'd love to just dive right in and and talk about that and talk about because for a of people, it's hard to understand how you build something up. It's your baby. It's your thing. It's, um, in some ways it ends up being your identity. And so, uh, what made you kind of like want to move on? What was the, uh, was there a particular moment or moments that, that led to that? Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing because as much as I loved on it and I still love on it and it's always going to be a part of my DNA, I didn't have my identity wrapped up in being the CEO. Those three letters didn't make me feel better about myself. I didn't

go to the bathroom in the morning and look and be like, there you are, CEO. Like, go get them. Damn, you should have. But so when it came to the realization that I wasn't fulfilling the office of CEO like a CEO should, and that's just because of my varied interests. I love doing my podcast. I love going out and exploring my own personal growth. I love writing my books. I love leading my mastermind, the Fit for Service mastermind.

I love all these different things. And any CEO that I would hire for Onnit would not be doing all those things. They would be maniacally focused on every aspect of the business. And so I had this internal struggle where I knew that I wasn't fulfilling the office of CEO as good as somebody else could, even though I have my own magic and my own strengths. But I realized that I was able to add those strengths and add that magic, that kind of secret element that I have that's unique to me, just being the founder and just being the chairman of the board and dipping into the important conversations where I needed to,

and then allowing somebody else to kind of bear the burden of, of, uh, and the opportunity and the privilege of being CEO. Does it feel any different? Did it alleviate any pressure or anything like that? It did. What it alleviated was guilt, to be honest, because for about a year, year and a half there, I would just be thinking like, all right, come on, like this month, I'm going to go through and I'm gonna go go through an entire marketing spend and I'm going to look at every advertisement we did and I'm going to go look under every corner of every rug, which is what a CEO should do. They should leave no stone unturned. And I kept thinking that that's what I was going to do and that's what I should do. But I never did it. And I never did it because I didn't really want to do that. That's not what

I was called to do. So when I actually stepped down, it just kind of alleviated that pressure of like, ah, okay, now I'm really doing what I want to do. And I have somebody else who I deeply trust, who's handling all those things that I didn't want to do. So in short, you're more invested in taking selfies and being jacked. That's always a part of my routine, you like that's that's gonna exist for a while yeah before you started on it um you know you were working jobs that you didn't necessarily love and you like in your words you you had to smile through the suck uh now that you did build on it and then you are you know in a sense stepping i guess I'll say to the side, cause you're not really stepping far away.

But, uh, do you think a younger Aubrey Marcus would be like, what the hell are you doing? Or was this maybe the goal the whole time, which was just to be happy? I don't, you know, I think the younger Aubrey Marcus would be fucking stoked. I mean, he'd be like, look what you did, man. Like, good job. And, uh, and he'd be proud of look what you did, man. Like, good job. And he'd be proud of the other things that I was doing as well. So to me, it was never about being the CEO forever. It was about building something that was meaningful. And I feel like I accomplished

that mission. And we built something that means something to a lot of people, myself included, of course, but also the different millions of people who've interacted with on it. So, you know, really there's just a sense of pride in accomplishing the mission that I set out to accomplish by creating a brand and products that actually impacted people's lives in a significant way. Did this at all coincide with some other life decisions that you've been going through? I mean, there's other life decisions that you've been going through? I mean, there's always life decisions that I'm going through. There's always different things that are transforming. And so I don't think anything was particularly related to that, other than just the escalation of all of the other projects that I'm working on and everything else that I'm really passionate about. I feel like I delivered the bulk of my gift to understanding human optimization

and all of the kind of wisdom and expertise that I could offer that. Not all of it, but the greatest portion of that. And where I'm drawn next is what can I offer the world of mastering your mind and kind of mental optimization and emotional optimization and spiritual optimization, like all of these different facets of what makes a human being, um, thrive. And that's what I'm really called to from my personal relationships. I actually just got engaged to an amazing woman. So that's, that's some new information for people out there. It's not even public yet. So you guys are going to be the ones breaking the news. Um, but you know, so that's been, that's been

beautiful. Lots of different things that have been evolving and transforming. But, you know, so that's been, that's been beautiful. Lots of different things that have been evolving and transforming. And I'm just, I feel really blessed. It's the happiest I've ever been by far. I think a lot of us that are in monogamous relationships, we've been living through guys like you and Kyle Kingsbury and you guys have, have fallen so far. I don't know what's going on here. Well, not a lot of people are living through Kyle Kingsbury cause he's, you know, his wife has a boyfriend and he doesn't have a girlfriend. So if you're living through that, that's your,

that's your special kind of kink. Um, but it's a beautiful thing they have. I was just over at their house the other day and, uh, you know, they're really making it work. Uh, for me, obviously when you're in a polyamorous relationship, as I was for six years, basically off and on, obviously, when you're in a polyamorous relationship, as I was for six years, basically off and on, there's a lot of amazing things and a lot of gut-wrenching, horrendous things you have to reconcile with your own emotional body. And I feel like I really did it.

I went all the way and I did everything I could to explore that to the fullest. And it had the highest highs and the lowest lows. And, um, but now I'm, I'm looking and really eagerly excited to transition into something else, which is really about deepening the relationship with one partner rather than, you know, kind of spreading that relationship energy out to multiple different partners. Do you feel like in some way, uh, that you maybe love this person more, uh, you love this person more, you know, kind of after the fact,

after going through all that, and then now, you know, moving into this, you kind of made the decision because, uh, you're just completely in love with them, I guess. And maybe before you didn't feel that same connection or it wasn't as powerful. Maybe. The interesting thing about any polyamory is that it's, it adds elements of excitement and novelty and, and struggle and challenge is always something to work on. And, um, but you know, fundamentally there can be misalignments. And I think, you know, Whitney, who is my former partner, she's fucking awesome. And certain attributes of her just

absolutely irreplaceable, but our innate nature tends to skew towards different things. We like to address the outer world in different ways and our inner world in different ways. And I think while we were focused on our polyamory, you don't really get to that stuff because there's so much stuff ahead of it. You know, there's so many other challenges and so many other quests for validation and requests for attention and all of these different factors that you can kind of allow some fundamental misalignments to exist. And, you know, while we certainly matched each other in certain areas, there are certain areas where, you know, both of us were unfulfilled by the other person.

And I think that's one of the things that kind of happens with polyamory is it really puts a lot of stuff in the immediate, you know, in the immediate needs. Like if you're in using kind of the triage metaphor, you know, if you're going to the emergency room, you deal with the thing that's bleeding the most, you know, not the thing that's kind of lagging underneath the surface. And in polyamory, there's usually something that's bleeding the most. And it's usually, you know, your wounded ego or your jealousy or some aspect of that. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time working through that and it's really productive, but, um, I think ultimately, you know, I know that both of us are going to be happier when we

find a partner that kind of matches us and matches our kind of innate nature a little bit better. And that's what I've found in my latest partner. Did those feelings ever go away? Like the feelings of like jealousy or not being paid attention to potentially, et cetera. Like, do you just get used to those things? Or cause I know you're not in that right now. So, I mean, I, I'm just curious, like when you're in it, does it get easier to deal with

or is it just always something that's harping at the back of your head? It does get easier in some ways. Um, you get the things that were hard initially are no longer hard, you know, as you move through, but there's usually something new that'll come up and surprise you. That'll be hard again, right? Like the, the nature of it, at least the way that we did it, and this is not the only way to do it.

And I'm not even saying we did it the best way, but the way that we did it, it was on this constant escalating curve where we kept, we would have kind of rough boundaries and then we'd break through those boundaries and go to another level, you know, and another level and another level and another level. And so initially where it was just about sexual freedom, you know, at the very start, we're like, all right, we're allowed to sleep with each other. Well then one of us gets significant feelings for another person.

We're like, fuck, all right, we're, we're allowed to have feelings. And then that's another whole challenge. And then, you know, somebody falls in love with somebody else and like, fuck, all right, we're, we're allowed to have feelings. And then that's another whole challenge. And then, you know, somebody falls in love with somebody else and like, fuck, all right, well, you're in love with somebody else. And then, you know, somebody's, you know, at a certain point, Whitney was in love with her boyfriend and spending more time with him than me. And I was like, well, fuck, you know, like, why are we even living together? You know, you're really spending most of your time with him. And that doesn't really make any sense. So it was just this constant progression where, and i think this is something for people who are interested in trying polyamory is just i would recommend that there's two things that are that

are necessary one you have to have absolute radical trust and radical honesty i mean honesty to the blistering point where you surrender your privacy. Because when you find something out in that container, it's devastating because you really need to have that trust. It's such a high-pressure situation that if you don't know exactly what the other person is feeling, thinking, doing, it's going to be immensely difficult. So trust and honesty, that's one big lesson. And the other big lesson is I think it's important to keep something sacred,

keep something special for the relationship. And that's something we didn't do a good job of, you know, there was, um, we didn't have things that were just for us, pretty much everything that we had, um, was accessible to everybody else. And that ultimately erodes that kind of special bond that you have. I mean, we had the time together and we had kind of this more public relationship, but it wasn't the sacred, meaningful things internally in the relationship that would have allowed some sense of security and some sense of peace within that.

It was really just, we went for the full free-for-all approach. And there's a lot of learning and a lot of growth in that, but a hell of a lot of challenge. Did the lockdown assist in any of this? Like, did it bring you guys, bring your partner that you're with now, uh, somehow maybe bring you guys closer together just cause shit got weird. Shit did get weird, but I don't think the lockdown had much to do with it. I've known her for four and a half years and always felt like there was an incredible amount of potential for us to have a relationship but we'd always had i was in my polyamorous relationship for a lot of that and she was in another um committed partnership so we never really got to explore it

and then as you know me and whitney had technically split up a year ago so there was a lot more room we'd still see each other but there was a lot more room there on my end and then on her end she was transitioning out of her relationship. And at the moment where we both kind of lined up, it just clicked like almost immediately. And it was like, Oh shit. You know, this is something that's beyond anything that I would even dare to describe in a fictional telling because people would accuse me of being a Disney propagandist. Did you have to like reestablish some rules like hey remember like we were doing it this way before and like now moving forward we're not doing that

shit no more well i mean with bylana the relationship started fresh under a monogamous context like you know we're not we're not going to be engaging in any kind of polyamory at least for the foreseeable future i think all things are possible, but if we did do it, it would certainly be under vastly different rules than me and Whitney, um, by Lana being my, my fiance. So it was, it was a real clean slate. It was a fresh start and she'd had her own experiences with, uh, with some polyamory in her last relationship. And both of us learned a lot of lessons, a lot of hard lessons and, uh, and got to see things her last relationship. And both of us learned a lot of lessons, a lot of hard lessons and,

and got to see things from that perspective. And both of us were like, nah, let's try and let's try and focus on us. You know, like that sounds fun. Let's fucking do that. I don't remember how long you lasted,

but I believe you were like fasting from sex. What did you learn most about that? Stellar. I said, I'm not going to have sex or masturbate for six months. And then nine days later, I was jerking off for like the entire day. I lasted a heroic nine days. You know what I ended up realizing? It was fucking brutal.

Like I'd gone prior, you know, like four years realizing it was fucking brutal like i'd gone prior you know like four years ago i'd gone um 21 days without touching myself or even thinking sexual thoughts this is part of a spiritual practice called the dieta that i was doing uh with the under the guidance of a shaman and on day 18 i had a wet dream so like that doesn't really count though i mean it just just happened like i can't can't be mad at that but i'm like a grown I had a wet dream. So that doesn't really count, though. I mean, it just happened. I can't be mad at that. But I'm like a grown man having a wet dream. It was kind of funny that that happened.

So I figured, all right, I can do this. Well, around day six, I was like freaking out. And what I ultimately realized, and by day nine, I just couldn't handle it. Like I literally couldn't handle it. And so what I realized is that I needed the validation that I got from sex, because one of the things that happened in this polyamorous journey is I started to love myself less and less. And that was one of the toxic elements of it is, as I was kind of constantly seeking my validation with my other

partners, and also from the woman that I love the most, Whitney, I wasn't receiving that same kind of validation because there was nothing special about my relationship with her that other people didn't have with her, you know, whether it's somebody she met recently or somebody she had long-term. So I started to value myself less and less. So I needed the sex to actually make me feel okay about myself. And so by day six, I was like losing my shit. And then by like day nine, I was like losing my shit. And then by like day nine, I was like, fuck it. I can't handle this. I got to at least jerk off, you know, and not only jerk off, but like jerk off fantasizing and thinking about my other sexual partners, because that gave me some hit of validation. Well,

at least they did this for me. And at least I could go look at these pictures or whatever and, and figure it out. And so it really highlighted just a massive deficiency in my own self-love and how I kind of constantly externalized my own love for myself through the partners that I had. And so that was a huge eye-opening experience and kind of tilted me into a much stronger self-love and self-honoring practice. So it was after that, that you went and you found, was that why you found a shaman to do the 21 day thing? No, that was prior. That was four years ago.

This was only like six months ago or something like that. Um, so yeah, four years ago, that was just part of a, uh, spiritual practice related to, you know, ayahuasca has a dieta and different plant medicines have a diet where you connect with the spirit of a plant through meditation. And so that was just something I was doing just for my own growth. And this was something I was doing partly because I was dissatisfied with my current state of affairs in this kind of polyamory journey that I was on. And partly because I knew there was something I needed to do there. And I ultimately realized what that was. It didn't take me six months to figure it out. It took me

nine days to figure out that I didn't love myself. And that's exactly what I needed. So while it was a highly embarrassing thing to announce back to the public after I declared six months on Instagram and two major podcasts that I was going six months. And then I go out and I just, I just posted nine days. And it's just this post like, well, it's so long. It lasted. So, uh, that's embarrassing. What do you think, uh, all this, uh, exploration has been about whether it's, um, you know, being in multiple relationships at the same time or experimenting with psychedelics?

What do you think? Like, what have you kind of, you mentioned not loving yourself. What else have you kind of discovered or landed on? I mean, what haven't I? I mean, I feel like I've really uncovered, I think human beings are more similar and universal than we actually realize. And if there's something that somebody is struggling with, most likely I was struggling with it too. You know, like periods of depression and anxiety and the need to achieve to be validated, the need to do something, judging myself on my actions

rather than my presence and my essence as an existence. All of these different factors ultimately are things that need to be exposed until you get to a place where you can have equanimity and peace with simply being who you are and what you are and knowing how you're serving yourself and the world. Like that's the place that you ultimately want to get to. But there's so many other, you know, kind of pathologies that we have from these software programs that have been written in our mind from the collective and from things we've learned, conditional love paradigms where you're loved if not loved no matter what, you know, just for being. You're loved if you score 30 points or if you, you know, grow this company or your podcast has this many downloads or you're

making this much money or you look this certain way. There's so many ways in which society will give us love based on these things that we do, and that will put us in this perpetual state of chasing more and more rather than just acknowledging that we're worthy of love simply for being. Have you learned to reinterpret a lot of what you previously thought? Always. I like being wrong because that means that there's a lot of what you previously thought? Always, you know, I like being wrong, you know, cause that means that there's a lot of growth there and it's a constant

process. Like I don't hold anything sacred, you know, for sure. I mean, even to go back to our former conversation, I was confident that polyamory was the way no matter what ride or die, like it doesn't make sense to possess someone's sexuality. I tried to tell my wife, I was like, you know, I just got off. Yeah. I mean, you can, and I understand it philosophically. Like I do understand that you shouldn't possess another person. You shouldn't restrict another person's freedom. You know,

like that doesn't make sense. Like love, you don't own somebody as an act of love, you don't own somebody as an act of love, or you don't restrict somebody as an act of love. And so I still believe that, but I also was discrediting the fact that two people could voluntarily choose to engage in a construct in a union that every day they're choosing the same thing. And I think that's the way it works. I think that's one of the issues with traditional monogamy is it's no longer a choice. It's just like you accepted a deal, but you're not actually backing the deal. You're not pushing more chips into that agreement through your own voluntary choice. So, you know, I think the way that I foresee my upcoming marriage with Violana going is that we're constantly going to be choosing to be with just

each other and if at any point that discussion changes well shit both of us have years of experience in another way we'll talk about it it's not like i'm gonna be like oh my god you know i don't know how to deal with this like all right like i can deal with this and i think she can she'll feel the same so that really allows it to be a choice where if someone's, if I'm like, look, I really want to, you know, experience something different. She'd be like, okay, well, let's talk about it. And if she, she comes to me with that same conversation, it's like, okay, let's talk about it.

And it's not something that's taboo or something that's forbidden. It's just a day-to-day choice, but you know, I don't foresee either of us making that choice, but if we do, so be it. You know, I was curious about your thoughts on this, because like, let's say like that situation, you guys are choosing each other every single day. As a, like, as a guy, I generally think most guys have those types of thoughts more often, those sexual thoughts in terms of other women, just more often than you would

think about, you would think, okay, go on that. I'm curious, what do you think about that? I think that's a, I think that's a stereotype. Okay. I think actually, you know, if you actually start to look at some of the research, you know, put out by Dr. Wednesday Martin and look at who's initiating polyamorous relationships, look at who's like acting on these different feelings and who actually has the steepest decline in sexual desire in a monogamous container. It's the women. So, but I think women have so much pressure and so much shame around expressing their sexuality freely that it's, it's kind of a misnomer. Oh, guys are the dogs and women are these faithful monogamous. Well, not if you look

at the data, you know, not if you look at the data, which is telling me, telling the real story, but I, so I think it's for both, but I know what you're, I know where, I kind of know where you're going, but I'd love to continue. But I think it's all I'm saying is I think it's more mutual than we realize. I think both men and women have these urges. Guys are just more ruthless about how they talk about it. Yeah. When I told my wife what was going on with Kyle and his wife, she goes, Oh my God, she cracked the code. And I just looked at her like,

what do you mean she cracked the code? What code? You know? And then we just started joking around about it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. How about this? We, in terms of you, I guess, figuring out how to love yourself more, what have you been doing to, I guess, do that? Have you just been doing more, like doing more stuff on your own? I mean, just what's been going on there. The interesting thing about self-love is that it's a practice. Like for anything you go, practice makes the master. You want to get better at gratitude, practice gratitude. You want to get better at forgiveness, practice forgiveness. You want to get better at self-love, practice makes the master. You want to get better at gratitude? Practice gratitude. You want to get better at forgiveness? Practice forgiveness. You want to get better at self-love?

Practice self-love. Now, how do you practice self-love then becomes the question. And a lot of people confuse self-love with self-care. Oh, well, I'll get a massage. I'll take a bath. I'll work out. I'll eat better food. And self-care is kind of one way to love yourself, but it's not actually doing the things just kind of honoring your body and serving your body's needs in a kind way. But actual self love is a feeling that comes from the heart. And I think one of the things that a guest that I had on my show, Kamal Ravikant, he wrote a book, love yourself like your life depends on it. And he lays out this step-by-step practice. And it's really about just religiously going in and practicing self-love.

And one of the exercises that he has you do is when you breathe in, you breathe in and you say to yourself, I love myself. And then you breathe out anything that's not that self-love. And you try to feel it as much as you can with your heart. And if you can't feel it, that's okay. You just keep saying it and keep practicing it until you can feel it. And so that's, and then it builds upon that practice. So that's kind of the basis. You can do it in the mirror. You can do it in different ways. And it's not loving yourself for anything. And that's what people confuse narcissism for. Like narcissism is loving yourself from the ancient Greek myth.

Narcissist loved himself for his beauty, which is not self-love. That's conditional love. I love myself for this. It's not looking at yourself thinking, I look cool. I look rich. I look this. You're loving the intrinsic part of yourself, which everybody has. So you're no better than anybody else, but you're you.

And that makes you worthy of love at the deepest, deepest core level. And that's the part that you're loving. So that's one aspect of it. And the other part is self-forgiveness. It's very difficult to love yourself if you haven't forgiven yourself, because you'll use love as that thing to adjudicate either reward or punishment for your past actions. So if you deem what you've done is good, you'll love yourself. If you deem what you've done is bad, you'll restrict that love as the harshest punishment to your own self based on what you feel like you deserve. So to forgive yourself is to get to that clean slate where you've forgiven yourself for everything that's happened in the past, and it's easier to pour that love, genuine, unconditional love back into yourself. I wonder if these are things that people probably commonly practiced, you know,

thousands of years ago before we had so much technology. You probably were kind of left with your own thoughts more often. You know, you probably just, I'm sure there was times where you were fighting or there's times where you're hunting and things of that nature. And there's probably a lot of work to be done every day to ensure your survival. But there was probably also just times where you were just left with your own thoughts. And I, I think that what you're sharing right there is really powerful. And I see a lot of people make that mistake of being like so demanding of themselves that if they don't get to this goal, you know, do this or else, you know, you know, if I don't,

if I don't reach this goal of, of weighing, you know, 30 pounds less than, you know, you know, whatever it is that they're going to do. And then a lot of times people will, when they do mess up on like nutrition, then they tend to go the other way a lot too, where they're, you know, they're trying to be super restrictive because start on Monday, they're going to make these big changes. You know, they're going to dump all that on themselves. And if they have kind of a previous history of eating unhealthy, they were previous history of being heavy or thinking that they're fat or thinking they're not worth stuff, as soon as they try that really hard diet and training program on Monday and Wednesday rolls around, as you mentioned, nine days later, right? You're in a lot of trouble.

For a lot of people, it's a lot sooner and it might be two, three days later. And then they're just proving themselves. They're like, yep, I am a piece of shit. I was right. I am fat. I am, you know, I can't do these diets. I can't follow Aubrey Marcus's diet plan. I can't follow this guy's plan. And they kind of end up, uh, almost teaching themselves to hate themselves rather than what you were preaching right there, which is to teach yourself to love yourself. Yeah. I think that's the, that's the ground. That's the substrate on which the biggest growth happens is when you really love yourself unconditionally, because people think that we need to be these harsh, you know, tough love kind of,

um, judges of ourself, but that doesn't really work because the problem is, is the shame that's created internally will actually be a, be a roadblock, be a resistance, be that parachute that you're dragging behind yourself. The anchor that you're lugging along is all of this shame that you're carrying, which will prevent you from actually becoming the thing that you're looking to become. So I think that's a big part of it is to, is to love yourself no matter what, and also love yourself enough to go through with these things that you know are the best for you. And when you really love yourself, it's easier to do that.

When you still feel like you need to punish yourself, well, then it's a lot harder to go and complete that diet because you don't deserve to be fit. You don't deserve to be skinny. You don't deserve to be wealthy. You don't deserve to have the partner of your dreams or whatever. You'll feel like you don't deserve it, So you'll prevent yourself from actually getting it. And that becomes a problem. And then as far as like setting these goals, I think one of the best things that I heard was from Jersey Gregorick. You probably maybe have heard of him. He's an old

power lifter and poet and a coach. And he talks about the concept of micro progression. And it's really just about, instead of trying to rush towards the end goal of something, just making little minute improvements that you can actually do every day, you know, and not trying to set some grand, you know, external goal that's so big and so far that it seems impossible. Just focus on like, what can you do the next day? And that's really what I wrote about in my book on the day anyways, which is, let's just take this day. Like, what can I do this day? Can I get a little sun in

the morning? Sure. Can I drink a little sea salt with lemon in my water when I first wake up to hydrate myself and get electrolytes? Yeah, I can do that. Can I turn the shower cold for at least 30 seconds before I get up? Okay, yeah, I can do that. Can I move my body at some point during the day at least? Sure. Can I eat a little bit more fat, a little bit less carbohydrate for my breakfast and my lunch? All right, I can do that.

And so you start to accumulate all of these micro-progressions towards your goal. And that way, if you blow it one day and you stay huddled in a dark room, eating fucking hot pockets and jerking off all day, like that's okay. You know, you'll get back at him tomorrow. You know,

he didn't ruin anything. The hot pockets and jerking off. They go together. Unless you're using the hot pockets to jerk off, which case it's risky. They're hot inside. Just let it cool down a little bit, you know, open it up, let it air out. which case it's risky they're hot inside just let it cool down a little bit you know open it up let it air out and then it's nice and moist perfect perfect ham and cheese i wanted to ask you this um because okay the way that you were explaining you know

making progress and loving yourself the whole time that that makes a lot of sense. But, you know, I definitely know that I was like this, I would see certain things that I hated about the way I do things or hated about the way I act, or even people would say you do this. And I like, I would hate that about myself. And at that point, that would be a motivation for me to try and grid that out of my personality or rid that from who I am and what I do so I could get better. I don't think it was the best way to go about it. But for people that are going about things that way, how can they? Because I guess what I'm trying to say is in the moment, it seems like it's working just fine. Right. So why would it be a negative in your opinion? It's not a negative necessarily. It's just not the best way. Like, like a better way to do it would be to anchor to the reality in the future where that thing has changed. So like, if you can

change something, you know, it's like pretty useless to hate the color of your eyes. I mean, I suppose you could wear color contacts or something like that, but like, if it's something that you can't change, well, for sure, love that part about yourself, you know, cause that's just who you are and don't compare it to other people and learn to see the beauty in that innate thing. But if it's something you can change, like you have a habit of not listening to people and a lot, and maybe your partners have brought that up to you, like, Hey, you don't listen. And instead of like hating the part of you that doesn't listen why don't you anchor yourself to the part of you that's listening and causing other people to love you more and and having them feel seen and you anchor to the positive result or

maybe you hate the extra weight that you're instead of hating the extra weight that you're carrying like anchor to the reality where you feel like you can move how you want to move and you feel just confident and good in that shirt that you're wearing and like anchor to the good aspects of it rather than the self-hate of where you are and let the good of what your future reality that you're striving towards pull you instead of your hate push you. And I think that's just going to be a easier way and a smoother way and a more pleasurable way to get there. But it's a similar idea. It's just one's using a push and one's using a pull.

You're either pushing away from that which you hate or getting pulled towards that which you want. And I think the pull is going to be a lot stronger. Sure. That was well said. I love that. You know, because, well, I'll bring it up now. It's going to be a little bit embarrassing. Damn. Sure. All right. Mark had said like, Hey, um, you know, when it, when it, cause the whole goal was to obtain abs for the first time. Like I've never had abs. So I wanted, you know, that was the goal. And Mark was like, well, you know, abs can be perceived a different way by different people.

So, you know, you like Aubrey Marcus, let's get a dope picture of him and say, that's the goal. Oh, it was really literal. It was, it was literally a goal. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was it. All right. So, I mean, yeah, I'm like kind of fangirling a little bit here, but that was the goal. And what's funny is Mark actually told me, he was like, film the video right now. You know, this was like when I first started and he was like, thank everybody that helped you, you know, uh, you know, thank your, your, your wife that, you know, have patience to deal with you on your diet and dah, dah, dah. He's like, and just imagine that it just happened. And I did an audio version of it, but, uh, it, it helped a ton. And it's funny because like, I don't know why, like, I kind of forgot about all of this, but it's huge, man. It is so powerful when you kind of, it's almost like uh you you will it into into existence right no doubt and so that's a that's a beautiful move mark it was what a fucking coach you are man the best that's impressive yeah yeah i've been teaching people that um for quite some time you

know it's um you know comparing yourself to other people isn't such a great thing, but using somebody for inspiration can be really motivational. And when it comes to powerlifting, you know, somebody would say, Hey, I saw Brian Shaw does it, you know, he deadlifts this way. And the guy that I'm talking to is five foot six. And I'm like, you know, why don't you find somebody on the internet that is built a little bit more like you find someone who has a physique, you know, physique that you that you would like to, you know, one day obtain. And let's maybe mimic what that guy does just because he he looks, you know, a little bit more similar to you. This looks like a more reasonable thing is to kind of, know take an image of this person but then also just to kind of um think about you know what the goal is that you want and and why do you want this goal you know what what's the what's some of the reason for it and then just imagine

as if you already reached it you know think about it as like i don't really think about goals necessarily i think about a little bit more of like a to-do list and I guess a direction. I like to kind of like head in a certain direction. You know, if we're all going to be on a boat and we're going to row, hopefully we're rowing in a fashion that gets us going in the same direction. And when it comes to goals, I think it's kind of a great thing for people to envision. What would it be like to have that goal? And for myself, when it came to, you know, I did a couple of years of professional wrestling and as I got closer to WWE talent and as I got around them and as I got into it more, I actually recognized that it wasn't anything I wanted.

And then, so I actually thought a little bit more about the goal. I got close to it and I thought about, okay, what would it be like to be like WWE champ? You know, it's like, okay, well now I'm on every pay-per-view. I'm on every single SmackDown taping. I'm traveling all over the world. I just had a kid. I'm like, wow, that would be fun, but none of that actually makes sense, and none of that fits with anything I'm doing. So then from there, I just kind of switched my goals and went into powerlifting and that sort of thing. But that's always been really helpful to me is like find someone who did it already.

When it comes to supplements you know maybe maybe you're starting a supplement company why not have on it be that like on it came through and they were different you know how can your company be different how can your company not be so different that it's weird and unattractive but be different and provide value you know things of that nature i think can really help you to project in a certain direction yeah and i think you know, things of that nature, I think can really help you to project in a certain direction. Yeah. And I think, you know, the, the thing that you were talking about, which is, it's supposed to an old saying, and then the saying is actually from the Bible and it's pray as if it has already been done. Right. So instead of like asking for something as if it

hasn't happened in the future, pray as if it's already been done. Well, So instead of like asking for something as if it hasn't happened in the future, pray as if it's already been done. Well, if it's already been done, then you're in the space of gratitude. You're saying thank you because it's already done. You say thank you. So in the, in the, you know, as it pertains to prayer, instead of saying, please, God, can you grace me with this thing? You say, thank you, God, for gracing me with this, whatever you're looking for, right? So that shift is actually what makes prayer so much more powerful. And it's the same thing that makes your intention setting so much more powerful, which is like, ah, thank you to my wife for helping me achieve these goals. Thank you to everybody who supported me along the way. And the device, which I've never heard anybody doing, which is recording that video in advance, which is kind of like your acceptance speech.

So it's basically like if you're an actor and you're going into acting, well, record your Oscar acceptance speech in advance. I just want to thank the Academy. I never thought I'd get here, but here I am. And it's just amazing. And so Tom Cruise handed me the microphone, something I've always dreamed about or whatever you're thinking about, and you create this reality. And you're much more likely to draw that reality to you because your own self belief, you're kind of in training the mind to believe that you're going to get there. So you're going to make all of the little micro corrections necessary to help you get there,

because you deeply somatically believe that that's where you're arriving, it's happened already in your mind and happened in your emotional state. Jim Valvano, the old Villanova coach, he's one of the people that kind of brought that technique to the forefront. His team used to practice chopping down the nets, cutting down the nets because that's a practice that you do when you uh make it to the final four but Villanova was nothing and they never made it anywhere until he came along and he had them chopping down those nets uh at at the end of practice all the time and the college was like why do we have to keep paying for these nets to go up all the time and he was like hey it's going to pay off and then they famously beat, um, one of the most, but one of the best college basketball teams of all time in the final four ended up winning a championship. And so I think that that can really be massively helpful. And what about even just

being grateful for the fact that you have the thought, like, I'm grateful that this thought hit me today that I want to run this new business, you know, that I want to be a millionaire or whatever the heck it is that comes to mind. Maybe that should be something that you should be grateful for is just the fact that you got smashed with this goal that you're now obsessed with, because that's kind of fun to be chasing after something like that. You're like, you're like buff Yoda. Yeah, you and I would have a great time hanging out. I just, I just don't know if I'd be able to,

I don't know if I'd be able to handle some of the psychedelics since I've never tried any of them. Well, you only know if you know, my friend, you only know when you know. Yeah. I mean,

psychedelics aren't for everybody, of course. And I'm saying that tongue in cheek, but it's been a really powerful tool for me. No doubt. You know, a way to get to the root cause and a different perspective on many, many aspects of my life. I know you have some thoughts on psychedelics for

treatments and things like that. My brother recently took Ibogaine and I don't know if you had a chance to see any of that video. Is that something that you've experienced as well? Have you ever tried Ibogaine before? I have three times and it's intense. It's the most intense psychedelic by far. First of all, you know, the longest journey that you'll usually have, I guess some journeys like what you can last, you know, eight to 10 hours and are largely pleasurable for that process. Ayahuasca can usually last about five, but can last maybe up to seven, depending on how your body's assimilating it. So you get some things extending into longer. Mushrooms are typically four to five.

MDMA about the same, four to five. But iboga lasts like 24 hours, like 18 to 24 hours. And it puts your body in a stimulated state. So your heart rate's elevated. You're incredibly nauseous. You're it's hard having a hard time like seeing anything. Your ears are buzzing. I mean, it's the most hellish experience that I've put myself through, but the clarity of the mind that comes, I mean,

I liken it to like being an ant on a tuning fork and, uh, and like the tuning fork is, is the aboga and it's just ringing and it's just overwhelming, you know, vibration that's just changing any other patterns that you have in your body. And, but your mind is incredibly lucid and aboga is just relentless with what it'll tell you. And if you have an addiction, it'll show you all of the reasons why you have that addiction and also shake out any of the, you know, patterns that are left in the body. You know, there's a great book called the body keeps the score. And so really to cause lasting change, it's one of the reasons why a Bogan ayahuasca is so effective is the body goes through such a process that the body you know gets reset like a giant imagine

like an etch-a-sketch which has drawn all of the different patterns of why you're addicted and held it in the body well if you shake the body enough or purge the body out like ayahuasca does then you can kind of break up those patterns and structures in the body and then the mind has to unlock as well because the mind will recreate those patterns if the mind isn't cured as well and aboga is one of those things that works on both faculties so your mind is incredibly lucid you see exactly why you've done everything with ruthless clarity you know just merciless clarity and then your body is also completely reset and recalibrated i watched somebody get over a full blown heroin addiction. And he actually went through a three day journey.

They kept feeding him more, uh, Iboga, which is traditionally the way you do it, but it was a three day journey. And after that three day journey, he slept for two days and he came out and he's like cured. And, and that stuff doesn't really happen with, you know, some of these big opiate addictions. And, um, and that's why Iboga has been so powerful in treating the people who have engaged with it, but it's a, it's a harrowing journey. You know, it's, it's definitely not the, not the easy way, but it's the fastest way and it's the most powerful way. And in many cases, you know, the research has shown that it's the most lasting way. Um, so just really kudos to Chris for being willing to

Annie up and do that. And, um, I didn't have any particular reason strong enough to do that, but a boga nonetheless shook me free of a lot of different ideas. I actually went in engaged, um, to a woman who's now one of my best friends. Um, but a boga told me that we weren't going to get married and the relationship wasn't going to work. And that was a total surprise. And I was like, nah. And I argued, I argued with myself for like, and I felt like I was arguing with Iboga, but you could argue that it was a part of myself. But I argued for like six hours until finally I was like, okay, fuck it.

Fine. Like you, you know, like I get it. I get it. I get it. It's not going to work. Like whatever. Can we move on now? You you know and it was uh it's it's really relentless with that and uh and i think the length of time that it has with you is is one of the things that makes it so powerful are there any like known drawbacks um as far as like the research goes and what i mean is sort of like uh you hear like if somebody takes molly like the next couple days they're kind of almost depressed is there anything like that where there's like a like a withdrawal well i mean i think first of all the molly is is a street drug that's usually adulterated with a variety of methamphetamines and a variety of other things so everything that you kind of hear from colloquial wisdom about Molly, you know, shouldn't be kind of extended to the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, which is now, you know pharmaceutical grade mdma are different

things um and the you know what the findings are is there can be some mild you know mild results of taking mdma but it's nothing like what you hear on the streets which is usually molly plus drinking plus whatever the fuck else you're doing uh at whatever environment you're doing it in so it's a little bit different and aboga is another one of those things where you don't want to take it recreationally and just fuck like i can't even imagine taking aboga recreation it doesn't even make any sense to me it's so unpleasant but you, in that kind of context, it is generally very, like, accretive to the body's overall health from the research. However, it does put the body under significant strain. So there's risk of different cardiac conditions.

So a lot of places actually have you on a cardiac monitor if they're going to be offering them from a medical context, the more spiritual communities, which developed out of a place called Gabon in Africa. They obviously have their own way of kind of sensing whether somebody is, is fit to receive the medicine, but it's an intense ordeal. And you have to be ready and strong enough for that ordeal. And your body has to be tenacious enough to make it through. And then on the other side, I mean, certainly I noticed some effects. I noticed that I was, there was, you know, the second day after I hadn't slipped, you know, there was some irritability and some different things that kind of came up because your body's been through a lot.

But overall, you know, the long-term benefits, which haven't been studied as extensively as they should, but the long-term benefits seem to be there because when you actually heal the mind and actually support the body and ridding itself of some of those negative patterns, the long-term effects are going to be wildly positive, but it has to be right for you. And you have to be ready for it because if you go in and you're half-ass ready, you know, and then you're like four hours in and you're like, fuck this, I'm done. Well, sorry, you're not done. You got another 20 hours.

So buckle up, son. This isn't going anywhere. And that's not the position you want to be in because that'll put your body under a lot of stress and challenge. Are there doctors that people can go to to try psychedelic therapy? to try, you know, like psychedelic therapy. I remember you talking to us previously about maybe a program called maps from what I remember helping people with like PTSD, like, is there like a safe way or do you have to go to like some weird guy who knows a guy who knows another guy? Is it always some strange? That's all changing really rapidly because it looks like there's going to, they're going to open up MDMA for compassionate use cases.

So even before it gets officially approved as a therapeutic intervention, it's going to be probably approved for people who have PTSD within a year. So it's coming soon. But in the meantime, yeah, you have to go to the guy who knows the guy. And that's an unfortunate place that. But in the meantime, yeah, you have to go to the guy who knows the guy. And that's an unfortunate place that we're in right now. But fortunately, we're right on the cusp of it changing. So I recommend to people, like, just fucking, if you can handle it, like, hang tight.

Like, these things are going to be legal here soon. And in the meantime, there's some things you can do. And psilocybin is right behind it. So psilocybin being the active ingredient in mushrooms, it's been shown to have amazing efficacy for smoking cessation, depression, anxiety, a bunch of the major medical conditions that we're facing. And that's going to be legalized. That has been kind of legalized in some states. It's been decriminalized, which has been a huge help, but it hasn't been medically legalized. So no doctors or healthcare practitioners can actually support you through that process, which is pretty important to get the kind of therapeutic results you're looking for, unless you have a strong, like indigenous,

traditional kind of ceremonial utilization of the medicine, like you find in ayahuasca, if you go to Peru or something like that. But yeah, that's coming really soon. And so that's going to be available shortly. In the meantime, one of the best tools that's available and been legalized is ketamine-assisted therapy. So ketamine was recently legalized for depression and is an amazingly powerful tool if used in the right hands. Now, the problem is that most of the doctors who are offering ketamine therapy just kind of shoot you up with ketamine and leave you in a dark, you know, like a sterile waiting room. And I don't even know if they play music or not.

They're like, good luck. Like, they don't know shit about it. But really, it should be treated in the same way that a lot of these, you know, MDMA-assisted psychotherapies and the mushroom usages and all that, it should be treated in a different way. And when it is, it's extraordinarily powerful. So, I'm actually working with a group here in Austin to actually push the right type of ketamine therapy and ultimately MDMA therapy into the market because that's a great tool that's available now. And so, if you find

a good practitioner, that's something that if someone's really in need of a pattern interrupt some way to break their negative thoughts or their, you know, whatever, whatever depression or whatever pattern they're going through, ketamine is a great legal option right now. Is there yourself and both yourself and Chris mentioned that iboga or ibogaine, it scrubs bad patterns. And when Chris mentioned that to me one day, I was like, whoa, that's dope. But how about all the good patterns you have? Like, when you're going through this, I mean, I know you have certain things that you're trying to focus on and you're trying to get rid of, but couldn't it potentially also get rid of things that you've developed positively? Or is that generally not something that happens?

you've developed positively or is that generally not something that happens? You know, the negative patterns aren't supposed to be there, right? Like we have a blueprint of who we are as a thriving human being. And that is really solid. Like that has grounds and that's supposed to be in the body and the body doesn't want to shed it. It's like if you have a splinter, the body will develop, will push that splinter out and burst it out through the skin. It doesn't start pushing blood cells through the skin. It knows that that's

supposed to be there. It doesn't work against your bones, you know, to actually like push your bones out of your skin because it's supposed to be there and it's healthy for the system. So what's actually being removed is that which doesn't fit, you know, that which isn't strong. What's actually being removed is that which doesn't fit, you know, that which isn't strong. In some ways, I guess it's a pretty bad analogy, but, you know, you think about some kind of medical treatments like chemotherapy, right? Which actually does universally kill a lot of cells, which isn't what a BOGA does, but the weakest cells are the cancer cells. And that's why it is effective in certain cancer treatments. The weakest cells, the ones that aren't supposed to be there are going to be the ones that are

affected the most. The true strength of the body is going to be the last to go. That's the last bastion, right? So by removing all of the negative, like by actually putting yourself under this position with a boga, it's just the stuff that isn't supposed to be there. The stuff that isn't strong and fortified and isn't all the way, you know, solidified down into your very soul or your backbone or your, your moral character or your, your, who you really are,

that stuff is going to stay and the rest of the stuff is going to go. So you may have a pattern that you like, but that isn't healthy. Like you may have a pattern like, wow, I'm, I'm this great, you know, seducer. You know, I can, I can meet a girl in a bar and sleep with her and in fucking 30 minutes, you know, and a boga might be like, nah, bitch, that's not for you. You know, like we're getting rid of that. It's not healthy, you know, but you'd be like, no, but I like that. And it's like, nah, you know? And, uh, and so it might,

it might undo some of the motivation for certain patterns like that, that you actually might like, but ultimately I really trust that it's going to leave what's the best for your body and remove what's the worst. Is there a fascinating, it's like getting rid of a lot of misconceptions that you may have had previously. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a, uh, like a buildup process to, to everything? Like does one need to start with like mushrooms and then move on to, I don't know, like ayahuasca and DMT and then eventually Ibogaine or is it just whatever you happen to land on? You could be called to something specifically and that could be the right thing. I know, um, Iboga, even though it's the most intense could be the right choice. You know, it could be the, the absolute right choice to just

dive in and get clear from that. If you're ready for it, I would, if someone's just curious and they're interested in exploring and they don't have a specific need, you know, like they're addicted to opiates and they want to go straight for a boga because that's the only thing that's going to save their life and change their life. And that's their best bet. And they don't even have time to fuck around with the other stuff. That makes perfect sense. Maybe you're called to ayahuasca first, maybe you're called to something. But typically, I would recommend a shorter, more controllable experience so that you understand it. So I always recommend breathwork first. So either holotropic breath work or some really heavy Wim Hof breathing, because that's going to get you into an

altered state of consciousness. And if you don't like it, you just slow down your breathing, like relax. You know, it's all good. Like if you freak out in breath work, it's your fault. You know what I mean? Like just stop breathing, bro. Like you're fine. You know, just breathe normally. You'll be fine. And, and that's something that's really controllable. And if you want more, if you want to, if you want more of a dose, we'll just breathe harder, you know, and go, go deeper. And it's, it's a very intense process, but you're in complete control of it. You can calibrate how deep you go with it and how shallow you go with it just by your

own choices. So breathwork is one of my favorite practices to kind of get people immersed in that. Sensory deprivation tanks is another place to put you in an altered state of consciousness where you're in that water that's the same temperature as your skin and you're floating in Epsom salt and you can't feel anything, you can't smell anything, you can't see anything and you just kind of surrender to that state as another great tool. And then as far as like the psychedelics themselves,

that I would say if somebody's curious and mushrooms are very kind of malleable, especially if you have the right dose, but it is a five-hour experience. And if you take too much mushrooms, you're in for a fucking ride. And if you're in the wrong environment, you're in for a fucking ride. So there are some more challenges with that. The one that I think is the friendliest is actually a type of DMT called NNDMT, which comes from the mimosa plant. It's a very deep psychedelic, but it's very fast.

It's basically a 10-minute experience. So you get kind of immersed into this, what typically is a very beautiful world. It's seldom really dark. Some of the psychedelics can get pretty dark, but it's usually very beautiful and it's very fast. And so even if you're having a hard experience, which does come up sometimes, usually through your own resistance to it, you just got to ride it out for like 10 minutes. And I think that actually helps things a lot. So as far as everybody that I've seen go through that experience, there's been a couple that I've seen go through a challenging experience with DMT. But ultimately, when I've been in the room there with them,

I remember there was a UFC fighter who took DMT, andmt and i just went over to he was having a hard time and he's like i want this to be over i wanted to stop i wanted to stop i tried to get up and i was like i just sat down with him i was like it's all right champ this five minute round right here and this is over like all you got to do is relax surrender for five minutes you got five minutes you know what five minutes is you know that's what you do for a living five minutes champ and he was like okay you know like that was it whereas like somebody in a challenging mushroom or particularly lsd lsd is a is a medicine that i don't particularly like because it's so long and it can get so squirrely and the dose is so small like you take too much lsd you're in for a hell of a ride.

It can be 10 to 12 hours and it can be really disorienting. If someone's in that position, it's like, okay, champ, you only got a day that's going to seem like 10 lifetimes worth of time. So it's just much harder. You know, it's like, okay, you just got to make it through all day. And they're like, fuck you. I don't want to make it through all day. This is hell right now. You know? And so that one is think is, is more in that kind of, you really need to be ready for it and you really need to be careful.

So the shorter acting psychedelics, ketamine is another one of those, um, where ketamine is only going to last 30 to 60 minutes. And that's another great one because that's a much more manageable time block and a good way to get your feet wet without going too deep. Even eating weed, like people who eat too much weed, that's one of the hardest psychedelic experiences because it lasts forever and you're paranoid as fuck. Like, I don't, I mean, I've done every psychedelic in the world. I don't, I do not want to eat more than 10 milligrams of weed. Like, do not sign me up for that ride.

Like, I'm no, no, no, no, no. Not it. I think everyone's had that terrible experience with edibles i know i have that shit was terrible but i've always been it's the worst it is i've always been interested with psychedelics and stuff but if you were to be on a quote like bad journey yourself like how would one navigate that i mean i've been in some really really fucking gnarly spots and i'll tell you how and in how you do it is you have to really deeply surrender and you have to try and find the beauty in whatever you're experiencing so whether like the key though is the surrender it's this kind of witness and allow it's it's as if imagine you found yourself in a movie theater that was showing a horror movie and if you remember that

you're in the theater and you're there as the watcher of the movie it's not that scary but when you get super involved in the movie and you're in the movie and you're the one in the shed and there's someone with a fucking chainsaw and they're going to kill you that's scary as shit and so the key thing is to just remember that you're the watcher of whatever you're seeing and whatever you're seeing in some way is trying to teach you something and if you remember that you're the watcher then you're fine if you get lost in the movie it's going to be a little sketchy so and i think that's that's where things get squirrely is when they get lost in the movie rather than remembering that they're as the observer of the movie and they don't have

control over what movie plays and they just have to watch, they got to watch the movie and you just sit back and watch the movie. And when you actually surrender to watching the movie, usually the movie will change. In your, your experience, has there been ways to get to these different levels of awareness without those drugs? Have you experienced anything through exercise, through you mentioned breath work, meditation, running, music, anything like that? Exercise is, is great, but it's not a transformational practice.

It's great to kind of recalibrate the body. It's great to kind of change your mindset. If you're in a funk or in a negative mood, you know, going get a good sweat in and get good workout in or run some Hills or doing that. It's, it's going to be excellent for that. As far as transformational experiences, things that allow you to have a radically different purview on what's happening in your life and the root cause of a lot of things.

I think you have to look at one. I think the breath work is probably the go to ecstatic dance is another great one. I mean, dancing in a particular way where you collapse the sound impetus from the way that your body moves. So you're just getting in this kind of trance state and something that different tribal cultures have utilized for thousands of years for good reason. Even it's kind of a joke, but the whirling dervishes, the reason why they whirled

was to get themselves in a trance state. And that's something that everything from the Lakota people on the sun dance or any different culture has used dance for that practice. So ecstatic dance is a great practice. Also something that I teach in my masterminds. You're really safe in excellent ways. And you also do get the sweat from the dancing and everything like that. So all those endorphins are present. Meditation is harder, but you can get there through meditation. Absolutely.

You know, and then probably the most powerful transformational practice, even more powerful than any of the drugs I've ever done was when I did the darkness retreat recently. And that was six days, six nights in absolute jet black, not even a pinprick of light, darkness, absolute silence, no sound, and absolute lack of physical contact with any other human being. So I was basically, imagine I was in like a, what would have been like a dorm room looking type of situation or like a bedroom in a bed and breakfast,

which is really what it was more like. And the bedroom had a little bathroom and a little area in the bed and breakfast, which is really what it was more like. And the bedroom had a little bathroom and a little area in the, you know, a bed, a single twin bed and a little desk where I could eat my food. The food would come into a blacked out hallway outside of my room. As soon as they dropped the food off, they would ring a little bell and then I'd wait for them to leave. And then I would go into the dark hallway, pull the food in and just eat it in the dark. And that was my existence for six days. And that was more transformational than any experience I'd ever gone through.

And it was also actually rather incredibly visionary. And while this hasn't been proven by science, I've done enough DMT to know what DMT is like. And around day four, my brain started to produce endogenous DMT. So it started to produce its own DMT. So I was in a full DMT vision for about 72 hours straight incessantly, which was a little bit exhausting, but incredibly powerful. I mean, an incredibly powerful experience. And I didn't have to take anything. Really, the darkness was what facilitated that experience. And this is a tradition that's been around for also thousands of years. All of the mystics that would go into a cave, well, why'd they go into a cave? Well,

they were creating the environment in which they had what's called cave black, which is the blackness that comes when light can no longer bend around any of the corners and find, you know, find you. So it has to be a cave that kind of circles in on itself bend around any of the corners and find, you know, find you. So it has to be a cave that kind of circles in on itself and blocks out all the light. And they would go there because the darkness would facilitate the release of DMT and also the, the deep meditation of being with yourself and being alone. And it was the most powerful journey I've ever been on by far. What did you take away from that when you did it? And then also like,

like, I guess, what were some of the things you were, I'm curious what you were eating at the time? Was it just the same bland food every single day you'd have to go? I mean, I, so the food was nutritious. It was raw vegan food is not my preference for diet. I understand why they were serving that though, because the food was so boring. Like, I mean, I know that there's certain chefs that can make raw vegan like delicious, I suppose, hypothetically, but this is, it's much, it's a difficult thing. And certainly that wasn't what they were trying to do.

It was basically just like a pile full of veggies, you know, at all times. And it was so bland that it was purely for the nutritional element that I would eat it. That if I was in a deep meditation or, or like really with my thoughts and I heard the bell ring and like, Oh fuck it, I'll get it in two hours. Like, I don't care. You know, it's like if it was like a delicious, fresh, hot piping cheeseburger, I'd have been like, Oh, cheeseburger. I'll get back to you later, meditation. Like, see ya. I'm going to eat. You know, food would have been so exciting.

So I get why they were doing that. And also, you know, having that kind of cleansing diet. I think raw vegan is good for cleansing. It's not really good for sustaining, but definitely a good cleansing diet. So that was the food situation. And then as far as the takeaways, I mean, they were so vast and varied. I had a massive vision having to do with my father who's, you know, went insane like eight years ago.

And he came to me in a vision and talked to me about why he went insane. It was really like beautifully poetic and poignant. And, you know, just kind of understanding my mother was as close to unconditional love as any parent could be anybody I've known in my life, other than perhaps my current fiance. But, you know, really understanding that even with her, I wouldn't allow her to love me because I didn't love myself. And I think I alluded to this earlier in our conversation, like she loved me unconditionally,

but I wouldn't allow her to love me unconditionally because I didn't love myself unconditionally. So I wouldn't receive that from her because I didn't deserve it in my own mind. And then stuff with my ex-partner Whitney, recognizing that I was always loving her for what she could be instead of loving her for who she actually was, which was making her more ashamed of who she actually was because she wasn't what I thought she could be. And that was the version of her that I loved. And that was absolutely counterproductive. So I felt I had to reconcile with like, Oh wow, I've been fucking this up the whole time. You know, I've been causing her to be more ashamed of who she is because I'm loving who

she could be rather than loving her exactly as she is. So massive lessons like across the board. And then of course, when you pull your blindfold off, I mean, that was one of the most emotionally charged moments of my life, just recognizing how beautiful it was to be able to see again and how beautiful it was. I was looking out over this amazing landscape and recognizing, and I just started weeping because I recognized not only was it that beautiful, but I recognized how I didn't appreciate how beautiful it was ever because you just take it for granted. Maybe if it's an amazing view, you go, wow, look at the sunset.

Wow. But until you can't see for six days at all and you have no faculties of sight, you don't recognize how fucking blessed and beautiful it is to actually see something. It's like those videos that you can watch on Instagram or YouTube where somebody has given their sight back and like the emotional reaction for someone who's been blind. You can see it's overwhelming because it's like, holy shit,

this is gorgeous, you know, but the body and the mind, once we get used to something, we just kind of take it for granted. So it was just really powerful across the board and in all those ways. And I encourage anybody who's interested. I did a podcast, uh, on after my darkness retreat. Um, so you can check that out on the Aubrey Marcus podcast. Working on yourself as a full-time job. Apparently

it is, man. It's, it's relentless. It it's relentless there's always new levels i i do believe that there's you know there's major issues that you can kind of knock out and then you're kind of cleaning up the smaller stuff but uh i haven't i'm finally at the place where i feel like i've gotten through most of the major issues but you never know because there's always new shit that surprises me yeah i heard a quote it's's from a physicist. His name is David Deutsch, and he says that all unhappiness, all evil comes from lack of knowledge. And it sounds like you've just been in constant pursuit of how do I gain more knowledge? How do I have a stronger skill set? And you're not afraid to explore whatever different way that means, different therapies, different types of drugs, different experiences.

And I think that that I think that's great. And I think, you know, I hope that people that are listening to this podcast today, you know, really embrace that and just try to understand, like, what you know, how can they lean towards being happy or how can they lean towards, you know, finding what really interests them, what really calls to them? Yeah, man, no doubt. And I think it's important to listen to others who've kind of gone through and done it. Something like you were saying, like find those other people that you can identify with and that have gone through similar experiences and learn from them. And then when you're ready, there's no knowledge that's better than the direct knowledge, you know, what the Greeks would call gnosis, which is the difference between someone describing to you

what an avocado is like and then you actually eating an avocado. Like someone can describe to you what an avocado is like. You're like, yeah. So it's like a fruit, but it's creamy. Like, I don't get it, but I understand what you mean. It has a rough outside and a big, like, okay, like I kind of get it. Then you have an avocado, you're like guacamole. You're like, oh, fuck, I don't get it, but I understand what you mean. It has a rough outside and a big, okay. Like I kind of get it. And then you have an avocado, you're like guacamole. You're like, Oh fuck. I get it. You know, like it's an avocado, you know? And that's the,

that's the reality with most of these spiritual truths. You know, someone can describe to you what God is all day and you can take them on faith and be like, okay, I believe you. That's God. Or you can have a direct experience of the divine. And that's going to be a vastly different thing than someone telling you about it, just like the avocado analogy. Same with a lot of these states.

So, you know, if you're called to it, you know, it's good to listen to others, but it's also nothing beats that direct knowledge, the direct information, the gnosis. You mentioned that you have a mastermind that you, direct knowledge, the direct information, the gnosis. You mentioned that you have a mastermind that you, I guess, like, cause you were mentioning like the, I don't know if it's ecstatic dance. I don't know if it's ecstatic dance. What, what is that mastermind?

It's called the fit for service mastermind. So it's taking about 120 people through a year long. This year we're doing the hero's journey is the arc. And so it's a year long practice. We meet up three big summits, like five day gatherings and then three smaller like meetups. Obviously travel has been kind of a little bit difficult to schedule around, but it looks like that's starting to normalize. And we just go through as many of these transformational practices that are legal together and also form this really tight community that bonds together about helping people expand their, you know, their business endeavors, helping people expand their relationship connections, their friendships.

like 35% of people from last year started a new business with one of their members, you know, formed a partnership with one of the members, like 80% formed friendships that they believe would last a lifetime, you know, like 95% experienced emotional healing. So it's really coming on a lot of different levels. And I think it's really accessing, yes, we have great coaches and great musical guests and speakers and different people, but it's really a lot about, and obviously I'm working with people on a daily basis, but it's really about the community coming together. You know, a little like-minded group of people who are just coming together to really support each other and be completely open and vulnerable and share all of the things because there's nothing that somebody's going through that somebody else hasn't gone through. I mean, whether that's, you know, as you know, we've even had people talk about really tragic things like a car accident where they killed somebody or something else that happened. And like that stuff that you carry, it's not like you just announced that, but like when you get to like an intimacy with a group and that groups like receiving what you have to say,

like your dark thoughts, the things that may have happened and loving you in spite of that, and also celebrating the good things that have been in your life. And it just changes your whole orientation. You no longer feel alone. You no longer feel like you have to have to do this thing all by yourself. You feel like you have a group that's behind you and that can support you. And so it's been, you know, one of my life's real honors to be able to lead that. Wow. Kind of in finishing up here, what has been your experience or what have you seen in terms of psychedelics being able to help somebody who has a mental disorder, like whether it be like bipolar or schizophrenia or something like that? I think you have to tread lightly, you know, I think because these are kind of dramatic experiences and it may not be right. It may be too much stress for, but I think the traditional

narrative is also flawed. So while psychedelics might not be the direct go-to, and I wouldn't recommend that without some real expertise from someone who knows exactly what they're trying to do and exactly the dosing that's going to get somebody in exactly the right medicine, I also believe that a lot of times these conditions are misdiagnosed. They're symptoms of a root cause that hasn't been addressed. And when you start to find that root cause, you can start to unwind the symptoms. I think we have this hypothesis that we all, we have broken brains and somehow if you jam a pill into that broken brain, the brain will fix itself. Well, the brain's broken because of some

misalignment in thinking more often than not. And there's some amazing research that's emerging and I'm putting in my new book that I'm coming out with next year about how even with something like depression, there's this idea that your brain is broken on the serotonin mechanism. And if you deliver enough SSRIs, it'll fix it. Well, if you really analyze the data from all the SSRI trials and take into account what's called the active placebo, which is the understanding that yes, these trials are double blind and we're getting a little bit into science here, but the trials are double blind randomized trials,

which means that people taking it don't know whether they're taking the drug or don't know whether they're taking the placebo. And that's to account for the placebo effect, which is a strong enough effect that if you don't account for it, you'll show benefit from taking any drug, right? Because the placebo is incredibly strong. So they account for that by randomization. However, the SSRIs have really strong side effects and the side effects are so evident and the people in the trial, both sides of the trial are briefed on what those side effects

will be. Let's call them headaches and nausea or dizziness or whatever they might be. I don't know exactly the side effects, but if you're briefed and say, you know, you may experience headaches, nausea, et cetera. Well, if you experience any of those, you know, you're taking the drug, right? Like, you know, you don't have a, an inert pill. That's nothing. You know, that you're taking the actual drug. And the moment you know that you're taking the actual drug because of the side effects, the placebo effect starts to kick in again. So it undermines the randomization. And if you take into account the placebo effect for the active placebo hypothesis, then even the SSRIs don't work.

So really what we may be doing is just throwing a bunch of pills with a bunch of negative effects at people without actually recognizing that the only thing that's really working is the mind's belief that it's going to work. Yeah, I think you're 100% correct. And I think a lot of times we're trying to, we probably ultimately need to fix our mind and not necessarily our brain. Although in some cases, some people's actual brain circuitry may be different than the next person. But in most cases, it's the mind that you need to work on. And there's not really necessarily pills for the mind since the mind is part of your conscious and subconscious. And it's really hard to even

locate or figure out. Yeah, true, true. And that's in the mind actually can affect the brain. Like our thoughts can create the errors in the circuitry just as the errors in the circuitry can create thoughts. They're both a self-reinforcing cycle. So you break one of them by changing your thoughts, you can watch your biology change. Or you change your biology in the right way, then you can watch your thoughts change.

It's fucked up. Awesome having you on the show today. Really appreciate your time. Where can people find you? And if you've got something new to plug, go for it. Yeah, just the Aubrey Marcus podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at Aubrey Marcus. And there's applications for the Fit for Service Mastermind.

We only accept people who apply. So if you feel called to it, you can apply and we'll take a look at your application and, and see if you're a good fit. Um, and then, yeah, there's nothing else too much going on, obviously on it. If you're interested in supplements and kettlebells and all that, all that good stuff, it's, uh, you know, the best products that myself and all the experts I could gather could create. And, uh, it's a beautiful thing. That's O N N I T. And that's pretty much it. What about the, uh, the new book?

New book, April, 2021 master your mind, master your life. So, um, a little too early for pre orders on that thing, but, uh, maybe you guys will have me on when I can talk more about that book. Awesome, man. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah. Likewise. Thank rest of your day. Yeah, likewise. Thank you. Shit, that was a good time, huh? It was.

It was awesome. Was he all you expected him to be, Andrew? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, second time I've had the opportunity to talk to him on this podcast. And then Mark and I, Mark was on his podcast, so yeah, Mark and I, uh, Mark was on his podcast, so we got to hang out for a little bit at on it and yeah, he's just super awesome guy.

You didn't get a chance to ask him about oiling him up and stuff. Hopefully when he comes back, this was still, you know, icebreaker. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah.

And then also if his book comes out in April, maybe he'll come on around my birthday and that'd be an awesome gift, you know, be like, Hey, uh, I think a lot of the stuff he was talking about there was great. And what he was talking about at the end might be a little bit confusing, but you know, your brain is kind of the physical, actual brain, the actual mush that we see. And your mind is not. You know, your mind is maybe your brain is like the hardware and your mind is like the software, something to that effect. It really appears that most problems that we have and most problems that we later on have in life, most of them come from the mind, at least for what we know currently. Most of them are just adjustments.

And that's why I've been talking so much about working on reinterpreting how you think and how you feel about certain things. And it's been really helpful to me. It's been really helpful to me. It's been really useful to me and people can debate, um, you know, different ways of handling things and people can, but, but what you, it's hard to debate is when somebody just shares with you that it's been really useful to have a certain state of mind. And, you know, a friend of mine passed away the other day, former pro wrestler, You guys probably saw. Yeah. Shad, he drowned in the ocean.

He was swimming with his son. He was trying to save his son and so on. But anyway, my point is, my point in sharing that is, is that even though I was friends with him and even though I'm close with him, I'm able to, at the frame of mind I'm in nowadays, I'm able to make a little bit more sense of that. And while it is sad, you know, the only thing that saddens me about the situation is I know how hard he fought to be back a part of his son's life. And I know, I kind of know where he came from. And I know a lot of his history, and I just know that he worked really hard to get himself to where he was. But at the same time, I can also think and look at it from a more positive side and say, you know what? I think his son and his significant other, I think they saw that.

I think they had an opportunity to see that. I think they had a chance to know that, you know, that this kid had a chance to see that his dad was, you know, working hard to be in his life. His dad was doing the best he could, making the best were to think about, you know, cancer, wiping somebody out, drowning, wiping somebody out, a flood, a hurricane, I mean, it's, it's easy just to think, well, uh, that's, you know, really unfortunate. The ocean is a brutal place to be, and you could be fine one moment and not find the next. My own wife, you know, had a scare with the ocean and she knows how to swim. She's an amazing swimmer, but she had a scare with the ocean years ago or not too long ago, back when we were in Malibu. So about two years ago. And that ocean is unforgiving. And, you know, you want to try to be cautious in life, but we don't want to live. And, you know, you want to try to be cautious in life, but we don't want to live, you know, you don't want to not go in the water and enjoy yourself, right?

You don't want to not do stuff because you think that you're going to die from it. You don't want to not go to the gym because you think the weight's going to crush your neck and you're not going to be able to bench press. But anyway, this has been really valuable for me is this kind of new understanding of everything is just a matter of how you process it. And when you can process it and you can filter it better, it's going to impact you a certain way. Whatever way you decide that you want to process it, you want to be really mad or sad, I think sometimes you, you have every right to be, I think it's okay. It's okay to, as he was talking about like surrender, it's okay to surrender to it. But I would also urge you very strongly to get yourself to a point where you can go from irrational to rational. So how can you do that? You know, can you, can you replace your feelings? You know, your feelings get so tangled up with, um, your thoughts. Can you unt your feelings? Your feelings get so tangled up with your thoughts.

Can you untangle those things a little bit better? Can you replace some of the information, some of the feelings? Can you replace those with facts? Because if you can replace them with facts, it'll probably hurt a little bit less. You can probably zoom out a little bit more and you can think about it a little bit more. And then you can start thinking in more rational terms. What's something that you can do about that situation? Can't bring somebody back. Could you reach out to the family and say, hey, I just want you to know I love Chad.

He was a friend of mine. He was my boy and we had a good time together. I can tell him a funny story. Maybe that'll be, you know, maybe that'll be found helpful. You know, those are the kind of things that I've been working on and in search of. And it's cool to see Aubrey so aggressively bouncing around to so many different ideas, so many different books, so many different concepts. Like that is really something to admire. So Andrew, I don't think you're wrong in having this guy be your man crush Monday for every Monday for the last several years. Yeah, just hearing some of the quotes that he comes out with or

when he's talking about even just going to the darkness, like, hold on. There's people that are listening to that. This guy voluntarily went into the hole like they do in prison and stuff. And he's like, no, because thousands of years ago, they would actually do this in caves. And it's like, how do you like retain all this information and then talk about someone like a Greek God, like whatever it may be, you know, it's just like, dude, that's crazy. And yeah, it's just really interesting. Some of the stuff that he does, because you could, again, talk about how good an avocado is, or you can go eat that fucking avocado.

And he's eaten quite a bunch of avocados in his day. Three Ibogaine trips. Yeah, dude. Three. And again, you guys got to check out the mini doc that Chris Bell just put out. He went through hell. And to do that, you know, voluntarily three times is like, Whoa,

he's got as many Ibogaine trips as LeBron James has championships. Yeah, he does. Hey Mark, since it's been a while, since Chris has done it, how's he, how's he been doing? Like, what have you, what have you seen? You should get them on the show. I've seen a little bit of a disconnection, to be honest with you, between what he says versus what might be like reality. Because he kind of mentions how he thinks it fixed everything, and then he'll complain about something like hurting him later on. kind of mentions how he thinks it fixed everything. And then he'll complain about something like hurting him later on. So I haven't really like, you know, dove in on him, you know, to talk to him further about that. But, you know, in one sentence he's saying he thinks it fixed

everything. And then another sentence he's talking about how his knee still hurts or something like that, you know, um, he is somebody that gets excited about stuff. So, you know, sometimes his excitement might override maybe what's really going on. I know like he did some squats the other day and he said he squatted 315 and he did a bunch of reps and he said he did it with no pain. But he's also, you know, texted me that in the past as well, like where he's, you know, gone in and lifted and didn't have any pain. I think he'll just have to be honest with himself about what it actually did and what it actually didn't do um and then also um give it some time you know give it like weeks months maybe a year like um initially when he told me about it he was like oh it's just something you need to do like once. And then, and then you're good. But then you hear Aubrey talk about it and he did it, you know, multiple,

multiple times. I think in the end, if you can do it and have, have it not really have negative impact on you, then I would say, what's it really hurting. And I do like the idea of that it's going in and kind of almost like a diagnostic test of your body, like, okay, what's wrong here? And it's deciphering out what's wrong. And I actually, I'm actually kind of a believer of that. I think that that can be very true. I know that just through my own research, you know, I find little tidbits that feel the same, you know, I, well, I can't even say they feel the same. I would say that in my opinion, have a similar impact or similar, um, they have similar like staying power or maybe they're more powerful. I don't know.

Cause I've never done these psychedelics the way that these guys have done them. But when I find something like even just today, you know, I'm listening, I was listening to James clear. James clear has a book called atomic habits and he talks about your environment, shaping your beliefs. And SEMA, if you were, if you were born in Nigeria, that environment would shape a lot of your beliefs versus somebody being born in Northern California, right? Like you'd have, you just kind of almost automatically without your

own choosing, really, you just kind of grow up with different beliefs, maybe even believing in like a different God, you know? But your environment can really shape your beliefs. And the things that we tell ourselves where you grow up is not really necessarily, I guess it could be, but it's not really necessarily negative. It's not really necessarily a problem. It's just a matter of like you grew up there. And as you get older, you'll probably recognize that and say, all right, well, if the people from where you were from originally aren't as successful or whatever, you can make sense of that. Or if they're more successful or whatever, you can make sense of that. But what you can't make sense of is that when you become a byproduct of your own environment, kind of in a negative way. And when you become a byproduct

of your own thoughts, you won't even really recognize it. You know, when you're a negative person, I heard somebody say this today as well, something else I learned. The guy just said, there's really not a lot of uses for cuss words that are positive. He said, sometimes somebody will emphasize something with a effing, right. Or, or whatever it might be. But for the most part, they're kind of negative. And the guy just said, I don't really speak negative. So I choose not to use cuss words. And I was like, wow, that's a really cool belief system. Like good for that guy. Like that's super cool. And then, so maybe you can adopt some of these belief systems and maybe they can help

change you. But something I heard James Clear talk about as well is he said, every option that you take is a vote towards the type of person that you want to become. Every action that you take is a vote towards the type of person that you want to become. He said doing one push-up will not transform your body. But it does cast a vote towards being a person that doesn't miss workouts. I was like, oh, my God, like this. So I think that I really liked a lot of the stuff that Aubrey said. And I love the fact that he mentioned that he felt very strongly towards you can still come to some of these same realizations through some different methods.

I can't really say for sure since I don't have the same experiences as he does, but I'm a firm believer in that as well. It might be different because you're not on like a trip, you're not getting high, but I think that knowledge can really be something that solves just about anything. And if you continue to dig deep enough and continue to be honest with yourself, truthful with yourself, if you learn to love yourself, as he was talking about,

you can be very accepting of a lot of these ideas and concepts and you don't necessarily have to take DMT to get, get you there, but maybe for some other person, maybe that's what they found to be useful. Maybe they felt like they did need to do that. Yeah. Uh, for Chris Bell, we haven't hung out in a while cause of the, uh, the quarantine. Um, but I remember when we had them on last time, you know, I was like, Hey, like, you know, you're, you're,

you're in pain. Like, what if you were to just do like one 35 for like 20 reps? And he's like, no, I don't want to do that. He was pretty, I mean, he was really like, like, no, that sounds lame. Like I, that doesn't excite me. There's no way I would want to do that. And then after Ibogaine, you know, Aubrey was talking about how it scrubs out some of these negative patterns or I forgot how he worded it exactly. But after Chris was saying like, yeah, you know, that actually does make a lot of sense to not kill myself every time. So he was kind of at least open to the idea. Hopefully he still is. I don't know. Like I said, I haven't talked to him since. So it'd be cool to, you know, interview him here. But I think in that aspect, it, it, that's something that probably can be

a permanent change, you know, knee pain or whatever it may be, you know, we're all going to get older. We're all going to get beat up eventually. But I think, you know, if you can build a strong mind and with, with the help of Ibogaine to help get you there, I think that's just like you said, Mark, it's not negative. So I think it's a really good thing. Yeah. The Ibogaine may have been something that reinforced something he's already heard before, something he maybe previously knew about himself, or maybe it's completely new discovery. But if you were coming to, if you were coming to and SEMA and I saying, man, I can't gain weight, I can't gain weight. And we're like, dude, you need to eat breakfast. Like you're not eating breakfast. Like we talked about this already. We keep telling you, you're like, fuck these guys. I don't know what I'm talking about. And then you're at home and then you complain to Stephanie like, man, I can't gain weight. I've been eating like a maniac. And she's like, well, you never eat any breakfast. You know, like you now you're starting to be more open and that you need your dad to die when you're young for something great to happen. Or like in the case of someone like a

Shaquille O'Neal, you need your dad just to, you know, walk out on you when you're a kid. Things don't have to be that way. I mean, you can, one of the guys in the really popular basketball player right now, I forget which guy it was, but he was on the Jordan documentary, The Last Dance. And he was just talking about getting the opportunity to meet Michael Jordan. And he was talking about how he was in these camps and stuff. And he thought through these camps, he's going to be able to meet Jordan, but he couldn't. And anyway, he ended up somehow getting like backstage at a game. And, um, I think it was like Kyrie Irving or something like that. Yeah. Kyrie Irving was on it. Yeah. I think it was Kyrie Irving. And, uh, anyway, the point is like these camps aren't cheap, you know, to get

to these camps, aren't cheap to get backstage, you know, at one of these games, like he had to know somebody to know somebody. So he clearly had parents that cared about him very much. He probably – I don't know his situation, but I'm just projecting here that he probably had someone that cared about him enough to get him in that situation to meet Michael Jordan. So he didn't have to have the same life as Shaquille O'Neal to be a great NBA player. Not everything always has to be so damn difficult.

Not everything has to always be so gut wrenching. You know, my, my brother dying and then me, you know, creating a slingshot. I don't think that those things have to happen. You know, I don't think they have to be that way. I had the idea of the slingshot before he ever died. You know, I do think that that was a catalyst of like, Hey, like, you know, you should really, you know, kind of honor him and get this thing moving because you know, we don't know what's going to happen in life. So it did kind of push me along. But again, um, I think if you're paying attention, your eyes are open,

you're willing to learn and you're willing to accept new concepts and ideas and you're willing to fail a lot and learn from those mistakes. I think that anything is possible. And I don't think that you have to have a shit life to, uh, to be able to get there. Yeah. It's, it is interesting you say that because a lot of people, especially these days, there's a big talk on privilege. You know, oh, they grew up with this type of privilege or they have more privilege than me and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, when I look at those things, it's just like, first off, there's no one should be, no one should be feel guilty for the amount of privilege that they have at that you know i mean i'm more privileged than a lot of people you know what i mean we're we all have some type of level of privilege yeah you talked about getting your cd player whatever

taken from you when you're in nigeria or whatever right but that guy probably wouldn't be have been able to buy that anywhere in nigeria at the time right so i was privileged to even be able to be from the u.s and have that i that little ipod um but there should be no reason that anyone like thinks that they can't get there because they haven't had some massive adversity because you always hear the stories of yeah great people and great adversity etc but i i do think that you know know, you can, you can learn a lot from other people like Aubrey, like yourself, et cetera, take the right steps, still have something that's helping you move forward or something that's pulling you forward as Aubrey

put it. It should be, should be perfectly okay. But I, yeah, there's too much me and my friend were having this conversation. It's just like the topic of privilege comes up so much. And to me, honestly, it's really just annoying and frustrating because when the topic of privilege comes up so much. And to me, honestly, it's really just annoying and frustrating because when the topic of privilege comes up, it's always about how X, Y, Z are more privileged than us and why they're able to do things. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's, it's useless conversation. Yeah. It's not, it's not very, um, it's not really helpful towards anything. then also i mean you know the the privileges that people are talking about i think i think that in today's day and age

especially when you consider the united when you talk about the united states um so many of us have access to a lot of privilege like um like i am in i'm in the highest tax bracket that you can be in right but i see people with a lot of similar shit that i have you know like i you know i don't not Like, um, like I am in, I'm in the highest tax bracket that you can be in. Right. But I see people with a lot of similar shit that I have, you know, like I, you know, I don't, not everything that I have is like some featured thing that you can't get. You know, I have this, a similar phone to a lot of people. Maybe my phone has a little bit more storage or something like that. Uh, the laptop that I'm using right here is similar. Not everything I have is like, you know, just this crazy thing that I had custom built or whatever. Some things I have,

I have some things that are like that. Where I think that there's some real strong advantages is just when people have really good parents. And I'm not really talking about from a money perspective, but just being loved and just being hugged, being cared for. And if you didn't have, you know, if you weren't raised by two parents, you got one parent who's strong enough, who makes you feel good enough about yourself to where you can get the right momentum going in your life. My wife experienced that. I think, and Seema, you experienced some of that. Just having somebody that cares, maybe even there's multiple people in the family that give a crap, like your grandma, grandpa. There's a couple extra people in there as well. And I think

that if we want to talk about privilege, that's the only people that i would say have like an advantage but also they didn't really they didn't choose that you know that's not any different than being born a different color um you just you were just or that's not you cannot you can't choose your parents you can't choose what color you're going to be i don't think we can choose how tall we're going to be like there's certain things that i, it would be a privilege to be six, nine and to be able to have a sick jump shot, you know, that would be great, but I don't have to feel bad about it, you know? Um, but I, I try to mention that a lot in my story. I just always want people to understand that. Um, I never had to worry about like where a meal was coming from. I didn't have to like sneak in the house and worried about whether I was going to get beat up by my dad.

You know, I just, my life was never like that. So I just always like to point out that you might be struggling, you might be in a different spot in your life because you may have started out in a different position than where I started. So I just think that, you know, I do think it's a privilege. Like I am privileged to have awesome parents, but I just got lucky. Yeah. I think that the, a big thing of that is like, you know, when we mentioned that it's, I guess, I guess there is some good understanding and being grateful for, I'm grateful that I have a loving mother that, that, that loved me and cared for me and, and did all the things that she did for me. I'm grateful for that. Um, and I think that,

that in itself is a privilege. And I think it's good to also reflect and maybe understand where you are, I guess, not where you are in the totem pole. Like you can understand, okay, I can see why those people are having though. And, and talking about those issues, I can understand that from my place of privilege that I have, right. Having empathy towards that. But at the same time, there's, there's also a thing where, you know, when you are thinking about this, like Mark, you're very wealthy,

right? I could look at your accomplishments and the things that you've done. And I could be like, well, he only did that because he had some great idea and it made him millions of dollars. And, you know, there's, there's so much privilege, or I can look at that and I can, I can look at all the things you did to get there and be like, huh, okay, I could see how he was able to do all this. I could see the way he thinks. I can understand that and have maybe some of those things try to pull me towards my goals, right? You can look at people that have more privilege and use that as maybe a blueprint of some sort. But it's when we start looking at it and it's like, it's a negative thing that that person has that privilege, right? You hear about white privilege. And when I hear that, it just makes me cringe so hard.

I cringe so hard because I'm just like, yo, I don't even want to have that conversation right now. But it's an interesting topic for sure. For sure. I love it. I think it's good. I think it's good to talk about all these different things. And, you know, I had somebody commented on one of my posts, and then I just, I gave them some history on elephants. tree on elephants but uh they yeah they commented and they said something uh to the effect of uh like mark and then they put in like quotes i had rich parents bell or something like that and

i just kind of looked at it i was like it's just interesting when people put words in your mouth you know they i'm like i don't i don't recall saying that we were rich. My dad did really, really well for himself. But when I was really young, we were in a trailer. And when I was older, we were in a trailer. We started and finished in the same spot. But my dad kind of took us through a pretty cool ride because we became, I guess you'd say, upper middle class. And we had a weight room in our basement and stuff like that. But, uh, you know, I didn't take any offense to it. I just found it to be interesting, but you know, being, being well off and, uh, you know, being, being in

those spots of like, for me, so it had different impact on each one of us. My brother is four years older than me and Mike would have been, or Mike was about six years older than me. It had a different impact on each one of us. And I think that my brothers may have felt, I don't really know, but they may have felt more entitled than I did because I saw what happened to my dad after he had money, like he had money and then push it all got taken away. He got the boot from IBM and, um, he kind of at the same time he got like a knee surgery. Um, he was in bad health. He was having some heart issues and we didn't have any like income coming in.

So it was like, all right, we got to sell everything. And we've got to like, you know, really downsize. We got how to get rid of the weight room and we had a pool and we had like all this cool shit. But to me that was also very normal. That was what was on my block. You know, everybody had a basketball hoop. A lot of people had a pool. A lot of people just kind of had a nice setup. It wasn't like a real rich neighborhood or anything, but we had to downsize. And the impact that had on me was like, oh, nothing's really a sure thing. My dad woke up every day and put on a suit and tie Monday through Friday. And I didn't see him, you know, the whole day. I didn't see

him till like around six or seven o'clock. We'd eat dinner and then like repeat, you know, and then for a while he was doing other work. He was doing some taxes and real estate while he was at IBM. And then I really didn't see him, you know, for, for a period of time. And then when he lost his job and we lost all these like possessions, I was like, wow, that's pretty crazy. He's worked so hard and, uh, you know, now we're losing these things. And so for me, it was like seeing that had a real positive impact on me, having me like kind of want to lean more towards, I think, thinking for myself and being in my control of my own like destiny, you know, and being in control of whatever I could control, you know, and kind of working for myself because my dad later just shifted and we didn't really skip a beat. We had to get rid of stuff. But the love and all that stuff was all the same in the family and like Christmas and

everything was, everything was still the same. We just went from being in a big house and being in this trailer park. We went from having a couple of nice things to just really kind of, I guess, like minimizing, but all the same stuff. We still had a stove. We still had a sink. We still had a refrigerator. We still had a shower. I still had a bed, you know, like still had air conditioning heat, you know, still had a lot of stuff. So anyway, it just had a different impact on me. But when you see a comment like that, you know, sometimes your initial reaction is to my old reaction would be to get fired up about it you know to get mad about it and be like that's not what i said instead the guy just gets a comment about elephants

when it comes to customize things you do have amazing bidets those aren't customized and. And they're more readily available nowadays. I don't know if you've seen some of the commercials that are popping up on IG. Yeah, you can get just the seat, just the top part from Costco for $200, $300 or something. But my bathroom doesn't have an electrical outlet. So I got some work to do. I'll find you. Let's do. I'll find you. See if I can find you. There's some other products out there nowadays.

Yeah. So actually, funny thing, I had posted on my Instagram, because this was a couple weeks back. We were running low on toilet paper. So it's like, oh my gosh, okay, let's see where we can find some. And I can't remember where, I think it was just Amazon. It was like a 12 pack for 30 bucks. I'm like, this is ridiculous. I need to find a bidet and yeah, there's a bunch that are non-electric, but we'll, we'll see how it goes. Cause I, I ordered some and, um, we'll see how the cold water spray feels. Hopefully it's not too bad. So I'm moving up, but you know,

we'll get that electric outlet installed one of these days. I could just get you with the hose. That'd be great. Just straight touching my toes. Put my thumb on there. Anyway, awesome podcast with Aubrey Marcus. I just, just think about it, Marcus. I just, uh, just think about it guys. I mean, that guy, I don't really know the estimated amount of dough that has rolled through on it.

I'm sure you can just Google it, but it's probably 50 million or a hundred million. Mm-hmm. And what is he doing? He's just, he's just, uh, he's just chilling, right? He's not working on himself. He's not exercising. He's not dieting. He's fat. He's out of shape. He's getting old. He's just letting everything deteriorate, right? He's just sitting back, counting his money and enjoying food. No, he's working every day at trying to make himself better. He's working every day at trying to figure out. trying to make himself better. He's working every day at trying to figure out. And it's just to develop a skillset to try to be as happy as he can. And I don't know if you guys noticed his tone. He talks about all these different things. He's pretty monotone for each thing, but I noticed some excitement when he talked about like his mastermind thing where he gets 120 people together. And like, you can can tell like he really and he kind of plugged that at the end i mean the guy doesn't need to plug anything right but he he's excited about it you know that's something that gives him a lot of purpose

has a lot of meaning and i think that's all we're all looking for yeah now what he's doing that mastermind is an amazing thing too like helping them get all of those experiences that he has had with psychedelics that's legal but that is that takes so much organization and dealing with all those people at the same time is one one crazy experience like a disneyland for psychedelics that's what it seems like sounds awesome to me yeah yeah right on i think one of the coolest thing though that people can take away is just it's still stuck on my mind it's um what you mentioned what you had andrew do in terms of like the the recording of you know when you're already there um even before i started people i kind of want them to envision what they'd feel like with that goal but having that goal pull

you rather than like the the hate you have for your body or the way you this and that, like that is so much stronger. And I just really hope people kind of take that away. Yeah. Pray as if, pray as if it's already happened. Amen. So they're all tough things. Cause there's a, you kind of toe that line between, you know, no one's going to really be more proud of you because you achieved a particular goal. I mean, they may be more proud of you if you had a behavior change. So they would be more proud of you if you had a behavior change that made you happier. Right. made you happier, right? If you had a behavior change and you used to weigh 400 pounds and now you weigh 200 pounds, you'd be happier because they know that that made you happier. They would

be proud of you because they recognize you kind of leveled up. You, you learned something new. Same thing with getting like a diploma. Um, someone's not like necessarily pumped because he got the degree. They would be more pumped, recognizing like this is hopefully they're more and more excited about the fact that you work towards something that you wanted, you got it. And now you're going to be able to, you know, do what you think is best, the best move for you next, you know, and that gets to be a little bit weird because sometimes people want shit for you, especially when it comes to like education. Like your mom always wanted you to go back to college and stuff like that.

Right. Sometimes they just because that's like their belief system, that's like kind of in line with their belief system. And maybe that's not what you want. And that's where stuff gets to be a little a little dicey sometimes because then you feel like you have to do it because I know it's going to make her proud. And that's where we get into those weird circumstances. But yeah, awesome, awesome stuff from Aubrey Marcus. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Yes. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.

Sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Perfect Keto, for sponsoring this episode. For more information on them, please check the YouTube and Facebook description as well as the iTunes show notes. And hey, if you guys want to get in on a big Power Project ayahuasca retreat, let us know at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. You guys can hit me up at IamAndrewZ on Instagram. And Seema, where are you at? And Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. And Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube.

And Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell, Instagram, Twitter. And I got a YouTube channel, which is Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.

Power Project. Thank you for checking out this episode with Aubrey Marcus. We want to give a huge thank you and shout out to everyone with aubrey marcus we want to give a huge thank you and shout out to everyone that's taking the time out of their busy days to drop us a rating and review on itunes it helps us out a ton right now we want to give a big thank you to brian mac 32 brian says fun fun and informative quote just let me say this. These guys are more than just meatheads. Okay, to be fair, they are meatheads,

but they really care about the info they put out to the public and they do it in a fun way that is easy to understand. They have guests that I truly believe are industry leaders in health and fitness. I think it's fair to say that this podcast has and will continue to change lives for the better. I have tried to listen to other health and fitness podcasts, and I finally realized that

once you've listened to The Power Project, you don't really need to go elsewhere. Dude, that was sick. Thank you for that review, man. I'm freaking honored to be able to read that on air. So thank you so much, man. Sincerely appreciate it. If you're listening right now, if you'd like to hear your name and your review read on air, please head over to iTunes right now, drop us a rating and a review,

and you could hear your name on air, just like our homie BrianMac32. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.