Mark Bell's Power Project - If You’ve Lost HOPE, Listen - Steve Weatherford || MBPP Ep. 1067

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

In episode 1067, Steve Weatherford, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how Steve went from a Super Bowl Champ in the NFL to feeling lost without purpose until he found Jesus. Follow Steve on IG: https://www.instagram.com/weatherford5/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza & Get Podcast Guides, Courses and More ➢ https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

You win the Super Bowl. You're the NFL's fittest man. Where did you go wrong? Had the greatest game of my life on a contract here, which means I'm about to get everything that I've ever wanted. This wave of depression came over me because I realized, like, nothing's changed. He gives me a hug from behind and he squeezes me. And the next thing I know, I'm, like, pulling my pants out.

Like, as I'm running, he's like, I care about you. Let's, like, this is our little secret. And because something happened like that that questions my sexuality, what do I do? I go sleep with a lot of women. I got to prove it to myself. I'm not gay. What kind of drugs were you doing at the time? Smoking pot, taking Adderall to keep up with the workload and then eating Percocets for like depression. And then the pastor walks up and he looks up in the corner and goes, Hey you, he goes, I don't know who you are, but God told me that he's going to heal what's broken inside of you. So when I come onto this podcast, I share things like that, not because I'm proud of them.

I share things like that because that's part of who I was before I gave my life to Jesus. If you guys have been enjoying the content we've been bringing here on The Power Project, consider leaving us a review on Spotify and Apple. We've had podcasts with people from Functional Patterns to Ben Patrick to Jack Cruz who roasted us on air. But we did that for you to bring you some of the best information in fitness.

We're learning along with you. And leaving a review with how you dig the podcast is really going to be something that helps the podcast move forward. So if you can, leave us a review there and enjoy the rest of the show. Let's get into that a little bit. Steve Weatherford, thanks for being on the show today. I've been following your stuff for a long time. I remember seeing like probably a while back, maybe a couple years ago, you training a little bit with Mike O'Trenn. I mean, Mike O'Hearn.

And, you know, I've been following along with your story and I'm a huge football nut, huge football fan. So I've seen you playing on the Giants and the Jets. I'm from New York originally and Jets fan. So my whole family is a fan of the Jets and Yankees. And we're pretty aware of like the players and all that stuff. So thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it. Man, I'm pumped to be on the show.

It's been a long time coming. Yeah. You know, I feel like you and I have been. We had some sort of weird miscommunication like a while back, I was like, someone from your team I think hit us up and like we're going to have you on the show or something, you're like, I don't have a team at the time, it was like a couple years ago

and I was like, well I don't know what Steve Weatherford was going to show up here and do the show I don't know what happened, so yeah, anyway we got it locked down now and you own a TRT clinic? I'm just an investor. Great. What's been some of your experience with the peptides and stuff like that?

It's a game changer. I feel like I, just like you, man, I'm like a guy that loves to learn. And I'm a guy that I feel like I'm real coachable. And one thing that I've always been really, really curious on is like, what is my body actually capable of? And when you're in college and you're in the pros, like I was never going to be a guy that like put my eligibility at risk. And I also was one of those guys, like if I won and I was cheating, I knew I wouldn't feel

good about it, you know, because I used to cheat in Monopoly and when I would win, I wouldn't feel that good when I would win, you know? Everybody cheated in Monopoly a little bit, right? Yeah. I'll be the banker. Especially when you had younger brothers and sisters, man, you bump that rent up a little bit more because they can't read you know i feel like i feel like a lot of influences have treated people at home like they can't read um so no i retired and then after i retired after 10 years in the nfl i went and started to do some blood testing and i think my testosterone was like 419 or something like that. I'm like, well, my life be like, if I got up to a thousand. And so I first started with testosterone and this is probably four or five years ago in tesamorelin, which is a peptide. And then from there, I actually ended up reaching out to

Transcend when they just started out and just exploring more peptides with them, more like nootropics, like a peptide called dihexa, which is actually a capsule. And it's actually been proven to regrow brain cells. And so when they told me that, I'm like, oh my gosh, my teammates are going to totally need this and want this because a lot of my buddies won't mess with needles, right? But a lot of my buddies have had concussions and they have some serious issues and a lot of them have struggled with suicidal thoughts. Some of them have actually done that, depression, anxiety, you know, all the things that CTE brings on. So I started to explore with some nootropics. I've always been pretty lean, so I haven't really

messed around with the peptides that like suppress your appetite but i've heard like really great things about peptides like um simirelin um i think it's called tessa finson um so i started trt about four years ago maybe almost five years ago but every nine months i'll get off and do hcg and i think it's called enclclamiphene just to keep myself like naturally producing testosterone but make sure the balls don't shrink too much yeah and one thing I would say out of all of them Mark that I would say man like for people

listening to this go do some research on a mixture a blend of Tesmorelin and Ipamorelin I take an injection of that five times per week before I go to sleep. And I have like the whoop data to support it. But my deep REM sleep has gone up over 20% just by taking this peptide. And think about it, like deep REM sleep is the portion of sleep that your brain actually like records memories. It's the portion of sleep that you

actually like recover in your body resets. So just think about like, man, if every night I could get 20% more of the memories converted into long-term, so I would have better recollection and I'm going to recover more. And it also has increased my lean muscle mass and made me leaner. So I wasn't planning on talking about peptides. I've actually never talked about peptides because normally when I come on podcasts, man, I'm here to talk about Jesus and addiction and identity. He's right here. I know. And I noticed that I came in here earlier before you guys were here. He's on every show. And I'm like, man, you know what? I'm in the right spot because John Cena is on the floor and Jesus Christ is standing mighty and high where he belongs.

He just slammed John Cena. That's right. He created John Cena so he could raise him back up if he wanted to. Mm-hmm. You know, I think there's so many young kids that grow up with this idea that they're going to be a professional athlete. And football is huge here in the United States. And so young kids all over the place run around with football and they picture themselves being a pro football player.

But I don't know how many of them picture themselves being a punter. And you kind of hear like- Zero unless your dad's a punter. And even when your dad's a punter, and I know because I have two sons, my sons didn't even want to be me. They wanted Odell Beckham Jr.'s jersey, not mine.

Right, right. They want to be the superstar They wanted Odell Beckham Jr.'s jersey, not mine. Right, right. They want to be the superstar, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So how did all this start? What's kind of your superhero origins of becoming a punter in the NFL? So I was just telling Nsema how I got started in football. So I'm from Terre Haute, Indiana, and soccer is not a big deal in Terre Haute, Indiana. Football and basketball, mostly basketball, but football was a big deal in Terre Haute, Indiana. Football and basketball, mostly

basketball, but football was a big deal at my school. I went to Terre Haute North and I was a soccer player. And I started high school at 108 pounds and I wasn't really short. I was five foot eight, but I was very, very skinny. But I was still a good athlete, had a really strong leg. And the way that I got into football, and I feel like this story will be an encouragement for everybody listening, because I feel like when you watch your heroes, and not that I'm anybody's heroes, but when you watch people on TV that are doing some of the things that you want to do,

you kind of make up in your mind, Mark, like, well, they probably didn't have like that much adversity, or like you could look at it and see them and be like, man, he's just got great genetics. And everybody totally discounts the hard work that you put in. Or when somebody says, oh, like you do peptides, like, oh, well I could look like that. So it's just really easy to look at people and, and not recognize their struggle or their adversity. And so we hear it all the time with height. Someone's like, if I was six, eight, I'd be in the NBA. Like, no, you'd still be uncoordinated. Yeah, and you'd just be uncomfortable on planes.

Hard to find pants that fit. But like I said, I appreciate your insecurity and you're protective of your ego by saying that. So how I got started in football. The football coach actually came onto the soccer field and he asked the coach, he said, Hey, I'm looking for a kicker. And my coach said, you know what? Why don't you, Oh,

you pulled up one of those highlights. Oh, it was one of these fake punts. Yeah. Went back when you were on the jets. I think that was Monday night football. And okay, here's this,

I'll get back to this story. But now that we're watching this highlight, so this was Monday night football. and during my 10-year NFL career, I had 11 first down attempts. Quiz question. How many of those 11 first down attempts, how many of those were called? Like how many of them? Oh, oh, oh.

How many of them did the coach say, okay, Steve, I want you to go for it on fourth down, and how many times did I do it on my own? I'm going to guess that you instinctually just always just did it without it being called. Ten times I did it on my own. Because you just saw an opening. Yes. And you were like, and did the coach kind of— Or I kind of like started to fumble the step, and I knew I was going to get it blocked, and then I ran.

Did the coach kind of encourage you to do that because of your athleticism? Because you were the fittest man in the NFL. It depended on who it was. When I was playing for Rex Ryan, after I did it the first time, he thought it was the best thing ever. Do it again. And he said, hey, if you're going to do this, you just make sure that you do it. And then I played for him for two years and I think I did it like five or six times. And then I went to the Giants with Tom Coughlin, and he don't play that game.

You know, I mean, you've heard Tom. Yeah, I've seen him on the play. He's a disciplinarian. So he said, hey, I heard on the street some of those things that you've been doing. You call it on your own. We don't do that here. I said, yes, sir. So we did a one fake punt with the Giants and they actually called it and we didn't get it. So if you want,

I'll go back to how I got into football. Let's go. Okay. So in high school, so the football coach, Wayne Staley, God rest his soul. He came over to the soccer field and asked my coach, he said, hey, do you have anybody that has a strong leg? And he pointed over to the far field and he said, that guy over there, he's a freshman. So as coach walked over to the far field, he got a little bit closer and he saw how small I was. And he looks back at the soccer coach. He's like, are you talking about this guy over here? And the coach says, yeah, yeah, just have him kick the football. So he comes over to me and I instantly get nervous because this guy is like the biggest him kick the football. So he comes over to me and I instantly get nervous because this guy is like the biggest deal in our school. And he walks up to me and he says, hey,

kick that soccer ball. So I back up and I kick this thing with all that I have. And it sounds like a bomb exploding. This ball just takes off. He looks back at the soccer coach. He goes, he'll do. And so he said, come to the locker room tomorrow at three o'clock. So the next day, I can't wait for school to get over. I'm on the football team. I'm going to play on Friday. So they go in there to get me my shoulder pads and my helmet. And like I told you, I was tall and skinny, but I had a big old head.

You know, eventually it's kind of like a puppy dog with big hands. Like you look at him, you're like, man, what a goofy, weird looking dog. But one day that dog is going to be a beast. That was me. I had this gigantic head. And one day, if he ever grows into that big old head, he's going to be a big man. So I go in there and they put, they're finding shoulder pads for me. And because I'm so skinny, they don't have shoulder pads that fit me.

So I'm going like down the line from mediums all the way down to extra small. They don't have them. So they holler to the middle school locker room. Hey, do you got any middle school pads? So they put seventh grader pads on me and now it's time for me to get a helmet. So they get the medium. It's too small. The large, the extra large, eventually we get up to an extra large helmet and they put it on me. And so I'll bobble head out to practice and they've already been warming up. And so as soon as I walk up, coach pulls up the whole varsity team. And I'm like, oh my gosh, because I've been in high school for like three

days and all these guys have like beards and they're like real men. I'm just this little boy that barely has hair on my peaches. I think I started puberty like a year before that. And there were some guys in eighth grade that had like sideburns. You were saying one guy had like chewing tobacco. Oh, yeah, yeah. So he gathers everybody up and they announce this to the team. Hey guys, this is our new kicker.

And so the kicker that was before me ended up getting like a scholarship to Indiana State and he was really good. And so they're like, and then they see me and I literally heard a gasp from the varsity team. They're like, oh. So he's like, just give him a chance. Field goal.

So he lines up the whole field goal team. And the biggest guy that went to my school, his name was Mike Canada, 6'4", 275 pounds, big old beer belly. And this guy chewed tobacco during practice. I mean, he was the ultimate B.A. He ran the streets in Terre Haute North. And then he's my snapper. And then my holder, my holder is Chris Farr, which is like, I don't know if you ever watched Friday Night Lights, but he's the all-star quarterback, like the one that all the girls want to date. And he's got these beautiful blue eyes. And so it's my first ever field goal session. And mind you, Mark, I just kicked a field goal for the very first time the day before, right?

Because coach said, hey, kick this soccer ball. And then after that, he gave me a football. He said, do you think you could kick this through that H, right? And I'm like, well, the ball's not moving. There's no goalie. And you just want me to kick it right there? Seems so simple to me. So I go out to soccer practice.

And this is the first time I'm actually going to do it with like somebody actually holding the ball and it's not on like a tee, you know? So I'm nervous. And I remember they blew, blew, set, snaps the ball back. Chris catches it. He puts it down and I'm looking at it like a charging bull. I'm like, this is my chance because when I make this field goal, I'm going to be on the varsity team. And I know the varsity team on Fridays, we get to wear our jersey to school, right? I want to be one of those guys that goes to school and wears one of this part of like the men, the tribe and the earth, like the cool guys in school. This is my chance. So I charge at this ball and Mark, I swing with everything that I have. An explosion. Boom, happens.

It sounded just like it did the day before. But the next thing that I hear is this loud scream. Ah! And all of a sudden, Mike Canada, that big guy, jumps up, grabs his left butt cheek, looks around, looks back at me with, like, red in his eyes and literally runs at me. I don't know what to do. So I look at Coach. He looks at me with like red in his eyes and literally runs at me. I don't know what to do. So I look at coach.

He looks at me. He goes and kind of like shrugs. So I just turn around. I have no protection. And I run into the locker room off of the football field into the locker room. I take off this giant marshmallow helmet. I give it to the training staff. I give them the shoulder pads.

I'm like, thanks so much. I'll see y'all later. I give it to the training staff. I give them the shoulder pads. I'm like, thanks so much. I'll see y'all later. I'm done. And so I left practice. And later on, one of the guys on the team came over, met with me, said, hey, listen, we don't have a kicker. Our season starts on Friday. I know Mike just chased you off of the field and said, don't you ever come back. But if you go to this gas station tomorrow, this lady's working and she'll sell you tobacco. Buy five cans of Copenhagen snuff, put it in Mike Canada's locker and ask him if you can come back onto the team. And I'm not kidding. This is a true story.

I went and I bought that Copenhagen. I put it in Mike's locker. Mike put his arm over my shoulder. And from that day moving forward, I was Mike's guy. We had a game on Friday in my first ever high school game. I had a 49-yard game-winning field goal. And I say that story. And I want that to be encouragement to everybody that's out there.

Don't let someone discourage you from your thing, because that could have been, I could have let the failure of that first time that I tried it, kind of like when, before we did this podcast, we went out there and you guys tried to snap a ball to me. And we had like a competition, how, like who can do the best at something you've never done before. Andrew, right. And there's so many, there's so many of us that are so worried about what other people's opinions are of us that we won't even try to go. I caught myself doing it as you guys were like swinging that rope.

I was like, man, I probably look like a idiot if I do this. Then I made up the excuse for my back is hurt, so I'm not going to do it. And so as I say that, I want people to know as you're listening to this or watching this podcast, I'm in the game with you. So in this particular hero story, I made the decision to press in. But there's been times in my life where I was a coward and I didn't go back and I didn't try. So I'm just praying that and believing that the conversations that we're going to have for people at home, that seeds would be planted, but also that maybe our conversations will breathe life into dry bones. And I believe that there's dreams that God has given people that maybe because of a mistake that they've made,

a decision that they've made, a decision that they've made, or maybe they had kids or maybe they got married or maybe they got injured. They've just like let that die. And I believe that some of the conversations that we're going to have are going to give people new eyes to see, new ears to hear, and also a new fire in their belly. So Mark, man, I'm really pumped to be here uh i've been listening to quite a few of your shows and we've been buddies for a while so i enjoyed working out with you earlier enjoyed finally meeting in sema and uh and the rest of

the guys that are up here with you your producers and sema's pretty small in person huh yeah that's what people usually say they usually shot he's a deep guy than one yeah he's a deep guy i like how he thinks, man. And I'm excited to have more conversations with you. But that's how football started for me. You said you weighed like 108 pounds. What did you do to be valuable as a football player? Because 108 pounds isn't going to cut it.

Maybe in high school you can make the team because you can kick a couple field goals. But you know, what did you weigh like when you graduated high school? Yeah. So in, in eighth grade, like right before I started playing football, I was in the dentist's office and they had a muscle and fitness magazine. And, and I always thought that like, I grew up loving Rocky, Karate Kid, Kickboxer, Lionheart, all of those movies, loved those movies. And I always knew that like strength and size were something that I lacked. And when I saw that muscle and fitness magazine in the dentist's office, I stole it. I took it home and I cut out all these pictures and I put them all over my wall. And I guess people would call that a vision board.

I didn't know it. I just saw something that like I wanted. And according to this magazine, if I like eat these certain things and I take these certain supplements and I train this certain way, it's possible. Right. Impossible, right? So about the time of the story that I'm telling you, I really got into the weight room and I just became just obsessed with it to the point where my senior year, my dad called me into his office. So my dad had, he worked at a company called Bemis, which was like, they make like, remember this company Gap? They would make the plastic bags for Gap or the cellophane that goes around a 24 pack of water. So this plant was next to my high school and my dad called the high school and said, hey, I want you to come to my office after school today. I'm like, this has never happened to me before. And I'm 17. So I'm like reeling through all of the stuff that I've done that my dad didn't know. Like all the girls that I snuck into my house or the you know i was smoking pot

with my friends two weeks beforehand trying to get your lies you know like he's gonna yeah he's gonna make me take a drug test or you know what i mean i'm like panicking like my mind is racing and so i go and i sit down with them he said hey he's like i'm not mad at you but we just want to get you some help but i've been hearing from a couple guys up here at the office that you're taking steroids. And I remember sitting back in my chair. My dad is a wonderful, wonderful man. But my dad is, I guess you'd call him old school. Like, he's not a guy that's going to sit you on his lap, rub your back, tell you you're a good boy and that he's proud of you.

But my dad was very faithful, very consistent, never raised his voice with my mom. Just like, I wouldn't necessarily call him loving, but I knew that he loved me. Right. And so I remember sitting back in my chair, thinking to myself, boy, he's going to love this. Dad, I promise you can put a Bible on this table. I'll put my hand on that Bible. I've never taken steroids. And like before when he accused me of something, I always did it. You know what I mean? So I was like, okay, like make sure you're conscious of your face. And like, cause he can tell when you're lying, you know, your parents can tell. But I knew like, I knew I knew creatine is the worst thing that I ever took. So I'm like, dad, put my hand on a Bible. I've never taken steroids. And he goes, are you sure?

And I go, I'm sure, dad. And I remember walking out of there and thinking, I think that's the best compliment my dad's ever given me. You know, is that I've put on so much size and strength that there's no way I could have done it unless I was taking steroids. And so that was like a, I know it's a weird story to tell, but that was like a defining moment for me, right? When I knew, like it clicked for me then, Mark, that if I pay my price, I can change myself. I can change how strong I am. I can actually change when I walk into a room, people are like, oh, they noticed me, right? Oh, that guy's got authority. And when a guy walks in, I remember when I was a little boy and a guy would walk in,

Mark, you instantly knew certain things about him. That guy's focused. That guy's disciplined. That guy will sacrifice. Just like all of the things that it takes in order for you to have physical authority when a man walks in. And I wanted that. But the one thing that I didn't see like growing up, cause my, my parents are like wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. But we went to the type of church that

like, you didn't see people that were in shape. Like we went to the type of church that like, you got to wear khakis, you got to tuck your shirt in. You can't talk during service. If you did, they smacked you in the back of the head, like really formal. But then you take somebody like me and I have what the world likes to call, and I don't claim this label, but they call it ADHD, right? Like attention deficit hyperactive disorder. So if you put somebody like that in a really formal setting of like church or school, dude, like it makes total sense, Mark, that like growing up, my whole identity was in sports because I got kicked out of Sunday school. And I even remember like I love my Sunday school teacher, Mr. Bobby. Still talk to him.

He's still alive. He's a wonderful man. He's the only guy at that church that I ever remember helping me to feel good about how I was built, right? And all the other classes, they would sit me outside of the classroom, so like a room like this. And I would listen, and I would hear about God and listen about Jesus through the door. And I can't even get mad at my teachers because here's the deal. If I'm in the room with nine other kids, they're probably not going to be able to learn as well. My mom wasn't the type of mom that was like, okay, well, we're going to medicate him. And I actually started eating like all organic before it was like really a thing. It was called the fine gold diet. And so from a really young age, Mark, I actually like learned about preservatives and all these different things.

And my mom did her best up until probably about seventh grade to where you get like really busy with sports. I pretty much didn't have any popsicles or ice creams that wasn't like all organic and et cetera, et cetera. So I had like a really unique childhood from a physical fitness standpoint. Cause I started running like ultra competitive track when I was like 10 years old. And so between like, and they trained us like Olympic athletes. I was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was on a track team of 200 people and I was the only white kid. For real. It was, we trained, it was called Keeping Young Track.

And I hope some of my teammates hear this podcast because I like, it was before Facebook, right? So like, I don't have contact with hardly any of them, but we practice at Southern University, which is an all black school. Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But I got recruited to be on this track team because they had like a, an all, all city. Remember the physical fitness test? Yeah. So we all came together with a bunch of schools and did the physical fitness test. And in like fourth grade, I mashed it, you know, like a seven foot broad jumper and I was crushing it on the shuttle run. Um, and I got recruited to come onto this track team. So I say those things to say, I started eating like crazy healthy as a kid because of that label that the, the world tried to place on me. And then because of this athleticism God gave me, I got discovered and pulled onto this uber competitive track team. And so by the time

I found muscle and fitness and like, this is the way that you build muscle, I was ready for it, right? Because I had already been taught how to eat really healthy. And like, as far as paying your price and enduring pain and getting up early and stretching and these different things that building muscle is required. I learned that from this track team. So when I got into high school, my body was really, really ready to build muscle mass and to create like explosiveness because of the background that I had that prepared me for it. prepared me for it. So I kind of see all those things to say, by the time I hit 36, I believe that my body was ready for peptides and for testosterone, because for the most part, like I had maxed my frame out and it's not like I'm trying to get bigger. I have six kids now. I'm trying to live like my highest quality of life. I could care less. Somebody commented the other day,

cause I ran a marathon. And as I was passing the, the finish line, it said the, the time was five hours and 39 minutes. And somebody commented like, well, it's impressive that he's 245 pounds, but you know, he, it's a five hour and 39 minute marathon. But what people don't realize is like, Hey, the time doesn't matter to me. And my ultimate goal that day is I led 20 men into battle that had never ran a marathon. Right. And so my ultimate goal was make sure every one of those men finish. Yes, there's my finish right there. But most of my life, Mark, and I feel like this is when my life really got really interesting and fun, is my whole life has been, up until five years ago, had been about me.

And so normally that comment would have really bothered me because people's opinion of me would have mattered so much. But when I had this radical God encounter five years ago, I realized that I had been building my own kingdom with the time, the talents, and the treasures that God has given me. And I was really empty. Mark, God has given me. And I was really empty, Mark. I was really empty and I was a Super Bowl champion. I was a multimillionaire. A fair amount of people knew who I was, had a lot of people on social media.

But it gave me a revelation about what life is all about. And I'll share this last thing that I'm sure you have a question. I saw this painting about six months ago and it's called the Allegory of Long Spoons. And it was painted by a rabbi in the 1800s. But what it was, it's a picture of heaven and it's a picture of hell. And in the picture of heaven, it looks like a Thanksgiving feast, right?

There's 12 people around a table and there's just food everywhere. And in the scene, every person has a really long spoon. Like the spoon is so long that you have trouble getting it into your mouth. And so the circumstances in hell are exactly the same, right? They're sitting around a table of 12, a huge Thanksgiving dinner. But in the picture of hell it's really gray everybody's really skinny they're really emaciated and the picture of heaven the reason everybody's so fat and happy is they're taking their long spoon and they're using their time their talents and their treasures to feed the person across the table for from them and

the picture of hell is the way that i lived my first 36 years of life. I took my time, my talents, my treasures, Mark. And I tried to build my own kingdom. I tried to buy all this Louis Vuitton. I had to like make everybody on Instagram make seem that I was like, just totally killing the game. But dude, I was depressed. I was suicidal. I hated who I was. Like one of the things Mark said to me as we were working out earlier, I was like, Mark, one of the things that I really love about you, man, is like been watching you for like 12 or 15 years is like your businesses are growing and your brand is growing, but like never once have I ever seen you take your eye off of the prize of your marriage and your kids. And one of the first things Mark said, he's like, oh yeah, one of the ways I do

that, it's like, I'll let anybody look in my phone. There's no weird stuff in there. There's no, like, you're not going to find anything that's going to make me feel any type of way. And I said, Mark, you know what that is? That's integrity. And if you want to be an uncommon man in 2024, be a man of integrity. And so like, and Seema, do you, I mean, how rare is that? Oh yeah. You get to do life with somebody that's like, I am who I say that I am. And the reason that I hated myself is I wasn't who I said that I was. There was this paper version of myself.

Like I would think to myself six years ago, if I would meet you, it would have been a completely different version. I would have been thinking to myself, how do I need to show up and be on this podcast so the people that watch it or listen to it would like me? And how can I show up on here so I can advance in my agenda for you? What can I get transactionally out of this experience that I have right now? I would walk into a room to compete with other men. And after God got ahold of me and changed me and showed me that I'm more than

enough. Now I walk into a room and I want to complete other men. I don't need anything from you, man. I want to lift you up. I want to hold you high. But it took me until I had like a radical encounter that I realized like, man,

all that stuff that my mom was telling me about God, all this like religiousness, God is love. God is joy. God is peace. And I had never experienced love, joy, and peace before that moment. It was just moments of happiness and achievement, but never worthiness and love. So I know that it was kind of like really long winded, but that's kind of a little snapshot of who I am. A constant thing that's been beneficial for all of our health has been intaking enough protein, but also intaking quality protein. And that's why we've been partnering with Good Life Proteins for years now. Good Life not only sells Piedmontese beef, which is our favorite beef. And the main reason why it's our favorite is because they have

cuts of meat that have higher fat content, like their ribeyes and their chuck eyes, but they also have cuts of meat like their flat iron. Andrew, what's the macros on the flat iron? Yeah, dude. So the flat iron has 23 grams of protein, only two grams of fat, but check this out. Their grass-fed sirloin essentially has no fat and 27 grams of protein. There we go. So whether you're dieting and you want lower fat cuts or higher fat cuts, that's there. But you can also get yourself chicken. You can get yourself fish. You can get yourself scallops. You can get yourself all types of different meats. And I really suggest going to Good Life and venturing in and maybe playing around with your proteins. I mean, going back to the red meat, there's picanha, there's chorizo sausage, there's maple bacon. That stuff's incredible.

The maple bacon is so good. My girl put those in these bell peppers with steak and chicken. Oh my God. It was so good. But either way, guys, protein is essential and the good life is the place where you can get all of your high quality proteins. So Andrew, how can they get it? it yes you can head over to goodlifeproteins.com and enter promo code power project to save 20 off your entire order links in the description as well as the podcast show notes i do want to add in it's actually uh quite interesting you know i've known mark since i think like late 2014 and i think one of the things that i've been able to learn through like the 10 years that i've known him because like i mean I mean, I didn't, I'm not saying like, I look at Mark as like a father figure, but like my, my dad wasn't there. Right. And by seeing his relationship he has with his wife and

children, that was actually an awesome example. That was like, just that I could just see, you know, he, he like, you don't see many guys that have a lot of wealth, right. Like act with such integrity as I've seen you. And that's been super impactful for me, um, and how I treat my girl in my relationship, you know, being able to see that. So it's just like, I totally agree with you. It's rare, dude. Followable excellence. Yeah. Most men, they, they don't live with followable excellence. And like, I've been talking about my dad and there's so many things that my dad did that taught me that make me great. Like one of those things is like, Weatherford's don't quit. I don't care what other people do. We don't quit. I learned that.

And that's like a, that's a philosophy that I learned from my dad that, that rings true in my life today. And there's also things that we've learned from our fathers that are called generational curses that we also carry around. And so one of the things that I needed to do after I encountered God is I needed to go through and really like analyze my life and analyze my father's life. And like, what are the great things that my dad has instilled in me? How do I double down on those things? And one of them was integrity and faithfulness. My dad is such an integrous man. And like, I lived a long, long enough to like, see so many men say, I am this and not be that. But 41 years, I've never seen my dad incongruent. Right. And I know that your dad, that's one of the things that you got

from your dad. That's why he is the way that he is, is because of his father before him. Right. And so one of the things that I want to do. Mentioned this on the show before, sorry to interrupt. No, you're good. I've never even seen my dad look at another woman. And that was crazy to me when I was a kid and I started having more interest in girls. I would be like, you know, obviously he's not going to look at girls that I'm looking at because I was young, right? So it would be inappropriate, you know. So that's understandable. But every once in a while, like a woman would walk by and I'm like, there is no way that he's not going to look at this woman.

It's impossible. Her like boobs are out. She looks amazing. You know, we're at the mall or wherever we were and he wouldn't look. And then he, I asked him one time, I was like, how did like, he's like, I just never wanted to hurt your mother. I was like, holy shit. You know, he's like, your mom's been hurt enough in her life. She doesn't need any, any more of that coming from me. I was like, holy shit. Yeah. What you're describing to me is you're describing to me

a defining moment that you had in conversation with your dad that changed you, right? You asked your dad, dad, how do you be this way? Well, I told my wife, I said, I'm going to look. It's hard. Yeah. And she goes, me too. Fair. Fair.

Let's keep it that way. Look, don't touch though. And don't gawk too much. You know, don't make it obvious that you're thinking like really disgusting thoughts.'s keep it that way. Look, don't touch though. And don't gawk too much. Don't make it obvious that you're thinking like really disgusting thoughts. Just keep it clean, you know? Yeah. So what we're talking about is we're talking about

generational curses. And we're also talking about generational blessings. And one thing I had this thought like a year ago, and I feel like it's a profound thought that the chains that we don't break get placed on our sons and our daughters. Just think about the chains that you've broken of poverty on your family. I don't know like your family's financial backstory, but I've watched like enough of your content to know like your dad and your mom were just good,

simple, like Midwestern, hardworking, loving people, not millionaires. It took somebody like you, because there's never been anybody like you in your family to break the generational curses of just enough, right? Like your, your dad was really satisfied with raising a family. Not that he didn't want to do more, but his ultimate prize was being an amazing husband and raising an amazing family. I know that I never got a chance to meet to do more, but his ultimate prize was being an amazing husband and raising an amazing family. I know that and I never got a chance to meet him, man, but I'm so thankful for him because of the product and the fruit that he created in you and the impact that you're having. I had so many like great short conversations with you back here about like why you do the things that you do because you don't need to. And it's impact, right?

And it's influencing people. And so there's another quote that my dad's pastor said, his name's Dan Hamill. And I think it goes along the same lines as like the chains that we don't break get placed in our sons and our daughters. I think that goes for addiction as well, dysfunction, disforce, infidelity, depression. dysfunction, disforce, infidelity, depression. But the quote from Dan Hamill was what we don't transform, we transfer. And I have six kids and not only do I have six kids, I like you guys got a chance to meet Pierce. Like he's not, he's not my son biologically, but like spiritually, like I'm raising him up to be a man and I love and honor his father. But at a certain point, his dad stopped pulling him

up and mentoring him because he said, well, let me release you out. But that's not actually the way that fathers are supposed to be. We're supposed to continually raise our sons up and put them in positions where they can fail safely. And so I say those things to say every person that God puts in my life, I believe that Apostle Paul said this. He said, if we wake up every day and we die to self, aka go after the things inside of us that don't belong

or that are incongruent to who we want to be and kill those things off. And one of the greatest, biggest things about me that stopped me from being the best version of myself and really being a great friend or a great leader or a great husband was my ego. And one of the reasons I had such a big ego is because my opinion of myself was so small. I feel like the only value that I had was the sports that I could play or the things that I could do. I made up in my mind if people really knew the deep, dark stuff about myself, that

people would reject me, abandon me, and leave my life. You ever heard the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a great book. I think I had examples of that in my own upbringing. My mother's side of the family was dysfunctional. There was a lot of drugs.

Both sides of the family, both of my grandparents had nine children. So both the families were really big. And I didn't realize this when I was a kid. I didn't, it didn't. It's just normal to you, right? Well, it didn't hit me until I was older that my parents like grew up down the street from each other. It was just like, that's just the way that it was. I would go to my mother's side of the family first and we would hang out for a little while. And then I would go to my dad's side of the family. And I was always like, you know, they live just a couple hundred yards away from each other. Like, why doesn't everybody come together?

And the reason was, is that my mom's side of the family, like the house was literally like dark and everything was just like dreary and it just wasn't fun to be there. And as a kid, it was always like uneasy. Like I always thought I was going to get in trouble, you know, sitting in my grandpa's chair or whatever. But my grandfather on my dad's side was like so loving. And if I was sitting like in his chair, he would like wrestle me and like punch me. But like, you know, kidding around, you know, he would like turn it into like a game. What are you doing in my seat?

You know, and he'd give me like a kiss. He actually, my grandfather would famously say, get over here before I beat you yeah and you had to go over to him and you had to let him give you a kiss yeah because that's like how how loving that side of the family was so i kind of saw all that growing up and yeah and i saw like okay whatever this way of living i like this yeah i like this side but this other side i don't really. And I wonder, as a kid, I kind of pondered the thought of like, is that controllable? Like, can you make that? You know, I know there was alcoholism in my mom's side of the family. And then so like as a young kid, that always kind of scared me, drugs and alcohol.

I was like, I don't think that's a good route for me to go until maybe I can understand it better. But as a young person, it always kind of made me nervous. Even going to a basketball game or a football game with my dad, even smelling alcohol, going to wrestling, WWF type stuff, just smelling alcohol would kind of make me nervous because it would kind of remind me of, not that anything bad happened to me in that home, but there was a lot of abuse and stuff like that that did happen inside that house. And so I almost feel like I could sense it when we went there. And our whole family kind of hated going there. Even my mother didn't even like going there. But, you know, it's a family and you're supposed to see each other and stuff like that. So you got to go there and check the box.

And that's what we did, but we never wanted to go. So you got to go there and check the box. Yeah, that's what we did, but we never wanted to go. But we're always pumped because we knew once we got through going there, we were going right to my other grandparents' house. Yeah, I feel like what you're describing to me is atmosphere. an atmosphere that was at your dad's parents' house that was like loving, connected, kind, generous. And I feel like, yes, it's controllable. And I feel like through mentorship, I've learned some of the, cause I was the same way. Like I kind of talk about like this God moment I had five years ago, but what was, and I feel like I have, I have the home that you're describing, like dad picks you up and things like that. But I wasn't like that six years ago. And so like something people might be

listening to is like, man, how do I create a home like that? And for me, I had to get really, really clear on what are, what are the values that are important to me? And because those values are what's going to create the atmosphere that you live in. Think about like for your grandpa, your grandpa probably really valued relationships. He probably really valued fun. He probably really valued experiences. probably really valued experiences. He probably really valued family. And when you value those things, it creates an atmosphere. And conversely, if you think about your grandma's parents' house, I mean, jump in at any time, but they valued alcohol, right? And typically when people value alcohol that much, it's not that they value alcohol. It's that, it's that there's something that they're experiencing that they don't want to experience. I could see at a young age that it wasn't necessarily them.

Yeah. I could see that something else was controlling it. I kind of, I think I knew that at an early age, like these aren't bad people. bad people. Because when my uncle died, I actually remember how many people were at his funeral. And I had a weird misunderstanding of it at the time because I was like, I thought he was a bad guy. Like he did cocaine.

Like he's a bad guy. Like fuck him. You know, he deserves to die because he did something that he knows is super dangerous. Like that, that's just a, just a thought that was in my head. When cocaine killed him?

Yeah. Yeah. He died of a, he died of a drug overdose. Wow. So I was thinking, well, he's a drug addict. Why is there so many people here?

And then each individual person was telling me all these great stories about him. So I was like, oh, he's actually – okay, yeah, no, my Uncle John, he was a good person. He just really struggled with this drug, and this drug made him act irrational, erratic. This drug was kind of controlling him. And he just he eventually lost control of himself so i kind of saw some of that at a young age and i was like okay well again like what's controllable what's controllable maybe to just do your best to try to stay away from some of that stuff the best that you can yeah well it's value it's values and standards that create the atmosphere, right? Like in your home, like if I went into your home, would I find a lot of liquor?

You'd see some, but yeah, not a ton. Yeah. Wouldn't see a ton of liquor because it's not something that's like priority to you because you live a standard that health and wellness and fitness is something that you value. And so there's certain standards that your grandfather lived by that created an atmosphere that you wanted to be around. Like one of the standards was if this kid sits in my chair, I'm going to make him feel really special. I'm going to grab on him. I'm going to love on him. I'm going to kiss on him. That was a standard. Like you remember it being as something that happened often, but your grandfather as the leader had to decide when he sits here, I'm going to do this thing.

And I'm going to consistently do this thing, and it's going to build this feeling in him. It made me respect it too. I was like, no, it's this chair. Like I'm not going to sit in it. And then when my cousin sat in it, I'm like, you need to get – the little kids are sitting there. Hey, dude, you need to get out of the chair. Grandpa is going to grab you. And he'd do it – like I said, he did it in a kidding, messing around way.

But we also had like a lot of sports too. Like we were outside all the time. And I think all those things I think kind of helped mold you. What was like your experience? You mentioned you did track and you did football. You played a lot of different sports. And were you around a lot of family members and stuff too? Well, when I was born, Mark, I was born in Crown Point, Indiana. And then at age two, we moved down to Baton Rouge. And so all of our family is in the Midwest and primarily in Indiana and Illinois. And so a lot of our community was built from the

church because you go down to Baton Rouge, like really the only people that you really do life with is the other parents that are on the teams that you're playing on, or maybe people that you see at church. And so that was really our community. But my dad and mom did a really consistent job of making sure that we went back at least two times per year and we had a station wagon. So I have two brothers and a sister and we'd show up and we'd grab, I'd grab my figurines just like that. And I had like a bag of them and we would get in the station wagon. They would put me in the back cause Steve needed a little bit more room. You know, you'd have the parents in the front, three in the,

in the second row and then they put me in the back with the luggage so I could like move around. But I remember we, we went back so consistently and very, very similar to you. I had two different sets of grandparents. One grandparent that was like, just loved me and made me feel like I was seven feet tall and told me all the great things about me and wanted to know about my sports and did his best to like buy me brand new shoes every time I came up for Christmas. And then I had another grandfather. And I remember one of the things that when I would go to his house, if I touched his things, I would get in trouble.

Right. And if you ran in the house or you screamed, you would get in trouble. Which side was that grandfather on, by the way? On my dad's. Okay. So it makes sense, right? My dad came from like a really firm and formal childhood. And my memories of my grandfather was him waking me up at 4.30 in the morning and us going to the baseball and the softball parks to grab cans and smashed up cans, you know, like trade the cans in and make money. And I thought that was just normal, right?

That like, well, I'll go here. Like, we'll just wake up and we'll go get cans. That's not normal. You know what I mean? But that was just how, right? That like, well, I'll go here. Like we'll just wake up and we'll go get cans. That's not normal. You know what I mean? But that was just how I grew up. And then I would have another grandpa that would go and buy me shoes, right? So it wasn't like he was buying. I didn't care about the shoes at all.

I felt like he liked me because he wanted me to sit on his lap, right? And when I would go to his house, it wasn't just me. Everybody else in my family wanted to go there. And so that relationship with his name is Thomas. And my middle name is Thomas. And so when my dad or my mom named me after him and I found out later in life, why? Like, I really wanted to own that. Right. And it was something that like, maybe, maybe God didn't say, Hey, how he is genetically, I'm going to make you like him. But because of my experience with him. And then my mom said, well, I named you after him. I really, really wanted to be, be like him. I wanted to be like a guy that would just walk in

a room and like the atmosphere would shift. And the reason the atmosphere would shift when my grandpa would walk in the room, cause he would look at you and he would encourage you and he would honor you and he would empower you. And he would make you Mark feel like you were the only person in the room and see me. He would look at you and he would ask you and he would make you, Mark, feel like you were the only person in the room. And see me, he would look at you and he would ask questions and would be so curious. He would make you feel like you're so important. And it was something I was like, I want to be like that. I want to make people feel special. I want to make people feel like they're great and they're strong. And I want everybody in the room when I walk in, I want them to be like, yes, Steve's here.

And that's how they would be when my grandpa walked in. And I like, so not, not so I could be the man in the room. Like it was because everywhere he went, there was joy. There was fun people that were uptight. All of a sudden got really relaxed. One thing that my grandpa did, I've never shared this before that he did. You remember you all get together for Christmas and never shared this before, that he did. You remember you all get together for Christmas and there might be 30, 40 people around.

And you remember when like you might have like a uncle or maybe you, you might bring a girlfriend to Christmas for like the first time. And you really, really like this girl. And she's so freaking uptight. I mean, especially in a family like mine, like we're big and we're loud and we're like, yeah, man. We're physical people. I think our families are very similar, you know? And we'd get around and the girl would just be so nervous. You know what my grandpa would do? And I didn't notice it at the time.

He would go out of his way to make that person who was really untight and really uncomfortable feel so comfortable and so loved and so like that they belonged. And I didn't realize it until I was an adult that like he was consciously doing that. Cause he kind of like what you were saying, he could feel that people were uncomfortable and he didn't like that. Right. And so he would search them out in a room of 40 people and be like, Hey, tell me a little bit about yourself. That's awesome. I really like your eyes. Your eyes are beautiful. Tell me a little bit about your blouse. My grandpa don't care about her blouse.

But he knew that if he drew interest in people and he was curious about people, that they would feel loved, supported, seen, and heard. I'll say that again for everybody listening, because this is what we want all of our wives and our girlfriends. If you have a wife, don't have a girlfriend, but if you have a girlfriend that you want to make your wife, you want them to feel loved, supported, seen, and heard. And one of those ways that we can do that is asking really good questions and then looking people in the eye and being genuinely curious. The reason Mark's a really good like podcast interviewer, haven't given him a chance to ask a lot of questions, but he's really curious person. Like he needs a really, he's really hungry to learn. And so

when you're curious and you're hungry to learn, you're going to ask really good questions. So thanks for letting me share that. I was curious, man. Cause there's, there's a bunch of things. But to the ADHD label that you said you were given, how do you think that you've actually used that to benefit yourself? Because there have been famous people that have been dyslexic. Apparently, I think Muhammad Ali and Albert Einstein were both dyslexic, right? But those weren't labels that messed with their progress. So how has ADHD been actually beneficial for you?

Yes, it's a great question. I think my son has the label dyslexia and ADD as well. And I think for him, I'll speak kind of like for him and then for myself. For my son, I feel like he might see words backwards, but I saw a study that over 60% of the Fortune 500 CEOs and entrepreneurs are dyslexic or ADD or ADHD. What if God made his brain to see the beginning before the end and he's seen things in reverse? I mean, ask Mark. He's a more successful entrepreneur than us. And I'm all those things.

Are you? Yeah. Wow. Well, he sees the beginning from the end, right? He sees things backwards. And to us, we're like, oh, you're broken. But entrepreneurially, you put Mark in a classroom, he's probably not going to do very well.

But if you put Mark in a room with a whiteboard and say, you know what, I want you to write down your ideas and write down your vision. And one of the things Mark doesn't realize about himself that God gifted him this way is Mark's a visionary. Like he's a visionary, but I believe that he has a uniqueness to come up with the vision, but then also to come up with a strategy and probably coupled with the humility to know what he doesn't know and to hire and outsource and get sourcing in the areas that he's weak. And I would make up in my mind, that would be a big portion of the reason that made you successful. I'm curious. I want you to speak on that. And then I'll kind of talk about ADHD and myself personally. Yeah. I think, you know,

they call it like attention deficit disorder, but I think that your mind is maybe racing and just not solely concentrating on some particular topics that you don't care that much about. But what you usually find in people that have ADHD is that they can hyper focus on certain things that they really enjoy. And so like, maybe it's a distraction and maybe it's not great when you're learning about like history and you just don't, you know, you're in school and you, you, you want to get out and move. Um, I think that's a big factor. I also think the school, traditional schooling and traditional education where you're just sitting there is asking too much of most boys in general. It's, it's way, it goes on for way too long. The classes are way too long. The day is way too long. The year is way too, like all of it's way

too long in my opinion and needs to be examined a little bit further. But I think some of the things that have been really helpful for me is that, yeah, when I do look at something, when I do, when I go to read something, it can have more difficulty than maybe the next person. I do kind of see things backwards, but I kind of view that as like a blessing in a lot of ways. The greatest filmmaker of all time, you know, perhaps is Quentin Tarantino, and he tells his story backwards. What a unique way to go. He tells his story like some different ways. And so it's helpful. It's helpful to be able to draw upon that.

And then again, having great parents, having confidence. I don't know if my parents knew all the different things that they were doing when they were doing it. But we were brought up with not like a lot of strict rules, but we had rules, we had guidelines, we went to church, we had community, we had family. My parents were like kind of mentors and helped a lot of people in the church.

They gave back to the church, they gave money to the church. They helped other family members, they gave money to other family members. They tried to help wherever they could because my parents were always, my dad was the oldest. And so he was always a little bit further ahead and he tried to just be like super generous with that. So I think I saw a lot of those things and then starting my own business and trying to figure out some of that. I've always felt like, well, if I can just lift somebody else up like it doesn't really hurt me at all it does not it's not like against me although you know I can get competitive here and there but I usually am trying to like put the highlight back on somebody else because I feel

just like fortunate that all these things have happened for me or with me or however you want to slice it. So I think having the confidence and growing up with that sort of like foundation allowed me to be confident enough to believe in myself, to be creative. Because I think one of the big blocks with creativity is that people, they're not very confident. They're just not confident enough like everyone's creative everybody's creative even even the worst idea actually can spawn a really incredible idea after that yeah you start with something that seems really backwards again backwards um starting backwards is great i mean how do you get through a maze you know like when you looking at a maze you go you can kind of go through it backwards how do you get uh headed in the right directions my phone ran oh wow that's silence I'll use your science but uh even when you're trying to find directions when you're trying to figure out your directions you

you put the directions in your phone the destination first man not the first turn right you put you put the destination in first, right? Yeah. But also you just start to go. You just start to go and you're like, oh, I'm, especially when you're walking like, oh, look at that. I'm walking in the wrong direction. What about screwing on your shaker cup? Like I, to screw on your shaker cup top, you always have to kind of start backwards to get it to thread. Like normally it doesn't just go on first. You got to kind of move it around, go backwards, and then it threads perfectly once you do that. So I kind of start backwards to get it to thread normally it doesn't just go on first you got to kind of move it around go backwards and then it threads perfectly once you do that so i kind of just i think i've looked at a lot of things that way over the years but what if you don't necessarily know where the destination is like is that going to prevent you from even getting

started then um i think you know for myself i i, just, I haven't minded that side of it, you know, cause I'm not a, I'm not a person that really worries a lot about stuff. Um, and I know that if I, if I can just put something out there and if I can just kind of like make it like, there's a lot of products from our companies that I haven't even really highlighted that much yet. Um, but I needed to just make them and they're just made. And then I figured out later. So there's been a lot of stuff over the years.

Sometimes you can highlight those things and sometimes that may have not been like the, you know, greatest idea ever. But there's a lot of different things that it's like, if I just make it and I just put it out there i put it in the universe yeah um it's going to be taken care of by like a lot of people because i had the energy to put into it to get it out there in the first place uh then at some other point like it will be picked up somehow some way mentioned on joe rogan or something you know something is going to happen at some point if i just don't give up and I'm honest and I just keep working at it, like it's just going to work out.

I just kind of think it's a matter of time. Yeah. Speaking of being influenced, that's what I did with my course, right? I recorded and published a course on podcasting. And a lot of it was just like, I don't know how to do any of it. And I'm going to get going right now. You know, like literally like building out a home studio. i set a date i'm like okay on january 7th i'm gonna record my first lesson this was december 27th demolitioned everything and then we got

started right on time but when i'm hearing you know you guys talk about like you know you put the the end result in first and then you go it's like well shit i actually don't have a vision for like the full like i guess i'll say like finish line but i know i'm gonna just go and that's stuff that i get from mark bell you know he talks about putting the cart in front of the horse and then when i'm like dude i think i know what you're talking about he'll be like and now understand there's no horse i'm like oh fuck here we go again i gotta learn something else you gotta lug it yourself sometimes yeah yeah that's good um man this is what I feel like I'm hearing you

say, man. I feel like what I'm hearing you say for you dealing with this, the label that the world put on you of dyslexia and ADD, the way that Mark Bell has been successful is as a young boy, you had uniquenesses that your parents encouraged and helped you to be thankful. Because that's one thing I experienced from you is like a gratitude. And then I'm hearing you say that your parents helped you to own who you are as a young kid. And through that, you have been able to have courage in the vision because it sounds like you've always had ideas. And because of your parents, you had confidence in those ideas. And a lot of people, kind of like what you're saying, Andrew, you're like, man, I don't have this big vision, but I'm taking action on it.

And I feel like the last thing that I'm hearing you say is, I didn't give up. There's a scripture in the Bible. I think it's Galatians 6, 9 that says, do not grow weary in doing good for in due season, you will reap if you don't give up. Right. And I feel like what you're experiencing in your life is a great harvest. You're reaping a great harvest, but it's because, and I don't want to speak for you, but it sounds like because of the way that you grew up, you grew up with a standard or a philosophy that the bells don't give up. Doing good is a slow process. Yeah.

Because the reward is very slow. And I was labeled as being slow. And I'm like, okay, well, who's to say slow is bad? Yeah. What if I'm slow forever? Yeah. You know, what if I'm just one foot in front of the other what if it's accumulated over like a long period of time yeah so that's the way i kind

of look at everything i know that i'm going to get better at running i know i'm going to be better at certain things i know that i'm going to be able to make progress and some of the things that i'm working on the only way i won't make progress on them is if I don't work on them, if I don't pay them much attention. So the route of going, the route of being like good, not that I'm good in all areas all the time, but the act of being good is just, it's a slow process. It's a slow burn. And that's been the situation with the different businesses I've had over the years. There's really hasn't been any one major thing of like, boom, there's this big spike. And then the company is like off and running. It's just been kind of a grind it out, you know, three yards in a cloud of dust, like they say in football.

Yeah. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you, how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements to help them function at peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now, because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project panel, which is a comprehensive set of labs to help you figure out what your different levels are.

And when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation, or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guess

work with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done. This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick. We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash powerproject. And at checkout, enter promo code powerproject to save 10% off any one of these panels or any lab on the entire website. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes.

I want to switch gears for a moment. I want to ask you, because it sounds like you had a pretty great upbringing and sound like a lot of your story, you know, there's some trials and tribulations. You were undersized when you played football and probably teased and made fun of a little bit for stuff like that.

But, you know, you win the Super Bowl. You do all these great things. You're the NFL's fittest man. Football pays for your life, pays for you to fly around the country. You mentioned earlier that you kind of had a lot of extra time, maybe as opposed to some of your teammates, and you got to meet all kinds of famous people and great people. Where did Steve Weatherford, where did you go wrong? Like where, where did you,

where in that journey did you like, I guess, lose yourself in some way? Cause it sounded like you were, it sounded like a lot of things were going really well. Right. And then did something, did you make a turn, head, start head really heading in the wrong direction and what spawned that? Yeah. So what I'm did you make a turn, start really heading in the wrong direction? And what spawned that? Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is, Steve, you had the world by the balls. Where did you lose grip to the wheel? I don't think I ever had a grip on the wheel, man.

You know, I grew up always feeling like a renegade, like a misfit, like a rebel, kind of like a skateboarder at a park. Like nobody wants skateboarders there. You know, there's signs everywhere. I always felt like I didn't fit in. I mean, even in my family, those long road trips from Baton Rouge to Indiana, 15 hours in a car. Imagine me at like eight years old, 15 hours in a car, right? We used to play this game, Mark, where my mom would give us a, like a jar that's about as big as this coffee cup, maybe even a little bit bigger, probably had like, I don't know, $10 worth of quarters in it. And every time that we got hollered at in the car,

we, my mom would take a quarter. And there was this place called Boomland that was on the way from, it was in Missouri on the way from Baton Rouge to Indiana. And every time we'd make the trip, we'd stop at Boomland in the morning because it was 12-hour drive. Wake up in the morning, stop at Boomland. We'll be at Grandpa's in two hours. And all of my brothers and sister would walk in with their quarters, right? And I remember every single time I went to Boomland, I would have no quarters left. So I'm walking in and Boomland was like, it was like on an Indian reservation. So it had all these like trinkets

and just like little train horns. And like with $10 in 1989, buddy, you can kill it at Boomland. And so at a very young age, you know, six, seven, eight years old, I'm like, I know that I'm so different than everybody in my family. And because of how I am, I get in trouble.

And when I get in trouble, I don't get money. I don't get abilities. I don't get to have sleepovers. I don't get to go and do all these things. So I associated with how I'm different is bad, right? Just like how the world tried to tell you like dyslexia and ADD is bad and you're dumb and you're slow, but your parents were like, well, no, no, no, no, no. Like, we're not going to let them put that identity on you. There's also a scripture in Bible. I

believe it's Romans 12 too, that says, do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And what your parents did was they protected your mind. My mom would actually make fun of the teacher. My mom would be like, she's like, oh, this teacher is like flunking you. She's like, this guy's an idiot. You know, and then she would point out something funny about him. Like my one teacher, he was a math teacher. He was like always really red.

Just like he's redder than a lobster. He's like, screw that guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about. You know, and she kind of like, she just, she wasn't trying to discredit the value of education by any means. She was just saying like, these are just regular people. They're just doing their job. And their job is to grade your papers. And you're having a hard time learning in this one particular class.

But relax. Yeah. She downplayed it and she protected you. Right. And where was I talking right before that? Sorry, I lost my train of thought as I was listening to you. Boomland, $10. Boomland.

Yeah. And so thank you, Nsema. Nsema's excited. He wants to go to Boomland. I want to go to Boomland, man. I know. It sounds like fun. I remember at a really young age, I started hating myself because I was different.

right? Because I was different. And I don't think my dad was as well equipped for the internal struggle that I was dealing with because my dad didn't grow up in a real emotive home where you talked about your feelings. And so I didn't talk about what I was feeling like with my dad, but I do remember Mark, when I was 11, this is where life got really interesting and fun for me. I grew up in church, but when I was 11, I got invited to this event that was at a different church. And it was kind of like the first time I'd gone to a different church. So I'm in this real formal church and I get invited to go to a power team concert. Both of you guys went like this, you know, the power team. Yes. So this is when my life got crazy. Cause I grew up just like you. So when I'm watching your documentaries and stuff, and you're talking about wrestling,

I'm like, Oh, me and Marbel, we're going to be friends one day. I didn't think it would take us 12 years to actually connect, but I'm watching your stuff. And I'm like, I'm watching your family dynamic.

And you have just like sweet, sweet parents. I have sweet, sweet parents. You love wrestling. I love wrestling. You love big muscles. I love big muscles.

And so I'm just like, but I went to this concert. That's it. These are the freaking guys, right? Like they're taking these steel bars and they're bending it over their head. They're taking phone books, a Baton Rouge phone book. And I can see, because when I got invited to this event, I scooted up to the very front row and I'm looking back at my dad, Mark. And I'm like, dad, is this, is this legal? There's fire on the stage. You know what I mean? And so I go and I watch these guys for an hour and a half do the most incredible physical feats

of strength that I've ever seen. And Mark, this is before the internet, right? You can't go on YouTube and Simit and say world record bench press and see amazing things. It wasn't there. So this is the first time I've ever seen men that are like six foot six and 300 pounds. I actually know that guy. That's Jeremy Baker on the screen, Pierce. Breaking bricks. Shout out to Jeremy Baker. He's actually become one of my friends. I just saw him on this screen. These are probably videos from like 1996. So see this guy, like, look at this. So great. My mom was so into this. She was like, check this out. What better way? What better way? That's Jeremy Baker right there. So what better-

That's real. Blowing up a hot water bottle is real. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, Pierce, will you get them the link for the video on Instagram when I actually did this? Show that to them. So let me get back to the story. So I'm watching this and it's the most unbelievable spectacle of strength that I've ever seen. But here's the deal, Mark. In my church, you have to wear khakis, you have to tuck your shirt in. And like I said earlier, it wasn't guys like this. So this is the first time I've ever seen things like this even allowed in a church. But they're talking about the same Jesus that my parents are talking about in this church.

My worlds are colliding, right? Like a picture of possibility is going off in my mind. I'm like, wait a second. So like all of these wrestlers that I see on TV that my dad discourages me from following and wanting to be like are standing before me and they're talking about the same Jesus. So there was a main guy, his name was Keith Kraft. And he was like the MC main guy, six foot six, real handsome. He shared his testimony at the end. And then at the very end, that's Jeremy Baker again, all star. So at the very end of the event, he says, Baton Rouge police officer, come up from the

back and handcuffed him. And I'm like, my chin is on the stage, cuz. And then he says, this is not enough for my God. Bring another pair of handcuffs. And I'm hearing him clank, dude. And I'm like, he's not enough for my God. Bring another pair of handcuffs. And I'm hearing him clank, dude. And I'm like, he's not gonna break them. No way. So he counts down from 10 all the way to one.

He goes, I want you to know that these chains, they represent the bondage that the enemy has on you. If you feel like you don't fit in in your family, if you feel like there's things about you that you don't like, God wants you. God is desperate for a relation, not a religion with you. God is desperate for a relationship with you. And if you just repent of your sins, the mistakes that you've made and say, God, I want to repent of my sins and I want to forgive.

And God, I want Jesus to be in my heart. I want to belong to you, God. I want you to pray that prayer right now. And so when he said, if you want to do that, raise your hand. I threw both of my hands up. I'm like, oh, Jesus, I want you to pray that prayer right now. And so when he said, if you want to do that, raise your hand, I threw both of my hands up. I'm like, oh Jesus, I want that, right? Because you're talking about like confidence and boldness, but then all like loving and kindness. I had never seen it wrapped together like that, Mark. And I'm like, I want that, man. And so I raised my hand. I prayed that prayer. I remember going home and I remember telling my mom, I'm like, mom, things

are going to be different. And I started reading my Bible every day. I started staying in my prayers, not because my mom told me to. I belong to Jesus. I belong to God. He wants me the way that I am is actually by design. So I had that moment of you, like your parents, just like, you're the best. Screw those teachers. I had that moment of belonging right then. And I was in sixth grade. And I remember, I went to a new school in then. And I was in sixth grade. And I remember, I remember I went to a new school in seventh grade and I'm this new creation, dude, I got this new confidence. Like, even though I don't fit in with them and in this new class that I don't fit in here, like God's got a plan for my life. Jeremiah 29, 11 says, for I know the plans I have for you

declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you a hope in a future. And I'm like, that's the God that I believe in. And then I went to this new school and I had this teacher that, man, he encouraged me more than any other teacher that I've ever had. Every time I went into his class, I felt like I grew an inch. Man, Steve, I like those new shoes that you have. Are you a runner? Your legs are really strong. Hey, great job on that paper that you turned in last week. I know punctuation's been really hard for me, but I can tell you've been working hard. Great job, Steve. Every time I came in there, I was like, man, I love this Mr. Johnson. And it was almost like he could see that I had a

dad that wasn't like giving me those words of affirmation and solidifying my identity that I'm a good boy. And so I'm just like getting it from another father figure, kind of like in a way you get that from Mark, even as a grown man, when he's like, man, this thing that you do, you do it really well. That means something to you. Just like when, when I empower and encourage him, he's like, yeah, I'm, I'm doing well because there's somebody that's just a step or two ahead of me. It's saying, that's it, man, keep it up. And then there was one day after class he asked me to to stay after and he came up behind me i'll never forget it and he started to massage my shoulders which i didn't think was like that big of a deal because he would always come by like hey man like

great job man you know he was just kind of like like a man like physical i hope this story continues to get better and not creepy yeah it's gonna get creepy oh shit and then he asked me he says hey get up man and he gives me a hug from behind and he squeezes me and he his hands start to slide down to my stomach and then i like i froze and i think he could tell and he said hey i just want you to know like you're a good boy and i just i love it that you're in my class and then he let me go and i remember my heart's pounding out of my chest and i run out of the classroom i don't say anything to anybody because he's like he's like everybody's favorite teacher. He's like, he's amazing, man. It's Mr. Johnson. So like two or three weeks go by. I didn't say anything to anybody, but I still thought it was kind of like

weird, but I've had like 99 interactions with this guy that have made me feel like I'm like amazing person. And then one that made me kind of feel like a little bit weird. So three weeks later, he asked me to stay after again. And he came up again, rubbed my shoulders, hugged me, slid his hands down to my stomach. And then the next thing that I know, like I freeze again. And, and I hear like the metal of my belt undo. And then I feel my pants slide to the floor. And, and I black out. And I think, I don't know, maybe 90 seconds or two minutes later goes by. And the next thing I know, I'm like pulling my pants out and I'm like running out of the room. And he's like, Hey, like, as I'm running, I was like, I care about you. Let's like, this is our little secret. And I remember going to my next class and just like, I'm having a panic attack. I don't know.

It's a panic attack, but my heart is beating out of my chest. And so I end up asking to go to the nurse. I go to the nurse. And as soon as I get in there, I'm like, I feel like I need to talk to somebody about something private. And then I went into the principal's office. I told the guy everything that happened. And the next thing that I know, my parents come into the room and I share with them kind of some of the story. But because I'm so ashamed, I don't share with them kind of some of the story, but because I'm so ashamed, I don't share

with them everything. And, and so my dad's like, oh, like he has a teacher that like touched him inappropriately, but like nothing like really happened. He just, and so I didn't get any therapy and talk to my dad about it. But ever since that day, I'm like this whole God that they talk about, that's so good. It this God that loves me, where was he? Where was the God of Israel? Where was the God of miracles? When that man's just doing things to me that no man should ever do to any little boy. And the reason that I say that and that I share that is that's when the seed of doubt was planted. That is God real? Is that God that's real, is he good?

Right? And with those seeds of doubt, I didn't turn my back on God, but I wasn't going to serve him anymore. And so after that moment, I actually six months later, thank God my dad got transferred. And we went from Baton Rouge back up to Indiana and for eighth grade and then high school. And like, I was so thankful because it's like a fresh start for me. But like, I thought that I could leave my problems in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And so when you asked me, and I take this back to the question, when you asked me, where did it go off of the rails? I don't think it was ever actually really on the rails, but I think it got onto the rails at Comey Baptist Church when I gave my life to Jesus.

But John 10, 10 says that the enemy comes to steal, to kill and destroy. And I have come to give you life and give it to you abundantly. And I believe that God does not author drunk driving accidents. God does not author suicides. God does not author cancer. God does not author AIDS. When evil entered the world, this became the devil's kingdom, right? This is the enemy's kingdom. And this is not the kingdom of God. But part of our assignment, my assignment as a disciple of Jesus Christ is make enemy's kingdom, and this is not the kingdom of God, but part of our assignment, my assignment as a disciple of Jesus Christ is make God's kingdom come and make his will be done. So when I come onto this podcast, I share things like that, not because I'm proud of them. I share things like that because that's part of who I was before I gave my life to Jesus. And so to answer

that question, it went off of the rails when my identity was built on anything else but Jesus Christ. And I went into the world thinking from that moment, I'm dirty, I'm broken, and does this make me gay? And so I take those thoughts and I put them down into the basement of my life and I cover them up and I just, I don't go down there. It's dark, I don't take anybody down there. That's gonna be that private little place that nobody knows about.

And because of that, all of the different things that I've achieved in my life, Mark, and all these people that are telling me like, you're so amazing, you broke this record and thank you for buying this car from mom and these different things that I've done. I've never actually been able to fully receive love from people because the enemy was telling me in my mind, if they knew that this about you and now you watch porn all the time and you take pills, if they knew these things about you, they wouldn't love you and they wouldn't celebrate your skill. So you got to keep that to yourself

and just continue to operate this way. And what that's done is that put me into a hamster wheel or a cycle of like a costume party, right? Of never really revealing who I truly am to anyone. party, right? Of never really revealing who I truly am to anyone. So then I can never get any healing. And if you don't get healing, then you have a wound. And there was a lot of my life where I was what's called operating from a wound. And because something happened like that, that questions my sexuality, what do I do? I go sleep with a lot of women because I got to prove it to other men. I got to prove it to other men. I got to prove it to myself. I'm not gay. I'm not gay. No, Steve has slept with the most women. He can't be gay. It was almost like nobody ever even thought that, but I wanted to make sure that

everybody knew how many girls that I was taking down. So they would never have the thought, is Steve gay? Like, why does my physique look the way that it was? Because initially I was operating from a wound, right? I said, if I build my body up big and strong, no man will ever be able to press himself upon me like he did. And you know what? I'm going to be the protector of people with my power. And so, so much of what's on maybe the Wikipedia page of my life was born from feeling inadequate, feeling insecure, and feeling broken, and thoughts of, am I worth anything now? So that's where it went off of the rails. And I even remember the night I won the Super Bowl, Mark, was like the night, because it's something I think we all think about or all dream about is like throwing the football in the backyard with our dad and be like, ah, I'm catching the touchdown and spiking it and practicing your dance. Right. And, and I actually played in the Superbowl and it was 47

miles from my hometown, Terre Haute, Indiana, or I'm from Terre Haute. We were playing in Indianapolis Superbowl 40, 46 against Tom Brady. And I had the greatest game of my entire life. I had four punts and three of them were inside of the 10-yard line. After my first punt, the very next play was a safety. So big influence on the game. And it's at halftime, Chris Collinsworth says to Al Michael, man, I don't think we've ever said this, but at halftime of a Super Bowl, if we were going to give an MVP,

we'd give it to the punter steve weatherford right because i had three punts and all of them were were uh impacting in the game and i say all of those things to say i had the greatest game of my life and the biggest game of my life and i remember as the confetti's coming down and i'm pouring he's 16 now but i'm pulling my four-year-old ace out of this, the stadium stands. And he says to me, we did it, dad. We won it all. Like he knows what's going on. And like the overwhelmed dude. And the next thing I know, somebody's pulling my jersey. I turned around, it's freaking Al Roker. And he goes, what's it feel like to be a Superbowl champion? And I'm so shocked that like, we should go back up. I don't even know if it's with, they kept the film, but I look at him and I go, oh, you're Al Roker.

And he goes, yeah. And then he just went to the next person. I'm shook, dude. I am shook. What's going on? I'm just a kid from Terre Haute, Indiana, right? I would have done the same thing. I'd have been like, it's Al Roker.

It's fucking Al Roker. Yeah. So we go and we, you go and we take a picture. And I remember getting the Super Bowl trophy. And as soon as they gave me this big old thing, the first thought that I have is, where's my dad? Because that is the desire of every little boy is to take their trophy, is to take their kill, is to take their achievement to their dad. And for their dad to say, I'm so proud of you. Right. And I remember handing the trophy to my dad and I love and honor

my dad. We have a great relationship now, but he didn't even realize what I was looking for from my dad. Cause he didn't get it from his. Yeah. Right. So I remember handing the trophy to my dad and him looking at it and not even making eye contact with me and saying, that's nice. Let me show your mom. And then just like walking away. And I was expecting something inside of me to like shift and change and like, like the elephant to get off and like the heavens to open up. Yeah. Like, wow. I always knew you would be a big success or something. Congratulations. Yeah. You've arrived. And then I remember we go to the after party and I always remember telling my wife, I'm like, man, if we ever win the Superbowl, I'm going to get so ish faced.

It's going to be crazy. And I remember after having my first beer, I remember looking at her and I told her, I was like, I don't want to feel any different. Like, I don't want to feel any different. Like everybody's here. Like we won. And I remember getting back to my hotel room and swiping my key card, maybe two o'clock in the morning and walking into the room.

It's the first time I've been by myself and I dropped my bag and I turn on SportsCenter and I'm about to sit down on my bed and I hear some noise up at the window and I'm on like the 17th floor in downtown Indianapolis and I walk up and I look down

and Marcus, it's an ocean of people just partying, high five and taking selfies, taking shots. And they look so happy. And I remember looking down and noticing that they're not even wearing Giants jerseys. They're just happy to be somewhere where something great happened. And I'm 17 flights up, had the greatest game of my life on a contract here, which means I'm about to get a multi-year extension, everything that I've ever wanted. And it's happened in this night. And I remember looking at them and taking a deep breath.

And just before I could exhale, just this wave of depression came over me because I realized like nothing's changed. And I'm realizing all of the early mornings, all of the late nights, all of the sacrifice, nothing has shifted and changed inside of me. And it was my seventh year in the NFL. And I knew, I knew in that moment that there was nothing inside of the NFL that was going to fix this hole that I had on my chest, because I knew the hole that I had on my chest was a God-sized hole. So I ended up playing three more years. And then out of nowhere, I retired. My coach, my wife, my dad, my mentors were like, what are you doing? You're walking away from 2 point whatever million dollars a year for six months of work. Steve,

it's not that hard. You're a punter. What are you doing? And I'm like, man, I've saved enough money to have like three years. Like I got to figure out what life is about. And I, I call it like a vision quest. Like I was, I was searching, like I wanted to know like the purpose and the meaning of life and within two weeks. So I retired and then we moved out to San Diego and this is where this story gets crazy. So I get out to San Diego and within two weeks of me being there, I get invited to go to this church called Awaken Church. of me being there, I get invited to go to this church called Awaken Church. And, and my marriage was destroyed, you know, like I wasn't cheating on her or anything like that, but like, I had just

been so focused on the NFL and so focused on making money and building my brand and all these different things. Like I really hadn't been paying any attention to my wife and it wasn't like I took my eye off the ball, right? That's why I like to admire how you've rolled for so long. Cause you never took your eye off the ball and I know you're not perfect, right? But you stay focused on what matters most. And I believe that you learned that from your father.

And so I didn't do that. And so my marriage is just a mess and I've got five kids at the time. And so my wife agrees with me to go to this church. And so my marriage is just a mess. And I've got five kids at the time. And so my wife agrees with me to go to this church. And so I just retired. So I didn't, I showed up to church 10 minutes late. Cause I don't know if you guys have ever been to church. Like there's really happy people that meet you at the door. Hey, how are you? Where are you from? And you can tell like, this has got to be freaking fake. So I showed up 10 minutes late to avoid those people. Right.

So I slip in 10 minutes late and I'll walk up the side and I find like the darkest corner of the auditorium, about 400 people in there. And I walk in and I feel like I'm hit by this energy. And I walk in and there's people that's dressed like us, like cool and hip people. Their shirts aren't tucked in and they're not wearing khakis. And they're wearing flip-flops. Yeah. Those are my favorite churches.

And I'm like, this is like, this is different. And they've got their hands raised up and they're just wearing khakis. And they're wearing flip-flops. Those are my favorite churches. And I'm like, this is different. And they've got their hands raised up and they're just crying out to God. Some of them are crying, but they look like happy tears. That's the kind of church I grew up in too. People dancing in the aisles, people going nuts. I was always like, what the hell is going on here? This is different.

So I go and I find a dark corner and I watch people. I'm just people watching for the next two songs. And then the pastor walks out. His name's Dr. Matt Hubbard. I'll never forget it. He walks out. He starts talking for about 30 seconds. All of a sudden he pauses.

And he looks up in the corner and goes, hey, you. He goes, I don't know who you are, but God told me that you've been gone for a really long time. And he wants you to know that you're home. And he wants you to know that he's going to heal what's broken inside of you. And as this dude's talking, I like turn around. There's nothing behind me but the wall. And so here I am. I tried to sneak into this church for the first time in probably 15 years. So nobody would see me. And all of a sudden as this pastor is talking to me, the spotlight goes off of him up into the corner, right on me. And so he keeps

talking for like 30 seconds and Mark, everything that he's saying, it's like, it's cutting me wide. It is, how does he know this about me? So church gets over and I leave 10 minutes early because I don't want people coming up to me. So I get in the car with my wife. I'm like, babe, what was that? Like, does he know who I am? Or like, is God real? It shook me, man. So I continued to go back to that church. And about two months after that, I have a friend.

His name's Nick Unsworth. He invited me to a men's conference. And the men's conference is called Emerge, put on by that same church. And so we continued to go back to church after that. But honestly, like my marriage wasn't, nothing great was happening. And I always feel like I was doing a little bit less drugs. But all the while, like I'm getting coached by, you and I can talk about who later on. But somebody that you know was coaching me and I'm making $250250,000 a month just like crushing it into supplements and growing.

What kind of drugs, by the way, though? What's that? What kind of drugs were you doing at the time? Smoking pot to come down at night, taking Adderall to keep up with the workload, and then eating Percocets for like depression, loneliness, for mood, right? Percocet, is it like a painkiller or what? Yeah, Percocets like Vicodin, maybe a little bit stronger. Uh, but something I had access to because of injuries with football. And then you're living in California, you can get weed, no problem. And because of my ADHD and I'm an entrepreneur, I made up in my mind, I need to start taking Adderall. So like a smorgasbord of

things, depending on how I am, I'm like my own chemist, complete freaking train wreck. Right. But making lots of money money working 70 hours real short with my wife not spending any time with my kids right trying to earn it trying to like be valuable and so i got invited to this men's event and at the time my son's 16 now but my son uh was 11 years old he told me when he's four years old mark he said dad i want to be a pro and so in some of the only way i know how to be a pro is to like replicate my childhood for my son. And so that's what I did from age four up to 11. And he hated me and I resented him. Cause like you say you want it. I'm mapping it out for you. What are you doing? Let's go get out of bed.

Right. Cause that's how I spoke to myself. Because I was worthless and I needed to get up, stop being a pussy, quit being lazy. So I spoke to my son that way. So I say those to set context for, I got special permission for my son to come to this men's conference that's in the middle of the desert in San Diego. And so begrudgingly, my son said yes. So we go to this men's conference and literally, I'd have to look at the date. I think that men's conference was probably five years to the day. I'm actually going back to that men's conference.

When I leave here, I'm flying there from here. And it was exactly five years ago. And we show up at this men's conference and they give you this two by four. And they say, this is your burden. They give it to each man. They give you a marker. It's got two holes on the two by four and a string on it. And they say, take is your burden. They give it to each man. They give you a marker. It's got two holes on the two by four and a string on it. And they say, take 15 minutes with God.

And I want you to write down everything on that burden board that you walked into the desert with that you want God to take away. And I was like, I was at the end of myself. I'd gotten the money, the fame, all these. I'd had all the wine of the world. Nothing quenched my thirst. And so I was at the end of myself. So I wrote down porn. I wrote down lust. I wrote down worthiness. I wrote down depression. I wrote down

anxiety. I wrote down lust. I wrote down, am I gay? I, everything, suicidal thoughts, everything that I could think about that I just wanted God to take away. I wrote on this burden board and then they tell you to put it on your back, put it on my back. I'm like, I don't care about these other 2000 people. I'm not showing, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna fake it anymore. So then I walk into the tent and so they do like two or three songs of worship and same thing. I feel that energy again, man, got their hands raised up and crying out to God. I'm like, man, this is like different. They didn't care about the judgments of the guys next to him. And then the main speaker comes out. And as soon as he speaks into the microphone, he said, good morning or good evening. And as soon as he did that,

I felt like I got hit by a lightning bolt. My skin started vibrating. My face got hot. I looked at my son to see if like something was happening to him. Nothing was happening got hot. I looked at my son to see if like something was happening to him. Nothing was happening to him. I look at my friend, Nick Unsworth that invited me. I go, what's this guy's name? And he like fumbles around with the program and he goes, Keith Craft. I don't recognize the name, but I Google it. And the third image that pops up is a picture of this dude in 1994, busting bricks in Jesus name with the mullet on the back of his head. And I'm like, that's the guy.

That's the guy. So as I'm having this revelation of who this guy is, my skin is like vibrating, but I'm feeling like an unbelievable sensation that I can't quite describe. And I've, man, I've done three ways with women. I've done all types of drugs. Like I've, man, I've done three ways with women. I've done all types of drugs. Like I've done all, I've won Super Bowls.

Just all of the different endorphins that can go off in your mind. Like I've pursued that. My flesh, my flesh was my leader for the first 36 years of my life. I did what my flesh wanted. I wasn't led by standards and commitments and values like your dad was

that helped you to be how you are. I was just whatever my flesh wanted, whatever would help me to advance as a pro and be more of something that I thought I needed to be. So as I'm walking, so he gets done preaching and I run around the side of the tent and I'm like grabbing dudes by the neck and throwing them out of the way in biblical fashion so I can get to the hymn of the rabbi and tell him who he is to me. So I get up to him. I'm like, Pastor Keith, you're never gonna believe this, but in 1994 in Comeat Baptist Church, you put on a radical show and you changed my world

and what I thought a man of God could be. And because of that, I went to the NFL. I was NFL's fittest man. I won a Super Bowl. I just vomited my Wikipedia page on him. And I was like, also, and I gave my life to Jesus that night. And I just wanted to thank you, man. You changed my life. He's like, wow, that's crazy. So I'm walking back to my chair

and I still feel like my skin's vibrating. I feel like I'm walking on pillows. And I have three revelations about God in that moment that had always been doubts that I had. I knew in that moment that God was real. I knew in that moment that God was good. And I knew in that moment that God had operated outside of time for this moment that was happening. And so I get back to my chair and I'm about to tell my friend, Nick Unsworth, this story. And right before I was about to tell him, I realized I lost my son. I lost my 11-year-old son in a tent of 2000 men. And my marriage isn't so well. So if I call my son. I lost my 11 year old son in a tent of 2000 men and my marriage isn't so well. So if I call my wife and say, I lost our son, that might be the camel that breaks the

straw that breaks the camel's back. And before I started to fully panic, Nick goes, Oh dude, I was going to tell you, but you were so excited. Look up there. And I look up at the front and my son is at the front of the altar at 11 years old, giving his life to Jesus for the first time. And Keith Kraft, the preacher, was the same guy that led him to the Lord. So I was 11. My son was 11. It was 25 years apart.

And so I have this massive God encounter. And the next day, I'm still reminded. I still got all this guilt and shame on my back from mistakes that I've made. But they had this big bonfire. And there's a scripture in the Bible that's a promise from God that says, if any two of you touch anything on earth, our Father in heaven will do it. And so we took that promise and that scripture. And I had another guy pray for me, put his hand on my burden board and said, God. And I said these words. I said, God, I need more of you and I need less of me.

God, I repent of my sins. I'm sorry that I've taken everything that you've given me and I've tried to build my world with it. So God, I turn away from who I was and I want to give you everything that I am. I asked that Jesus would come into my heart and it's in your name that I pray. And I've released that thing into the the fire and I went home and I confessed some things to my wife. And I said, this is who I was. This is who I'm going to be moving forward. And I made a covenant promise with God. I said, God, I feel like you changed me this weekend, but I still feel like there's like some stuff going on in my mind. And I feel like there's probably some things in my heart that still need to be healed. But just like an athlete, I'm going to give you the next year of my life. The disciplines that I put on, like becoming a pro,

everything was non-negotiable. I'm going to do that with you for one year. I'm going to get a mentor. And Pastor Keith started mentoring me. Every 30 days, I'm going to get on a phone call with him. And what he tells me to cut off, I'm cutting it off. What he tells me to start doing, I'm going to do it. And I'll tell you what, God, if you heal my, if you heal my heart and you change my mind in the next year, I'll give you everything that I have. And probably six months into that depression, completely gone, anxiety, completely gone, just a completely different person. And the reason that I'm here isn't to sell supplements. It isn't to sell a book. It isn't to do anything else, but fulfill the covenant that I made with Jesus, that everything that I have and every platform that I go on, I won't do anything else.

I mean, I'll talk about supplements and peptides and things, but I feel like I could come on here and teach mindset and teach flexibility and teach performance. But those were all of the things that I tried to fix that, that hole that was in my heart. I did acupuncture. I did, I never did that ayahuasca or anything, but I did hypnosis. I did psychiatry. I did psychology. I did depression pills. Nothing helped. Right. And it wasn't until I got at the end of myself and I said, all right, God, I want you to take it all. And I'm going to, I'm going to do it your way. And that was literally exactly five years ago. And about nine months after getting that coaching with, um, with that mentor, me and

my wife started praying about moving to Texas. And that was three years ago. We're in Texas now. So radical story, man. And, um, thanks for letting me share it. You're probably wondering why am I wearing these glasses? Well, it's because I'm being bathed in blue light. And blue light isn't necessarily bad. There's blue light in the sun. But if you're in your office, if you're indoors, if you're in front of a screen during the daytime, it's not a great idea to have your eyes being bathed by blue light all day long. That's why EMR Tech, a company that we've partnered with, has blue light daytime glasses and blue light blocking evening glasses. These glasses right here are meant for you to wear during the daytime when you're in front of screens, et cetera. But if you're outside, take the glasses off and get the natural sunlight.

And if you're at home in the evening when sun sets and you need to be in front of the TV or you need to be in front of your computer or on your phone, these glasses are the ones to get. They also have the best red light therapy devices on the market. If you stand in front of any of EMR Tech's red light therapy devices, you will actually feel how much stronger the output of the red light is on those devices versus any of the competitors. They also have some of their smaller red light devices like their Fire Wave, Fire Dragon, and Fire Storm. And then if you want to get some of their bigger panels, they have their Fire Hawk, which is their biggest panel, and the Inferno panel.

These are literally the best red light therapy devices on the market. And if you want to save on them, Andrew, how can they do that? Yes, you got to head over to emrtech.com. That's emr-tech.com. And check out Enter Promo Code Power Project to save 20% off your entire order. Again, that's emrtech.com promo code power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes what you got going on over there and you thank you for sharing all of that yeah um i wanted to kind of go back to like the uh the

generational curses and that sort of thing in in my family you know i grew up seeing my dad all my uncles drinking as soon as i was old enough to get access to it, I leaned into drinking big time. It wasn't until, you know, I met my wife that I really like kind of got a grasp on everything. And I know it's going to be super different for everybody. It's going to be different for you, for Mark, for Nsema. For me, I watched. So my brother and I got divorced from our first marriages almost at the exact same time. We both had nowhere to go. So like, hey mom, hey dad, like we're moving back

in. And then, so my brother and I like, dude, now we're old enough. Like this is going to be sick. Like we're going to hang out. We're going to drink. We're going to party. Like this is going to be amazing. I ended up watching him basically like ruin his life. It was like the weirdest thing where I'm like, this isn't fun anymore. And so right then and there, I was like, I need to stop this. Cause obviously there's something in our family that's like,

we cannot handle, you know, our alcohol whatsoever. So if somebody, you know, cause there's somebody that's listening right now where they're like, holy shit, this is an amazing story.

I resonate so much with you. I have this same bloodline that's listening right now where they're like, holy shit, this is an amazing story. I resonate so much with you. I have this same bloodline that's like, and I'm kind of following the same path. But I do want to change the culture. I want to stop this chain right here, right now. What advice do you have for somebody when they look back and they're like, yeah, I remember my grandfather being drunk and fighting with my dad. I remember my dad fighting with my uncles or potentially even mom. I'm doing the exact same thing.

How do you break that generational curse? The story that I just told is the only way that I know how to break it. And what would those steps be, Steve? So what I feel like I'm hearing you say is if people are listening to this right now, Andrew, and maybe it's not just alcohol, but maybe it is alcohol. Maybe it's drugs. Maybe it's like there's a generational cycle of divorce or infidelity. Whatever that generational curse is, how do I decide? If I'm watching this right now and I want to be the one, I want to be the one in my legacy that steps up. And because of me, it completely changes the trajectory of my family.

Like for Mark, you took what your dad did really well. You stood on his shoulders and you took it further. Right. People would consider Mark Bell to be the one in this family. Right. And so what I feel like I'm hearing you say is, Steve, how can other people decide to be the one in this family. Right. And, and so what I feel like I'm hearing you say is Steve, how can other people decide to be the one? Well, you can't go back and say, well, have really good parents that protect your identity and raise you up really well.

I think the number one thing is it's identity. And I feel like a big reason that I didn't make the right decisions for myself because I knew right from wrong. You know what I mean? But the reason that I did those drugs and treated myself that way, it was identity. I didn't see myself as valuable. And so if you don't see yourself as valuable, Andrew, you'll make decisions that are congruent with somebody who's not valuable. You'll give yourself alcohol.

And what ended up happening with your brother? Your brother was stuck in a lot of guilt and shame from the failure of his divorce. And so because of that, alcohol allowed him to avoid it, right? And as he avoided it, it became a crutch in his life, something that he couldn't live without. So no longer was it something recreational. Now it was something that needed to happen or he didn't feel well. And so that's an identity issue, right? He's taking the mistakes of the past and saying, that's who I am, right? And so if I boil it down

to like, I'm tactical, right? So for people that are listening to this, well, okay, I totally get it. I would agree with you, Steve. How do I not be that brother? And how do I be more like Andrew, right? Well, I believe that you're going to have to release some things that don't belong to you anymore. Example, what was your brother's name? Arturo. Arturo? So Arturo was carrying around the burdens of the past, the mistakes of the past, which

makes you feel heavy, right? So the first thing would be severing everything that happened in the past, right? So you release and then heavy, right? So the first thing would be severing everything that happened in the past, right? So you release and then receive, right? What are you receiving? The thing that I received was I received my son shipped, right? Jesus Christ came to this earth,

lived a perfect life, a sinless life. He went through every emotion, every temptation that we went through, but he lived a sinless life. He allowed people to crucify him on the cross. He defeated the grave, and he did that so you and I could have an identity in Christ, a blameless identity in Christ. And for a really long time, Mark, I tried to earn it, right? I tried to, like, earn back the mistakes and the regret and the shame and the guilt.

And am I gay? I tried to, like, become more than who I am to try to make up for it. But it wasn't until I said, I'm not enough. Like I'm not enough. I can't beat this thing. And so I'm gonna release this thing to God and I'm gonna receive Jesus,

not just for his forgiveness, but also for his authority because Jesus didn't just come so like we can pray a prayer, be forgiven and then end up in heaven one day. No, no, no. He came so we could have an identity in him so we could live here on earth in authority. And the Christians that I grew up in, they didn't believe that way. It was more like, you're going to go to hell and don't have sex. Those were the things that they were really pounding down their head. But they didn't talk to me about the fact that like Jesus came to do what he did so we could walk in freedom and authority.

And so what your brother didn't have, Arturo didn't have freedom. And the reason he didn't have freedom or authority is because he never got his identity. His identity was built on the sand. His identity was built on his resume. His identity was built on his Wikipedia page. My identity was built on my Wikipedia page as well. And it's never enough. And so it wasn't until I realized that I'm not enough. And I started to every day wake up after that event and agree with God's opinion of me. If every person on this podcast only agreed with God's

opinion of them, everybody would make different decisions. Everybody would make different, we would speak different words. And I guarantee you, Arturo would have started making decisions to build himself up and to nurture himself, knowing that God has a plan for his life. But he's carrying around the guilt and the shame of the mistakes of the past, which was making him treat himself poorly. Does that make sense? Yeah. It sounds like it would be a little difficult because there's probably going to be a lot of staring in the mirror and figuring things out. And it's so hard to do on your own. How do you see the ingredients of what makes you great from inside your own bottle, but also how do you see your own blind spots?

Like if you're a Ferrari driving down the road and you're asking Cadillacs and pickup trucks, hey, like make sure that you let me know my blind spots. Dude, by the time they're telling you your blind spots, you're a mile down the road. And so it's not until you and I get with the right people at the right place at the right time that the right things start to happen. And it always starts with the right people. So you're talking about, man, that process seems like it would be like a lot of staring in the mirror. Yeah, it's a lot of staring in the mirror. But if you do that with another brother, then there will be effectiveness in it. So I didn't finish the one, two, three. So I would believe it would be releasing the mistakes of the past and the wins of the past because I'm not the

Super Bowl anymore. That was like 10, 12 years ago, man. Like, let's talk about that's great, but that was 12 years ago. So release the past, receive the future. And in my opinion, my belief is the future is Jesus, right? But then it would be release, receive, commit. And what would commit be? Commit would be figure out what you value. For me and the Weatherfords, for my house, we value discipline.

We value fearlessness. We value honor. We value joy. And we value excellence, right? Those are values that we've decided if you're going to be a Weatherford, these are the things that we value. So everything that we do or that we say we filter through, what a family that's fearless, disciplined, honored, that grows, that's excellent and joyful, would they do these things? And so if we don't care around the mistakes

of the past and we walk in the authority and freedom of Jesus and directed by values, I believe that that is a person that is followable. Not perfect, right? But I believe that you have now become a man that's professional. And the difference between an amateur and a professional man is an amateur makes decisions based upon his feelings, aka his flesh. But a pro, your dad, you're mad. Your dad made decisions based upon his commitments. So your dad might not have been a professional athlete, but your dad was a professional dad,

right? Because he decided this is who we are. And these are the values and the standards that we're going to live by. And like you said, like it was so ridiculously consistent. And because of that, you wanted to follow that. So I know that that was kind of long-winded, but release, receive, commit, and commit would be commit to a set of core values. How important is purpose? Do you think? and commit would be commit to a set of core values. How important is purpose, do you think? It's everything.

I would say part of that, like that radical encounter I had with God helped me to realize that I was a Ronin. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of a Ronin, but a Ronin is a masterless samurai. And that's what I was. I would go from goal to goal, AKA I would go from mission to mission and I would accomplish these great to goal, aka I would go from mission to mission.

And I would accomplish these great and these mighty works. And I would go back to my father. And because I didn't get what I needed from my father, I would go back out on mission, right? And it wasn't until I got off of mission and onto purpose that I found joy, peace, and the assignment of my life. And you might be saying, okay, Steve, that sounds like really great, religious, biblical, all that stuff. Well, what's your purpose?

I have it boiled down. My purpose is to love God with all my heart, my soul, and my mind, and to love my neighbors more than I love myself. And then the third one would be to go out into all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so if you ever catch me not doing those things, Mark Bell, this is my promise to you. If you ever see me not loving God, and I mean this, we're starting our friendship this weekend. If you ever see me

living in a way that is not loving God with my heart, my soul, and my mind, loving you and loving my neighbors more than I love myself, and spending my time, my talents, and my treasures going out into all of the nations, even Davis, California, and baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I want you to call me and call me a fraud and be like, dude, you're not who you said that you are. I thought you were a man of integrity. And that's why I feel like I can live in a much more dangerous fashion than any of the other men, not all of them,

but 99% of the people that you and I meet, they don't have their standards and their values really set. And because you don't have your standards and your values set, you can be considered a weak man because you can be negotiated with. And Sim, I can't be negotiated with. I won't compromise.

Like I know one day I'm going to die and I'm going to meet God face to face. And so I used to play my life for the audience of everybody in the stadium, the fans, the coaches, my friends, my wife. Their opinion mattered so much to me. I had a massive fear of man. You know what's going to happen when you meet God? What? He's going to say that was a sick punt in the Super Bowl.

I hope it goes a little bit more like, well done, good and faithful servant and great punt in the Super Bowl. As an exclamation point. Yeah. So I just feel like in these last couple of years in Semba Mark, I've gotten really clear on who I am and what I'm about. So if I feel like in the last three years, I've gotten clear on my vision, my mission, and my values. And I feel like that's one thing every husband, every father, and every business leader needs to have is most people, and that's why they're not

as successful as you are in entrepreneurship, is because they don't have a vision. They just want to create a product to make money. But you have a heart to help people, right? We were talking about it earlier. If your heart is genuinely to help people, which would be the ultimate vision at the end of it, it's not a product, It's not selling your business. His ultimate vision is to help people. And his mission is to do it in a positive and an uplifting and a generous way from what I've noticed. And the values that you live with, we've kind of mentioned of a few of them. You're the one that decides what they are, but I've noticed you to be very present. I've noticed you to be very generous. I've noticed you to have integrity. I've noticed you to make things about other people and not

yourself, which means that you're a man of honor. And I guess I'll just pause there, but those are the things that I've noticed since I've been in your world, that you're very clear in your vision, your mission, and your values. And that's the reason that you've been successful. And part of that is because you see the end before the beginning. So what the world says is broken about you has actually been the X factor. I think that purpose is just really interesting because I think that people tend to get lost in their life and they get lost in maybe what they're doing and their, their eyes on the Superbowl or their eyes on being this pro athlete or to do this extraordinary thing that is

maybe extraordinary to other people, you know, and maybe that will give them some sort of validation or that will bring them to some other destination in their head that they're not currently at. But what you'll find is when you keep going to these destinations, once you end up there, they are very, very rarely anything that you thought they would be. I would say the only time that they might be better than what you thought is if it's something that you did and the goal wasn't for yourself. If the goal was to do something for other people, like you said, you ran with 20 people for that marathon.

And an experience like that, you might actually finish that and the feeling of that might be overwhelming and maybe even feel kind of better and more fulfilling than the Super Bowl because the Super Bowl was kind of like, okay, it's about the team, but it's about you and winning a Super Bowl ring. I think there's only been like 3,000 or 4,000 of those Super Bowl rings ever made. So the percentage of people walking around the Super Bowl ring is really low. The percentage of people that actually participated and played and started on a team that won a Super Bowl, it's an extraordinary thing. But sometimes I think that we tend to take

what we do and we make that our purpose yeah but i think that we need to be a little bit more creative even with that because your purpose we get to make it up like there could be certain passages and certain things that you've read in the bible or certain things you've learned from other people over the years that explains why human civilization is like here in the first place but nobody really truly knows why we're here. Therefore, I would say no one really knows what each individual purpose that somebody might have is. And it's up to you to kind of find it, to seek it out. But I think that we, and maybe you believe something different because of your religion, but I believe we get to kind of make it up.

And it's a wonderful thing that you get to make that path up in some ways. Yeah, I would agree with you. I believe that God has uniquely anointed every person with a subset of spiritual gifts and physical gifts. One of my physical gifts is my physical authority, right? Like my body is like, it was built to move, right? It makes sense that God also made my brain, which the world calls ADHD. And now you were talking about, we never went back to this, and I guess I could spend one or two minutes on it. You asked me about what's it like to have ADHD and how have you used that to your advantage? And you actually kind of answered what I was going to say is I don't have a focus problem. I have an interest problem. If

I'm not interested in it, I can't focus on it. Right. And so when I find something that I'm interested in, I will go all in on it. And for me, it was like physical fitness. And so I was just obsessed with it. And it makes sense that I developed my body. I gained 117 pounds in high school. I went from 108 to 225. That's crazy. Now, granted, I went from five, eight to six foot three. So I grew quite a bit as well, but I put on some freaking beef. Right. And it, and it happened because I would lift before school, after school, I was drinking like a gallon of milk a day. It was like, some of this stuff wasn't like smart or anything, but I was just, I was committed, man. And I. And I just wanted, I was willing to pay my price. And kind of like Mark and I were talking about, there were some things that he's gained some

mastery in, and at least enough mastery to kind of get bored with it, like powerlifting. And kind of like one of the reasons I would assume that you're not as heavily invested in your business is you have other interests now, like other things that you're not as heavily invested in your businesses. It's like you have other interests now, like other things that you want to spend your life doing while those businesses are busy helping other people. And I'm the same way. Like I'll find you. And that's why I'm doing like endurance running and things like, cause I want a new challenge, just like you're looking for a new challenge. But I'll tell you what, man, once, once I had an encounter with God and learned more about him, I truly do believe that the purpose of our life is to take our time, our talents and our treasures and to bless other people. That's

because like what you're saying, like, and I, and I've, I've learned that climbing a mountain, I've done those before and I've done them by myself. You get to the top. If you don't have somebody, it sounds so generic and cliche to us. If you don't have somebody it sounds so generic and cliched as if you don't have somebody to share it with it's so empty right and so kind of like that analogy the the allegory of long spoons is we ever find a picture of that can you try to look that up i i'm super interested but allegory of long spoons the allegory of long spoon it's a portrait of of these people with the long spoons but so it's amazing according to the bible this is what happens when our body expires so this one's

kind of hard to see and there's like a comic book version but it's not as accurate what you're explaining yeah so this is the comic book version right and so you see the people that are trying to feed themselves with their spoon they're miserable and they're depressed. Because they're not strong enough to, you know. They don't have a long enough arm. You know what I mean? And so like guys trying to jump in from all these different angles. And that was me.

I was taking the time and the talents and the treasures that God gave me. I was trying to feed myself, man. And now I want to take. I would totally try to feed myself. Yeah. Everybody would. I'm so ashamed of it already. I'm looking at it. I'm like- I would totally try to feed myself. Yeah. Everybody would- I'm so ashamed of it already. I'm looking at it.

I'm like, I would be like- I wouldn't think to be like, oh, serve it to him. You say that, but if I look at how you live your life, you feed other people, right? And that's why I make up in my mind that you have joy and that you have gratitude because you don't be generous with people unless you're thankful for what you have. And I feel like that's one thing that's been consistent with you that I've noticed is you've always been very, very thankful and thankfulness and gratitude precedes generosity, right? And that's what this is a picture of. And so according to the Holy Bible, when our body expires, we'll go up to a heavenly realm

and there'll be a book. It's called the Lamb's Book of Life. And if you repent of your sins and receive Jesus as your Lord and your Savior, your name gets written in the Lamb's Book of Life and it gets written in Jesus's blood, which means it can never be taken out. And so a lot of people be like, okay, there's a celebration that I go into heaven. Well, no, no, no. You actually go into the throne room with, and it says in scripture, Abba Father, which means our heavenly father. So he'll be on the throne room with, and it says in scripture, Abba Father, which means our heavenly father. So he'll be on the throne room and we sit on a seat that's called the Bema seat, B-E-M-A. And God judges us for our time, our talents, and our treasures. And the way that I imagine it in

SEMA is it's almost kind of like when I was a New York Giant, we'd be sitting in the film room, right? Instead of being in there with 52 of my teammates and my coach, I'm sitting in there with God. And the difference is, as we watch the game film of my life, we're gonna fast forward through all of the sins that I had because Jesus's blood is so good that even God can't remember what I did. It covers all, right?

It says God's grace is sufficient through Jesus's blood. And so we'll fast forward through all of my mistakes, which is already different than a meeting that I'm used to. Cause when I sit with my coach and that red dot comes out and goes over your Jersey, guess what, Mark, you're like sliding down in your chair, like, Oh, here comes. Right. But I feel like it's going to be the complete opposite when we sit with God and we watch our life because he's going to take the time and the talents and the treasures that he gave you. That's unique to anybody else. And every time, every time that you use it to bless somebody, to enrich their life, to uplift them, to create an opportunity for them to be great, I believe that God's going to pause the movie. And there's going to be like a blip that jumps off to the side, Mark.

And you're going to actually get to watch the impact that you had on that person's life because of your generosity with what God gave you. You're going to have all of eternity. So you'll be able to watch the major difference that maybe some of your content made in people's lives, or maybe just a small interaction, taking a picture or loving somebody and how it changed their life. But we're going to have all of eternity. And so my ultimate goal is, is that God would be pausing the game film every five minutes and that we get to watch. Maybe there's an impact that God has on you because I came in here bold in my faith, right? And I don't know what it is, but I do know that if I stay focused on target, on brand, and on mission, I'll never feel the way that I used to feel, which is hopeless, with no purpose, with no identity, and in bondage.

Does that make sense? Can I ask you something? And this isn't necessarily shit, but I was thinking about this. Like, you know, you moved out of that town, luckily, after that happened with that teacher. And you've probably, there's probably been a level of forgiveness for what happened. I don't know. Maybe not. But at the same time, do you know if that teacher was still teaching?

Because like, you know, if you were that, if you were a kid, then that means that there has probably been other young boys or girls, right? Do you know? I know that he was removed from teaching at that school. No, there's no bitterness. There's no like unforgiveness. Like I bless him, you know, like I, I hate what he did, but hurt people, hurt people. Somebody had to teach him that, you know? Um, and there was a lot of years that I had unforgiveness for him and unforgiveness for my dad and like unforgiveness for him and unforgiveness for my dad.

And like unforgiveness is poison, man. You know, and I feel like. Was your dad kind of linked in that in a sense of like, why didn't you protect me kind of thing? I think so. Yeah. You know, and it wasn't like, I mean, how was he supposed to protect me? How he could know. But I mean, your perception is your reality. And so there was unforgiveness I had for my dad,

unforgiveness I had for this guy, but also unforgiveness I had for myself. Like I made up in my mind that was my fault. And I wasn't able to forgive my dad or myself or this guy until I experienced God's forgiveness, like full forgiveness. And you can't experience God's full forgiveness until you fully surrender. And I always said like, oh yeah, like full forgiveness. And you can't experience God's full forgiveness until you fully surrender.

And I always said like, oh yeah, I trust God. No, I'm a Christian. But I like, I didn't live that way. Like I still lived in unforgiveness of other people. And I still fight it every day. Like my human condition, my instinct is come on here and talk about how great you are, you know? And so I have to re-remind myself that like, don't go on to this podcast with a expectation. Like come on here with an

intention. Cause if I come on here with an expectation that people would like me or some type of result would happen, then if it doesn't, I'll be disappointed. But if I come on here with an intention to bring glory to God and start a great relationship with some really amazing men that are also generous and want to help other people. I can't be disappointed by that. Because if you like reject me or abandon me and say, I don't want to be your friend, like I'm okay. Cause I'm playing for an audience of one, like remind, like reminder for me is like,

nobody else really matters. Like love them, but their opinion of you doesn't matter. Cause if you look at like the apostles, the disciples in Jesus, like if you're not getting ridiculed, if you're not getting ridiculed, if you're not getting persecuted, you're really not following Jesus. So I'm okay for whatever the backlash is. Do you have some coaches or some mentors

that really kind of helped you out of some of those spots in dealing with what you were dealing with? Yeah, I mean, I still have two coaches right now, one of them business, one in my marriage because I would say say those are the areas that I want to up level the most. I think if you look at, I get an opportunity to like a fair amount of men will share their deepest and their darkest stuff with me. And what I've noticed through getting to receive some of that, the dark parts of who they are, you know, they take you down into the basement and share everything with you is, I feel like life is kind

of like a decathlon, right? And for my life and for a lot of men's lives, we'll find at an earlier age, like what events we like and what events we're good at. And we want to spend a lot of time in those events, right? And as we grow older, there might be some new events that you need to show up for, right? Like when we were younger and we were in college, we didn't need to show up as a husband. We didn't need to show up as a father. We didn't need to show up as an entrepreneur. We didn't need to show up as a spiritual leader, but those are important events, right? And so as we grow older and we have marriage and we have kids,

a lot of men, because they're not comfortable, kind of like when we're out there snapping the football or swinging the rope, because we don't have experience in it. And maybe we didn't have a dad to teach us, or we were kind of like scared to try. We just don't show up for that event. And what I learned, because I was a decathlete in college, is what I learned is I never got first place in any of the events, but I'd always get like third, fourth, or fifth place. And there'd be 12 to 15 competitors. But by the time we got to the last event, which was the 1500, like I was so far ahead in points, most of the guys didn't have a chance to pass me up. And it really kind of just recently gave me

like an epiphany for like, how do we become the best version of ourselves as a man, be it a husband, an entrepreneur or a father. And I think it really boils down to showing up at every event, because if you get first place in every event, but you don't show up for one of them, you will never win. You will never beat somebody that gets third place in all of the events. If you get first place in all of them, but don't show up for one matter of fact, I could probably get fifth or sixth place in every event and you could get first in every, but one and you don't show up and you can't win. But that's really similar for life. Think about it. Like, let's say me, I'm sitting here with you guys. You're like, man, this guy talks about Jesus and God a lot. Okay, cool. Fine. I get it. Right.

That's my event that like, man, I just love to show up for. But what if there's event of physical fitness that I don't show up for? So I could be over here all wise and high and mighty talking about all this stuff. But 10 years from now, I could be taken out because I didn't show up for my physical fitness. I disqualify myself. So a lot of men are disqualifying themselves from really showing up in a powerful way because they don't show up for an event that maybe they're not good at. Right. And so for me, I just, five years ago, I just started showing up, you know, like I didn't know that much about God. I didn't really know that much about being a great husband, but I just started to show up. And I said, manifest, as long as I can show up, kind of like for pole vault, when I first started pole vaulting in

college, like other guys were doing like 14 and 15 feet. Like I was lucky if I could get like 10 or 11, but as long as I just got over one height and scored some type of points, I knew that I could still win in the end. But if you have an event where you score no points or you don't show up, none of us can be the version of the man that we want to be. And so I say that because I want men to double down and triple down in their giftings, right? But don't disqualify yourself by saying, I'm not going to show up in an event because it's hard for you. Does that thought make sense? Absolutely. I think the pole vault is like the most amazing thing. It's so fun too.

Like you run with this stick and then you, it's like, you could picture that like people were trying to do that to like get up into a castle or some shit thousands of years ago. It's weird. And then nowadays, the pole is fiberglass. How do you think they started that? It was like a bunch of knights in the medieval times. Got some real flimsy iron and said, let's see if we get into the castle. Ready?

Yeah, people were probably getting hurt really bad. Oh, my. The only time I've been injured in track was pole vaulting because I got my spikes stuck in the turf as I was running through and it just kind of twisted my ankle. But that absolutely was probably the hardest event because it's not something – I would say I'm very athletic. It's not something where you can be really athletic and just be like, oh, yeah, like long jump or even like high jump. You can just be a freak athlete and go over there and be pretty good. What's with the gorgeous women in track? There's some really beautiful women in track. Well, they're all. Paul Volt?

I know. Long jump? No, the jumpers. Yeah. The jumpers are where it's at. Well, think about it. They're unbelievable. The bodies are unbelievable.

In order to be like a really good miler or two miler, you don't want to have wide hips and be like curvaceous, right? But when you're jumping, that's like, that's a seven second event. It's power. That's like a football player. So it makes sense that those women are going to be built a little bit more like a Clydesdale on the hind quarters, right? And that's exactly what you're talking about. When you're talking to, man, these women are beautiful.

You're not talking about the milers. You're talking about them sprinters, them jumpers, you know? Yes. So that would be my hypothesis on women in track. I didn't know you did decathlon. That's like so hard to do. Yeah, it is. And I didn't have a lot of time because I got a scholarship for football at the University of Illinois.

And so I redshirted my first year and I asked the coach, I said, hey, can I go out for track? And he's like, well, you got in trouble twice in the fall for drinking and you haven't even played yet. So here's the deal. If you maintain this grade point average and you come to all the football workouts, I'll let you run track. So I was waking up doing a 6 a.m workout for football conditioning, going to school and then going to track from 2 until 3.30 and I would practice like hurdles and shot put. Then I would go to football weightlifting at 5 and then come back for pole vault practice at night. So literally like a lot of the weekdays, I was doing four workouts and it really probably wasn't enough because it's 10 events. Even if you work on two events every day, you're barely getting through the 10 events

in a week. And you're not really- You do javelin and stuff too. Yeah. Javelin, discus, polvo, all of those things were things I had never touched before. So it was a whole lot more about like, hey, let me learn this technique so I can put this really athletic physique into purpose and performance. So it was a lot of, it was a lot of technique, but it would, it worked really well for me. Cause my, my background is kicking and

punting, which is like fine motor skills and like replicating it with like surgical consistency. So it makes sense that like, it would totally make sense that mechanics and physics and body position would be something that would come natural to me when I go and I'm taught how to pull vault or javelin or discus. I'm not just trying to muscle it because I'm understanding angles and things like that. Do you still train athletically or is it more like kind of bodybuilding, lateral raises, curls type stuff? I do a lot of everything this last december i did my first hundred mile race and i did it at about almost 240 um but i did the

hundred miles i jog walked it though so like if people are listening to this you know like i didn't run like a crazy time it was 25 what was it 25 37 or something like that um i don't i don't care what people's opinions i went 100 miles in 24 in 25 hours so i my my game plan for that mark was i'm gonna jog for five minutes at about 10 minute pace and then i'm gonna walk for five minutes and i did that for 25 hours straight and i finished 100 miles it's incredible um so your question was what kind of training that i do i do a little bit of everything. You know, I do, because my son trains with me. So we do a lot of like plyometric works, jumping.

He's a basketball player. I do a fair amount of bodybuilding. And I don't do a ton of like strength training to get that much stronger. So you still do some rotational work, some jumpings, some sprinting. Yeah. So I like that stuff in there. I just want to be like really well-rounded right now. I'm not going to go like deep in the game and endurance but kind of like you like i want to get into running to where my goal is anybody could ask me any time of year hey will

you do a marathon with me tomorrow and i just want to be marathon ready until i'm 75 years old i'm really curious about this because when you when you talked about there's a phase you're talking about how you were wanting to raise your son to be a football player and how hard you were at that point um you know one can make some inferences to think maybe you were fathering kind of like how your father how your father fathered you but at the same time like seeing you now and talking to you and like feeling your energy you seem to have a very uh warm childlike type of energy which is not a bad thing. It's something that would be great if more people had, but did your fathering style change at a certain point after, I don't

know, you, after you had that, you know, that, that change in the, the, the conference you went to, did, are you warmer with your kids now than maybe you were before? I don't know what the difference is like. Completely different. I mean, think about hating yourself and then almost like overnight, totally embracing who you are because God made you that way. Wouldn't it make sense that you're going to be way more patient with your kids?

Because you're more patient with yourself. I wasn't really able to love people until I could love myself. Think about that. Profound change. But I would say it took my wife probably a good two years of this like new version of me. And then, and I was like pretty frustrated. I'm like, babe, I'm different.

Why do you keep treating me like who I used to be? You know? But because I'm an excitable person, she thought, well, this is like him coming home from a Tony Robbins event. And like, she was waiting for it to wear off. And then on father's day, about two years after that event, she gave me a card on father's day that said, thank you for proving to me that transformation through Jesus Christ is real. I mean, think about that. I mean, I was with her since I was 17.

She's walked on in on me watching porn and just like all of the dirty and the shameful things. Like we don't want to tell anybody about it. She's seen all of it, man. You know? And I also came home and like confessed even more to her. And then she saw me show up every day and value different things. I valued results before I met Jesus. And now I value relationship.

I valued competition before I met Jesus, and now I value relationship. I valued competition before I met Jesus, and now I value completion. Not completion of a mission, completion of other people, because we're all lacking. We all have gaps. And I used to take advantage of that before. So think about how that's going to change with my son. My son, I was constantly helping him to recognize his gaps and where he lacks. And now I'm telling him, dude, this thing about you is amazing, man. Tell me a little bit more about this. Hey, I don't know if I've ever told you the way that you do that, man, it's really

great. I want you to keep doing that. It's a 180. It's a 180 from what you lack to what makes you great. So it was a great question, but yeah, like massive, profound difference noticed by everybody. But my wife was the last one to really buy in. How, you know, being someone that was like, I guess, sexually violated or however we want to put it. How is that when you have your own children? Is that tough to, you know how is that when when you have your own children is that tough to you know is there any um i don't know how it would be i don't know what it would be like to like not be this way right so i don't i mean the kids going to school and like kids having teachers and stuff i mean i

would imagine that because you went through that trauma maybe you're less trusting of people or at least for a while, maybe. That's a great question. I think my wife and I have just created standards that we've agreed to so our kids can experience life without us living in fear. Because here's the deal, it's out there, man. It's out there. I got abused at a Christian private school, right? So it's out there. And for me to think, man, I'm going to put my kids in a bubble and make sure that they never experience it. I experienced it, but I will tell you this, I'm ready to declare it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. Because when I go and speak and I share, when I share that part, people are like, okay, this guy's not here to self-promote because that's really nasty and dirty. You know, nothing about that is cool. And there's a scripture in the Bible,

Romans 8, 28, that says, I'll use everything from your past together for your good, for those that love me and those that are called according to my purpose, right? And I know that I love God. And I know that I'm called according to his purpose. And so if I can agree with those two things, and then I can also say, and this is for everybody that's listened to this also, if you can say, man, I love God and I'm called according to his purpose,

if you can release your past, you're actually giving God permission to use it. But if you and I are carrying around the things that have happened to us, like if I'm still holding on to the bitterness and the regret of what Mr. Johnson did to me, like that energy that you feel for me, you'd feel that. But what you're feeling is joy. Yeah. A hundred percent. What you're experiencing is freedom. Like there ain't nothing you can tell me.

It's like they can, there's nothing, you can change my current circumstances, but I have a joy that comes from the Lord. Right. And when I give people forgiveness, it's not forgiveness that, it's not mine to give. Jesus forgave me. So I'm going to let this flow through me to you. But if I'm blocking myself, how can I love someone else? Does that complete the thought for you? Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great question. No, really, man. I'm curious about this. I'm assuming it's along the same line, but along the lines of the energy that you put out, even when you're here, the style that you have, the thick rimmed glasses, the jersey, you're very animated, which these are all good things, but with a lot of people, it seems like as they get older and older, maturity means holding in, maturity means keeping rigid.

Protecting yourself. You know what I mean? What's, I guess, what's allowed you to be so comfortable with that? It's not my own. Yeah, okay. Like my kids. Yeah. Those are It's not my own. Like my kids. Those are God's sons and daughters. He gave them to me.

My money, my gifts, he gave them to me. So I feel like what you're asking is what has allowed you to be bright and to be childlike and to be fun and to just be how I experience you. And I think it's because I'm playing for an audience of one.

And I used to, I used to never want to talk about like emotional or scary or dark things because I might cry. Right. Well, like, I think I got like low key cried twice on this show, but I'm totally okay with like pouring tears. Right. Not because I'm crushed or that I'm depressed that one of the unique things about me kind of like,

you know, I feel like you're this way as well. Like you can kind of pick up on how people are. Right. It's called discernment. Right. You have a spiritual gift of discernment. So like the energy that you're picking up on me is the Holy spirit,

right? It's the spirit of God. And where the spirit of me is the Holy Spirit. It's the Spirit of God. And where the Spirit of God is, there's freedom. And so when I walk into places, and everybody has the capability to carry this, but I carry the presence of the Lord with me where I go places. And remind me what your question is because I don't want to veer off of it, but that was... No, that's pretty much the answer. I was just wondering, you know, again, I don't know what you were like 10 years ago or before this. You wouldn't have liked me, man.

Yeah? You wouldn't have liked me. Okay. I would have been thinking about like an angle, like how can I sit so I look like this? I'm serious. I'm so serious. I know people like that. Honestly, that's why I was like attracted to like Michael Hearn because Michael Hearn is a guy and I love him.

I honor him. He's taught me so much, but he's a guy that really cares about the opinions of other people. It's a prison, man. It's a prison. Um, and I just lived in that prison for a really long time trying to like cover my insecurities from people. And now when I kind of, I talk about, man, one of the greatest things that happened to me is when I got abused because that allowed me to go through the process that I needed to go through to walk in freedom. Right. And to be like totally okay with not negotiating who I am or how I show up places, even if it might like make people uncomfortable or offend them. As long as it always comes from a place of love and not judgment, I'm good. You know,

I want to love people. Well, that's what Jesus did really well. He was compassionate, judge people and ridicule people. He held them high. So I want to be a person that like holds people high and helps them to see the uniqueness in them. Because one of the things that you have an ability to do, and I have an ability to do, we carry weight, right? If you see a little boy, because of how we look, not even, they don't know about social media or any of this stuff. Because of how we look, if we stop, we say,

hey, man, I saw you playing basketball, little Bobby, and I know that you're only eight years old, but I just want you to know God put a gift inside of you. And if you pay your price, you can achieve anything. I'll see you later, Bobby. Bobby's going to remember that. Not because of the words that you said, because of the man that you are, because of the character that precedes you.

There's a scripture in the Bible. This is my favorite verse. If my friends that are listening to this on the interwebs don't remember anything, write this verse down. It's Romans 5, 3 through 5. And it says, not only this, but we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that our suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character gives hope to other men. And that verse means a lot to me because I believe that the X factor for life,

and you've kind of nailed it, is being thankful, right? And you can't rejoice to God while you're going through suffering if you're not thankful that God just gave you breath in your lungs. And so one of the things that I've used that promise from God to position myself every morning is no matter what happens today, I'm going to rejoice in my suffering. And you know what that does? That makes me eligible to build endurance because I'm sitting here complaining. I can't grow through what I'm going through, right? You've been with negative people and you go through something hard with negative people. They don't benefit. They don't win. They don't get better. And because value, you have a value of growth. One of the things that you've been able to do is you've become

really positive and that's allowed you to build endurance, aka you can handle more. And in that scripture, it says that rejoicing in your suffering builds endurance and endurance builds character. Think about it. Character is the thing that we all want. At first it was muscle when we were younger, right? And then once we got around real men, it was character. That's why you have integrity because you saw your dad, he didn't have physical muscle, but he had integrity and you wanted to be that way. And so that verse speaks to me. And I feel like for the power project, this podcast, we talk a lot about muscle, right?

And this verse is, it's literally the game plan for muscle, right? If you and I can rejoice in our suffering, we're going to build endurance. And when you and I go to the gym, we go for the first month, our muscles don't grow, but we can handle more, right? If you and I can rejoice in our suffering, we're going to build endurance. And when you and I go to the gym, we go for the first month, our muscles don't grow, but we can handle more, right? We're not as sore. Our endurance grows. And then that second and that third month, what happens? Muscle starts popping up, right? AKA, if you stick to it long enough, you're going to build more than muscle. You're going to build character. And character is the thing that gives hope to other men. AKA, we're on this podcast. We're not talking about money.

We're talking about values. We're talking about purpose. We're talking about mission of life. That's going to give hope to other people. Me coming on here with the biggest arms in the world, the fittest man, whatever, whatever. It doesn't give hope to other men. It intimidates them and it makes them insecure. So my assignment in life is to talk about the

junk that I have so other people can connect with that pain and realize that through their pain, they can grab some purpose. That God didn't author that drunk driving accident. God didn't author that cancer. God didn't author that suicide, but God will use it to pull you in, to teach you more about who he is and how much that he loves you. And so I'll pause there because I feel like I'm talking on. It seemed like you spent the majority of your life trying to prove yourself. A hundred percent. It was all about results. It had nothing to do with relationships.

I wouldn't go home for Christmas. I wouldn't go home for Thanksgiving. It was training. It was preparation. I remember when we would have a bye week during the NFL. Like I remember when we would have a bi-week during the NFL. Like I remember, and I regret, I don't have that very many regrets, but probably one of my biggest regrets of my NFL career. And I didn't realize it was such a big deal for him, but my younger brother's name is Scott. And he like followed in my footsteps and became a punter, got a scholarship to Eastern Illinois. And, and I don't know if it was probably like my sixth or

seventh year in the NFL. And I had a bye week and I could have go, I could have never shared this story before. I could have gone home to see him play one heist or one college football game on like his senior night, but I wasn't having a very good season. I was in kind of a slump and I decided to stay in New York and like rest and like get my mind right. And, and I never, I never saw my, my younger brother, Scott ever play a college game and it crushed him. It crushed him. And that's a perfect analogy of who I was. Like it was in it for the results. I wasn't in it for a relationship. And, and I feel like a lot of men and women will connect with, we cause pain to the people that

are most close to us. The opinions of people that don't even know me meant more to me than the opinion of my own brother. So I would say I don't have that many regrets because I feel like God has forgiven me for a lot of them, but for the people that matter the most to me. And I look back at all those times that I was so selfish and I was so self-centered and I missed a lot of opportunities, right? And so now I'm just praying and believing that the person that I'm operating as now will even show my younger brother and my older brother. Oh, Steve is different. Like Jesus genuinely changed my brother for 36 years. Like my older and my younger brother,

like they don't really want to be around me much because I kicked the crap out of them. I'm more athletic. I'm bigger. God has blessed me more in that area. And I'd let them know physically, They don't really want to be around me much because I kick the crap out of them. I'm more athletic. I'm bigger. God has blessed me more in that area. And I'd let them know physically, like wrestling or if we go play basketball, we go play pool. Like somehow I would always cornhole.

I would beat their brakes off and I would tell them you'll never beat me in anything. That doesn't build your brothers up. I think there's a degree of like competitiveness. But if you've been beating them for 20 years, they don't need to hear it anymore. And the only reason I beat them for 20 years is because God has maybe gifted me more physically than them. In addition to, I've got this obsessive thing that I want to be great, right? So if we start playing cornhole, I'm going to stay out there all night and then wake up and beat the brakes off of them in the morning. That's how I was built. You need to be breathing through your nose at night for better sleep quality because your nose humidifies the air you breathe.

It filters the air you breathe. And when you're breathing through your nose, it allows you to be more parasympathetic, which allows you to be calmer. But a lot of us, and myself in the past included, breathe through our mouth when we sleep. And when you're breathing through your mouth, you have a higher heart rate, you wake up with a dry mouth. It actually makes your dental issues worse and your sleep quality becomes much worse too.

That's why we use and we've partnered with Hostage Tape for such a long time. Because no matter if you're using a CPAP, if you have a beard or whatever you're dealing with, if you're able to breathe through your nose when you sleep, your sleep quality will be better. And everything else in life will get easier. Your fitness habits, your nutrition, et cetera, because your sleep is quality because you're breathing through your nose. So get hostage tape on your mouth. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project, where you can receive five packs of hostage tape for the price of three. That's almost half of a year for the price of

three. That's again at hostage tape.com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. I got to ask you something about this real quick though. It makes me really curious because like, okay, that aspect of you hasn't changed. I think I was hearing something recently where they mentioned that psychologists, surgeons, and a lot of high performing people tend to have just higher levels of sociopathy, which isn't necessarily bad. It's not a bad thing. I don't even know what sociopathy is. Teach me. A lot of those people tend to have selective empathy. Meaning that, for example, in that situation you brought up with your brother, you needed a break.

And you chose not to go watch that game. And maybe that allowed you to perform better. It's obviously a big regret, so it probably would have been better to go to the game. But generally those types of people will choose themselves in those situations rather than making somebody else happy because potentially in the long run, they see that in the long run, this is going to be okay. In the short run, this might hurt. Right? So how, I guess if you still have that in you,

how do you always make the choice to make other people happy when sometimes you need to say no? You can't always make other people happy right now, but in the long run, that might be beneficial. I think the question that you're asking is how do you practice wisdom when the standards need to be renegotiated? Right? Yeah. And I do that through conversation with my wife and through mentorship. Okay. So you're talking.

Yeah. Here would be a perfect example. There's a couple pastors that are really motivated to fly me out to Australia. And I went last year and it was an amazing trip. And I spoke at like and it was an amazing trip. And I spoke at like three or four different churches. And I think, I think maybe like 180 people made a first time decision for Jesus was like a big deal. Right. But when you quantify the amount of time and effort and energy that it takes to go all the way out there, and then we come home and there's

180 people that say yes to Jesus. But I know that if I go to a business conference, God has shown me that 500 people might say yes at one time. And you can stay in town at Dallas. And so I say those things to say, maybe I've given my word that I'm going to go to Australia. Like when I was leaving Australia last time, maybe I said, Hey man, I'm definitely coming back. But then when I get back and I realized like, I didn't get paid for going over there. 180 people said yes. And I was gone from my family for two weeks. I asked myself, is it worth it? You know? And so I've already given my word. And so how do you, how do you handle that, Steve? I feel like that would be a perfect

situation of what you're talking about. Yeah. I would pray about it. I would talk to my mentor and I would talk to my wife. And it says in scripture, with many counselors, plans succeed, right? And I feel like a lot of men make decisions in silos. Most men make decisions by themselves. Yes. And the other is another facet of men that don't have best friendships and they go to their wife for everything. And you and I were talking about it earlier. Like, what's the one thing that men need and one thing that women need? The number one thing that men need is respect. And the number one thing that women need is security.

money for our wives, that's not the only security that we need to give them. We need to give them emotional security. And most men handle their problems on their own, or they think at a certain point, well, maybe I need to work them out with my wife. And so when they work them out with their wife, wives are like, oh my gosh, he's having trouble with these different things. Like, the frick's wrong with him, right? Now they're thinking to themselves, he's definitely not secure. So now I'm emotionally insecure. And now they stop giving you the respect that you want. So you might be thinking to yourself, well, how do I make sure that that doesn't happen, Steve?

Well, let me share a scripture with you. And you've all heard it before. You've seen it on t-shirts. Proverbs 27, 17, iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another. Notice it doesn't say anything in there about women, right? Men are supposed to bring their problems before other men with vulnerability and strength. And with those men and those counselors, they work out what the best plan to do is.

And then with that information, you go back and you have a conversation with your wife from a place of power and wisdom, not insecurity and weakness. And the reason that I say this is I did the same thing. Think about it. I had teammates and brothers my whole life from age four, all the way up into 34. And all of a sudden I decided that it's a good idea that I retire. Right. And then a year, a year and a half goes by and I started dealing with some issues, right? Like, man, I'm like, I have to make my own routine now and I have people keeping me accountable. And I start to drop the ball a little bit. And then I think, well, maybe I need to go work

these problems out with my wife. She'll know what to do. And that took a bad marriage and made it a whole lot worse because I would always been a guy that like the quiet, silent type, right? Don't bring her to problems and make tons of money. And then once I started to want to unwind some of these emotions that I'd never unwound before, now she's panicking and thinking this guy doesn't have his game together, right?

So I say those things to the men that are out there right now. If you don't have a man that you can take into the holy of holies and share with him truly who you are, you need to get one, right? I feel like there's three levels of friendship. There's the outer layer, there's the inner layer, and then there's the holy of holies and share with them truly who you are, you need to get one, right? I feel like there's three levels of friendship. There's the outer layer, there's the inner layer, and then there's the holy of holies. The outer layer is where we bring all the constituents, the guys that know our name, but we don't really trust that much. Then the next layer would be our comrades. Those would be like, you know, like your guys at Mike O'Hearn, right? He'd be a comrade. You've known

him for so long. You know him really well. You care about him. You love him. But you probably wouldn't grab Michael Hearn's hand and say, you know what? You come into my office. I need to share something with you that I've never shared with anybody. And I need you to help me navigate it. You take him. I don't know your best friendships, but you guys have been together for quite a long time. If you're struggling with something, he's probably the guy that you're going to bring into the Holy of Holies and reveal to him something about yourself. But most men don't do that because most men fear man. Most men fear rejection and they fear abandonment

because God made us to be tribe animals, to be pack animals. That's why we don't work well on our own. We work well in community and tribe and the enemy has convinced us, don't reveal to him what you're dealing with because he's going to think that you're a pussy. He's going to reject you and he's going to leave you. You're not a real man. And so our father's taught us to handle your business. Don't be a pussy, rub some dirt on it and get it done, right? I didn't necessarily, my dad didn't call me a pussy, but men, most men when we were kids told us to handle our business in that fashion. So does that speak to you? I get what you're saying.

Yeah. I think what you're saying is really interesting. And I think you're not saying like just stuff feelings down, but why not present it to a couple of friends, whatever your problem is. Yeah, start with one. Just start with one. You start with a buddy and say, I think I'm taking a little bit too much of this painkiller that was prescribed to me a while back.

I got to be honest, I think it's getting a little out of hand. You talk to them, you communicate with them and they say, oh man, I ran into the same problem. Here's how I got off of it. Then maybe you go to a significant other and say, I've been dealing with this issue and I talked to Steve about

it. He's helped me work through it. We got a plan. I'd love if you would come to church with me every Sunday too, because I think my belief in faith, I think is going to, you know, help all this together. I think when you, if you go to your significant other with a plan, even though you're sharing a weakness with them, at least there's some sort of devised scheme or a plan to move forward, right?

Yeah, so everybody, what you're explaining is a Barnabas. So in scripture, there was a disciple named Barnabas and he was like famous for being like a roll dog, right? A guy that just wouldn't leave you, just a best friend, just an encourager, but a guy that would keep you accountable, right? So really what I'm encouraging people to do is to get a Barnabas, right? But I believe that all men need three men to live their best life. They need a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy. A Paul is a

spiritual mentor. He's an anvil. He's a guy that lives his life with such conviction and to such a clear standard that you can follow him because as you follow him, he's like, in my mind, I choose a Paul that's following Christ, right? So as I'm following a man in the flesh, I know that I am getting closer to living exactly like Jesus, right? He needs to be a man that has fruit in his life. He can't just be a guy that comes on a podcast and talks about God in a really like animated fashion. You need to say, what fruit do you have in your life? Oh, you've been married for like, Mark, 24 years. Mark, I think that you are certified

to speak to people on what makes a really good marriage. What are the do's and what are the don'ts? But there's people on the internet that might be married for five or six years and their supplement company is not doing very well, but they've noticed that they can sell their coaching in marriage on the internet. And so they start speaking from a place of transformation, right? But they're not

transformational leaders. They're transactional leaders, right? And so people present themselves as Paul's, but really they should be Timothy's. And what's a Timothy? Timothy is somebody who you are a Paul too. So every man has to have a man to follow, a man to encourage him, and a man for him to lead. Does that make sense? And I believe that my transformation has accelerated a lot, not just for me learning the theory from my mentor. It's come from me taking the theory, taking the seed, planting it in the soil, nurturing that. And as it begins to create a harvest, then I teach people, this is how I get this type of fruit. But there's way too many people out on the interwebs that are reading a book and then they're a guru.

They're certified. They'll teach you. I think a cool thing that came from your past and maybe came from you wanting to prove yourself either to other people or maybe even ultimately trying to fill a void in yourself to prove yourself to yourself more. I think what came from that was some money and some, you know, you have now have like financial freedom. So like that situation that you mentioned about Australia, the way that I would, the way that I would figure something out with that is I would say, all right, well, let's get an Airbnb out there and let's make it a party. Bring family members, see if friends want to come and be really inclusive.

Those are some things that I've tried to do over the years that I've found to be really effective because now it's not just about me. It's not just like I'm going to do this and I'm going to be gone for a week. this and I'm going to be gone for a week. I'm going to be gone for a day and a half because I have a couple of things scheduled, but I'm going to be available the rest of the time that we're here. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is as you're doing things, maybe that you don't want to do that would take you away from your family, Steve, there's a way that you can enroll and integrate your family into the things that you're doing. So you're getting a two for one. Yeah. And you tell some of the people in Australia, you want me back here next year? Maybe you got to pay for my family.

Or however, you got to work it out, whatever way would work out for you financially. Yeah, so I just think that's a good point. And I just think for us as men, I think using a collective of men that value what we value and that we can trust that don't want to take from us. Those are hard to come by, but once you get those, I believe that's where wisdom comes from, right? Like I'm all for reading the scripture, spending time in prayer, but there's sometimes, man, you read the scripture,

like, I don't feel like God's talking to me, bro. And I don't understand this old English talk, right? You need a mentor to help unpack that and help you to learn what these scriptures are actually saying. And then once you learn what it is they're actually saying, okay, that's great. How do I apply this into my life? Right? Like, I love it that God says, like, love me with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. Could you show me what that looks like? Right? Like, okay, I get it that God says, love your neighbor more than you love yourself. But could you like, could a man show me what that looks like? Okay, I get it that God says, love your neighbor more than you love yourself. But could you like, could a man show me what that looks like? Okay, I get it that it says,

go out into all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But could you show me what that looks like in 2024? Right? And I feel like that's my assignment. But in order for me to do that, I have to have a Paul. I need a master samurai looking over my shoulder. So as I, in my mind,

as I'm taking territory from the enemy, I need a mentor that's looking over my shoulder and be like, bro, it doesn't say that in the Bible. Don't do it that way. I need that. But I want that because that allows me to operate with so much aggressive urgency. Nothing else matters, right? aggressive urgency, nothing else matters, right? So if I have somebody looking over my shoulder that gets my heart, he can help me to live as a passionate leader and not an emotional leader. And the difference between emotion and passion is I believe that when your intense, when your, when your authority reaches an intensity, let me make sure I say this right. And I'm talking about emotion versus passion. And I believe my wife said it to me really well one time and she was talking about, because before God really got a hold of me, I was emotional because these emotions started to come out and I wanted to navigate them.

But that's not something that you can follow. But passion is controlled. So when you have your emotions under control, you're a passionate leader. But how many of us have been like really excited about something, but it's gone past excitement and we've been a little bit out of control? And people are like, he's being emotional right now. He's being emotional. But then we see somebody that's so on fire and so on purpose. That's passion.

And you want to follow that because it's got something different on it. It's got an enthusiasm. I also believe that that's what you're experiencing from being with me as well. It's more than an energy. It's like an enthusiasm. And if you look at the root of enthusiasm, what is entheos means, it means to be in God. And so I'm able to bring an enthusiasm to things because I spent 15 or 20 minutes listening to worship music before I came in here.

Cause I'm like, God, I don't know what you want to speak to these guys or anybody that listening to this, but God, I am so available and I promise you I'll be obedient. So if you give me a word, I'll freaking say it. And I believe that with that confidence in God comes more than energy or positivity comes like a joy and an enthusiasm. There's something I'm curious about. You mentioned a Timothy and a Paul, correct? Now, I think there sometimes men may be scared to open up with other men because maybe they feel that there is going to be a level of betrayal. There's going to be a Judas, right? So, because there are those people that exist that they smile in front of you and they're like, great job. You're awesome. But at the same time, they're hoping for your downfall. They're hoping

that you fuck up. How do you navigate that? I mean, I know you're not always looking over your shoulder for that or you, you, you don't, you don't seek that, but like how, how, how do you keep that in mind? Because a lot of people know you, a lot of people probably want your energy. A lot of people probably smile in front of you. at the same time they're hoping you fuck shit up yeah yeah i think there's people for people listening to this it's my family included there's people that have my last name that don't want to see me win let me say that one more time there are people that have your last name that don't want to see you win. And that's why I feel like it's even more important that we decide who we are and that we make that non-negotiable. Because even people that have

your last name, we're going to be like, even family members that I grew up with going to church that have my last name are like, bro, you need to chill out on all this Jesus stuff. And I'm thinking to myself, you haven't experienced what I've experienced. I've been in the SB green rooms. I've been dapping up LeBron. Like I've been friends with all these people. I've had the millions of dollars. I got million dollar, like multimillion dollar signing. I've had the wine of the world. Right. And I feel like through that, it's like, it through that, it's like Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was really smart because he eliminated things. It's like the process of elimination. And so

I grew up saying like, these are the things that matter, but because it was wrapped in a package that I didn't want to be like, I didn't have anything to do that. So I wanted the money. I wanted the cars and the homes. I wanted the sex. I wanted the money. I wanted the cars and the homes. I wanted the sex. I wanted the drugs. I wanted to see what life was all about. Because to me, a Christian was just a long list of things that you didn't get to do. I'm like, man, why do I want to have sex?

And why do I want to watch these porn? I like it. But that's the human condition, right? God wants us to want him. Like people talk about like, oh, don't be jealous. Like God's a jealous God. And I'm not saying we should be jealous, but God is a jealous God.

He's desperate and hungry for a relationship with us. Like, I feel like a lot of people, not a lot of people, humans have mucked it up. Cause you like a couple of times, you guys have been like, oh, you're religious. Bro, I'm not religious. I don't belong to any type of sect or denomination. I believe in the Holy Bible.

I believe that it's the infallible word of God. I don't belong to a church. I believe it's important to go to church. But the church is not your solution because there's people inside of that church that'll molest you too. There's broken people inside of there as well. And in religion, let's talk about like, for example, like Catholicism. Catholicism,

there's a lot of that stuff that's not in the Bible, right? There's a bunch of rituals and like, let me, you need to confess to another man. No, you don't. You need to confess to God. Like humans have tried, continue over the ages, have continued to try to place themselves in between us and God. The Bible says that you don't need that, right? So I live by the word of God and I use mentors and pastors to try to learn it more. But I would agree with both of you guys. Religion is flawed and men have screwed it up.

And so I don't do religion. I do relationship, man. And religion didn't save my life. I tried that for a long time, but men made relationship or men made religion god made relationship and that's what i spend my life doing andrew see if you can bring up that clip that i shot over to you it's uh i just threw uh sent it to you uh in a text message i got it you see it over there yeah you need audio then? Yes, sir. Yeah, this is my mom talking to my brother in Bigger, Stronger, Faster.

So I just wanted to get your reaction to what she's talking about here. I watched this. The quality might be pretty poor because it's just like ripped off of YouTube. Look at your papa. Yeah. That's amazing. The Bible lays everything out about how to live your life. But the Bible can't solve all your problems.

It can. I can't pray to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not going to happen. No, you can't pray to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but neither can you take enough steroids or enough human growth hormone to look like him. But you get as close as you can. It's not going to happen. You're fearfully and wonderfully made.

Come on, Mom. Every sinew in your body, every muscle, every fiber was made by God and you're exactly who he intended you to be. And so what to somebody with a six-pack of abs? Maybe they don't have

what you have. I mean, you know, why don't you ever think that way, too? What I don't get is why did our boys not feel that they were good enough?

My father or my grandfather, you can shut it down. What did you think? That was such a good documentary. Your mom's spot on, man. I mean, she literally was like sharing some of the scriptures that I was.

Um, cause your mom knows, man, she was, she was old enough and wise enough to see the enemy play enough tricks on men to try to get them to feel like they're not enough. You know? I mean, think about it.

Like the enemy is not going to attack your gifts, right? Cause your gifts were given by God. They're irrevocable. God can't even take your gifts away. It says in scripture, right? So the enemy is not going to attack your gifts because the enemy knows that he can't win, but where will he attack? He will attack your identity. He will attack. He will come to steal your identity, to kill your legacy and to destroy your ability to multiply in the earth. Right? Think about like the struggle that like

your brother Mike was in. It was an identity thing. Like he was so desperate to be something, right? It's like, because he felt like he wasn't enough. He felt like he needed to achieve something outside of himself in order to be enough. And I like, I was the same exact way. So like, as I was watching all of that unfold, like it was hitting me real time. And I'm like, bro, I'm just like him pills, just like just like him. Identity, just like him. And as I was watching that happen, I didn't have a solution for me. So it freaked me out even more. Now I'm like trying like hypnotherapy.

I'm trying Wim Hof breathing. I'm like, I'm desperate, man. So like when I like found myself in that church, it was an appointment. Like God had an appointment for me. And like, he needed me to know things about him. And he wanted to reveal things to me about myself that because of what happened to me in the past, I was carrying those burdens around. How am I supposed to receive what God has for me? It's so big. I'm gonna need two hands, but I'm carrying around this suitcase about what happened last week. Can't do it. So. Yeah. I grew up with that all the time. My mom saying stuff like that

to me. Yeah. She's a powerful woman. Like all the time, you know, weekly, she would say different things like that to me. I even remember her saying, you know, to my brother and he, and she said it in the film, she said, how do you know somebody doesn't want to be the next Chris Bell? You know? So it's just like, it's just like as just a little different perspective like oh you're trying to be like these people you're trying to be like that guy yeah but how do you know like if you set the example like you could be the person that sets the example you have everything that you need within you already to go ahead and do that yeah and that's the that's the comparison game like the the enemy loves Instagram, how we can look at other people's highlights and compare them to our low lights. It's a depressing

scene out there, man. And so it's like, it's really important that, I mean, there's never been a better device for the enemy to conform our opinions or our thoughts than this thing right here, right? The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And Jesus has come to give us life and give it to us abundantly. And I would say, man, like I so believe in that scripture because I had everything that the world had to offer for 36 years. And like, I was one of those guys.

I didn't need, like, I didn't get addressed. I didn't get arrested and like caught with cocaine and strippers in a hotel. Like I hit my own rock bottom. Like, and I knew like life had to be different. And so that's why I feel like, and I hope that, that my testimony impacts people because I've heard people that are like, oh, Jesus is the way, but it's like typically after they get like arrested and humiliated and like, okay, like now they have to talk about something because they need to rebuild their brand.

I'm not that way. I just had enough of the world to realize it wasn't going to fix the God-sized hole that place that God put in my heart. So, yeah. But I mean, sometimes somebody needs to go through that, right? Like that, that rock rock bottom the rock bottom is different for everybody yeah you know yeah yeah for like pierce one of the guys that's with me that i'm mentoring like his he never got into drugs are you sure that you're mentoring him

yeah exactly it's the truth yeah i mean he'll tell you i've i mean why am i running 100 miles i'm inspired by somebody that i'm mentoring, you know? Yeah. So like, as you're choosing a Timothy to mentor, like choose fertile soil. And when, when I chose to mentor him, it was because I knew that he would pay his price. Like I knew that if I spent time with him, he wouldn't waste my time. And one of the byproducts of that, the greatness that's in him, God put uniqueness and greatness in him. And now the uniqueness and greatness that God put in him is starting to come to the surface.

And it's positive, not just positively impacting me, but it's helping to change my life. And now like all the guys that roll with us, we're all runners and it's 1000% because of him. That does make me wonder though, you know, sometimes I look at what Mark's doing with the running and then I see what you're doing with running i'm like why are you big buckers trying to do distance running so like what what spurs you to do the thing that your body is like your body's made for speed and power and you're like i'm gonna do what i'm gonna go for distance. Why, dog? I think it's limits. I think forever, I think I told myself like, oh, you don't do marathons.

It will kill your muscle gains or it will do this. You won't be able to jump higher anymore. And I think I just allowed the opinions of like other people to be like, oh, I probably shouldn't do that. But now I've gotten to the point where like, I think the weight room is like awesome. It will always be a haven for me, but I want more. I want like a new challenge and I want something kind of like that I suck at. Yeah. And he's my coach.

Like he's my running coach. He's 23 years old, but he's done great and mighty things in the art of running. And so the reason that I got into running is because somebody came into my life and their gift was running. And I get to be a beneficiary of that. Just like I believe that God has anointed me to communicate and to pontificate ideas that I have in my mind.

And I'm using that gift to impact people's lives, just like he's using his gift to get people's attention. You know, like I was talking about how the reason my body looks like it looks right now is because I was operating out of a father wound and I needed to be big and strong. But now, now I take, I use my body to grab people's attention, to tell them about the way, the truth and the life. And so I believe that we all have gifts inside of us. And the ultimate calling on life is learn what your gifts are and then learn how to bless other people with them. Seems like a lot of those wounds have healed. Yeah, I'm sure that there's still some more that I'm like not so sure are completely healed.

One thing that I feel like I've been noticing this year that I'm still drilling down on, I feel like I still get angry. seen this year that I've, I'm still drilling down on. I feel like I still get angry, you know, like when I get tired, like I'm on the road and I'm traveling and I come home, I feel like, I feel like anger still rises up for me at some times. And I would say I've done a lot of work on myself, but my marriage is the number one place that I want to improve. Business would be another place that I want to improve. But I lead myself with three really simple core value traits, and I've actually designed them into like a declarative statement that I lead myself with. My name is Steve Weatherford. I'm a man of integrity, honor, and accountability. I'm a son and a warrior of the one most high. So I have that written on my mirror. And when I first gave my life to Jesus and really went all in, I said, okay, God, I need you to change my mind and heal my heart in this

next year. I created that statement for myself because up until that point, Mark, I hadn't been a man of integrity. I was a fraud. I was a phony. I would change who I was or how I talked depending on what room I was in. So I said, you know what, I'm a gamify this thing. No longer is my life going to be about the results, right? It's been about the scoreboard my whole life. Let me make it about integrity. If I can just be who I say that I am, I know that I can be proud of myself. And most men have never been proud of themselves, right? And I knew if I could be a man of integrity, I could be proud of myself. And the next one that I chose was honor. And the reason I chose honor is before God got a hold of me, everything was about me. And what honor means to me is honor means making your life about God and other people. So I knew if I could be who I am all the time,

and I can make my life about God and other people, I feel like I would be proud of myself. And the last one that I chose to lead myself with is accountability. Because I believe, and you talk about vision. Well, my vision for my life is, kind of shared with you guys what the throne room looks like. One day my body is gonna expire and I'm gonna go up and I'm gonna see my name in that Lamb's Book of Life and then I'm gonna have a meeting with God. And I wanna live my life in a way

that is accountable to that meeting. Because God will ask me, Steve, what did you do with your time, your talents, and your treasures that I've given you? And what I desire God to say to me isn't great kick in the Super Bowl. It's well done, good and faithful servant. And it's not going to say, hey, really great job, really charismatic leader and Instagram influencer. He's going to want to know if I was good and if I served people, right? And so leading myself to be the same man all the time, to make it about God and other people and to be accountable to that end vision. And now I just reverse engineer

my life, kind of like people with dyslexia. They see the end first, and then they act in congruence. Like, how do I need to act or what do I need to do in order for that end vision to happen? In a way, I've done the same thing. I know what I want it to look like in the very last chapter. Now, how do I fill in the gaps by being the same man in every room and making my life about God and other people? I'd say anger is an unresolved conflict. Yeah. That's a solvable. Yeah. That's good. So you can ask yourself like, why am I feeling this way? What caused this? A lot of times in my opinion, and maybe my own experience has been that, uh, that might pop up,

uh, via an expectation. Yeah, that's good. And the expectation I had was most likely poorly communicated by myself, either to myself or to somebody else. Right. So I think if you start to kind of look a little deeper into that, you'll just realize that. I need more friends like you to tell me why I suck, bro. I hate to say it this way, but anger, I think, is just stupid. Yeah.

It's just kind of a— That's why I mentioned it, because I don't want it no more, man. Like, when I get angry, I'm like, what are you doing? And if I get mad, I get frustrated that I'm mad. Yeah. And now I'm really mad. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So it's a thing that I think is probably going to always be there, but I think you can definitely flatten it out quite a bit. Where can people find you? People can find me. I would probably be most active on Instagram. So at Weatherford five, we're going to spend a whole lot more time on YouTube as well. So just type in my name on YouTube and you'll find it as well.

But man, this has been awesome, man. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank you so much. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later. Bye.