Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Saturday School EP. 16 - More Important To Be STrong or Tough?

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Welcome back to another addition of Mark Bell's Saturday School kiddos. Today's question comes from stevetaylor5509 over on IG. He asked Mark, is it more important to be STrong or tough? We naturally got into a BUNCH of other things, but we did focus on the main question, I think you guys will dig it. Thanks for the question Steve! Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz 00:00 Intro 02:00 Kids Need More Protein 12:00 Ditching Social Media 24:00 STrong or Tough? 32:00 What STrong Means To Mark 51:00 Make Up Your Mind 1:11:00 Never Kick A Downed Opponent #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Hey everybody, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by our homies over at FreeSleeve. Last night in SEMA, I was cooking up some dinner and my elbow's been bugging me. You know, I'm benching, my elbow's just always kind of messing with me. But what I did last night is I threw on an elbow sleeve and I was able to cook while still, you know, using some cold therapy. How yourself have you been using cold therapy? Yeah, no, I love this FreeSleeve because after like jujitsu or powerlifting or bodybuilding type training, I like to wait a few hours, especially after that my joints are feeling

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Upgrade your ice packs today by heading over to freesleeve.com. That's F-R-E-E-Z-E-S-L-E-E-V-E dot com. At checkout, enter promo code POWER 25 for 25% off your order and free shipping on all domestic orders. All right. Welcome to another edition of Saturday school. I really appreciate everybody that's been listening. It's been fantastic.

The feedback has been really cool. And this just gives myself and Andrew just yet another way to communicate out to you guys. You know, please continue to ask questions. Probably the best place to ask questions is over on our PowerCast Instagram. Make sure you're following that, which is what? Yeah, it's at Mark Wells Power Project.

There you go. At Mark Wells Power Project. There you go. I'm talking out my ass. I don't know what I'm talking about. That happens to me quite a bit. But anyway, this gives us another opportunity to speak to you guys and to communicate. And Andrew has a really cool question.

But before we get to that, I'm going to drop off a little bit of this information on you that I posted on Twitter. And this is, this has to do with kids and this has to do with nutrition. And we've just been asked so many questions about this so many times, like, what do we do with our kids? And the short answer and the quickest answer is just to try to get your children more protein. And what I said in this post is, I said, when it comes to kids

nutrition, just try to think within reason, how can I get them some more protein? And what I mean by that is like, so instead of them reaching for a granola bar, which there's nothing wrong with a granola bar necessarily, but there's also nothing really good about a granola bar either. It is, a granola bar is just a little little chunk of energy and you need to think like does your child need to have three of these little chunks of energy all day or would they be better off with um with with more meals so they feel more full so they don't have to reach for a bunch of snacks all the time but anyway we want to try to utilize this protein leveraging theory for everyone because it can benefit everybody.

So can you make your kid a sandwich instead? Can you make your kid a grilled cheese sandwich? Can you make your kid a grilled cheese sandwich with like a slice of ham on it? Like would they go for that? Could you make like if your kids like quesadillas, like what kid doesn't like a quesadilla? Can you, can you kind of sneak some chicken in there or some bacon or just another source of protein? So how do we just continue to get our children, uh, more protein?

And so I said, protein first mindset, meat, eggs, or dairy. Dairy is a great choice. I think a lot of times parents are like, I don't want my kid drinking too much milk because they don't eat their meal. But milk has a good amount of protein in it. It has some sugar in it and it can have some fat in it depending on which milk you selected, but it is a good source of protein. And I think you should encourage your kids to drink milk as long as it doesn't bother their stomach. So we want to think protein minded for my kids. I've been buying them those like core protein drinks. I think they're, I forget what company makes them.

They kind of look like muscle milk, but it has like 26 grams of protein in it. And I don't buy them all the time. They're a little pricey, but I buy them here and there. And I just get that instead of, instead of like a chocolate milk. Now it doesn't taste exactly like chocolate milk, but it's pretty darn close and they're getting 26 grams of protein. And I think they're getting like 10 grams of carbs or something like that. So it's just a way to get them a little bit more protein.

And then I said, the second thing you can think about is, does this meal or snack have at least 10 to 15 grams of protein? And the third thing would be, can you make them protein shakes once in a while? And I've found that my children enjoy protein shakes. I think the truth is, is that, so if we take stuff away from our kids, they're going to be pissed, right? But if we don't leave them a lot of other options, then I think that's okay. I think that it's part of our job. You know,

you got a parent. I had something recently pop up with my son where I really had to parent. And I just, I hated every second of it. I really hated it. Just like I would hate having to come in and have a hard conversation with any of the people that work here, because the people that I love,

the people that work here, everyone's like family and I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to break anybody's heart. I don't want to, I don't barely even want to like share my full feelings because I don't want to hurt

anybody else's feelings. But sometimes you need to do that because you need to communicate and need to say, hey, I don't really like when this happens this way. So this would be better off if it went down this road.

And I think it's our job as parents to, you know, not be your kid's best friend, to really try to parent them, to try to safeguard them in as many different ways as you can. You don't want to try to insulate them so that they can't experience life and things like that. But you do want to try to protect them and trying to protect your kids against obesity, diabetes, and just maybe your kid can kind of escape, you know, being picked on for being too fat. Like maybe they can't control like not being picked on at all, but maybe they can kind of maybe you can assist them in some of these things. And then maybe the sport they want to play will be available to them because they're a little bit faster and they're not carrying around as much weight. So anyway,

I just wanted to share that with you guys because I think that just kind of having this protein minded idea isn't hard. Maybe think about your own nutrition and how do you just share that with your kids? You know, can you cook when you go to cook up some chicken breasts? Can you cook them a little extra? Can their chicken breast be different than yours?

Can their chicken breast be smothered with cheese and barbecue sauce? Sure. I don't see any reason why not. They are growing. You know, they're getting there. They do need calories. And so I don't see any issues with adding a little extra to their stuff, because if you just give them a chicken breast and a baked potato with nothing on it, they're

going to be like, yo, we got to talk about this uh food situation so andrew what are some of your thoughts on that yeah i i think it's great like even just a simple thing as adding you know a couple of grams of protein per meal um but one thing i i do want to uh i don't want to say caution but i just i growing up, like you didn't do a good job unless you cleared out your plate. And if you start giving your kids higher protein meals, it's going to be a lot harder for them to finish. Uh, the other day, my daughter wanted something sweet.

So I made her a concoction of, uh, um, uh, oatmeal, blueberries, uh, protein powder, and basically the peanut butter powder, and a little bit of sugar-free syrup. It was insane. It's so good. But she got through like a quarter of it. And what's funny is I think that like the mindset of like that we all have is like, oh, she didn't like it because she only got through a little bit of it. It's like, well, in actuality, she probably crammed in probably close to 20 grams of protein with just that little bit that she had.

Right. And she was done. She didn't want to eat anymore. Now, that could be because if it was a slice of pizza or something, she would have been more motivated to keep going. Whereas this, it was kind of like a healthy ish. You know, she understood I made it. So it's not candy therefore she's probably not as hyped for it but she was done eating like she couldn't do any more

so I think if we get out of that that whole mindset of like like oh you you must really like this dish because you finished the whole plate because if we do that then all of a sudden they think that they maybe left literally food on the table and they're not going to be, they're not going to think that you're happy, you know, and then they're going to feel like, oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't, I didn't, uh, satisfy mom and dad because I didn't finish my plate. I've heard parents say before, Hey, you can't have dessert unless you finish those French fries.

Of course. I've even heard that. Yeah. And it's not even like vegetables or something, but yeah that stuff is very uh is very interesting and you do you do want to caution on how you present any of this material to your children because you don't want them to have any sort of disorders or anything but don't not say something just because you're scared of the reaction you might get because it is an opportunity to teach and it's an opportunity for them to learn.

And if they could say, God, you know, why are you so obsessed with what I eat? You know, if they get real frustrated as they get older, you can say, because I love you. I love you more than anything in the whole world. And I just, you know, I'm just, maybe I am overbearing. So if you want me to back off a little bit more, I can do that. But I'm just, I'm simply trying to assist because I grew up and I got a little too fat when I was young and it wasn't easy. And I just, I would love for you to have a different, um, maybe to be further ahead, you know, and, you know, your kid is still going to make fun of you and talk trash on you, but at least they know that you, uh, at least they know that you care. Another thing you can do is like, so let's say your kid wants to order off the kid's menu.

They want to go grilled cheese and French fries, right? Or they just want to order something that you're not really that pumped about them ordering. You're like, you know, you already ate this. You already ate that for the day. You're kind of calculating it in your head. And you're like, this is not a good weekend for us with food. You know, things aren't going our way. You weekend for us with, with food. You know, things aren't going our way. You can maybe suggest, say, Hey, you know what?

You can order whatever you'd like, but I would really love for you to order the chicken salad and just, you know, eat, eat some of it. And then you can eat, you know, and then you can order, you want to get the, you want to get the Mac and cheese, like Mac and cheese, like my most hated thing, even though I love mac and cheese. I just don't feel that it's a meal. You want to order the mac and cheese, get through that chicken salad first.

And if you don't want to finish the whole thing, if you don't really love it, I'll eat a bunch of it. Just try to get some sort of compromise. That way they can really learn. And then maybe, you know, months down the road or a year or two down the road there, they come to you and they're saying, Hey, like, you know, I don't want to be, I'm gaining some weight. I don't want to be gaining some weight. And you can say, Hey, remember the conversations that we had, you know, you know, where I was trying to encourage you to eat more protein. Well, that's really going to be really helpful to you throughout the rest of your life. And maybe a little bit of exercise. You really like playing volleyball. You like doing this or that.

See if you can stay more active. So the two things I think for kids is how do we push the activity and how do we push protein? And so if you can kind of just hold on to those two principles, I think those would be great. Moving right along, we're going to move into, we're going to talk today about whether it's better to be powerful or whether it's better to have mental toughness. Is that where we're kind of close enough?

But I'll give you guys the exact question. This came from Instagram. This is from at Steve Taylor 5509. I kind of. Oh, 5509. Yeah. I thought you said seven. No, my bad.

Okay. I might have. I get sevens and nines wrong because they kind of look the same. They're the same. Yeah. I put out the bat signal and asked, you know, everybody like, hey, like, we're going to fire up the old Saturday school machine. What do you guys want to hit us up with questions or what do you want us to answer? And so he put out this question, which was, is it more important to be strong or tough?

And I just, as soon as I saw that, I knew that Mark would have a lot to say about that. out this question which was uh is it more important to be strong or tough and i just as soon as i saw that i knew yeah that mark would have a lot to say about that so i pushed that that question right in front of you and that's what we have for you guys today it's a hard question like i don't like hard i like easy stuff you know like uh what's your favorite football team and then i can just make up i can look at the scores and i can see who's the best team and i can be like the chiefs dog like dude are you kidding me the chiefs have been sick since day one i've been with them the whole time um but yeah this is kind of actually a tough question before i get to that i'm gonna share one more one more uh twitter post with you um so i i've been

pretty much off social media i do realize that that Twitter is a social media platform. Uh, but a lot of times I'll post on there and I get away from it. I've also changed my interpretation of what social media means to me. Um, and, uh, luckily for me, it don't mean shit. I'm not worried about it. Uh, you know, I'm not really too caught up on it any longer where I, at some point I was, I got to admit that I was. And so here's, here's what I wrote. I haven't had IG in months.

I don't helicopter over things on Twitter. I don't watch, I don't watch, I don't watch, I didn't watch the debates. I'm not watching the news and I'm talking about how amazing I'm feeling. And I said, oh, and by the way, by the way, I by the way, I did mention I can't watch the news or. What am I trying to get through here? Oh, I don't. So I just kind of wrote it kind of weird. I don't watch the news or intentionally click on something that I feel is going to trigger me. So I want I want you guys to really think about that part right there. I want you to think about

and in quotes, I want you to think about will this quote unquote make me mad? If you think even if it's from us, even if it's from us, I want you to watch everything that we put out. Trust me, I really do. But I would love for you to learn some self-control and some self-discipline. And if you think something's going to trigger you, it's going to go against your ideas, your principles, and it's not going to just, against your ideas, your principles. And it's not going to just, it's not going to challenge your beliefs and have you start to open your mind. It's just literally going to piss you off because you're not going to be able to interpret it in a healthy way. And that could be because you were where you are in your life. And that could be for many different reasons, but

I am guilty of this. This is how I know about this is that I will see something where I'm like, that's bullshit click. And I need further proof that it's bullshit. And I click on it and then I'm mad. And then I'm, you know, typing a mean comment or like, you know, you know, giving it a dislike or, I mean, I usually don't do that, but like, I do get hung up on it and I will read the comments. And then then I I'm sitting there, you know, building up all this frustration. And it's over nothing. And by leaving Instagram behind and by kind of shifting into some of the things I'm doing now where I record YouTube videos, we make content like this. But anyone that's negative, like I'm just not part of it.

I'm not listening to it. I'm here to be happy. I'm here to be happy. I'm here to help other people be happy. And I don't want anything to do with, you know, groveling and being like and having like self-pity or just fighting or. just fighting or, I mean, it's really kind of crazy that we get into these, this,

we have so much back and forth on the internet. It's really just a really weird, it's a really weird thing. And so I'm just like, man, like I, I really go on there and I argue a lot. What a dumb, like imagine explaining it to someone that's never seen social media before,

like an alien, you know, like why do you go on social media and be like, oh, yeah, I go on there for this and that. But like most of the time, if I'm being honest, most time I'm on there and just arguing with somebody else. And it's like, that's so stupid. I don't I don't argue with anybody during the day. Maybe once in a while we have things that might challenge some of our beliefs and we go back and forth and we learn new things. But for the most part, it's just like, it's just a lot of garbage. So I want, I want you guys next time you're about to click that click baity thing, I want you to think about it. I'd also love for you to think about your own mental health and think about how much are you on some of these platforms? How, how much are you on Instagram? How much are you allowing this to influence you and kind of just pull you

around? How often are you tied up with, let me see if I can get a really sick selfie, but you're not in your selfie. You're not like, you're not being part of like what you are supposed to be doing at the moment. Oh wow.

Like I got a sick pump in my arms. Let me see if I can get a picture of this vein. And it's cool to be proud of yourself and stuff, and it's cool to share stuff like that out. But let's face it, we can get really just way too caught up in it. So my Instagram, I've been very transparent about it. It's run by my team here at Slingshots. More specifically, it's run by a good friend and a great employee and, uh, she's doing a wonderful, wonderful, uh, job with it, but she is sharing

my messages. And so you guys will still see messages from me or things that I've said previously, or obviously there's still images of me, but it feels amazing to have disconnected from it. And I'm not telling everybody that they need to go off social media because I think that social media can be really valuable. And we talked about it a lot in many different ways on our podcast. But I do think, you know, we talk a lot about intermittent fasting. You know, can you intermittently fast away from some of these platforms? Can you get away from your phone a little bit?

Like I've been going on hikes and doing a bunch of stuff lately and it's just, it like almost brings a tear to my eye how exciting and how fun that is without being tied to this, this, the weapon of mass destruction. That is our, there's our phone that is just kind of at our fingertips. So I'm not saying that this is going to work for everybody. It's going to work miracles for everybody. But some of you guys and girls out there that have anxiety that are having trouble sleeping that are just, you know, just, I don't know,

just not feeling great about yourself, man, just trust me on this one and just see if you can get some distance from it. Just maybe once a week, just get off there for a whole day. If you can do it and just see how it feels. Like I said, I've been off Instagram for months. Haven't even tried to look up anybody else on Instagram. Haven't looked at one thing. I've even had people try to show me things from other people that would only invoke me, like either making fun of the person that they're showing to me or it would make me kind of mad i wouldn't allow it to happen because i'm like i don't do that anymore like don't even show me that you know and then we kind of laughed about it but i was like

no no don't like just please just don't even it's like putting a donut on the table like i don't need it i don't i i love donuts asshole you love donuts. You know, I love to rip other people in half. You know, I love to just talk shit and talk trash and make fun of people and have some fun with it sometimes here and there. Right? Like we, everybody's guilty of some, or maybe not everybody, but most of us are guilty of that. So I don't want to be baited by it anymore. And so I've tried to remove it from my life as much as I possibly can. So hopefully you guys find some of that helpful. Yeah. And I mean, I think people have used this analogy before, but you have a backpack on. Does a small, tiny pebble, we'll say it possibly weighs maybe two grams. Does that have weight? Right. It does have weight. It that have weight right it does have weight it's insignificant but it does have weight every time you kind of go back and forth or every time you

see a negative post that kind of like oh damn what an asshole or whatever like oh that guy sucks that little pebble goes in your backpack no big deal you don't feel it it's like i don't think i have anything in my backpack right now. You can see another post. There's another pebble and another post and another pebble. And then all of a sudden, like four years down the road and you have all these negative pebbles in your backpack and you're carrying that shit around. And even another pebble, you don't really feel it, but now you're bogged down.

You know, now it's like all the weight of that shit is accumulating to something that is going to affect you. you know, now it's like all the weight of that shit is accumulating to something that is going to affect you. And we don't know enough information to, to understand whether that hurt, like literally hurts your body, you know, like it could like,

uh, you know, I don't want to make connections to things that I don't know about, but I would say that like, I think it could lead to disease. I think it can lead to pain, like literal pain, the pain in your knee, the pain in your elbow, the pain in your back. What if that's just from you just kind of being an asshole, you know, obviously there's going to be things that just hurt because of certain reasons,

just the way you were developed, where you're born. born there's there's a lot of factors but man i i know that when i feel like tensed like i hold a lot of it in like my neck you know and then someone squeezes your shoulders you're like oh my god your whole body goes numb you almost hit the ground just you know and so we we hold on to a lot of that stuff and i agree with that's great analogy. And I think that we are walking around with a lot of extra weight. It's somebody else's weight. It's somebody else's bag. If you know, what about when someone tells you,

Hey, do you hear about what so-and-so did? And, and there's not even there's, there's, there's it's for fun. You know, it's supposed to be for fun,

but there's not a solution that we can come up with to help solve anything. So it's, it's literally just some talking just to talk and communicate and hopefully, you know, people, hopefully you all get like a laugh out of it, but still sometimes it's at somebody else's expense. It's just you're just kind of being a dick. And like, does that does that kind of stuff weigh on you or just seeing? I mean, man, sometimes people are sharing some really wild stuff on social media. Sometimes they're sharing that they're going through a rough time, which that it might be relatable. But now you're walking around with their shit, too. And we're not I'll tell you this. We're not designed for that. You know, uh,

we're designed to be more tribal. You know, we're designed to have six, eight, 10, I don't know, a hundred, 200 people,

right. Just around us. Like, cause we grew up in a certain area or whatever. And we have interaction with 10 people a day, 20 people a day. And we hear different problems. And then we're supposed to be able to like kind of problem solve and work through them. But we're not supposed to hear thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of problems and thousands and thousands and thousands of things that are going really fucking well for everybody else when you're not feeling so great.

You're right. Like, we're just not made to be able to take all that news in. And then you shut down your IG and you're like, all right, Mark's right. I'm going to get off that. Let me check the TV. Boom. You turn on the TV and like just there's stuff about pedophiles and fires and covid. And you're just like, oh, my God, I'm just can't escape. Oh, just like they're just injected you with like, you know, poison. they're just injected you with like you know poison yeah and for anybody that like thinks the the correlation that mark just kind of you know try to try to make with like your health and

social media it's like well shit try to lose weight when your cortisol levels are high and how do you get a high cortisol level like stress yep so it's like all the more does the stress come from could come from one of these silly posts it makes. All right. Now we're going to dive into our question. We're probably like 20 something minutes in. But anyway, we'll give you that in the show notes because if you just want to skip right ahead of this, you can do so. But anyway, here we go. So is it better to be more stronger? I just lost it.

One second. So is it more important to be stronger or to be tougher? Ah, more important. I think I, I, I guesstimated that one. I lost the damn,

I screenshotted it and it's gone forever. Is it more important to be strong or tough? I did get it right. Is it more important to be so proud of yourself? Yeah. Is it more important to be strong or to be tough? Let me take a crack at this one. It's such a general question that it's going to be very difficult to really narrow down and give a real straightforward answer to.

Um, I am somebody that does not really believe in, I only believe in mental toughness to a certain degree. Um, and here's why I've talked about it before. I think that most things and maybe everything, I don't like to speak in absolute, so I'm not sure if I worked that one out right in my head, but I think pretty much everything has to do with being prepared. So if I'm prepared to do something that looks quote unquote tough, it'll look easy. Right. And if I'm prepared to do something that's like, you know, extraordinarily tough, I might be wearing it at the end. I might be looking like I'm going to die, but I'm going to be able to still make it through. And so when I think about mental toughness, I always think of this analogy that my buddy James Smith shared with me. And he said, you know, you know, who do you think is the baddest man on the planet?

You know, who do you think is the baddest man on the planet? Who do you think is the toughest guy? And then who can we universally agree about and say, okay, that's a tough dude. What about a Diego Sanchez? Like guys had some wars in the ring. What about Chuck Liddell or somebody like that? So let's just take Chuck Liddell as an example. Chuck Liddell is, you know, very, I mean, by all accounts, it seems like he's very,

very tough, right? But what if he's not prepared for what he's about to do? So what if, what if you take Chuck Liddell and instead of, you know, putting him in a UFC ring, I realized he's retired for a long time, but what about instead of putting him in a UFC ring. I realized he's retired for a long time, but what about instead of putting him in a UFC ring, you drop them off in the middle of a war zone, uh, in the middle of the night, he's got night vision. He's got to find the quote unquote bad guy. And he's got to, you know, take out a few people. Um, how tough is he then? Or is he, you know, or is he pretty terrified? Cause he's like, I don't know anything about this. Let's give another analogy because maybe Chuck Liddell's a crazy bastard and maybe he just doesn't care. And maybe he would do great in that scenario. What if he had to try to save somebody's life, you know, through brain surgery, you know, you give him a scalpel and, you know, this person's on the table and he's gotta you know open up their head and

go in there and do some work uh now i'd imagine he's he's very unsure of himself and he's probably like hey like i you know i i don't i really i don't can't i'm i'm hopeless you know i can't really do anything right so now what if we were to take you know the marine that we would normally you know drop off in the middle of the war zone and what if we put him in the ufc ring with thousands of people watching it's a pay-per-view and he's fighting bones jones well you know maybe the guy knows how to fight and maybe the guy is considered by everybody to be very tough but he's not like bones jones tough right it's a different toughness it Jones tough, right? It's a different toughness. It's a different, it's not a toughness either.

And that's why I don't necessarily agree with sometimes what we think is being tough is really just a skill set probably. And yes, that would be difficult for most people. And yes, that would be difficult for most people. But the difficulty level changes the better that your skill set is. The more that your skill set matches up to that, the easier it's going to be. You know, I don't run a 4'4", 40. I don't have the dimensions of a NFL running back. They're usually a good 20 pounds lighter than me and maybe even 30 pounds lighter than me.

And they've been running their whole life and they are workhorses and they, they know how to move. They know how to get out of the way. They know how to lower the shoulder. They know how to do all these things. So you stick me in that scenario. And I'm just, even though I've played football, I'm not, I'm not quote unquote tough enough to handle what would happen in like an NFL game. I would just get absolutely murdered.

And maybe I might do better than the next guy, but maybe some people feel like, yeah, okay, Mark Bell. I would, I would say, yeah, he's he's pretty tough. And what I would tell you is that I'm just not, you know, if you if you try to push me into something that I don't have experience in, I'm going to really get my ass kicked, especially for me in particular, because I've always been a little slow at stuff. It takes me a little while to get a feel for something. And I really enjoy the process and I don't mind it taking a while. So I take my sweet ass time. Well, you know, a lot of times when you're talking about trying to do something on a

professional level at a really high level, you know, you don't have a lot of time for that. So you take this Marine that you dropped off in the UFC ring and now, you know, you, you dump him into trying to be a surgeon as well. And he's just as terrified as, as a Chuck Liddell. So I think when it comes to toughness, um, I would have to say that I don't think mental toughness is complete

bullshit, but I do think that we're talking more about a skillset and we're talking more about an ability to adapt to something. Um, let's take, uh take David Goggins, for example. David Goggins is great at any sort of endurance stuff. And when you're great at endurance stuff, it's actually really interesting because I do think that that might be the one time where you maybe do gain an edge in some toughness because I think you kind of burned a hole in your head and you burn,

you, you short circuited your body's ability to recognize like when it's in trouble, like you, you hacked it. Basically you hacked the system and now, and now the system can go as far as you kind of want it to go. Now,

David Goggins is going to have a hard time, you know, getting underneath a thousand pound squat, right? So no one's going to have this. It doesn't matter how mentally tough he is. He's not going to squat a thousand pounds. It's just, it's just not, it's not in the cards. And even for myself who has squatted a thousand pounds before, it doesn't really matter how much I'd like to desire to squat a thousand pounds again. I can't do it unless I adapt to it. I don't, you have to earn the right to be able to do it and you earn the right to be able to do it.

You get that passage, you get to kind of go in that warp zone and be able to head in that direction through, you know, doing stuff day in and day out. Now on the flip side of this, um, you know, is it more important to be strong or is it more important to be tough? I would have to say, especially because of my quote that, uh, being strong, you know, it's just such a general word towards like, um, obtaining like that is a, that is obtaining a skill, like being strong. Um, wow. That person's really strong willed, you know, that's, uh, when someone's strong willed, they probably have demonstrated over and over again that they have the ability to do something consistently enough to where it's very clear that they're consistent.

And it's clear that they're consistent because they're pretty damn good at something. So you're like, okay, well, you know, that guy must have worked on that for a really long time. And that's why he's that good at that. Strength is not something that you can cultivate overnight. It takes a really long time to gain strength, just like it would take a really long time to be, you know, quote unquote, tough at something as well, because again, it's kind of a skill set. But I really think that strength is a really valuable skill set. And I think it might be more clearly a skill set. Whereas toughness, I think that people are kind of mislabeling it a lot of times. When I think of strength, it very rarely has to do with the lifting of weights. When I think of strong, I'm thinking of, I don't even know what the definition is. Maybe you can look it up over there, Andrew. But when I think is strong, I'm thinking about the ability to just really be able to handle a lot without, without, um,

the ability to handle a lot without really showing it because there, because you went through an adaptation process of doing some of these things. And over a period of time, you've been able to handle more and more and more and more. And so I think when I think about, you know, strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Being strong is almost always going to, you know, is always going to help you. Being weaker doesn't have a great benefit. Having a stronger mindset is going to be better than having a weaker mindset. Having a stronger mindset, I think, is going to be better than having, or maybe more important than having a tough mindset. Because again, when I took those analogies of putting those people in different circumstances, you saw that their toughness wasn't really a factor,

but your strength would, will always be a factor. If, if you're strong, if you, if you have a good amount of strength, whether it's your mental strength, your physical strength,

and you go into a scenario, you're probably going to just be able to handle it better than somebody else, even without the actual skill set. An example could be something like jujitsu. I mean, you're going to get smoked either way, but if you're a little stronger, maybe you can last a little bit longer. Whereas if you were tough, I don't think that that would be much of a factor because you're just, you're probably, you know, you're probably going to get yourself into some trouble. The only thing that I can think of that would be better than both of those things in that scenario would be being crazy. Yeah. So based off of a Google

search by way of Oxford languages, which I want, I want you guys to wait for the second definition. But the first one says strong, having the power to move heavy weights or perform other physically demanding tasks. Pause. The second one says able to withstand great force or pressure. And I think that's kind of more along the lines of what you were, you were getting at. And as far as like analogies, um, in an interview, not too long ago,

Gary V was like, yeah, I get pretty pumped up for doing speaking engagements. I can speak in front of, in front of a big crowd, you know? Yeah. I get nervous,

but I look forward to it because I'm good at it. I like doing it. Now, if you were to hand me a book in front of all those people and ask me to read out loud, it's like, I would shit my pants. He's like, because I'm not good at it i like doing it now if you were to hand me a book in front of all those people and ask me to read out loud it's like i would shit my pants like because i'm not good at that like so that i would be terrified for i'd turn pale and i'd probably collapse so kind of more of the same thing what you're talking about you're dropping a ufc fighter into a you know war zone that's the same person saying like oh i definitely couldn't do both right and i think you know, war zone, that's the same person saying like, Oh, I definitely couldn't do both.

Right. And I think, you know, this, this is a, it's a great question. Um, but like, which is more important. I don't think you can really necessarily, um, pick one over another, but if I was to pick one over the other, it would be, it would be being strong. And again, the only reason why I say that is that I think being strong is maybe just more defined. You know, toughness is a weird, weird one to try to define. And also, I think that toughness is oftentimes, as I mentioned earlier, just a mislabeling of somebody that developed a skill set. Oh, that test was really tough. And someone's like, well, not for me, but it's because they were just more prepared for it. It was just, uh,

you know, they, they had the skill set to get through it. I think saying, um, you know, with strength, you know, being able to get through demanding tasks, that's what I look at, you know, are you able to get through challenging tasks? And what you mentioned about talking in front of people, um, that's another great analogy. Um, and maybe like running a race. I don't know if you guys remember when you were a kid and you went to like run a race, like you got kind of nervous, get some butterflies. Like if you're really young, you probably don't really feel anything. Cause you're just, you're literally just running for fun. And maybe you don't even understand, uh, that you're really young, you probably don't really feel anything because you're just you're literally just running for fun. And maybe you don't even understand that you're competing against somebody.

But as you get older, you're like, oh, shit, like I got to I got to beat this other person. And you kind of get a little nervous about it. But those nerves are great. Those nerves are going to help work you towards being stronger. Those nerves can help work you towards being able to handle situations a little bit easier. And I think that if we think about our nervousness and just kind of convert it over into excitement, you know, like even just in your own head, like maybe let's just get rid of the word nervous. Oh, that makes me nervous. It's kind of way different if you say, Hey, that gets me fired up. That gets me excited. Oh, Oh, wow. Like that's, uh, that, that,

that gets me stimulated. That keeps me stimulated. Right. It's like such a different word. Nervous. Um, really, I gotta be honest when I hear anybody say like, uh, that they're worried. Concern is kind of a different word. But when people say worried, like, and this is just like my own weird, because I try to do an exorcism of some of the words that I don't think are helpful to me. I hear worried. I'm like, pussy. The guy's a pussy. Like, don't use that word. Like, don't even don't even say it out loud. Like, how dare you? I understand why people use it. Cause it's, uh, they maybe are legitimately

worried about stuff and it's fine to be worried about stuff. But for me, I try to make sure that if I'm going to say a word like that, I try my best to make sure that I really mean it. Oh, I'm really, I'm not really worried about the situation. You really that worried about it? Or, or is it just something you're kind of unsure about? You know, it's just kind of some differences. And I think that again, with Andrew's analogy about walking around with this extra weight, I think we really carry a lot of this stuff around. When you say you're nervous, you say you're worried. It's like, that's a, that's registering in your body. It's registering. You just told yourself.

You said it out loud and you told somebody else. And it's confirmation to them. And maybe they already thought you were nervous or worried about it. And now it's just maybe that's a couple pebbles. Maybe that's more than just an ounce or two. Maybe that's a full-on brick that you just threw in your backpack and didn't even recognize. And then now, you know,

we know that when we go on a walk that, uh, it's not always flat. It's impossible for it to always be downhill. Right? So there's going to be other things that happen. It's impossible for the weather to always be perfect. So walking around with that bag with a little extra weight,

not a big deal, right? You're like, Oh, that's five pounds extra. There's no big deal. But then you're like, oh shit, that's a pretty big hill. Oh wow. There's a few of them. Oh shit. It's raining. Why? Oh shit. Now it's getting windy. You know, now, okay. Now we're going downhill and there's rocks and slippery. Like it's just, things just keep getting, Like it's just things just keep getting, they keep getting worse.

And I, I really feel that I, I see a lot of people, um, they can't, they can't afford that to happen because I see a lot of people kind of living their life behind where they're just not getting the stuff done that they need to get done. They want to get stronger. They want to be in better shape. Um, they have this list of like things that they want, but the things that they want are very different than the things they're doing. Their actions aren't lining up well. And if you had a job, you know, if it was your job, you know, and I'm your boss and

it's your job to be leaner and to be stronger. job to be leaner and to be stronger. And then you came to me and said, Hey, you know, this is a, or I need, need to know kind of where, where I stand, you know, how am I doing with my job? And, uh, it would be very clear and very easy for me to say, well, you know, you, you were benching 135 and, uh, when we went to test you again, you benched 115. And your body weight went up a little bit, and that wasn't the goal. The goal was to lose weight and get a little leaner. And it's just so clear when you look at things that way. But when we are living our life every single day, we don't notice these changes. We

don't notice these differences. We sometimes don't notice that we're going backwards. And even if you're just standing still, that's a form of going backwards because other people are moving forward. I mean, there's some people that are moving backwards at a really fast rate, but you can't hang out with those people and you don't want to be around those people anyway. You want to be trying to always move forward. And if you're not always moving forward and you're either standing still, which to me is the same as moving backwards, or you're going backwards, you're having regression. And it's okay to have those sometimes because that's part of human nature. It's part of having, we have good and we have bad. We have, you're going to make good decisions. You're gonna make bad decisions. We have, um,

you know, we have things that are enticing and seductive and we got, you know, different foods and different things in front of us that are, are, they're very, very tough to, um, get rid of all the time. Very tough to be a good boy all the time, right? It's very tough to do the right thing all the time. There's not a person in history that's ever made it through life doing that. So it's important to recognize that you are going to get stuck here and there. You are going to move backwards here and there, and those things are fine. What you can't do is you can tell yourself, hey, like, that's not great. Like we're moving backwards. The job that I wanted to do, I wanted to get in better shape. I wanted to

get a little stronger. I'm not doing it. You know that you're not doing it. Okay, good. You admitted it. That's over with now. Now let's put the plan in place. How do we match up what you want to do with your actions? How do we match up your actions with what you really want to do? First thing you'd have to do is make sure that you really want to do it. And the next thing that you have to do is to make sure that you can do it. And then you can kind of go from there. But this is how you build strength. And this is how you build towards having a really powerful and strong and just strong will to where people say,

yeah, you know what? That dude is really strong or that dude. I think, I think ultimately you want both. You want to be strong. You want to be kind of considered to be tough, not necessarily a tough guy,

but just to have some grit, to have a little fight in you. Like, you know that the guy is not going to quit, you know, that the guy is not going to quit. You know, the girl's not going to quit. That person is not going to. I know that that person is just not going to give up. Like, that's a that's a really sick trait to have. Yeah.

Here on the podcast, you know, we we study a lot of stoicism and, you know, we think it's important not to get too up or too down. And when we had Ryan Holiday on, I had asked him like, hey, is it a bad practice to like try to think positively, to hope for an outcome that's more in your favor? For you yourself, do you find yourself doing that at all? And this question comes from, you know, when you're when you like say, oh, I'm worried, you now accepted that. You now open yourself up to that. And, you know, people do talk about like, oh, like you got to be positive. Like, okay, you're cool with telling somebody stay positive. But flip that around and tell somebody not to be negative. Because if one can have an action, the other one can have action just as much as this one, right? Just because it's negative, we want to assume that like when I say like, I don't know, or

I can't think of an analogy right now, but when I think of, you know, something negative about myself, it's like, oh, I'm just being silly or I'm just being hard on myself. It's not actually doing anything to me. But if I say something positive, it's like, oh yeah, bro, you're doing a good job. So that's where that question came from. So for you yourself, what goes through your mind when you're like maybe up to a certain task, like you're going to go train after this? Like, are you thinking like, oh, I can't wait to get a sick pump. I hope I have a good workout, even though I know you're prepared and you're

going to, but for something like that, what's the thought process? I think, you know, um, again, being prepared is a huge thing. How do I prepare? Like today is a weird day. I've just been bouncing around a lot. Um, but there's no, there's no excuses. excuses I just I don't have food with me I decided not to eat this morning so it and now it's you know it's just getting you know it's getting closer to like one o'clock I did have some protein this morning with my coffee and so at least I had something but everything's always just about being prepared and and trying to safeguard yourself against having to blame anybody else, safeguarding yourself against just anything happening that, anything that's in your control,

really nothing shitty should happen from those things. Like that should be set up as best as you can get it. And we know that like things are going to go wrong. We know that things are going to go haywire and stuff like that. But if you're trying just to always figure out a way, how do I set myself up to be as successful as possible? Within also within reason, though, because what's optimal and what's doable are way different things. what's optimal and what's doable are way different things.

You know, what's optimal to do for lifting and for cardio training and for body transformation. I would say that like, I mean, first of all, no one really truly knows exactly what's the most optimal. I mean, there's a lot of different theories,

but like no one knows, knows, right? So there's that part. But I would say that even out of the one percenters, I would say that a very small amount do exactly what's optimal to ensure their success all the time. And the reason is, is that it's just not always obtainable. Even if you were, even if you're a Mr. Olympia competitor at a certain point,

it's going to get more difficult because maybe you took on a couple of business opportunities. Maybe a couple of things came your way and now there's just like more shit in your way. I mean, you can close yourself off to those things, but it would be impossible to do so forever. And I think that again,

the most important thing is you try to figure out a way to prepare yourself, to safeguard yourself away from being able to place blame on anybody else. Let's just, you know, the easiest example all the time is just like getting in better shape. You're going to have to have some meals with you or know where you're going to eat, when you're going to eat. Like you have to have answers. You have to know, you know, what you're going to do, like you have to have answers. Uh, you have to know, you know, what you're going to do, what you're about to do. And then that way, that way you're not hoping, you know, hoping and wishing. I think ultimately what you're really in search of and you're really hoping for, if there is a thing like that, is a deeper and darker challenge so that you can become a fucking savage and so you can handle anything.

darker challenge so that you can become a fucking savage. And so you could handle anything. Now you don't want these things to be like a tragedy, but like, you know, you, you want things to be a little bit tougher. You want like when you lose weight and you start getting a little bit better shape, you're like, wow, like I, okay. I lost 20 pounds to school, but like my abs really still don't look that good. Like that's, that's actually awesome because you know what, you're going to have to fucking work for it.

You know, you want a 600 pound bench and you tear your pec and you try it again. You tear your, like those things are, they suck, but they're good because you want things to not be so easy. You want things to not be so comfortable all the time. so easy. You want things to not be so comfortable all the time. And the easier that things come to most people, usually the more lax they are with those situations. Usually they're less likely to be not that it doesn't mean that they're not, they can't be successful, but there are a lot of times when things are coming really easy to people and they just sort of happen and they kind of fall backwards into a bunch of stuff, you're not going to see as much progress. So the way I gauge success

is through progress. And so somebody might look good and somebody might do something really well, but how much progress are they really making? Are they really, you know, they're really moving forward? Are they doing better than they were, um, a few years ago? And these things get a little weird because sometimes somebody gets so far off track that it's easier for them to have a stronger success story because they had so much regression at the, the progression, like the two things end up on opposite sides, you know?

But who's had more success in the last five years, you know, four years, me or my brother, you know, the answer would be my brother. Like he, he like should be dead. You know, he was addicted to drugs. He was addicted to alcohol. He was really fucking fat. He's like five feet tall if he's lucky on a tall day. And he was like 260 pounds. You know, he was just like, and he was going down a path where it just seemed like there was no quote unquote hope. Like it didn't seem like he was ever going to get out of that. It just seemed like this downward spiral.

like he was ever going to get out of that. It just seemed like this downward spiral. Somehow he was able to like, you know, keep some lifting around and keep some family around and keep a couple of good friends around. And somehow he's able to figure out, okay, I can, you know, start to gain momentum and I can start heading this other direction. But, you know, in terms of like, you know, wishing or hoping or I don't think that he was probably he probably wasn't wishing that he was going to be better. He probably was like, I'm going to fucking get better. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going, you know, I really love this term and I don't know why it's not, everyone always just says it and they don't, I don't even know if anybody ever thinks about it,

but the word like makeup, like, oh, he just, yeah, he, he made up his mind. Hey, did you make up your mind about that? What a fucking crazy thing. What happened to Andrew? You see, Andrew's all fucking buff. He's all jacked. Like, oh yeah, he made up his mind that he didn't want to be skinny anymore.

Decided he wanted to take it more seriously and train, eat more protein, and focus in on his fitness and get a little bigger and have some good arms on him and things like that. You just, like, you can do that. You know, maybe, um, maybe not everybody has the same genetic capacity to just like, you know, do it to this like crazy, crazy level.

Uh, but you can do it. You can like make up your mind to choose all of a sudden, you know, start to do these, these things. So when I think about like some of the things from stoicism where it's talking about kind of this balancing act of, um, you know, uh, you don't want to get too caught up in, uh, you don't want to get too caught, too caught up or too hung up on expectations, you know, because if your life doesn't have a lot

of expectations in them, not that your expectations are low, but you literally just don't have any, um, that can keep you out of harm's way. Pretty good. It's also a little complicated. She's like, how do I have no expectations? Like, you know, it's my daughter's birthday today, or it's this thing today. Like I'm, I'm kind of expecting like something kind of fun to happen. Um, so it's, it's hard to not have any expectations, but I think it's like one of those deals. Like, don't get your hopes up. Like, well, maybe we shouldn't say don't get your hopes up.

Maybe we should just say, don't have hopes. Like, don't be letting shit up to like the fucking universe make up your mind to make these things fucking happen on your own on your own terms your own way this is why i love hanging out with someone like sean provost my boy that now owns like 10 dutch brothers i was just talking to him about his wi-fi he's like, I think I'm going to buy a tower. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like,

well, you know, you can buy like a fiber optics tower tower and we're friends and stuff. So I'm like, what does that cost? He tells me what it costs. My holy fuck. Wow. He goes,

yeah, but it's actually kind of cool because then you can sell the space to other people. So he's like, you know, after a while, but we'll, you could actually make money on it.

It costs a lot up front. And, but, but anyway, it's like, there's a lot of people in this world that are like that, that are like, I'm just going to take,

okay, this thing sucks. I'm just going to take control of this. And I'm going to make up my mind that this is the way shit's going to be. Shit's going to be my way under my terms, when I want to do them, how I want to do them. And this is just, I'm going to live my life just like this. And there's people that make up their mind to do those things. And I think that that is like the strongest, most powerful play

that you can make when you just decide, I really love doing this. I really love doing that. Ah, this other stuff. I don't really like that that much. I'm not going to do that. And maybe you can't get away from it all the time because that can be impossible because there are, it's just like life. You're going to always have things that are maybe not as exciting as others, but you can probably get rid of a lot of them. You probably really can. You could probably just find yourself, you know, not saying like, oh, man, I got to do this thing and it sucks. Still going to have to go to the DMV.

Still going to have to pay bills. There's going to still be things that just aren't fun. But for the most part, I think you can get rid of a lot of them. I hope the line's not long at the DMV. I really like what you said there about just don't have hopes. Because, yeah, I feel, because I have sometimes have said this to my daughter, like, don't give your hopes up. Like, it sounds almost like you're saying, hey, it's probably not going to happen. Yeah, you're not trying to be, what, pessimistic.

Yes. But, yeah, learning how to just not have hopes and just accept what's coming, but also being prepared. I think that's huge. And yeah, why don't people talk about how others have just made their mind up? Like, oh, he made his mind up to do X, Y, and Z. Hold on, wait. All he had to do was just convince himself to do it. And it happened. Right. Is that it? Yeah. Okay. Shit.

And we've talked before about interest level, just interested. It's really interesting. Really, really interested. I mean, Jeff Bezos was really interested in selling books. And one of the reasons he was interested in selling books is there's, in selling books. And one of the reasons he was interested in selling books is there's, there's not a larger, more diverse commodity in the world than books. Like I forget exactly what the term is, but there's like more books than there is anything else that you can possibly think of. And there's a lot of books that people don't have access to. And then like, what do books have in them? Books have information. It was information and information provides value. Sometimes the books are,

uh, no, not always like, uh, informational. Sometimes they're entertainment or whatever, but, um,

he's provides a service for people. He was excited about that. And he got excited about some other things. It will keep his level of interest high enough to, I mean, I think we have to recognize that. Okay. Yes. that's a special dude. Like there's some circumstances in that guy's life that most of us will never be able to figure out. We'll never be able to figure out, you know, some of the things he's done from a financial standpoint, but

you know, they're going to like when he dies, you know, at some point, are they going to do an autopsy and they're going to be like, Hey, look, man, he's got this whole extra part of his brain, you know, that's called the blah,

blah, blah, blah, that nobody else has, you know, and then same thing with Elon Musk. And then they look at Steve jobs brain and they find out that these people were aliens or they're superior to everybody else in some weird way. And it just, it's not, it's not true. We're all,

we're all actually very much more similar than, than you think. And as a human, you know, we have the ability to make a choice to choose. You get to choose your own words. You know, you get to choose the words that you use, the words that come out of your mouth every day that you're trying to communicate to other people. Maybe you don't even recognize that you're hearing them, too. Someone says, hey, man, how you doing? And if you go, I know I'm hanging in there.

And your shoulders are slumped and you're kind of looking down at the ground. Like, does that does that help you? Like, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think it helps you. I don't think you need to go around living a lie all the time either being like, Hey, I'm great. You know, but how are you doing, man? Oh, I'm doing pretty good, man. How about yourself? You know, just, you just, you didn't really give that much information. wasn't good it wasn't bad if you feel good you should probably you know emphatically say i feel fucking awesome because that'll probably you'll probably be like yeah fucking

right man i feel awesome you know probably give you a little they'll probably give you a little pep but maybe even you you know, beyond that, you, um, you just kind of change, start to make a lot of changes, start to clear a lot of it out. You know, I did a video recently talking about perspective and talking about, I cleaned out a lot of stuff, but I left a couple of things behind on purpose just to kind of have things that still fuck with me here and there. They get me fired up. They get me excited that, you know, I can use things from when I was a kid to, you know, get me to still have a lot of great energy in the gym. I could just think of, and it's negative energy, you know, but it's energy.

It's still going to burn, you know. The stuff out here in California, you know, the stuff that burns like it has to burn. It's supposed to burn. It's fuel. It's dry shit. It's supposed to. It's supposed to burn. It's supposed to.

But it doesn't all burn. And why doesn't it all burn? Why doesn't it all go away? Because it's going to need more fuel at another time. And I feel like I can kind of rely on some of these things. Somebody, you know, somebody listening right now has been wronged by somebody, a parent, a guardian of some sort, in a relationship. Like, don't throw that thing away. Don't be depressed. Don't be a pussy about it. Hold on to that thing, you know, hold on to that thing and use it like a pair of brass knuckles

for when you need it. You know, pull that thing out of your pocket, hammer somebody over the head with it. I don't mean literally. And I'm also not, I always need to point out, I, you know, I very fortunate was never abused, not sexually, not verbally, not physically, none of that. So I want to always make sure that I just say like, I don't, I don't pretend to know what any of that is about, but I would say that I do know that you still have, everyone has a choice on their perspective on these different things that have happened to them because I have many, many friends who suffered through a lot of those things and they made choices to still be excellent, amazing people.

And like one of those people is CT Fletcher. He's like the baddest man on the planet. Maybe the greatest guy that ever lived. He's amazing. Everybody loves CT. But you kind of get my point is that, you know, you still, even though everything that might've happened to you might've really sucked. You still have a choice to kind of make up your mind and figure out what it is that you want to be. I know this is probably pretty

far off the track of strong or tough, but I think it kind of falls in the category of being maybe a little bit of both. Yeah. I think it all fits right in line with everything, you know, with that question, with everything you said, and then, you know, just real quick with CT and, you know, you said earlier about like, when you do face a struggle with everything you said and then you know just real quick with ct and you know you said earlier about like when you do face a struggle like you should be kind of pumped about it um i don't know do you ever play the game shoots and ladders i remember playing as a kid yeah yeah you stopped playing it because it's fucking easy and it got boring right so all of a sudden call of duty comes out that. That's really hard. Everybody loves playing that. Simple, stupid example, but that's what we're talking about.

Yeah. No, there's a lot of things that are, there's a lot of things that are like that where you, there's, you know, you're, you're not going to be stimulated by it. There's not enough, there's not enough resistance. Playing tic-tac-toe, you know, there's like a strategy in tic-tac-toe where you can either tie the game every single time or you can win break it yeah yeah if you go first right and then once you learn that like the whole game is messed up forever you know you can't you can't even have you can't even have fun with it anymore and so i i really think it's um i think it's just you know, it's a really important factor to take whatever it is that you want to do.

And, and literally take it. Like, what do you want to do? One of my favorite quotes is in a 50 cent song. I think it's 50 cent. Oh, wait, no, it's a, maybe it's Snoop Dogg. He says, want some, get some, bad enough, take some. I love that. You want it, go and fucking get it. But you better be bad enough to get it. I mean bad in a good way, right?

Be bad enough to get it. But what do you have to do to do that? You can't be the same pussy person that you are right now. Because that shit ain't going to work. You're going to have to figure out a way to arm yourself, to armor yourself. To have some thicker skin, to be a little stronger. To have some weapons in your back pocket, maybe your front pocket, maybe even in your sock to figure out how to get past, you know, a lot of these things.

So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed that. I'm getting fired up to get some lifting in right now. I'm going to do some shoulders. I'm going to do some shoulders. I'm going to do some biceps and some triceps. I just want to share one more thing with you guys for just a second. Andrew, if you can maybe give these people the Free Sleeve code. This episode is brought to you by our peeps over at Free Sleeve. It's a company I got involved with a few years back um you know it's always a pain in the ass to try to uh you know put some ice on an elbow or a

knee uh when you get done with a training session and you're you're trying to put like if you put like direct ice on there you're going to get like skin irritation you're all screwed up and if you're trying to put on like a thing of meat on your leg or something, it's like kind of gross. And you're just like, I don't know. You're trying to use a knee wrap and wrap it around. And none of that shit works. But a freeze sleeve is great. It's a product that looks like an elbow and knee sleeve.

You just slide it right on. Comes in a bunch of different sizes. Comes in a bunch of different colors. And you guys should go check it out over at freezesleeve.com. Andrew's going to give you a little bit more information to give you a code yeah everything that mark said and i'll just yeah reiterate one more time it's it's it's an amazing wearable ice pack if you want if you can imagine that um it doesn't drip it doesn't sweat it doesn't leak uh super convenient and it does get super cold but it doesn't get painfully cold. I don't want to sound like a weenie, but I'm not jumping in an ice bath for a reason. So to upgrade your ice packs today, head over to freesleeve.com.

Straight up spelling, but I'll go ahead and do it anyway. F-R-E-E-Z-E-S-L-E-E-V-E.com. At checkout, enter promo code POWER 25 for 25% off and free domestic shipping on all orders. This is real quick. I know we're hammering you guys with a lot today, but hopefully you had your pen and pad out today and hopefully you got somewhere.

I'm not going to share who this was shared with, but I shared this with a friend. I kind of recently was told that they fell off their plan a little bit from a diet perspective, but they already done such a great job losing some weight and, uh, just wanted to kind of give them some encouragement. And, um, they were, they were pretty bummed that they fell back into some habits. And, um, I basically shared this and just said, uh, you know, I don't believe in on and off. I believe it's more, you know, I don't believe in on and off.

I believe it's more, you know, these things are more of a detour. Sometimes you simply don't want to continue to improve. Like literally sometimes you just, sometimes you get sick of it, you know, and you just want to be a quote unquote regular person. You don't want to think about lifting. You don't want to think about eating more protein. You're just kind of like, you know, like I just, and again, this goes back to the interest level thing that I talk about all the time, but your interest level can be reinvigorated.

So don't be afraid to take a little time off. Don't be, don't be afraid to take, don't be afraid to say, you know what? I'm just going to stop lifting. I know it sounds like a slippery slope and it sounds dangerous. I'm just going to stop lifting. I know it sounds like a slippery slope and it sounds dangerous. I'm just going to stop lifting. Now that doesn't mean you stop lifting. You don't do anything else. I'm going to stop lifting this week. I'm just going to walk and I'm going to see, you know, I'm going to see how I feel after five days or seven days, most likely three days later, you're going to be back in the gym more, more than likely, especially if you already had the bug for lifting anyway.

So sometimes you just kind of get sick of it. Sometimes you tend to fall back into some of these quote unquote bad habits, but these bad, these bad habits are minor compared to what they used to be. So the damage that you do now is way less than what you used to be. Maybe you, you know, maybe you cheated on your diet, but maybe you just had dessert at the end of the day. And that's not nearly as bad as the way you used to start out your day with the donut. And then, you know, at lunch,

you would eat a burrito and then for dinner you would overeat and you would hammer a dessert and then you would eat some cereal or whatever it is. So you have to kind of realize that the progress that you made is probably pretty damn good. And just think, you know, where were you a year ago? Where were you two years ago? And if you're ahead,

you can't be beating yourself up for it. Now, this is a huge rule that I have, and this is probably an entire Saturday school, but I say never kicked, never kick a downed opponent. I love UFC. I love watching fights.

I love watching boxing. I love watching all that stuff. But when something gets overly grotesque, violent, where the other competitor is incapacitated, they can't defend themselves anymore. I don't want to see that guy get hit. I like watching it because it's a good competition. I don't like watching it because it's violent necessarily. I like seeing these two guys

are skilled. They're fighting under the same conditions. And yeah, it's kind of neat. You see a guy get popped pretty good. Like, wow, like that was real intense. And that was, that was pretty wild, but I don't want to see too much more than that. I don't want to see the guy's arms collapse to the side or his hand get caught in the cage and the guy drills him five times. I think that we do this with ourselves all the time. You can't kick a downed opponent. So when you tell yourself, I can't believe I did that. I'm a piece of shit. I'm a fat fuck and I'll never, I'm never going to be in shape. You can't go down that road. You can't do that to yourself. What you can do is say, damn it, you know what?

You're doing it again. You're starting to screw up on your diet. You're starting to slip on your training and you know that it's in your best interest to get back into it. That's it. You recognized it. You're going to draw attention to the problem.

Give yourself a solution. Give yourself a way out. What's the new way out? You're going to call a friend, see if they want to lift with you or whatever. Maybe you're going to talk to your spouse or significant other and say, Hey, I, you know, I could use your help. You know, I'm kind of falling apart. So these are all just things that I've noticed over the years, you know, go ahead and, and

and what you want to do from there is you want to really try to persuade yourself to reach your goals. You want to have a pull towards your goals rather than having actions against your goals that are so negative. Because if you, you can't force someone to be a good person. You can't force someone who's fat to be skinny. You can't force someone who's skinny to be jacked. You can't force someone who's dumb to be smart. You can't force someone who's smart to be dumb. You can't force anybody to do anything, including yourself.

Including yourself. It cannot be forced. It has to be something that is steady over a long period of time so it could appear forced because it can appear that the guy was once fat and now he's slim but it was a long progression it was it took time you worked on that for a really long time and I think it's just really important that you make sure that you don't try to kick a downed opponent. You're making sure that you're not doing what is referred to as acts of coercion. This is like, this is forceful. You're being forceful against yourself. If you don't do this, this is the consequence. If you don't do that,

this is the consequence. Doesn't work't do that, this is the consequence. Doesn't work. It's not reformative. Look at our jails, right? You look at that system. The system is very broken. And it's because when you tell someone, hey, when you do that, it's going to result in this. That means that you're a bad person and we're going to lock you up.

It's not enough because it's not reformative because you're not showing them a different way. You have to teach yourself a different way. You got to show yourself a different way and it can't be through force. Otherwise, you're just going to keep kind of falling into these pitfalls. So just remember, never kick the down opponent and fight fairly, especially when it's against yourself. If you guys have made it this far into the episode, please hit that like button. Leave us a comment on something that inspired you today or just something that stood out to you.

I have another page full of notes that I'll have to go back through just for my damn self. But that last downed opponent thing is huge. The person that you're talking about that you sent it to did screenshot it and post it on their Instagram. Hell yeah. Yeah. Shout out to my boy then. My boy JP.

Yeah. He just said, you know, when Mark Bell hits your inbox with straight gold. So he was fired up. And I think that is is huge i am definitely somebody that will kick myself when i'm down i do it too that's how i know about this stuff i'm not making this stuff up i'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or anything like that i'm just i'm i'm well an amateur i'm a butt doctor more so than anything else, whatever that's called. But, uh, no, I, I just, I experienced a lot of this stuff myself. I do a lot of this myself and, uh, I feel like at this point I almost have a PhD in

it. That's great, dude. So yeah. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Um, huge shout out to free sleeve. They just, you know, hopped on board with the power project. So please show them some love. Links will be down in the YouTube and Facebook description, as well as whatever podcast app

you're listening to this on. Again, that promo code is Power25. Let's, yeah, let's go ahead and just like break their damn website. Mark's over here flexing. I'm flexing into the microphone. Can you guys hear? But yeah, any who follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB

power project on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn, Facebook, of course, YouTube, trying to think anything else, maybe your local newspaper while we're at it. If you guys want to hit me up,

it's at I'm Andrew Z Mark bail. You got a couple of things going on. Where can people find you? You can find me at, you know what? Go over to markbale.com because we just keep adding shit over there. You guys are going to love it. We got our Super Friends section. Please check that out.

We also have Mark Bale University. There's old workouts from me when I was a fatty, fatty power lifter. And there's some workouts, more recent workouts of what I do now. I talk a lot about nutrition. There's a lot of great stuff on there. We have a lot of great people that are interacting on there all the time. And we have a lot of great people that are helping with that website. My boy, Jesse Burdick.

Shout out to my boy, Burdick, for cranking out another baby, a little cute baby girl. Congratulations to him and his family. And also our boy Josh Setledge is working day and night, day and night on that website. So please go check that out. And I'm at Mark Smiley Bell on all our other thingies. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. I'm out of here.