Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Saturday School EP. 25 - The Blue Print Remains The Same

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

There was no blue print, there was no road map, there was no guide to getting better in 2020, however, Mark Bell teaches us that it does not matter because the blue print remains the same no matter what year it is, no matter what your situation is, it is the same and always will be. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢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 #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

We are rolling. It's Saturday school, y'all. Welcome to Saturday school, everybody. Hopefully you made it in time for the bell. Hopefully you got here promptly. Get your number two pencils out. You know, I've never seen a number one or number three pencil. Two and a half.

And speaking of like... All the tactics in school to scare the shit out of you. It's going to be on your permanent record. That's right. We talked about that. But also like beating the bell and like getting in like dude i was always late what they oh yeah they got so mad at you for that like i would get detention my school was huge they made it impossible to get across that was the worst too and then uh you know as i got older the school only got bigger and the girls just got cuter so it's like this is impossible these girls smell

good and everything they look good and it's like how am i not supposed to be like following them around and right how am i supposed to concentrate on anything around here this is ridiculous yeah what i didn't understand is like you know some people like they would get away with stuff and you're just like man that guy again like he's always late but the teacher likes him yeah he's just like what the what's going on here zaragoza stay after class yeah like bell you're all good pretty much that's why i like sitting there chewing gum with your backwards hat on like just not giving a fuck you know that's why i like mark bell saturday school because we don't we don't have to deal with that we don't have to deal with uh detention anymore

yeah yet today we're going to talk about, you know, kind of building a roadmap, roadmap, a success, a blueprint and how, you know, during the pandemic, there's not a pandemic blueprint that we've had to lay out before.

But I think the thing is thing to, to keep in mind is that the blueprint is kind of always the same and it's hard to follow. It's hard to follow a game plan. You know, Mike Tyson has that famous quote, everyone's got a game plan until they get punched in the mouth type thing, right? Everyone does have a game plan until chaos comes, until things start to get a little iffy. And then you're like, I don't know, like, is that going to really actually work out?

I'll give you an example. The law of attraction is a great example of that. I'm a huge proponent of not accepting money for a lot of reasons and not, you know, I'm not talking about a job or a job well done. Talking a little bit more in the category of like a favor. Uh, talking a little bit more in the category of like a favor, talking more in the category of, um, you're supposed to meet someone for coffee and they're a little late and you just picked up the coffee and what, and a breakfast thing for them. And, and, and they, you know, slide you a 10 or 20 and say, Hey, don't worry about it type of thing.

Those, those things are tough to do in the face of chaos in the face of like yeah i don't know if i got enough gas money to like get back from this coffee place but hopefully hopefully nobody notices that my car is not going to start when i go to get back in it or whatever um yeah very difficult very difficult to to to to stick to your principles and and to stick to what you believe in. But what you'll learn is the more that you can stick to what you believe in, the more that what you believe in appears to be the truth and it appears to be real. And it's just your truth. It's your own truth. It's your own beliefs. You know, it's not necessarily a truth for everybody else. But we end up with these situations in life where we get really tested. And I think 2020 was a test.

And I think, I don't know about you guys, but for myself, I get into tough predicaments and sometimes I'm like, oh, wow, like, I don't know if I can handle this. And I do doubt myself. sometimes I'm like, oh, wow, like, I don't know if I can handle this. And I do doubt myself. But once I get past that doubt, if I can hang in there past the doubt and I can kind of keep my hands up and stay in the fight and things get harder and they get worse, but I'm still there. I'm like, yeah, motherfucker, this is great. This is what I'm here for. Now I'm excited. Now you got my attention because I'm like, OK okay this is a challenge and this is going to be a deeper darker harder challenge than i've ever had to deal with before but i'm ready for that

shit i don't know if like a lot of you that are listening right now if you've ever experienced what i'm talking about but i was listening to astro creep from uh rob zombie the other day and uh there's a quote in there that he says uh he says i want more live fucker i ain't done and i'm like damn i'm like i love that line uh and you have to kind of like fight for these things you know you they don't just there is a law of attraction and there is like um some rules and things i believe in like allowing things to just come to you and not. Like hunting them down so severely or so harshly, like something like success, like I don't think it's great to like chase success. I think success is something that will it will come back to you.

However. There's times where you got to push forward and you have to, you have to do stuff that other people aren't willing to do. I think for myself, if I kind of think back to kind of where some of my success has started and, uh, when I'm talking about success, I'm referring to, um,

financial gain. There's many other forms of success, but this is a success that a lot of people recognize in our society. So, um, I, we, we talk about it often because a lot of other people are trying to obtain something similar. And so here we go. Um, when I try to think back to like where some of this started for me, it all, like I can connect the dots looking back and that's a Steve Jobs quote. He says, you can connect the dots when you look back upon your life but when you were in it and you were trying to look forward you were

like this does not make any sense you know for me to travel to Columbus Ohio from Los Angeles when I didn't have any money to go to a seminar to see to see Dave Tate like just didn't make any sense logistically, but I figured it out. I actually was super crafty and super resourceful and not necessarily anything special, but I had a friend that worked for Southwest, so I was able to get a hookup

on tickets. I want to say these tickets still had a lot of value to him because he could share them with family members and stuff. So I still had to give him some money for it. But he was like, yeah, man, give me, I don't know, you know, 50 bucks to get you out there. 50, 100, give me 100 bucks for a round trip. I'm like, man, 100 bucks.

Like, that's that's sick. Like, otherwise it would cost me like three something or whatever, you know, I would stay with somebody else in a hotel room or, you know, try to figure out not, not bumming off them. I would still try to pay half or whatever I could or whatever way I could handle, um, handle it. But when I look back on it now, it's like I go to this seminar and the guy that's teaching the seminar grew up with the same circumstances that I did, grew up pretty much the same way as I did. He grew up with two parents. I cared about him a lot. He went to school. He really struggled like hell in school. He had learning disabilities.

He shared this story on the first day he gets up and he talks about, um, this dumb kid in school that couldn't figure out, you know, you know, couldn't, couldn't figure, couldn't figure out hardly anything that later turned himself into success and became a successful personal trainer, entrepreneur,

strength coach and business owner. And then he cut, that's how he introduced himself. And he's like, and that person is standing in front of you today. And I was like, I, the whole time I thought he was talking about me.

Now I wasn't successful at the time, so I knew he wasn't talking about me. But I was like, damn, okay, now this guy's got my attention. And I think, you know, we don't really know why these things happen, but like having that be my influencer, you know, I've had other great influences in my life. My dad's a huge one. My mom's a huge one that many people, both my brothers, I mean, people all had huge impact. Um, but Dave Tate was a really a great mentor to me, but like none of this would have happened if I didn't believe in what I believed in. I mean, first of all, I had to believe in the West side method, right?

I had to believe in the conjugate system. I had to believe in that style of training just to even get me there. How weird is that? Like I had to believe in box squats and dynamic effort work and speed work and all these things that, uh, at the time they weren't that hard to believe in because that's what a lot of other people were doing for their training.

And they were doing so with, uh, with some great results. But as I'm going through this process, I didn't really know what it was all for. And I really love the idea of your, your sacrificing for the unknown future. You know, you're sacrificing something today or something that you're unaware of the unknown future you know you're sacrificing something today or something that you're unaware of down the road and there's something beautiful about that because if you were sacrificing for something that's knowable it's different because it's like um it's more like a time commitment or investment and not a sacrifice. Like if you're, if you're, if you're giving up something because you understand what the return is and the return is going to probably be pretty positive, then that's a little bit more of like an investment.

You go to nursing school and you come out the other end and you're a nurse. That's not really sacrificing for the unknown necessarily. That's not really sacrificing for the unknown necessarily. You know, I think sacrificing for the unknown is doing these things where you're like, this does not make sense. I'm spending money and I need to do the opposite. I need to make money. And you're not really understanding what that education is going to do for you, especially for me, because I didn't have a desire to be a strength coach. I didn't have a desire to really be a personal trainer, but I was just obsessed with continuing to learn more.

It was almost just for myself. But I always had a belief that this was the right path. I don't know why, but I always had a belief that this is the right path. It was kind of like I would tell myself repeatedly, like, dude, don't worry about it. Like, if you just get if you just get strong as possible, everything else will work out just fine. And I don't know why I believe that because it doesn't make any sense really. But I think I knew that if I could figure out how to get myself strong, I could figure

out how to get other people strong and I could figure out how to get other people interested in strength and in fitness. And so that's the route that I ended up going. And I didn't know, you know, any of the things that I know now about like, you know, the kind of do more, be more type of principle of the more that you do, the more that you can handle. But I was setting the groundwork for a lot of that because as I'm learning these things, as I'm starting to integrate these things in my life, I'm able to do more, you know, I'm able to, I'm able to become more. One of the things I think

where people really miss out is they miss out on the fact that in order to like be something, in order to truly like be something or to feel like you're something or someone, In order to truly like be something or to feel like you're something or someone, you will have to have, you will have to have done something of some sort of significance. So it's kind of weird because how do you believe in yourself if you haven't done that yet? And for me, it was all these kind of small steps of like, hey, learn this, gain this skill acquisition, and then see how you feel. Learn how to do a box squat. And then through the process of learning how to do a box squat, go from a 600-pound squat to a 700-pound squat. How does that make you feel?

It's like, okay, well, I know something about self-improvement. I know how to make myself better. I did so through efficiency and through learning and through paying attention. And so right now for some people, you know, in this time of this pandemic, I think people are scared to take risks. People are worried about, you know, trying to learn and play the long game. And they're really concerned because they're like, I don't know what's, you know, I don't know what's going to happen next. Meanwhile, the people that are already successful, you know what they're doing? They're like rubbing their hands together and licking their chops because they're like,

this is the greatest time that we've ever had. I just talked to a friend yesterday. Like this is the greatest time that we've ever had. I just talked to a friend yesterday. He's like 2021 is going to be like the, the people that are already doing really well are going to double and triple what they're doing. Elon Musk just became the wealthiest man in the world. I think it was like yesterday or something like that. And so those people are going to continue to really,

really thrive and excel. But why is that? Like, what's their blueprint? Did they have a blueprint that they just dusted off that they pulled out from their blueprint pandemic file? Or is there some sort of universal law going on that has been around forever? That is the same thing that we always talk about, about being consistent, sacrificing for the unknown, building enough consistency to the point where it builds a lot of confidence, and then having that confidence and taking your knowledge. The difference between knowledge and wisdom is that wisdom is taking knowledge that you have and now you're applying

it. Think about how many people you know in your life that are really knowledgeable. And now think about people that you know in your life that you would say, that person has a lot of wisdom. There's probably like three people that you can think of in your head where you're like, that person applies a lot of what they know very successfully. person applies a lot of what they know very successfully having a lot of knowledge is is almost completely useless if you're not putting it into action not putting it into action or if you're not sharing it out it really doesn't do you any good it's just just, at that point, it's just information.

So, you know, gaining a skill acquisition is always going to be one of your most important things. And when something like a pandemic rolls around, you are not scared. You know exactly what to do. I think some people that have had, you know, some really crazy circumstances like shutting down a restaurant or shutting down a local mom and pop business. Maybe they can have time to kind of reset and think of like a different way of running their business. Maybe they can think of like, is there a way for me to shift to something online? Think of like, is there a way for me to shift to something online? You know, I have a good friend that has a gym and she's done a great job of shifting her focus into having some online classes and, you know, her classes aren't thriving.

It's not like they're, it's not like it's killing it, but it's still providing fitness for a good amount of people and people are still excited about it. And she's still able to move forward. She's still able to have her gym. And there's certain parts of her gym that she's able to keep open because they got an outside facility and things like that. And so she was able to kind of continue to move forward. How can you continue to move forward? Well, there's some universal laws that allow you to do that. And these are the things that allow you to do that. And these are the things that, these are the things that you, you already, you already know a lot of these things, you know, showing up on time, uh, you know, um,

being kind to people. Um, and then also just like using your, using your mind, like trying to really think, you know, maybe you did lose your job, but maybe that's great because maybe your job sucked and maybe your job was slowing you down. Was your job like interrupting your life? Was your job in the way of you living the life that you were meant to live on this earth or, or was your job defining you? Was your job something that you really loved that, you know, this is Andrew and he's a sanitation worker. Was that your career that you really wanted to do? Or were you kind of stuck in a job anyway?

Because I think there's a lot of people out there that lost their job that are just kind of thinking, yeah, man, I lost, you know, I just lost my job. And it's like, well, that was four months ago, you know? And I empathize with you and I understand that shit's different now and, and things, things might be difficult, but what companies are thriving? What companies are hiring? I just mentioned Elon Musk, you know, becoming the wealthiest man in the time period of COVID. Did he hire more people? He probably did. He's got more money, probably hired more people. He probably has more help, probably has better help.

Or maybe there's a need to get to mars a little faster now with everything everything that's going on and what about amazon and i mean there's a lot of businesses out there doordash so you can choose to like sit around and be mopey and sad and say you know i don't have a job i don't have this or that or you can pick yourself up i mean one google search you know one google search i think will bring up a list of some of the top jobs that you can pick yourself up. I mean, one Google search, you know, one Google search, I think will bring up a list of some of the top jobs that you can try to apply for. And even aside, even aside from just that, again, it could be a blessing that you don't have a job at the moment

because you could be thinking and you could be working. Like, forget about like work as you once knew it. Now pick the job that you want. You know, think about the job. Think about the life that you want. You know, think about the job. Think about the life that you want. What would you do if you just had your way? Like, what would you do? If you had your own way, what would you do?

Maybe what you would do is something that like doesn't seem like it would work in the next two, three years, because maybe it's like you want to open up a store of some kind. So that doesn't seem like a great option, because who the hell knows how long we'll be dealing with what we're dealing with. So that would be that would be a harder play. Could you have online representation that maybe you love fishing and maybe you always want to have a fishing store and maybe part of that fishing store was you getting to know the customers and stuff.

Well, maybe you can't have a fishing store. Maybe you can't have a physical location, but maybe you can have a website. Maybe you could sell stuff online. There's, you know, there's a lot, there's, there's more options if you, if you just continue to start to wrap your, your mind around what the hell it is that you want to do. If I can take you guys back for a moment to my early beginnings, recently we had Zach Evanesh on markbell.com, and he shared a story with everybody about Jesse Burdick and myself

traveling from California to New Jersey to do a seminar. And this seminar, you know, I was thinking I'm kind of in the height of my powerlifting career. I'm kind of at my, not at my absolute strongest, but I'm getting there. I'm squatting in the 900s and lifting some pretty damn good weights at that time. And so I thought there would be a pretty good appeal and pretty good following. At the time, I already worked for Dave Tate and Elite FTS and had a little bit of an online presence. So I thought, you know, a seminar at Zach's place and like, you know, 150 bucks per person or something like that, or whatever the dollar amount was

like, we should be able to knock that out pretty good. And we should have, you know, about 20, 30 people. And that would be really cool. And make a little bit of money, get to go to the East Coast, visit some family, share some information and some good times with some people and call it a day. Well, I think despite Zach's efforts, I think we maybe had about five people that really wanted to go. And I think two people were comps because they were coaches in, in the area. And another person that showed up was my cousin, Steven. And I was about it,

you know, and, and Zach and I decided, Hey, well, it's just, you know, if it's going to be that way,

let's just invite a couple of people to it as well. So we still had a really low turnout, but my whole thing was as I was communicating with Zach, you know, Zach was like, look, man, it's like, it's not worth it, man. I think there's only a couple of people that want to, there's only a couple of people that signed up. And I said, Hey, if we got anybody signed up, then I'm coming because even if I just have one person to teach, I need the exercise. I need the experience. I need to get in front of people and I need to talk because communicating is going to be something that's going to be important for me.

And I just want to teach people. I just want someone to learn. So if one person learns something cool and they get to pass it on to somebody else, then my mission would be complete. So I didn't know why I was saying all that at the time. I call it Burdick and tell him and Burdick's like, oh man, that doesn't sound great. Like that kind of sucks. But Jesse and I were happy that we would spend some time together and hang out. Well, I think maybe about a week goes by and now it's about two weeks out from when we're going to go, or I'm sorry, it's about a week out before we're going to go. Jesse calls me and has the terrible news that his brother died. And Jesse is from the East coast as I am.

I, and, uh, Jesse's like, well, you know, it works out great. Cause we already have those flights,

you know, and that's around the time I need to be home anyway. And he's like, oh, you know, I can go home and I can see my family. Jesse's from Pennsylvania. I think we flew into like New Jersey or something like that.

I don't really remember a lot of the logistics of it. And Jesse went through all that. He went to his brother's funeral. He drove, you know, really far to get to the seminar. We still did the seminar. And, you know, the whole time I'm checking in with Jesse, but he's like, this is the best thing that could have happened, you know, because I'm with my best friend.

We're on the road. We're kicking it. He's like, I got the best thing that could have happened, you know, because I'm with my best friend. We're on the road. We're kicking it. He's like, I got nothing else to think about, except for this seminar and training and hanging out with you. He's like, this is great. Again, there's another example of like sacrificing for the unknown. We have no idea any of this stuff's going to happen. We didn't know his brother was going to die. We didn't know.

We didn't know what a great time we were going to have. We didn't know the relationship that we developed with our buddy, Zach, who's been a longtime friend ever since then. And we also got to meet some other great strength coaches that weekend. And we got to just learn a lot about ourselves. Like we know like, Hey,

look when, when there's adversity, it's not going to change our game plan. Our game plan is going to be the same. Like the, the plan for success. We, we the same. Like the plan for success. We, we think that this is the plan for success. And just because a tragedy happened or just because people didn't want to show up to the

seminar, uh, doesn't really matter what was going to be in our way. We're like, well, maybe this isn't the best plan we ever drew up, but this is the plan and we're still going to follow it. And following your plan and sticking to your guns is, it ends up being massively important. For myself, and this might sound very egotistical, but I kind of think it's my job in inventing and creating products to show people what's cool because they have a hard time recognizing it for themselves

sometimes. And so like when I make a product, like I'm making a new, a new supplement coming out really soon called the steak shake. The steak shake is a, is an innovative idea. The slingshot was an innovative idea. People didn't even really know that they needed it. I need to needed to show them like,

this is something that you need. And they were like, they weren't like, Oh yeah, of course I need that because it's like this. It wasn't like anything else they ever tried before. So I had to like make up reasons on why I felt they needed it and how it was going to support them, assist them, help them bench more weight.

The steak shake is a little bit more natural to where it's very obvious. It has a lot of vitamins and minerals and components to it that are essential to your body anyway, because it has liver, it has heart, it has kidney. It has all these things in all in one shake, including having steak, whole eggs, whey protein and collagen in it. So it has a wide array of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and just things that are great for your body. And so somebody might say, well, why in the hell would I need that? Well, now it's my job to show you why I think that you need it.

I've been on a carnivore style diet for a long time. And rather than like showing you and explaining to you a million ways that I can, which I will still do, I'd rather just lead by example and say, hey, look, this is what's working for me. This is how this is benefiting me. And this whole time with a lot of the stuff that I've been doing, that's all I've ever really tried to do in the first place is just try to lead by example and try to show you guys like, this is what this looks like to do this day in and day out. This is what it looks like to, uh, you know, work towards your goal. And when I share stuff online about being a success or buying a new home in Tahoe or something, it's more to show you guys, like, what I hope that you can look at that and say, I can do that shit.

I can do that shit better than Bell, I bet. Like, Bell's smart, man. Like, that guy's got his shit together. He's pretty jacked. He's pretty tan, but I wonder what I'm capable of. Cause I bet, I bet if I was to apply myself like that,

I bet I could kind of shock myself and, and do some damage too. That's what I hope people see. That's what I hope people are getting out of it. And this, you know, this whole time during this pandemic, it's so easy to use the pandemic as an excuse. I just got off a podcast with Carl Lenore.

And he used the podcast or he used he used the pandemic and used moving as an excuse not to train for a little bit. It was like I was moving and I was, you know, but like, how long does it take to move your home? Like we've all moved before moving your home. It actually usually takes like a day. There's usually one day, one day of reckoning where you move everything. And a lot of times too, you have, it's like, there's some sort of people are helping or either friends are helping or you hire a company to help a little bit too but it there's usually like one main day of moving now yeah of course there's going to be some other days involved and shifting some boxes around folding shit up and putting it away and taking shit out of the boxes and so forth right

but that doesn't have anything to do with your training or your training time, because it's not like it's not like you're going to you're going to move and then be all of a sudden moved in. Like it takes months. Right. Like there is like a day where you may move most of the stuff. But then like weeks and months go by and that painting still isn't hanging up and the stuff's not out of the box all the way yet. You still have stuff from your kitchen that's in the garage and you forget and you forget where your Christmas shit is and so forth. And it takes a long time to really be like officially, uh, settled into that house. But if you wait around for that and put everything else on pause, you would be fat as hell. Um, people do this with their kitchen.

A lot of the kitchen is getting, you know, the kitchen is getting redone. So, um, okay, that's fine. The kitchen is's getting redone but i don't really understand the connection to taco bell i mean is there is there an unwritten law somewhere a rule that says because your uh your oven is you know not installed yet that you have to eat taco bell every day you know i'm pretty sure i've never seen that rule before i just i have to call out my brother because they did the uh the the kitchen remodel and yeah they it's like yeah we have a microwave upstairs and that's all we use right now like okay yeah and uh and it's like um yeah i understand the inconvenience but you have a box of cookies sitting here like what's I'm kind of like the cookies are the cookies essential to,

to your survival, you know, at the moment. So the same blueprint that has always been around forever, that has taken people everywhere they want to go and more is the same blueprint that you're going to whip out during a pandemic. It's the same exact thing. You want to figure out how to do more and be more. The more that you can do, the more that you can handle. The more that you can handle,

the easier it is to tolerate the stresses and the things of life. They're just going to bounce off you. You're going to seem unimpacted by them. You're going to seem unaffected by them. People are going to say what does deal with this guy how does how does he do so many things at once and you're not really you're not necessarily doing anything at once it's just that you build up a tolerance towards um being uncomfortable and you built up a tolerance towards you, if I was to, if I was to flash some cards at you and I just held them up out of

nowhere and I flashed a card of like a teddy bear, right? You know, you could react a certain way to the teddy bear. And then the next thing I hold up is like, uh, you know, somebody tucked in their bed, like looking all comfy and cozy and little Z's coming out of their, out of their mouth. Like they're sleeping, right? These are all things that are kind of like comfortable. And the next thing I show you is like an infected leg, you know, and like, right. You can make a face as if you were able to actually smell that infected leg and see it. And as if it was really here or as if it was your own leg,

I mean, you can react to that whatever way you want, or you can look at it and say, wow, okay, there was some damage done to that guy's leg. I wonder if that's like a war injury or whatever. You don't necessarily have to make the queasy face and like pretend you're going to barf from it.

You could, right? Life is similar. Like when life flashes these different cards at us, we can react with whatever face that we want. What I try to do is I try to just have the same face all the time. There you're off the team face. No, I try to just have the same kind of look every time, you know, trying to be stoic because I believe that the reaction in your face

gets dumped into the rest of the system. And so if I'm jogging down the street and gritting my teeth and making this crazy face, how many times have you seen people, somebody run down the street like that before? Like they're, they're running, they're out for a jog,

but I've never seen anybody really run like that before. I've seen a couple older people where it's kind of clear they got a, you know, a certain style of running cause they're banged up or whatever. Um, but normally you see someone running, they're kind of, they're normally,

they're pretty happy. And a lot of times they're kind of relaxed. Maybe if you're like sprinting or something, you might make a slightly different face, but even like, look at Olympic sprinters. You ever see their face, their face goes all over the track.

Cause their face is supposed to be really loose. Their face goes all over the track because their face is supposed to be really loose their face goes all over the place andrew's laughing like spit comes flying out and just like it just gets to be uh it gets to be crazy because they're trained to really keep their their jaw and everything relaxed they're not supposed to like clamp down on that and um and keep their mouth you know uh super stable but even when we lift when we lift, when we lift, uh, we see a lot of people when they start to warm up, they'll get underneath the bar, look at an underneath, uh, 95 pounds or so. And they'll make these wincing faces. And you're like, that's going

to be a rough day for that guy. Cause he's already calculating like how bad it hurts his knee. And we haven't even had an opportunity to really have him feel the pain that might happen in his knee when he gets to 225 and so forth. And so you make it, you make it worse for yourself. I guess the whole point of that is when these obstacles in life come up, how are you reacting to them? And are you overreacting?

And is there a real reason to make that face as if you're looking at an open wound? Is there really a reason to, you know, go, whoa, oh my God, what is it? Or is that really not useful? How about you just identify, say, okay, that's different. There's an, there's an issue there and we're going to work our way around it. issue there and we're going to work our way around it. Look at what happened last night with the Capitol building kind of getting overrun, right?

You could take, you could take your remote and you could throw your remote dead center in the middle of your television as hard as you can and be like, you know what? I'm tired of all this shit and just completely smash your remote control into a million pieces and just put a nice big crack down the nice TV that you got. And that's all that you'll have for it. A damaged TV, maybe you hurt your shoulder. Been a while since you put some heat on it.

And you have a controller that just exploded and you have a family that's looking at you like you finally lost it. And that's about all you have from it. And it doesn't help anything. Nothing got solved. Nothing. There's no healing. There's no, um, the country doesn't get better. No one improves from it. Uh, the, the only thing that you can do in that situation is say, wow, man, I really, I, I, I kind of hope that, uh, no one gets hurt and then you could hit power, shut the TV off and choose not to ingest any more of that. Or be like, Oh, I'm going to watch some SpongeBob. I feel like being in a better mood rather than being in a worse mood. So I'm going to watch something fun or funny.

We have that choice. I mean, especially when it comes to the TV, you could kind of flip to whatever you want, even though that was on every channel last night. But you could sit there and if you find yourself commenting on stuff like that, that's a great indication that it's time to move on because you're falling into the trap. commenting on stuff like that. That's a great indication that it's time to move on because you're falling into the trap. You're falling into the kind of pandemic trap that makes you think that you

need a different blueprint than you always needed, which is just the same blueprint that's been around forever is that we need to work. We need to put in work every single day. We need to develop some consistency. That consistency needs to turn into confidence and the confidence needs to turn into you starting to see the light on how you can do things a little differently and how you can connect the dots from your future self as if

you were looking back. I mean, think of think of yourself as, as a success already. You're already success, right? Think of yourself as, okay, I'm going to fast forward 10 years into the future and I'm making that a hundred K, 150 K. And I have the, uh, I have the vacation spot and like, I got all these extra cool things that I've really always wanted now start to look back and say, Hmm, how did I get there? Okay. Well, there's, there's the beginning over there. I can see that part. Let me see, like, how, how am I getting to these kinds of

middle spots over here? But what if I, you know, what if I, the discipline I'm having in the gym, it seems like I'm able to make my arms a little bit bigger. I'm able to make my bench press a little bit better. I get leaner every year. I wonder, you know, if I could do those things and I'm manipulating that. And there's a cascade of disciplines that surrounds that, that ensures that I get enough sleep. I take in proper nutrition. I wonder if I took in the proper things, if I'd have the correct skillset to continue to move my mind,

body, and spirit forward in a way that would get me to those dollar amounts. I wonder if I need to go to some seminars. I wonder if I need to read some books. I wonder if I need to listen to some podcasts. Remember, you're the-product of what you consistently do. You know, that is the simplest thing, simplest way of putting any of this. You're the by-product of what you consistently do. And what is it you're consistent, you know, show me where your time is and I can show you where you're going to end up.

Like, where are you spending your time? If you are repeatedly spending your time in areas that are, that are not conducive towards your goal, it doesn't mean you're a loser. It doesn't mean you're a bum. It just means you're not as interested in your goal as you thought you were. And that your goal might take a lot longer. And it also might not ever happen because time might pass you by because

you're in love with video games or you're in love with, you know, cuddling on the couch or whatever. Like, you know, even just something like that. I mean, that, those things are important snuggling up on the couch with your significant other. Those, I'm not going to say that those things aren't important, but I'm saying that a lot of times if you're spending a lot of time doing that, it's still a pull away from spending time away from your main goal, which in this case, I would say that that's positive. Anytime that you can spend any extra time with your family or

spouse, I think that that should be something that you really work on trying to prioritize that. That can be hard to prioritize because we're all trying to get better all the time. I think a blessing and something that happened during this pandemic is look at all the babies that are popping out from this thing. I think, and see like that's,

that's another interpretation, right? Hey, you're locked up in the house. Like, you have to be locked up in your house. You can't go to the same places as you once did. Some people are like, yeah, that's great. We're just going to stay here and fuck. You know, like, that was their interpretation.

Like, literally, fuck it. All right, fuck it. You know, that's what we're going to do. I know about 10 different people that are popping out babies at this time. And I'm sure people listening are probably laughing because they're thinking the same thing. But your interpretation of that could have been like, yeah, that fucking sucks. Just be locked up here with my wife. This is a pain in the ass.

This sucks. She's going to ask me to take out the garbage. She's going to notice I don't clean up after myself. It's going to be awful. This sucks. She's going to ask me to take out the garbage. She's going to notice I don't clean up after myself. It's going to be awful.

That could have been the interpretation or the interpretation. Interpretation could have been, hey, now game on, right? Anyway, you know, hopefully you found this to be helpful. Your blueprint that you had before the plan that you had before to make it to where you want to make it to is the same. And remember that analogy of kind of looking back and figuring out how to connect the dots. I know the dots that are closest to the main goal that you have will be the most vague, but I want you to really think about those, you know, think about like, um, think about you got these like lily pads, you got to jump on like a video game and you have two or three of them already laid out.

Like you jumped on a couple of them and now you're trying to figure out what are the next two or three that I need to jump on to get me further along towards my goal. And then, you know, what is going to be that, what's going to be your boss that you need to, you need to kill at the,

at the end of the video game uh to kind of reach your goal like what is what is the you know even like i would even write down you know a dollar amount that you need to make every day and compare it to what you currently make and then just think like well how do i increase value how do I raise that up a bit to kind of match what I'm going for, what I'm going towards? And then on a different note, you might think of, you know, multiple revenue streams. Sometimes having more than one revenue stream can be helpful.

Or maybe it's a joint thing that you do with somebody else or however you got to figure it out. But, you know, get it figured out. Don't use the pandemic as an excuse. I think, you know, 2020 was great for a lot of people. And 2020 was awful for a lot of people. A lot of people died. We did lose a lot of people.

But then the other side of that is we lose a lot of people all the time anyway. Like people die. people. But then the other side of that is we lose a lot of people all the time anyway. Like people die. Like no one, no one goes through this life, uh, without dying. It's a prescription that we all end up getting. It's something that happens to everybody. So those, those things are unchanged. Maybe people died prematurely and, uh, we can agree that that's sad. You know, my mom died at 69, I think on Monday, she would turn 70 and, uh, those things hurt. They're hurtful. Um, but at the same time, like I, I, um, I can't bring her back. I can't bring back my brother. Um, there's really nothing I can do about it. The only thing I can do is try to think of

good times I shared with them. And I can only look at some of the positives. So let's take this pandemic and let's kind of, let's flip this thing up on its head and say, you know, hey, we're kind of forced to do these other things or we're forced to go in these other directions. How can I use some of the skill sets that I have, you know, and, and utilize them towards something different. Maybe it's time that you start that podcast you've been thinking about.

Maybe it's time that you started writing that book. Maybe it's time that you started taking action. You probably have more time than normal or your time is split up differently than it used to be. I mean, I know that you understand there's a lot of shit that you can do every day towards the goals that you have. And what I'm really recommending and suggesting is that you,

I think it's productive to try to do like two or three things every day towards your goal, but man, just keep it as simple as possible and just do one, you know, pick one, pick one thing that's towards your goals. There's going to be a bunch in there anyway, because if we're to face it, like we need, we need to be physical and we need to have good nutrition. Like those are two things that are really, really important. I mean, don't like quote unquote need to, but they, they can be important to help you get to your goal a little faster.

So those are going to be things that you're going to want to keep in there. And then on top of that, like whatever your goal is, you know, you're going to have to pick that thing that is going to be most beneficial towards that goal. Got anything, Andrew? Yeah, I, I do. official towards that goal got anything andrew uh yeah i i do um this almost can be its own saturday school but early in this uh class session you had mentioned that you know you get fired up when a challenge arises you know if you're still standing you're like hell yeah like it's go time let's let's do this it's sort of like you know you're leaning into the challenge you're kind of you're

making uh you know you're not making a hard thing harder but you're you're accepting that it's hard and you're accepting of it and you're just loving the challenge um it kind of reminds me of um you know there was a weird time period where whichever team the niners or cowboys which whoever whichever team came out of the nC, it was over. Like we knew who was going to win that Super Bowl. Right. And it was going to be a blowout. Nobody cared.

But then as teams got a little bit closer, it got a little bit harder. It became interesting again. So it's kind of almost like that in my head. But what I wanted to ask you is like, I mean, how can somebody see a challenge and get excited? You know, like, you know, it seems scary. know like holy shit like what do you mean like that hard thing you want me to i don't know man that doesn't even seem safe like you know like it just it's the challenges it seems challenging try to like maybe picture something like this like so you're um you're like fighting with somebody you know you're, um, you're like fighting with somebody, you know, you're kind of throwing some punches

back and forth and you don't know what you're doing really. And so you really just, you really cover up a lot, you know, you got your hands up and maybe like a knee up and you're just trying to cover whatever parts of your body that you can. You're not sure what the hell's going on. Um, but at some point, uh, just cause of circumstances, the person hits you and the punch doesn't hurt.

And, you know, you said in your head before you even got hit, when you saw the punch come and you said, ouch, you know, but it hit you. And then you're like,

Oh, that, that didn't really, that actually really didn't hurt that bad. Like, imagine if you were in a fight like that, somebody threw some shots at you and you got scared and nervous and you threw your hands up. And then after a couple of shots came through, you're like, wow, like this person's a lot weaker than I am. Like they're not, they're not really that, they this person's a lot weaker than I am. Like they're not, they're not really that, they're not really, that doesn't really feel like much.

Um, you would probably be like, fuck. Yeah. Like I'm going to throw some punches back to me. A lot of times that's the way a lot of challenges feel because normally I'm already in the middle of them and you know, like a set of leg extensions or something or set of leg press or, you know, like a set of leg extensions or something or a set of leg press or, you know, high rep set, a bench press or something. And so that's where I get that mindset of like, fuck yes, this is right where I need to be in my workout. I start to think about all the time and all the energy that went into just getting myself

into the gym to do the workout, the warmup, the pre-workout that you might've taken, the thought process that you had the night before about, yeah, I'm going to go in there and train my arms and shoulders. And you had an idea of what you're going to do. Maybe you looked up something on Instagram to find out more information about training your shoulders a certain way. You watched a Jay Cutler video and got all fired up or whatever. So you think about all those things

and as you get into the mix, you're just, it's not so much that the punch is so weak that you're like, yeah, I'm going to knock this person out kind of thing. It's more like you just recognize that you're going to be okay. Like, dude, you're going to be okay. You're going to be fine.

I've done stuff in the gym before where i don't have any idea whether i'm gonna be fine or not but that has taken a long time to train myself i've had a couple points where like i have literally thought i was gonna die in the gym and that took a long time to be able to work my way towards that and And then I'm totally fine though. So like when you do these things and you, maybe that's like overdoing it, but when you work really, really hard and you notice that nothing bad happens, pretty much only positive every once in a while, you get too sore from it or you're overworked.

But when you kind of like, it is kind of as if you put your hands down and you're like, man, that's all you got. Like that doesn't, that doesn't bother me at all. In fact, you can keep punching me and I'm not even going to punch you back because it doesn't bother me that much, you know? So I try to, um, it's, it's over a period of time, you develop a strong skillset to be able to absorb a lot of these things and have them have less of a negative impact on you. And they have more of a positive impact on you. And they, they just like when somebody says,

when somebody says we can't do that or how, how we like my buddy, Sean, Sean Provost talking about opening up a shop in Arizona. And he's going to have a hundred, a place where 117 cars can be lifted on these hydraulics or whatever. Right. I think he said 117 or storage for 117 cars. He could work on nine cars at a time or something like that.

And he said, they were like, we don't, you know, we don't know how to, we don't know how to get that much power to a building. And he was yeah but somebody does you know like so he so he got excited by the i can't that was there he got excited by somebody saying look uh that's impossible he's like come on it's we're trying just to get some energy to a building like you can get energy to a building i've seen buildings with lights on them before, and we know that that's possible. So how can we dump more power into it? There's gotta be a way. So he's figuring out a way.

And so I think for everybody out there, like just always try to figure out a way. And when you, when you hear the, I can't, or when it comes from yourself, that's when you should really get pumped up. I think it's like, it's exciting. You're like, Ooh, like you're like, I can't. And you go back to Ben Pekulski. He said, whenever you say I can't, you need to follow it with, I must, I can't do that. You need to turn it into, I must do that for me.

What can I do? I can't stretch. How good would stretching be for me? We both know it would be fucking great, right? So there you go. That was awesome. I'm never going to stretch though. No, because you got to lift.

That's right. You can't. Got to be jacked. Yeah. Dude, that was fantastic. I'm sure everyone's going to love this. The Saturday School community, it's like almost like a different like subset of people that follow the podcast.

We freaking love you guys. You guys are so awesome. You always leave comments. You always like these videos. If you haven't done so, please do so right now. Hit us up with more questions down in the comments. If you have them,

Mark loves doing these. These are, like I said, this is just freaking awesome for everybody. So we really appreciate you guys. But yeah, leave some comments. Let us know what you,

what do you guys have on your mind? That's what we want to know. My boy, Andrew, right now, sacrificing for the unknown. He's got places to be right now. And we're sitting here doing this. He's like, hey, fuck it, man. Let's do it. So, you know, we all, we're all in this, we're all in this battle together.

Hopefully everybody that's listening to this just has the goal to get better. And, you know, treat this as like a mentorship, you know, program. That's the way I like to view this particular subset of the podcast and the way I like to view my YouTube channel, which is just Mark Smelly Bell. Please go check that out.

It's just an opportunity for you to learn some stuff from me and hopefully it helps you get better. And if you found it to be useful, just share it out with somebody else. I don't claim to know everything or anything like that. I just am sharing some experiences that I have utilized myself personally and have had a lot of success with. So if you're into that, share it out with other people and strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.