Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 130 Live - You're As Happy As You Make Your Mind To Be

Episode Date: October 23, 2018

Mark Bell breaks down Abraham Lincoln's quote, "you are as happy as you make your mind to be". He speaks on the mental side of being successful and how you can be positive in almost any situation. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

cannabis the rapper or the plant uh the plant oh okay what what too much porn other than that what you got on your mind? So I wanted to start out today's podcast. We'll talk about our epic bicep and tricep workout maybe a little bit later as we're wrapping up this podcast. But I wanted to come in here and hit up a quick hitter. I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow, going out to get a calcium score done. As per the recommendation from Dr. Davis, Dr. William Davis. If you haven't listened to that podcast, make sure you get a chance to check it out.

And also going out to see Stan Rino Efferding's doctor. You can imagine what that entails. But just getting some blood work done and just trying to trying to make sure, uh, I'm healthy. I have, uh, some goals coming up. I want to, you know, work on getting leaner again and, and, and do certain things, but I just want to make sure that everything's, uh, kept in check, so to speak. Nice. But what I wanted to talk about today is, um, you know, everybody is, is hungry to set

goals and everybody's hungry. And we've talked a lot in this podcast about setting goals and something that I never addressed. And, um, I kind of can't believe that I never addressed it, but, uh, something that is important to share. My stomach is growling. I'm not really sure why. I think maybe just cause all I had was some aminos haven't eaten yet. But, um, anyway, if, if you hear my stomach growling, it's growling because it wants to eat everything in sight, I think. But what I wanted to share with everybody today is that when you reach your goals, you're not necessarily going to be any happier than you are right now. You'll be as happy as you make up your mind to be. That is a quote from Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln was pretty goddamn smart, but you'll

be as happy as you make up your mind to be. That's regardless of goals or, or if you set a goal or if you're on your way to a goal or if you already reached your goal. And I think that, um, the, the goals can make us accountable. They could give us responsibility. The goals can help us. We were just talking to Aaron in the gym. Aaron used to weigh probably close to 400 pounds.

He weighs about 325, 330 now. So he lost a tremendous amount of weight and he's trying to keep it off. And he's crept back it off and, uh, he's, he's crept back up like an additional 20 pounds. And so by him, you know, setting a goal to be 320, um, and, and him being, uh, or him setting a goal to be 300 pounds coming down from being 320 or 330, when he gets to 300 pounds, he's not necessarily going to be any happier. There's not like something that's going to happen when he gets to that 300 pounds. Now that's the goal. That's what he wants to do. Um, but it's important to understand that for

right now, at this very moment, you are as happy as you make up your mind to be. It's up to you on how happy you want to be making these goals and doing these things, they are fun, but they're goals and they're things that can keep you motivated and they can keep you moving. And it starts to, when you really start to look at it, you could look at all this and somebody could teach a course on it and they could go up and it could like write on a board and they can kind of point to you why these different things are of significance is because they help give us meaning and they help you kind of with your day to day. But if you're trying to, if you're trying to think like, you know, when this happens,

everything else is going to be better. That's not really the case. That's kind of a false hope that you're giving yourself. And I wanted to make sure that I share that with people today, because I think that when people get to a goal, then they're like, oh, like, what do I do now? I just saw an amazing interview and we'll have Sean Roden on the podcast soon, but they talked to him about, you know, toppling the great Phil Heath. And they talked to him about winning the Olympia. And, uh, they're like, what's changed, man? Like they wanted to get the dirt, you know, like the great phil heath and they talked to him about winning the olympia and uh they're like what's changed man like they wanted to get the dirt you know like what's new like what what happened you know now what type thing and he said well he's like i got home to la

and uh he's like i was pretty excited had the sandow trophy put it down you know put it in my living room and looked at it and then i looked over and noticed the garbage was full he's like so i took the garbage out he's like and i went to bed and the next morning i woke up and i made breakfast for my little girl and he's like and i took her to school and he's like so everything's the same wow know, there's a, that's a lifelong goal. Think about it. Like, what are you going to do when you win the Mr. Olympia contest? Are you going to go out and snort cocaine off a stripper's ass and then eat a bunch of ice cream and pizza and stuff? I mean, like, there's not anything like, uh, you're going to celebrate it by being like, you know what?

Let's see if we can defend this title. Now I got the strap. Same thing with someone like Cody Garbrandt, who's here in Sacramento. Good friend of ours. Good friend of super training gyms and somebody I hold in high regard. I have a lot of respect for that guy. He's a tough son of a bitch. But, you know, winning the belt is a huge, you know, winning a UFC title is crazy.

But then you got to defend it, you it's a whole different animal it's a whole different animal a lot of times these goals there's not like you know andrew and i might have a goal to do uh 400 podcasts in a year or something like that right nothing nothing different's going to change It's just that we set out to do something. And now what would happen again, you going back to that whiteboard mentality, where if we were writing this down, we could say, okay, the goal is 400. There's 52 weeks in a year. All right. You know, uh, Andrew can't do the math. I can't do the math. Joey help us out with the math. Yeah. And that's mainly just a racist joke because Joey's Asian and all Asian people are good at math, right? What just so happens, she's really good at math, though.

I know. She's like a math world champion or something. I think so. She does the letter math. I don't know how it works. I know. Yeah, that is weird. It is weird.

How is there an X in there? I don't know where it came from. X is equal to Y because I don't know. It has something is weird. It is weird. How is there an X in there? I don't know where it came from. X is equal to Y because I don't know. It has something to do with the X sleeves. The X factor. I've seen the show before. But I think a lot of times people think they're going to like hit this goal and like something magical is going to happen.

And it just doesn't, it doesn't really, it doesn't work that way. You need to be happy uh with the process with what you're going through and i was just thinking about this the other day it's kind of a weird thing but um i i just kind of i see a lot of people not that i'm like the happiest cheeriest person in the world uh i'm not like our boy uh jp our boy jp that came out here and showed us all up on a squat you know know, JP is like really happy and really jolly. Okay. Yeah. Like different people are different ways. Like he dresses up as Santa Claus every year, you know, sorry, kids might've heard that. Um, he's like a professional

Santa Claus and the guy's got a grin ear to ear. I don't walk around like that necessarily all day, but I am like positive. I am am excited and a lot of times like i'm walking around downtown davis and i just i love the area i love walking around down there and i'm going to like a coffee shop and i'm kind of walking around with like half a smile and i think people think i'm like crazy yeah people are kind of like like mean mugging me he hangs out with a girl that yells at everybody he yells at buses buses down the street. Yeah, yeah, right. And you guys think I might have just made that up, but no, there is a woman in Davis that just yells.

Yep, and yeah, she cusses a lot. She's got a potty mouth. We should get her on the podcast. Yep. She's an ex-girlfriend of mine, you know? She's still heartbroken. Still upset. No wonder every time only we walk by, she starts yelling. Shit, fuck.

But, you know, I walk around with kind of like, you know, half a smile on my face. And, and first of all, like, I'm just happy to like be alive. I'm happy to be walking around. The weather here in Northern California is almost always amazing. It could get a little too hot on occasion. You can get a little too cold on occasion, but, uh, in the grand scheme of things if we're comparing you know the heat uh in like and the humidity of like alabama yeah uh and uh the coldness of like buffalo new york or something like that like we're not anywhere near any of that kind of stuff so i'm pretty generally happy happy uh just uh, just because of that. But also like, I, I, um, I don't know. I feel like I, I feel like I almost have like a secret.

Like I don't really worry about a lot of stuff and I thought about it a lot more and I started thinking about, um, when I was younger, I didn't worry about stuff because I just wouldn't, I wouldn't take on the responsibility of, of things that I couldn't do. And when I was young, I just, I thought there was, I thought there was a lot of things I couldn't do. So I had a lot less responsibility, almost like no responsibility. I didn't, I barely took responsibility for myself and that's how i ended up with like debt and that's how i ended up with like no car because i ended up getting a bunch of tickets and i never took care of any of them you know a lot of guys go this is like a man thing like i mean not not to say that women can't go through that but like it's really rare to hear of a girl who

who's such a loser like a guy let stuff go stuff go. Yeah. Let stuff go like that. I think women, they tend to care or worry about it more. Um, but as I got older and as I matured more, um, and as I was able to do more stuff, you know, I talk about do more, be more, the more that you can do, the more that you will do, the more that you'll want to do, because you'll feel better about yourself. You'll feel more confident. And even if you're just doing little stuff, uh, the more that you do, the more that you'll be able to do, even just getting up off the couch and, and hitting up the grocery store and getting your foods prepared, uh, for the next couple of meals that you have that little task right there, right there might sound so minor, but the leg up that you're getting, uh own goals is huge. And forget about the rest of

the world. I mean, you're, you're really dominating at that point because everyone else is so lazy. So you're, uh, you're really getting out in front of it. But as I thought about it more, you know, you tend to hear people say, oh, the things that we worry about are the things that we can't control. You know, we're, we're worried about some scenario that's never going to happen anyway. And I thought about it more and I, and we've even kind of talked about that on the, on this podcast before. And I was like, you know what, that's actually really not that true. Like I disagree with that statement. Like that's not a completed statement. Yeah. We tend to worry about things that that that that uh aren't going to happen because

we kind of make up these scenarios in our head or we make up something we've talked about this a lot on this podcast where we have the perception of what someone's going to say or do and that's going to be damaging and we're worried about that and that's that's that's uh there are a lot of things that are like that but there's also just your own responsibilities to get shit done and that causes a lot of worry and causes a lot of stress when i was talking with uh it's really interesting to see the different people in here turn the corner when uh when when they haven't uh when when you never thought that they would you never thought that they would be you never thought you'd have this conversation with certain people in this gym about how they're no longer cutting the corners they're they're going around them um and i was talking with marcus the

other day now marcus is not a guy who's going to take shortcuts when it comes to like his squat workout bench workout and like he's very meticulous with everything that he does um he's actually very like an analytical person a lot of people don't know that about him. He's not just this, you know, Neanderthal Filipino thunder that comes in and screams and squats heavy weights. He really, uh, really thinks about stuff quite a bit. But we were talking about diet the other day and he and I were talking and he said, you know, it's just easier and less expensive and smarter just to cook your own food. You know, just to prep, just to prep your own stuff. It just, it just makes so much more sense in every single, in every single way. And he said that a lot of people try to make it out to be harder. And he's like, I just think

it's easier because the food, like the food that you're eating, I mean, there's some people that can digest us about anything and they don't care, but a lot of, a lot of times you're going to digest those foods better. Those foods are more nutritious for you. I mean, the list of positive that it's doing for you, it makes everything easier because it makes your life easier because there's less worry. If your goal is to squat a certain amount of weight, well, then you need a certain amount of fuel and certain type of fuel to push you in that direction. Now, if you're not doing that and you're just rolling through in and out burger and you're just chewing on protein bars and having a protein shake here and there, and you're very haphazard with your attempt, well, you're going to end up with shitty results.

So you're not going to end up with the results that you want. And that's going to cause a ton of stress. end up with shitty results. You're not going to end up with the results that you want. And that's going to cause a ton of stress. And back to that, the thing about people saying, you know, that you don't worry about these things because there are things that aren't going to ever happen. I don't think it's actually true. I think I would say that the majority of the things that we worry about are things that we have a lot of control over, but we're not controlling them. And that's what gives us a lot of stress. You, you know, you put off, uh, you know, cooking your meals for the next day. And then the next morning you're

stressed out. You're like, Oh man, I don't have this. I don't have that. You go on a trip or you're gone for a few hours and you don't have the foods and now you're hungry. And it's just, it just causes a cascade of problems. It's also, it's also really hard to ever like let off the gas pedal on that it's hard to be like rational about that because you know all all too well that if you do let off the gas pedal that that's going to let uh all these other things come into play that could lead you into having a really bad streak for a while just as just as quickly as you could develop a good streak you can be like dude i've been i've been crushing it with my diet i've been crushing it my sleep i'm you know 15 days in

a row just been on it like like you wouldn't believe well then another 15 days from now you could say the exact same thing in the opposite direction right yeah and it can be so much more detrimental like as far as uh like it took 15 days to like feel great and it could take just like one or two nights of bad sleep and bad eating to where you're like oh like i just threw all that away and then now you got a little bit of depression from you know from kind from kind of falling off. And then you're like, and then next time you see the person like, oh man, how's everything going? Oh, I fell off the wagon. Like how many times have you heard that? Yeah, I fell off the wagon. And, um, another thing I think that happens kind of,

you know, in the same, uh, in the same vein as this is that you also, so, you know, oh man, I had a good streak going and i i uh i fell off the wagon but i think that other other times two people are looking at other people they're saying oh it's easier for them yeah it's it's just it's easier for stan efferding stan efferding has money already like he's was pro bodybuilder um you know he it's just it's just easier for him. It's not any easier for him. It's actually like in some ways, shit's kind of harder. Like, especially when you become like a public figure now, he has to be Stan efforting all the time.

Um, I think for Stan, I think being lean is something that comes, uh, pretty easy to him. I don't think it's like something that he has to really work. Uh, I'm not, no, he works tremendously hard, but I just think that being lean and being pretty jacked is like just his thing. And he's just pretty damn good at it on top of working hard for it. But I think it's of no surprise,

you know, people will think, oh, it's someone who works really hard. Someone who's these hardworking, smart people. Someone will kind of think, oh, these hardworking, smart people, they get all the luck. It's like, well, really think about what you're staying there. Of course, they get all the luck because they're working for it all the time. And so, uh, and plus they're probably looking at the positives. Meanwhile, you're trying to look at a lot of the negatives

and not seeing the fortune that you have, uh, that's coming your way. You don't see the opportunities that are there, that are right there in front of you for you to just be as successful as somebody else. Yeah, I know because it's like, I try to think back when I had to work in an office and I didn't have an opportunity to just walk 10 feet into a gym. And there's no doubt it was harder as far as time being stuck in traffic and whatnot but if i meal prepped as much as i did now i think i would be able to make you know not make it as easy because i'm not gonna lie and say like oh it's just as easy for anybody else that doesn't work at a gym it's just it's it's more convenient is what it is right more than anything but um

if i had this mindset back then to do more and be more i definitely could have you know uh hit the gym way more consistently i think that people feel that this happiness is going to come you know um you know once i you, once I move from my apartment to this house that has a better stove and a better kitchen, then I'll be able to cook more. Uh, we'll be able to have more parties over here and think we'll be more social. Like we'll just be happier. They just think all these things are going to change and they're going to happen. And they really don't.

It's your own mindset that has to change. That's going to be the most important thing. Happiness comes from small things that you hammer out day by day. your own mindset that has to change that's going to be the most important thing happiness comes from small things that you hammer out day by day it doesn't come from one big thing that makes some sort of huge change i talked about on this podcast so there's never been one single thing that's ever changed anything uh for me there has not it's been like a progression of a lot of different things even the invention of the slingshot it wasn't like I invented it and boom, I was off to the races. I created this idea in my head and it took a really long time to manifest and to turn into

what it turned into. Um, it took a long time to turn it into an actual product. And then it took a long time to take an invention and a product and turn the invention and product into a full grown or fully formed business, which is then, you know, having other products that support the slingshot. Cause if I just had the slingshot, like where would we be right now? Like, I don't know, you know, we wouldn't, you know, maybe we'd still be selling slingshots, but it would be a really just a really really small company we sell a lot of fucking slingshots uh so it's not really necessarily about that but then we made other supportive gear and all the gear goes together it's all stuff that is specifically designed to make your workouts more comfortable allow you to handle more weight allow you to train uh with a with an advantage you can lift heavier with less pain and but it's

through that process of coming up with all these different concepts and coming up with all these different ideas over a long period of time that has turned into what it's turned into it's not it wasn't this one change you know like i had the dream of having this gym, this facility that we're in now for probably about five years. But, you know, the years prior to that, I was working my ass off to try to figure out how to get to here. Because I knew that this would create better opportunity. I felt that. But at the same time, there's still a lot of better opportunity. I felt that, but at the same time, there's still a lot of great opportunity.

I was still creating my own opportunities and trying to create other opportunities for other people before I got here. I never, I didn't stop. I wasn't like, Oh, you know, I gotta,

I gotta wait until we're going to, we're going to wait until this happens for this other thing to happen. I just, I hear a lot of people saying that, and I think it's a, it's not a great mindset. And this thing that I thought about, it might sound kind of corny, but I just thought,

you don't sit around and worry about stuff. You warrior about it. You turn into a warrior. You fight for it. You fight through these things. I've mentioned before in this podcast, you want to try to lift through it. People talk about living through certain things. Well, lifting through things has been a thing that's always worked really well for me

because whether somebody called me fat or somebody called me stupid or whether I was inadequate at doing certain things, I could always rest my hat on the fact that I could pick up that weight and maybe somebody else couldn't. And being able to kind of lift through aches and pains. When I was about 20 years old, I herniated a disc in my back. I couldn't walk. I couldn't do anything really. I couldn't laugh. I was pretty miserable. I got on painkillers for a little while. It was a really short period of time that I did that because I just realized that that was bad news and that wasn't going to work. And, you know, this back pain was crazy. And it was for about two weeks where I was really jacked up.

And then it started to, you know, started to dissipate. But what happened was, is I went to a doctor and they said, we got to fuse your spine together. And they told me this whole thing. I went to a doctor and they said, we got to fuse your spine together. They told me this whole thing. And I was like, man, I don't want to be off my feet for X amount of weeks and have all this shit happen. And I was really scared and nervous to do that. So I didn't want to do that. So I went and I tried to just like work out and stuff.

And I couldn't figure any of that out. And the doctors told me you know you really can't go to the gym so i spent about three weeks out of the gym and i just got more and more pain and then i was like you know what i'm just gonna lift through it like if i make my back stronger it won't hurt anymore and so i went to the gym and i started training and i started doing things that just didn't hurt. So I'd sit down and do curls and I do this movement and that movement. And, um, I slowly started to realize, okay, I can train this. I can train that. I don't have to, uh, you know, worry about my lower back on

these certain movements and did them for weeks on end. And, uh, then my back started to feel a little bit better with more exercise and i started incorporate more and more exercises but i fought through the whole process rather than sitting around and worry about it i worried about it i trained i trained through it i lifted through it i made myself stronger while all these other things uh were going on that with my back that i thought i couldn't control um I did have control over them. I could control them. These things that you think that you can't normally do shit with,

you actually can. And so going to the gym and trying to lift my way through it was the best thing really that ever happened to me because I learned so much through that process. And when i think about you know other people telling me oh my back hurts you know and uh my back hurts because because of a deadlift i'm always like no your back doesn't hurt because of a deadlift your back hurts because it's weak you need to work on making it stronger over a period of time you'll get it

stronger get it stronger and it will it will hurt less i mean there are injuries that are that are nagging and that may always just kind of be around um but the point is is is there's things that you can do uh to make these things better and if you know you know specifically uh that your shoulder hurts every time you bench press well on a day that you're going to bench press take extra time to take care of your shoulder so your shoulder doesn't hurt when you bench press if you need to warm up or whatever it is or simply don't bench press there's a novel idea that no one will ever do right but you know again you're causing you're causing your own misery you're causing your own problems by not, by simply not being rational about the fact that, okay, this is the problem. Here's how I'm going to solve it. Here's what I'm going to do to take care of it.

And here's how I'm going to do it in a timely fashion so that, you know, it doesn't impede upon everything else in my life. Yeah. I mean, I've experienced everything you just said with my back. I just assumed I'd never really be able to deadlift again or just not be in pain, but you helped build my back up. But when it comes to like, you know, doing more and being more, somebody might be listening to this saying like, I want to be an actor. I'm living in middle of nowhere. I don't know, name a Midwest state. I'm going to move to LA right now and just become an actor. It's like, like, hold on. Like what kind of steps should people be taking as far as like, um,

like you're saying, do what, what you're able to do right now. But when can people jump to making, you know, progress? And as far as like, uh, you know, uh, we're going to cook dinner tonight. And then tomorrow I'm going to go to the gym when really it's like, holy shit, you're tonight and then tomorrow i'm gonna go to the gym when really it's like holy shit you're probably not gonna be able to go to the gym tomorrow because of x y and z or whatever so do a 10 minute walk instead right but they don't recognize that and then like oh shit i'm such a piece of shit because i didn't do what i said i was gonna do yeah um in terms of like making a leap, you know, you got you you want to be.

This is where things get to be a little bit hard and a little bit confusing is because when you're when you're when you're work working towards when you when you're working towards a goal, you want to try to be irrational in some ways, um, because you want to have a, a goal and a dream that's so big that it kind of sounds crazy. We've talked about that before on the podcast where you might say, like when I was a kid, I said I wanted to live in a castle. Right. Um, so you're going to say these things that are, that are pretty outlandish. Now, as you go through the process, like somebody saying they want to be in the NFL, as they go through the process, like our boy Terrell, as you go through it and you play high school football and you're one of the best around, you play college football and you're like, okay, there's a lot of other dudes that are all American

and these guys are going to get drafted in the first round. I'm not the best. I'm not better than everybody else. So now I have an outside chance to try this NFL thing and you start to become a little bit more rational and you have to be, there has to be some form of, uh, of rational thought that comes into play as you get closer to your goal. Cause are you going to really make that leap? And if you're going to make that leap and you want to be an NFL football player, um, that's not something you can really like,

you can just go and like start a business and you can say, I'm an entrepreneur, but you can't just play in the NFL. Like someone's got to like you enough to make it work. Right. Um, anyone can claim they're an entrepreneur and you see it all over the internet.

It drives me crazy. Um, but to, to, when you went to make that leap, you're going to have to be close enough to where you at least think you have a shot of making the jump. I've used the Mario brothers, uh, example many times where you're jumping to the flagpole and trying to get as many points as you can and you strategically line them up so he can jump as far as possible. Right. And if you mess it up up then you got to just

get like 400 points or whatever it is for you know jumping his fat little body on the pole at the bottom right and uh hated when i fell oh it's terrible yeah you want to go all the way up and and like slide down the flagpole with the flag underneath your butt basically right so at that point i would just jump on the the block that it stood on and then just walk into it. And it's so sad because the flag all the way up, but you're just sitting there holding the bottom as it slides through your, I'm assuming his digital fingertips.

It's sad. Yeah. It's very sad, but yeah, you got, you want to make sure that you are like work, like legitimately working towards it. People,

people talk about what they'll never do. And I always consider those people to be cowards. They have these big dreams, these big goals, and they keep talking about this thing that they're going to, this crazy business they're going to open up or do. And it's like, why do you talk about that? You know that you'll never, like you just, when the person at, uh, at, at, uh, a holiday brings that up, you just want to, like, turn around and smack them. And be like, why do I have to hear you talk about this every year? Because it ain't ever going to happen. You're a bitch and it ain't ever going to happen. But even for that person, like, the reason why they're not doing it is because they know they're not lined up to do it.

So you have to at least be lined up to do it and you hear people talk about this all the time too you got to make sure that you really like it whatever it is that you're going to do you got to make sure that you're really into it if uh you want to have um you know if you want to um i don't know you want to uh fucking pimp out cars or something, you better make sure that you love cars. You better make sure that that's a thing for you or motorcycles or whatever the hell business it is. You got to make sure you really love it. And the reason that that's important is because can you see yourself doing it in five years? You know, can you see yourself doing it in three years or 10 years?

You know, those are things that you got need to play out in your head. And those are things that I think about when I think about this business, when I think about the different things that I'm going to do, I'm like, is that really, am that really something I'm going to do? Yeah. You know, with power magazine, um, you know, we had power magazine for nearly 10 years. That's a good run. We, we did it for a long time. It was successful. We had fun with it. A lot of people enjoyed it um it was time for you know print magazines to just kind of be put to rest and so that that was that right um but it's not like i'm trying to pick things that we're going to do for like just weeks at a time or

something we're trying to have some longevity with these things try to have some legs with these things yeah and power magazine's not going anywhere per se it's still gonna be uh what is it bi-monthly but just uh digital form now yeah we're gonna be we're gonna be changing some things up uh yeah coming up but you know the the point is is like you know make sure that it's something that you still have strong convictions towards make sure it's something that still has a powerful um a powerful pull and you know when I was talking about how you're not going to be any happier when you reach your goal,

you'll be excited from reaching your goal. That'll cause an endorphin rush. It'll do all kinds of things for you, but it's not really going to make you truly happy. It's not really truly going to change anything. Even something like uh

like getting engaged or getting married like what you just got engaged you know just a few days ago it doesn't actually really change anything it's symbolic and it's it's okay here's you know we've been together for a long time our goal is to eventually get married well the engagement is a nice big uh chunk and a nice big uh break off of uh getting married like it's all right yeah now now we're you know there's at some point within the next two years or something we will figure out a date and we will we'll have a wedding right you know whatever our whatever our wedding is but being engaged you know you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, my God, I'm engaged. Like, that's pretty cool. But it doesn't really truly change anything. The love that you have for Stephanie and the love that she has for you is the same.

You know, you guys might grow together stronger as you go and you might learn more about each other. That makes you more excited about each other and things like that. But it's like, you love each other, you know, and that's, there's not really like an amount, right? It's not like, it's not like, uh, anything really, uh, changed because you gave her a ring. You know, she doesn't really, it's not that, um, it just doesn't work that way. And I think that a lot of times, you know, what I, what it's helped me over the years is, is recognizing, uh, that I'm not going to be any happier when I, when I reach my goal than I am right now,

you know, because as I said, in the very beginning of the podcast with Abraham Lincoln quote, you're as happy as you make up your mind to be. And that's really important how, you know, and I'm, like I said, I'm walking around Davis with half a smile. I think people think I'm crazy, but I feel like, I feel like I know a secret. I feel like I'm, I'm in on something. And I mentioned this before on the podcast too. I think that people that engage in fitness are in on a certain special secret. I think our lives can be more prosperous. Our lives can be more fun. The people that lift, I mean, they already, they already know it. I mean, that's

why we love it. And that's why we feel so good about it. Um, but you know, my, when I look around and I see other people that are, especially like at an airport or something, you know, I'll walk around and I'll be pretty cheery and pretty happy. And, uh, I'm like, man, these people are just, you know, sometimes people don't know where the hell they're going in the airport, but I'm like, man, these people are, these people are grumpy. And the reason why I'm walking around with that half a smile all the time is because I know that I've been working really hard and I know that I've been working on hammering out small advantages every day to get towards my goal.

And so I'm not worried about anything. When you see somebody walking down the street and they got a big old smile on their face or like a kid, you see a kid that's, that's really happy and they're playing with a truck or something. They don't have a freaking worry in the world. That's what, that's what really makes you happy. So it's, it's not necessarily, um, it's not necessarily a goal that's going to make you happy, but it's just hammering out these things day by day.

Maybe they are small goals. Um, but you know, don't, don't get it twisted and think that, you know, when this thing happens, Oh, I can't wait till this happens. I can't wait till that happens. I hear that a lot. And I think it's a dangerous spot to be in. Yeah, of course, you can be excited about a trip that you're going to go on with your family. Of course, you can be excited about this and that.

But just understand the fact that it's not really going to truly change anything. It's going to be a moment that you get to experience with each other it's gonna be fun it's gonna make uh make some great memories and all those things but um you know you don't you want to kind of be happy now be happy now be happy and excited now don't be miserable and think i i've heard people say you know oh when when uh you know when we have kids things will change or when we get married things will change it's like whoa yeah like you know we you and i've talked about that on this podcast before that's crazy talk don't think about you know oh i'm sure andrew will stop playing video games when we get married you know if you love

video games now you're gonna be playing them a lot for a long time probably. Yeah. Yeah. What I hear a lot, well, not a lot, but when I try to help somebody out, like, uh, with going like with a, like a low carb diet or, or something like that, it's like, okay, like here's what you're going to want to do, do this, do that. Okay. For how long? Like, well, right. No, that's just what you do now. Like you, if you want to, if you want to keep progressing to keep progressing, that's now how you live your life.

It's like, okay, so I meal prepped for Monday and Tuesday, but I'm going to have to do it again on Wednesday. Well, don't think about that. How about we just celebrate for a second here and be like, holy shit, you're now ahead of the game. And guess what? Now that you're ahead on Wednesday, it's going to be a little bit easier than it was today.

But I hear that a lot. Like, I'm going? Now that you're ahead on Wednesday, it's going to be a little bit easier than it was today. But I hear that a lot. Like, uh, like, oh, I'm going to have to keep doing, I have to keep this up now. Like, well, kind of, but after a while it, you won't be having to keep it up. Like, that's just what you do. Yeah. It's just your new standard. You raised, you raised your standards. You're, uh, living up to something totally different.

Yeah. You raised your standards. You're living up to something totally different. Yeah. And it, it, it, at some point, the food that you consume when it's like, when it's not what you're used to, it really kills your stomach. And you're like, I don't even, after a while, you're like, I don't even want, I don't even want that anymore. Of course, you're going to have like moments where you're going to, you're going to waver

here and there from stuff. Like no one's perfect, but once you kind of get out in front of stuff the life that you can live and the life that is there in front of you there is a lot of money there is a lot of uh other forms of success there is a lot of happiness that is that is just waiting for you it's just sitting there it's it's for taking. Like it has your name on it. All you gotta do is claim it. Yeah. You gotta,

you gotta do some work for it. It might not be easy. Um, but that's kind of what makes it like, um, like what, whatever the goal is, whatever the job title it is,

no one else is doing it because it's hard. Right. So, you know, going in that, like all this is going to be it's going to pay off it's going to be worth it because no one else is willing to put in the fucking work like right now i'm just thinking about my day i'm gonna have to uh i don't have to i'm gonna i get to go enjoy my nephew's baseball game i'm gonna probably take my camera

i'm pretty excited but i'm looking at the long ass day that I have because I'm excited to go to Costco to get food. And I'm excited to cook food tonight to cook for tomorrow. But I'm going to be doing stuff that no one else is going to be doing tonight. And I'm going to get ahead. And I'm so excited for that right now. And I think people just don't understand how good that can feel. It's amazing. And again, if you see me in downtown Davis and I look like I'm smiling, that is why that's a secret that I'm in on. And I, I will say this

to the day I die. I think that fitness is a secret and I think it does unlock a lot of powers. It unlocks a lot of potential. It's a cheat code for life. life um you get to get a little bump above a little notch above everybody you know when when you have you know my dad is like is learning this with with his training my dad keeps talking about a pr every day it's so funny because he's like i didn't get a pr today i don't know what he thinks like i don't know what he thinks his workout should be it's kind of funny yeah but uh he's like i didn't get a pr today he goes so when i was leaving the gym he's like they have some stairs like going down you know down the steps and he was like you know what i'm gonna go up and down those steps uh 15 times and so he was so good he's like he's like that's a record he's like

he's like i remember you saying like you know if it's new's new, then it's a record. Yeah, I was going to say, he probably just set a world record. Yeah, right. A world record for those particular stairs. No one's ever gone up and down them 15 times consecutively like that. Yeah, it's an amazing feeling. And again, with fitness, the reason why I feel that it makes you feel that way is because you feel in control. You feel in control of something. Like, we've got a lot of guys and girls in the gym and stuff that are really fighting for these goals.

And they're really hungry. And they put a lot of time into it. And, of course, they're not reaching every goal. I'm not reaching every goal. You're not reaching every goal. You know, we can't reach every single thing that we strive for. Life just doesn't work that way. But when you're in the pursuit of something, when you're in the pursuit of making yourself better, it is like really magical. It makes you feel awesome. It makes you feel, that's why we get hurt. We get

hurt because it makes us feel unstoppable. You know, we want to just load up a bunch of weight and then we do something stupid. I think you did it a while back with a squat. Your squat was progressing and you got excited. But that's how it makes you feel. It makes other, you would never do something like that. You know, you normally, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't be so happy to like pick up a bunch more weight. Right. that could potentially hurt you. But that's the way this stuff, this stuff makes us feel, it makes us feel amazing.

Yeah. And I had talked about it on the last podcast about acute stress versus chronic stress. You know, our, our body doesn't understand once the, uh, like I said, like the, the big ass stack of paperwork that we had to do at work, you know, once that's gone, let that, well, that stress, once that's gone, our body doesn't get the, like the endorphin rush. It's kind of like we shot a blank. It's like, wait, there's nothing here. Like, I must not be done. I still got to keep building up this anxiety. Whereas when we lift some heavy ass weights, it's like, hell yeah.

Like that was great. Let's have fun now. That makes a lot of sense i've heard people before to say that when you set a goal that um even just by even just by setting the goal and like doing like what we call social media victory lap that your body your mind already thinks that you actually accomplish that the same chemical cascade happens in your brain um so like if uh i don't know if you were posting like that you're really happy with the success of your diet lately like day 21 super pumped lost 10 pounds well your your brain that

feels the same as if you lost let's say your goal was like 20 pounds because you shared this, uh, this, you did this social media victory lap kind of prematurely. And so it, it kind of, again, makes you get, get off that, uh, gas pedal and it makes you, uh, not as hungry as you were to, uh, to kind of reach that, uh, reach that goal in the first place. And so again, this all just comes back to when when i was when i was broke when i was uh in my 20s and when i met my met my wife i had no car i had no driver's license um you know i i didn't like i i didn't uh i worked hard but i didn't have you know i didn't have any like real income coming in i wasn't you know i wasn't. I wasn't really putting up points on the scoreboard, I guess you'd say.

I was working hard, lifting, and I was just trying to, at least I thought at the time, I was doing the best I could. But I didn't have a whole lot going on at the time. And I didn't understand that there was so much more I could control. that there was so much more I could control. As I started getting more into the fitness and nutrition and those kinds of things, I started to understand. I started to open up my brain and make me realize, you know what, okay, so I don't have a car or license because I got too many tickets in New York

and my driver's license got revoked and I can get another one here. But, um, you know, I don't know what it does cause I never checked into it. Like, you know, so just, just loser stuff that you go through. And, uh, I just didn't realize like, man, I could just, I can make my entire life so much easier if I just live my life ahead. I'm, I'm already doing it with, with working out. Um, I take care of that.

I'm already doing it with working out. I take care of that. I have a responsibility with lifting. And I've created a body that I feel good in and I feel strong. And I'm eating the way that I want to eat regardless of all the convenient foods that are around from our culture. And then I was like, I should be able to do that with other stuff. So I started incorporating little by little into everything that I do and started lifting your way through life, started lifting my way through life.

Things started to really click and come together. And even stuff like, you know, I went, I went to a junior college. I had some like student loans from that. And even that process of like just calling them and paying them. So I called them and I said, I don't have really a lot of money to pay.

And they're like, okay, well, what can you pay? And so I told them, I don't remember the dollar amount, but it was really low. And they were like, we don't care. We just want you to pay something so if you're paying then they're like yeah in the long run you'll pay more because the sooner you can pay it the better but um they're like yeah that's fine i never knew it worked that way yeah how did i not know that because i never looked into it i never i never tried to take advantage of a small opportunity which is just to find out more information so now that i know now that i've you know once you learn these things you don't have to ever let those things hurt you again you don't have to ever let those things drag

you down again and that's that stress and everything that was caused from all those different things which at that point i didn't really have stress because I just didn't care. But all those different things that happen, they can really pull you down. But back to the whole entire point, and we'll wrap this song bitch up, is you are as happy as you make up your mind to be. You're as happy as you make up your mind to be. That's something that you should write down. Because when I was broke and didn't have a license that didn't have all these things i was still

really happy i was still i still you know i'd still laugh all the time i still would have fun with my i wasn't like i wasn't sulking i wasn't like oh man like you know like just the way the government is man i can't get a good job or like, I don't know, like people complain about all kinds of weird stuff. So I never, I never let myself fall into that rut. Well, that's good. Hopefully today's poop cast was beneficial to you guys. We need you guys to get out there and hustle. We need you guys to get out there and vote for us and tell people by voting for us.

I mean, you need to tell other people how awesome we are. Get more people subscribed to the power project channel. I think there's like 12,000 or so on there right now. Um, but, uh, anything you guys can do to help would be appreciated. Some comments on,

uh, iTunes, some ratings, uh, just anything you guys can do to help is, is appreciated. We love, uh,

spending time and, and, uh, and resources, uh uh and getting some of the best people in the world on this podcast yeah we i mean our current our current subscribers and watchers they're they're they're all dope like i've met like three that have come into the gym this week right it's been great uh some guy i think his name was bobby he's from new jersey what's up bobby yeah he i think he might even still be here. He doesn't know we're talking about him,

but he'll find out on Tuesday. When is today? Today's Tuesday when people hear this on iTunes. But, oh, man, I hate talking into the future. But anyway, and then, you know, the guy that gave us the Super Nintendo, he's back. And someone else I was talking to I can't think of. But, like, so we're impacting people's lives,

and now we're just asking those people to just, you know. Yeah. Well, we want the same impact that it has for you guys. We want it to impact other people the same way. So just relay the message. You showed me a message from Instagram of somebody that, you know, chimed in. Yeah.

And I just sent the guy a quick video yeah our boy thomas there you go there you what's up thomas and uh and then also today uh one of the girls in the gym uh denise that's who it was yeah yeah denise uh you know she mentions that she listens to the podcast all the time shout out to to her. She's probably listening to this and cleaning right now. Not because she's a female. Okay. Just because that's what she said she does when she listens to the podcast. Yeah, man.

But anyway, yeah, this is a lot of fun. Andrew and I just got done smashing some biceps and triceps. Got a great workout in. Smokey snuck in with us. Our boy Lauren snuck in with us. We haduren snuck in with us we had a cop working out with us today i'm surprised somebody didn't get arrested for the pump that we got no one asked me for my green card or anything oh man maybe that'll be next time maybe anyway we're gonna head on out of here strength is never weakness weakness never strength see you guys later