The Sevan Podcast - #17 - Tony Blauer

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

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You look awesome. People are only going to stare at the drink right because it's purple um 48 years with a singular focus on fear 48 years from the age of 13 i don't want to tell anyone how old you are, but with simple math, people could figure that out. Hold on a second. Is 48 to now, is 13 to 2020 48? I think your math's off. If you were born in 1960.

Correct. That would be from 1973 to now. Okay, my math is horrible, but it's just, also so let me let me tell you how i do it 1973 to 2000 is 27 years and then 2000 to 2021 is 21 years theory 27 plus 21 is 48 how many years ago was 1973 47 really your phone just does that yeah that's awesome yeah it's an apple device okay so i was wrong i was off a year 47 years minimum minimum 47 years and i apologize because i didn't realize they were you're only off a year i wouldn't have said shit i just that just blew my mind that you said that like it just just seems like forever it's a total theme of all my guests i blow all their minds nice you um it's an understatement to say you're a fear management expert a self-defense expert a safety mindset educator based on physiology and psychology. And then I'll just

throw this in there. Host of the no fear podcast. My, my, I never know what I'm going to talk to people about because I have six pages of notes, but I woke up this morning and after watching your podcast with Bedros, the Empire podcast, you said something that really resonated with me personally. You basically said that at 25, you wanted to start a business. You wanted to open your own gym. And your wife at the time planted some self-doubt in your head. She said something like, really? Or how are you going to do that?

Say that again, Tony. Yeah, really, or how are you going to do that? Or say that, say that again. Yeah. She said, you know, how are you going to, it was like, how are you going to do that? Like total, like incredulous. It's like, it would be like, if you said, you know, you're going to play in the NBA and people are going to look at you. How are you, how are you going to do that? I've had three, three partners since I, um, since I've been like 20, uh, in the film space, people that I worked very closely with people that I went on every single shoot

with and all three of those relationships ended because they wanted to, um, one, they didn't have their work and their and their life integrated meaning they had them compartmentalized and i don't do that like i just work that or i just live it just is my life you know holding the camera video editing and the second thing is is they wanted to argue my limitations so like i would say hey let's make a movie and then they would start questioning um do you know how to do that? And all three of those relationships ended because of that. And I just thought that that was fascinating that you experienced that too, that you don't want to be around people. There's a Taoist saying, argue your limitations and they're yours. I was saying, argue your limitations and they're yours. Right.

And I sure as hell don't need anyone around me arguing my limitations. And then I think about the two probably most influential people in my life, my wife and my mom. And they always got behind my, my, my harebrained ideas. Was that your first time experiencing that? Someone who is going to be be no no no uh but it was my it was profound because i was married and it was it was a it was a dream of mine and actually as she said it i was looking at her i didn't answer i didn't argue i didn't go well i'll do this but as she said that I said to myself we're not gonna make it I knew we're getting divorced like when she said that which was crazy it was like that was it was so weird it was almost like if if you had you know you you've worked in

media so like if you had a live earpiece and the producer's talking to you right so so anyone who's like listening to this if you never had that you know you have an earpiece in your head and someone says ask him about this and it's not your thought but suddenly you're going so what happened with you know and uh and she goes well how are you going to do that but it was just the tone it wasn't it wasn't how are you gonna do that like you got yeah hopefully everyone understands it was it was this really surreal moment but but i'd had that before then um yeah and this is the most profound thing is i had that voice all my life that was what fascinated me with i'm trying to understand fear but not from a a um like like that like uh i didn't i didn't it wasn't thinking i'll become a psychiatrist or psychologist or or it was just me as a kid i always had that doubt i always had that

and it was weird it was like i'm gonna that. And then how are you going to do that? You know, I'm going to, Oh, I want to play football. What if, what if this happens? It was always as negative and it impacted how much I enjoy. I enjoyed the, the like, I would fall in love with an idea, but if I came time to, to play compete, I hated that. And I didn't, you know, some people might be thinking, Oh,

that's self-sabotage. Everyone has that at some point for this or that, but I was out there, whether it was skiing or football or baseball or whatever, I was out there. You would never know. You would never know that inside just riddled with self-doubt. And I think, you know, as decades later, when I was teaching my No Fear program, and whenever I do it and I talk about those moments, that resonates with most people. You know, a lot of times we don't think about this is when we read the books on flow and flow state and, you know, all the great musicians and athletes and artists.

They don't represent the general populace. They're the anomalies. They're the fucking unicorns. populace they're the anomalies they're the fucking unicorns so i would always joke you know like when anthony robbins would interview uh quincy jones and quincy jones would say anthony helped me so much quincy jones is already quincy jones for decades before he met anthony robbins so you know like you know if you like the the guy who's training mike tyson for his his fight right now yeah i trained tyson mike tyson was already mike tyson before you got him so there's like the guy who's training Mike Tyson for his fight right now is going, yeah, I trained Tyson.

Mike Tyson was already Mike Tyson before you got him. So there's a real disconnect. And I would always see this, even at a young age, like that guy was already going to be, you know, that special person. So I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but, but the, uh, I think it's interesting. I think we needed, we needed a, uh, an approach to managing fear for the, the common man, I'm allowed to say man, person, human, common person, uh, um,

in the world, because I've met, you know, that, that my career has taken me working with, you know, tier one units and all over the, all over the place. I have met and I tell the story almost in every podcast, just to illustrate this point where at one time down at Fort Bragg, where I got there a little bit early, went and had my meeting. It was a Saturday afternoon. I'm there with two of the guys

from from this particular unit that i'm working with and one of them says hey you want to go jumping later and i'm like like uh and i go like this i go like like this like up and down and he goes no like skydiving i said i know i know what you mean and now i'm not interested he said like were you scared i said well i'm not a fan of jumping out of airplanes not a you know he goes oh aren't you mr fear management with air quotes and i said yeah i'm managing my fear by not jumping into the airplane and he laughs like you just laughed but the guy beside him laughs a very nervous laugh and me as a person who studies uh body language and human nature. That was a laugh of a guy that was with me, but he was in the same unit, which means he knows how to skydive. He's just afraid of skydiving and he doesn't. That's

what I've always, that's my whole life is managing fear. There's lots of things in life that we need to do afraid. And if you, and if you're, you know you know like the the idea of fear triggers a movie in your mind that movie in your mind has you as the victim or it has you as like an action hero but that movie in your mind creates a moment of doubt and doubt creates hesitation hesitation becomes procrastination so when you have fear as a writer you don't write if If you have fear as, you know, for your case, fear as a lover, you know, fear as a dad or fear as an entrepreneur, this creates procrastination. If you finish that project and you get that done, is your book almost done? What is it? You're like, man, I just can't.

And you peel the onion and spear. can't and you peel the onion and spear my connection because i i i love self-defense and i found in when i studied martial arts it was a way to um the fear i had as an athlete growing up so when you said 47 years i've actually been dealing with this this battle um i'm all over the place right now do you remember dan millman gymnast uh but he wrote the gate the the way that yes yes yes yeah yep yep and you're not all over the place you're killing it this is good um way the peaceful warrior great great book but years later he said somewhere else i got this quote he said when you face just one opponent when you face just one opponent and you doubt yourself, you're outnumbered. And I was like, holy shit.

You know, like that is so good. And that's that self-doubt. And that could be, you know, oh, I have to defend myself. I've got to protect myself. I've got to be a courageous bystander. And then your head starts going, this guy's going to shoot you. This guy's going to kick your ass. This guy's going to punch you out.

And you shirk away from that initial inspiration. Right. And it could be, hey, I want to start a business. How are you going to do that? And then, you know, you either listen to that voice or the person who said that was a partner in your life that had that much push or influence over you. But, you know, the initial fight, I always ask people when we're doing our personal defense or our instructor course, whatever it is, I go, where's the first place people are hit? And there's always some, you know, funny guy in the class that goes, in the face, in the head. And I go, yeah, yeah. That's the first place most people think they're hit.

But the first place people are hit is their emotional system. Every victim of violence who lived to tell the tale said they had bad feeling before the attack. So anytime you've been screwed in business or a relationship didn't work out, while you still had to go through the breakup and all that shit, when the dust settled, Sebi, you went, you know, I knew that wasn't going to work out with that guy or that gal. went you know i knew that wasn't going to work out with that guy or that gal i knew that guy was going to fuck me or whatever because and you know if you're romantic it's because you're trying to change it or otherwise you know whatever but but i've been dealing with this you know this all this is a 15 minute answer to have you ever heard that before uh yeah that's the crazy thing is is i i had this like unsolicited narration with everything i did and i was freaking nervous but the irony of it all is that i remember once um we were playing baseball i was about 14 or 15 years old or A bunch of me and my friends were playing baseball

and a bunch of like 17, 18-year-old kids. And there's a huge difference in size and strength and confidence, you know, when you're 15 versus 17, becoming 18. And this group of 17-year-olds comes to this playground and we're just playing ball and they go, hey, get off the field, we're playing. And we're like, you know, there's this kid's 13, this guy's 14, I'm 15. And I'm standing there, I wish I don't have a baseball bat here,

but I'm standing there. There was no Warriors, come on, play. That movie hadn't started, this is, you know, in out and play. That movie hadn't started. This is in the 70s. And all the kids are here, and they start encroaching on us, just like that movie. And everyone's got baseball bats, right? And I'm so fucking nervous. I'm not making eye contact.

I'm looking around going, fuck, fuck. We should just leave. And these guys are going, get off the field, get off the field. And one of my buddies back then is going, we were here first doing that whole 15-year-old arguing with it. And I've got this bat in my hand. And I'm so nervous, pretending this is the bat, that I just start kicking it just to do something. And I'm like lost in thought going, oh, fuck, let i kick it and i kick it too hard because i'm nervous and it pops up and i spin it you know like and i spin it like this and i put it down on the ground i'm so

fucking nervous and i do that once and they see that and they read that as I'm getting ready to just split some fucking heads. And I hear one of the guys go, guys, he's looking at me. He goes, he goes, let's just get out of here. Let's let them play. And I like I knew what had happened there. And it was like, like literally if they had gone, boo, I'd have fallen over. And it's like, what is that? boo i'd have fallen over um and it's like what is that and it like in that moment i didn't realize it now i can explain what was happening is that gesture created the movie in his mind

that i was going to beat the shit out of them with my baseball bat it just i look too cool and too ready here i am fucking kicking a bat spinning it like a fucking cheerleader anyways um it it the whole mindset thing uh fascinated me and when i had the the the responsibility to begin teaching self-defense even though i didn't know what i was doing so i was just i was trusting my instincts and my intuition. And, and I was, I had all these, these kids that I was teaching, you know, I had two jobs working for my dad during the day. And then seven days a week I was teaching self-defense and I would talk to

each one of these kids. I remember like conversations where like a 17 year old kid would come into me. I'm like in my twenties now and go, Hey coach, can we go over what role emotions play during uh self-defense like who has those conversations like that was that was kind of the incubator that i was that i was creating and i didn't know i didn't know where it was going to go i didn't go oh uh um you know 20 years later i'm going to develop the no fear program and teach people that if you you know change your relationship with fear, you can change your life. Um, everything that I, everything that I, you know, I've known you for

10 years and I've seen you in my mind, I had this, um, perception of what you taught, what you were about. But since I was preparing for the podcast, everything that you said, I could apply to my life and it had nothing to do with self-defense. It was crazy. It was like, oh my God. One of the classic examples is people used to would say to me in a previous lifetime, they would say, man, you have some amazing questions. How do you, how do you come up with those questions? And my response was always, oh, I just, if I feel a question bubbling up from the bottom when I'm interviewing someone and I don't want to ask it, that's the question you should ask. I mean, it was a real simple litmus test. And then as I hear you talk, yeah, I'm afraid to ask the question.

So I should, that's the direction I should go. Here's an interesting thing. In all our courses, we show a clip of get that from get Carter, the Stallone movie where he fights in the elevator and, and the scene starts off. It's really well done. It starts off. He steps in the elevator. You can see he's,

he's fried. He's burned out. He's exhausted. And the two bad guys, you know, come in there, they grab the elevators really well shot. And they come in there.

And one of the guys, I forget the actor's name opens his jacket and you see he's got a 357 magnet and immediately you know you hear him talking going uh hey man what's up you know like he's the big dog he gets the girl sorry about that and then all of a sudden the guy pulls the gun out and starts pulling the trigger and of course you know it's not the end of the movie and salon's not going to get shot It's an action movie. But it's well cut that you go, oh, you don't know that he's visualizing this. And then it cuts back to the guy still talking and the gun still in his waistband. you remember Peter, don't you? There's like his little henchman there going, sneering at him. And then the next cut is Stallone, you know, strangling him from behind. And the guy pulls out the gun and sticks it to his head. And I play this to people and I go, and I love using the

acronym F-E-A-R, false expectations appearing real. False expectations appearing real is when you're visualizing a future event that debilitates you in the present. It doesn't matter what it is. Again, it doesn't matter what it is. Should I call this person? Should I ask this question? Should I defend myself? Should I quit this job?

Should I start this job? Doubt becomes hesitation. Hesitation becomes procrastination. Procrastination becomes fixation. If you don't have the self-awareness to unfuck yourself during that dom domino effect that becomes non-clinical anxiety and in some people anxiety non-clinical anxiety is like oh fuck what's the matter with you like you know it it's funny i mean you know my wife very well and uh she she doesn't have this type of self-awareness and a lot of people don't and and And where I can look at her two days before she knows what's bothering her, not knowing what's bothering her and say, hey, are you OK? The way she's biting her lip or the look in her eyes, her body language is 60 percent of communication.

But everyone listening to this, how many times has somebody said to you or said to somebody, hey, was everything OK? And they're like, yeah, yeah. Why? And you can just see it, the energetically manifesting in their body. And then a day later, a week later, they're going, hey, I've been meaning to talk to you about this, or I got this thing and I don't know how to deal with it, right? So following that domino, doubt becomes hesitation, hesitation, procrastination, fixation, non-clinical anxiety. All of that is eating up time, the only element in life that we can't regenerate, right? Everything else you can almost fix, but you can't regenerate time. So if you've got a very specific amount of time to solve a problem understanding how to manage fear changes everything but you can't do that if you don't have self-awareness because self-awareness is that moment when you

go what am i doing wasting all this time but if you can't peel the onion it seems obvious to some people if you can't peel the onion that that hesitation is is is still going to be there um but i feel like i was about to tell you something else because you you asked uh a question i kind of lost it here but the uh the the you know i'll give an example where i was training a fighter and and you know part of this is i'm using uh fight examples but i can use any type of example in what you're doing. When you develop that self-awareness to go, why am I hesitating here? When you find that out, it doesn't mean the fear disappears.

It just means now you understand what it is and you can strategically navigate that. If you're mountain biking and you're coming down, if you're looking at the rocks or looking at the trail, that could impact whether you fall or not. Right. So you need to look at the trail, not the rocks. Right. You get up to go golf and someone says, don't hit it in the water there. And you're thinking about the water. The ball goes to the water. That's like the magic of the mind. But you you you got to look at the trail but if you ignore the rocks you could still fall so you got to somehow find that balance of this is the path they need to go but these are the obstacles and these are the dangers and these are the risks so this isn't about being cavalier and

and and i i share this story of um this kid sean i was i was i was training and it was an amateur kickboxing match and and the title fights are four rounds and um uh it was his first uh not sorry it was a title match and and he was fighting for the title and in amateur kickboxing you only fight three rounds and then when you go to the title you fight for four rounds and I say to him, 15 minutes before the fight, the ring official come in, stamped his gloves. It's like a shitty old gym in Montreal, Canada.

It was like the bottom of an original Rocky movie. Come on, kid, you got this. He's there shadowboxing. He's doing all this shit, moving around. I just put his gloves on. How do you feel, Sean and moving around. And, and I just put his gloves on and, and I like, how do you feel? How do you feel Sean? He goes, good coach. I'm nervous, nervous. I said, you're supposed to be nervous. You're about to get in a fight.

Guy's going to try and kick you in the face. He's going to try and knock you out. He's going to punch you. And you're going to do the same thing to him. And no matter what he looks like, it was during the year, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard era. I said, even if he looks at you like, like hands the Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard era. I said, even if he looks at you like, like hands of stone Duran inside, his heart is racing inside. He's got butterflies in his stomach inside. He's trying to control his breathing. And the facade is I'm going to kick

your ass inside. He feels just like you. And he goes, thanks coach. And he turns around and he started shadow boxing. And I sit down kind of a little proud of myself, like, that felt pretty good. That was a good answer. But then, like, like, like, you said, Hey, if I'm hesitating on asking a question, maybe that's the question that needs to be asked, right? That's intuition. I always tell people intuition whispers in your ear. But then fear goes, shut up, up not now and it's that fear that shuts it down and if you don't have that that ability to again introspect and just there's write this down because i don't have any notes i got to finish my fort bragg parachute story and i didn't finish the stallone uh um uh metaphor on fear you're good you're good tony you're good so so so get this so i'm sitting there and and this is probably the biggest lesson i can i can share with you as as a as a good friend

of mine and every one of your listeners which is like your mother hayley true so you know i don't think the boys even listened here no they don't um and uh but intuition whispers in your ear and fear shuts it down and and so we go ask you know we should have what you're the like the that intuitive producer goes ask him this and you're going like fuck no i don't want to don't do that that'll change and then it's the it's the fear but it's not understanding how to decode fear. And I'm going to go to the Stallone thing here because this will fit better. In the Stallone video, they show him getting shot.

And then they show him, the guy says, remember Peter? The next scene is him choking up Peter, the guy putting the gun. And I tell everyone, what do we see here? We go, oh, this is a perfect example, Mruer and the false expectation appear in real acronym i go fantastic but what else can we learn from this and they're like because the next scene is is uh stallone attacking the guy charging the guy with the gun fighting him biting the hand dropping the gun elbowing peter taking a couple of shots beating them up and then leaving the elevator unscathed in a cool fight scene.

And I go, here is the magic of fear if you know how to look at it. Fear will show you what could happen if you don't do the right thing. And so fear says, here's a guy with a gun. And your mind visualizes, boom, the gun coming out. Then fear, then he says, Peter, then fear shows you this. If you don't go to the guy with the gun, he can shoot you. If you go to the wrong guy, the guy with the gun can shoot you. You have two threats.

You're in imminent danger, but one person is an immediate threat. If you have an unarmed person, an armed person, don't go to the wrong guy. Don't let the guy with the gun point that little hole at you. And suddenly that inspires a strategy. And so when you learn to look at fear, like, like, you know, Oh, you know, uh, uh, my tooth hurts. Like how many people go, I got a toothache and immediately they have their doctor, their dentist on speed dial. And they go like, I know I haven't seen you in four months. I'm so excited. I've never had root canal. I'm hoping it's root canal. When can I come in? And like, what do people do when they're, when something starts to bother them in their mouth,

they avoid it, they wait. And then, and then they eventually go in and the doctor says, oh yeah, popcorn kernel stuck in there, you moron. Call me earlier next time. Take these antibiotics. You should be fine. But this could have been bad. But what we do is we visualize, like Stallone, the elevator scenario, but we don't look at what fear is trying to teach us. And it's not always right, but it becomes investigative.

And that's where, you you know the fuck fear acronym people think it's just tony being cavalier and battle cry fuck fear f-u-c-k is an acronym it's an acronym for you know the system base it understand it control it and then k-o-w know it um yeah and over the years i did begin to know, I did begin to know that voice. And actually I had to be careful, like to, to be patient, like to, to still let that fear arise instead of kind of like almost forcing it, looking for those questions to be edgy or to be provocative. Well, just, just wait, they'll come. Yeah. And that's, that's wonderful self-awareness, man. Because what you can do is, is, is you know it's like trying to be funny

trying to be funny sometimes like the whole table stops and goes like you just interrupted us for that okay like because you're you're you're you're trying to replicate something and it's synthetic instead of organic and you you you've got to trust and that's the intuition like you know we always talk about the three eyes instincts intuition, intuition, and intelligence, trust your instincts, listen to your intuition. And if you, if you co-create something with those ingredients, it's probably going to be intelligent. At least it'll be authentic. You know,

I want to share with you a quick story that's kind of along those lines. I was at the beach the other day. I'm with my three little boys, three, three and five, six and my wife and a man approaches us and he's very hostile. And, um, he's lecturing me about, about, I don't, I don't know what just nonsense. Right. And, but I immediately get like, my first instinct is my heart starts racing and like, am I going to kick him or punch him first? Like that's the immediate first instinct. And then quickly right after that, I realized, okay, he's 12 feet away and he's not closing. He's, he is taking his ground. That's where he's going to stay. He's not moving in. He's, um, he's got no, nothing in his

pockets, no jacket. He's in shorts and a t-shirt. He's not big. Um, he, I assess that he's not in better shape than me. You know, I do just super quick. Those are happening in a flash. So I'm just chilling. I don't say a thing to him. My kids were, I wanted to leave the situation, but I couldn't because all my kids were sitting down on the ground, eating their snacks and drinking water. And there were a ton of other people around. But I really made that assessment that, hey,

as long as I can close the distance to him before he can get anywhere near my kids, we're fine. And then all of a sudden something happened, he moved or something. And now my wife and my kids were in between me and him. And I had to make the decision to move between them, right? Because that's instinctively what I wanted to do. But then I had this other thought, okay, if I do that, that's also an act of aggression towards him. So I have to be very, very careful because if he sees me closing the distance, I don't want to trigger him to, um, think that I'm being hostile towards him. And I, and I just remember all of those things, um, you know, going through my mind and I basically let him vent and my kids started

laughing at him and then eventually he walked away but but it was all of those um scenarios sort of running through my mind right it was like the get carter thing where you just see things and so it was a question you're sharing just sharing just sharing well my sort of my point was is that sometimes um of that causing – in your story, it causes him to engage. Sometimes it's like, okay, just take a few deep breaths. The threat may – like trust your intuition also if it's not as serious. Like you don't need to escalate. I used to work with disabled adults, and the worst staff were the ones that would escalate.

Like they would get into power struggles with people. And sometimes that's just not needed. You don't want – in that movie Colors with Sean penn and robert duvall sean penn's the young police officer who's always escalating the situations and causing the fights between the cops and the gangs and duvall's like hey man sometimes you got to chill right and it was just i just thought it was a uh not a counterpoint but a different different, uh, same, same thing you're saying, but it doesn't have to escalate. So listen, most, you know, we have an expression like part of ourself.

And then don't forget your parachute story. Cause I won't. Okay, cool. So, so part of, you know, so what you did is it was, was, was great. Because you've got the self-awareness cultivated from years of whatever, where, where you could process, where you could process that. And you trusted in that case, uh, your instincts and intuition, intuition when, when Haley got in between, you know, what I would do is like, you know, if Jesse gets in between, if my wife, Jesse got in between,

I would push her towards the bad guy and move her from our house. It gives me a chance to run for help. But you've got to trust your instincts and intuition. And I know you and I know you as a dad. But had you felt this person was really dangerous, your behavior would have changed. Most incidents, we have an expression in our... Sorry, let me interrupt, Tony. Not only dangerous, but I had to keep my ego in check, right? Here's my three little boys watching. Here's this guy talking a horrendous amount of shit to me and immediately i prioritize safety not me telling

this guy hey fuck off dude like if it would have just been me and i didn't have kids 10 years ago i would tell him to go fuck himself right that is not there i had to keep that in check also sorry because that's interfering that's interfering with intuition well this is but this is what i was going to say to you is that like if you had another self-defense expert on your show and told the exact same story, like someone would have said, well, you know, you should have stood here. You need to be here. And you go like, it's very, very, this is like a blueprint for handling every problem. And I was like, there is no step one, step two. It's organic and it's dynamic and it's fluid and but what what you need

to do is is have this big the totality of the circumstances there like had your had your kids not been there or hailey not been there you'd have done something different but the fact that you have the self-awareness to go like like i didn't like what he was saying to me uh but i had to rise above that control that and and and do all do all this stuff and listen like there's and i was ready to fight you know like it was like i could feel my body like i was about to do public speaking you know what i mean like i felt like i got 30 pounds lighter and my feet were tingling. Sure, your adrenaline is raging for your body. You're ready to go. It's a tricky thing.

Listen, you know, there's so much I want to say that I want to say about that. But a lot of people don't realize this is types of confrontations are not unlimited. They're very limited. And what you can do is you could list, if I said to you, because you could ask some people, well, how many different ways can you be attacked? And you go, well, I don't know. There's like a bazillion. And how many counters are there for every attack? Well, there's a counter for every counter.

So there's a, but that's not the way I look at things. I look at, there's verbal assaults that can escalate. There's verbal assaults that only damage ego and pride or embarrass you. You know, what does that do to you? You know, when that verbal assault, because a confrontation, like some stuff is just random, it's like Jack in the box, boom, it just, it just pops. And I remember this, this one guy at a seminar when I said, Hey, where's the first place you're hit?

And people go, Oh, in the face, I go, ha ha. But seriously, emotional, psychological. And then I shared the research and the concept around it. And this one guy puts his hand up. He says says i'm not trying to be a contrarian but i was once uh punched in the back of the head by a guy i didn't know so you said like there's always a story there's always a scenario there's always and so these are called pre-contact cues where you go like like why didn't i you know like if something happened and you were this guy was yelling at you for like three minutes like one one person would go you had three minutes to get out of there what are you doing standing you know and and you know three minutes goes by really fast and really um and so this guy he puts his hand up he goes i don't mean to be contrarian

but like this just happened to me. I got hit back in the head. I didn't even know the gun. So but I agree with what you're saying, Mr. I just want to share this experience that I had. And I said, OK, well, you know, thanks for ruining my presentation by sharing. I never realized. And I go, but let me ask you a couple of questions because I've done this so many times. This may be the anomaly event. But there's usually a story. So you didn't know this guy. He goes, no, never seen him before.

Hesitation. Never seen him before. He said, well, you know, I mean, I didn't know him, but we had exchanged some words prior. I go, when? He goes, well, the week before. I said, the week before at the same bar, you had words with this guy. And then you went back to that same bar and sat in a place where your back was exposed. And this guy decided he was so angry from that week that he was going to sucker punch you when he drank it.

And he's like looking at me. I go, buddy, you had one week to prepare for that punch you know it's so so you know it's a whole different way to look at personal safety I don't teach people how to fight so on I teach people how to not fight I teach people how to fucking think and and if I said you you should have stood your ground there your kids are going to grow up and they're going to be and they'll be like a huge percent of the population that if you told that story to dude you're a pussy you didn't do this your kids are not learning this and then

and the reality is that's that's not right either obviously and you've got to be you know true it's like i like to say to my own self be true i think you know i'm an original i'm the first guy that ever said that you've got to be authentic that was a shakespearean joke right um totally over my head sorry so no but maybe my mom will get it when she listens to the show yeah i doubt it though i want to i want to say something really important important here that i that i'm noticing for anyone who's listening say something really important important here that i that i'm noticing for anyone who's listening don't the only reason why tony uses um fighting these situations my opinion not tony's is because he really really is a fear expert and we keep hearing these stories or these examples of fear through a lens that he's put over this expertise that manifests in the vernacular and

syntax of fighting and self-defense and situations that could hurt you. But if you want to know about fear, why aren't you writing a book? Why haven't you asked this girl to marry you? I mean, it's all there and it's so easily translatable. Now, I don't know this about Tony, but I think he's chosen life-threatening situations for two reasons. One, he started taking Taekwondo when he was 13, but also what bigger fear is there in life than losing your life? So if you can understand fear at that level, then from there, it's applicable anywhere. But do not think for a second that you shouldn't look up Tony Blauer and look up at his stuff because, Hey, you're not, you're, you're not into self-defense. You're not worried about

getting beat up. This shit is like applicable everywhere. So I just, I just wanted to. That's, that's, that's deep and profound and ironic. I would say back in the eighties, uh, I would, I would tell people, you know, I had a friend of mine who's an actor, uh, named Rick and he's going so nervous about this audition. And I'd say, Rick, and he trained with me. I said, Rick, is there any chance at this audition that the director is going to pull out a gun and shoot you in the face at the audition? He goes, no. I go, so you've trained with me.

Are you prepared to defend yourself if somebody tried to fuck you up? Yeah. You don't know if you're going to win or lose, but you're prepared to fight. Right. So you need to manage your fear first. And then the fight happens. But at least you're in a fight. And he goes, right.

I go, so there's no chance the guy's going to shoot you, right? He goes, go do the audition. You're not going to get killed on this audition. Right? Right. Right. And I would say that to people like, like in anything else. So I use, I would tell people that the ability to protect yourself or a loved one is arguably the single most important skill you could possess. Why?

Because you get a stomachache and go to the doctor, you get a toothache, go to the doctor, you know, your, your roof is leaking. You could YouTube how to fix your roof, but you're going to call a roofer. Right. Right. Problem in life. You got time to make a phone call. Siri, give me the number to write and you can do that. The only problem in life you don't even have time to dial 911 for is sudden violence. And sudden violence, right? And I just wrote a book, ironically, what you said, I just wrote about this yesterday, where I was on an airplane years ago, coming home and a seat down beside me. This is like, like when people read books and it wasn't in like a,

like a, an iPad or something. So I had like three books on the empty seat. I had a disc, the disc man with a little, do you remember that? Of course, Tony, I am the exact same age as the time you've been studying fear. Nice. Okay. Okay, go on. So you're a disc man.

You're sitting on a plane. So I'm here like this. And all of a sudden, it's a red-eye flight. I'm exhausted. A red-eye flight. And this flight attendant who's not working the flight comes running in. She goes, oh, my God, that's my seat. She sits down.

I'm going to take all my stuff. It's in front of me. And she's like, why? She goes, I thought I was going to working the flight comes running in she goes oh my god that's my seat she sits down i'm gonna take all my stuff it's like in front of me and she's like why or she was i thought i was gonna miss the flight this isn't my hobby i'm gonna stay here i would have been here for two days it would have been awful and she's in her flight attendant suit and i'm sitting there i got like torn jeans on and t-shirt and i'm like oh my god she's wired she's gonna talk to me off flight i really want to sleep to sleep. So I'm just ignoring her, hoping that... She goes, so obviously, she points at her pin, her name. I'm a flight attendant. What do you do?

And we're starting to taxi. And I say, life insurance, thinking, who the fuck wants to talk about life insurance? This will stop the conversation. And she looks me up and down and she goes, she goes, you're not a life insurance salesman. And I go, you're right. I'm a life extension insurance salesman.

And as I said that, I'm like, you know, thinking, she goes, life extension insurance, what is that? I said, I teach self-defense. She goes, oh my God, I always wanted to learn how to defend myself. And I'm thinking, this is turning into a seminar. I want to go to sleep. She goes, oh my God, I always wanted to learn how to defend myself. And I'm thinking, this is turning into a seminar. I want to go to sleep. She goes, oh my God, I always wanted to learn how to defend myself. And I said, no, you didn't. She goes, I beg your pardon. I said, I think what you meant, I said, people who always want to do things have done those things. I think what you meant to say is you always wanted to know how to never be in your situation where you might

have to defend yourself. And you see her eyes do a mess she goes oh my god yes and and and so i i shared that story just buckled my head because i like i actually wrote it and posted it last night and it's like from it was it was actually i was uh uh oh it doesn't matter i'll tell you privately where i was coming back from but the the uh what's amazing about that is people see me because they go self-defense knuckle dragger like like like spiting i have poor violence i fucking have poor violence which is why i practice it i i don't want to ever be in a situation where i don't know what to do i sent you a video once of some violence and you basically you it's probably the only time in our relationship you've chastised me but you're like hey man I don't like easy that's not that's not

my favorite thing to see I was like oh wow yeah I don't like I you're like people send me this shit all day I'm like damn and I and I don't look at it and I get videos that that that don't go on the internet from some of the people and I don't even look at them I don't I don't go on the internet from some of the people, and I don't even look at them. If you knew at a cellular level, I don't want to see the fear in the victim's eyes. I don't know what to do. I'm scared. Fucking somebody help me. And that's horrible.

And so I've committed my whole life to helping whoever I can. And most importantly, trying to share this information. I can't do this myself. So, you know, one of my biggest focuses is training other people how to do this, but it's not how to do a block and a punch, and it's not the physical stuff. You know, the mind navigates the body. If you don't manage your fear, you're not going to manage the fight. I always tell people that.

I realized that in the 80s. I was doing fight club before there was fight club, the movie, right? In the 80s, for 13 years, we did scenario-based training. And I studied multiple sailings, you know, two on two, six on three, one on ones. And I noticed that it was really simple. The people who managed their fear managed to fight. It didn't mean that they won the skirmish, but they were in the fight and that impacted their self-esteem, their dignity, their healing, their resiliency, all of that. And people would come to us for cathartic reasons, you know, victims of sexual assault or violence or whatever. And it was just the therapy wasn't working. And this was and this was very direct.

I want to share something so profound about fear. I tell people you can't be brave if you're not afraid. There's no such thing as courage or bravery without the presence of fear. If you're not afraid, let's go back to the skydiving story. If you're not afraid to skydive, it doesn't take any courage or bravery to jump in the airplane. You're just doing something. Right? And so I remember when the guy said to me, what, are you afraid?

Like, aren't you Mr. Fear Management? I said, I joke, yeah, I'm managing my fear by not jumping in the airplane. And he goes, ha, ha, ha, ha. Funny. And the other guy's like, ha, ha, ha. I'm exaggerating. But I could tell. And I said, let me ask you a question. You're not afraid to jump.

He says, I fucking love it. I've got over 600 jumps. I go, well, anytime I can. I said, really? And no fear. He goes, no. I said, well, let me pack your fucking shoe for you today. And he leans forward and he points at me and goes, you're not coming anywhere near my shoe.

And I go, did I just introduce some fear? If I change your ritual, do I introduce some fear? What happens, again, when we study, I said this way earlier in the beginning, when we study the elite X game, like that elite warrior athlete, they've done this so long. It's either a calling, it's an inspiration, and or they've done it for so long, they won't ever define the physiological changes in the mental preparedness as fear unless they understand the importance of the semantics. I was on Mike Ritland's shows A retired SEAL Very deep thinker Long form show Much better interviewer than you

And much more professional than you But that's not your hero there But we're there And you know He's been in gunfights And we're talking about this I make this joke always that fear needs new management And I go When I talk about fear management people are like i don't have any

fear i'm okay like we don't want to appear vulnerable and and uh uh he says i can remember standing outside a house with my team in a stack right and he goes we knew every single person in the house was going to try and kill us. Everyone was going to try and kill us. And we had to go in that house anyways and do our job. And everyone, he says, if someone told you they weren't afraid in those moments, they're full of shit. But if you ask that person in that moment, they wouldn't describe it as fear. Right? it is fear, right? And so it's semantics. And this is what I want your audience to understand,

that if you've got a stigma about the word fear, that's the joke I make, fear management means new management. You know, if I said to you, hey, you want to manifest courage? You know, that might seem lame and everything, but you can't. Because you know what courage looks like whenever you see it. But if I said to you, Siobhan, what does courage feel like? You can't, you go, yeah, because you know what courage looks like whenever you see it. But if I said to you, Siobhan, what does courage feel like? You can't, you can't describe that. But if I said you describe fear, oh, physiology, vertical breathing, sweaty palms, tunnel vision, self-doubt, self-doubt, you know. Well, everyone knows what fear feels like, but very few people, even the person who acted courageously, doesn't know what it is. Because if it's true courage, they're just doing what they had to do. When you think of an interview of somebody who ran into a burning building, like a civilian, an average citizen ran in there to go, you're a hero.

You know, I just did what I hope somebody would have done for me or my family. Like, nobody wants to, no one thinks I'm going to be courageous today. I hope like some fucking catastrophic event happens. You can't plan that. And so the magic of this theory or concept is that if you go, wait a minute, I'm afraid. And I, my intuition is telling me what I know what to do. That's an act of bravery. That's an act of courage. And so, you know, people ask, well, how do you get good at this stuff? And you just, first you got to understand it, but you practice courage.

You practice courage and self-awareness in the same way you might have a question or a thought or an idea and your heart starts to race a little bit. You go, man, I can't believe this is about to come over and out of my mouth. You want to weigh and consider that's the self-awareness. Is this appropriate right am i just saying this to be contrarian to be a shit disturber to be clever or is this appropriate is this going to go deep um and and if you approach looking at fear that way you will turn you will turn your relationship with fear around because listen i know i've been working with wait wait what do you what do you mean turn your relationship with fear around because listen i know i've been working with wait wait what do you what do you mean turn your relationship with fear around wait what do you

mean by let me give you an example that you could plug it into so i benefit from this directly i am i've been interviewing people for for over 20 years i'm always always crazy anxious right before the interviews yeah like crazy like five minutes leading into what's even worse is if someone's going to interview me i fucking hate that i i just i just want to run the other way um and so but but soon as i'm here like literally 30 seconds in it's gone right um so so so so sorry you said what did you just say about fear that made me that made me think that you were saying around with it yeah turn your relationship don't don't i not want to turn my relationship around with it isn't isn't there something good happening there yeah if you recognize you recognize that. But if, let's say, there's a bunch of people here who want to start a blog or a podcast that aren't.

I'll never be as good as Siobhan. Like, I can't afford equipment. Whatever excuse they come up with, if the fear is preventing you from self-actualization then it's pejorative it's a fucked up fear if the fear is like so laurence olivia used to throw up before he'd go on stage but around the greatest actors up mike tyson used to throw up maybe still does before each fight but you would never like in his heyday when he was a ripping through the heavyweight division and he'd walk out there with no shirt on his black shoes black black pants walk if i said to you that guy's just threw up in the changing room he's so nervous

you go you're full right um when i started my garage gym, right? So I started that pivot to deal with shit. The first day I started my garage gym in March or April 1st, I'm standing outside now, my system that I developed holistically, organically, and I've been teaching now for decades, 40 plus years, inarguably, and I'm saying this tongue in cheek to make fun of myself, I'm the best spear system instructor in the world. I'm the founder.

In terms of content and information, there's like, I've forgotten more stuff than people I've taught know, right? And again, I'm being tongue-in-cheek there. I'm not trying to be an asshole. The day I was walking out and 100 people in a Zoom call, Zoom sign up to train directly with me remotely, I turned to Jessie and I go, holy shit, I cannot believe how much anxiety I have in my body.

And she looks at me, she goes, why? It's a Zoom call, and I've been doing like WebEx and Zoom for over a decade, teaching already. She goes, why? You're like the best fear instructor in the world. You just go, what the hell could you possibly – I've done – you've seen me, I've spoken, taught for decades. public you see me i've spoken taught for decades that type of fear is the type of fear of let's go high five fear you're the type of fear you have and that's why semantically instead of using the

word fear this would be anticipation this would be adrenaline which are some of the byproducts of fear. Now, what I did just before when she said, why are you afraid? I stopped and I said, okay, do I have any false expectations appearing real here? Am I thinking this is going to? And what I realized, it was just in answering the questions appealing. Well, I'm not afraid of teaching. I'm not afraid of talking. I'm not afraid to engage an audience. And you've done this with your videos. It's like you've gotten really good at just talking to a camera. 20 years ago, if I said you just talk to the camera, that would have been you said like, I'm doing drills on Zoom.

Or if you said to me like a year ago, I want you to teach the Range Rover drill and motion climate training on Zoom. I go, you can't do that. You need to be three-dimensionally with somebody where you can touch them. And now, this week, I was telling my team, I go, I almost like teaching on Zoom better than in person. I miss the energetic aura, but I'm much more succinct because I can't touch people and get distracted by the shiny ball going, hey, watch that over here. Oh, no, you guys see this? So I say, listening to this podcast, you wouldn't think I do stay focused, but I do.

So the idea here is when I had a system, when I looked at what we have a map called the cycle of behavior, and I'll send you a link to it. You can post the link to it. It's just a mind map of I'm in a scenario, and I'm motivated, and then suddenly I'm not. What are some of the things I need to think about? What are my expectations? What are my beliefs? What are my neural associations?

How's my brain linking up to this? What are my neural associations? How's my brain linking up to this? And when you start to do that, you take this generic malaise, this, well, I don't feel good about this. And now, like tomorrow, if you're doing a podcast and you get that same feeling and you remember this talk, you go, this is the anticipation of something fucking, this is my type of danger. What am I going to say?

What's going to happen? Is this going to suck? Is it going to be to say what's going to happen is this going to suck is it going to be good am i going to go hey thanks for the podcast and then when i get off i'm never releasing that right or i can't wait to release that so that's that's like you know you're getting ready for a fight you don't know if you're going to win or lose but it's going to be this this witty battle of of of jargon and nomenclature and shit like that you my wife asked me why do you i was telling her last night it's like 1206 i'm like fuck i gotta go to bed and like i like i because like i'm just getting myself wound up for the podcast tomorrow and she goes why

do you think that always happens to you and i said because you have an obligation to your guests they're taking they're taking their time, right? To, they're going to give you their time. You should better be like, you better take that serious. That's better. Go ahead. No, but that's, that's one part of it, man. Like that, that onus and responsibility to be prepared, to be switched on, right? Like that. But, but there's other elements, the positive part of your ego. When I say your ego, our ego. When I did my first class, I wanted everyone to go, wow, I want to do this again. I wanted it to be that good. So it wasn't like resting on laurels.

There's a part of you that goes, because you, because, but you want it to be that good. Cause you don't want to embarrass yourself. It's not about you. Right. You're not like, Oh, I hope this is good. So I can sell a thousand more. It's more in the moment. Right. It's like, God, I hope this is good. Just so these people walk away happy, right? Having the self-awareness it's everything. It's everything, you know? Uh, and why I say that is what, there's nothing wrong with wanting it to be good enough that you want to sell a thousand of these. That puts pressure on you too as an entrepreneur. And that's why beliefs is one of the blocks that you ask yourself. Because if you have a belief that money's bad and making money's bad, that's going to create fear if someone says, we can make this much money.

It's like fear. And I said this earlier. Fear throttles. I didn't say this today. Fear throttles everything we do, from who we talk to to who we met, from how much weight you lift to whether or not you defend yourself, from how much money you make to where you live. I remember, shit, I just forgot his name, a famous motivational speaker. He asked a bunch of questions. He said, I just forgot his name. I'll try to, I'll try to remember what I'm talking,

but he asked these four questions. He says, he says, if you didn't know where you lived and you were looking at every place in the world where you could live, where would you want to live? And why aren't you living? If you didn't know where you lived and you were looking at every place in the world where you could live where would you want to live and why aren't you living if you didn't know what you did and you looked at every job in the world and went i want to fucking do that why aren't you doing that uh and i can't remember the other one but the last one which is the most profound it was i've heard you say it before i think age if you look at it you didn't know how it worked yeah if you didn't know if you looked in the mirror you didn't know how old you were how old you think you were wayne dwyer is the was the guy's name but those are friends so if i if i say to you you know man i always wanted to do that job i always wanted to learn how to do

that it's like that talk i said on the airplane i was going to learn and defend myself no you didn't yes i did no you didn't people you know you see someone who's 50 years old just shittily playing a fucking guitar shittily is not a word and they're going what are you doing i was going to learn how to play guitar oh and now you're learning good for you right so like like you you got to do stuff but um the you know uh we're all over the place here. Tony. But it's fun. It's 8.07. I heard a bedroom door open. I have six pages of notes that we haven't touched.

Listen, you bring any one of your kids, I will, no shit, you set up the fights. And I tell you, that's one of my most fun things, posting on those posts. Oh, thank you. It's one of the most flattering things to have tony blower post but it but it's but just the for people who don't know um i'm always posting challenges uh so it's it's it's it's uh it's funny was there any before the house wakes up and everything goes crazy was there was there one or two really big questions you had to get out?

I can't do any of the big questions. You'll talk for another hour straight. I want to say two things, and then I want to bring up one final thought that I want you to touch on. There are a lot of people I know in life and a lot of people I like, and I like them in different scenarios. I want to say that you're the kind of person, if I was at a bar, 10 drinks drunk with my fly down, I would want to sit next to you. Or if I was at the most sober dinner with my parents and they were there, I'd want to sit next to you. I have always, I don't know, but the first one, I've always loved hanging out with you and you are so such a, um, nonjudgmental, open, loving, caring person that I've always loved hanging out with you and you are so such a, um, nonjudgmental, open,

loving, caring person that I've always enjoyed your presence. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. You're, you're, you're one of the coolest people I've ever met. Um, there's something you said there. So, so I watch UFC every Saturday, like a fucking idiot. It's really the only thing I watch.

I'm just addicted to it. I don't even know why the whole time I'm watching, I'm like, this is, this is gross. Like I seriously have those talks with myself, but, but I'm addicted. Um, it's like picking your nose. I'm just, it just, I do it even though it's gross, but you describe Mark there. I don't even know. Uh, I don't know what, what you call this topic. sorry. But there's four categories in whatever this big topic is, and I'm sure you'll tell us in a second. There's martial arts is number one. Then there's combat sports, which is number two. By the way, sorry, it made me really nervous when Bedros was interviewing you that he didn't have notes.

Like that was giving me anxiety. Number one, there's martial arts. Number two, there's combat sports. Number three, there's reality-based self-defense. That's like one of those suits where the guys wear the suits and they practice fighting each other, right? No. Okay. Sometimes.

Reality-based self-defense is like all modern martial arts systems like Krav Maga and stuff like that where their focus is on self-defense, not sport. Okay. Let me go through again. Martial arts, combat sports, number three, reality-based self-defense and number four, violent encounters, sudden violence versus sudden violence, the unknown. And then you kind of go into explain that sudden violence versus consented violence. And those first three are consented violence right and that fourth one is sudden violence and then i was like that when i heard that i'm like oh shit i've known tony for 10 years and i've always just made up some bullshit in my head of what i thought the spear was but that hit me like a a ton of bricks So, and that's what you teach, right? You, you teach, you teach a level of awareness and how to, to hopefully overcome a situation where number four happens, not number

one, two, and three. The irony is, and no one should, no one should, uh, the irony is, and this is one of my questions is, is, was to question you. Cause I, you did martial arts 30 to 40 private lessons a week. You took them from the age of 20 to 25 and you started your martial arts career at the age of 13 doing Taekwondo. So it's kind of funny. You, you have this line about demystifying, um, the practice. Um, but yet you trained like a fanatic to get there and so i so that the private lessons was what i was teaching okay okay during that period i i studied fanatically um you know i got i got jumped by two guys in 1972-ish 73 uh by by two guys and you were 12 years old at the time. Yeah. And when I went home, my dad says,

you're going to learn martial arts. And Taekwondo school had just opened about a mile away, a couple miles away from the house. And I would either get a lift there from my mom or I'd walk there. And it was, for a kid who, as a wrestler, as a skier, as a gymnast, was afraid of everything. I go to the practice, like I said, but I was afraid of everything.

So learning martial arts felt like even though I was standing in line going key eye and doing this and learning kicks, I felt like this is the Holy Grail. This is what's going to help me overcome my fear. overcome my fear and uh um and then i started actually uh teaching in 1977 i was i set up an attic i mean i would uh i i had a what's called a mackie ward it's a striking pad uh i would have it under my bed like before i would get up in the morning at 13 years old 14 years old 15 i would slide her bed and start working on strengthening my knuckles. I'd roll out of bed. I'd be doing handstand. On the way to the bathroom, I'm throwing freaking kicks like I was a fanatic.

But I worked through – I don't remember what your question was. Oh, the four categories. So in 1980, one of my students, I was training this kid, Mitchell, to defend himself. His dad was one of my dad's closest friends. And he knew I was a martial art fanatic. And he says to me, he comes to me, I'm in the back. It was 1979, 1980, I think it was 80 and rocky had already released that was 1976 and we would get these big boxes in at my dad's uh warehouse and when we would

empty them i would punch them and i beat them up like stallone hitting sides of beef they were thick thick you could like i could jump back kicks into them and they were so big it was like side and i would do one day i turn around and this guy, Joey, is standing there going, Tony, you're getting good. And he asked me, would you teach my son? It's 1980. And I said, yeah, what's going on? He said, bully problem at school, but I don't want it to be, you know.

And he pays me to do this. And I start teaching mitchell three months later mitchell gets in a fight gets dropped the guy drops him with a left hook and and uh he's debriefing he's telling me what happened he's furious and i said why didn't you you know i've just been training you for three months on how to box it i've clinched how to how did like what i was teaching was wrestling it was 1980. This is 13 years before the first UFC. I was, because of my wrestling background, my Taekwondo background, and I had a fascination with

boxing. I'd already started boxing. I was teaching boxing, kicking, and wrestling. It was like a precursor to MMA. There were a lot of guys doing that. I'm not saying that I invented MMA. There's going to be one asshole listening to this going, oh, Tony threw credit for him. No, there were lots of guys.

Right? And so my point being here is I said to Mitchell, why didn't you do wax on, wax off? And I didn't say that because Karate Kid hadn't been released yet. But meaning I'm going, he hit you with a left hook. Why didn't you slip it? Why didn't you parry it? And he looks at me, and he's 15.

He goes, he goes, um, he says, well, I grabbed the kid by the shirt. Cause the kid had shoved him and Mitchell had grabbed him and said, you know, fucking to leave me alone. Just that emotional moment. He said, I grabbed him by the shirt and I had my school books in my other hand. So can you imagine if you had to box me, and I said, hold on to my shirt and hold on to some books. How soon do I punch you in the face? Like right away. Right.

Then. So, so here's the guy like this. The guy goes, you know, boom, fucking hits and drops Mitchell in that moment. And I, I've told the story a million times. It was like the goddess self-defense hit me with a lightning bolt. And I went, oh my God, we keep self-defense wrong. It was 1980. I was 20 years old.

And I said, are those your books? He goes, what? I said, are those your books from school? He goes, what? I said, are those your books from school? He goes, yeah. I said, grab them and grab me and show me how we grabbed you. And I started for 15 minutes, reverse engineering. I had him grab me. I had him grab. I started moving and realizing if you're holding onto somebody, you're holding books and someone goes to hit you, your body flinches. There's a microcontraction. You can't drop the books. You can't even let go of the shirt. Now, I explain it a lot more elegantly. And I explained the

neurotransmitter myelinization factor and the starter flinch and the cross extensor, and all this brain science shit now decades later. But back then it was like, I know what we need to do. All self-defense must be taught through the lens of what's the scenario. All self-defense must be taught through the lens of what's the scenario. And we must reverse engineer ATM, getting out of a car, opening a door. Everything we did in class was then. That replicates a violent encounter. So now we come back, fast forward to the four categories for decades now. And I'm talking about, I could be with an elite tier one unit or talking to a guy in

a Starbucks. Everyone's a fucking expert, but everyone you like, nobody understands the unconscious bias because it's unconscious. If you ask a boxer how to solve a problem, he's going to tell you with my hands. If you ask a martial, like a type one, no guy, which is predominantly a kicking art, how do you solve this problem? He's going to tell you with his feet, right? The grappler is going to say, I'm going to take it to the guy,

the jujitsu guys, we develop an unconscious bias, but nobody's asking, does my unconscious bias, my passion, my love for this style of martial art, does that compromise my safety? I just wrote something recently. Does your, can your love of martial arts make you put you in more danger? Because what it does is it is it is it it it impacts your true situational awareness stevan because what your brain is looking to do your brain is like a hard drive always trying to predict the future right now while we're talking you're hearing sounds in the background and you're thinking even though you're trying to listen to me

how long is he going to talk for because the kids are going to come in here soon i've got to go do this hailey's going to get this. You nailed it. Right. And you're distracted by that because your brain, without you even having to do anything, is trying to predict the future. So if all you know how to do is double leg or round kick, or like I always make the joke, everyone learns how to get out of the headlock. Well, if you do your 10,000 reps of practicing the counter for the headlock, you didn't realize that you did 10,001 reps of putting yourself in a headlock. And so another, another fascinating topic,

which could be a whole podcast that you mentioned. Yeah. Every time you practice self-defense, you're also practicing getting in that situation. So if I grab a gun, I stick it in your face to practice the gun disarm. You're training your brain to let the gun come towards you so you can do the move. And this might seem ludicrous to anybody who listening here does jujitsu, taiko, and other go. Now, that's stupid. But the reality is this is evidence-based and it's neuroscience-based. It's not my opinion.

I just happen to be the, like, don't shoot the messenger. Anyone who thinks it's bullshit, all they have to do is open up their self-awareness, not even their self-awareness they need to be more aware you can see you can see it happen non-stop everywhere around you people's biases once you once you know understand what tony's saying you'll see it everywhere listen i love martial arts i've been in martial arts all in all my life i've got hundreds of affiliates around the world they didn't come to me like like like they were just born and now i'm coddling them and going, I'm going to teach you sphere.

Every single person who teaches my system comes from jujitsu, Krav Maga, Taekwondo, boxing, MMA, law enforcement. And they realize what's missing from their practice is a way to reverse engineer scenarios and teach their clients how to manage fear. Because if you don't manage the fear, you don't manage the fight. You don't get to the access. Listen, when a violent encounter happens, your reactive brain hijacks executive function and cognitive thinking.

And that's where we talk about, we do these blocks for law enforcement world called evidence based scenario training. And we're using dashboard video and CCTVs going with, here are trained people not doing what they were trained to do. How is that possible? And what we explain is the neuroscience in decision-making and that you can't access your conflict. If I ask you, so the unconscious bias is this, if I say to somebody, how would you solve this problem?

So if I ask you, how would you solve this problem? Your brain goes da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But in the moment, if that problem happens, if the fear loop hijacks you, you're going, fuck, I'm running out of time. What am I going to do? Well, that's messing with you. That's messing with your coordination, your complex motor skill, your confidence. But the answer, as succinctly as I can, why I created the categories is because people people I always say be careful

when you practice you might get really good at the wrong thing careful when you practice you might get rid of the wrong thing and people thought I was criticizing their arts but what I was talking about was neuroscience that that that in a high stress situation you're going to default to what you've done the most of and so if three guys jump out of a car in a road rage incident, and all you've done is double leg the guy in front of you, what you should have done here is got back in your car and gotten the fuck out of there, or maybe run because it's three guys, right? And next thing you know, you're on the ground and there's two people kicking the shit out of you. Because you weren't situationally aware, i was telling you this your self

awareness and your unconscious bias are working together and that compromises or informs your practical situational awareness does that make sense a hundred percent it's pretty like nobody nobody thinks in that way because we fall in love. We romanticize our martial arts. And I say this one more time. I love martial arts. I love, you know, but I don't confuse the practice of complex motor skills in category one traditional martial arts. Very ritualized, very formula driven, very cooperative, very choreographed. Does that mean?

Listen, there was a guy named Masayama, who was a founder of Kyu Kushinkai martial arts, a very famous hard style martial art. One of his demos he did was to kill a bull with a reverse punch. And I would talk about it sometimes at night when I'd be talking. I'd go, Masayama, who knows him? Yeah. what's the most famous story about masayama it's legendary he killed a bull with a reverse punch and that's the legend so if you want to learn kyokushinkan fuck yeah i go do you know that that bull was sedated and held by two people oh like it wasn't a bull

charging him one day when he was like you know out, out, you know, walking with his family. It's a bull. Right. That would have been impressive. I go, but listen, do you, the fact that he was a big fucking huge guy, his hands were bigger than your head. Savant. He was a pro wrestler. He was a lifelong martial artist. The bull was slated for slaughter. It was sedated and it was a demo. Crazy. The bull was slated for slaughter. It was sedated. And it was a demo. Crazy.

Some people were horrified. I go, the fact that it was so controlled means it wasn't a real fight. But it became like a legendary thing surrounding this art. But it wasn't a transferable skill. I could train with him. I'm not going to do it. But here's the thing. So people are like, think I'm knocking Masayama had disrespectful. I go, no, you're missing the point. One is that wasn't a real fight.

There was no need to manage fear. It wasn't a moving target. And I still don't want to fight a guy that can kill a bull with a punch. Right. Right. Right. Right. So I can look at somebody who that's a, every one of those martial arts are great athletes. I can look at somebody but that's a every one of those martial artists are great athletes i can look at the best you did i love to just chest muscles at 100 miles an hour that's amazing that's amazing amazing but is that what you want to do with three guys you know in a peaceful uh in a peaceful protest with with skateboards you know hitting you over

the head is that where you want to be right now yeah and that's what that's what you teach should you use your karate should you use your track and field expertise should you use your jiu-jitsu should you why aren't you aware of why and why aren't you aware that you have a choice of which one to use we redefine self-defense uh that where if you google self-defense in the dictionary, it'll say you're paraphrasing the act of protecting your property or your life. It's a physical act. It doesn't even include situational awareness in Merriam-Webster's version. We created, several years ago, a definition that says the decision to choose safety when danger is imminent. To have the courage, like you did on the beach, I don't feel when danger is imminent to have the courage like you did on the beach

i don't feel like danger is imminent but i gotta be ready right the decision to choose safety when danger is imminent and that changes your paradigm right um when i when i looked up um the definition of self-defense um it said how i asked siri how the fuck would i know ask tony blower that's what she said just so you know siri is is very smart but the uh um listen i created the categories to have conversations with people where it would help them identify and improve their self-awareness where they would realize you know category one hey i'm a martial artist. And if I ask, here's the thing. If I ask a guy who's a street vendor selling fucking shitty, dirty food, I go, I call him up. I go, dude, I'm starving. Is your food good? He's going to say, yeah. And if I call up,

you know, French Laundry or Morton's or some famous steakhouse and I go, hey, is your food good? The guy's going to go, yeah. Like everyone thinks their food is good and what they're going to serve you is good. It doesn't have to be malicious. If I ask somebody who's a traditional martial artist who's never studied fear management or scenarios or anything like that, does your Tai Chi work in self-defense? They're going to go, of course, because there's a version, there's a narrative that it does. If you ask an MMA guy or somebody who's a kickboxer, their idea is like, let me let me back kick you in the head I knocked the guy out so everything works but there's there's there's a whole other side to dealing with a violent

encounter than just you know does does that elbow or that punch work category four category four violent encounters Tony in four minutes I'll be driving in a minivan taking my kids to jujitsu go do it listen you set up that fight i will i'll actually fight all three of your kids right now um thank you for your time every day that you get older my kids get stronger so the longer i can put off that fight i know the odds are my favorite i'll be they'll come in they're like 25 i'm in an old person's home you know and they're like you i heard you you're my my dad showed me all these texts flower and i'm like i don't remember your dad i'm gonna call you later on today and tell you something that we

have in common okay yeah well We have one thing in common. I just realized yesterday, listen to one of your interviews. And you don't want to talk about it. Okay. No, no, no, no. The world's not ready to know. Okay. Dude, this was fun. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thanks for getting up so early. And you have no, you have no reason to have no reason to be fearful before that. That's just your anticipation, your excitement, because this is where you thrive, man. Thank you.

I enjoy the fear. It's funny. I made a post about it last night, and I got tons of advice. I was like, oh, man. Yeah. But that's the fear management needs management, because the word stigmatizes people. If you said, I enjoy the rush and the buzz and the energy and the light anxiety before I'm about to perform, people go, oh, that sounds weird, but okay, good. It's a show.

It's your show. What's the name of the show what's the name of the show buddy i i gave it a humble name the savant podcast yeah so they're sure there's just good to show you exactly right the savant okay man peace out bye thank you you look great by the way that's a good angle for you keep using that lighting thanks man okay bye