S1E83 · Logan Gelbrich: A logical justification for chasing your dreams

Hey legends, welcome to another episode of the Virtus Performance Podcast. We have a very exciting guest for you guys today, a very interesting conversation and hopefully the beginning of a lot more very interesting conversations. Before we kind of get stuck into that, I'd like to thank all you guys for listening. It's been a pleasure to see the downloads kind of continue to grow and to see all of the feedback that we get, both positive and negative. It's awesome to be able to have dialogue with you guys around what you want to hear, what you don't want to hear, what you get a lot out of and kind of where you guys see value.

So thank you for that. If you have been enjoying the podcast, please share, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff, leave a review, pump our tires up, you know the drill. Today's episode is with a man from Venice in California. We first kind of got wind of what he was doing maybe about 9-10 months ago. Lucky enough to be on a video call with him where he talked about organizational culture and leadership and he kind of had us hooked ever since. So we've been following him on Instagram, on his blogs, kind of diving into a

little bit of what he had to say and we were lucky enough to take a big chunk of the team up to Sydney a couple of weeks ago for the Hold the Standard summit and then on the couple of days later we were lucky enough to catch up with Logan Galbraith for a podcast. So today's episode is with Logan. We kind of dove into what he does and but more so why he does it and how he does it and spoke about the important conversations that need to be had around culture and development and adaptation

and I guess challenges and how we actually overcome these challenges and how we do it in a group, as a team, as a collective so that we can we can all make the world a better place. So yeah you'll get a much better idea of who Logan is and what he's about over the next hour or so. Unfortunately the the mic did pick up a little bit more background noise than we were hoping. We're in a little bit of a louder space than we planned but all is well. You can still hear the conversation and I'm sure the message will still get through.

If there's any sound engineers out there know how to get rid of background noise that'd be great but otherwise just think of it as a little bit of ambiance. Without further ado let's dive in here's Logan. My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day. I believe everyone especially normal people have a story to tell. The Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Logan welcome to the podcast. I'm Paul. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Yeah I'm glad to be here. I don't know if I've ever had like a follow-up conversation not that we'll talk about this but a follow-up conversation with people immediately after the summit like like this and so seeing you guys like years peeled back. Yeah it's been an intense weekend and I'm sure we'll dive into kind of what we touched on but this is a this is a cool feeling because we've kind of been fanboying a little bit for the last nine months or so since we started following you and it's it's cool to be in the same room Instagram is a wonderful wonderful thing.

It totally is. Well I appreciate the hell out of it. Most of the time. Yeah it's a bad rap I think. But the fanboy thing is mutual you know like it's a trip for me to get on a plane and go somewhere and then bring the human to this like connection that's there and I mean it's a yeah I'm feeling the same the same thing it's like made real at that point. Yeah that's true. Well the way we kick off the podcast first question for you what gets you out of bed in the morning? Well

I have this thing with determinism and so I'm quite allergic and so I would say curiosity is what gets me out of bed in the morning because if there was no mystery or or uncertainty or something to be curious about then we would kind of already know how things would go yet. Yeah. So that just blessing of uncertainty and me being curious about it I think is what gets me out of bed. That's interesting but you kind of you seek it out right like it's not something that you just wake up and it can't like

the curiosity and the uncertainty comes to you because a lot of people this is probably me pigeonholing a little bit but a lot of people kind of set up their bandwidth and their their walls and they kind of put their blinders on and just live their regular life but you kind of seek it out. Yeah I mean you know I think there's two sides to this this coin because life will dish you a heavy dose of uncertainty regardless of your framework even the most risk adverse people will be introduced to this uncertainty whether they're seeking

it or not but yeah I think my my personal framework includes a lot of latitudes we'll say you know and again that goes back to just my own personal thing with with certainty or like determinism you know if if you could tell me what my life would be you know in a definite way then I don't really see a lot of fun and doing it at that point you know but yeah uncertainty is not a it's not a me thing it's a lot of things. Do you think you're prepared for that uncertainty? I don't think

anybody's prepared for it I mean that part of you know there's a conversation in like the CrossFit world for example about like being prepared for the unknown and unknowable they talk about that a lot right and you can do things to allegedly prepare you in the best way possible but that's part of the characteristic of uncertainty yeah is that there's no preparing for a test that you don't know the questions for so like in an absolute sense I'm not prepared for uncertainty at all you know like but I think we all some more effective than others we all are doing some things to sort of manage that uncertainty.

Trying to move the needle as close as we can to whatever that thing is. Yeah and uncertainty is such a big big idea it's a big general thing luckily if we care to pay attention I think there's this beautiful element of skill transfer to steal language from coach Pauley you know if the uncertainty that I'll face in my life and uncertainty that you will face in your life can't be you know confined or known maybe just maybe we can you know attack some specific things with general implications right like maybe you can go about a

ballet practice that would inform how you would navigate the waters of let's say motherhood right like these things seemingly have nothing to do with each other but you know showing up and being disciplined and having attention to detail these are these are ballet things and these are motherhood things you know so you know I'm not a big fan of trying to like mimic life you know there's the whole like sports specific training thing but you know what that is it's playing the sport like in baseball you don't just have like a baseball bat with like

bands attached like get ready for specifically baseball you do some generalized things to develop yourself and then you apply them specifically outside I guess what you do who is Logan Galbraith and how do you I guess explain that to people that may not have met you before which is probably a lot of our audience yeah I I also don't feel very tethered to what I do because in my view they're just vehicles to sort of again play with this curiosity and learn about myself so yeah I just feel like I'm a student I feel very

you know I step in and take pride to the role of teacher but I think things get weird when you start claiming teacher yeah it's a little bit could have to do with what we spoke about all weekend which is that if you're the teacher with the lesson then this is a generalization but that sort of sets the stage for playing defense for that lesson and trying to confirm and reinforce those truths but if you're a student then you can also be a teacher and you have the optionality of progressing involving yourself you know so

if I was gonna take the you know the balcony view on who I am I would say I'm a student myself to give some context we we participated in your call to stand someone on the weekend and he spoke a bit about seeking disconfirming information and looking yourself in the mirror what do you see I see a super green young man is trying to figure it out if I'm gonna give myself a little more credit than that I do see specifically a young man who is willing to do things that a lot of people around

me I observe are not willing to do in terms of looking in that mirror and doing the work and sort of seeking mastery full well knowing that characteristically seeking mastery is a road just just paved with you know disappointment yeah you know because the alternative and it's a popular one seems like a like a charade you know it's like okay I don't like how failure feels so I'm gonna avoid it which is a lie because those roads again we started this whole podcast talking about uncertainty uncertainty those roads are are not certain either you know

so it's on paper it feels like you can like skirt the system but to me it's like there's a bunch of failure and disappointment in one direction and a bunch of failure and disappointment in another direction only one of those options has the upside of actually doing something remarkable that way it doesn't seem like there's a choice for the people I guess it's your being the student you're learning and then teaching what you're learning but to steal a little bit from your book or what it's called and going right how do you it's kind of

the having two thoughts in my head at the same time but you've you can't really chat or you can't at all change what other people think or how they act and what they do right it's that's on them but at the same time you've kind of got the the way I say you've got the golden goose to a point because you've seen the other side or you're working towards the other side you're looking to other side so how do you help you know if people are at those crossroads direct them to going right do they

have to desire themselves or is there ways that you can kind of ask the question of them well there's a super meta way to answer this question because regardless let's say regardless of whether I am sort of like trying to semi forcibly guide you to a thing yeah or you are already pursuing yourself the process specifically of going right as outlined in the book must begin with curiosity because curiosity is the starting point for what could become commitment and in order to go right or to pursue your peak expression which is what this little made-up

phrase is for what we know about these people is that they understand commitment on a level that could not be understood any other way okay and then this is like there's a cascade into a bunch of other highly transferable skills because you've committed to something in this you know highly powerful way you put yourself in position for the next step of going right which is to develop a large body of deep work no one has skipped that step in creating asymmetrical value and seeking mastery you know once you commit to something and you develop this

large body of deep work you're then fit for the thing that's coming our way which is uncertainty and failure yeah if you were going to be met with some adversity would you rather be highly developed and prepared for that or would you rather be an amateur right and so the obvious answer is that those who have developed a large body of deep work then are more fit for the challenge and seeking these sort of difficult challenges and being quite prepared for them is a sweet spot that we sort of know about and it's the peak

human expression just flow yeah going right sets the stage for this now the last thing that sort of going right affords you is this you know basic idea that we talked about already as well which is these are all highly transferable skills so if you change course or change your mind or what going right means for you evolves it's okay you don't have to start over again you are actually more prepared for the next thing and that creates the thing well everything that I just sort of like explain right there begins with this little seed

of curiosity okay so you have to do on your own fruition whether someone introduces it to you or you introduce it to yourself you must be curious about the thing and so yeah I can share this with a million people and I will but there's got to be curiosity but yeah they need to be genuinely curious right and you can stress test this by thinking about commitment you know I was joking back home and I was explaining this to somebody that's sort of like if if I just decided in this like meeting room right now

I'm like guess what guys we're committing to something and I mean really committing you know what that thing is it's ceramics we're gonna be making all sorts of pots pottery it's gonna be both outdoor and indoor okay you have my attention there's no way that unless there was a coincidence that you became actually curious about this that you could commit it would be a fake so so if we rewind back to like Saturday morning 10 a.m. you've got 20 new faces in front of you yeah and I think like how is it just a matter

of okay guys we're gonna commit to this thing which you know as you said most of us didn't know what we signed up all of us didn't know what we signed up to in its entirety so how do you kind of shift that from we're gonna commit to this thing and everyone kind of agreed to I guess the end of the weekend where you've we've spent two days kind of diving into content and trying to adapt and trying to learn and trying to kind of jump on the thing with how do we I guess how

do we well how do you I don't know what I'm looking for express that to the group yeah how do I solve that I solve the problem yeah that's a good question because it's something that I on one hand really worried about those those moments in the beginning I mean as someone who as someone who is genuinely stressed and uncomfortable with the idea of speaking publicly to people and I really care about the content of this thing okay I care about teaching the summit more than I care about most anything in the world and I

have I feel a great deal of responsibility to deliver this message on one hand on the other hand I'm sort of solving this with the same sort of framework that helped me get over crying my eyes out anytime I had to speak in front of people which is that I'm gonna be there with you guys I'm just gonna be in the room and and that this is not a recital thank God those are the ones that are really you know all my eyes I wouldn't be able to finish the first sentence in school it's not

a recital I actually get to be me yeah thank God and and that's how I sort of like let myself off the hook a little bit because what you don't know I mean we could ask you if you had a positive experience or not or what you would grade the experience or something but I'm just gonna assume right now you had a positive experience what you don't know is that I'm doing what I described in the high performance lecture I'm doing that exact thing when I leave there each day which is I am extremely dissatisfied

with what I intended to deliver and what I actually delivered so I'm like armchair quarterbacking my shit right you had that sweet example on the airplane you didn't mention it like you were unclear in this area you didn't really answer this question the way that you envisioned but all these internal things like but you guys don't know that yeah you know and so yeah it's it's the same sort of problem-solving that any performer and anything is trying to do which is like oh my god I'm about to do this thing and I want it to

be perfect and in the back of my mind we know it's not going to be perfect but doesn't mean you shouldn't try well no doubt in a couple of hours we'll probably reflect on this podcast and there'll be 400 questions we didn't ask no shortage of half a dozen podcasts that started with one question yeah and they had paper just like y'all do lots of questions on there and we did not get to question number two yeah so question so question number two why should you give a shit to me that's a question of self-respect

because I think and this is maybe just me placing my view the world on there but I think that apathy is disrespectful to self and I'm now I'm trying to say like universal truths off the cuff here but okay so now I'm trying to trying to to check that for truth so and I realize there's nuance here we need to decide what matters for us yeah and so when you ask the question what I sort of heard was like why should we give a shit about anything and I'm not saying that you should give a

shit about everything we should decide what matters and you should really give a shit about that because to pretend like you don't care about the things that you actually care about is extremely self-sacrificing and disrespectful to self I think yeah well it is and I guess that's everyone's up to everyone's own prerogative to decide what actually matters to them and I think that first thing I think of his values so what are the the deep-seated values that you've kind of identified that you have I guess it probably was showing a lot on the weekend but

I'm sure your answer is probably different to our perception well I can tell you specifically because I've done some work to discover what those values seem like that kind of person that's right well it's actually really awkward to be 32 years old and someone asked you what your values are and you'd be like yeah that was my answer you know so my values are love joy freedom growth can't remember my fifth I got four and these are specific to specific to me and specific to this season of my life you know I think our values

I think it's important to do something to drill down into what your values are because if not we can kind of solve the problem of that question by naming positively connotated things how did you I guess from 32 to 33 how'd you identify what those values were was it just so specifically in the context of therapy and then specifically in the context of studying an LP early linguistic program yeah took a master practitioner course 16 days in Amsterdam and there's some some techniques to do that technical leadership the specifics of how you go about that

probably matter less than you just go about that so I think it's important because I I wasn't making a joke about people's make a joke about myself like it's fucking weird to be a grown man so what are your values like I'm gonna tell you how much time you got honesty true but you just like go down the list of words that have positive meaning yeah you know I can imagine that I'm covering up what your values were was liberating in a sort of sense but and question one was it question two was it also

scary or was it expose you yeah it was very scary it was a scary time in my life I was like highly depressed at that point and we can rewind the tape if I if I said joy or not because joy is one of them if I didn't you did if I did I could go it'd be really ironic if I missed that one because that was my first core value specifically because I didn't have it you know I didn't have any expression of it in my life furthermore I didn't know how to get it

I didn't know how to do it I'm really clawing my way out of whatever that was like as of this hour you know because yeah like I someone just asked me the other day so what do you do for fun that was about four jeans in on Saturday afternoon I was like I don't I really don't know and so that was like the confronting part of like this values elicitation because when you feel sort of incongruent with yourself and then you see sort of in a very straightforward way how specifically you aren't congruent with yourself

or your needs it is very confronting you know but at least there's clarity there yeah it's important it's important to go into what that is you know because and this is part of the where I could place I don't want to say the blame but that's really the only word I kind of come up with the I can assign the explanation for a lot of this was it's really hard get what you don't know that you need yeah right yeah yeah and so that was like the upside of going down this rabbit hole has it

helped further define what your vision is what the standard is yeah and I in a personal sense right you know what's ironic about this is I speak to people all over the world about like creating some sort of brand or a company or you know to do something remarkable with a group of people part of that little spiel is often to separate yourself from the thing that you're creating you know so like I am NOT deuce gym or strike movement or any of these things I participate and interact with these things and they mean a

lot to me and I influence them and they influence me but it's important to like not be those things well the irony of the fact that I go around talking about that is I think I've done a good job of that part but what I haven't done a good job of is you know letting both entities win and thrive because it's so hard it's so hard to create something from nothing in the world that if you're like me and you're down for whatever you will do anything to to make that thing remarkable or make that

thing win including maybe forgetting yourself along the way have you had times where you've struggled to differentiate between you and juice as two different entities because it's like from a personal point of view it like resonate with that immensely being you know you kind of where's the line always a there's a gap in my mind I haven't struggled in terms of that separation yeah the areas where I feel connected are less about an identity and more about a duty like it what what level and how specifically and I do to fold to this thing and

so like very simple almost silly technical examples of this are just like when and how long I am at the physical place you know yeah and so it's less for me an identity thing and more of like I think I think that the shadow of what makes me good at some things is that I will just work harder and like I said before just willing to do things that I think other people aren't sometimes so the shadow is that of that is there you are sort of overly delivering into this one one of one of

the I guess theories or thing that we talked about at the gym occasionally is a third place so it's you've got your happy happy home your house you've got your place of work and then you've got a third place do you have a third place that you can go yeah well there's there's two third places the the local one is monoties it's a coffee shop but it's not it's it's a great place and they do great things with coffee but it's not super chill think of it in Venice Beach so my personality sometimes it's not

the perfect one so I have a like a little creative space up in Malibu where I go up do my thing that's what would you find that gives you or allows you to experience for me it's it's space I am highly introverted it's almost annoying how much I mentioned that there's like a mean words like something about introverts like if you're so introverted why do you why is it that you can't wait to tell everybody but yeah I'm maxed out the scale on introversion in terms of the Myers Briggs test so when I have space

to be with myself and my thoughts I am in my mind at least I'm unstoppable I can do anything I can do more more better work longer than anyone I know now the hard part with that is I'm in a industry or a job or a role where I have to interact with people and fortunately or fortunately as you may be have success in that role you interact with people and so you know the thing forces you to have structures in place to protect your yourself or it'll just kind of like eat you up you

know so that's what it gives me is some space from the default mode which is I am at service to whoever would like to take my time you know yeah 100% definitely resonate with that we are we have coffee shop next straight over which is an amazing place same kind of deal but it just gets hectic sometimes and there's no place to go inward it's all communication and outwardness so it's been able to find that place where you can hold space and that and that term I guess you use in a couple of different ways

but what does it mean holding space yeah so firstly based on what we talked about in the summit the size of the space you can hold is specifically sort of tethered to how big a container you are or how large your conscious capacity is different maybe more simple way to say that is like how many perspectives you can hold and really holding space well is in my opinion or my view is about holding perspectives for all the sort of stakeholders involved you know there's a little tool that we talk about around the gym that shows

up in NLP a little bit which is like the perceptual positions right so there's five of them the first perceptual position is life through your own two eyes it's the one that most people live in all the time people who cannot hold space usually spend all their time there there's a second perceptual position so that is the position of the other so if I had the ability to hold space for the other I could then leave my consciousness and put myself into your shoes and not just imagine looking back at me but I would feel

the way you feel I'd be experiencing what you're experiencing I would have a background that you had it's putting yourself in someone else's shoes yeah third perceptual position is that of the observer meaning an emotionless observer view as if you're watching whatever scenario you're dealing with on like movie screen yep from the balcony and this is sort of the true way to not be affected by the emotions of the situation really helpful for conflict the fourth perceptual position is that of the group so maybe it's business or it's family or it's a group of friends

imagining that it has its own consciousness and needs and values and the fifth is source that's like the highest expression of self or if you're religious it would be like God or so your ability to like see and include those considerations in any given moment then would be your ability to hold space so a little bit of empathy happening there yep have you you said it this industry the world that we're in like obviously it is very attractive with others why this why this industry yeah it's a good question so specifically because of my own

satisfaction with what I observed inside of this industry versus what I my experience of it through performance as a team sport athlete meaning what I mean by that is the curiosity that got me in at the very beginning was built on this sort of gaping disparity between the multi-billion dollar fitness industry thing and the actual thing and of course I'm realizing that I'm biased when I say the actual thing but as my friend Tate Fletcher likes to say you can't argue with results so until further notice we'll call this thing with results the actual thing

and then the multi-billion dollar industry with virtually no results not the thing that's good and you know I get fired up on that still I mean I'm it's not why I'm in it today and I'll maybe sort of start to explain that but that's how this all started which is it still fires me up just now as I mentioned it because I don't like scenarios where there's isn't consequences or accountability it's like a skin in the game thing you know it feels like people are it feels like injustice like people are getting away with murder

because if there was an industry of that size billions of dollars the example I use all times like the automotive industry if we accepted in that industry what we accept in the fitness industry then it would be like completely normal for you to go out to your car to go to work every morning and then just like four mornings out of seven in the week your car just wouldn't work and we you know cars they just don't really work you know and we wouldn't accept that there there's this this kind of screwed up vortex of

the fitness industry that sets the stage for this and and I hate it because it allows this thing to perpetuate and in my lifetime it probably will not change which is that the consumer is more interested in being off the hook for the responsibility of their own health and wellness yeah then actually having the health and wellness meaning it's much easier for these people to just get together and reinforce that this thing is just hard and can't really figure it out because last year was paleo and this year's keto you know we're all kind of

trying to keep up and everybody's lying to each other so you have this propped up authority figure in the health and fitness space that will take people's money because they're them giving money for weird products and services relinquishes them of their responsibility in their mind therefore you can be a complete thief moron or otherwise and not just survive but thrive in this thing so that's why I got into the thing I realized once being in it that it doesn't really matter it doesn't really matter what the thing is is what I mean just like baseball

was for me just like fitness is for me now just like entrepreneurship is in a general way it's sort of an environment to receive feedback you know it's the opposite of a vacuum and so when we put ourselves in these environments where we can give feedback you know where a strike is a strike and a ball is a ball and you know there's a bottom line somewhere and the weight on the bar is either higher or lower than your previous best it's just information to facilitate development did you explain before I've used it with pride

yeah the main bones of it is development yeah it's like the flavor or the vehicle it's like it's the reason for the conversation and now the nuanced part of that is knowing that and agreeing with what we just said does not negate the specific deep dive into the fitness right because here's here's what here's what's at stake and I'll use Carl Pally again as the example right so Carl Pally my opinion best coach on the planet he's having a conversation that no one else is having no one else is holding space for and his background

is in gymnastics specifically and he was a national champion in Spain Olympic hopeful and comes out on the other side as a very influential successful globe-trotting coach talking about gymnastics except if you follow him closely not only can he do the gymnastics thing justice at the highest level he can also tell you it's not about gymnastics yeah but if you're just an asshole who's never done anything on the street you can't say it's not about the gymnastics you have to go through the thing could have the runs on the board master it yeah be in

the arena come out on the other side and say it's just a vehicle to do the thing yeah you can't be a you know non skin in the game non participatory and non contributing talking heads is not about the thing man you need a thing yeah yeah so that come comes with I guess this experience and time and effort and sweat tears blood all that kind of stuff yeah but specific experience to being on the hook it's like the level of which you are ultimately responsible is going to like equate the gravity of that understanding

I think right so so so you know again my background wasn't in baseball I'm not even a baseball fan I'm not gonna even begin to tell you guys that like other people should get into baseball or whatever but the level at which I went through that specific arbitrary thing matters not because of the sport but because of the implications of being on the hook your your livelihood your you know whether you make rent or not depends on your performance of the thing is a different type of conversation then if I put the same sport and

just played like a rec league on the weekends because it's not about the thing it's about the weight of responsibility inside of the thing you know when you sign a lease of a business and take out a loan or or empty your bank account for a thing it increases the sort of weight and responsibility of that those lessons aren't available to you if you are without risk yeah I think of risks like that I feel as though I was significantly more likely to take those risks when I didn't have anything to lose and like I've

been kind of one of my I guess improvement goals we talked about on the weekend is the ability to assess and take more risks because I guess when I started it was me and I started with business partner and it was us and if we failed there then you know we're not losing anything right because we didn't have anything to start with so now that we're at the point where a bunch of people's livelihoods rest on this thing and then you know we've got all these we call the vertice family all these clients and people

that are relying on us to do our thing so that they can improve their lives like now whenever I go try and make a bigger decision I find it almost like I find that fear creeps in because there's so much more to lose how and if you have been through the same thing or have you been sent through the same thing and how have you been able to work through you know just making that that judgment call on trying to get to that next level yeah I I think this my answer begins with the general

observation that we don't really understand risk very well to begin with as humans yeah and the reason why we don't really understand risk is because of how time works so and and I can say this with a caveat of you being unique to let's say most people because you generally are taking risks but I think we don't understand it because we experience our own failures and shortcomings very closely we know those very well we remember them very well feel them we actually downplay our own successes and up play our failures whereas we do the opposite

with other people we generally play up the successes of others and we don't really understand their failures very well and that's because of how we experience time when you go through your life you're doing it chronologically right that's how I'm doing my life at least okay mostly last year was 2018 right okay this year 2019 correct except if you think about it that's not really how you experience other people because by the time you come to recognize or appreciate a successful person or thing that's like day one of your memory okay and even if you

were to really research and try to find out how hard they had it you cannot unknown the fact that they are successful about them in the first place that's the sort of winner circle bias right and this skews our understanding because now we see this deviation was like well I try stuff it's really hard and I'd fail a bunch and it's like expensive and it gets scary and I was like rent to me do or whatever but then there's these other people who like fly in their private airplanes and they have crazy cars and they

make great art or whatever the thing is right and so that like sets us up on trajectory of like in that inaccurate information you know classic example I talked about a lot is like Nike you know shoe dog is book worth reading it's incredible read shoe dogs there I mean just to summarize it it's a complete shit show and you know by the time you buy the book I mean you don't even need to buy the book everybody I mean the swoosh is most one was recognizable brands in the planet but what's what's unique is

the there are moments in Nike's history where you know as the reader that the consumer or you didn't have to buy Nike's a person in the world would evaluate Nike as a raging success because on the podium the Olympics John McElroy was wearing them it's everywhere what you don't know is in that exact moment the whole thing is within moments of catastrophic failure and it wasn't until they went public and you know the guy taps fill down shoulders like hey you're worth 250 million congrats or he's like oh really yeah and and so this really

skews our understanding of the thing what this sort of comes down to is risk is everywhere why because of what we talked about yesterday which is life is uncertain period in a lot of ways the things that we believe are safest actually have a hidden deeper way more dangerous risk the classic example and this is half the reason why you know I wrote the book is if you seek safety in your let's say career what you do is you try to avoid all risk and you find yourself 10 20 30 years down the road as

an unremarkable contributor to a job it doesn't matter with no asymmetrical skills or value and the industry shifts or you get fired or you are then made redundant and what you do is you come out on the other side completely unprepared for the world that you still live in which is an uncertain world and so for me the least risky thing you can do is continue to put yourself in a relative environment of growth which means you have to continue to seek out the challenges like we talked about weekend that will expose your blind spots

expose your weaknesses etc yeah I think and really listening to shoe dog was one of the the big kind of realizations that everyone feels like they're on the point of thought and can be on the brink of failure at any time and we don't see that and a couple of months after that I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Joe and Henry Rowlands and like isn't two of the most from the outside in the most epic humans on the planet right and they spent a good half an hour talking about in the imposter

syndrome and not and just both of them and I kind of wasn't one of the like you understand it intuitively you understand that everyone feels that way but to actually hear them talking about it and to dive into it and it kind of it made me feel like I was doing okay do you feel like you struggle with imposter syndrome sometimes and how do you work through it if so allegedly as like some sort of leader and some sort of conversation it's literally it's all made up now I think it's important and valuable but I

can't I know that you know everyone as well that I sort of respect is like a high performer deals with this this thing and it's personal spirit experience and podcasts as well and interviews and books whatever but everyone's sort of dealing with it and I sort of wish that our generation as we become quote-unquote adults and like raise kids and business do a better job of creating a more truthful reality around that because he kind of want to go back and like shake all these parents that you like grew up around you guys we're all

making this up you made up everything like nothing figured out yeah complete shit show and you pretended you weren't and now I'm you yeah yeah that's a good that's a great point and like us as students even though you're a student as well but you kind of the teacher role for the weekend we we see you come in and explain these theories and how they how they work in experiments and actions and things like that and we look at you and we're like okay this is a this is someone on another level is an incredibly

evolved evolved human I guess my question to you is understanding that you're on another level that you've worked up towards and yeah whichever way you wanna look at it where do you now need to go to evolve to that next level in the next level it's funny because just like I just described you are naturally biased towards playing me up yeah and so that dynamic is that also the edges that I'm exploring places I need to go are quite small in adjustments because there's a certain point and I think anyone who's an adult is sort

of there you can't see what you can't see and so you're sort of looking for the next marker and that by nature isn't gonna be too far away from where you currently are so to specifically answer your question it doesn't look like anything too crazy but just like it's a pain in the ass to put a kilo on your back squat at this point it's hard to make yeah like massive change to who you are as a person so for me I'm really working on understanding communication setting expectation and boundaries you know even though I

talk about teams and communication and like all these things and I feel like I understand them on a level that you were able to experience this weekend I still make critical mistakes all the time you know there's a natural thing that we're all exposed to which is the sort of spiraling forward of complexity right transcendent include which means the containers got to get bigger or you're gonna be more and more in over your head and so as I evolve I have to hold space for way more complexity than I did before and that includes other

humans and so one example just to like most general response to your question all the time is I have this this default belief that if I've communicated one thing someplace once that I'm communicating it everywhere to everyone all the time right and so I have to remind myself that I'm not nearly as clear to my team as I believe that I am that's a Napoleon quote but I think I butcher and coaches prep 101 I think I get it right in coach prep 101 I think I'm just gonna butcher right now which is your orders

must not be easy to understand they must be impossible to misunderstand that's like a cool little goal when you're dealing with other people that one is a challenge that I don't yeah it's a bit of a head fuck so it's like a thing that I try and stay true to is like it's not what is said but it's how it's heard yeah and that's like a big part of the communication space it's sort of an extension of that what was the last thing you changed your mind on as part of your evolution as well that's

my favorite question such a good question I changed my mind on a lot of things I'm trying to think of the last thing but I've changed my mind last impactful thing I mean this is sort of like a general thing but with major implications which is a big part of my own development has been changing my mind about my perception of the world because as open-minded and curious and whatever other cool words you want to attach to yourself that you think you are you are seeing the world through a very biased inaccurate perspective and you

know as you move to that stage for thing where you're like you know Johnny I have my method and my custom perfect view principles on things you've what that stage fails to see is that you are looking through a custom pair of glasses yeah and your custom pair of glasses are specifically as inaccurate as everyone else's and so to get enough distance from that is a pretty edgy place that I have gone in the last couple years which is it's sort of like assuming positive intent on steroids right like that's a that's a thing to

like especially in conflict like a assume positive intent like not just assume positive intent but everyone is literally doing what they think is right yeah including when you're motherfucking on because they have failed to meet the standard of the case me right and and that is a level of complexity that most people just rather not go towards and fortunately or unfortunately I'm sort of interested in including that ability as they go forward and so it's sort of like changing my mind about inclusion because if you're not careful you might begin to think you're right looking

like currently if you were to look through your I guess bias glasses would not at the world would that paint a picture of optimism or pessimism from your point of view well that's funny I'm I believe that I'm quite optimistic extremely optimistic about the upside of human potential my potential the potential of others in an absolute sense I think I'm intentionally pessimistic about how that plays out but here's the thing and it's quite liberating and you can even attach this to the whole major versus nurture argument which is you don't have to figure out whether

it's nature or nurture or you don't have to figure out what is the truth about the sort of expression of humanity because it only pays to believe the nurture side it only pays to believe that we have the upside because even if you're wrong it doesn't matter anyway yeah and so we all ought to just assume we can do everything and that skills move in both directions forever and you just get after it yeah I like that I think one of the things I remember from the weekend was was kind of on that is even

if there's 1% of your life that you have control over then this is a non argument it's a non discussion right and you know I learned these these lessons playing this horrible sport where you fail and it's really confusing but it was really a blessing because I feel extremely incongruent with a lot of people in the world the stage for judgmental side of me would say these are low performance but you know I've just never met someone who has managed the things inside their control so well that they could consider caring or complaining or speaking

about or worrying about the things that are outside of their control and so until I meet that person I think it's sort of news to all of us to just get back to the things that are in our control and what's scary is if you don't opt into like we said earlier an environment with heavy consequences with feedback you'll never learn that lesson it'll always be hypothetical you know but if you really go for it and try your best like with the consequences of failing you might actually learn one of the most important lessons of

life which is there are only some things inside your control and that's where your attention should be It's kind of like serving around to a leadership, it's your choice whether you choose to focus on the things in your control or focus on the things that are out of your control and an element of responsibility to yourself and to the people that you serve to choose the things that are in your control Why did you choose to take on the responsibility of this? Because it's a heavy burden, right? Yeah, it's a good question. I have this

very significant feeling that I am capable of so much like more than I'll probably be able to accomplish in my time here and I feel lucky to have that but it is a blessing and a curse because if I were to not opt into leadership and to, you know, it sounds corny but like give my total human best effort I couldn't unknow that like I would know that I was taking advantage of this sort of opportunity and it just feels disrespectful to myself and to whatever sort of higher powers out there and I often wonder

about other people's views because I've never lived as someone else of course but I've tried to see what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes and from what I hear that makes me weird okay so from what I hear it's unique that I think I can do anything and so the part of me who is trying to live inside of other people's shoes sometimes really wonders deep down if they really believe they can't do things or if it feels convenient to believe that because then they're not responsible for it and I want

to believe that everyone at some point in their life this is also sort of why I wrote the book you know I don't believe that you're born and live a life of any length and die and never ask yourself what could I be or what could I do you know I mean even the most unaware motherfucker has got to be doing laundry one day and be like I really believe everybody does that now the question is do they genuinely believe they can or that they're not capable or the other people are somehow better than them

or something you know and I don't know but I definitely know there's likely a tendency for us to lie to ourselves about that because it's may seem scary this might be me trying to find a simple answer to an incredibly complex question but in your research for the book and as you kind of dove into it and created that thing was there a personality trait a line of questioning or something that you identified was allowed people to take that shift into is this it for me to actually going I'm gonna load up and dive into

my peak expression yeah so it's a in a not-so-secret way this is also what the weekend is about which is like pursuing your peak expression begins to look like continually putting yourself in the newest most relative challenge for your own development and what we know about that is that requires disconfirming information so it definitely pays to be of the mindset or of the perspective that is open to seeking ready willing and able to receive this disconfirming information because you sort of guarantee your underperformance by being resistant to that right so if your pride is such

that you don't want to ever hear that you might be wrong or that you have some sort of flaw then what you're doing is your you're sort of putting the nails in your own coffin of development and so if there was a trade that would yield the most growth results and the greatest opportunity to to reach your potential it would be those that elicit growth so that would be the ones that are sort of both vulnerable willing to try and willing to look at the failure yeah can we get like halfway there and still lie

to ourselves that we're trying that like in terms of mindset there's like that fake growth mindset she talks about towards the end of the book so if you hand someone a book and say hey there's this thing called the growth mindset it really pays to have it people that have this big growth mindset are gonna be like well if it's valuable externally then I have that yeah I think the the way to answer your question is knowing it's difficult or knowing any of the concepts that we just talked about doesn't really make it easier you

know back home these guys the US Navy SEALs they get a lot of like cred and notoriety for this training this filtration process they have which includes the world-famous hell week five days long sleep like you know an hour and 15 minutes over the course of the five days and these like weird naps that you can win and and you're wet and sandy the whole time and it's just a place for attrition like trying to break people so they quit and you know everyone knows that going in and you can even have a transformative experience

there it actually come to the realization that you are willing to suffer and even die without quitting on say day three of hell week I mean you're soaking wet your skin is chafed off you've been awake for three days and you're just getting your ass kicked and you still can't go to the instructor and say I've realized that this is how this goes you keep me up for three more days it's horrible just like this and I just continue to not quit and then I get my tried and I become a Navy SEAL so since

I figured that out can you just hang now we just wrap this thing up it's like no you have to continue to over and over and over again make these decisions yeah right and and and so it's funny like especially people that are in training we know that ultimately right it's the reason why people who are good at this like almost in some ways fear their training because they know exactly where the edge is they know what it feels like I know how much it hurts they know how to go there and they know that's

where they need to be you know what when it comes to like our life development we somehow continue to tell ourselves that like we're gonna like figure something out and then we're gonna be at like our edge and we're gonna be chilling or there's some sort of like finish line and and life will remind you that your edge is your edge and it is hard and horrible and difficult and if it wasn't those things it wouldn't be your edge yeah so there's this process of continually opting in you know it's like you mentioned leadership that's

what leadership is you know it's not like hard in the beginning like dog days leadership made it through business it's like no dude you're choosing to like just hang out there yeah at the horrible edgy part and it's always gonna be hard there's always well you can have good days bad days etc but it's a matter of knowing that even at the end of how weak there's gonna be more challenges that's cool thing you obviously get a lot of your discipline and drive from intrinsically right who are the people that you can kind of look

up to extrinsically they're just doing cool shit that make you want to be a better version of you that's awesome yeah I this another thing I realize is that whereas I am quite intrinsically not even a matter of intrinsic and extrinsic just internally oriented yeah it's possible be possible to be motivated both internally externally have a different orientation I sort of make sense of the world internally whereas people that are twice as successful me as as me can can orient themselves externally and so that's my bias however I do sort of relentlessly seek out people that are inspiring to me and surround myself with people who are also vulnerably going for it dr.

Karen Miller for sure is inspiring you know I'm very fortunate to spend time with people that I feel like I don't belong there and in the last three years there's probably been a hundred times we're in my head I've said out loud in my head yeah you know and there there's a unique group of people up in Malibu that I get to be around tangentially that includes like crazy cast of characters Pat Riley basketball coach Rick Rubin music producer like deep in Beastie Boys you know like layer Hamilton Gabby reason and it's just it's less

of a name-drop deal so I'll stop but it's more of a it's more of like what's the same because as someone who felt like an outsider in a group like that you start to see how these people interact with one another and you realize that this is not a matter of like celebrity hanging out with celebrity because those are the only people they can hang out with it's no these people need each other just as much as scared non-contributing complainers need each other to feel safe right the people who are like too scared to try

so they hang out with other people who have also given up and they tell each other it's okay these people are like the savage version of that because they are on their edge doing shit that no one's ever done before and they look across the room and you know Josh Brolin who's just like starting you know five different superhero movies at age 43 or whatever the case may be looks across the way and like connects eyes with Laird who is gonna go faster on a foil on a 50-foot wave next year than he did the

year before and they get that you know and and so need sort of community in that way now again it's not about like celebrity or whatever but like these are the types of people that just humble me and show you perspective I think a lot of people can think small you know there's a moment I again another place where I was like how did I get here right go on these trips to Fiji and this like little island where it's like one of the best surf breaks in the world I don't surf but like it's

just a vacation and it's our small group and the only people on the island and I'm sitting there in this chair and in front of me is Bob Hurley who started Hurley and he sold it to Nike for nine figures or whatever and you know he's the sweetest man brilliant hard-charging guy and then behind him sort of like blurry to my vision is Larry Page's yacht from Google which is like a moving city right with the staff like bigger than you know the number of people that are on the island or whatever and he is

laughing about the levels of that and here I am in my little level and and so seeing perspective like that is huge and if you ever feel like you're in the zone where you're like the big fish or the strongest person in the room or whatever you however you want to say it it's like literally stunting your growth yeah was that like a an action that you took you just kind of say something I wonder I want to be part of this or was it more of like a organic like you were drawn to those

people I don't think you get there if it was the former yeah I don't think you get invited if you're weirdly motivated like that I think it's how you show up in the world you know that's me trying to explain something that I'm grateful for and can't really understand but uh you know yeah definitely people don't recognize the power of personal brand because you don't get the phone calls that you don't get so you wouldn't have known what you missed because you were an asshole high school or you right but you know if you show

up this is something I realize that for baseball it's like it's it's not hard out here you know in my opinion after you you sort of send it on something really difficult like trying to play a professional sport or trying to do something whatever it is that you your lane is you know because you get out in the real world and you realize that everyone is scared and everyone is playing small and so that just to like try your very best in the world is insanely unique and remarkable because there's nothing really else and so

I don't know that would be the only way I can explain it is there are people who are probably genetically attracted to that because deep down we all want to explore that so when we see someone else doing it we want to kind of be around yeah like that you're all in pursuit of excellence and you're all and that's like half battle showing up there from there you have the ethic to do this totally you know like and I feel like a douchebag because like the ridiculousness of those names and interactions but I think it

like lands you know but another guy who I really look up to that's featured in the book his name is a nicely able and he's not famous but he is world-class at what he does and he makes coffee better than anyway in the planet and I don't know if you know this but there's a world latte art championship yeah this dude is people fly from all over the world to like see him do this thing and that's what I mean by like excellence is by definition valuable and rare and attractive and there are things that

he's learned about making latte art that everyone learns about you know seeking their edge you know and oh by the way he has a job that like is easy to make fun of he makes he's a barista right but he as one who's the best in the world what they do does he now is a multi-time business owner and he is completely resistant to the fragility of ebbs and flows of losing jobs and you know like he's permanently valuable to this planet yeah how cool is that yeah if you asked him if it's about the

latte art or not he'd probably say it's not right you mentioned you're grateful for some of those people you mentioned what else are you grateful for outside of that grateful for my health you know I think that's part of where this duty or guilt or whatever you want to call it comes from it's like you know perfectly able young person with with nothing really to complain about you know also seen even for the first time a little bit experience like the fragility of mental health very grateful to have that now and I don't know that

there's two there's too much around my life is insane it's all made up traveled all around the world talking to people about things that I think are important you know I made a goal when I was really young to never make a resume for example still got that going for me good there's too much you know enough gigabytes on your good a couple of couple of questions to finish up and is the heart some sometimes sometimes the whole finishing up thing takes longer than the actual podcast so we'll see how we go but what are

you proud of I genuinely am proud of myself I'm proud of what I've chosen to do with my life considering the other options I'm proud of my people at deuce gym they're the best people in the world I'm proud of the fact that that thing exists yeah I'm proud of just truck just trying to do the harder thing I think what are you most confident I genuinely think I can do anything it's weird like I've become more and more comfortable sharing those things maybe it's just like a long-form podcast situation that find myself in or

whatever I think it doesn't really pay to speak my mind in that way publicly but it would I think it would shock people what I believe about myself in my own head and I'm grateful for that confidence because it's allowed me to try things that I don't see it seems like it's hard for people to try try the best do you think they will be scared or shocked at when you think of yourself because it's normal yeah again that goes back to what I said either it's not normal or other people are just lying you

know like I don't know why I think that I've always thought that you know I really don't know I have the best parents in the world I mean they probably have something to do with it you know but I mean I remember being in elementary school and I like it just didn't matter what I wanted to do I didn't fear not being able to do it you know like the joke I've said before it's like worries why I'm not an astronaut that I didn't want to be one I've never thought of limitations like that and

I realized that that either that's unique or other people are lying but whatever it is like I lean on a heavy do you sometimes have those doubts of bubble up that you can't do something and then is there a way to that you squish them back down I think my relationship with failure is what frees me out like cuz I to be clear I don't think that anything's gonna be easy for me or that I'm like particularly good something yeah I just like I'm so down to fail that I figure eventually I'll just be able

to do it you know and I think that was reinforced by the baseball thing you know yeah anytime you try to do something the best in the world especially something that's popular in your country and like millions of other people want to do it you know you start to look around you're like I probably shouldn't be able to do this like really fast or like you know there's just not a lot of reasons for that so the ace in the hole then becomes like just how down you are I guess and I generally feel okay

with failing not not in like a loser way like I played a win quote unquote but like it doesn't derail me to fail I guess where I think maybe it derails people or the fear of failure do yeah strikes me as you're someone who even if you do fail you don't see yourself as a no yeah yeah for sure and that even that goes back to the sort of the the stoic thing or the or the view of performance that we talked about it's like even if I was doesn't pay to think that yeah you

know like maybe I am but like there's a lot more upside and pretending I'm not so like let's do that one yeah anyway you win regardless of potentially find out what are you most excited for I'm so excited for this book yeah so first of all don't ever write one so scratch that scratch that stretch go well I'm just kidding so when you write a book you have to you don't have to but every book that you've read that you respected has been designed on the inside so there's a designer that like makes the words

fit in like a square and stuff it's not like word where you just like it's all jagged and shit on the edge I never really realized that yeah I mean I realized that like you do nuanced stuff with like how you do headings or whatever I guess I figured someone did that but anyway it's his whole job it's like making the thing whatever and so I wrote this big long book it was like you know almost 300 pages or whatever and took it to the editor and of course they like prevented me from ranting so

much or being lengthy or whatever so of course I knew that the edited version would come down inside yesterday I got an email from the interior designer we're done and I'm not gonna tell you how many pages it was but I was like how many pages is it and I was I wasn't asking for the vanity of that like what you think how many how many they jumped off yeah but I have to ask to tell the exterior designer because they then decide how wide the spine is yeah and she told me the number and

I was like really and I literally told her to make it longer just justify saying you're just trying to allow people to hold space within the pages adding more space within the pages yeah so anyway it was consolation some of the most impactful books I read are less than 200 pages yeah like I think you know it'll be bad principles are pretty long that book means the world to me and I was gonna write it if no one read it so well you've got two here yeah it's pretty little yeah mate thank you very much

thank you this is fun this is a lot of fun it's hard to do double you guys yeah we've uh we've tried both selfishly I like it when it's just me but killer segues right it's good because if I'm like fuck what do I say I just look at him yes oh fuck I guess I give you an opportunity for you to say whatever you want to say pump whatever you want to pump you know I don't like speaking from like a place that sounds like a finish line or some sort of like pedestal and

I think podcast can set the stage for that you know I think the thing I want to make clear is that just like you guys and everyone listening we're all doing our best you know we really are and if you sort of are discerning about who you spend your time with and what you do and what you accept in your life that's sort of where the magic happens you know because it's not like a matter of like you're blowing it and like these guys are killing that's not really what it is and so I think

if everybody sort of heard that I'll be able to do it I guess technical stuff like if people are listening that are in our world of coaching and movement and all that there's a lot of cool things education wise online and that's all I guess hold the standard comms best place to go beautiful selfishly that one more thing to ask for yeah the most I think beneficial section of the weekend was the difference between adaptive change and technical change can you explain that to everyone who's listening cuz I think that was just mind-blowing for me

on the weekend so we open the summit with this concept of differentiation because this is actually what makes this this seminar unique in my opinion and so explaining it is sort of just a meta way of sharing what's coming most seminars educational opportunities are technical in nature meaning you go to a place or you read a book or you listen to someone to get their information well it's 2019 and that is the least important time in the history of humanity to get more information and so we're in this zone where we kind of don't really

know what to ask for or what we need and that's because we don't know that there are two types of challenges there are technical challenges which is which is a challenge of information meaning the solutions to whatever problem that you have in a technical scenario can be solved with expertise that means that there is someone out there that has the information or the solution to your problem even something as catastrophic as like having cancer or you know breaking your leg or you know you have some sort of like financial trouble these are all like very

big time challenges for us but there are people that have solutions their doctors and their Google and they are books okay well the challenges that really give us trouble are not technical the ones that we have a hard time getting over and they are adaptive in nature meaning that it would require adaptation to solve them meaning the person who has the problem would need to become another person in order to solve these problems in a collective sense we have lots of adaptive challenges from like global warming like we can't there's no person I'm still to

this day that we can ask how to fix this there's people with ideas whatever you know the ethics of artificial intelligence there's not just a guy you can ask how to do that yeah this is we're in over our heads here and so this naturally sort of brings to the forefront that there's two types of leadership technical leadership and adaptive leadership we really screw ourselves up when we have adaptive challenges and we throw technical solutions at them okay so in like on our world there's a lot of coaches that think that they're like one or

two seminars away from being the coach that they need to be and what they don't realize is that they themselves need to evolve and be more capable between the ears has nothing to do with the reps and sets and so adaptive leadership then would be able to drive this type of evolution and it sounds you know confusing or you're wondering how it's happening but there are there are ways and it generally comes down to exposing that which is not in your field of view it's in your blind spot you cannot see what you cannot see

you don't know what you don't know etc and that is really what makes the summit unique and when you leave there you won't just have more information just fine you'll have that but you'll have the sort of like keys to driving adaptive change and if people listening are searching for you know how artificial intelligence global warming has anything to do with them the classic one is weight loss in 2019 losing 20 pounds of fat should be a technical challenge that we can solve I mean there are a million ebooks and a million diets and a

million macro programs whatever we're a hundred percent of people that have 20 pounds of extra fat could just go to a website and lose 25 okay well a lot of people that need to lose 25 pounds of fat know all the diets like the back of their hand but they cannot do it and this is how we know that a technical problem is now an adapter and so there's something about this person that they cannot see what is in their way about this thing and what's not in their way as information oh yeah yeah yeah

because my big takeaway from a big takeaway one of the takeaways from that was just that it's looking in the mirror and going how am I the problem how am I the bottleneck how do I need to change and adapt to fix it yeah and it's I mean it's not always that but it's often that because it would make sense that a lot of our blind spots are found there because of how unwilling we are to look there like if we were just looking there all the time maybe our adaptive solutions would be somewhere else

but we definitely aren't looking there definitely yeah perfect great thank you very much it was awesome