Todd Herman - The Alter Ego Effect: How To Activate Your Heroic Self

Full transcript: Todd Herman on London Real

4:04 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Todd Herman, the American author, speaker and performance coach to Olympic athletes, corporate CEOs and billionaires. You’ve logged over 15,000 hours working one-on-one with clients and you’ve been featured on The Today Show, Sky News and CBS. Your latest book, The Alter Ego Effect, is a Wall Street Journal bestseller and teaches people how to activate their heroic self to achieve high performance.

4:28 Todd, welcome to London Real. Thank you, man. This is very exciting. We met a long time ago and I’ve wanted to come and sit down in this chair with you for a long time. One correction: yes, I am a Canadian that lives in America.

4:42 Of course, that’s so to give a shout out back to my red and whites back in Canada. No, I’m really glad you cleared that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m excited, we got tons to talk to you. We’ve known each other for three years.

4:53 I’m glad you made it over here. And look, that book, it’s fascinating stuff and I want to talk about everything. So yeah, super excited. First of all, what’s it like coming to London? You know, what does this city, I don’t know, represent to you?

5:05 What does it feel like? Yeah, come here, when you think about it, even from New York City where you’re based. Yeah, this is a, well, it’s interesting for, so for the Canadian side of me, you know, as a Commonwealther, it’s, it’s great to go back to the motherland. I’ve got ancestors that come from, from this part of the world, so it’s great to get back. Then that’s what culturally.

5:24 It was also, her filming this around Remembrance Day and it was fantastic to be here, cheering, remember to say weekend, and experience that, as, you know, I have a grandfather who fought in the war and stuff. So, but I just, I love the culture here. I was here for quite a while as well, so it’s good to be kicked back. But it’s changed, as everything has been changing, too. Yeah, because you lived here in ’05, ’06, you know, for a while.

5:49 Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot more buildings, there’s a lot more people, a lot more development. It’s a great city. Yeah, I was just in New York last week. I saw you at the Pencils of Promise gala, which is awesome, and I love New York and I love London.

6:00 Yeah, they’re just their sister cities in so many ways. The ambition that’s there, because again, it’s, it’s not easy to be living in either of those cities, you know. If you’re living in that city, hopefully you’re there for a purpose, because otherwise, go, because it’s so expensive. You know, you can have a higher quality of life in other areas, but if you’re there to soak up and be around really ambitious people, there’s, you know, no two better places to be than London and New York City.

6:23 Yeah, I always say, people say, if I talk about the weather in London, and I’m always like, yeah, it keeps the suckers out. Like, you do, you got to really want to be here. There’s Miami, LA, all those other places, but yeah, yeah, it’s a place I love. Minted is home now, so, um, look man, I’d love to jump into the book. And on a kind of a surface level, this concept is something I’ve seen before and I’ve come across.

6:45 I remember reading an interview with Beyonce and her talking about this Sasha Fierce character, and that’s one of the first times I heard someone really admit it on her level. That wasn’t like a hip-hop rapper. They’d have had an alter ego then, for all my favorite hip-hop guys like Ice-T, I was a big fan of Ice Cube. They all had these names that I’m guessing were all alter egos. And I had David Goggins in here, who’s got his alter ego, we dog, creatively named Goggins.

7:13 That’s right. And for him, you know, most people don’t understand, Dave, you know, was this kind of out of shape, dejected, you know, self-described loser of a fat man. Yeah. And when he turned into Goggins, that allowed him to channel into these bigger things. Yeah.

7:28 But at the same time, we’re never taught this is okay as kids, right? It’s okay when you’re a little kid to play around. I mean, my son Caden had a Batman shirt on this morning when I left him. Yeah, you know, and I didn’t even think about that. Yeah.

7:41 So it’s something we kind of know, but then when we grow up, we’re not allowed to do it, but you can do it if you’re an entertainer somehow. Yeah. And you worked your whole life one on one with all of these athletes and top-level people, so maybe you can explain why this is not only just an interesting concept but it’s a crucial concept. Yeah, well, I mean, to, to your point about kids, it’s, yeah, we do this naturally as young children. We play around with, you know, what can I do if I jump off of the sofa as Superman or Batman, how far can I go?

8:13 And or we’re in our front driveway and we’re bouncing the ball, or we’re playing on a sport in a park, and you know, it’s like, okay, well, and kids do this, they say, okay, well, who are you gonna be? No, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be Wayne Gretzky, or I’m gonna be Michael Jordan, or like whatever the sport is, or I’ll be Lionel Messi and you be Cristiano Ronaldo. And it’s because we go to that place and ahead of what could I do if, if I wasn’t whatever you perceive yourself as right now, because we all have this sometimes destructive narrative on what we think that we can and cannot do.

8:44 But when we ask ourselves a question, what can I do if I was Brian Rose and I could show up a night like that, confident way that he does with so many different, you know, big personalities sitting across from him? Look, if I could like own that state, cuz I mean, you do, like you show up in a very, like you show up in a very calm, confident manner, which is, which is brilliant, right? So other people can see that, I wish I had that. Well, you know, we can do that, but we do it naturally as kids.

9:09 So I want to break this down from a scientific perspective for people too, because a big part of the pursuit of my company is that we always back things up with scientific research, not just experience. And though, right, and this is what makes you different, practical experience and scientific research. Yeah, because we’ll get into this later, you’re a bit frustrated with there people that put out information that isn’t based on one-on-one, yet practical coaching and also real science.

9:35 That’s right. And these days, since publishing so easy, there’s a lot of ideas floating around out there which you don’t buy into. Yeah, well, yeah, that’s the frustrating thing, is that, you know, we live in an influencer culture where people like to put out, you know, cotton candy, bubblegum and popsicle stuff. It, you know, it tastes sweet, we like the idea. I wish that, you know, we in the, cuz again, selling hope, that’s very easy, but selling meat and potatoes and kale, which is what I do, that that doesn’t look attractive, but I can tell you what, it associates the appetite for whatever the ambition is that you have, because it’s gonna digest and it’s gonna give you the nutrients that you need in order to make the change happen.

10:12 And so getting back to this concept though of why, so why do children do this so else, but specifically between the ages of one and seven, the reason that they do it so well is because they’re working in what’s called the theta brainwave state, which is the creative imagination state, really just to use the simple, don’t get it in floating chambers and things like that. Yeah, or die’s meditation, you go to the phase. Exactly. So there’s four levels: there’s delta, theta, alpha and beta.

10:40 Beta is like someone that could be watching us right now and they’re like sort of judging and reasoning, trying to come to terms, okay, well, what’s this guy saying and stuff. And we do this, we judge, we reason, that’s the beta kind of like. And then when we get into real focus, that’s typically alpha brainwave state, when you’re kind of starting to get real focus, you’re not in flow state, right? You’re in, you’re really focused on something. Theta is the flow state, in the zone state, where literally that’s where all of your capabilities start flowing out of you unfettered and, you know, without the friction of the judgment and the worry of what other people are thinking of you.

11:17 So you’re very much locked into the present and you’re in the process. So children do that from 1 to 7. When you take a look at the fastest growth of any period in our lives when we’re developing skills and understanding, that’s the age, right? And a lot of people say that by the age of 8 that’s typically where your personality is kind of set. Is that true?

11:38 No, it’s not. Okay, it’s not true, because that would be, that would, that would think that we are, we’re just baked. That’s a fixed mindset, as Carol Dweck would call it, or, you know, growth mindset, is that no, we are a constantly unraveling self that can develop. Why? Because of neuroplasticity.

11:55 We can learn new things. And that makes sense to many, like when you actually break it down, people like, yeah, I have learned things after eight, and, right, some of those things did change how I see the world and also change my personality. So, but I will say a lot happening, there’s a lot of stuff that’s very baked at eight, so the work that you do after eight needs more effort to crack through that for some people. Yeah. Anyway, so kids play with that idea to step into new roles and play around and whatnot, and the theta brain wave, say for any parent, I’ve got three little ones under the age of six, or six and under.

12:30 If you’ve ever had to yell at them seven times to come to the dinner table and they haven’t come and you’re getting frustrated, just know it’s because they’re actually in the state that you wish you could get in when you’re working. They’re just caught in a moment. So typically coming over and tapping them on the shoulder, you’ve got to do a state change with them, that’s a better thing. So anyways, we do this as kids, and then what happens? Our frontal lobe starts to develop, we would develop judgment, reasoning skills, and we also start to look to the future more, because now we’ve got the ability to now forecast, use forethought, because that skill is now developing.

13:04 And I take a look at someone who’s 13, I think you probably did it too, you look at someone who’s older than you, like three years older, like, man, I can’t wait till I’m 13, because you see what they’re able to do now, or they’re bigger, taller, they’re faster or stronger, and you’re like, I can’t wait till I’m 13, too. And so we all start now living into the future, and living into the future, and I can’t wait till I’m 15, 17, then you look at what adults do, they’re like, oh, in order as I grow older, apparently I get more serious, and they get more pragmatic, and I get more practical, and so all those things that I was doing as a kid were childish, I got it, let’s leave those things alone. And then we move away from those things, those traits, those qualities, those abilities that actually helped us develop really rapidly, find ourselves more quickly, because we perceive it as being childish, and yet they were the very things that helped you do difficult things and challenging things, like learn to how to ride a bike, learn to associate with other people, a parent and adults, someone else in society.

13:58 Okay, so now how I ended up finding this as a tool that I used when working with athletes, I did this when I played football and I was a national, I was a college football player, got a scholarship. I was a nationally ranked badminton player back in Canada as well, you know, football, badminton, they always go together, but I just loved sport. But I never, I was so, I was always so insecure about how skinny I was. I was one of those kids, I just could not put on any weight whatsoever.

14:27 I was tall, like worse polish, I was six foot but I 156 pounds soaking wet, but I wanted, I had this destroyer mentality when I went on the football field, but if I was attaching that to Todd who’s the skinny guy, didn’t seem to work. So I built out an alter ego that was going to go out and play for me, and it was a composite of my two superhero inspirations in football, Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott, and the other two were are the, the other, the rest of it was a tribe of Native American warriors where I grew up. I grew up in this big ranch in a farm in Western Canada and it’s got its rich in Native American history all around us, and I used to get on my horse, Crackerjack, and ride around on the farm and try to find the old fire rocks and dig around for, you know, arrowheads and just artifacts as a kid, and I just, just romantically just so infatuated with that culture and the warrior mentality like they had.

15:27 Did you have a name for yourself? I did, which is, I talk in the book, the importance of giving something a name, and it was drawn well, so Geronimo, and actually can I walk through with people? Yeah, how, cuz they can actually teach them how to actually build a mental movie theater in your head, because I’m trying to think of what my name means to be. So yeah, yeah, but of the movie and all that. So yeah, yeah.

15:45 So, so one of the things I teach people about is the power of building your own mental movie theater in your mind, where you go and you practice your skills, you start to associate yourself with doing something so that when the time comes, you can more comfortably execute it in a flawless fashion, right? And you know, because the brain, when you’re experiencing something that’s new, will go to a place of, it’ll look for pattern. If I can’t find it, it’ll go to a default mode of how are you, of however you normally respond in a situation.

16:16 So if you’re a shy, nervous person, you’re gonna show up now shy and nervous, despite the fact this is a great opportunity. You’ve just met someone who could be a great partner in your business or someone that you’ve always wanted to connect with but you don’t go up and introduce yourself, or you’re in the boardroom and there’s an opportunity for you to say something with a great idea, but then you don’t because you’re concerned about what everyone else is gonna think of you, right? And you have the idea and you have the credibility, you just don’t do it.

16:39 You just don’t do it, right? Yeah. So you had the capability but it didn’t get out. Okay, so the mental movie theater, so I had this, I go inside, at first off I’m in the locker room and I’m getting ready, I just put on my shoulder pads, the jersey isn’t on top yet, and I would had my helmet next to me and I had five trading cards, like, you know, football trading cards, three were of Walter Payton and two of Ronnie Lott, and we’re gonna get to why I had a physical thing later.

17:07 Yeah, okay. So then I go into my, my close my eyes and I start to imagine me walking into the door of this crushed red velvet movie theater, like old school, and that’s where I would go and I would think about things and on the screen, and I walk in and I’d tell them I left as I turned, there’s this big movie screen that I could go and watch me do something, or I would also imagine myself jumping into it as well so I could experience it in the first person as well. Okay, as the, so there’s the observer watching me and then there’s the experiencer too.

17:42 Those are two different types of imagining. One can be easier than the other for people, there’s always gonna be one that’s easier for someone else, some people can experience it easier than watching themselves do it, others can watch themselves do it easier than physically almost experiencing it. Yeah, so just a distinction I want to make with people, because I’ve done this for a long time and people get tripped up with that, because if you use one, sometimes you don’t connect.

18:06 This comes with coaching. Yes. You find the practice. Yeah, exact, come to coaching. Just again, this is the value of getting around people who have got one-on-one work, like his, again, these are the questions that come up with people.

18:16 So anyways, I walk in, but there’s also two doors at the other end of my movie theater, and I built them because I needed them for her before the work I was doing. So through the one door would walk Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott. Walter Payton, Hall of Fame running back, football player for the Chicago Bears, total hero of mine. Payton yourself with Walter Payton and trading cards. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s some of the youngsters, I’d okay, I’ll own it.

18:41 Yeah. And then Ronnie Lott, who was an absolute devastating, again Hall of Fame safety for the San Francisco 49ers, just an absolute beast out there, because in high school if you’re a good athlete you play both sides of the ball, you’re never coming off. So, so I played offense and defense and special teams. So they come walking in, and then through the other door came a tribe of five Native American warriors led by Geronimo. Okay, so they all walk towards me, and Geronimo is holding five trading cards in his hand.

19:10 So they walk towards me, and as they approached, Walter Payton would say to me, take each of these five trading cards as a representation and an embodiment of how all of us would show up on that field with you. And that’s when Geronimo would hold out his hand with the five cards, and then I would reach out and I would grab them, so now we’re both holding them, and then I would go to pull them away, even in my own mind I was doing, I pull them away, but then John would tighten up and he’d pull them, tug them back. As Walter Payton would say to me, but don’t you dare, he’d lean in, don’t you dare dishonor our memory and how we would show up by not bringing all of us onto that field to like cement that emotional connection.

19:52 That’s heavy, man. Yeah. Walter saying that to you. That, I know, I know. And and so then Geronimo would release and I would take, okay, so now I have them.

20:02 Now I’d open up my eyes and I would turn and I grabbed the five trading cards off a thing, and I take one of Walter Payton’s and I stuff it inside my helmet because I wanted to think like him. I would take his other two and I stuff them inside my thigh pads because I wanted to run like him. And then I took Ronnie Lott’s and I’d shove them inside of my shoulder pads because I wanted to hit like him. And then I’d put on my helmet, so my jersey would go on now, and I gotta get up and get myself sort of dressed more, and then I would put on my helmet and leave the chinstrap unbuckled, and when it was go time, that’s when I would snap it shut, and that’s when I would feel the tribe of Native American warriors rush into me, and that’s who I was going to, with their conviction, take out onto that field.

20:52 So there was a mynhardt body all connection, all that kind of stuff. That sounds so intense that it always makes me worry, like, if you still have to wait 15 minutes to go on the field, does it drop, or can you hold that intensity? Hold it, hold it. That’s why, a couple hours, but not for a couple days. No, no, not for a couple days, no.

21:09 There’s no, there’s no need. That’s why I aim time. Yeah, yeah, that’s me. But that’s such an important distinction, Brian, because so many people get trapped in the idea that you’ve got one self, one ego. That’s not true, we have many sides of ourselves.

21:24 I talk about it in the book, like, just the research that’s been done in the world of psychology and how they’ve actually flipped the script on something that they held true for a very long time that isn’t true anymore, and it’s that they always thought that people who had one self and one identity were the healthiest mentally, lowest rates of depression or anxiety and stress or mood disorders. But me on the field, I’m like, wait a second, my NFL guy or my, you know, guy who’s playing somewhere in FIFA or PGA, he’s very different off the fields when it comes off. You don’t want, like you don’t want some of my guys coming off the field and being that way in the regular world.

22:03 Yeah, we don’t want you as Geronimo right now as a parent either. My kid, that’s saying you become Mr. Rogers when you’re at home. Exactly right. Okay, well, you know, I want to take away from, look at that, but I thought that was fascinating, that you would have an alter ego of this, you know, guy in a sweater. I know you’re at home, but it made total sense.

22:20 And I mean, I guess we’ll get into that one, but that’s the fun part. I just, I love this because it allows people to become what I think is the missing key in our society right now, which is way more playful. Like, I’m an intense person, I know it, but I’ve lived this work now for 22 years since ’97 when I started doing this, and just seeing the transformations that happen for people across many domains of their lives, whether it’s at home, whether it’s at work, whether it’s on a stage, whether it’s, you know, on video cameras, or whether it’s on the field, court, ice, whatever it is, it’s so fun because people start to relate to themselves in different ways.

22:56 And you know, what’s the most challenging, like when you got started overnight, what was the most challenging page that you had to write on your website? Challenging page? Yeah, probably like the About Us. Exactly, yeah, exactly, thanks for giving the right answer. Okay, it’s the About page.

23:13 Why? Because we’re writing this About page in context to the people that maybe we want to bring into our world, but when you’re writing it, you’re like, I’m, I know, you’re more than that. Yeah, right, yeah. And then for the other people that are out there, the other most challenging piece of paper you’ll ever write is your CV or your resume, right? Because you’re like, I only have so many bullet points here, which bullet point, which bullet points should I put in, because I’m way more than all of this, right?

23:42 Of course it’s difficult, because you’re, there’s so many different roles and identities that you’ve got in your life. And that should be a signal to people. Like, that’s why the stuff that I talk about, people at the end of these interviews, people go, you know what, that just makes sense. Why? Because it tracks back to how you’re actually living your life.

24:03 That should be a signal to many people, that when you’re out there and you’re trying to pursue change in whatever domain and field that you’re concerned about changing, if it doesn’t like resonate at a, like a root level, like there’s something that’s really off about that, that should be a signal that it’s not really rooted in the science of how we work or the science of how success happens on that field, or you’ve never seen anyone even do that before, like that’s, that’s a, that’s a mismatch. And so then you go to the messenger. Okay, did the messenger research and regurgitate other information and just propagate stuff that’s already out there, because then when we perceived as an expert on that topic, or were they actually on the field with someone working with them with a lot of hours underneath their belt?

24:49 Like, I typically want to see at least a thousand hours of work underneath someone’s belt before would engage with them to work with them. Understood. So, Geronimo, so in anything else to talk about that transformation. Yeah, so then I snapped. The one thing I want to say is I’m a sound, sound, yet he’s a phenomenal trigger for the device, when you want to like activate a self out there and touching yourself as well, you’re hitting your heart.

25:18 Oh yeah, yeah, like just Tony Robbins does the spin before he goes onstage. I seem, dude, that’s the thing. Yeah. And but he does like a boom, boom, spin, and he turns into the guy, and be on stage goes in, he activates that self. And the purpose of that is because one of the key things that I talk about in the book is when you start to take control of how you want to be showing up on that field of play or in that role, like you’re deciding how you want to show up, and you’re not going to be trapped typically, which is what happens to people.

25:49 And I use the word trap specifically because that’s the most common term that people use when they feel like they’re not performing like they know that they can, or they feel like there’s something outside of them in their environment, maybe other people, the politics of a situation, there’s circumstance, or they feel like they’re trapped by it. Is what you call the ordinary world, the ordinary world, trapped in the ordinary world. You want to get them into the extraordinary world where they can be heroic.

26:14 Yeah. And when I say heroic, heroic to you, the results that you get are can be extraordinary. There’s no difference in the two worlds in the fact that they’re both challenging, there’s goblins and demons and, you know, briar bushes that you got to walk through and brambles that you got to try and, you know, get around and and stuff. So there’s no difference that way. What this, the extraordinary world isn’t cotton candy.

26:38 No, no, it’s that you have equipped yourself with mental tools, skills that are going to help you walk that with a heck of a lot more courage, grit, perseverance and a playful mind, because the playful mind is that golden key that finally unlocks the door into zone and flow state. I’ve just seen it thousands of times, because people think the zone and the flow state, that amazing place where you’re just so engrossed in the moment, is this mythical point that you maybe get to one or two times in a season or in a year, in a week if you’re a writer, creator or executive or something like that. No, it’s a biological process and it’s a mental process that when you start toppling the dominoes, the likelihood of it coming to you just increases exponentially.

27:28 And playfulness was that, that’s sort of just because it’s an openness that happens, right? I just had Michael “Venom” Page in here last week, who’s one of the big top fighters in Bellator. You would have seen him, he does these walkaway knockouts and, yeah, all these funny goofy stuff, his windup punches. I know my for about four years. But he does the same thing.

27:45 Yeah, he’s in there, he’s like, Brian, I’m playful, he can hear the corner speaking, he’s goofing around. He said, he said that allows me to be relaxed and be enjoy the moment, and that leads that I’m not tense. Yeah, I’m not trying to be the tough guy fighter. Yeah, and you see it, you know, Jorge Masvidal does it at the UFC. Yeah, I see some people at the top do it, but you don’t see a lot of people.

28:06 Kamaru Usman talks about the Nigerian Nightmare. He’s like off, like outside of the ring he’s playful, guy, like he’s very approachable, nice guy, but he talked about, me, hey, when I stepped through the cage, that’s where the Nigerian Nightmare lives, his out on that field or out on that, you know, in that octagon, and it’s like, look out. And then even Kobe Bryant with the Black Mamba, you know what people don’t get about Kobe in the Black Mamba? He didn’t have that when he was in high school, he didn’t have that when he came into the NBA.

28:36 He activated the Black Mamba when he was going through an identity crisis. Hmm. When he was going through that sexual assault case that was happening in Colorado, he’s being accused of, and with the allegations, and he felt like he was losing his identity, feel like he was losing his edge. So he was watching Kill Bill, and in this there’s a scene with the Black Mamba, and he’s like, wait, that’s who needs to be taking out onto that court. That is the Black Mamba.

29:08 And, and then he talks about how even when he’s in the locker and there’s a transition that happens, and that’s when he activates the Black Mamba and it’s just like, just, just look out. And he’s like, he imagines in his head, just like I was in my mental movie theater, he imagines in his head that he had that the Black Mamba was in a cage, and it’s like, I didn’t go near the cage any other time because that was a dangerous place. All right, I opened up the cage to let the Black Mamba out to go out there and destroy things on that court or whatever.

29:40 Now that’s an intense thing. Yeah, yeah. To go back to your point you said about me with, like, Mr. Rogers, now imagine me, I’ve got, when I go home, I’m a challenging personality, head, like I’m working with, like, top achievers like you all day long and, you know, athletes. I’m going from call to call or, you know, I’m creating training programs and unpacking systems and, you know, working with people. I’m, I really want to understand how to level up everybody with real stuff, not fake stuff, like real stuff, and I love it every single day.

30:08 But the last thing that my three little kids at home in New York City need is that challenge or personality type. Had been that dad before, yes, yeah, in it, and that husband before, and it made him and I made mistakes with it. Now I’m not judging myself, because we, it’s, we’re human beings, we, but I’m good at coaching and, you know, I caught myself, and where I caught myself was with my daughter Sophie, who she’s my Molly, Sophie and Charley. Charley’s two and a half, and he’s, uh, he will probably bring down New York City, he’s an absolute just breaker of everything.

30:40 Okay, the cab bruiser, he’s a bruiser, and my use is the same any, but at the same time he’s a sweet little kid. But Sophie, she has this amazing emotional bandwidth, she has incredible highs, and when she has a tantrum it can be an incredible, like, and it could stay there too. And, you know, when she would go into that tantrum, that’s a force, that’s an emotional force, and again they’re just bundles of emotional energy, it’s an emotional force. And so what do I do as dad?

31:07 Meet that force with big dad showing up. It’s like, stop that right now, enough, that’s not even like, because you’re like, you’re freaking out over the fact that I brought you the Elsa spoon and not the Anna spoon. Like, come on. So anyway, and then I caught myself on my way, a second, Todd, what are you doing, like, you know better. And then I was like, okay, so I’m bringing this work identity home with me, and I haven’t created the new identity that I, like, haven’t really shaped it, because I like to find sources of inspiration for how I want to show up, people that have already done it, because it’s because human beings love to map and model things, because it makes it easier for us to then execute whatever the skill is that we want.

31:51 And I immediately went to a, my father, my father’s, I’m a huge extrovert, my dad’s quiet and introverted, he’s, or he’s a rancher and farmer, man of very few words, when he spoke he spoke in like prophetic cliches kind of thing, um, but like Roy Rogers. Yeah, he just had some great stuff that he that he shared. I was very lucky to have the parents I got. And then, but Mr. Rogers as well, because he was so, if a challenge of personality sits on this end of the spectrum, Mr. Rogers sits on this end of the spectrum, because it wasn’t a challenger, he was patient, he was playful, he was really kind, and I was like, wait a second, that’s, those are the traits that I want to bring to being a dad when I’m at home.

32:36 Now let’s play with that stuff, because my, my experience of working with people is every trait, every emotional quality that’s needed to be successful is already inside, we’re born with it, and it’s just that we get trapped by our identities and how we describe ourselves with our egos of it’s like, well, I’m a pocket square guy, that’s just how I am, it’s like I’m buttoned up or something, right? I was telling you earlier that when I go on stages and I speak, I wear a t-shirt and, uh, like a zip-up sweater, because I know that sometimes people who wear this can come across as intimidating or that, you know, the perception is that person’s trying to be too perfect or something. You and I wear this.

33:19 Okay, I like it, I love that you wear that stuff, it looks freaking amazing, you wear it well. Thanks. I’ve learned. Yeah, but but for you, you realized it was separating you from your audience and so you were like, let me just dial that down. Yeah, just, and I want to be more playful on stage too, right?

33:33 And so, and there’s all sorts of science behind this which I just kick out on, but so Mr. Rogers and my dad became my inspiration, and so in that situation, if Sophie’s gonna have a freakout, how would Mr. Rogers respond in that moment? Well, I know how he would respond, because I see enough his shows growing up and know enough about him as a, as a human afterwards. Is he would get down on one knee immediately, again, match, I too, I get down on their level.

33:58 Yeah, and instead of trying to communicate with words they don’t understand that much, they don’t, they don’t understand that as much, but what they do understand is action. So then I would immediately grab Sophie and bring her and I just give her a big hug and a squeeze, don’t say anything, I got you, honey, that’s it, I got you. And the first time I did it, which was about two hours after her that one meltdown, when I caught myself, you know, not acting like I’d want to, she melted, like melted immediately.

34:26 Her torment or her tantrum would typically go on for like, say, eight minutes or 12 minutes, it was done in 8 seconds, 10 seconds, and then immediately she ran off to go play, completely forgetting about whatever it was, right? And I was like, oh, that, right there is the moment where you’ve activated a heroic self, when you got to actually apply the traits of what you wanted to show up with, because that’s the feeling you get, you’re like, there’s this, like, internal moment of, like, right, I did it, I did, I was the right guy and the right of that, and it’s a job, dad, right? Yeah, right.

35:02 And it felt great because she calmed down, and you want to see your kids happy and plentiful and doing their thing. So how many of these alter egos do you have? 4, 4. Okay, Forrest for that I specifically will activate. Okay, people, and that’s, and that’s in four very important roles that I play in my life, right?

35:19 Because again we have many egos that we play through with many roles in life. So we’ve got the ego as a, and the ego is typically the trapped self, we defend it, you know, like, well, this, and, and it’s not a healthy thing. So then the alter ego there is to create the super self, the best self, you know, the best version of you in that. And so I’ve got four specific areas that I’m really developing, right now. What they are?

35:41 Yeah, so there’s the, there’s the, there’s the leader in my business, okay, that works with the team, and that’s, and that’s Super Richard. So we’re giving it names, right? Okay, I’m, uh, and then on stage and when I’m even when I’m creating some content, it’s playful Hugh. Okay, and so that’s me honoring the, the person who I’m inspired to act through on stage, which is my goodness, is Grant? No, no, no, no, it’s not.

36:16 You guys saw the Wolverine guy, a Hugh Jackman. You, Jack? Yeah. Why him? Because, well, he’s got so, hey, I just really resonate with him, like I just like him.

36:29 I’ve always liked him as a, as an actor, seeing him in enough interviews, he’s, he’s not what you think, right? He’s very thoughtful, he’s very, and he’s very playful. Yeah, he’s a jokester too, but the thing there is, like, there’s, there’s one word in particular that I’m, that I’m attaching to, is that playfulness thing. Okay, because my wife had told me a little while ago, I was sharing with you earlier, that the great frustration that she would have with, say, the, the personal brand of Todd is that she’s like, I fell in love with you because you were one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met, and that doesn’t come out, come out on your website, and just come on your website, in the, in the content, and, and that’s because I talked about, like, maybe intense things or, or whatever, but so I’m leaning into that stuff way more, because that is a huge part of who I am.

37:15 I’m totally the jokester. When you work in sport there’s a lot of trash talk behind the scenes, I love to needle people and give them, you know, your Brian right now, but there, there will be a nickname that comes up maybe in the interview at someone, but I just, I love that side. Thanks. I think again we take life very seriously, and I’m very honest with that, because I’ve taken life very seriously and it’s been a trap at times. So playfulness, oh, you playfully Hugh, my serious Richard, serious to permit trooper Richard, right?

37:43 Playful, you, Lord Vader. Okay, Lord Vader is the version of me that I use when I’m writing. Okay, and so again not to freak people out with this stuff, but this is the playful side of this, I’m, I want to get people, whether the judge or not, I don’t really care, I’m just giving people how those people who get to operate at a top level or operating. So I have a perfect replica, working replica of the Darth Vader mask, sound and everything, like the breathing as I breathe, even when, even when I talk, it would come out as the Vader voice or whatever.

38:19 We’ll talk now. Yes, yeah. So you got one of these? So I’ve got one of those. It’s, it’s, if you see interviews with me in at my office, you’ll see it sitting behind me.

38:28 Sometimes it’s in the picture, sometimes it’s not, but it’s sitting behind me. That’s where I keep it. And so I’m dyslexic, okay, and I have all, I’m an auditory guy, like I love to, I can speak things out better than I could write them. But when I was going through the writing of my book, because I wrote that book, I had a ghostwriter that I worked with to get the first draft done, and then I took it over and finished it off with the stories and stuff. Boy, you talk about resistance, because I had, I did not have a healthy identity as a writer.

39:01 I did not see myself that way, but I was like, who wouldn’t give a f*** about how they think and how they’re being perceived? And I’m a huge Star Wars guy and I love the dark side as well, you know, because light, dark. So I’m like, oh, it’s Lord Vader. So I went online, bought like a five hundred dollar Darth Vader mask, and that’s, I would actually put it on before you write, or don’t, when you’re writing? Yeah, I know, I would wear it while I’m writing.

39:32 Wow. Not the entire time, okay, just enough to get me going. To get you past that, because again, yeah, it’s the friction of the start that’s my hardest part, right? Self-doubt, and they say writer’s block, it’s just you having to exit too many expectations for what you’re gonna write in other ways. I mean, it’s just a mentality.

39:47 Yeah, and so Lord Vader’s mask goes on and then I write, and then it’s look out. Now I’m not writing with Lord Vader’s words or anything. No, but it’s, it’s that, it’s that way that he would show up. Like, would he ever have writer’s block? Yeah, I don’t think so, you know, all these things.

40:05 So when I put that on, it’s, when you say that’s so, but again, like, why not be fun with this stuff? Like, that’s because again I, I know myself as a youngster, I was a serious kid from the very start of my life and maybe didn’t smell the roses as much as I could have been, should have, when I was a kid. We, you know, I’ve battled depression all of my entire life. I had a very traumatic experience, a sexual assault that happened to me when I was 12, that really, you know, sent me into a spiral, and, you know, I had a battle suicide a lot through my teens and 20s, and, you know, it’s what’s made me really good at the mental game and performance work is a just an extraordinarily high level of compassion for other people.

40:52 And, you know, I have this issue with, it’s very popular on social media to say cut all the toxic people out of your life, and I think, no, you need to level up your skill set so that you can deal with toxic people in maybe a more compassionate way. Like, there are some people who are just, they are psychotically toxic, those people, yeah, I’m gonna avoid them, but some people are just hurt and literally nobody has come along and treated them with a little bit of kindness, so they’re hurting. You like, it happens to me at events, you know, I’m not gonna be everyone’s cup of tea, and someone comes up and they feel like it’s their privilege to give me some advice or challenge me on something.

41:39 Some people will do it in a nice way and other people will do in a very toxic way, and, and in that moment I’ve got a choice. I can, you know, tell them to beat it or whatever, I can, or I can, this have a conversation to get to know them better and see how I can help them, because maybe I didn’t help them on stage with the speech, but I only have 45 minutes, maybe I can help them off the stage with it, right? And so I’ve had to step into that, like, so that kind of idea that you’re gonna cut all talks at people out of your life, I think it’s pretty weak and it’s actually a setting, I think, society on a really poor course, right?

42:14 I’m just getting in that retreating mode, that victim mode. Well, cuz everyone displays toxic behavior, you got to be able to know how to deal with it. Yeah, but the reason I was chuckling myself is, it, I have this, this course I teach moon usually in January called Our Life Accelerator course, and I put people through about 24 high-performance habits and they go through a, a real tumultuous eight weeks, and I asked them to answer four questions every week, and they are this: What are you afraid of?

42:36 What makes you uncomfortable? What would a high-performance person do, aka what Dan Pena do? Mm-hmm. That’s basically the Darth Vader mask I’m asking them to put on. Yeah.

42:46 And then the last question is, what we put on this planet? Yeah, but point number three is basically, without me knowing your IP, asking them to channel Dan Pena, you, who is, were actually worse than the Darth Vader, that’s probably killed more people, I don’t hear. So I, and so it’s like, what would he do? And I always tell people, would he be scared to go live on video? Would he be scared to go on?

43:04 No, no, it would be, I’m on it, I’m on it, I’m on it. So how, people need to hear this, that’s what he would be thinking, people need to hear this. Yeah, because again he thinks, he would think so much of himself or his experiences that he needs to get that thing out there. And again you said this before around the whole content stuff, if you’re so concerned or you’re kind of caught in the trap of not getting something out there, that’s because your, your focus is very much on you rather than other people.

43:30 Totally, right. Yeah, I said this to some students last night, I said, focus on that person out there you’re gonna help. I always say it’s that, that, oh, that old lady in Iowa who hasn’t left her house and the drapes are closed for seven days, and your video’s gonna come up and then she’s gonna think, wow, now that’s really cool, maybe I’m gonna get out of my house today. Think about that person as opposed to how cool you’re gonna look. Yeah, and then that usually gets people out of that, and, yeah, trap, which I guess is, it’s one identity that is one thing.

43:57 Yeah, so you have four identities: Rogers, Vader, Hugh, Super Richard. Yeah, okay. Yeah, in those four areas that are important for me right now. Okay, and Geronimo, you retired because you don’t have to go in the field anymore. Yeah, you can channel bits of them when you need to.

44:10 Well, yeah, he’s never gone. Okay, he’s never gone, he’s still in my arsenal and my, my weapon. Now for people at home and I’m, my wife’s probably watching this at home, or she’ll watch it later, and maybe I’m thinking of her, maybe some other people, they’re thinking, okay, but I don’t know where to start. Yeah, like I don’t know her start. I would guess for most people they need to start with a high performance alter ego, because, but how do people start?

44:31 So first, I mean, and again, alteregoeffect.com, or go to the book, go buy it anywhere, it’s everywhere, the Audible as well, but I have the entire process, that’s the one thing that I’m so happy with that I did with the book. Malcolm Gladwell, I got to talk to him when I was writing the book as well, and he gave me some really great advice and encouraged me to continue to push through on this was, I don’t know about you, but I always get frustrated when people sell a book and their consi, like, but if you want more details, go to my workshop or something like that. No, all the process is in the book, okay, all of it is there.

45:04 Like, I unpack everything for people, naming it, naming the enemy and the shadow side as well, because as human beings, we have this, once we give form and name and substance, something all of a sudden it’s not as scary. It’s like horror movies, I kind of talk about in the book, in a horror movie, when’s the scariest part of the horror movie? Like the first half, when you don’t know a what the thing looks like, what’s coming at you, all you hear is haunting sounds and, you know, creaks and cracks and things like that, but then all of a sudden when you can see it, you’re like, oh, now I know how to beat that thing.

45:34 Same thing in our own heads. And before I get to the, hold, what’s the first step on this? Just to, I want to honor where this comes from. Like, I didn’t invent alter egos, alter egos are a, they’re a part of the human psyche, everyone’s used them, like I say, before as kids, we did this thing naturally. So every time the great thing I santak, every single one of you here already knows how to do this, you’ve forgotten its use because you’re trying to act through the adult ego, okay, and it traps you, because the creative imagination is our real superpower as human beings.

46:08 Yeah, that’s the cape that we have that we get to wear, because that’s the only that makes us different than everything else on the planet, which can we, can tell stories and narratives, and the story, the narrative side of things is that secret link in this whole process here, which we’ll walk through, and people don’t realize that enough. That’s like one of the big things you say, that creative imagination is the thing we should focus on. Yes. So that what makes it different, that’s how, that we can tell stories, that’s how we put a man on the moon.

46:31 Yeah, otherwise that’s how we’ve, that’s how we’ve shared information and how to live through generations before pen and paper or the printing press has ever developed was through stories. Right, and that’s how we connect with cultures. And in the more I think, the more that we share other people’s stories with each other, the more we find connection points, like, oh, that person’s story isn’t that much different than my story, just because they look different, they sound different or whatever.

46:56 You know, we’re actually more the same. That’s what we do here. Yeah, once you hear someone’s story, you realize they’re just a different version of you. Yeah, that went through a different journey. Exactly.

47:05 You see, you see a lot of yourself in that person. So, so this has been around for a while, a long time, and Cicero was the person who named it, the greatest Roman statesman and philosopher to ever live. And in 44 BC, two years before he died, he was writing a letter to a friend, and it was basically his kind of philosophies and what he’s really learned about life and working with people, and he talked about the the need for an alter ego, and the alter ego’s root means the other I, or trusted friend within, which is a really helpful concept, people to think through, think about having the trusted friend within.

47:42 That’s what Geronimo was to me, even though he was a composite, it’s like a Transformer coming together, he was the trusted friend within to help go out and help pull all the capabilities that were there out of me with more intensity, less concern about how I was going to look, because Geronimo wouldn’t care, Walter Payton’s not gonna care, Ronnie Lott’s not gonna care, the five Native Americans aren’t gonna care, all of us together are gonna go out there, they were my tribe that went out there with me. And that connectedness is so important, because the pathway to depression is loneliness. If you isolate yourself, isolation is the pathway to get into depression and feel alone.

48:19 The alter ego is a great way to have the trusted friend within. I just noticed, and then through science seeing it, that really we need to have many trusted friends. The mistake is to have one alter ego, but we have many roles that we play, we have any field to play. So I have the trusted friend that works for me really well when I’m at home, you know, and then I have the trusted friend who helps me when I sit down to write, I’ve got the trusted friend who helps me go out on stage and, you know, connect with audiences in a different way on this theory EXPN.

48:54 I’m talking people with a serious subject matter themselves, mastering their own mental game, their own kind of identity, I’m challenging them sometimes with new paradigms that they’re uncomfortable with because they’re trapped in the concerns of being authentic or authenticity, which we’ll get to in a little bit, I think, hopefully. And then that other identity of making sure that I show up as a really good leader for my, for my team, because that’s a different role, that’s a different need than me writing, I even, that’s why contra nurse was so difficult, there’s so many rules. Yeah, right.

49:26 So that trusted friend within is so helpful, because you and I know, and you and I have experienced this, and we run in a lot of same circles, we all know that if there is one pursuit that you can have in business that will always bear fruit and be the best investment you’ll ever make, constantly up-leveling your relationships, like Dan Pena has done with you and other mentors. The better the relationships that you have, the easier it is for you to overcome obstacles, because you’re not doing it on your own. You can ping me, and you can ping me anytime, say like, hey Todd, do you know someone that can help with this?

49:59 And yes, we’ve got the perfect person, right? And this is what meant, one of your mentors told you early on when you were trying to go it all alone and you’re like, I’m gonna be Rambo, which is a lot of young, yeah, we watch Rambo and we think, I’m gonna be Rambo. Oh, stupid, I thought I was gonna be Rambo. Yeah, I would do it all myself, just like in the Hollywood movies, which are not true. No.

50:16 And one of your mentors said, no Todd, that’s not the way to do it. Yeah, cuz I’ve been struggling for six months after we had a conversation, and he had given me kind of a prescription of what to go and do and I hadn’t done it yet, and it was Jim Rohn. I connect with him really early on, he’s hurt. Oh yeah, yeah. People that don’t know, can you explain who Jim Rohn is?

50:34 Yeah, so Jim Rohn, I believe Forbes was the one who named him as one of the top three business philosophers of the 20th century. He was a really, really famous keynote speaker back throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, he was huge in the network marketing world, but he had an ability to poetically speak philosophically in just simple ways that super connected to kind of how you could see the world. He was, he was big, he was a big-time simplifier, but in a very poetic way, like his choice of words and his word smithing was just unrivaled, really.

51:08 And it’s his phrase that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Exactly, Jim, that’s Jim’s, along with many others that people don’t give credit to, right, social media anymore. Um, but yeah, I met him at a managed to sat next to Matt a conference when I was really young, I didn’t know who he was and then we just connected, and I asked him for a little bit of help, he gave me a challenge and I went, did the challenge. He gave me three things to go and do, and that was on a Saturday, and on the Monday at just after one o’clock I called him and said, and the three things, now what do I do?

51:36 And he was still traveling at the time and he called me back the next day and he was like, okay, you’re officially the first person who’s ever, you know, gone and done something so quickly. And so we stayed in touch for the hard things to do. No, they weren’t, cuz I had talked about how I just won this award in Canada in the hospitality world, and I wanted to get into, like, speaking and coaching people on this topic. It wasn’t the mental game stuff yet, I was doing that almost like as a hobby.

52:05 It was more around how to build powerful teams at, in the hospitality world, because that’s what I had, that’s what was, was the secret of my kind of success that I had. And so he said, okay, go and you need to register a business name, so go and register a business name, go and get your, go and getting a bank account, and then go and take that, it was there was, there’s two steps in the whole register the business name thing, but so there’s three steps total. So I went, get all that, and I, so I take the business name, then I could go and get the actual bank account, right?

52:44 And so I went and did that, and he was, this was the genius of that mentorship that he gave me, simple, actionable, and they were literally the first three steps that I needed to take so that I could develop the identity of what someone who had a business, right, because I had a business name now, and I had a bank account, because if you just have a business name but you don’t have the business banking out yet, how can you get money to go into something? So looking back, and he didn’t even articulate it that way, but looking back I was like, that was so smart. And so for me, when I’m trying to help people, even if it’s just an aside conversation, what’s just like some simple actionable steps that’s gonna help someone to now develop the identity that they’re gonna need in order to be successful in that area that they’re trying to pursue, right?

53:31 So it’s so good. Yeah, so, and later he said to ask for help. Yeah. And so six months had gone by after he’d given me some advice to go and do something, and I didn’t take any action on it, and or I’d taken a little bit action but I wasn’t successful really at it, and so he wanted understand how I was thinking, and I, and I kind of said, like, listen, like, I really want to be, because I’ve kind of been that kid up against it my life, and I’m gonna plant, I want to plant the flag at the top of the mountain just to show people that I, that I did it on my own.

54:01 And he laughed, he’s a lot of obviously, well, that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. If you want a path to slow progress, definitely do that, but here’s what I know about successful people: every single one of them has surrounded themselves with a lot of other people so that they can do it together, and that we can do all of our successes together. It’s like one giant mountain range together, that’s where you want to be standing, not on the solo mountain with nobody else around so that you can have hero worship looking up at you.

54:32 That is going to eat you up, it’s a sign of the ego gone wrong, it’s totally, and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Anyone who says that they got there by themselves, they’re self-made, I mean, come on, there’s no such, there’s no such thing as self-made, you know, and you don’t want to be self-made anyway, what a terrible existence that is. Lonely, lonely. So, so yeah, so that, that pathway of, you know, getting other people around you. Sorry to get back to your point, where do you start?

54:59 Find the one area of your life right now that you’re struggling with the most, what’s frustrating you the most, what do you maybe avoiding the most in your life, or where you feel like you’re under-indexing in your life, like you’re not showing up like you know that you can. It could be in business, or what I found after doing a lot of keynotes, in the book being out there a lot, is there’s a lot of people who feel like they’re under-indexing as a parent. You know, when we do, beat ourselves up pretty hard on that stuff.

55:28 But that might be the area, but pick one, even though I just said I have a, you know, a bunch of alter egos that I play with. And again, the alter ego isn’t me being fake, that’s me truly trying to activate the qualities that I want to be coming out. Again, this is, I’m giving people the purview into the six inches of my ears, not many people do that. Like, I’m telling people how I actually think, warts and all, vulnerability and all. You don’t need to tell everyone else what your alter egos are.

55:54 I bet. Again, I’m the, I’m the teacher of this, I’m the purveyor of this, so I need to tell people, that’s how it’s done. These alter egos pull out those best qualities inside of you that gets you over that filter in your brain that doesn’t allow that person to show. So again, it’s just you being even more authentic, we’ll get to that word later. Yeah, more of the people person you want to be, whereas normally you would just talk yourself out of it, all this stuff would come up.

56:17 Yeah, or you would revert back to the, the wrong person in the wrong situation. And when you think about that process, like what you just said, that’s you being fake, right? Because when you show up in a moment or in your day and you don’t perform like you know that you can, that’s the rub of life, you’re like, because that’s what’s trapping you, you’re like, that’s not me, and yet I showed up and I did that, that day, today was a wasted day for me because that’s not who I know I am and what I’m capable of.

56:46 That’s the fake you, that’s the ego taking over. So what everyone else says is, no, be the real you, you know, be authentic, wonderful ideas, where’s the meat, where is the tool, right? I’m giving people the tool that people at the highest level of sport, Olympians, pro athletes, public figures, like there are so many corporate leaders that have reached out to me, the oddest thing is Instagram direct messages, apparently the number one place to reach out to someone, not even LinkedIn or the email, Instagram DMs, I get hit up every day by so many people, and corporate leaders are saying like, this is, this book is amazing because it’s the anthology on how I was able to get to where I was, I thought that I was almost being psychotic, and now they’re like, you have no idea how much stress you’ve relieved from my own self, of me thinking that I was being fake, when really what I was doing was I was really just creating the self that I wanted to be, right?

57:50 So now you’re allowing them to embrace it, and then even on it, which makes it easy, what out, what a, doesn’t, that’s my favorite thing when I hear that from people, is that they can associate with themselves in a different way and realize that, no, like, yeah, you developed yourself that way, you were just using this tool. So, so pick that one part of your life that you’re under-indexing, and I like that word. Yeah. And then create that ego. Yeah, then you go to, okay, so before you do that, then the next step is, okay, so what is it about way that you’re showing over, know that you don’t like?

58:16 Is it because you’re worried about other people are thinking of you possibly, or is it that you’re doubting yourself, or is it that you think that you’re lacking the skills, right? Like, what I’m not doing is I’m not saying that, hey, if you want to be a plastic surgeon, then put on a lab coat and be a plastic surgeon. No, I’m not inventing skills, this is for people who have got skills and capabilities, or they have pursuits that they want to go after but they’re not activating that, or they’re not showing up like they most want because of the concerns of, again, societal stuff, is a challenge culturally, like the concern of getting kicked out of the tribe or being judged is a big obstacle for many people, but there’s a way to get past that.

58:56 So what are those things that are trapping you possibly, what isn’t getting out from you? So unpacking that, and then the third step is, okay, now it’s just a reverse of that, what superpowers would you want to have, what will be the traits, the quality, would be the way that you’d want to show up. So Super Richard, when I built Super Richard, which was when I was 21, I just started this business, I looked like I was freaking 12 years old, so concerned about how young I looked.

59:22 So again, all I’m doing is I’m repeating the same pattern when I was 14, 15 years old, so concerned that, yeah, I’m a tall kid but I’m 140 pounds, under 56 pounds soaking wet, I’m not big enough to, you know, to win on the football field. Okay, we do that again, it’s just we do this again, it’s repeated. So we start to doubt, oh, I’m not this, I’m not that. So here I was, I’m 12, who’s gonna listen to me? I’m going up on stage talking about the mental game, I don’t have seven letters behind my name with a bunch of psychology and psychiatry degrees or whatever behind my name, I don’t have three best-selling books, all these stupid rules I was building up in my head that would prevent me from going out in providing value, because I’d already actually had success at this, because I was volunteering at a high school, work with the kids after I played football, I was, you know, coaching a high school football team, the defensive backs, and I was sharing with them, and not telling them to do more sprints and cone drills and, you know, more physical work, I’m like, no, you don’t prepare very well, you don’t have good plan, you don’t have good routines that you’ve got to help set WAP to drop the dominoes that you show up on that field like in a powerful way.

1:00:30 You know, you don’t like your, your mind game is off. So I give them my strategies and they started getting great results, not only on the field but off the field too, like in the classroom. So I already had success, then people started asking me, you know, hey, could you mentor my son or daughter? And I’m like, yeah, sure, I’d love to. Not a business, like I was like, yeah, I’d love to.

1:00:49 They’re like, okay, well, how much you want to pay you? And that’s where I was like, $75 for three sessions. So that was my original price. Okay, in-home visits, $75 for three sessions, and I did that for three years, that was my price for three years. And so it was an exciting price, but it got me a lot of reps working with great athletes all around the province.

1:01:11 And so now, okay, now I’ve got this business, so how do I market it? How I get more than just referrals coming in to me? And I wasn’t making the calls, I wasn’t getting on the phone reaching out to, because I was focused on hockey players up in Canada, good market, but I wasn’t making the calls to hockey associations, hockey teams, reaching up to friends that were coaching hockey teams, wasn’t at all. I was just trapped by the concern and worry of getting rejected, because, oh, what are my credentials, kind of thing.

1:01:40 So in that moment I was like, wait a second, I use Geronimo before, he’s not built for this particular role, but who would, who would I most want to show up as? And it was Super Richard, too, which was a composite of Superman, Joseph Campbell, who was a huge hero of mine, wrote The Hero’s Journey, and, you know, just amazing mythologist, and Benjamin Franklin, you know, I’ve read his autobiography, pro, you know, more times, and, you know, most people on the planet, definitely, and those are my three inspirations. And I kind of took, know what is it about their traits, because he, and that’s what I’m trying to get, two years, what other traits that I’m trying to get to.

1:02:13 Well, Super Richard was confident, decisive and articulate, the three opposite ways of what I was showing up as, as top, excuse me, Todd, in that moment: confident, decisive, articulate. I would, didn’t have any confidence, I was insecure, was not making very decisive decisions at all, and I wasn’t being very articulate with the way that I could help people, but Super Richard did those, were, that’s how he showed up. And then I went out and I bought a pair of non- prescription glasses, yeah, to put on my, I use this as my totem, I talk about this in kind of steps in the book, and I talk about the importance of a physical object.

1:02:48 And so I just thought, you know, people who wear glasses were smarter, so why don’t I just use that, then not to signal to other people, not to trick people, because if you start doing things to trick other people or deceive people, that is inauthentic and it’s gonna trap you, right? Because now you’re being trapped by the, the device, as opposed to, I’m wearing this because these glasses represent the qualities and the traits of Benjamin Franklin, Superman, Joseph Campbell, and when I put these on, this little, this little switch happen where the glasses go like this, I imagine the switch right there, I was, I’m turning it on. Okay, that’s where manator, that’s when, and that’s, it’s not that I’m turning on Joseph’s camp, I’m turning on articulate, decisive and confidence, those are the three things I’m stepping into.

1:03:40 And so I would practice just putting these things on and imagine what that would feel like and how I would move differently, and then that’s how I stepped into, and so Super Richard then went out, made the calls because he loved what Todd was doing, he believed him, etat was doing, and so he became my number once I employed a salesperson, and it was Super Richard in Super Rich, because again sometimes we have a tough time selling ourselves. Yeah, stop selling yourself, then employ someone to do that for you, and Super Richard did that. He was my salesperson.

1:04:12 I love it. You know, and again, that’s that trusted friend with him, imagine seeing yourself in a way where you actually do care about yourself, because again I know there’s people out there who are struggling with how they identify with themselves, you know, as a guy who has been challenged with the biological and chemical, chemical issues of depression for a very, very, very long time while still holding ambitions. That’s that’s a, that’s a pretty strong fight inside.

1:04:39 So Todd might have been struggling with depression, but for moments in time I could suspend that for a bit, and Super Richard could go out and he could be an advocate for me out there in the marketplace. And six months later I remember finishing a call, I just booked two great workshops for myself, and I looked down and my glasses were sitting on the table, which is the whole point of this. Is Cary Grant, you know, we’re sitting over here in London, Cary Grant’s a Bristol guy, who was a famous golden era actor, debonair, charismatic, good-looking guy, but he battled with depression all a lot of his life too, but he wanted to be something.

1:05:22 He came from, raised by single mom, not, didn’t have very many means, but he wanted to make something of his life, and he went to Hollywood and he did. But he said at the end of his career, he said this great quote, great line which I share in the book, which I think is the best encapsulation, I think, of this entire idea, where he said, I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person, or he became me, but at some point we met. The only thing I would change about that, based on the work that we do, is I activated the person I wanted to be, not pretended, I activated.

1:05:55 You chose to be that person, so you did this so much that you left your glasses on the table, and one day you were him, you were Super Richard. Yeah, yeah, I was just like, you know, there’s gonna come a point in time where maybe to sit down and write I don’t need the Darth Vader helmet kind of thing, but I still like to do, I actually, I’m already at that place, but I like to do it because it’s just, it allows me to get past that ego thing, because I mean you’re sitting at your table or your desk, we’re in a Darth Vader helmet, like you can’t help but laugh at yourself, and when you can do that, I mean that’s a pretty healthy place to cleaning there it lady ever come in? No, my wife has, like, oh sorry, I never know who’s writing.

1:06:34 But you hate that expression, fake it till you make it. Yeah, well, that’s not what you’re trying to know, cuz that’s because fake it till you make it, and again words matter in life, I learned that Aaron Jim. So yeah, fake it to make it, I mean automatically it sends off a negative sort of connotation to people, telling your subconscious you’re faking, that’s not good. No, it’s not good, it’s not good at all. And is it, are you faking it for other people, the purposes of other people?

1:06:57 I’m not, I’m doing this because I want to bring the best of me out there. I want to start, I want to continuously hack away at all the different labels and perceptions I’ve got about my so that I can continue to find more and more of what I’m made of, right? That’s that’s the great pursuit of life. In fact, I think one of the great quotes that comes out of this country, it’s, it’s, it’s attributed to an archbishop in the UK, where he says, I wanted to change the world, and so I started out, I started out trying to change the world because I wanted to make it a better place, and then I quickly discovered that change in the world was going to be hard, so I decided it’s gonna change my nation, and after trying to change my nation I realized that that was difficult, so I tried to change my community, and try, in trying to change my community discovered that was difficult, so I said is gonna change my family, and I discovered the change in my family was hard as well, and then I realized, now at the end of my days, that if I would have just started with changing myself, I could have impacted my family, which would have changed my community, which could have impacted my nation and ultimately changed the world.

1:08:05 The great pursuit of all this stuff is always how can we constantly be best versions of ourselves, how can we get patent. And that’s a, that’s a hard thing, but that’s why I love the pursuit of, you know, what we do at our company of trying to find and give people the actual tools, the real tools. And that’s why it’s so important for me that I continuously, even though I could stop working with people one on one and just let training programs, you know, proliferate around the globe, no, I need to stay rooted in what’s happening on the field with people daily, face to face, toe to toe, nose to nose, so I can really see what’s working and what’s not working, diving in between the six inches other ears and hear like, how are you, what are you actually saying to yourself that allows you to perform at such an extraordinary level?

1:08:54 Like, and just on that note, there’s a, there’s a soccer player or a football player over here who is, you know, he’s in the top five greatest soccer players of all time, and in his actual psychology of how he thinks about the game and himself is this, and I worked with them, he is personally offended that other players are going to be on the same field as him, sharing the same blades of grass in his terms, and he feels it’s his duty to embarrass them as much as he possibly can out there to show them the gap that is between how much better he is than them and how much more work it’s gonna take for them to even sniff, again, sniff his cleats. And so now I’m gonna go out there, both opponents and teammates, and make that happen. Now are you gonna hear that in a press conference?

1:10:03 No, like this is, this is actually like, this is behind the press conference, this is you diving into the six inches of how people are really thinking and what they’re actually doing. No, but that’s it, that’s a healthy super-ego that how Allah allows him to bring out all of his abilities out there, right? And that’s what’s lost nowadays, is that a lot of people are trying to take young kids, I see this in sport, where they’re like, you know, oh no, everyone’s got to get equal ball time and stuff like that.

1:10:27 Well, in the development stages, seven, eight, nine, ten, you’re skill building, yes, but there are times where there’s a kid who is after practice going home and he’s practicing more and more and more and more and more and more and more than everyone else, and he starts to rise above everyone else, and then they start to put a little hand on his head and try to push him down, say, no, no, no. And it’s sad, I feel bad for those little kids, I try to rescue them out of those situations and build them back up again, he’s like, no, no, this brilliance that you’re developing, move into it. Yeah, and that, and that super-ego or that alter ego, that football player, it’s super healthy on the field.

1:11:06 Yes, as long as it stays on the field. And that’s where, and that’s where it does live for now, because he did take it off the field and then, but all that took was, because he’s a smart guy, all it took was just about 15 minutes of us talking and he’s like, I get it, right, I get it, I get where, and then it’s like, okay, now let’s have fun, now what’s, what’s the other side’s, if you can look like, right, right. So, so that third stage, what are your superpowers, what are those traits and abilities?

1:11:38 I said confident, articulate, decisive, you know, even on stage for me it’s being really playful, you know, definitely being articulate as well, but playful and articulate. Yeah, so Hugh Jackman, love that kind of idea of, you know, stepping out there in that way. And so there’s a couple of ways you can come into that. You can either choose the traits or you can say, who else already has what I want that I really, really connect with, because this is really key, because we are story and narrative beings, we need to emotionally connect with that, that other trusted friend within, so that when it comes time to be activating these things, it’s not just you going through a logical process, it’s you connecting to the emotional process, because without that emotional connection you won’t make it happen, because we live on these three planes of mental, emotional and physical.

1:12:31 Most people know what they should be doing, they do, they don’t need more content, more information, they know what they should be doing. I agree. Right now in this moment, the step that you need to take right now is in front of you and you have what it takes to take that step, you’ve got the information, but it’s not getting out here into action, the physical plane. Why is that? The drawbridge of emotion is up, it won’t, it won’t let that be cut, and so this is doubt, this is anxiety, this is the worry and the judgment of others, and so yeah, thoughts not going to be the unconscious, you know, emotional side of ourselves.

1:13:07 So how can I lower that bridge for people? Well, one of the key things in this process is make sure that you emotionally connect. I didn’t choose Superman because, oh, he’s got a cape and that’s cool, no, I loved the Superman movies of the 1970s and 80s with Christopher Reeve, loved them, and he was just my hero. But other people have chosen, you know, so it’s like you don’t go, oh, Wonder Woman, or. And most people don’t choose superheroes, actually there are other heroes in your life that you’re deeply connected with.

1:13:38 You know what the most popular category is actually of all the categories? Grandmothers. Yeah, about, say, grandfathers or something. Grandmothers, grandmothers, interesting. Why?

1:13:49 Because you already have an emotional connection, no, not everybody, but minute you already have an emotional connection with that person. Well, that’s just greasing the slide of me helping you take this process and making it happen more quickly, because the key part of this is, again, like I said, in that process of Geronimo handing me those cards and Walter Payton saying, but don’t you dare for one second dishonor how we would show up. When I put on, when I go home, I have a little bracelet, it’s a very colorful bracelet that my daughters Molly and Sophie made for me, it’s on a hook right inside the door, so when I walk through that door there’s a ritual I have.

1:14:20 I stop, take a deep breath, there’s a, I imagine, and these are all tools that I teach people in sport, I’m just bringing them into this world, but right, if you have a favorite color, use favorite colors as a way of you bathing yourself in something, confidence, you know, belief, you know, playfulness, or some trait, some way that you want to show up. So I have red as my favorite color, and when I walk through the door I don’t just walk through the door, no, that’s how everyone else does it, you want to create a ritual, not a routine. Rituals and routines are very different.

1:14:56 Everyone talked about routines and habits, routines and habits, yes, they’re important and they are great, you know, I’m cables to help support and create the lives that we want. Nothing is more powerful than mindset and ritual. Ritual is a story that’s attached to a thing that you’re doing at the highest level, as we focus on mindsets, strategies and rituals. Okay, so what’s the ritual? I stop, take a deep breath, and that’s me exit, and I exhale to leave my identity of challenger out, and then I connect with how I want to be going into that door, where the most important people in my life are living.

1:15:37 Because most people, they spend all their day at work, I’m just tired. Since when is energy a non-renewable resource? It is renewable at any time through proper breathing techniques, mindset and stuff, right? And I want to connect back to those amazing people that are nano so that door, and there’s a red, just a red wave of color that sits at my door, when I walk through it, it bathes me in that, you know, attitude of playful patience and kindness that I want to be for my kids.

1:16:05 So I walked through the door and then I grabbed that bracelet and I, as I put it on, I snap it, and that’s me activating my dad and Mr. Rogers, and I think of them now in an observer format walking with me and watching me as I, as I interact with my kids. And then I try to find a first mover, it’s a, I call it like a first mover action. What’s the first move action I can take right away to get me into that? And it’s immediately get down low and scoop up one of them, whoever is the closest or ever comes running to me first, and that’s me getting into that mode.

1:16:39 You become them as soon as possible. Yes, no, activated pause or get into that. Okay, it also activates just a rule in kind of social dynamics that the first 90 seconds of any interaction shapes a lot of the next fifteen to thirty to sixty minutes of interaction. So if you come in and you’re down and you’re angry and you’re barking at people, that’s going to shape the mood of the next 60 to 90 minutes. So why topple a domino that’s gonna be harder for you to get out of?

1:17:08 Why not topple a very pot? And anyone can do something for 15 seconds or 30 seconds or 90 seconds, and then you can coast with that actually for a while. So come in with, like, big energy or positive attitude, you can, you can do that, because if you can’t do that and I mean 15 seconds, you can’t, you can’t be positive for 15 seconds, you can’t have a big smile on your face for 15 seconds, so that it just topples a domino that works. Okay, really powerful for you, that’s nice.

1:17:37 Oscar Rogers used to actually do the same thing, remember, if you think back, he used to come in as work clothes and he’d put on his sweater and his loafers. Yeah, and that was him changing states, or I, I use him in my, I use him in my, my keynote, because there’s this great, there’s this great part of the Won’t You Be My Neighbor? documentary with a Mister Rogers, it’s good, which is so good, like a third of that documentary is basically unpacking his alter ego, which was the, the cat, the cat, right? And the King as well, right?

1:18:12 Well, the king in some way, but it was the cat, which was more of, his wife says it beautifully, and she says that was actually the real him. And then at the end of the sequence that I play in the video, he says, he’s got the hand puppet on and he says, you know, this doesn’t look like it’s very far between here and here, because to get me to say I’m scared or I’m worried or I’m excited would seem maybe odd for someone like me to say that, but he could say that. And so it doesn’t seem like it’s very far, but I can tell you is very self-efficacious.

1:18:48 And efficacious means your belief in your ability to take action and do something, right? And so if I could give people a lot of tools that they can use in their mental or physical tool sets to help them be more efficacious, then that’s the great pursuit that we’re after, is that. Yeah, so powerful, much to learn from Mister Rogers. Oh man. And then it’s so, so, so again that’s actually tying in to the fourth part of the process: what’s the totem, what’s the artifact, what’s the thing that you can wear and put on, because that’s important.

1:19:17 Yes, that’s where we are physical teachers. Yeah, anchors are all around us, anchors are all around, they mean things to us, they represent things big time. And so what it’s tapping into psychologically is this concept or phenomenon called enclothed cognition, which is that human beings will give an attribute, traits and stories to the things that other people are wearing, and they’re wearing, and what happens is, if so to kind of play this out, if you look at someone who walks into a room who’s got a doctor’s coat on, you automatically think that they are, this is unconscious, you assume that they’re successful and that they’re, they’re smart and that they’re detailed, they’re deliberate, or, like, you know, again, what I have, a reliable and trustworthy.

1:20:03 Yeah, methodical, and crazy thing is though, because you already are telling yourself that story automatically about someone else, if you put on a doctor’s coat, you’ll actually start acting through those traits. That doesn’t mean that you’re a doctor, no, what you’ll start doing is you’ll start acting through the traits of being more detailed or methodical, more full, more deliberate. So if you’re in a role or if you’re doing a task that demands being detailed, methodical, careful, you’ll actually improve your results automatically just by wearing that.

1:20:39 Okay, there’s a great study that was done on this as well at the University of Minnesota, where a lady who had heard about this concept of the alter ego decided she wanted to kind of put that to test with some young children, four to six year olds. And so what she did was she brought them into a room, a classroom, and they divided them up into three groups, and they had this sort of padlock puzzle with a bunch of padlocks and locks on this box, and they gave each kid a bunch of keys to unlock all the padlocks. They want to see how long they would stick it out and tough it out, because all the keys didn’t work.

1:21:17 Okay, so nothing was gonna work. Impossible task. Impossible task, let’s see how they’re gonna respond. Three groups: one group just, here’s the keys, go to it. Second group, whispered in the air, pretend to be your favorite superhero or a character that you love.

1:21:34 Okay, third group, they gave, they rolled in Iraq a clothing, Batman costumes and Dora the Explorer costumes, and they said, put on your favorite superhero or character and then go to the task. So the results, because they were, what they were testing for was grit and perseverance, how long would they persevere. What they found though, as a subset of the study, was how much self-talk changed. So the first group, they quit the earliest, and they would say things like, I’m not good at puzzles, so I’m gonna quit, or this is getting rate too hard, or this, I’m just too frustrated, and they’ve quit.

1:22:13 I’m too frustrated, this is getting too hard, I’m not good at puzzles, they’re describing their own identity, of their own experience so far. The second group, they stuck it out longer, but then after a while they would quit on it. The third group, most of them had to be asked to stop, they would say things like, Batman never quits, so I’m not going to quit. Dora the Explorer always finds a way, so I’m gonna find a way, because they were acting through that new identity.

1:22:44 Key thing for people to understand, we as human beings always act through whatever we associate ourselves with. We as human beings always act through whatever we associate ourselves with. That’s why the story and narrative that we have about who we are, where we come from, is very powerful. Are you Tara, are you telling yourself an empowering part of where you come from? I come from the middle of nowhere, I’m come from a farm and ranch in southern Alberta, you know, nearest neighbor is five kilometres away, or three and a half miles away, kind of thing.

1:23:16 Some people think that as a negative, I’m like, no, I got to, even though I was an extrovert and I kind of felt trapped being there because I wanted to be around a lot of people, I got to learn the value of extraordinarily hard work, being around really good, really good people that were, you know, handshake deal type individuals, all sorts of other things, being in nature and learning. That’s why nature is such a big part of the way that I teach as well. So sometimes the stories we talk about are not positive, but it’s so powerful.

1:23:49 So like, again, the enclothed cognition, they told themselves a story of what Batman means, they put on Batman and they acted through Batman. Yeah. So who was being the most authentic in that moment? Then that’s why, that’s why I come back to this idea of authenticity. Authentic, there are many versions of what’s authentic.

1:24:08 Those kids that got defeated earlier, they were being authentic, but they were leaving a lot of traits and abilities trapped inside. So that’s why I don’t play with the term, I think, because now it’s become a meme. Yeah. Now it’s almost like a virtue signal, it’s like, I’m just being authentic. No, you’re just being a dick, you’re being an a**hole to other people, that’s what you are, you’re just excusing it away for the fact that you haven’t developed some skills on how to relate to other people, right?

1:24:33 You could be channeling someone who’s great at that and you get B being that person. Yeah, yeah. So I just don’t, and I mean if you really listen to the success unpacks, and if you read a lot of autobiographies and biographies like I do, because I think that’s where a lot of lessons are hidden, not in kind of like the nonfiction unpack of a lot of different books or ideas. You’ll never hear anyone say, well, the reason I was successful is because I was so authentic.

1:24:55 No, they’re like, you know, I had to do a lot of hard things, had a constant reinvent myself, and you know, didn’t quit, found better people, always pursued to get around, you know, better coaches, better mentors, better, you know, performance trainers or, you know, and that runs across all the veins of life or disciplines of life. Yeah, so point, man, and I was just thinking, so I, I feel like I’ve tested lots of different parts of this without ever knowing exactly what I was doing, it without ever having a structure, but I remember the reason I did a TED talk is I remember I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, the host of London Real has a TED talk. That’s what I said.

1:25:29 Oh, that’s great. And that’s why I booked it. Yeah, cuz, cuz of me, in my mind that was London Real was like this guy who’s doing these things and of course he has a TED talk and a message, otherwise I’m not congruent with who I believe I am. Yeah, who the show is. Yeah.

1:25:42 So I booked it. Yeah, and now is that true? No, that’s not true, that the London Real host has to have a TED talk, but that allowed you to then go and pursue something that, again, did that have to level up your communication skills? Oh yeah, massive, you know, and so I’m in a very uncomfortable situation. Yeah, and so what is that true, but again that’s how you got to create that narrative, and it propelled you to go and do something that was really worthwhile.

1:26:08 Yeah, and now it is true, now I am a public speaker. Yeah, I know, I never wanted to be and never could be, and you grew into that identity. Yeah, yeah, that’s a, that’s a perfect example. Yeah, I mean these, these mean these totems. Talk to me about uniforms, because we were talking about that earlier.

1:26:23 And I mean, you know, I’m wearing a uniform now, and and we put on these clothes, and you know, we were talking about Dan Pena. Yeah, my mentor, Darth Vader incarnated, and when I got back from his castle about five and a half years ago, which was a week-long, you know, whatever, deep dive into all sorts of things, where actually I was never told to dress differently. When I got back I started wearing suits on London Real. Yeah, I started dressing different.

1:26:46 Before that I was kind of this, the old skateboarder. Yeah, and it wasn’t a conscious decision, but I was just decided to show up as a different person. Yeah, and I started dressing different. Yeah, it’s, but to unpack that more, so you had that experience with Dan at the castle, and then, you know, I know that it started out this way with him, like there was some friction that was there, right? But there was still some things that you looked at with Dan, Dan, and you’re like, I do like that part.

1:27:15 So what were some of the traits in the qualities that he shows up with that you really kind of, you know, connect with? Well, the big realization I had at the castle was I was not, I was playing small and I, I, I was just playing small and I needed to really go bigger. Yeah, that was like a big thing. I mean, but I mean a lot of the things I see what Dan is, is this, you know, is this Darth Vader character, or the high performance mentality and this mindset and all of this things that he is and that he represents.

1:27:46 Yeah, so that’s what I channel sometimes when I’m thinking about it, and I’m guessing I channeled some of that when I came back. Yeah, and again you’re gonna channel it in still your own way. Yeah, like is there something there is a, there’s a foundational set of values that are very much like the DNA of how you weren’t, because I have, I mean we’ve got a lot of friends and associates that overlap, and the great thing is, is never once have I ever heard anybody ever say, oh, that, that London Real guy is a real dick, right?

1:28:18 Dan Pena, some people have said that because they’re challenged by him. Mmm, right, and they’re just, they’re just these glasses, but so they’re, they’re challenged by that, but you’re gonna, you’re gonna take that quality and set, and you’re gonna still, you’re gonna still activate it in your way, right? And that’s what’s kind of cool is, I can’t be Hugh Jackman, I can’t be Joseph Campbell, I can’t be them, but there’s something about them that I really like, and it’s because that’s the powerful part of story, is when you’re watching a movie you’re seeing a part of yourself in that character, right?

1:28:57 Which means that you’re seeing a mirror, and then your next step should be, this should be a big takeaway for people if they’ve made it this long in the video, which, you know, great, is that that means that you’ve already got it. The way that I treat people when I work with them isn’t that I need to add something to you that is, until you talk about high performance, I toggle peak performance, so it is a process of stripping away, subtracting, deleting and removing, because most people are carrying too much with them. It’s really hard to win in anything in life by having a big thing, even in the world of business, you’ve got IBM, you’ve got big companies right now that are stripping away, they’re trying to become more manoeuvrable, more quick, more agile, because big doesn’t work nowadays, the business world is moving way too quickly and way too fast, so agility is key, peak performance is key.

1:29:48 So subtracting and removing. So the way I look at people always is that you already have all the traits, qualities and abilities from emotional set already there, and that’s why that mirroring thing happens when we watch and we see, if you love Luke Skywalker or you love Katniss Everdeen or you love Arya Stark or Jon Snow or insert the name of any character that you’re reading or watching, it’s because there’s something about that character that you see represents part of you. That’s actually a place to start and find who might be the inspiration for how you want to show up, and there’s no gender role here.

1:30:24 A lady had asked me recently, she’s like, I love the Incredible Hulk. Then you use it, it’s not about, don’t worry about that, right? That’s the trait. So cuz it’s the traits that you’re seeing. Yeah, so, um, yeah, it’s, I love the homicide, love donning into the dialing into, like, the psychology with people, illnesses you’ve mentioned.

1:30:41 Depression earlier, and you had thoughts on that, and maybe just overall thoughts on how we perceive this idea of depression and then also maybe how it relates to things in the book. Yeah, I, I have this, I do have this love/hate with the world of personal moment and leadership and self-help, because a lot of people take, you know, a hammer-nail approach to things, it’s the cure-all. I don’t think that the older you go is a cure-all, it’s an amazing tool to help you develop, you know, a new identity, play with yourself, like play with yourself, play with, but play with being, having a more playful attitude when you’re approaching things, and just happen, it also just is proven, it happens to be a tool set that people use at extremely high levels.

1:31:28 However, a lot of the reason, or a lot of people are actually out there struggling with a different thing, and having better goals for yourself, setting different goals, you know, having more high performance things in your life, that’s actually not what’s causing the issue, is that you lack that skill set, what’s causing the issue, because people talk about avoidant behavior, and then they prescribe, oh, you just got to do it, or you’re self-sabotaging, and so they prescribe something else that’s almost like a band-aid on top of it, or any one of a host of a number, or they say, well, you’ve got impostor syndrome because you’re, you’re too scared to get out there. No, the reality is you’ve got a biological and a chemical issue that’s going on. I am not a therapist, I am an, I’m not a licensed psychoanalyst or psychiatrist or psychologist, I stay in my lane, I’m here to help people improve, but through the process of me working with top achieving people is, you’re gonna find, because in that world there are a lot of people who are struggling with other stuff, could be traumas from the past, just, you know, there’s a lot of us that are out there.

1:32:41 And everyone’s had a trauma, car accident is a trauma, just how it gets processed in the brain. Other people, you know, the trauma comes from sexual abuse or violence or things that have happened to them, which is, it’s, it’s that has a lot more psychological impact with people. And so I, I just want to encourage people that if you’re avoiding something, if you’re procrastinating on something, if you’re like self-sabotaging because you’re not pursuing the things that you want to do despite the fact you’ve got the drive or the ambition for it, you might be dealing with some state of depression.

1:33:18 It could be mild, it could be very extreme, and you going out to another event to help try and solve that, bring in more information in your head and acquire more knowledge, still isn’t gonna change the fact that you’ve got some chemical disorder going on. The one thing I want to help people with with this is get them to see that you are not depressed, meaning that, like, don’t take it on as your identity, right? Because if you have a broken arm, you’ve got a broken arm, you don’t say I am broken arm, right?

1:33:54 I don’t say I am broken arm. Some people, some of us have got maybe a broken or an ill brain. And I am not, I am not depressed, I am, I am someone who deals with the effects of depression, or you are dealing with the effects of depression but you aren’t depressed, you’re dealing, because a, and again because this thing rules a lot, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a lot more difficult for build on San people. Understand a broken arm, they’re like, oh, you got a broken arm, but the moment you start getting into a conversation around depression, I want to remove the stigma, and so I’m a part of, you know, lot of different groups trying to help break that and get out more leaders who talk about it more honestly, because the moment we can remove that, we can help more people that come out of, you know, the military, you know, we just, you know, talk about Remembrance Day earlier on, like that’s an important group that needs to get helped, or people who come out of, you know, terrible abuse as kids, that, you know, even once you get them past the trauma, there’s still effects of lingering depression that still sit there.

1:34:55 And so I just want people to be a little bit kinder to themselves and up beat themselves up and say, oh, I’m just, you know, I’m not a hard worker, I guess. No, that’s not it, dude. You might be just someone who’s struggling with something that’s, you know, very much a puppet master with the way that you do things, but talk about it as if it’s a temporary thing, or a light, not even that it’s a temporary thing, because because it is, it is a disease or a disorder for people that, you know, some of us will have to, you know, just manage and work with all of our lives, right?

1:35:28 And but that, you know, but there is a path forward with it, even if you’re in the darkest places of it, because I’ve been there, like I said, I battled suicide, you know, I, for five different attempts, you know, in my, in my teens and 20s, teens and 20s, and, you know, like, I know what that’s like when you take a bottles of pills and you’re sitting on a gurney in a hospital and you’re choking down charcoal, because charcoal is what you take, that’s what give you to, you know, discount the effects of that, and that’s a pretty, like, again, I know what that’s like. I know what that experience, I’ll never forget that experience of sitting on that, trying to choke down a cup of black charcoal to soak up all of that stuff, and how extraordinarily difficult that is, and while you’re doing that, the story that you’re telling yourself about how did I get to this place, right?

1:36:21 And, you know, isolating myself was probably one of those things that I had done that was wrong, and I don’t say this because I don’t sit, I don’t care, people would judge me because of that, you know, I’ve, I’ve had lots of different successes in life, I probably would have had way more successes if I was actually, if I had the chance to be mentally healthy throughout my entire life, but I did, you know, I’m proud of the fact that I did a lot of things despite the fact that those things tried to, try to get in my way, and that’s also why I got into the world of mental game stuff, because I needed it for me, right? And then I just became really good at just in the pursuit of wanting the science behind things, and, and then I’m very happy, and again I had a great mentor early on, Harvey Dorfman, that told me very early on that when we do the work that we do, he’s known as the Yoda of baseball, the greatest mental game coach I think that ever lived, he wrote the book, he really wrote Coaching the Mental Game, he’s just an amazing man, and he’s like, you know, just we are gonna, you’re gonna find people who are hurting, don’t try to fit, like we need, you need to know your limits, you know, and then your job is to now build up a Rolodex of amazing other superhero Avenger types that you carry with you that you can now pass people on to.

1:37:33 That doesn’t mean that you lose relationship, because the person still can’t just jump off to the sidelines of life and not go back on the field and compete, because they don’t have that luxury, most of us don’t, we still have to work. So then how do we do that, how do we continue to work while also trying to get, whether it’s a Medicaid of route, whether it’s a therapeutic route, whether it’s a plant-based medicine route, which, you know, we haven’t talked, chatted about yet, which there’s so many, so many promising things in that world. So anyway, let’s talk about that trauma.

1:38:04 I mean, our latest film is called Reconnect, it’s premiering next month in London, and it’s about, it’s not bad, a lot of things. It started with three plant medicine ceremonies, me going down to Costa Rica last year and drinking ayahuasca. Yeah, I had done it about seven years ago when we first started the show as well, but I hadn’t been back since. I’d had psilocybin experience, a DMT experience that I did a YouTube episode about before everybody was doing that, and I hadn’t been back in a while and I went, and for me a recurring experience in my plant medicines is going back to seven years old, my parents getting divorced, and, yeah, he having this weirdly traumatic event around just shutting, shutting myself off from the world, not wanting to be hurt ever again.

1:38:45 Yeah. And not allowing anybody inside close to me to ever hurt me again. Yeah. Which is not a great way to live life and stuff. Yeah.

1:38:53 It led to a lot of my isolation and addictions later in life, I believe, so it’s something I kept coming back to, and something I actually end up going back and talking to my parents about the divorce and get on camera as well. Wow. Yeah, go, yeah, it’s deep. Try to kind of try to get 70-something-year-old parents on camera is difficult, but I did, and so it’s about just processing it to understand thyself and actually understand that the story I told myself wasn’t even necessarily the true story.

1:39:19 I know. And to come to, come through that. In last year the movie Iron Mind, I talked about my, you know, heroin addiction and overdose, which most people still find that hard to believe about me. Yeah. But it was very important that I talk about it, and again that’s important as, because people are seeing the perceptions of us right now, right?

1:39:36 Two guys sitting in these leather chairs in this awesome studio you’ve built out through the successes of this, and so they’re seeing, they’re seeing sometimes the, the end of the race when you’re running through the thing, even though there is no end of the race. But you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot there, you people. Yeah, there’s a lot there, and I wanted to ask you, when did you get comfortable talking about the sexual abuse or the suicide? Yeah.

1:40:00 When did you actually start processing it yourself, what, and what are some of the lessons you learned from that, and what was the reaction about? Well, I haven’t heard you talk about. Yeah, I, I was, I waited way longer than I should have. So this happened when I was 12 at a church camp. That I was a, an extroverted kid growing up on a farm and ranch, you know, classic middle of nowhere, even in the word to my book, or not for, but in the dedication of my book, I said to, to all the people who grow up in the middle of nowhere.

1:40:30 And yeah, even that, like, that just gets me, because I’m so proud of the fact that I got to grow up where I did, and, you know, now I live in this, you know, eight million person, eight, nine million person city in New York City, and I get to pinch myself every day that, you know, I made it there, which is this place I wanted to get to. I know that place though, because I, I had a grandpa with a farm in Colorado that literally the next house was two miles down the road. Yeah.

1:40:54 And I had a grandpa with a ranch in Arizona, so I know the types of people you’re talking. Yeah, it’s really solid, salt-of-the-earth, right, that’s the words that we swear we say. And so, you know, super extroverted kid, what to just get to the city anytime I could. And so when summer came around, I wanted to go to any church camp or camp I possibly could. So one weekend I was Catholic, the next I was evangelical, the next I was Baptist, it didn’t matter to me, I was gonna morph into it, so as a good shapeshifter that way.

1:41:26 So I was at this camp and I kind of got singled out by these two men, and then over the course of a couple of days was sexually abused and assaulted. My first day was, you know, bad enough, second day was very bad and, you know, not very nice, and I, and I just remember through the experience just wishing that my dad would come through the door and help kind of save me. And so anyway, I went home and then that was my first attempt for suicide, was when I got out of the back of this Chrysler LeSabre or Buick LeSabre car, dropped my little duffel bag off at the front door as my mom came out to say thanks to the people who had were dropping me off, friends, and I went into the back yard where we had a pool that we just put in on the farm, and I got changed into my bathing suit and then jumped into the pool and tried to like pin myself underneath the the ladder of the pool and drown myself, because I did not want any of my family to know.

1:42:30 I just thought everyone was looking at me and they knew, they didn’t know, because again it just, it, you know, your entire world changes because I was so foreign to me, like that all that stuff, I grew up in amazingly safe and loving home, and you know, and then just some of the things that were said to you during the experience, with, you know, like, where’s your family now, they’re not here to save you, how could they love you if they don’t, you know, if they’re not here, like all these things, now sudden, now you’ve got self-worth issues for a lot of your life kind of thing. And so I never told anybody about that until September of 2017, September the 8th actually, it’s 2017, finally broke down and told a friend. I was just operating at, I was just fried, I was stressed about so many things that were going on, I was in a business lawsuit that was very expensive and was, you know, trying to hurt my brand behind the scenes with former business partner and stuff that no one knew about because I was the face of things, but you know it was, it was hurting the business a lot, and you know, he still got to suck it up and just deal with it, but all this stuff is coming at you, thinking that you were the problem, but it was stuff that was out of my control, but we couldn’t talk about it publicly, so that and just a bunch of things that came together and it just brought this thing back up, stirs, because I was feeling trapped, and which was the feeling that I had specifically in that moment, and prior to me actually saying something to my friend, which then I went home immediately and told my

1:44:03 Wife. About seven months before that we had just had our little boy Charlie, who’s two and a half, a little more, two and a half now. It was the end of February 2017 we had Charlie, and it was a very bad birth experience, we had to have emergency C-section, all this kind of stuff, my wife had a very traumatic experience for my wife because she lost so much blood, and so she came home and, you know, she’s being taken care of, I have a big event that’s coming up and, you know, a month and a half that I’m trying to get ready for as well, so managing the team and all the quantity of work that’s there, and I’m also taking care of Molly and Sophie as well, and we’ve got a little bit of help, but but in and so I’m picking up Molly and Sophie from preschool, and Molly, my oldest, is just a really sweet and kind kid, that’s just her default mode of operation, and I put her in, it’s just before her fourth birthday, and she put her hand up to my face and she said, daddy, are you happy?

1:44:54 And I said, yeah, I’m happy, why? She said, oh, because you’ve been yelling at us a lot lately and it’s making us sad. And I was in the middle of Chelsea Piers, which, you know, Chelsea Piers, yeah, biggest sports complex in all of Manhattan, people rushing by taking kids to gymnastics and soccer, soccer fields and basketball and ice hockey and stuff, and I’m just like, waterfall. Yeah, because in that moment I thought, I am not gonna give my kids secondhand drama, because that’s what I was doing, I was transmuting all this stuff that was so painful inside and getting angry because I was getting triggered, because that’s what triggered actually means.

1:45:33 Triggered isn’t like, all that person just triggered me, people use that word very loosely, and, you know, whatever, you can’t police the world, but triggered is actually, you know, a an old psychological memory being triggered that is going to flood you with a lot of hormones that are tough to manage, cortisol, stress hormones typically, or adrenaline. And, yeah, and I was like, I’m gonna change this. Still took me seven months though, because then now it came up to the surface, I started trying to deal with it on my own again, even making my own mistakes.

1:46:10 So even though I say this to people, again, we’re difficult with ourselves. Yeah, so you blocked all this stuff out? No, yeah, yeah, I blocked it out really well, there’s lots of things that I even forgot about it until I actually started to get treatment for it and things, but it would bubble up and that’s, you know, it would, it would, it would come to the surface anytime I felt like I was being isolated by a group. Some, I had a couple of bad breakups when I was younger that triggered it, which then, you know, caused a suicide attempt and stuff, because you felt, you know, alone and unworthy, and then, and beyond the unworthy thing, then you’re carrying with you that whole experience again, like you’re just back to it, so it triggers that 12-year-old self, and sometimes again it’s, it’s so crazy, but you’re, or 12-year-old is doing that now, like that, that wound itself, it’s just, it’s locked inside of you.

1:47:08 That’s why people don’t get about trauma, is trauma also, the part of it is it’s very somatic, there is trauma that sits in the body. It can be like if you hold a lot of tension somewhere, that could be where the trauma is trapped or sitting, like it’s, you know, the body is a phenomenal thing. Yeah, no, it’s real. So that experience, yeah, so I’m sorry, I pursued that, still didn’t get much help, went to a therapist, but you know it was a little bit helpful, but I was like, how, this is gonna take forever, and I was just, I was fried, like I needed help now.

1:47:42 And so I opened up with my wife, and even when I told my wife this, we had the kids in the other room because she came home with the kids, and I said, hey, can you put on a Paw Patrol, you and I have to talk, Paw Patrol, you know, the number one cartoon amongst little kids, like that loved it. And so she came in a bedroom, and when I told her, that’s when she was like, she kind of had an audible laugh, she kind of smiled and she said, now I get you, now you make sense to me, I, and then all the other side of his like, now I know why I can’t get the type of love from you that I can’t get. Right, right, no, she’s my superhero, like a hundred percent, my wife is.

1:48:22 And so started to get some help, but it wasn’t until this, is getting to the psychedelics thing, I got involved with the, the largest study on the use of MDMA with people experiencing PTSD and trauma, done at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, along with the MAPS Institute and NYU, and the MAPS Institute, you know, been a leading organization trying to get these plant-based medicines into people’s hands because they know of its therapeutic help. Yeah, so we’re big fans of MAPS. Yeah, so yeah, Rick Doblin, this started and it’s been here seven years ago, five years ago, three years ago, and yeah, he’s a big proponent, and they’re, they’re really proponents with MDMA as the therapy, whereas other institutions are bigger on the other psilocybin, suicide stuff, but it’s a fascinating tool.

1:49:12 Yeah, use to get you back to those memories without having the trigger. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And and so again, like everything, caveat with all this stuff is I’m not prescribing this, this is my experience, there’s a lot of data to go along with it right now. I think the last time from that study that’s done at Bellevue, which is the most thorough scientific study on this right now, I think it’s a 78 or an 82 percent cure rate for people experiencing PTSD, which is an extraordinary number when you look at that based on any other forms of treatment that are out there.

1:49:51 And and that was my experience, was it finally got me to untether from the, like, you know, all of the wires that are connected with that experience, so now I can actually, you know, I could never been able to talk about this experience before, I, I weighed it, I only waited to talk about it publicly until after, because talking about it while you’re still going through it, I’m a bubbling mess in this chair, that’s not really helpful, but now that I’m on the other side I can talk about it, and I’m okay with that. If there’s anything I, there’s no, if there’s ever anything that gets me, like, you know, emotional or something, that’s when I talk about my kids and that experience with, you know, Molly and Sophie, and, right, because you know you don’t see your kids hurt.

1:50:36 So that was extraordinarily, extraordinarily helpful to get to the other side of it, you know, and there’s still other forms of treatment that, uh, that I’ll work through with it as well, you know, because the next forms, because it, it didn’t necessarily, it’s not that it cured the depression side of things, because that’s a different thing. Yeah, the trauma and the PTSD are different from depression itself. So yeah, I’m, I’m a big, big proponent of it, but like every, everything, educate yourself.

1:51:07 I’ve, I’m, I’m not, I’m not as great of a marketer as some other people, I guess, would be, because I’m like, oh, you know, this cures everything, about, like, I want a more mentally and psychologically responsible group of people that are, you know, buying something. I, so your homework. Yeah, which is heavy. Yeah, and that was, it’s an MDMA session in an environment with a therapy, with a therapist, they really walk you through a lot of these things, they walk you through, there’s two types, there’s therapy while you’re doing it and then there’s quiet therapy, which means that they sit with you while you’re going through the experience itself, and that’s the one that I was involved with, was that side, and you can talk if you want, you could talk if you want.

1:51:47 Yeah, call that kind of stuff. Yeah. Okay, I’m sound you, but yeah, and they just listen and they just, they don’t say anything. No, it’s, it, they’ll maybe say go on, I think that’s my, that might be it. And it’s even hard to remember because, you know, it takes you into such a deep, like, psychological state.

1:52:04 The very first time I took it, to be just frank, it was the very first time in my entire life where I felt deep levels of self-love, which, not to get woo-woo with people, but it was to feel that way about you, and then that gets transmitted into the world around you, like it’s, what a phenomenal anchoring point for me, that once you get out of that experience and you’re working through your day and you still have to deal with challenges, you know that that exists, that that experience exists inside of you, is so, so, so powerful, it was for me. Yeah, anyway, no, I think MDMA got dismissed as a party drug because that’s what people knew it as and it was just that thing, but I remember talking to friends of mine, even like 10 years ago, where one guy would be like, yeah, I did emptiness, I thought it was a good time, yeah, but I finally forgave my girlfriend for breaking up with me and I feel like this, this, this weight, weight lifted off my Chinese.

1:53:02 Yeah, it really changed his life, and it was just like, oh, that’s an interesting data point. And then Rick Doblin actually has this story where is his grandmother, I think, was dying and she was in the hospital and he wanted to have an MDMA experience with her and the doctor said, no, you, you can’t do that, and he said, okay, I’m gonna take him MDMA and be with my grandmother in the hospital, just her sober, me with MDMA, and he said it was one of the most beautiful experiences they ever had together, because he could be almost, yes, a child, 100%. And if you understand what I just said, then you understand anything more about that substance, because he could be, and you could actually have experience with only one person doing it, and a weird connection that they never had for.

1:53:42 Yeah, and in some way a beautiful experience for both of them. So yeah, so there’s something there and Rick’s been working so hard. Yet, I mean they were doing it in Dallas in the 80s before it was made illegal, it was like a real party drug, right, on that city, and they knew, they would be like a bowl of them on the, on the counter in the club, and they knew this is gonna be made illegal in a few years. Yeah. And they know we’re gonna be fighting for this for the next like 40 years.

1:54:05 Yeah. And now they’re showing people through these PTSD studies, well, even the FDA, I think it was after the second trial phase at Bellevue came back and said, this is the most, this is the most definitive evidence that we’ve seen for a cure for people with PTSD. And so it’s path to regulation, it’s gonna be pretty quick, hopefully, because it’s gonna be very hard for us, I at least in America, Congress, to, to sit there with nothing but veterans in the audience.

1:54:32 Yeah, try to go back to your constituents and say, no, we’re not going to help these people overcome the tremendous horrors that they’ve had to go through so they can live more, live their lives in a more productive way. Yeah, and I think that was part of Rick’s strategy, is you use first responders, Fire Department. Yeah, veterans. Yeah, PTSD, and use that as an example, again politically it’s hard to ignore. Yeah, even though, yeah, the federal, you know, the federal ban, a lot of these drugs is hard, you have to get through.

1:54:59 Yeah, it’s got some possibilities. So and I ain’t gots interesting, and also there’s people like Imperial College in London. I’ve just had a guy named Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, who works with Professor David Nutt, and they’ve been using psychedelics, he doesn’t consider MDMA a psychedelic, but whatever, it’s more like the psilocybin, DMT, LSD, ayahuasca, tip, they use that to treat some traumas, but sometimes it’s too traumatic when you take someone with PTSD with those substances, because it’s, it’s, you know, it’s less in control, it’s less loving and edgy, so I can see why you would want to use one as opposed to the other.

1:55:35 Well, and again, the, to make very clear for everyone that’s watching this, this is in a controlled environment with a trained therapist or analysts that is used to this stuff, so that it’s in a, it’s a safe environment, and yeah, like, you know, you can have those personal experiences doing things recreationally, but this is a very different path, and again it’s like anything, context matters in life, context matters, it shapes the experience with people. So the very fact that you’re going in and the, the lens of the experience is about the, the possible releasing of the trauma, changes the experience that that person’s now having underneath the effects of, of it, right? Which was my experience, because I had done it recreationally once, which was when I was like, oh, this is the first time I’ve ever felt this way about myself in my entire life.

1:56:31 This has to, there has to be something out there that actually helps people with this. And then because I’m around the community, people that I’m around, Tucker Max, Dan Engle over in the United States, who’s one of the foremost experts on this topic as well, that then accelerate that, that’s how, that’s how I got towards the actual study itself. Living in New York, I made it very easy for me to get access to that. Yeah, no, it’s a good point. And now in, in London, Imperial College, they’re treating anorexia, depression, some substance abuse, there’s like that with, you know, was, I’m excited about the possibilities for people dealing with a lot of different things with it.

1:57:08 Yeah, so the one challenge that I’ve had with my experience from when I was a kid was that that experience was videotaped. Okay, and it’s a very popular video tape in the pedophile community, shared amongst them, and I get trolled a lot in my, my email, and I have since the first time it happened was about 2005 when I started to get more of a public profile. Okay, and someone found me and sent me a link to a video, and it was all, didn’t, didn’t look, it was like almost like a video from a friend, and it sent me to this, like, you know, shitty pedophile forum before he was ever shut down, and, you know, seeing yourself as a kid.

1:57:49 So then that triggered an event for me, and then now people send me GIFs constantly, just literally just a couple days ago, it’s f***ing horrible. Yeah, but it’s so, there’s this great article that came out in the New York Times just yesterday. Yeah, it’s about, yeah, so how people can’t escape their digital footprints. Yeah, so that’s, I’m one of those people, and yeah, it’s been challenging, we’ve, we’ve engaged a lot of different security organizations as well, and in, unfortunately for us lately they’ve started to, like, up, they’re kind of more threats against not just me but, like, family and stuff like that, and so now I’ve got the FBI involved with it.

1:58:27 So you know, again, this is my point about the importance of that. So that’s my experience, that’s a very specific experience. Yeah, other people are experiencing different things where things come up for them, and, you know, mental toughness is, is so over, and mental toughness isn’t about having a rigid mine, or it’s the square jaw of Jocko Willink, or, you know, that, that’s not mental toughness, is actually about agility, it’s about flexibility and adaptability, you know, how well can you deal with the circumstances that you’re given and be flexible and adaptable despite what’s being handed to you, and, you know, that’s why for me it’ll always be the pursuit that I have to have just to, you know, lead or something like that.

1:59:08 Yeah, I mean that has to prepare you to be, man, I mean you have to be all sorts of things, you have to try to, you understand, try to forgive behavior, try to not, because that can just set you off, that could make you not want to believe in humanity, that’s the way I feel right now. Yeah, there’s some, there’s some, there’s some pretty, uh, there’s some pretty dark, dark people that are out there, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is, because I also have a very different experience of people, which is that, you know, thankfully I’ve had, I don’t know, I, I loved humanity way more than I despised it, despite that I had that experience, right? There’s some amazing people.

1:59:45 Look, and I actually feel like everyone’s amazing until you prove me otherwise, right? Like, so crazy thing is a lot of this stuff could turn these otherwise people into amazing people, you know, they’re probably weird in these weird loops, and abuses and, yeah, hurt people that have hurt them. Yeah, you know, trapped, and these bad mentalities that are occurring, I mean, yeah, you know, and they’ve got that identity that they’re acting through. Yeah, you know, so it’s their way of controlling someone, right?

2:00:13 Yeah, and that’s why I’ll continue to talk about it, because they consume that, they consume the media, and I know that because they, they reference it in whatever, you know, trolling type emails or messages that they send across the web. So yeah, I’m glad these articles are in the New York Times and it’s so good, I hope we take more action on that. It’s an important, what’s next for you? You’re talking about children’s books and stuff, which is crazy. Yeah, because why that, I mean, you know, I’ve had Jocko on, he does children’s books.

2:00:41 Yeah, most people find a very weird disconnect. Yeah, though it’s not really, if you get to know who he is. Yeah, but why that for you? I always knew that after the book came out, that probably nine months or ten months later I was gonna have the children’s book version of it, because so much of this idea is rooted in this, you know, playful style and kids. I want to, I want to try to reinforce that the thing that they’re doing now at a young age, from an adult again, cuz we hold authorial it ever, but I want them to know from an adult’s perspective to know when you become 10 or 11 or 12 or 14, don’t forget about this idea, 15, 16.

2:01:20 And I’m right now for my kids, because inspiration for basically most of the words that are in that book came after my, my little girl Molly was being bullied in kindergarten by two little boys telling her that she wasn’t fast and she could never beat them, and all this, they had an upcoming little competition at school, and she was, and she loves to compete, and she’s a very sweet kid, but she’s a, she’s a fast little runner, and so she was doubting herself and she was, her personality was changing, and we have very specific nighttime routine that we have with our kids, and I caught it fast, it was like the second X, I’m like, what’s changing, or their personality, something’s going on here, typically when that happens it’s a, it’s a social thing. So I said, oh, who said something to you, Molly Inuk?

2:02:06 So I’m talking, I ran, I’m like, who said something to Molly that makes you, is making you feel bad? She’s like, how did you know? I’m like, daddies know, that’s what we know. And so anyways, she, I gave her, she ran her race as Chase from Paw Patrol, I gave her a bandana to put on to activate cherries chase, and she won the race and she was faster than everyone else, and I have this great video of her FaceTiming me afterwards, I recorded it for my iPad, of her just so excited that she won the race and, you know, showed them kind of thing.

2:02:41 And yeah, so the book kind of starts off with, sometimes things are hard, sometimes things are tough, sometimes we try and we try and it’s still not enough, things are hairy, they’re scary, they’re new, they’re old, things are too hot, too loud, too, or things are too soft, too loud, too hot or too cold, sometimes things are, to something to this or to that, I may get quite angry, upset or just sad, but I, but then I remember I’m never alone, I remember a power that’s mighty and strong, and then it goes on from there, kind of thing. Nice. And so Dr. Seuss coming out.

2:03:15 Exactly, so it’s just, there’s a boy’s version, there’s a girl’s version of it, the boy’s version’s modeled after my little boy Charlie, the girl’s version’s taken a little bit longer to illustrate because there’s a battle between Sophie and Molly on how the little girl had to look, curly hair, straight hair, blue eyes or brown eyes, kind of thing. Okay, so there was a negotiation, but yeah, so I’m excited, but I mean that’s where I started, I started in sport with 10 year olds, 11 year olds, 12 year olds, it’s always been in one of my favorite groups to talk to. I want to bring a lot of more of this stuff back into the kind of the children’s space and, you know, for parents to help them with developing, like, really resilient and strong and, you know, playful kids.

2:03:55 So you know, that’s the first step, we’ve got a curriculum that we’re building out to help put into schools to help build little superheroes as well, so, you know, kids really see that this isn’t a, you know, that we do have many identities, we do have many roles and stuff in life. And so there’s that, and so there’s those are kind of two worlds that I’m really, there’s the two worlds that I’m really excited about getting more into and helping, is that children’s world and then also the world of military and police, because if there is a group of people that get trapped by the enclothed cognition side of things, I mean the stuff that they wear, you know, highest divorce rates, so the highest rates of domestic violence amongst any you know, occupation, right?

2:04:40 And that’s, you know, they physically take off the uniform but they haven’t cognitively taken, they’re dealing with highly stressed situations, they’re dealing with PTSD, and, you know, when you’re dealing with, when you know that you’re dealing with someone who’s got PTSD, sometimes they don’t have the amount same emotional bandwidth, they don’t have access to the same emotional skill set and toolset as, you know, someone else, someone else does. So anything that I can go and help, you know, military personnel or police personnel with this so they can start to build a new identity for themselves when they take that off, and, you know, create a new uniform for themselves, right? Mainly at home, or in personal related to help them in the military.

2:05:20 Well, in the military, so there’s a, there’s some, there’s some studies that were looking for final approval, for one is in conjunction with NYU, with the study of children going through chemotherapy and giving them a uniform to wear, this role in a costume set, so that because again the, the data would show right now that it would increase their level of pain threshold and grit and perseverance. So, you know, because again if you go through it just as yourself, you’re going to typically take on the identity of that traumatic experience. And so I just think that there’s some really interesting things I want to be testing out psychologically with people around this, this sort of disassociation that happens and whether it actually does leave the brain a little more healthy with someone.

2:06:10 And so when they’re going through and they’re doing, doing painful stuff, that one woman is actually doing it Superman story, so giving them costumes to wear. Yeah, it’s like a great idea. And then the other side is for military personnel, making sure that when they’re going onto the battlefield, they’re, they’re building super soldier identities for themselves, so that hopefully again for them it doesn’t, it creates a disassociation so that it protects their brain from traumatic experiences more.

2:06:37 And so that I’m excited about, you know, getting even more and more data and science behind the use of the, use of this stuff. That’s super exciting. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, tell me about you, what’s a daily habit that for you is just non-negotiable, besides the masks are there, but like just a daily practice? Yeah, so I, I see a lot of people that this is a pretty popular thing, people post about their, you know, I get up in the morning and I have a clean drink of water and brush my teeth, and then I go and I meditate for 15 or 20 minutes, I’m a, I’ve been teaching meditation since ’97, like, okay, huge practitioner, and like old school, old school.

2:07:17 Well, because job, well, it had me find out about it in ’97, I just was doing research on it and, you know, the, this one piece of research that had come out really early on had talked about how, how much it develops focus and concentration skills, so for me I was getting athletes to do it back in ’97 when yoga wasn’t even cool, and for me it was just, it’s pragmatic, it’s like most people discuss how they lost focus on the, in the game or something, so why not use one of the best tools that you can to develop it, because again it’s a muscle, let’s flex it, meditation helps that, so great, let’s do that. So for me it’s just like, this does this great, people need that, awesome, let’s do that. So meditation is such a powerful practice, I think from a long-term perspective it’s one of the best things that you can ever do.

2:08:05 Okay, so but mine isn’t that, mine is, I want to win the war the moment my eyes wake up and I become conscious, and I have a phrase that I say to myself, it actually was a little video that I talked about on social media that went a little bit viral, or the moment I wake up, the first thought in my head is, come and get me, because fear can’t hit a moving target. And then I get out of bed and it’s me sending that Incredible Hulk ground punch down to the ground, letting everything between my ears know that I own this space. You can come and get me, you can throw everything you want at me, but you ain’t gonna win.

2:08:45 There might be battles that I might lose some days or something like that, but you ain’t gonna win. What does fear can’t meet a moving target mean? Me, fear can’t hit a moving target means that when fear starts to set in, and most people look at the circumstance in situation that they’re in, they’re typically sitting on the couch, passively doing something, wishing about something, and then they’re projecting off with their forethought in the future of how difficult that might be or the challenges that are gonna happen there or whatever, but fear never shows up when you’re moving.

2:09:18 Fear can’t catch you, keep moving, keep moving forward, keep pressing forward, you know, and then when you adopt the second thing which, you know, to add to, you know, what’s the thing that I do every day? I maybe I have to be meeting with at least one person daily, right, because you know some of my work is solo, like, you know, whether it’s doing calls with people or doing some writing, but I’m an extrovert, I feed off of other people, so I need to be around humans, I need to be connecting with people, and this goes beyond, like, my family, this has to be, you know, another, you know, fellow business owner or, you know, sports coach in the pro world or something, like I need to be meeting them, coffee, or my athletes that are coming into town, into New York City, like I can’t be around physical energy.

2:10:07 Okay, right, so this is, this checkbox is off for me today over here in London, but that’s, that’s one thing. But yeah, their whole fear can’t hit a moving target, people love that. In fact, Laila Ali, Muhammad Ali’s daughter, who’s been a great fan and sharer of the book, said, she commented on that, then she reshared it on to her channel, that thing, she’s like, this is exactly the stuff that my dad and I talked about, this is the stuff that super performers are actually doing at the highest level, this is how we think, come and get us, come and get us.

2:10:42 So, um, yeah, she said some really great things around, you know, this is the real deal stuff, guys, not the candy, candy cane stuff that most people trot out, the puppy dogs and unicorns, that’s what I say. Yeah, they come, my students, I said, yeah, so that’s a, I want to own this stuff, because this is the where the battle really actually begins, is come and get me, fear can’t hit a moving target. Like, you just, I’m moving, and if you want to try and catch up, go right ahead.

2:11:05 But yeah, you know, I love it. You’re right, you can’t, if you’re actively going out there and doing things and pushing yourself, yeah, you don’t have time to think about the fear, there’s no fear, plus you’re, you’re doing so much and being so proactive that’s not going to matter, that you’re giving, you, you’re giving the world around you, because the ripple effect happening to then bring stuff back to you, which is only a message back to that little shadow inside that I’m losing the battle and I’m gonna have to take a residence in someone else’s head. Yeah, f*** yeah, yeah, come at me, bro.

2:11:36 Yeah, that’s a yes. Yeah, you can’t, you can’t live rent-free in my head, buddy, you’re gonna have to pay. That’s nice, man, I really like that. Um, if I were to ask five of your best friends, what is, what’s Todd’s superpower, what would they say? You were able to do everything that you’ve done and to continue accomplishing everything you do.

2:11:54 I would say that it would be one of my superpowers is being very thoughtful, really not taking something at face value but looking beyond it. Okay, like, and so that something that goes along with that is huge curiosity, like love trying to figure this something out or figure something out, so then how do I do that, and that’s with the, you know, using a lot of questions, being really good, I think that’s a, that’s a skill that’s lost in many people, you know, find really good questions to ask people. Like that’s such a great skill.

2:12:31 I mean you’ve learned this as a, I mean you must go back and look at the interviews that you do, did seven years ago or four years ago, and you go, wow, like that was a missed opportunity, I could’ve went deeper there. Since if they’ll see them, man, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, because we’re all against this unfolding thing. So thoughtfulness and being curious, just my brother, my brother would flat, I’ll tell you, he did it his, when he was the best man at my wedding, said that if there’s one thing that is about Todd is just you can’t get rid of him, he’s just, you can’t, because we tried, he’s an older brother, we, my friends and I tried to get rid of him, he was just there all the time, we would run away and he would just continue to pursue.

2:13:10 So you know, I’m just persistent that way, I’m not gonna quit. And the other, the other two, relatability, that’s one thing I found, is coming from the farm and ranch and then playing in the worlds of, like, three-piece suits, I, I, I know I’ve got this ability to relate to so many different people, and I, and I think that’s a, a lot of that comes from, then probably one of the other ones, which is more of a new super skill, which is this of being vulnerable, you know, like it’s not popular to say that you battle with depression, because somehow you’re gonna lose all your context, now you’re not tougher than that other guys. Okay, that if that’s the belief that you want to hold, the data somehow makes someone weak, then that’s unfortunate, because we need more strong people to show up and say, you know what, hey, I’ve got this thing called depression, you know, I didn’t go and buy it off of a shelf and, you know, consume it on purpose, it’s just how I’m wired, but, you know, I’m not quitting.

2:14:10 So that vulnerability side, I think, is a new thing which I’m really, I’m happy that I have that now, because it, I never had that before. Mmm. There was always very untrustworthy, took a long time to break through for me, like I like people, that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna be open with you, you know, I would always redirect conversation, and as soon as something got a little more deeper I would redirect the conversation more, and now I’m like, you know, whatever, like peeled the book pack, you know, there’s nothing for me to be ashamed of there, because shame and guilt really ruled a lot of my life, you know, because of that experience and hiding that away into a, you know, closet in my head that wasn’t serving me, and now it’s, you know, I’m fine to get past it.

2:14:53 It’s so important that you are, I mean I just, it just makes you so much more powerful and relatable, and so many people that sat in that chair that perform at the highest levels, you know, yeah, the World’s Strongest Man, Eddie Hall, who deadlifted 500 kilograms, I mean crazy for human strength, suffered from massive depression, yeah, for most of his life, and so many people talk about it and show people that, yeah, that doesn’t define you, you know, you know, obviously no, because they’ve done all these other things. Yeah, the more we talk about that, the better. Frank Bruno, the boxer, the list goes on and on and on, Dorian Yates, six-time Mr. Olympia, goes on and on and on.

2:15:30 Yeah, we need to hear these stories. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, and I’m really excited about is, is that that sort of, you know, cultural narrative, it’s being told more, when something gets told more, it becomes more, it gives people the opportunity to now share, because some people don’t have the same context as Dorian or myself or whatever, and, you know, because they’re not in the public eye, and because they’re not in the public eye you know they can’t go and share that, and it’s like, no, don’t put me up on that pedestal, I’m not better than you, you know, and in inviting people in that you’ve got a lot of trust with to just say, you know, what, I’m struggling. Like if there’s a take away more than you even bought, going and buying the book, is if someone actually went out there to someone that they know, that they trust and that’s gonna support them, and say, can I be honest with you, like, I’m really struggling, I’m really struggling, and you’re not bad that you’re avoiding things because it’s, it’s a chemical issue that’s going on, you don’t lack the skill of performance, you know, you’re just, you’re truly dealing with something that is very hard.

2:16:36 So yeah, yeah, I’m glad you’re talking about it. Yeah, what was the best day of your life? Best day of my life, it would be with all three of my kids and my wife a couple years ago, we spent about three weeks down in Mexico at this one resort, and it was just, you know, teaching my little guy, you know, how to get more comfortable in the water, he was like, you know, just before his first birthday, and swimming around with my kids all day long. I love the pool, of my wife, he was a competitive swimmer and I was a lifeguard, it’s just, we were all in the pool and his awesome setting and it was just that, was the best day for sure, and my parents came over as well, so then it were more family that was there, yeah, that was the best day.

2:17:23 Yeah, second-best day, I would say, was walking into the big Barnes & Noble in LA on my book launch day and seeing something that I’ve been working with for 16 years, as I came to the top of the escalator, there it was, you know, featured prominently at the end of the, this bookshelf with new release, bestseller, or whatever on it, was pretty awesome, and having my wife next to me when that happened. That’s cool. Yeah, that’s very cool. Yeah, what scares you?

2:17:51 What scares me is, what scares me is if somehow the darkness that I had to go through finds my kids, that’s the stuff that would scare me, is passed on or they just have to go through, so if they had to go through something that was the same, that would scare me now. Again, I’m at the point where realizing that, and this is what traumas do, really bad experiences, in those a bad experiences, because you can have dark without light, gave me superpowers. I wish I’d recognized that they did earlier, because, you know, my 20s and 30s were, and my teens were way harder than they should have been without getting the help earlier.

2:18:42 But I think that’s, that would be one of the things that would scare me, is that some sort of harm and hurt coming to them. Yeah, yeah. What would we be surprised to learn about you, some weird thing you do, or I, uh, pleasure, I press, I was the Guinness Book of World Records holder for winning the largest Twister competition ever in 1992 in my home town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where we hosted this huge students’ leadership event for, like, other high schools’ student councils in Canada and the US, underneath the largest teepee in the world, which is in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

2:19:19 And there’s, like, twenty-four hundred participants, and I won the Twister competition, not knowing that it was being judged or anything like that. You personally won it? Yeah, I won, it’s an individual event. So you were the last one standing? I was the last one, me against this teacher guy from Colorado or Utah, he was like a counselor, and you have to, like, bend and twist and touch the things, and at the end he couldn’t do it or he fell over.

2:19:41 So he was like, you know, you’ve got six people on this one Twister mat, and you got hundreds of other twists Matson’s, gradually getting down to the final, so it’s just elimination, elimination, elimination. And yeah, I was, what’s, what’s the key to being good at Twister? Flexibility? Man, mindset. Yeah, and mindset is like nando, not trying to stretch yourself.

2:20:03 If I go back, this is a long time ago because I haven’t played Twister in a long time, but, you know, making sure that you don’t overstretch and put yourself out of position from being able to reach another in color. That would be it, choosing your colors wisely. We got to do it fast, because if someone else takes it, it’s taken. Okay, yeah, yeah, so speed and decisiveness. Yeah.

2:20:26 What keeps you awake at night? It keeps me awake at night would be, what does keep me awake at night, I do have a pretty active brain, so, and again, just with, like, you know, people who deal with stages of or states of depression and, again, not that I’ve always dealt, like, you sometimes you’re not, you’re, and you’re not even in it, but when you’re, it’s just the overactive, just bouncing around with thoughts, and it’s gonna be about business stuff somehow, you know, like questioning whether or not I’m doing enough, how can I do more. I think, I think there’s this duality to ambition, there’s a really healthy side and then there’s also a toxic side to it, and sometimes when you’re not physically or mentally capable of executing the ambition that you have, you need to then realize that you need to take the foot off the pedal, and so that you can be a little bit more kind to yourself mentally and not beat yourself up that you’re not doing enough.

2:21:40 That’s just because, you know, it’s a season, and this season right now, you’ve got a, just back off a little bit. Again, this is coming from someone who works with people at that level, but again this comes out of experience in coaching these Olympians and, you know, other leaders, just like, you know, it’s, back the truck off, because giving yourself that space allows something else to show up then, so there could be some innovative thing that you come up with by just backing away. Yeah, so good advice.

2:22:11 Yeah, are you worried about the world, are we gonna make it? Yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna make it. I think that it’s gonna be this next 25, 30 years, it’s going to be a needing time to be living through as we start to live with and learn to coexist with the, the AI version of ourselves, right? That’s on your radar? Oh, a hundred percent it is.

2:22:38 Okay, you’re already seeing it in some ways. I was just in Mexico at this business event and we were literally having this conversation, and we were sitting on paddle boards out in the water, and sure enough we were, I was, we were talking about the merging of, not that we build a robot, no, no, it’s the merging of technology with the human, that’s how things are gonna adjust. And this guy literally came by and he had, you know, this, this camera on his, on his head, not like, it wasn’t like a, like a hero camera, but, you know, people were the thing, but it was something else, and I was like, that’s the perfect example.

2:23:14 So right now it’s sitting outside, pretty soon it’s gonna come inside, and now reconciling that stuff is gonna be interesting. But no, I mean, you take a look at quality of life globally, it gets going up. I mean the media is going to tell you about that, the fight between the Republicans and Republicans and the Democrats, or, you know, or here in the UK it’s a different fight that’s there, and it divides people, but the world is being elevated, so yeah, I’m very optimistic about.

2:23:45 Okay, good. Yeah, good. Yeah. Todd, I’m gonna ask you questions at the end, I’m gonna ask you, if you could pick up a phone and call up the 20 year old Todd and give that young man some advice, what Audible as well?

2:24:22 Yep. Okay, Jen, read it? I do, and get this, so I’m dyslexic, okay, so I memorized the book and I, I did my Audible from memory. No way. Yeah, that’s real time, that I fastest Audible reads, that’s one of my other Guinness Book thing, which was, isn’t a ghost book, but yeah, I’ve memorized and I got it done in a tower, one eight hours, take a week usually.

2:24:41 Yeah, three to five days, and I did it about. Yeah, you got to get it just for that reason. I love it. Look, we’ve known each other for, like, three or four years maybe, more, yeah, back and forth, but we never met, so look, I really appreciate the way that you can come here and just be so honest about you and your life. Yeah.

2:24:58 And that’s real [expletive] talk you just gave us, and that makes me much more connected to you and just know that you are super authentic in a good way. Yeah. Um, so I really appreciate that stuff. I appreciate that you know that, that’s something you’re dealing with and still dealing with and still doing all these other things. Yeah, that, that just makes it all more powerful to me, so, um, thank you for dropping all that stuff and thanks for doing the, appreciate it, man.

2:25:21 All right, thank you. I, until next time.