Wes Watson - 10 Years In Prison: How Jail Taught Me Appreciation, Gratitude & Discipline

Full transcript: Wes Watson: 10 Years In Prison: How Jail Taught Me Appreciation, Gratitude & Discipline on London Real

0:00 Wes Watson: You’ve got one life. Make this good. This is not a rehearsal.

When I was in prison I called my mom and I said, “Mama, I’m back here. I may get a life sentence from this. The pictures are bad, they’re telling me they’re going to give me another strike. I’m sorry, I love you.” And she says, “You’ve proven you can hurt people. When are you going to prove you can’t?” And I’m still having trouble with that today. I still do.

I sat in there for years writing letters, ripping them up, writing them, ripping them up. Why aren’t you writing me? Crying, crying, years.

I don’t want to tell the stories about the inside, but that’s the only way I can tell you where I came from. Sharing my story is really the introduction to who I am. But forget that, that was just to lead them in. I had a message, and the message is more important to me. People want from me what I truly validate in myself, and with my heart I’m drawing in people who are like-minded. It resonates with my validation of self.

Brian Rose: We mentioned the kids. You post pictures of you as the father.

Wes Watson: It’s my stepson, but he’s my son. His name’s Wolfe, and honestly it’s the best thing in the world. He comes to me and he loves me, and I know he knows my energy. It was something I wanted my whole life. I wanted a family, and I have one. It’s amazing. It’s still a challenge, dude. Most people who come out of prison can’t take care of themselves after two years. I’m at a high level after two years, taking care of my family and running a massive corporation.

The man who can take more pride in the steps that get him the result than in the result itself, that man cannot be stopped.

2:08 [Opening montage] New York City is a great city. Every block, every neighbourhood is different. Such a powerful environment. It’s a town where there’s so much opportunity, there’s also a lot of pressure. It says you either make it or we’re going on to the next person. It has a mystique, and it tends to draw the most talented people in the United States, and indeed the world, to it.

Brian Rose: I am back from New York City. It was crazy, it was noisy and it was full of amazing personalities, and one of those includes Wes Watson. One of his favourite phrases, which really resonates with me, is this: life is one big gratitude test. He also says that life is happening for you, not to you, and that everything that happens in your life is a challenge you can learn and grow from.

Wes spent ten years in the California penal system, in hardcore lockdown, and he’s lived to tell the stories about what that was like. After struggling for many years inside with drugs and with violence, he finally decided to go within and develop his own personal space, his own routine, and build the man he is today. It’s no coincidence that less than two years after getting out of prison, while he’s still on parole, he’s making six figures a month with his business. It all comes down to discipline, mentality and gratitude.

I am a massive fan of Wes Watson. I think he’s going to be one of the great speakers and influencers of this decade, so it was important to me to get him in New York City, sit down with him and share his message. Let me tell you, Wes didn’t disappoint. He brought the noise. He can get real, he can get angry, he can get emotional, and he’s giving it to you straight because he wants you to take your life to the next level. Pay attention to what this man has to say. I’m a massive fan, and I hope you’re going to see him more in the future on London Real. Now sit back and enjoy Wes Watson.

This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Wes Watson, the inspirational speaker, fitness trainer and ex-convict. You grew up in San Diego, California, skating, surfing and snowboarding, but then got involved in dealing marijuana. This began a downward spiral which ultimately led to a ten-year term in the California penitentiary system. After your release you created Watson Fit, designed to free people from their mental prisons and smash their fitness goals. Your YouTube channel, GP Penitentiary Life, inspires hundreds of thousands with your detailed and gruesome stories from inside the penal system. Wes, welcome to London Real in New York City.

Wes Watson: It’s amazing to be here. This is the first time I’ve popped on a plane in 12 years, and there’s no better place. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Rose: It’s great having you, man. Let me just say a few things first. Somebody showed me one of your videos six months ago, and I saw this dude with no shirt on, out in the sun in my town of San Diego, screaming, dropping science, getting angry sometimes, getting calm, and I was like, I don’t know if I can even get on this vibe. But I watched the next one, and the next one, and then I started reading between the lines and listening more, and I became a huge fan of you and everything you talk about. I think there’s a ton of knowledge in there.

I had a thought last night when I was coming home from the premiere. We have a guy who comes on the show, Dandapani, who was a Hindu monk for ten years. Then he quit and came back, and he’s dropped the knowledge he had as a monk. I feel like you’re the equivalent, but from the penal system. You were in a different reality, and now you’re in our reality, showing us things we can’t see that you saw. I’m super excited, I’m so glad you came to New York City and so glad you were at the premiere. For anybody watching right now, Wes has my stamp of approval, so go to his YouTube channel and start watching, because I think you’ve got an amazing energy, and honestly I see massive things for you in the future.

Wes Watson: It’s going down, for sure.

Brian Rose: I see you on stage in front of thousands, and I just want to be a part of it. I remember a guy I met once said, “Some people invest in companies. I invest in people.” Well, I do too, and I’m invested in you right now.

Wes Watson: I love it. Likewise.

6:36 Brian Rose: How was that premiere for you last night?

Wes Watson: It was awesome. You touched all the topics that I touch, because we’re all getting the same message. The guys who look within get the same message. When you’re grateful, when you’re seeking growth, when you want to change, when you want that transformation, you’re getting the message from above. Gratitude is the only emotion that taps into higher intelligence. So the message you guys are getting is the same one I’m getting. There is no Goggins, there is no Robbins, there is no Brian Rose, there is no Wes Watson. There are messages being delivered, and they’re all the same. So I can resonate with anyone who’s tapped in like you, because they’re the same across the board. They have been forever.

Brian Rose: It’s the commonality of the universe, which we can easily tune out in day-to-day life when we’re worrying about a bunch of nonsense. But we celebrate the people who tune in. Like you said, it’s the same message throughout time. They’re all hearing the same message. The people who aren’t just aren’t taking the time to tune in.

Wes Watson: The material world will detach you from the spiritual. I spent a lot of time with no material gain. Zero. There was no way to gain in any material form, so the only thing I could do was seek within and build myself internally to create my worth. My worth came from my conduct, my character, what I fought, how I practised, who I pushed growth upon, who I transformed, and it had to start with myself. Everyone’s trying to push stuff they heard, not what they did. I’m just sharing my life. Someone told me once, “Wes, you’re a good storyteller.” I said, “It’s hard to mess up your own story.”

You were up there last night telling your story for about 20 minutes, flawlessly, about you coming to New York, and I was like, that’s magic, because the universe rewards authenticity. I was sitting there taking it as the full truth because you lived it. People miss that. People are trying to sell you a process, trying to sell you some business, trying to sell you some idea. The reason my word is so powerful is because I’ve lived what I preached for 13 years to a tee, literally. So the word became exponentially more powerful through the duration of the act. I lived this way for so long, and people resonate with it because it’s just true. You’re in your own way.

Adversity is going to reveal a man to himself, and it’s going to teach him everything. Life is happening for you, good or bad. How could I deny that, after what I went through? I went through ten years. It happened for me. I killed it. I shaped myself into the person I am today and the person I aspire to be. One of my favourite books is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and he says, “Straight, not straightened.” In that respect we’re all okay, as long as we know we have to work on straightening ourselves daily through our process, our reflection, our ability to introspect, our ability to point the finger at ourselves. The second we point the finger somewhere else, it causes problems. We should all be pointing it at ourselves.

Brian Rose: I was telling the story last night about coming to New York City to go after my dreams, and eight years later waking up in a hospital room after an overdose, and I talked through the next 20 years of building my life back up and coming back to that same premiere. Like you said, I was just in the moment. There was no written speech. I was trying to communicate for the first time in front of that audience, and I got a standing ovation before they even saw the movie. I didn’t see that coming.

Wes Watson: It was real.

10:17 Brian Rose: It was real, and your stuff is real. Every day or two you’re dropping these ten-minute videos on YouTube, talking about parts of your story. I think a lot of what you talk about from the inside resonates with people on the outside. Is it always weird to you how fascinated people are by the inside? Is it almost like when people tell stories of war, because things are magnified in there?

Wes Watson: It never has an effect on me. I don’t want to tell the stories about the inside, but that’s the only way I can tell you where I came from. Sharing my story is really the introduction to who I am. People who are smart enough can connect the dots. People who are attached enough to themselves internally can get to know someone through, “Hey, I’ve been through a similar situation.” And being removed for so long, you were forced to build yourself or you were going to break. A lot of guys go in there, they get hooked on drugs, they don’t come out like me. A lot never discharge parole. They definitely don’t turn themselves into someone who’s the CEO of their own corporation and living in a certain manner.

And that’s its own challenge, because I did better with nothing. Internally, when I had nothing, I was happier. But are we able to juggle all these variables now: build this business, stay internally strong, build up the people around us, make sure everyone in our family and everyone around us knows how much we love them? This is the new man we’re after, the man who can pull all of this off. It takes a heightened ability to sense and know people. Everyone always tells me, “Wes, you’re speaking to me. Every day, the stuff you say is to me.” I say that’s because I don’t create content. I never create content. I deliver the message for that day. I tap in through my process, then I deliver a message, and I’m a hundred percent sure that message is delivered for the people who are hearing it. Those people needed that message that day. So they say, “You’re talking to me. It’s like you know me.” And I’m like, well, I know me, and we’re all one. We’re all the same.

Nobody doesn’t want love. But here they are, messing with love, running the sanctity of love through the dirt and wondering why they don’t get it on the back end, because they’ve built up so much karmic debt in the love department, and in so many other areas. Karmic debt can even be built up from not following the vision you’re supplied. When you wake up, Brian, you’ve got to shape up a little bit, you’ve got to do this. You’re being told. I call it conscience congruence. You’re being told exactly how you’re supposed to act today, and if you don’t act that way, you’re going to be punished. The point is that karmic debt is going to build up, and you’re not going to be able to walk your path.

Brian Rose: Explain karmic debt for people who don’t know the concept, because it took you maybe five years in prison until it finally clicked and you said, “Oh, that’s karmic debt.”

Wes Watson: Karmic debt is easy. Through our negative and our positive acts, we’re punished with time. People say, “What do you mean, punished with time? There are always 24 hours.” But how productive are your 24 hours when you get into an argument with your spouse, or with someone else? You’ll lose four hours of that day, maybe ten hours, depending on how bad it is. If you’re losing time, you’re clogged up in your head and you can’t detach from that moment where you put negativity on someone, or made them feel bad inside. You’re attached to that for exactly as much as you put on them. So through our positive actions we’re granted time, and through our negative acts it’s taken away, an eye for an eye, depending on how severe the act was. I’ve done a lot of violence and had a lot of problems in my life, so I was punished for years with karmic debt.

You see those people who just can’t seem to get ahead. They’re doing something, and you can find it. Once they erase that karmic debt, they’ll move forward very quickly.

Brian Rose: And that’s happening because of the bad things they’ve done in the past: the negative energy, the violence, the stealing, whatever it is. They’re living that reality and there’s no way around it. But most people wouldn’t even understand that concept. They’d say, “That’s not true.”

Wes Watson: It’s a universal law, but you don’t have to believe in it. What’s the downside if you do? What is the downside if you do believe in it? You’re just a better person. You’re checking yourself from within. The universe is in your heart. That’s where it’s hidden, in your heart. When you can drown out everything and not argue with people and not have issues, you’re able to harness the truth and the real answers. If a man is right, his world will be right.

15:01 My life is wrong in places. Everyone sees me: I’m erratic, I have this behaviour, I cuss a lot. That is my downfall. It’s an alpha trait, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and it won’t be, because I’m morphing into someone who’s not like that. As I grow it’s going to be a calmer demeanour: stern with self, kind to others. But I have to go back to Dan Peña. When Dan says that kindness breeds a lack of accountability, it’s true. Dan Peña, the trillion dollar man. When he says stuff, it resonates with you because it’s true.

Nobody wants to be hurt, but we only grow through pain, so embrace the pain. Adversity will reveal who you are. When you’re deep in your workout or whatever, and you start going off in your head with your self-talk, “I don’t want to do this, this is hard,” you get to know who you are right at that breaking point.

That’s where I used to teach myself, in the SHU, which is the prison inside the prison. You’re cuffed up every time you leave your cell. You have to cuff up to walk to the shower. You have to work out in a dog kennel. You’re in a cell by yourself, if you’re lucky, and you’re in there for 14 months, a year, not leaving.

Brian Rose: You went 14 months straight in the SHU?

Wes Watson: Oh yeah. I did 17 months straight in the SHU. But the lockdowns were worse. In a normal lockdown, after a racially based riot, you won’t even leave the cell. In the SHU you go to a kennel and work out, and you can see other people in their cages. Everyone’s working out in a cell-shaped cage outside, so sure, you get to go outside. But I’ve been on lockdown 12 months, 15 months, not one foot out the door.

Brian Rose: That’s crazy. Most people can’t even conceive of doing that. It would drive them crazy.

Wes Watson: But then I come out here and a lot of stuff out here drives me crazy. Why was I able to do that, when a lot of this stuff is difficult for me? Working with people who are too attached to the material world, because they don’t have that spiritual connection where I can relate with them more deeply. In the SHU it was just me. I could control me. I’m noticing that on this trip to New York. In San Diego I can control me. I’m drinking my stuff at the right time, everything’s perfect. The second I get out of my comfort zone, I’m not getting meals, I’m not drinking water, things are out of my control, and I’m back to being that guy I was screaming at in the mirror in the SHU.

That’s how I grew. I looked in the mirror and said, “You coward. You look tough, you’ve got tattoos, you’re muscular, you look this way, you’ve hurt people.” My mom said something on a phone call once. I’d just got a SHU term for an SBI A1, which is attempted murder, or serious bodily injury with a weapon. I got one of those charges and it got me 14 months in the SHU.

Brian Rose: This is after you took a guy into the cell and ripped his jaw?

Wes Watson: Yes. A hundred stitches. Something happened to where he basically looked like the Joker from the movie. And I called my mom and I said, “Mama, I’m back here. I may get a life sentence from this. The pictures are bad. They’re telling me they’re going to give me another strike. I’m sorry, I love you.” And she says, “Wes, you’ve proven you can hurt people. When are you going to prove you can’t?” And I’m still having trouble with that today. I still do.

I always say purpose over pleasure, purpose over pleasure. But what about at your weakest point, in your weakest moment, when you’re someone who’s combative, argumentative, violent? At your weakest point, are you able to choose purpose over pleasure, or are you just glorifying the times it works for you? I’m glorifying the times it works for me. But in my moment, when I’m argumentative and I don’t want to hear it, I get weak.

Brian Rose: So anger is one of your vices?

Wes Watson: That’s one of my vices.

Brian Rose: I never heard anyone say that until you articulated it. I think a lot of guys would say, “Wow, I never realised it was a vice,” because most people think it’s the drugs or this or that. But for you it’s something that actually makes you feel better.

Wes Watson: Anger does, but it leads to horrible consequences. When someone talks rubbish to you, or someone’s wrong, or someone stands up to you and you shut them down, it’s pleasurable in that second, just like any other vice. You get that momentary pleasure and then you’re left empty, and then the karmic debt ensues. You automatically get dealt exactly what you handed them, if not worse. Vices are simply trading tomorrow’s happiness for today’s. We’re trading the future. We’re living in debt. People don’t understand that with vices. Trading tomorrow’s happiness for today’s, they live a life of debt, and when you live a life based on debt, it creates hopelessness. Then they wonder why they feel this way inside.

I don’t want to say only negative things. I want to tell people how to get out of it. To get out of all this, drop everything you know you shouldn’t be doing. Don’t justify it. You know in your heart. Don’t be the guy who tries to convince his mind of something his heart knows is a lie. That’s the biggest problem all of us humans have. There are so many distractions, so many events taking place, that we try to convince our mind of something our heart knows is a lie, because this event happened. And it’s like, no. Do you love that person or not? Forget that event. Go right into your heart. If they died right now, do you love them?

That’s what hits me so hard, because I’m able to go there. I do get angry, I do lash out, I do argue, and I know it, and this is where my biggest change is going to take place. But I want to tell people to go right into their heart in those situations and say, “What do I want from this?” Go to the end result. Your true answer only lies in your heart. Any time you’re trying to justify with events in your head, that’s not your answer. Go back to your heart, go back to your intuition. Don’t try to say, “I’m doing this because he did that.” That’s when you know you’re not being congruent, and you’re going to pay for it later.

21:17 Brian Rose: You once said that any man who does violence always feels bad afterwards, and that you saw it in prison as well. I’ve never heard anyone actually say that, because very few people get to do the violence, and we always think it’s glorified. It’s glorified in movies: the guy punches the other guy out and he’s the badass. But it doesn’t work that way.

Wes Watson: No. You’re punished by the universe. There are certain things that are wrong, and it’s a simple definition. Good or bad, positive or negative, is simply defined as helping or hurting. Nothing else. Did you help that person, or did you hurt them? And there’s a fine line when you’re talking about being a coach. I know Dan knows it. I saw it in the interview last night, where the lady stood up and I saw him cross the line. He felt it. He got angry with her, and she said, “What about my kids?” He could have coached her with his brilliant way of coaching, right on the line. But that’s the problem with being right on the line, for me and him and other people who speak the way we speak. We’re strong alphas who will push it. Although I don’t like to call myself an alpha, just someone who’s a go-getter.

Brian Rose: Why don’t you like that term?

Wes Watson: I don’t like to elevate myself, and it also glorifies bad masculine behaviour that can get you karmic debt. People wouldn’t think it, but I really don’t like to elevate myself.

When I was in prison, I led by doing more. I wasn’t some dictator telling you what you were going to do and that you were going to listen. I led by doing more. I would ask you to be up at five o’clock; I was up at 2:45. I would ask you to do a certain amount of work; I would do more. That’s how I led, by example. I personified the teaching. I got the results, so they wished to learn. People miss that. People try to teach, and they don’t realise the person they’re trying to teach is thinking, “I don’t want to be like you.” Dan’s a powerful teacher because of his success. People want to be like him.

Brian Rose: I get people all the time saying, “Brian, my kids won’t listen to me, my team won’t listen to me.” What do you tell them?

Wes Watson: I say, why would they? They don’t want to be like you. I literally had someone on my coaching, on my All Access app, where we have a Q and A every weekend and push each other. It’s a collective consciousness, a growth space. Like-minded individuals are there to grow. And a guy said, “I can’t get my 14-year-old nephew to listen to me.” I said, “I wouldn’t listen to you either.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because you’re dropping the ball. You’re not living in a conscious manner. You’re not creating the man you admire, so he doesn’t admire you.” See how we’re all the same?

I tell everyone what I think the purpose of life is: to create the man you admire in every way, so you can give him away. That’s the purpose of life. Forget all the other details. I’m working towards it. I dropped all these crazy vices I had. I quit committing that insane violence. I quit for six years now.

Brian Rose: Quit violence.

Wes Watson: Yes, and that was hard for me. People think that sounds stupid, but from where I was, it’s not stupid. They say, “What do you mean, you quit violence?” But there are people who live that way and people who don’t, and people who have never committed violence find it hard to understand. Then they have a different vice, and I try to tell them, “Look, the way you act when you’re like this, that’s like me. You black out when you’re drunk; I black out when I’m angry. Can’t you understand that?”

So people say, “People aren’t listening to me. My kids aren’t listening, my wife’s not listening.” It’s because you’re not personifying the person they want to be like. Personify the teaching. That’s why my channel is successful. I’m not afraid to say it: I’ve created what I admire. In today’s society a lot of people admire a guy with tattoos and muscles who’s successful financially. But forget that, that was just to lead them in. I had a message, and the message is more important to me. I don’t go to the gym for muscles. I don’t even care about that. I go to the gym to find my answers. My answers are in that pain zone. I have to go and self-inflict that pain to find my answers and reflect. This is our modern way of digging deep within. We don’t have to take ayahuasca or do all this other stuff. That’s one way, that’s other people’s way.

But the way it fails is that you go so internal that it’s just for you. The other guy in the video would have to create his exterior in a way that lets him teach better, because how are you going to get through to the people who are superficial? That’s not their fault; society created them that way. How are you going to get through to them if you don’t look how they look, dress how they dress and like the stuff they like? You don’t have to change who you are within. You focus on the 1%, you put out your message, and ten million people are going to feel you nowadays if you can elaborate your message deeply enough. I’ve got around 30 million views or something on YouTube. I don’t even care about that. The point is how many lives were changed. I get a thousand messages a day. Do I care about that? No. I want them to become who they’re comfortable with. That was the whole goal.

26:34 In prison, the guys around me, my own people who I was in charge of, were liabilities. For me to get out safely, since we were all together, if someone came in and fought with you, I had to deal with that person. There was no choice, and if I didn’t, I’d get hurt. So I had to turn you into such an internally strong person, no longer a drug-addict liability, so that I could get out. Because you’re going to cause us a problem. You’re going to get that heroin fronted to you, the China white. You’re going to sniff a line, or get the black tar and do a “calveto”, where they put it in water and sniff it back up their nose. Then you’re going to build up a debt with the other races, the Southerners, and now we’re going to kill each other, because I have to stand up for you.

So my way of doing it was the coaching I do now. I strengthen you through the process. I wake you up early. I get your wins. I start you off winning. When you wake up, you have a choice to win or lose. You want to get up and be your best, but you choose to lay back down: that’s a loss. When you choose to get up, that’s gratitude, that’s winning. You’re happy, you’re like, “I did that.” No one ever woke up early and did something productive and thought, “That was so stupid, I can’t believe I got up early.” So why do we fail to do it every day, if it feels so good afterwards?

So you get up early, you read something that resonates with you, something that motivates you, something that invokes your soul and brings out your spirit, so you’re like, “Man, this gives me chills, I feel empowered.” Something quick, a quote, a little excerpt from a book you’re reading, something that hits you deep. Then you go right into your workout. That’s how you stack wins. You’ve got crazy wins by noon, and for the rest of the day you’re like, “All right, I’ve got this.” When you do that for ten years, 20 years, you’re a winner in your head. When you’re consistently losing in your head, you can’t expect to suddenly not feel like a loser. You’re choosing to lose in an area where you could win.

While you’re stacking these wins all day, the self-talk is your strength: “I’ve got this. This is nothing to me.” We know belief is the only thing that matters. I could say nothing correct up here but say it with such conviction that people say, “Yeah, I felt that,” because the universal language is energy, frequency, vibration. You know when a person is speaking authentically, when they really feel what they’re about. When someone feels what they’re about, it transfers that energy in a positive way. It also does it in a negative way. But stacking those wins and creating who you are from within is how I turned these prisoners from massive liabilities into assets.

29:21 Brian Rose: Let’s talk about that, because in prison it’s different from out here. Out here you’re trying to get people to step up, but in prison it’s life or death for you unless you get them to step up. I keep seeing this metaphor. Prison taught you all these rules where the consequences were magnified to such an extent that you had to have your routine, you had to invest in other people, or it meant life or death, or a horrible life. Now you’re taking everything you learnt there and putting it into practice in the outside world, which sometimes means frustration, because people aren’t necessarily as in tune with what you’re saying, but you also bring a different kind of knowledge. Talk to me about the way it works in prison, because the guys watching your vlogs understand all this stuff, but a lot of people don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you talking about the whites, what about the blacks? Can you give us a breakdown of the lay of the land when you go into prison, so we understand the stakes?

Wes Watson: When you come into the California prison system, CDC, you’re going to have to operate with your race. If you’re GP, general population, you’re going to join a gang.

Brian Rose: What does GP mean?

Wes Watson: GP means general population. The other option is to be SNY, which is protective custody, PC. You can tell the cops, “I want to be general population,” or “I’m going to be PC.” Back in the day, to be PC you had to say, “I’m scared, I fear for my life,” and then they would put you with other people. What’s happened now is the gangs became general population, and PC became the people who aren’t allowed in general population. The people who aren’t allowed in general population are child molesters, rapists, crimes of those sorts. You’d just get stabbed right away if you went into GP. They would tell you that if your cellie came in and you read his paperwork and it said he’s a child molester, you would have to kill him or you would get killed. That’s how it works. There’s no way around it. That’s an ethical code that keeps these organisations together. That’s just the way they believe.

Brian Rose: And that’s the way it’s been for a long time?

Wes Watson: Yeah, it’s just been like that. And it goes down to fighting too, and drugs. It’s a massive dictatorship. I’ll tell you this: it ain’t a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. What I tell you goes. You’re going to say yes to anything I ask you, or something is happening to you. That’s the rule.

Brian Rose: So I go in, I go to GP or the other one.

Wes Watson: Some guys will opt for the other one because they’re scared of GP, but then they’re with all the child molesters and rapists, and that’s a whole other horrible experience. They have gangs over there now too, but I don’t know anything about that. The whole system is prison. These are violent people. It’s flooded with crime, violence and drugs. These are all vices, and this is what taught me. I saw these guys who are supposedly glorified on TV, in music videos and everything we watched, and they were cowards. They were weak. Why? Because they would consistently have the same problem. They would always be looking for happiness in the same place they lose it. They’d look for happiness in the same place they lose it, come to tears about it, then cover themselves in tattoos and look all tough. And I was like, okay, I see how weak you guys are. I’m going to change all this.

32:41 My last big battle is my reaction, the way I’m reacting lately. Like I said, straight, not straightened. We’re gauging our progress as we get better, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And with the whole prison thing, I wanted to tell people, and one of my last videos is called Fake Hard, that’s what it is. We look at these prisoners with all the tattoos, who’ve been in there 30 years, from some gang somewhere, and you look at those same guys behind closed doors and they’re weak, because they’re going after drugs and then crying about the circumstances. We’re all going to have to learn the lesson until we finally learn it, but Jesus Christ, you’re going to cry about it, Mr Family, after doing that for 30 years?

Massive stabbings, mostly due to drug use, mostly the heroin and the speed use, which just leads to a lifetime in prison, the revolving door. They don’t want to do it. They’ll be working out with me and they’re like, “I feel so good, Wes, I feel great,” and I know they do. And then they have that draw. I go to bed early, I wake up, and I see one of the homeboys, one of my people I work out with, and I can tell he’s on something, and I’m like, “You idiot, what did you do that for?” You can tell he’s just miserable. I would always see that weakness and say, “Dude, you’re being a coward.”

And I did it to myself. I relapsed on meth when I was in prison. I hadn’t done it for four or five years, and I drank some prison wine. I was selling dope in there at the time, selling white and selling black, with everyone pushing it for me, and I did a bump of speed one day and started drinking some wine, some prison pruno. Then I started getting on my cell phone, looking at stuff, acting like I was back at the club. And it wasn’t two weeks later that it got really bad for me. I ended up beating up my bunkie over something small, some words he said, and I did it in the wrong area, next to another race. Then I had to get beaten up by two of my own people, people I’d beaten up individually before. So it came back around really quick, and I had to look at myself and say, “You’re being a coward.”

That’s why I use that word a lot. I tell people to quit being a coward, and the people who win with my type of motivation are my type of people. I can only share what worked for me. The fool shares some process he learnt from someone else. I’m going to tell you what worked for me.

Brian Rose: What qualifies someone to be that, in your eyes?

Wes Watson: Someone who’s putting themselves through a set of circumstances they don’t want and then crying about it, complaining about it. Their actions aren’t congruent with their desires or their mission. Their daily habits are not aligned with the future they desire. Their daily habits are out of whack, and then they wonder why it’s happening to them. They act like it’s happening to them, and it’s like, you’re doing it. It’s your internal choices.

35:44 Brian Rose: All right, give me the breakdown of prison real quick, because you just went through a bunch of stuff that people have to figure out, and it’s taken me 40 videos to get it down. You go in, so you’re choosing GP, unless you want to be with child molesters, and that’s a whole other problem. Say I got thrown in. I’m going to have to go into GP, and I’m going to have to go with the whites. Talk about how the races work and whether it’s racist or not, explain all this to people, and then we’ll get into the cell phones and all that.

Wes Watson: You’re going to come rolling up with your bedroll and all the stuff, your fish kit that they gave you. You come into the building and a white dude comes up and talks to you: “Oh, I’m Brian.” They help you to your cell, your rack, and then they ask you for your paperwork. It’s going to be your 128-G paperwork.

Brian Rose: What’s paperwork?

Wes Watson: Paperwork is your arrest charges, everything you’ve been charged with in the prison system. They want to know who you are and what you’re here for. If you’re here for a crime against kids, you’re dead. If you’re here for a crime that’s acceptable, then we’re going to work with you. You’re going to be part of our people. You have no choice. If you’re white, you’re going to be in this gang, and that’s it.

Brian Rose: Crimes against kids and rape: why is that non-negotiable in there? Maybe that’s a silly question.

Wes Watson: Obviously it’s despicable, but there are a bunch of people missing their family in there. There are guys missing their wives, guys who’ll never see their kids again. And you were touching someone’s kid, and I’ll never see mine again? You’re dead. I’ll kill you. It’s the same with a rape on a woman. “I’ll never see my wife again. I’m going to kill you.” And that’s it.

Brian Rose: So I need to go to the other side if that’s true. But if I try to sneak in, they’re going to find out from my paperwork.

Wes Watson: Even if you try to sneak in, they’re going to use cell phones and find out who you are. They can check you out. Don’t try it.

Brian Rose: What if I just say I’m going to hang out with the black dudes or the Mexicans?

Wes Watson: They won’t let you anywhere near them. It’s all segregated. The blacks are over here, split up into their own cars, Bloods and Crips. The whites, the Paisas and the Southsiders are on one side of the dayroom.

Brian Rose: The prison itself is segregated?

Wes Watson: Yeah, because they know it has to be that way. One side of the dayroom will be tables for white people, tables for Southsiders, tables for Paisas, which are Mexican nationals, people from Mexico.

Brian Rose: And the Southsiders are from where?

Wes Watson: They’re Mexican American gang members, from LA, San Diego, all over California. They’re the Mexican American gang, and the Paisas are the actual Mexican nationals from Mexico. So Paisas, Southsiders and whites are on one side of the dayroom. The other side of the room is the Northerners, which are the northern Mexican American gangs, and then the others, which are the Islanders and Asians, and then the blacks. That’s how the buildings are split up. We will never use the same bars, the same showers, the same sinks. We’ll never use the same stuff, never the same table. We would never drink or eat from each other. It’s full segregation.

Brian Rose: Is it racist?

Wes Watson: I wasn’t racist. I talked to a lot of black guys in there who I still talk to now, who I help with fitness stuff, and we work together. I’m like, “I’ll show you how it’s done.” I want people to do well. I’ve never been racist. Broad generalisations are the epitome of ignorance, because every skinhead in there, every dude with a swastika on him, always said, “Well, that one black guy’s cool, and that one’s cool.” And I’m like, dude, you don’t believe in maths, then. If that one is cool out of 200, then there are a million in the world who are cool to you, so you’re not racist. I guess we just figured out you’re not, so you can take that off and walk away. We just realised that broad generalisations are nonsense.

Brian Rose: No prisoners are all alike, no white guys, no black guys, no bankers, no people from London, no people from San Diego. We’re all kind of the same. So the segregation itself happens for security reasons, and that’s why it’s always going to be like this. It sounds like the South in the 1930s, and it’s weird for people to hear that people aren’t using the same bathrooms, but it’s set up that way because that is what keeps everybody alive.

Wes Watson: It keeps us safe. It’s political. These are the politics. I police my people, you police your people. I don’t like the word police: you control your people, I’ll control my people. That’s the only way it works. A black can’t prey on a white, a white can’t just start a fight with an Asian. They’re all going to jump in. If you start a fight with a white guy, they’re all jumping in, and we have an alliance with the Southsiders in a lot of places. So if a black starts a fight with a white, it’s kicking off with 150 people. You need the alliance because the white population is small in a lot of places. If there’s no alliance, the small guy comes in and gets preyed on. Instead, he’s got his people to back him up. That’s how it breaks down.

40:36 Brian Rose: So when I walk in, someone comes up to me, checks my paperwork, gives me the bunk. What would Wes say to me?

Wes Watson: I wouldn’t say anything to you. I’d send someone to talk to you. I’d be on my bunk reading some super motivational, high-powered stuff, which is what I used to do. I’m reading, I’m writing down quotes by hand, I’m coming up with stuff, I’m introspecting at a high level all day, I’m doing my thing. When someone new came in, the person under me would know to go and grab their paperwork, check it and come and talk to me about it. I might come and talk to the person or not. I’d tell them maybe once or twice: if we ask you anything, the answer is yes, or you know what time it is. And that’s it. Then if people grew, I’d start working out with them. I grew friendships in there, very few, but there were some.

Brian Rose: Would you give me a list of rules, or is that implied? And what are those rules?

Wes Watson: There are a load of rules. You’ve got to work out every day, you’ve got to be up at a certain time, you’ve got to shower, you’ve got to make every unlock. You can’t eat from blacks. You can’t share food with anyone on the other side of the dayroom at all. You can’t sit at certain tables, you can’t walk certain paths, you can’t use certain exercise equipment.

Brian Rose: Why are these rules in place? Why do I have to work out? Why do I have to get up early?

Wes Watson: We’ve got to strengthen you. It’s basically what I’m selling out here. I’m going to strengthen you. I’m going to create self-worth in you. If you’re just sitting there all day in prison, you’re going to be pretty depressed. People are in prison because they just sit there all day. They don’t realise they’re creating their internal feelings about themselves through their conduct and their actions. That’s why I force myself up even if I don’t want to. I know if I get up and go and work out, I’m going to feel great about myself. I’m going to get that win. So we were forcing them to stack wins so that they don’t feel like losers. Also, you’ll be doing burpees in there, because if a riot kicks off, I need you to have the cardio to fight.

Brian Rose: You need the cardio.

Wes Watson: It’s militant. We need the cardio. In the SHU and in most places we count while we’re doing burpees, so it’s not just burpees, it’s burpees with counting, so your wind gets really up and you’re not a liability when that riot happens and we have to pick you up so you don’t die.

Brian Rose: So it’s military.

Wes Watson: Straight militant. You’ve got roll call, you’re doing this, you’re doing that. If you break one of those rules, the discipline is usually a DP, where you get beaten up by two of your own people. If it’s bad enough, you get stabbed.

Brian Rose: When do the real problems happen? When people start getting into drug debts?

Wes Watson: The real problems are the drug debts. People still don’t understand: there are more drugs in there than out here.

Brian Rose: Most people are on drugs in prison?

Wes Watson: Everybody. And that’s because they’re not creating worth within. It’s the same reason someone wants to go and drink. They’re looking for an external solution to an internal issue, and that internal issue is that you don’t have self-worth. You didn’t get up and earn it. No wonder you feel like a loser: you treated yourself like one. You were seeking external solutions to internal issues. You beat that internal issue by strengthening yourself internally. The issue is still going to be there. It’s never going away. The issue you have from when you were a kid is never going away. Strengthen yourself to be able to take it.

You strengthen yourself from within with your conduct, with your character, by solidifying your core beliefs with your self-talk: “No, I’m not a coward. I don’t back down. I see things through.” Fortitude is what I’m about. I’m not about the aesthetics. I’m about the process, I’m about the long view, I’m about pushing when it’s impossible. When I can’t do any more, when I can’t go one more second, the timer turns on. When you’re in the SHU and everyone’s knocking on the door, screaming, banging, saying, “This has gone on too long,” and they’re angry about everything, I’m taking all their frustrations within and letting them empower me. I’m not even going to crack. I’m not even going to bend. You’re going to see me come out stronger. Your self-talk becomes who you are. Your strengths and your weaknesses are created from your thoughts and your actions, so create who you want to be with your thoughts and your actions. The second you have negative self-talk, extinguish it.

44:56 Brian Rose: How long did it take you to figure all this out in there? Was there a defining moment? Was it something you read? When did you get to the point where you had this daily process you could stick to?

Wes Watson: I just knew what made me feel good. I’m consistently shocked by people. In such a negative place, you’re looking for any bit of positivity you can get. So you work out, and you’re like, “I felt great after.” Then you just knew you had to do that. The next level was, it feels great to get people to want to work out with me and listen to the advice I’m giving them. It feels great to pass on knowledge. They say if you teach, you learn twice, so seek to teach if you really want to learn. So I would seek to teach people what I learnt. This is the hero’s path: I would go into a painful spot and bring back the answers, and the answers were always that it’s under your control. You can do it. I see so much in everyone because I was at the bottom.

Brian Rose: But how do you wake up in a place like that? I’ve seen the pictures you post on Instagram. You’re in a bunk, there are bunks everywhere with towels draped over them, and you said, “I was in the worst place on earth and I was still grateful to be alive.”

Wes Watson: Because I was in such a good place in my heart. I knew nothing could stop me at that point. I’d created someone who won’t stop, so anything was possible. The only thing that matters is that you never stop. If you have a ten-year plan and you run it with a massive desire to comprehend, a high level of curiosity, and you really enjoy the process, you’re unstoppable. When you learn to take more pride in the process that acquires the result than in the result itself, who can stop you? I have more pride in my wake-up time, more pride in my ability to stick to what gets me there, than in getting there. I don’t like being there.

I just bought a G-Wagen. I have a Mercedes, I have a load of money. I don’t care about it. It does nothing for me. Nothing. If I broke my process, do you think I’d be happy with that stuff? But if I lost all that stuff, do you think I’d be happy with my process? I know I would be. I wouldn’t be happy with that stuff without this internal work. People want self-love; it’s self-investment. What gives something its worth? Self-investment. If you’re not investing in yourself, there is no worth.

Brian Rose: How did you figure that out?

Wes Watson: Just building it from within, and taking so much pride in it, because there was nothing else. There was nothing to gain externally.

Brian Rose: There were drugs in there.

Wes Watson: Yeah, I had problems. I tried that route and failed, again.

Brian Rose: But a lot of guys kept trying it their whole time.

47:33 Wes Watson: Oh yeah, they’ll keep trying it, but usually they fail so badly at it that they end up getting stabbed and they’re gone, or they fail so badly they catch another million years, and they just dig themselves deeper. The problem is that people think it’s too late sometimes. One time there was a riot, and these dudes were massacring a guy in the dayroom, stabbing him a million times, hitting him on the head with a microwave, cutting at his feet. Then they’re going back into the cell, doing more speed and coming out again, and they know it’s too late. They’ve just got a life sentence. They’re on camera doing this to a man, and they’re already in prison doing ten years. They know they’re done, so they just dig the hole deeper and deeper.

I do that in arguments with people I love. I feel like it’s over, and it sucks, because I want them to just tell me it’s not over, and I’ll be good. When I feel like it’s over, I’m like, forget this, forget you, forget everybody. That’s what they’re doing, in a much worse way.

Brian Rose: What is that? Self-sabotage? “I’m not worth it, so I deserve the worst”?

Wes Watson: We just think it’s over. I don’t know why someone would do that, but I do it, so I understand why they would do it. That’s what growth is: understanding. I don’t know your exact situation, but I know what you’re going through, because I went through something like it. Wisdom is knowing there is one path, but it’s a two-way street. I get where you’re coming from, I get where I’m coming from, but we’re supposed to be going this way. It’s so simple: the Golden Rule, personified. Do we all break it? Yes. Do we feel great when we forgive and send love? Yes. It’s almost greater to forgive and remember than to forgive and forget. Forget forgetting. Let’s work past it. We’ll have that notch under our belt, and it’ll be nothing to us later.

Brian Rose: So you see these guys giving that beatdown, doing that to people. What do you see there?

Wes Watson: I just see a hurt kid. I see a hurt kid with tattoos on his face. I see that little boy who was seeking validation from a group of people who don’t care about him, and who threw his life away to the system. I see the problems of society. I see men looking for that initiation, men looking for that rite of passage as young men, which we’re not giving them, because we’re telling them they have to get a G-Wagen, they have to have a million-dollar house. So what are they going to do? They feel like they have to get it. It’s killing them. They watch the movie, that guy is so happy, “I want to be happy,” so they start selling drugs, because they need to get it quick, because they’re not happy.

Brian Rose: This was you, right?

Wes Watson: We’re selling them down the wrong path and not showing them the initiation. So I’m preaching, and I have youngsters who message me, 13, 14, 15, saying, “Look, Wes, I got rid of my man boobs, I got rid of my gut, I’m not fat any more.” When you get embarrassed, you learn. I’m teaching these kids the right things. It’s about your conduct, your character. You’re going to mess up, but there are plenty of things you can be perfect at. Don’t be the guy who says nobody’s perfect about the things you can be perfect at. That can only be reserved for when you really did fail. That can’t be wake-up times. That can’t be your process. Run your process, and in time your real weaknesses will expose themselves, and that’s where you have to put the most work in. Get your process down so you’re at least winning over here while you’re working over there, so you’re strong enough to work over there from these wins. The process is only the beginning. Men have more work to do.

51:09 Brian Rose: So we get sold the American dream. We see this wealth and we think that’s what’s going to make us happy. That’s our initiation. For a lot of guys, especially you, the way to get there is to bend some rules. You did that, and now you’re in the pen and in a bad situation, and you saw that a lot. And among the guys in there, you also saw guys who you said were fake hard. They look hard, but again, it comes down to drug addictions.

Wes Watson: I was the biggest coward. I was the fakest hard guy, consistently doing stuff that put me in tears. The only thing that’s real is conscious congruence. That’s the only thing that’s real. The only thing that’s real is to say, “I love you, Brian,” because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, and if I did, then I’m fake. We can have arguments, we can have trouble.

Brian Rose: Are you fake if you want something bad to happen to me?

Wes Watson: You don’t want something bad to happen to you, and you don’t want something bad to happen to anybody. Nobody really wants it. It doesn’t do anything for anyone. I’m human. I know you’re lying if you want me to believe you felt joy from someone else’s misery. That’s the epitome of fake. Maybe those people are always drowned in vices and massive distractions, and they’re just saying it. I can feel what they really feel. I’m not stupid.

Brian Rose: And you saw these guys after hours, crying at night, and that’s when you could see that’s not what they wanted. They’re just not being congruent, but they’ve been patterned to deal with life this way. They’re doing these things, but they’re not happy.

Wes Watson: No, not at all.

Brian Rose: And that was a big revelation to you.

Wes Watson: Yeah, and it would be for a lot of us. The only way to unmake everything, the only way to unmake that karmic debt, the only way to get back on a real path, is to just stop. The thing that’s rough is that in there it gives them an excuse. It’s the same with vices out here. People think, “You’ve got to live,” so they keep eating the food that’s killing them. “You’ve got to live,” so they have that drink that leads into a massive binge. No. We need to teach other ways of altering consciousness, and it’s through work. The universe doesn’t give you anything you didn’t work for. If you buy it in a bag, it ends badly.

Goodness is uneventful. It does not flash; it glows. There are no massive peaks and valleys. You’re just cruising up, steady, slowly going forward. There are tiny spikes, but no massive ones. You can’t buy that. These events are fraudulent. They’re linked to so much expectation, even good expectations out here: “Oh, this is going to be so cool.” It still ends badly, because nothing’s ever what we make it up to be in our head. I could live the rest of my days with nothing, just being good, and be happier than I’ve been recently, because I’ve been bad recently. I’ve been giving myself so much slack.

Not bad in terms of anything I used to do. What I consider bad now is treating people with disrespect, and that’s a massive gauge of how far I’ve come. I used to justify things. I used to say I was handing out people’s karma when I would shoot or stab them. “I’m handing out their karma. They did it to me.” Now I feel bad when I even argue with someone, and I gauge how long it takes for that window to close. I’ll just go and apologise. I try to make it good, and sometimes people don’t want it, and that breaks your heart. So you’re consistently saying, “I’m sorry, I messed up,” and when people won’t accept your apology, you can see they’re putting pain on themselves. Resentment is truly drinking poison and wishing the other person would die. Resentment is killing people.

55:01 Brian Rose: So I come in, I get in with the whites, and pretty soon I’m going to be asked to put in some work. There are guys who have asked you, “Wes, I think I should go to prison to get hard,” and you responded in some videos. What do you say when people say that?

Wes Watson: I say you’re stupid, man. You can train yourself to be hard out here. You can really be hard out here. Let’s unmake these definitions. What’s hard for you? That’s what’s hard. If you want to be a hard man, do what’s hard for you. Get up early, eat cleaner, be better, be positive.

Brian Rose: Be positive, for you.

Wes Watson: Unmake those weaknesses. I’m actually really positive, but I do fall into that negativity, and I can only gauge the window. I can only gauge the length of the window. If you have a weakness, a vice or a certain mental flaw that you step into regularly, the only way you can gauge progress is the window, because it’s never going to end. I know the monk gets angry. I know he does. He just shuts the window quickly. So how quickly can you shut that window? My window is about ten minutes lately. It used to eat me up for years: “I’m going to kill that person when I see him. You’re dead.” Now I’m not angry about anything in my past, not the people who snitched on me, none of that. I have no past issues except how I’ve acted. When I break character is my only problem. When a man willingly breaks character is the only moment life can be taken from him, and that’s directly linked to karmic debt.

Brian Rose: That’s a strong statement right there.

All right, so I’m in. And the reason you don’t want to go in is that I could go in on a DUI. You’ve talked about this before. I get drunk, I get behind the wheel, I go in thinking I’m going to do 18 months, and guess what happens? I meet Wes, he says I’ve got to put in some work because one of these guys is doing something stupid. I’ve got no choice. I’m going to have to go and rough him up or stab him, and then I do it and I get a couple more years, and pretty soon five or ten more. Is that what happened to you? Because you didn’t go in for ten.

Wes Watson: I went in for ten. But the case I got in there, they were trying to hit me with a life sentence off it. The DA didn’t pick it up because there was a riot at the time, so it just turned into a 14-month SHU term, and you do 11 months and 8 days on a 14-month SHU term. There are always time frames off it. And then they didn’t pick up the case. So you can get lucky inside too, and they might not pick up the case. I’ve seen people on the street who get charged with murder and they get ten years, 11 years, because that’s just what happened in the system at that time, in that county.

Brian Rose: Every case is different. So I go in, and there’s a very strong possibility I’m staying longer than I thought, and maybe I’m never getting out if something happens or I have to do something. That’s just the reality of prison.

Wes Watson: Yeah.

Brian Rose: Did you ever think you weren’t coming out?

Wes Watson: Oh yeah. Always.

57:59 Brian Rose: So when you were in the stoic mindset, you weren’t necessarily planning what you were going to do when you got out?

Wes Watson: No, there’s no plan. People ask me about my five-year plan. They ask about plans in life. It was only character construction. If you construct solid principles and solid character, then whatever falls in your lap, you’re going to be the best at, because you’re seeking to have impeccable character. You just focus on incremental principle progression: how well you can stick to all this stuff that gets you somewhere, and then how many new variables you can add to it. If I tell you to track your macros and do your training, and you never complete those with flying colours, I can’t add anything else. But that’s what people do. They’re given a task, and they can’t do it because they’re being lazy. They want to do all this other stuff. All the stuff they want to do is in the way of what they need to do, so they can’t move on. So what do they do? “Oh, there must be something wrong with that. I’m going to try the new thing.” Nothing is going to work for you. Your principles are weak, your character is weak. You’re not putting enough pride into your ability to sacrifice. You’re not choosing purpose over pleasure. You’re choosing pleasure.

59:08 Brian Rose: Tell me more about what it’s like in there. Are you talking to people on the outside? Apparently there are cell phones. Do you miss women?

Wes Watson: The woman thing, I really just grew out of that. I always wanted love more than anything. I used to say I wanted love so badly my whole life that I just decided to give it to myself, and it was powerful in there. I didn’t really miss anybody, because I just gave them love. The people I did miss, and did resent for the first few years, I just thought, you know what, end result: I love you. And that cured everything.

I sat in there for years writing letters, ripping them up, writing them, ripping them up. “Why aren’t you writing me?” Crying, crying, writing letters. “Why haven’t you written me? Why don’t I get any money any more? Why don’t you answer my calls?” Years and years. And then I finally was like, forget this, I’m just going to accept them and love them, and it all went away. It is that easy, but it’s so hard. I’m having that problem on the street right now. If I could just jump to love and want nothing in return, I would cure all my problems right now. The problem we have is that we really think that one day we’re not going to have problems. These problems are teachers. Life is happening for you, and my lesson right now is to be more patient, to give more love and to quit saying “I” so much. That’s what I noticed in my letters when no one was writing back: I, I, me, my, me. It was all about me.

Brian Rose: You’re an emotional guy.

Wes Watson: Yeah. People find it hard showing emotion. I don’t care. I know I’m tough, so I don’t care. I’ll cry in front of everyone right now, 50 times. It doesn’t do anything to me.

Brian Rose: It has power.

Wes Watson: Yeah. I’ve never had even a split second of doubt about it. I’ve cried about a lot of different things.

Brian Rose: In prison, did you cry?

Wes Watson: Yeah. I used to tell people I did: “Yeah, dude, I miss my people.” I said a minute ago that I didn’t miss anyone, but I meant I didn’t have a desire for women. I missed my people. I wasn’t desiring women. That’s what I want to clarify.

Brian Rose: And you could cry in prison?

Wes Watson: I wouldn’t just bawl in front of anyone, but yeah. I’d have my headphones on, I’d be writing some passages that were really emotional to me, and I would cry, for sure. One time I had a cellie who’d been down about 13 years, and he had a girl who sent him some pictures. She was quite overweight, and she was really in love with him, and he was using her for money and stuff. I saw the picture and started crying. I said, “What are you doing this to this girl for? You’re a stud, you’re in good shape, she thinks you’re really good-looking. Why are you doing that to her for the money? That’s messed up.” And I got him to stop it.

A lot of people, like I said, with random hook-ups and selling people a story, are treating the sanctity of love like rubbish. That’s a life of debt. That causes most people to drink and all this stuff. They don’t realise why no one can love them, and then they’re seeking all these vices. Really, it’s that they messed up love by being a poor example of it. Karmic debt, and debt in the long run.

Brian Rose: So showing emotion is a sign of power.

Wes Watson: To me. I don’t care. If you cried in front of me, I’d say, “Yeah.” I would never look down on it. That’s why I just don’t care about that.

Brian Rose: I love this whole “end with love” idea. If that’s the end result, just give them love.

Wes Watson: It’s the only thing that’s going to solve it for you, because that’s what you want in return. The Golden Rule. You only want to be loved. You don’t want anyone hating on you. By giving hate, you’re just getting it back. If you were strong enough to give love even in the worst situations, because those are the ones that matter… I like to tell people, I don’t care how positive you are right now, when everything’s perfect. Let’s get Brian locked up. Let’s take away his suit and all his stuff. How positive are you going to be then? I was positive then. I had to earn it. I had to earn it by overcoming. Everything’s earned. If you want to feel good about yourself, stack your wins, and you’ll feel that good. When people come at me with negativity, I think, “You didn’t get any wins today, did you? You didn’t do anything today.” Because if you did, your perspective would be different. You’d see me differently, because you’d be seeing yourself differently.

Brian Rose: That’s some serious wisdom.

Wes Watson: It’s real. I can see it from far away: “My dog, you need to go and do it right now, because you’re coming at me.”

1:03:53 Brian Rose: Talk to me about getting out. Did you know it was coming? Was it weird when you knew it was coming?

Wes Watson: I knew it was coming, but I didn’t really want to get out that badly. I was still being an idiot up until the last day, with the way I am, that combative energy. I was solid with people, giving good wisdom and this and that, but I’d still be stern with them: “I don’t care if I’ve only got a few days, I’ll still deal with you. Leave me alone.” And then I would still supply a good path for them to be on. That’s my whole way of teaching.

Brian Rose: Is that the only way to survive, even those last six months? Otherwise people might mess with you?

Wes Watson: It goes with Dan’s quote: too much kindness breeds a lack of accountability. I think everyone should live like that. It would save a lot of lives. Because what are we asking? We’re asking you to be your best. People think their friends are the people who take them out drinking, and then they end up throwing up on themselves in the gutter and getting arrested, and their friends are like, “That sucks, you got arrested.” No: it sucks that you brought your friend out to that. You didn’t tell your friend to go and do something positive. We need different ways of altering consciousness. It sucks that we push that on people. American society sold us a big fake lie: “Football Sunday, go and drink.”

Brian Rose: They did that to you guys.

Wes Watson: They did that to everyone. Well, they make some money off it. I don’t care to talk about conspiracies or anything like that, but imagine if the big thing was that on Sunday everyone went on a hike and ate a healthy meal. Honestly, this is the type of thing I’m pushing, and that’s why I don’t care about my delivery. I think delivery is insignificant if we mean to help. I’m not telling anybody to hurt themselves. I do say it in a suggestive manner, but that’s what worked for me. I had to call myself a coward, and I have plenty of people who love that. They say, “Dude, I’m being a coward right now.” Yes, I can work with that. That person’s ready. But the person who gets the finger pointed at them and is too defensive isn’t ready. You say, “Dude, you’re being this way,” and they get all angry. I do that in some areas too. If someone points out an area where you get really defensive, we all know what that means. It’s true.

Brian Rose: When you walk around downtown San Diego at night, that must be a trip for you, because you see all these people pursuing all of this. What do they call it, maya? All these fake pleasures, and it’s everywhere, and you’re thinking there’s nothing out there for you.

Wes Watson: And there’s nothing out there for them either. They just don’t know it yet. There’s nothing out there for me. The only arguments I get into with some of my people are when they’re always trying to go and find happiness out there, and then they go and do it, and afterwards they’re like, “Oh no, this is what I really like, right here, us right here.” I don’t go out there. I try to just be here. I actually fight you on going out there, and it causes problems. I’m just trying to keep us here. But like I said, I can understand, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running from it, because there’s growth right there. Life is always happening for you. If people are acting that way and it’s painful to you, then life is happening for you to be more patient, more understanding, more loving, and to understand that you were that way too. You might have been 14 or 18, whatever, but you were that way at one time. So don’t magically think people are going to be at the stage of growth you’re at. It’s not going to happen.

1:07:25 Brian Rose: Before we talk about you getting out, talk to me about being institutionalised. What kind of strange habits? You were talking in one video about you and your cellie cleaning that cell twice a day. What kind of habits got into you from being in that institution, good or bad?

Wes Watson: Mainly the superstructure. I’m institutionalised in a good way, through the structure I have. I would get up at exactly the same time every morning and do exactly the same schedule, to a tee. I’d get up, brush my teeth, use the bathroom, come back, sit on my rack, read some passages, go and stretch. Then count time would come, I’d get back on my rack, they’d count us all, and I’d go and work out.

Brian Rose: With homemade tools?

Wes Watson: Yeah, homemade workout bags, stacks of water, magazines, makeshift dumbbells. I’d get my workout on, and then I’d be ready for breakfast. When I went to breakfast there was a line, and I was like, I have to be the first out of this door. At the last place I was at, I had about two and a half years, but at the one before, I did the same thing for three years. I was the first person to walk out of that door at every chow movement, every time, for three years straight, because I would go there half an hour earlier and just stand there. Sometimes people were annoyed: “I want to go out first today.” It frustrated them, because I wouldn’t back down. I wouldn’t even say it. They’d just think, “He’s not going to let me go in front. He’s been standing here.”

Brian Rose: But that was a win for you. You wanted that win.

Wes Watson: The win was, I can do more than you in the areas where I’m weakest, because I’m not patient. So if I can do more than you in this area, that means a lot to me. Everything’s about what means something to us. If we can do more in the areas where we’re weak, it’s going to mean more to us.

I didn’t speak on camera until the year before last. I made a New Year’s resolution, the kind most people talk rubbish about. I said I was going to start talking on camera every day, and I did, every day. My biggest fear became my greatest asset. That’s how it’s always going to be, because you’re starting at such a deficit with your greatest fear. If you do get good at it, it’s going to mean more to you, and everything is about what it means to us inside.

Brian Rose: Why did being on camera scare you?

Wes Watson: I just didn’t like the way I sounded. I didn’t like the way I looked. Then I finally came to a realisation that can help a lot of people who are iffy about speaking on camera: I was being selfish. I had these messages, and I was refusing to deliver messages that would help and save people’s lives because of how I looked and sounded. I know they worked for me, I know they changed my life, and I believe in maths. I know they can change millions of other people’s lives. So I said, forget that, quit being selfish. That raised my vibration, my frequency, twentyfold, because I came out of my comfort zone selflessly to help someone. Look at all those wins. I selflessly came out of my comfort zone to help people. That’s really what it’s about. It’s so simple.

I don’t even go to the gym to get buff any more. I go to the gym to make sure everyone else sees that I went to the gym, so that they go to the gym. And it starts there: “I feel great, I’m going to do bigger things.” You don’t have to spell out the plan perfectly for people. Just start their day off with a win and see where it goes.

1:10:53 If I started my day off with Dunkin’ sticks, my feet kicked up on the couch, eating doughnuts, not engaged in the process, not believing in or listening to my conscience… I don’t want to look like what those Dunkin’ sticks are going to get me. I don’t want to be lazy, sitting there. I don’t want the outcome this is going to get me, yet I’m shame-glorifying it. Shame glorification is so real. People don’t want that outcome, but they’re like, “I want to go and get this pizza,” some overweight guy. Don’t do that to yourself. You’re glorifying something that’s leading you down a path you don’t want to go down. That’s happening across the board.

Brian Rose: Because the attention makes them feel good for the minute. It’s a bit of a vice in that sense.

Wes Watson: It’s the attention. Negative attention is better than no attention, and a lot of people are getting no attention, so they get it in a negative way, just like a kid: “No one’s paying attention to me, so I’ll act out.” I see that in a lot of adults nowadays, and I can see the little kid in them when they do it. I really get it. You were trying to get your parents’ attention for so long when you were a kid, for them to love you and pay attention to you, and now here you are acting out in a negative way just to get attention: “Watch me drink this whole bottle.” You know where that’s going. “Watch me do this. Forget you, Mom. I don’t care, I’ll kill myself.” You don’t want that. There are so many issues, but they’re so easily solvable.

1:12:32 Brian Rose: You said in one of your videos that if we just focused on our weaknesses, if that’s all we did, that would be enough to get where we want to go in life. If we all just focused on our own weaknesses and let the strengths come out. And that’s what you said you were doing in the pen: “First I’ve got to do this. This is hard for me.”

Wes Watson: I was changing definitions. Hard was defined falsely, so I just redefined hard and said I’m going to do what’s hard for me. It made sense. If I really wanted to be hard, I was going to have to do what’s hard.

Brian Rose: And for me, not having a drink was hard. Most people can have a drink and go home. So for me, if I can master that, my strengths will be shown.

Wes Watson: Dude, once we quit doing what we shouldn’t do. It’s more about what we shouldn’t do, because what we should do is obvious. If we just dropped all the stuff we shouldn’t be doing, our lives would be great. But we just get in the way, and it’s always pleasure-seeking. It starts off as pleasure-seeking, or we think it is, so we’re always looking for happiness in the same place we lose it. And I do it. I have my area. Everyone has their area. But what we do is, we don’t justify it. The second we try to justify our area and don’t point the finger at ourselves, it’s a cop-out, and we’re never going to get there. I really want to get there. I’m having such trouble with my reactions lately that I’m saying it a lot right now, because it’s fresh on my mind. It’s my current battle.

Brian Rose: Is that because you’ve now got the money, the material things, you’re in places like New York City? Is that why it’s more difficult lately, or is it just that the process becomes boring over time?

Wes Watson: It’s difficult because I’m attaching to the material world more and detaching from the spiritual in the process.

Brian Rose: Even though you’re not intending to. It’s the natural result of living in it.

Wes Watson: Yeah, I’m not intending to, but I’m getting success, so it’s working its way into my subconscious, and it’s a massive battle, to where I’m starting to define myself by success. That’s why I’m always telling people: know the principles. It’s the principles that create the man and get the success, so define yourself by those. Whatever you validate yourself with in your heart, Brian, is what people want from you. They’re going to want that from you. Are you willing to give it? I’m willing to give, and it’s clear on my Instagram. If I posted a picture of a car, it would get no likes. But if I post a picture of something that’s deep to me, with my principles attached to it, it gets a lot of likes and a lot of play, because people want from me what I truly validate myself with in my heart. I’m drawing in people who are like-minded. My validation of self resonates with them.

That’s the best thing we can do. The biggest problem is that people validate themselves with success and money, and then when people come to them for the money, they say, “You snake, you just want me for my money.” And I say, you did that. You validated yourself with your money. The biggest problem is not to pass that on to our kids. I know I do it somewhat, because we never unmake any trait; we lessen it to a degree, but it never fully goes. It’s happening to me because of success. I’m attaching more to the material, not the spiritual, so my validation is going more towards the material, which I know is wrong. I’m fighting it, and I know I’ll win the fight.

Brian Rose: Because it’s the new evolution of you, dealing with both.

Wes Watson: Right. And to deal with both in the correct manner is to make sure in your heart that the material means nothing to you. The love for your wife, the love for your kids, the message you push on to your people, the legacy you leave behind is everything. The material isn’t anything. I have so little attachment to it. I’ll never show it off, like, “Oh, look at this thing I got,” because I don’t even want those type of people.

Brian Rose: You don’t want to draw them in.

Wes Watson: Yeah.

1:16:48 Brian Rose: You mentioned kids. You post pictures of you as a father on Instagram. What’s that like?

Wes Watson: It’s my stepson, but he’s my son. His name’s Wolfe, and it’s the best thing in the world. He comes to me and he loves me, and I know he knows my energy. It was something I wanted my whole life. I wanted a family, and now I have one. It’s amazing. It’s still a challenge. Most people who come out of prison can’t take care of themselves after two years. I’m at a high level after two years, taking care of my family and running a massive corporation. We don’t struggle for anything. I’m not bragging about it. I’m saying it’s difficult, but it’s worth it, because we touched all bases. We didn’t just chase money. We provided worth to people.

Plenty of people would say, “He changed my life. I don’t care what he said, I don’t agree with everything, but he changed my life.” That one jewel, that one lightbulb, the glow of that one warm thought in their head, saved them for another day, another time, until we finally got them to a point where they could build themselves, and I showed them how to do it. That means more to me than anything. I always provide worth first. A lot of businesses nowadays are asking for the money before they provide the worth, and they don’t get it. Provide worth, and then the compensation comes. People would just say, “I don’t want to do your programme. This is how much you mean to me. You did this for me, take this money.” And I get it, but that’s not what I’m after, and it doesn’t do anything for me. What I’m after is to create generational wealth for my wife, for my son and for my family.

Brian Rose: Well, you’re adding value, man. My wife keeps coming in and saying, “Are you listening to Wes again?” Your stuff is blasting out of my computer in London. My kids probably know your voice: you and Peña, they keep hearing you from my computer. I think I’ve watched all of your stuff. It’s so powerful, man, and that’s because you went into your fear and decided you were going to start publishing every day. Again, changing lives.

1:19:12 Talk to me about coming out, because I think most guys can’t stay out. They do something to mess it up, or they go back in. I know you posted some pictures and videos of you on a single bed in your parents’ bedroom. People see you now in this big loft downtown, driving whatever cars. I know you’re not trying to show that, but we can see it in the background. That’s not what it was like when you came out. How did it feel coming out, and how did you stay on point?

Wes Watson: It was just a natural progression. It felt so good just to hold the path, because so many failed. I was taking pride in my ability to stay the course. I had more pride in those principles and my ability to stay the course than anything. They wanted the result, but like I said, the man who can take more pride in the steps that get him the result than in the result itself, that man cannot be stopped. Regardless of how life plays out for me, I always resort to personal growth in my times of pain. People resort to vices. That’s where the guys who just got out mess up. In their times of pain and loss, when they feel hopeless, they resort to vices. I used to. In my times of pain, I resort to personal growth. That’s the deciding factor. In your times of pain, when life gets rough, do you run to personal growth or do you run to vices?

Brian Rose: This is what we have to teach people. That’s the one thing. It’s everything, and it’s the hardest thing: just to be there and be with the pain. The vice does a bunch of things. First, it pushes that pain down the road, and the longer you push it down the road, the more it manifests into something bigger. At the same time, you’re getting into karmic debt, and you’re abusing your body, and you’re going to pay for that as well. It’s like a triple sundae of mess. But it’s hard to be there with the pain, breathe it and feel all that, isn’t it? Back when I was doing this in New York City, from my story last night, I didn’t have a mentor. Imagine if I’d had a Wes Watson to play a video from, or a Peña, or even a London Real where I could tap into people. I didn’t have that. So who was my peer group? Everybody else.

Wes Watson: People pushing the bag in front of you.

Brian Rose: Exactly. Everybody else was doing the same vices with me. I was literally stuck in a box, and like you heard in my story last night, luckily I got out of Dodge. But it’s hard sometimes for people to know what to do.

Wes Watson: That’s why we personify the teaching, and that’s why I do show little bits of success, to show them that you can get it all. The right path gets you it all, but it doesn’t matter, and you don’t define yourself by it. When we’re pushing the correct path to people, nothing raises your frequency, your vibration, more than selflessly foregoing your greatest pleasures to put them on their path of purpose. That’s what I do. I don’t want to get up as early as I get up. I got up this morning after that flight and after the premiere. I literally haven’t eaten in about two days because I’ve been so busy getting over here to New York. I’ve had protein shakes here and there and some eggs.

Brian Rose: We were wondering how you were going to get up early after staying up so late.

Wes Watson: I still got up early and went to that gym and did what I could with the dumbbells that were there. I went to the gym to find my answers. Am I someone who can always stay the course? That’s the answer: I can always stay the course. I anticipate the problem. I know this problem is coming, but I’m already committed. I’m already staying the course, because it means so much to me. It’s just fortitude. It’s that relentless person.

1:22:56 Where it becomes a problem out here is when you push really hard for an outcome in people, and they feel like you’re smothering them, pushing them too hard, and you don’t want to pull back, because you know what happens when you pull back: they slip.

Brian Rose: And that slip can be… you’ve seen that slip turn into death.

Wes Watson: I’ve seen it happen. That one slip, they did too much, they’re dead. So they see it as, “Now you’re controlling me, you’re not letting me live my life.” And I say no, later you’ll see. I’m saving you.

Brian Rose: This is you coaching. You get pushback where people say it’s too hard, you’re too much, but you’re trying to save their lives.

Wes Watson: Saving them, yeah. I have clients who are heroin addicts, alcoholics, people killing themselves with food. And it’s okay, because I did all that stuff, and the only way was, in your moment of weakness, to run to personal growth. That’s the only thing that works. If you find yourself running to vices, call yourself out. Tell yourself you’re being stupid. It’s okay, we’ve all been stupid. But it’s not okay to keep doing it after you know the answer, after you’ve seen what works, to go down that path anyway. I’m at a loss for words with this one, because I feel people seriously have to learn a lesson until they learn it, and sometimes life’s got to humble them. They’re going to have to be hit with that humbling life experience, like I was, and I’m trying to save them from something that’s probably already written: that they’re going to have to hit bottom.

Brian Rose: Do they have to? Wes, you had to. You couldn’t have got this lesson from some dude on YouTube.

Wes Watson: No, they don’t have to hit rock bottom. We can learn our lessons from other people. We’re not going to live long enough to make all the mistakes ourselves, so we have to learn from other people. And it doesn’t have to be physical rock bottom. It has to be emotional. They can get so down on themselves emotionally about an act that they hit rock bottom internally, and then they can grow from there. We always think rock bottom has to be going to prison or something like that. No, plenty of people can do it internally, and that’s the desired outcome. But you have to feel the pain. There’s no growth without pain.

Brian Rose: What was the biggest surprise and the hardest thing about being outside? And did you ever want to be back in?

Wes Watson: I never wanted to be back in.

Brian Rose: But a lot of guys do.

Wes Watson: Yeah. They have such low self-worth. They’re not getting their wins. They’re scared of what they’re going to do. They know they’re going to go straight back to their vices, to the stuff that brings them back, so they might as well not even leave. It goes back to that other thing I was talking about: they think it’s over, there’s no getting out of it.

Brian Rose: Was your path bumpy on the way out, or was it what you thought? Did you think you’d be here now?

Wes Watson: I did. Honestly, people say, “I’m so proud of you, you did this,” and I’m like, I knew I would do this. But that’s what it takes. I was creating the belief for 13 years: ten years in, and then the last two years before this started happening. I was creating that belief within. I wouldn’t stop. I already had this inside. People were like, “Oh, you got your big break,” or “This happened.” No. I’ve been speaking this way forever, living this way. It was only a matter of time. And I didn’t need this to define me. I was good either way. I was okay walking down the beach with my shirt off, being as kind as I could to people, not getting in my own way with my vices, just being healthy and happy and living in the moment. I was okay with that. But I’m a different type of person: the structure is needed, or I’ll go off course. So I need massive structure, and I create my happiness through my structure.

1:27:14 Brian Rose: Tell me about how people treat you on the outside. You were on parole until just recently. Is it a weird dichotomy, where in one sense you had to stay within a 25-mile radius, and in the other sense everybody on YouTube is embracing you?

Wes Watson: I don’t really trip on it. Sometimes people come and take pictures with me and say they like my stuff, but it’s more like it’s one big consciousness. I don’t really relate to individual things. I know my purpose and I have to walk it, and whatever pain comes along with it, I’m just going to take it in. I used everyone for accountability. I used the world as accountability. I said, “I’m going to be this way, I’m going to be this way,” so then I had to keep myself that way. It was a good way to do it. Speak up, say who you’re going to be, have some courage in it, and walk your talk.

Brian Rose: What do the guys in prison say about what you’re doing now, the guys you used to know?

Wes Watson: Some of them are like, “Yeah.” A lot of the ones who are out are like, “Forget that life, we don’t want to go back.” And some think it’s not the way to go, because they’re still in that criminal mindset.

Brian Rose: And some are happy for you.

Wes Watson: Yeah. Dude, it’s really my wife, my kid and one or two people I talk to. I’m all about four quarters, man. I don’t need a hundred pennies. I just don’t need that. I feel like if we have that many people in our everyday life, we’re diluted. That’s why the internet is so magical. It’s so powerful. We can give that to everyone in a one-on-one fashion, but without the draining effect of being around them or working with them all the time.

Brian Rose: Are you an introvert by nature?

Wes Watson: No, I’m not.

Brian Rose: But at the same time, your energy gets drained around people.

Wes Watson: Oh yeah, because I put so much into coming across how I want to come across. I want to leave that impression. I want to be a positive influence on them. I want to change them.

Brian Rose: What’s Wes doing two years from now?

Wes Watson: Just working on and conquering my weaknesses. I don’t even care about anything else. I don’t care about the travelling, I don’t care about money, I don’t care about this or that. I really just care about strengthening my marriage, and about getting out of my own way with my reactions. I say stupid things a lot. That’s what happens when you talk a lot, on camera or to people. I’ll converse with so many people a day that eventually I’ll just snap: “Are you really that dumb?” I’ll be rude to them and immediately regret it, and say, “I’m sorry.” Sometimes it’s too late, and they’re like, “Whatever, you’re this way.” I guess I’ve got to deal with that. But in two years I see myself getting rid of this. One of my last battles is the way I react, letting anger rule me.

A lot of people go through that. I’ve never seen a successful man who pulled that off, who had that energy where he never comes out of character like that. I’ve never really seen it in the forties. It usually comes in the fifties, and someone who achieved it in their forties worked really hard to get there. I’ve never seen a guy in his thirties who has impeccable energy and demeanour, who’s successful, carries the weight on his shoulders, does it at all levels, and whose energy is inviting, strong, affirmed, masculine but not combative. I’ve never seen it, but that’s what I aspire to be. What I aspire to is the vision of my demeanour, my character, my energy. That’s the only thing I look forward to being in life: that vision.

Brian Rose: How old are you?

Wes Watson: Thirty-six.

Brian Rose: Okay. Maybe Jesus Christ had that going on at 30. He seems like the guy who might have personified all those things you said, so maybe there’s one in history.

Wes Watson: I’ve seen men in their fifties who were successful, carried a lot of weight, had a family, did everything correctly and still had great energy, and I always want to ask them, “Do you ever lose it? What do you lose it over?” I’m curious about that.

1:31:51 Brian Rose: You got off parole just in time to come here for this, and again, I really appreciate that. But travelling is not something you’re looking to do too much of? You want to stick to the process?

Wes Watson: I want to travel, but I just want to get good at it. I’m not good at it at all. I didn’t come prepared. I just hopped on the plane and got agitated at about 12 million things. You said there’d be Wi-Fi on the plane, and I was annoyed: “My phones aren’t working properly. What is this? It’s 2020. Get yourselves together, Delta.” And when our energy spoils like that, it transfers on to the people around us, and then you’re draining them, and when they get drained they say, “Dude, I’m sick of you,” and you’re like, “How could you be sick of me?” That’s the story of my life. And then I realise, oh, okay, I had a lapse of energy and character. So controlling the energy I put out is the goal. That’s the life goal. And with travelling, I’ve just got to get better at it. The biggest problem is that people think they’re going to be a pro overnight, and I don’t ever think that, so I’m okay being at the very bottom.

Brian Rose: But new environments are tricky. You saw that part in the movie last night where I’m in an environment I don’t want to be in, I can’t get my normal validation from my work, and all of a sudden I’m freaking out, in a situation people would consider paradise. You’re just not used to it. And I never have Wi-Fi on a plane. I’ve had it once. I know it seems crazy, like it should be there, but usually it’s not. What about being on stage? Is that something you want?

Wes Watson: Yeah, I love it. One thing I don’t ever get nervous about any more is speaking on camera. I don’t have any of that, because I live my knowledge. You can’t gain all this from study. It has to be instilled in your soul. You have to learn it through life. This is life experience. You’re living it. All these things I preach are what I am. The things I talk about working on are what I’m not, yet. I am all these things I talk about, and the one I’m working on, I’m going to be, because I’m relentless. I will get it.

Brian Rose: If I asked a bunch of people in your business, and your wife, what’s Wes’s superpower, how are you able to build all this, what would they say?

Wes Watson: The guy doesn’t get tired. He just keeps going. He’s not human. He literally won’t take a day off. He doesn’t need one. He’ll just continually work and pull it all off, and it’s not just busy work. I’m a master planner. I can stack so many things into a day that people say, “How the hell did you do all that?” Well-arranged time is a sign of a well-arranged mind. I have a well-arranged mind, so I’m able to organise my time very efficiently, and that’s mainly through sacrifice. People’s time isn’t organised correctly because they’re seeking pleasure. They’re not honest. They’re wasting time in a lot of places. Sacrificing their pleasures would open up what they think is a lack of time. They say they don’t have any time, but really they’re wasting it on pleasures when they could sacrifice it for purpose.

Brian Rose: And pleasures in fact aren’t that pleasurable. They come with a downside.

Wes Watson: Yeah.

Brian Rose: Do you sleep much?

Wes Watson: Sometimes I go to bed at 7:30 or 8, and sometimes I go to bed at 11:30, but I always get up at 2:45. That’s the time it takes me to get to the gym by four, when it opens. In prison I started that way because it was right after the morning count at four. Morning count was done at about 4:20, and then I’d go to my workout. That’s where it originated. In 13 years I’ve never missed a day of 2:45, every day. That’s why I take so much pride in it. I’m creating someone who cannot be stopped in his pursuits, through dedication to the process. I get it now. We have to move on: quit just magnifying your strengths and laser-focus on those weaknesses. That’s why we keep going back to them, because I have to unmake them quickly. I have to get my outcome quickly.

1:36:03 In two years I did this with my business.

Brian Rose: It’s impressive. You’re doing six figures a month in revenue, and not just low six figures. Strong. And that’s two years out of the pen.

Wes Watson: That’s why, when people say, “Can you do this for me?” or make some excuse, I’m like, dude, I did this in two years. I’m telling them they could be so much more. I see so much in them. Hop on my business coaching and I’ll show you how the systems work. Whatever business you’re in, I’ll show you how to generate the leads and provide the service. Then it’s up to you to provide a service that gives people worth. Coaching, fitness, a lot of things, but even if you have a product or a service, the same tactics that drive my business can be used. You might not be the speaker; you might have to hire someone else to speak. And I always tell people who are trying to start a big business and get big on YouTube: pay to get on a bigger platform, or just ask to get on a bigger platform, like we did. I’ve never paid to be on a platform, but if the time comes and I want to get on something big with Ed Mylett, or 10X with Cardone, and they say 25,000…

Brian Rose: A small budget for him. He probably spends that on an Instagram post.

Wes Watson: I’d say, yeah, let’s do it, because it would be beneficial.

Brian Rose: Right. Make those intelligent moves.

When you see Dan Peña, like you did in the movie last night and in general, that teaching style resonates with you, even though people sometimes don’t like it.

Wes Watson: The delivery is insignificant. He wants to help. He wouldn’t produce the results he does if he wasn’t helping. People will always hate you while they’re going through the process. That’s part of the process. They’re growing. Growth is uncomfortable. “You make me so uncomfortable, you make me feel like this.” And I’m like, you’re growing. I just live in that zone, so I don’t mind it. Yes, it’s painful. Whatever. Done. Next thing. When there’s pain, there’s growth. I’ve just equated pain with growth. Something bad happens, and I think, I’m going to write some good stuff today, I’m going to come up with some good ideas today, I’m going to work out hard today.

And I’ve learnt to link pleasure with regression in my head. So when I see people out having all this fun, seeking these vices and this pleasure, I’m like, man, you’re willingly taking steps back. I’ve linked pleasure with regression. I’ll have a food I like every once in a while, and I know it’s not where I want to go, but that is the height of my regression by choice: some foods. For other people, it’s much more than that.

Brian Rose: And you see that in San Diego. You see it out of your window.

Wes Watson: I live right in the Gaslamp, so I look out of the window and these people are just wigging out.

Brian Rose: Are you going to move, or do you like it down there?

Wes Watson: We’re moving higher up in the building. Literally, I fly back to San Diego, we move on the day I’m flying out to Florida. So I’m in San Diego for about two days, we move our stuff to a higher floor of my building, then I fly to Florida, and then I fly back to LA to speak at a convention. This is the new life, man.

1:39:37 Brian Rose: You have to step up.

Wes Watson: Yeah. And the whole thing is, is it worth it? Are you going to lose your family? Are there going to be casualties if you pursue this route? That’s the touch-and-go of it, because they come first. If there’s something not good with my family or my relationships, that means more to me.

Brian Rose: Well, now it’s on you to figure out a way to do both. It’s a juggle.

Wes Watson: Is it possible? Yes, it is. Plenty do it. It takes two people, though.

Brian Rose: True, it takes two people, but you’re also the leader.

Wes Watson: That’s the thing. The real leader always points the finger at himself. If your people are failing, it’s your fault. I know that. And all too often lately I’ve been pointing the finger too much. I want people to be how I’m being. I’m wrong. I’m being weak. I’m pointing too many fingers.

Brian Rose: You can work with that. It’s hard. Jocko talks about extreme ownership, and I try all the time to do it, but every now and then I catch myself pointing the finger, or thinking about pointing it, and I have to get back to it: no, it’s your fault, take ownership. It’s a constant process.

Wes Watson: I think even thinking about pointing it matters. How we think about people in our subconscious… they may think they’re not putting off some vibe or some energy, but that’s almost worse. If you think negatively about someone in your subconscious, things aren’t going to work.

Brian Rose: Totally. You might as well be saying it straight out loud.

Wes Watson: Might as well just say it. That’s my problem: I’ll just say it, and then it’s like, okay, you just pulled the plaster off, it’s done, we’re done.

Brian Rose: Let me ask you a couple of last questions. What scares you?

Wes Watson: Losing my family. That’s it. That’s the only thing in life that scares me. I wouldn’t care about taking a bullet to the head out front if I knew they’d be happy forever. “Come outside, Wes, I’m going to shoot you right now, and they’ll be happy.” Perfect, let’s go.

Brian Rose: What about losing your process?

Wes Watson: I don’t fear that, because it’s not possible. It’s not even a possibility. I told a guy the other day, I’ll be at the gym at 80 with resistance bands. I’ll be that dude who’s there at four in the morning with rubber bands, working his shoulders.

Brian Rose: What was the best day of your life, and the worst?

Wes Watson: The best day of my life was when I got married to Valerie, my wife. That was recent. It was the best day of my life.

Brian Rose: Congratulations on that, man. I didn’t see that coming.

Wes Watson: We’re just two people who… that’s how we are.

Brian Rose: You’re a unique dude, man. You show your feelings on the same Instagram page where you show all the other stuff, and I find that super powerful. It’s authentic.

Wes Watson: I’m angry sometimes, I cry sometimes, I’ve got a big heart. Why does everyone think you have to be the yogi over here and can’t be anything else? That’s the problem. People think you can’t be diverse with all this stuff. This is me. I get angry, I get agitated, I have a big heart, I do love you, I would do anything, I am loyal. Who are you? Get to know yourself, then dig deep on the things you need to change, talk to your people about them and change them. Transform. It’s 2020. We can be it all. We can be as ripped as a fitness model, we can stack money like a stockbroker on Wall Street right down the street, and we can have the demeanour of a monk. We can do it all. That Sadhguru guy, I love his energy. My wife and I watch him, and we’re like, that guy is the best. He’s got good energy. He can crack jokes, and he can hold you to it. I wonder if he gets angry, though.

Brian Rose: That’s a good question.

Wes Watson: You need to ask people like that. Just throw them the curveball.

Brian Rose: I’ll have to ask him off camera. But he’s also in his 50s now, so maybe he got it when he was younger. His book, Inner Engineering, is really good, and he talks about the real things he used to do.

1:43:46 A couple more things. I already asked you about fears, and you don’t really have them. Worst day of your life?

Wes Watson: The worst day of my life was probably when I caught that assault, the serious bodily injury with a weapon, inside the penitentiary. That A1 write-up, the 115. The day the officer came by and they let the other guy go. The other guy was in the cell next to me. We were in the BMU, which is where you go before the SHU after you do something serious, because there was SHU overflow. The SHU, the security housing unit, the prison within the prison, was full, so we were in the BMU. They let him go, and I’m like, “Wait, why aren’t I going?” And they’re like, “No. He got all those stitches. You’ve got a case. He got a Division D, you got an A1.” And the captain came by and said, “You’re not getting out. You’ve got strikes. This is going to be another strike. You’re getting life now.”

I just broke down, man. I was in the cell for three weeks in the BMU with no cellie. Nobody walked by my door, nothing, and I just had to soak up that I’d just got a life sentence. It was real to me. I saw the pictures. They were horrendous. I know what I did to the guy, and I had previous strikes. It was a wrap, in my eyes. I just wrote letters and letters and sobbed my tears all over them.

Brian Rose: Wow, man. Have you paid off that karmic debt?

Wes Watson: I have. There’s no way all this good stuff could be happening if I hadn’t. Now my karma is instant. It’s for each act. When I’m not committing these small acts I still do, I’m a hundred percent moving forward. Everything’s working, everything works for me. Then the second I do one of these small acts, everything slows down. So I know I’ve paid up the old debt. I’m just incurring little ones that I pay for instantly.

Brian Rose: I know this might sound crazy to people watching, like, “What’s this karma stuff? I don’t know what you guys are talking about.” But I can concur. When I was off doing my finance stuff in London, I was taking and taking and taking, and giving to Brian, giving to Brian, and my life was a mess. Bad energy, no good people in my life, and so on. As soon as I started giving and giving and giving, it took a while, I had to pay off some stuff for a couple of years, but then I started noticing it. Even I could see it, as an idiot. Wow, I’ve never had friends like this, I’ve never had cool things like this, and now it keeps flowing and flowing. So people should know: if good things are constantly flowing to you, you’re probably in that positive karmic situation. It also means you’ve got to be sensitive, because those acts will bring you those negative hiccups right away.

Wes Watson: Right. It just comes down to this: if a man’s right, his world will be right. And don’t dwell on the old stuff that could be giving you karmic debt. People write me messages saying, “Could I still be paying for this?” Don’t even get into that. Just start now. Start now by not incurring any more, and push forward with your life. It’s just the realest thing. We all know it. It’s that simple: go and yell at someone you care about and watch how for two, three, four hours you can’t think of anything else. Anything good could change in your life during that time. You could get the car you want, your job could go through the roof, but you’re still attached to that fight you had, so you can’t even enjoy it, because you’re being punished.

Brian Rose: What keeps you awake at night?

Wes Watson: I’ve never stayed awake at night.

Brian Rose: Right, okay.

Wes Watson: What would keep me awake at night is when my wife’s out and I’m still sleeping. I’m not saying out like that. I mean when she’s driving, because I go to sleep really early, so when she’s still out picking up the kid or something like that, it keeps me up, because I need to know they got home safe.

Brian Rose: Do you worry about this world we’re in, or do you think we’re all going to make it?

Wes Watson: No, I know we’re all going to make it. I see the changes. Isn’t this the realest thing: people’s view of the world is a confession of character. If you see all the problems in the world, all the problems in your relationship, all the problems everywhere, you’re the problem. I only see you making it. I only see the world making it. I only see how we’re gravitating more towards growth and more towards positivity. It’s the new cool. It just is. The other stuff looks so foolish now: angry, smoking a cigarette, drinking that drink, yelling. I’m gone. That’s just what it is.

Brian Rose: That is an improvement. Twenty years ago that other stuff was cool. It was, “Yeah, look at that dude.” Now nobody wants to be around that. So we’re making positive steps.

1:48:44 Last question, which we always ask. If you could make a phone call to 20-year-old Wes and give that young man some advice… that would have been before the pen, right? You would have been living a carefree life. If you could advise that young man, what would you tell him?

[London Real promo removed]

Wes, I really appreciate you. I sent you messages on Instagram months ago. Wes, I really appreciate you, and I mean that in a big way. Thanks so much for coming out to New York City and facing that crazy plane trip. Like I said, I saw you months ago and really started to resonate with everything you say. I think actions mean more than words, and I just wanted to have you on, and you didn’t disappoint.

Wes Watson: It was awesome. Your accountability in your video last night… I cried about 15 times. Your vulnerability, the accountability you had for what you wanted to change, that’s everything. So I appreciate that.

Brian Rose: Thank you, man. I’m so excited about this new future. I was telling you on Instagram as well how great it is when young men or young women can see what you show. You can be the emotional guy. Like you said, let’s stop stereotyping and generalising people. That’s the big mistake. I love how you show all these aspects of yourself, how you show you’re still working on yourself, and how you put yourself out there.

Wes Watson: The universe rewards authenticity. People have trouble being that way because they’re worried about what everyone else is saying or thinking. So you have to attach it to selflessness: I’m going to show everything so that it can help. That’s it, and I know that’s what you’re doing with transformation.

I realised, when I was alone in isolation and in the cell for so long, that I never ruined my day. I never got up and ruined my day. Then when I got back around the guys in general population, and in life, and on phone calls, other people were ruining my day. I’m not going to point the finger at them, because it’s me and how I’m reacting to them. So my goal was to not even have to have that reaction. I was going to strengthen them so they’re like me, so they’re able to stand on their own feet and be so strong that they don’t even do that to me any more, and I don’t have to overcome my reaction to what they’re doing. So I was on this path to create people who were strong enough to stand on their own feet, be their own people, and become assets.

Brian Rose: I love that, man. It’s ownership of everybody else’s future as well. So people should follow you on YouTube at GP Penitentiary Life, and on Instagram at watson_fit, I think it is. How else can they find you? A website?

Wes Watson: WatsonFit.com. But basically Instagram and YouTube. Everyone can get to me through there. There are links to my pages and everything, to get on my coaching. The coaching is killing it. We get so many transformations every week, people hitting their goals. But the bigger part is that we talk about it. We’re not just validating ourselves with “Look at my six-pack now.” We’re always taking it deeper, and that’s what’s needed.

Brian Rose: I love it, man. All right, to be continued.

Wes Watson: I appreciate you, man. I love you, man.

Brian Rose: I love you, bro. Thanks for doing this. Bring it in.