#587: Terry Crews on Masculinity, True Power, Therapy, and Resisting Cynicism

Brought to you by Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, Gravity http://gravityblankets.com/tim weighted blankets, and Allform http://allform.com/tim premium, modular furniture. Terry Crews (@terrycrews https://twitter.com/terrycrews) can do it all: author, action-movie hero, sitcom star, children’s book illustrator, advertising pitchman, playable video game character, talent show host, high-end furniture designer, and human rights activist. The list goes on and on. Terry’s new memoir is Tough: My Journey to True Power https://www.amazon.com/Tough-My-Journey-True-Power/dp/0593329805/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. In it, he chronicles the story of how he went from being a six-year-old boy with a goofy, toothless smile to being utterly selfish and angry to being a man who can finally acknowledge his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities and use his experiences to help motivate those around him. Terry has starred as a series regular in three consecutive TV series that have surpassed the coveted 100-episode mark: Brooklyn Nine-Nine https://www.amazon.com/The-Vulture/dp/B00ESB6CV8/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Are We There Yet? https://www.amazon.com/Rat-House-Episode/dp/B09MXN9YBQ/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 and Everybody Hates Chris https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Hates-Keisha/dp/B077M69SFR/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Terry is set to star in Tales of the Walking Dead https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15669534/ and hosts NBC’s top-rated alternative series America’s Got Talent https://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent and its spin-offs, AGT Champions and AGT Extreme. He recently added yet another title, children’s book illustrator, to his resume for his first-of-its-kind augmented reality book, Come Find Me https://www.amazon.com/Come-Find-Me-Terry-Crews/dp/173269060X/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Terry’s Crew https://www.amazon.com/Terrys-Crew-Terry-Crews/dp/0316499986/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 is Terry’s latest children’s lit entry, a graphic novel set to be released in November 2022. Terry’s Crew provides insight into his childhood in Michigan and what it was like trying to find his place. In 2021, Terry and his wife, Rebecca King Crews, released an exclusive Audible audiobook, Stronger Together https://www.amazon.com/Stronger-Together-Failure-Faith-Transformed/dp/B08YC4TC1Q/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, sharing the staggering ups and downs of their relationship and how they have weathered the myriad crises that have rocked their marriage. Terry, a lifelong artist, released his furniture collection http://bernhardtdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/TerryCrews_Collection.pdf with Bernhardt Designs in 2017, which premiered at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York and was awarded the prestigious “Best of NeoCon 2017.” Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Gravity https://gravityblankets.com/tim weighted blankets! I place sleep at the top of my list for optimizing health, energy, and performance. If good sleep is in place, it helps everything else; if not, it hurts everything else. I've had sleep issues almost my entire life, which is why I’m always experimenting and adding great sleep aids. One of my new favorites is the Gravity Weighted Blanket https://gravityblankets.com/tim. 72% of Gravity users have reported better, more restful sleep, and 76% have reported falling asleep faster and feeling more rested in the morning. Gravity has been named “Best Weighted Blanket” by CNN, Business Insider, Good Housekeeping, and many more. Gravity is offering my listeners a special discount: order a blanket of any size or weight and receive 15% off your order. Just go to GravityBlankets.com/Tim https://gravityblankets.com/tim, and the discount will be automatically applied. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * This episode is also brought to you by Allform http://allform.com/tim! If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep mattresses, which I’ve been using since 2017. They also launched a company called Allform http://allform.com/tim that makes premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door—at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. You can pick your fabric (and they’re all spill, stain, and scratch resistant), the sofa color, the color of the legs, and the sofa size and shape to make sure it’s perfect for you and your home. Allform http://allform.com/tim arrives in just 3–7 days, and you can assemble it yourself in a few minutes—no tools needed. To find your perfect sofa and receive 20% off all orders, check out Allform.com/Tim http://allform.com/TIM. * Hollywood life isn’t all glamorous red carpets and spotlights. What does an average working day look like for Terry, and what supplemental duty has he had to push back against? [07:43] A lot of busy people don’t get around to reading one or two books a week, but for Terry, it makes being busy all the more possible. [13:36] What are some realizations about success that have come to Terry while reading Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker and watching the Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance? [15:04] What’s the biggest mistake a lot of people make — in every walk of life — that causes the most amount of unnecessary suffering? [19:29] How did Terry break himself of the habit of “victimology?” What initiated the event his family now refers to as “the D-Day moment,” and why did he carry a lifelong aversion to therapy that could have possibly helped him sooner? [23:32] What you should be prepared to do without if you’re intent on living life as if you’re in a revenge movie, and what Terry did to regain control of his own actions instead of defaulting to chaos. [33:52] Terry shares real-life examples that demonstrated — to his family as well as himself — that he could break destructive, impulsive patterns of behavior in favor of positive, responsible ones. [42:35] How endurance plays into the way Terry demonstrates strength these days compared to how he expressed it in his earlier, more bombastic iteration. [53:35] Why Terry believes the world determines winners way too early — and what we should be doing instead. [56:35] How can competition be the opposite of creativity if resistance is crucial to growth? Terry explains. [58:58] Terry’s thoughts on protest movements that don’t begin with the aim of reconciliation. [1:02:44] Terry illustrates why he really is a category of one — even when he sometimes lapses in the midst of trying to live his most teachable life. [1:05:04] Genius words from a (Thelonius) Monk, Terry’s war with cynicism, and other parting thoughts. [1:12:43] * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Gravity, makers of the original weighted blanket. Listeners of this podcast know I place sleep at the very top of my list for optimizing health, energy, and performance. I've had onset insomnia and all sorts of sleep issues almost my entire life. It does not come easy for me, which is why I'm always experimenting and adding new sleep aids to my roster of experimentation. This is currently my number one priority because it's the basis, the foundation for everything else. If that's in place, it helps everything else. If it's not in place, it hurts everything else. One of my new favorites is the Gravity weighted blanket. My girlfriend is also a fan. You might recognize Gravity from some of my interviews on this podcast with superhuman athletes.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  A number of them use Gravity weighted blankets and have mentioned them, which is how I picked up the thread and ended up testing them out. Seventy-two percent of Gravity users have reported better, more restful sleep, and seventy-six percent have reported falling asleep faster and feeling more rested in the morning. For me, the falling asleep faster is the key piece. Better, deeper, uninterrupted sleep is key for brain function and cognitive abilities, as well as everything from cardiovascular health to immune function. You know this, and if you do any form of training, it's also the cornerstone of recovery. Gravity is the leader in weighted blanket technology. They have all sorts of other products as well, which you can check out, and they have been named the best weighted blanket by CNN, Business

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  Insider, Good Housekeeping, and many more. And now Gravity is offering you guys, my listeners, a special discount. Order a blanket of any size or weight and receive 15% off of your order. Just go to gravityblankets.com/tim and the discount will be automatically applied. That's 15% off at gravityblankets, gravityblankets.com/tim to get your own original weighted blanket, gravityblankets.com/tim.

• 2:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They've launched a company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now, and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an L-sectional couch, and I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch resistant. The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size,

• 2:44Tim Ferriss?

  the shape to make sure it's perfect for you in your home. Also, Allform arrives in just three to seven days, and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes. No tools needed. I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces. They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional, so there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it. If you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually, in a way, what I did, because I can turn my L-sectional couch into a normal straight couch, and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I use the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color, and I dig it. I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day.

• 3:29Tim Ferriss?

  So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. Allform sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping, and you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months, and if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty. That's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical, and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined, and I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com/tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M.com/tim. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com/tim.

• 4:14Tim Ferriss?

  Make sure to use the code TIM at checkout. That's allform.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Can I answer your personal question?

• 4:29Speaker 03

  No, I would have seen it before big time.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:45Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, of all different stripes, from many different disciplines, to tease out the frameworks, the lessons learned, the habits, routines, etc., that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today is Terry Crews. You can find him on Twitter and social at Terry Crews. Terry can do it all: author, action movie hero, sitcom star, children's book illustrator, advertising pitchman, playable video game character, talent show host, high-end furniture designer, and human rights activist. The list goes on and on. Terry's new memoir

• 5:26Tim Ferriss?

  is Tough, subtitle My Journey to True Power. In it, he chronicles the story of how he went from being a six-year-old boy with a goofy, toothless smile, to being utterly selfish and angry, to a man who can finally acknowledge his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and use his experiences to help motivate those around him. And Terry's story is fascinating, incredible, heartbreaking in some respects, gut-wrenching. It is a story that I've learned a lot from, and I think also a story that you can learn a lot from. But let's finish the bio before we dive into the conversation. Terry has starred as a series regular in three consecutive TV series that have surpassed the coveted 100-episode mark: Brooklyn Nine-Nine,

• 6:11Tim Ferriss?

  Are We There Yet?, and Everybody Hates Chris. Terry has set to star in Tales of the Walking Dead and hosts NBC's top-rated alternative series America's Got Talent, and its spinoffs AGT Champions and AGT Extreme. Cruz recently added yet another title, Children's Book Illustrator, which I mentioned earlier, to his resume for his first of a kind augmented reality book, Come Find Me. Terry's Crew is his latest children's lit entry, a graphic novel set to be released in late 2020. Terry's Crew provides insight into his childhood in Michigan and what it was like trying to find his place. In 2021, Terry and his wife Rebecca King Cruz released an exclusive Audible audiobook, Stronger Together, sharing the staggering ups and downs of their relationship and how they've

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  weathered the myriad crises that have rocked their marriage. Cruz, a lifelong artist, which we dug deeply into in my first conversation with him, released his furniture collection with Bernhardt Designs in 2017, which premiered at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York and was awarded the prestigious Best of NeoCon 2017. Always drawing and sketching alongside his many day jobs, and that is many, many day jobs, Cruz joined the ranks of a number of other design world heavyweights, including Yves Bahar, as a contributor to Bernhardt's portfolio. Again, you can find him on social, on Twitter, at Terry Cruz, Instagram, Terry Cruz, and on Facebook, Real Terry Cruz. And now, without further ado, please enjoy a wide ranging and very deep conversation with Terry Cruz.

• 7:44Tim Ferriss?

  Terry, it is so nice to see you again. Thanks for taking the time.

• 7:48Terry Crews?

  Good to see you too, Tim. I tell you, been a long time.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  It has. And the last time we were in person onstage in Los Angeles, now we are remote, still looking at each other via video. And for those who can't see where I'm sitting, because they're listening to audio, I'm sitting in a studio with a projection of the skyline of Austin behind me because I had two location failures today. This is my third location. And it made me think of something I heard once when I did very little television, which was, or it was more of a joke. And the joke was, why does thunder come after lightning? And then the answer was, because even God waits for sound. And I was, so I was hoping, if you could maybe just give people a little bit

• 8:34Tim Ferriss?

  of connective tissue related to your professional life, because people see the red carpet events, they see the TV shows, and they might assume that it's just like all highlights all day long. And I was just wondering if you could maybe add a little bit of color to what a day in the life.

• 8:54Tim Ferriss?

  Actually looks like because there's so much behind the scenes.

• 8:58Terry Crews?

  It's seasonal for me, you know, one thing I learned, especially now, it's not as entertainment has changed significantly just in the last five years, especially after the pandemic, the last two years and streaming has kind of taken over. I had a much more structured life before, you know, you do a sitcom and you you wake up at four in the morning, get the workout in, go to the set, do your whole thing. I usually, I mean, my workout is two hours, though no matter what my call time is, I'm up at least three hours before my call time so that I can get all my, you know, my workout in, my showering, all that stuff.

• 9:39Terry Crews?

  And then I go right into a usual day, but and that's a 12 hour kind of sitcom day, you know, when I was doing Brooklyn Nine-Nine for eight straight years, that was my go to and that's kind of how the day went. But now with streaming and the way everything is going, people have now started to do limited series and I'm not on Brooklyn anymore, but I am doing, I did a stint on a TV series, B R M C, called Tales of the Walking Dead, which is going to be really cool. It was all in Atlanta and we shot 15 hours and it was like shooting a movie in 10 days. And that's kind of how everything goes.

• 10:24Terry Crews?

  It's always like hurry up, shoot it all, and then now you're down for two weeks, three weeks, finding out what your next thing is. But this is the thing, I never lose my own structure. Wherever I'm at, I have my first place I'll do and first thing I find is where I'm going to work out and then also what I'm going to eat and also my timing of my eating. I still do intermittent fasting. I'm going. I'm in the beginning of 12 years now, straight of intermittent fasting and doing my eight-hour window from two to 10. And then it changes by when I go to whatever time zone I'm in. And now, it's funny, because a lot of times I find I can go one meal a day. I actually

• 11:09Terry Crews?

  enjoy skipping that two o'clock, and then maybe by three or four, having a charcuterie or something like that with some real satiating cheese and some, you know, meat. And that's it. And then I have a dinner, and then I'm done. That's kind of the way I've been doing it lately. But the industry changing so much, and so much is also on social media. Now, every production expects to take all your followers with them. So you're like doing two jobs at the same time. And this is where I had to really, really kind of push back a little bit, because too much phone time is just not good for you. I never bring my

• 11:53Terry Crews?

  phone when I'm working. I leave my phone in the trailer. I find that if I lose my focus, I could lose my career. And the lack of focus that comes from always checking an email, always checking a post, and looking at what people are commenting on, and this kind of stuff, man, it slowly but surely changes you. And I saw it happening in my performances. And I only did it for a small time, because I immediately started to see a decline in my performances. It didn't look like I was there. I didn't feel present. I was somewhere else while I was saying the lines. And I said, man, this is gonna hurt me. So I learned

• 12:36Terry Crews?

  to just kind of leave and create a seasonal kind of thing with my social media, just kind of like. And what was crazy, and what I figured out, I didn't lose any followers. You know, in fact, I would gain some, you know, people are like, where you been? You know, I'm going, oh, my God, because you get this feeling, or you got to feed the beast. You know what I mean? Like, if you don't keep the pipeline running, all of a sudden, you're just gonna run dry. But I found it wasn't true. I found that when I'm doing America's Got Talent, and it's time to promote, and time to get your social media back up and running, it's like people never left. And I was like, man, that was a really good thing to find out.

• 13:17Tim Ferriss?

  Good to test early and learn that you can do it.

• 13:19Terry Crews?

  And again, I try to go to bed as early as I can. If I can get to bed literally at eight thirty, I'm gone. Cause I just enjoy my mornings with my workout. It's my peace, man. I put my headphones on, I'll listen to your podcast. I'll listen to some, I read a lot of good books via audio book. While I'm working out that just give me the insights and the, and the thing that I need. And I, I, I literally, I probably read a book a week at least. And sometimes two, if it gets really rolling, if the book is, the books are short. But I find that the reading just really keeps me level, level headed in a world of quick blurbs

• 14:02Terry Crews?

  and, and people who want to excite everyone else and get everybody riled up. One thing I like to say is the media likes to get everyone angry and keep them there. Because it's very profitable, but reading calms all that down. You know what I'm saying? And it's kind of like a very, it's a very realistic way of looking at life. As opposed to blowing through the day, it's like you're enjoying a sunset when you read a book. That's the analogy that I, I have for that. And it gives me great perspective. Sometimes I read books on people that I wouldn't normally listen to or understand or try to understand. And then you get a deep, you get a new empathy for different people.

• 14:45Terry Crews?

  You may not even agree, but I can definitely empathize with points of view and where people are coming from. And it gives nuance where there is, I mean, the depth of nuance has been kind of what's happening lately. You know, I mean.

• 15:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Sharp contrast. So I have, I've probably 27 footnotes that I've made for follow up questions on what you just said. So let me, let me jump into some of them. We'll start with the end first. Are there any books, audio books, anything that you've kind of consumed long form? That has stuck out to you or that has been memorable in the last, could be six to 12 months, two years. It's been a while since you and I saw each other. It feels recent on one hand, but it's also quite a while ago.

• 15:33Terry Crews?

  There is a book, Walter Isaacson is like my favorite biographer, you know, this man, he gets so in-depth. It's like, you know, you're living a life with these people as you read it, you know what I mean? And I believe, what is the one? It's with Jennifer Doudna and how she Oh, Code Breakers? Yes, Code Breaker. Oh my, yeah. That, let me tell you, man, and I'm a big science guy. Yeah. And for people who don't know, this is CRISPR related. I mean, there's a lot more to it, but very CRISPR related. Well, she, Jennifer was this biologist who basically developed CRISPR. So what happened while I was reading the book, it blew me away because I learned about, and it's the first

• 16:18Terry Crews?

  time I heard it, but it was all about James Watson. Watson and Crick, who, who his teammate, they basically discovered the whole. Yeah, the structure of the double helix. The structure of the double helix and the whole thing. But James Watson went public about how he felt the intelligence of blacks were inferior to everyone else because of their genes. And you gotta understand, as I'm reading this book, my heart just sunk into my stomach. I was like, wow, here, this is the man who is probably going to be, go down in the annals

• 16:56Terry Crews?

  of history as being this innovator, this, this person that really solved so many problems, but here he is creating a new one right at the same time. It hit me really, really hard because this is another thing, you know, there was a level of success you get to that it actually can harm you. One example is even when I watched The Last Dance, you know, the Michael Jordan documentary. And, and Michael Jordan is one of the greatest athletes of all time. But was he happy? When you look at the whole doc, you go, my God, like, here's a man who's like, I don't know if we could really say

• 17:39Terry Crews?

  that he was actually fulfilled in any of this. In fact, a lot of teammates, a lot of people were like, he was one of the people that you really didn't want to be around. You know what I mean? Where it's like, and this is a quandary. This is not a judgment on Michael Jordan, but it's like, myself included. I was the guy who had what everyone would say was everything and was great, but I had all these other things wrong at the same time. And here I was, you know, I was successful. I was popular and everybody liked me and the whole thing. But, you know, my wife was ready to leave. She's like, I can't put up with it anymore. And that reminded me a little bit of James Watson's conundrum.

• 18:24Terry Crews?

  You know what I mean? It was like, here he is, one of the smartest men on earth, and he's got this thing so wrong. See, this is how we think even as men, you know? We think whoever runs the business is the guy with the biggest bench press. And you're like, but that makes no sense. Like, no, but I have the biggest bench press. So I, I get to say what goes on in this business. But that doesn't mean you know anything about inventory or, you know? But it's such a wild take where you're like, you're misrepresenting here. And for me, I look at those things and these things in Hollywood, in science, in politics, in almost every genre

• 19:09Terry Crews?

  of what you would call life. And I say, man, that's the mistake we could always make. And we can never forget that. And we have to humble ourselves. We have to really, really understand that we're all just beginning. Even when you've succeeded, when you've got this thing, you're still starting at day one, every day.

• 19:30Tim Ferriss?

  And is the mistake, think just assuming that you know more than you know or that you are, you have more certainty in more places than you actually do? Is that the crux of the issue? Or is there, would you describe it a different way?

• 19:44Terry Crews?

  You know what I would describe the mistake is? The mistake to me is self-righteousness.

• 19:50Terry Crews?

  That's the mistake. The mistake is you have deemed yourself self righteous. And when you are self righteous, you can now do the most heinous inhuman things to other people because you feel right, because you you know in your heart you're right. But for thousands of years, and this is the thing where it's so crazy because now we can mix everything up. I think there's a lot of conflating going on even with racism. People say, well, that's racist. Well, actually, a lot of it is self righteous. And if you define the problem correctly, you can actually deal with the problem correctly. And this is the thing about self righteousness is that you can be black and self righteous.

• 20:35Terry Crews?

  You can be gay and self righteous. You can be, you know, white, self righteous. You could be a policeman and self righteous. You could be all kinds of things. It doesn't matter. You can be poor and self righteous. But we have these things, especially in Hollywood, where it's like you're poor, you know, now you got the up hand. You know more and you're the downtrodden and you're this and that. It's kind of like what I call victimology, where it's like you've created a hero out of anyone who's been abused or or hurt. But the issue is, is also there's two ways to be self righteous. You can be, you know, you can have like the divine right of kings. You can be like, I was born this way.

• 21:17Terry Crews?

  Or you can say, I've suffered more than anybody else. So now I get to say how everything goes. You see what I mean? I do. A lot of people have never looked at the other side. It's just like someone who suffered a lot is immediately given all this this play. But my thing is, is that But you still have to respect other people. You still have to understand that you are no better than the others. It's the phrase I've used before and will continue to use is that it's really, how can you compare your suffering to another person? It's not the oppression Olympics.

• 21:59Terry Crews?

  It's just not, you know, you can't, we get to be right because we've suffered the most. And I always look at that and have to examine it, even in the light of my own suffering and my own thing. And let me tell you, no one has basically been a victim more than Terry Crews. I had victimology down. I was like, okay, my, my father was abusive. I'm black. I grew up poor. I grew up in the hood. I grew, I had every excuse in the book and I felt justified in my self righteousness. And I used that against my family. I used that to manipulate people. I

• 22:42Terry Crews?

  used that in order to, to gain things that I never earned. Cause I knew people would give me the benefit of the doubt because of my background. I knew I could use that. But in the end, when all is said and done, it did not leave me fulfilled because I knew these things didn't play. Like the problem with, with victimology is all those excuses, they work for a minute, but they expire very quickly. I like to call it an expired credit card. Your excuses, they have a valid date, but it expires like really fast. And then you try to use it

• 23:22Terry Crews?

  the next day and you get declined. And it's kind of like every excuse you ever wanted to use, there's a time when it doesn't work anymore.

• 23:33Tim Ferriss?

  I would love to hear more about your, your personal experience. So you had, as you mentioned, victimology down. And then at some point, you reflected back on that with self awareness and then changed behavior or your perspectives, how you approached things. Were there any particular triggers? Was there a particular day? Could you sort of tell a story? Or give us an example of something that? catalyze that change because for a lot of people, if they have any perspective, they may not change that. They may not actually have a trigger to turn it inward and take a look at that. So could you describe what happened?

• 24:13Terry Crews?

  Well, you know, in our house, we call it D-Day. It was the day everything changed. And I've gone public a lot about my pornography addiction. Then there's a lot of people who say you could never really be addicted to pornography or whatever. And it's always been said that, but all I knew was I couldn't stop. That's all I knew. For me, it was a numbing device. It was something that I went to when I was sad, when I was happy, and I always went back to it and it left me unfulfilled and I had to get more to get a feeling of fulfillment, but then I would be left empty again. So it was a cycle. I couldn't stop.

• 24:55Terry Crews?

  But it was also a secret that I held from my family, my wife and the whole thing. And my wife finally confronted me on it. And let me tell you what was so wild and really, really strange. The question I was asking was, why doesn't she believe me?

• 25:15Terry Crews?

  But the question I should have been asking was, why did I lie?

• 25:21Terry Crews?

  You know what I mean? Like, think about that. It's all in the context is the same. And I'm sitting here lying and wondering why she won't believe me. It's all out focused. It was all her. It was the responsibility was on her in order to make me right. Like, you should believe me because I'm telling you this, but I was lying. I was lying. I don't do this. No, I got no problem. I don't do any of this. And then, and why doesn't she believe me? But once it switched into, why am I lying?

• 25:55Terry Crews?

  All of a sudden, it went inward. All of a sudden, I had to ask myself the questions I had been avoiding for years and years and years. And it was like, hey, man, you have an issue. Why aren't you doing something about it? And like I said, and I would pull out that card of excuses and this, and I would say, well, you know, I'm a man and, you know, men, we need to, we have a high sex drive and this kind of stuff. And I'll pull out that card and then my wife declined it.

• 26:29Terry Crews?

  That credit card was done. It was expired and she was out. And you know what, Tim? What's so crazy is that I was like, fine, bye, leave. I'm Terry Crews. I can get any woman I want. In fact, I will. And you know what? You know, this is a normal thing in Hollywood, you know? Divorce is, is pretty normal and it's not a big deal. In fact, my career won't suffer. Nobody cares if I lose my family. Hollywood certainly doesn't. And then I listened to myself talking like that. And I went, who are you? I didn't like that guy.

• 27:12Terry Crews?

  And I started to have internal conversations with myself. And I was like, man, this is not who you say you are. And I realized I was two different people. You know, when you have a double life, and when I say a double life, what I mean is I was more concerned with the image. I was more concerned with the image of Terry Crews rather than who Terry Crews really was. And it was two different people. And once I started to try to put them together, my world crumbled. Everything that I knew, everything that I was around, everything that I thought I stood for.

• 27:57Terry Crews?

  I thought I was like, yeah, you know, women are equal and the whole thing, but nothing in my behavior would do that or even said that. And in fact, I thought I was more valuable than all the women in my life, simply because I was a man. Simply because of the culture. I was in, I grew up in black culture and hip hop culture and sports culture. And there was a lot of misogyny. It was a lot of, you're the man, dawg. Hey, man, you better get your girl in line. These kind of words. It was looked at as like, yo, man, you know, you control your wife. Or your girl. You actually owned her. I remember in the NFL, going to the strip club and

• 28:40Terry Crews?

  we'd be in the club and with all the guys and the whole thing and the girls be up on stage and one of them would come down and actually want to talk to the players. And I would look at her like, okay, you know, she start talking, you know, I gotta, I gotta do this for my kids and then and you're like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You're ruining the experience. Because you're becoming a human being right before my eyes. I like you to be a picture. I want you to be a doll, a, a mannequin. Tim, but once you open that can of worms, it's literally like a domino effect. Like

• 29:23Terry Crews?

  everything started to fall on itself. I went through a huge, huge, just, and then, and now I gotta say this, because in my culture, where I grew up, therapy was looked at as ridiculous. And where I grew up, it was like, you know, you can't cure crazy. That was the term. It was like, if you're crazy, you can't cure it. My father being alcoholic, I remember him going to, he went to a psychologist one time. And I remember, I was probably around 12, 13 years old. And I'm like, wow, I think, you know, my dad's finally gonna get some help and the whole thing. And dude, it was crazy because like a week later, the

• 30:06Terry Crews?

  psychologist killed himself. It was on the front page of the newspaper. Oh, my God. And I went, that don't work. You know, my whole mindset was like, huh? Did my father kill him? Like, you know, did he, did he say something that made this guy jump off a bridge? And the guy literally jumped off a bridge. And I was like, what? That doesn't work. And so I had in my mind that all this therapy stuff is mumbo jumbo. And so there was a block, there was a resistance to that. And I finally saw a counselor who said, you need to go to this place and get some therapy. And I was like, oh no, you know? And I remember and my wife said, look, you know what?

• 30:48Terry Crews?

  If you don't do this, you know, there's no hope of us ever coming back together because we had split up at that time. And so I went and I said, all right, I'll give it a shot. And I'm sitting in this room with these people and

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  Terry, may I interject for one second?

• 31:04Terry Crews?

  Oh, yeah, go ahead.

• 31:05Tim Ferriss?

  You just, one question. So did, did you guys sort of split at that point or things on ice because of how you handled the situation? D day in that conversation or was it the subject matter? Like the addiction itself and other things? I guess I'm asking, was it what you did or was it how you handled what you did or something else?

• 31:29Terry Crews?

  It was what I did because what happened was I confessed to a infidelity that happened 10 years earlier. As a result of this addiction, because you know, I, I went to a massage parlor and got a handjob. And I vowed I would never, ever tell anybody, you know? It was one of them things, but I was, it was at the beginning of my career. I was, I was in Vancouver, I was by myself. I thought I would never be there. I thought I'd never do something like that, but you know, it was wild because I found myself in those circumstances and I did it. But I vowed I would never tell. I was like, I'm taking this secret to the grave, man. This is never, ever coming out. But my wife constantly, she was like, no, you did something.

• 32:13Terry Crews?

  She said, there's something you're not telling me. And again, I was lying the whole time. And she could feel that, you know? I mean, you could feel when your significant other is not telling you the truth. And it was just, there was something she didn't know. And when I told her, I remember just, it came out and I remember she's going, that's it. Like. Wow, you know, who am I living with? Like she had no idea. And that was the thing because I was, I had put an image in front of her and what was so crazy is that she was married to this image.

• 32:51Terry Crews?

  It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to her. It wasn't, it wasn't, there's no honesty in a relationship because you have to cover a lie with another lie. And then it just keeps continuing to grow. I mean, we were getting farther and farther apart. Is what was happening and she was, she knew it. She felt it. And that was the D day moment and she said, I'm out. She's like, that's it. You can't come home. You have to show me that you want this, that you want, actually want to do something. And like I said in the beginning, I was like, I'm fine. And then I realized, I was like, you know what? Cause the whole thing was, it was about her. And it's little bitty questions. It was just like, man, you know, maybe it's me.

• 33:38Terry Crews?

  A realization that hit me that it was me, that it was. And I have to say this, going into therapy, you know, all the, the great thing about therapy, and especially with addiction therapy was just the 12 steps. You know, the 12 steps, they work for every sort of addiction, be it drugs, alcohol, sex, all these things. And it starts with like, you know, the serenity prayer, which is, you know, help me to accept the things that I can't change and the courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. Okay. But you have to understand men, especially in my world, you live life as if you're in a revenge movie. Everything.

• 34:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm, I'm laughing because I, I, I, I'm a lot smaller than you are, but I understand.

• 34:29Terry Crews?

  You know what I mean?

• 34:30Tim Ferriss?

  I, I get it. I get it.

• 34:32Terry Crews?

  Hey, movies like that, man, like Payback and Death Wish and

• 34:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Wrath of Man. I mean, there's a long list.

• 34:40Terry Crews?

  Right. Oh, Wrath of Man, Taken. This thing where you get on the phone and you tell the guy, I'm going to hunt you down. I'm going to take you and your crew out one by one and you're going to die slow, you know, it's, it's like

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  Man on Fire, also a good one.

• 34:56Terry Crews?

  Oh my God. And you make them pay for everything. You make them pay for everything they ever did to you.

• 35:05Terry Crews?

  That's the male fantasy. It's better than sex.

• 35:10Terry Crews?

  You know what I mean? Like, Tim, it's like, oh my God, you can, you can literally sit in the theater like, man, oh, that feels good.

• 35:20Terry Crews?

  But this is the problem, Tim. This is the problem, man. I found out, and this is so crazy. You can either have success or revenge, but you can't have both. It blew my mind. And when you're talking about getting revenge, this is why I even alluded to the 12 steps, was because revenge is trying to control things you can't control. It's literally like you've lost it and now you've just got to even the score, you know? Most of us are all about settling scores, but the thing is, the score is never really settled. It's kind of like, things just get worse. Things tend to fall apart.

• 36:09Tim Ferriss?

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• 36:53Tim Ferriss?

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• 37:30Terry Crews?

  I was the kind of guy, I even start my book out where I talk about how I beat this man up on the street, man, for disrespecting my wife. And this was in Pasadena, this was around, oh, I would say 2008, 2009. And this guy, he basically talked disrespectfully to my wife. And she was just like, whatever. But I put this dude out. I mean, literally put his head on the concrete. And the police came and it was a big hullabaloo, man. And I, the only way I got out of it was because there was a guy in the crowd who was like, no, no, no, you know, I saw the whole thing, officer, you know, this guy came up there and they were bothering them too and the whole thing.

• 38:14Terry Crews?

  So I got away with it. It was way too big a reaction for what was done. But that was me, settling my scores. Here's the revenge movie. And my wife pulled me to the side and we went home and she said, Terry, she said, you have to promise me, promise me that you will never, ever do anything like that again. And I was like, what? I mean, you need to be protected. And she said, wait a minute. She said, I got this, but you are going to lose everything you have. You said, you're gonna get sued, you're gonna get shot and injured, or you may be killed by someone who you go up against on the wrong day or a police officer.

• 38:57Terry Crews?

  You can't go around and putting people on their head like this. I was like, no, I don't, I said, I got to, this is, this is my thing. This is me being a man. This is what this is about. This is me being tough. And she said, no, Terry. She said, you gotta promise me, promise me. And I said, okay, all right, I promise, I promise. I don't even think I meant it, you know, at the time, but I made a promise to her that I was gonna take the righteous path and be less violent, you know, and not, or nonviolent and try to handle things in a nonviolent way.

• 39:37Terry Crews?

  And little did I know, in the future, it would actually save my life in so many ways, so many ways. And, and what I mean is, is by not choosing revenge, because that's what that is. The whole thing is a little bit like you're playing chess and you don't know the right move, so you turn over the board.

• 39:59Terry Crews?

  That was my answer for everything. I'm stuck on a move. Instead of thinking my way out of it, my answer was just turn everything over. And that was my answer for everything. And it led me to a very, very hollow existence. So there I was in therapy, trying to figure my life out and trying to control the things that I couldn't control. Cause you can't control people. You can't control what people say to you. And a lot has been said about even my friend, Chris Rock and my friend, Will Smith and what just happened at the Academy Awards. And I, there was a time when I was Will Smith.

• 40:41Terry Crews?

  But what saved me was when I was the time I was Chris Rock. And it didn't descend into chaos. I decided to, what you would call take an L for one day, but actually win the whole war. And the other thing was in therapy, I discovered is when you can have the courage to change the things you can. And let me tell you this, because of victimology, I had given up control on probably every aspect of my life. It was always up to somebody else. Even where I worked, what I did, it was always someone else's decision. And then I found out I had a lot more power than I realized.

• 41:26Terry Crews?

  I was like, if I just work on me, if I stop pointing at everyone else and I just put a hundred percent into improving myself, all of a sudden, things started to change. Tim, I have to tell you, man, that first year was really, really hard coming out of therapy. And I mean, I was there for in and out for a while. We would do it by phone, we would go back in. It was a place called Psychological Counseling Services in Phoenix. And they had dealt with a lot of people who had really lost everything because of these kinds of addictions. And

• 42:06Terry Crews?

  It was wild because I thought, can I change? I was getting triggered every five minutes. It's like, I don't know. But what was happening is as I continued to work on myself, I changed. I slowly but surely started to see things the way I needed to see them. You know, and what's so crazy about belief is when you believe you're different, you slowly start to become different. You have to believe it first. You know what I mean? It's kind of like.

• 42:35Tim Ferriss?

  Terry, would you mind giving an example? It would be very helpful because I think from the outside looking in, people see this incredible physical specimen. Certainly in all my interactions with you and your descriptions and stories and tribal mentors, you've done a lot of self-development and you've worked on yourself a lot. Could you give an example from that chapter during or after therapy of something that you worked on or a belief that you gave attention to?

• 43:04Terry Crews?

  I could tell you a distinct example that let me know I was different. And it's so innocuous and small and tiny, but it was so powerful. We were on vacation and my son, who's 16 now, but he was probably four years old. And I have five total kids, you know, four daughters and my son. And we were out to dinner and he spilled his water all over the table. And, you know, it was all over me. It was all over everybody. And I just said, hey, man, I said, that's okay. We'll get a towel. And I said, hey, man, when people make mistakes, it's okay. And I started dabbing up the water and the whole thing.

• 43:48Terry Crews?

  Now, that sounds like nothing. The whole table was looking at me like this. I mean, they just were froze, like eyes bugged out, like, what is this? You have to understand, Tim, the way I was was like, what is wrong with you? What, I mean, you, didn't you see the water right there? Yeah, you, now you, what you gonna, you know, you, you got me wet. You got this wet. You, you, you costing, I paid for this dinner. You guys can't stay, stay still. You guys are not paying attention. I mean, I would have went off.

• 44:25Terry Crews?

  Tim, I can't count the family events and the things that we went to do that I ruined. Now, you have to also have to understand that these things were happening also because with my addiction comes guilt. You know you're lying, you know what I mean? You know what you're doing. So you take it out on everyone else. I would snap at the drop of a hat. And it was because I was angry with me because I couldn't control myself. So I would go off on everyone else. It's this common like, you know, where you're, you're projecting.

• 45:07Terry Crews?

  That's the term. And I was projecting my own guilt onto everyone else. And I was that guy. I, I have to say, I still, I have adult children right now that I still apologize profusely for how they grew up. The Terry Crews that I was back then was my way or the highway. It was vicious. Now, but this is the thing, Tim. And again, I was Mr. Self-help still. And, and the whole thing is I never, I never hit my wife. Cause I was like, my mom went through that. So my idea of what I was comparing myself to what I saw. And I was like, I'm way better than that.

• 45:49Terry Crews?

  You know, what I grew up in, you know, it was like, man, people, women were getting smacked like with impunity. And it was expected that you were to beat your wife. It was expected that you owned your kids and you beat them within an inch of their lives. And so I'm like, I'm better than that. Look at, I mean, you guys are, you know, living a good life. And you ought to be lucky. You know what I mean? And, but it was still cruel. It was cruel. It was self-righteous. That self-righteousness that I had, or mixed in with the guilt that I already felt. It really kept my family in this kind of cage.

• 46:31Terry Crews?

  And in an attempt to control them, in an attempt to control my family and control the way they thought and control everything, control the fact that you spilled the water. You know what I mean? And man, my wife looked at me when, when I just dabbed that water up. And didn't lose a thing. And I'm gonna tell you, man, I didn't even, I wouldn't have perceived in it. She said, oh, my God. And she pulled me to the side. She said, Terry, you're different. Man, I'm, I'm sorry. It's, I mean, just even imagine going back to that moment. I was like,

• 47:10Terry Crews?

  what? She was like, Terry, you're different. You changed. You changed. And it hit me that all, and this is years later. This is years into the therapy, you know, years into constantly working on myself. And my behavior started to change. I'm gonna go a fast forward a little bit to 2017 is when I think I believe what was crazy, we were still going through it last time we talked, but um, I talked about the time my agent assaulted me at a, at a

• 47:46Terry Crews?

  party in Hollywood. And the whole thing was, I mean, it was so degrading. And so, I mean, I pushed him off. I was like, what is your problem? I don't know what his problem was. I think he was on, he was high or whatever. I don't know what he was doing, but it was, all I could say is this, here's this guy, he's the head of the motion picture department at William Morris Endeavor, my own agency, and he grabs my crotch in the middle of this party, and I'm going, get off me. What the hell are you doing? Now, my first instinct, because what I'd done my whole life is to put people on their head. And I could have

• 48:29Terry Crews?

  killed this guy. I don't even think that there's anybody who would even doubt my ability to murder this man. You know, it's like, that's not the question here. But I remember my promise. And I remember my therapy. And I remembered the water.

• 48:51Terry Crews?

  I remembered that I was different. And I said, you know what? The whole phrase responsibility is just that. The ability to respond. I could choose how I'm going to act in this way. And I went against decades of programming and said, no, no. I grabbed my wife's hand and we walked out. Now, Tim, I'm gonna tell you, I got in the car. I was gonna drive the car right back through the club. I'm trying to like terminate, you know what I mean? Again, the movie never stopped. The revenge movie was still there, Tim.

• 49:36Terry Crews?

  Like, I was gonna turn around and drive right through the front door and just start blazing on everybody. I was like, that was in my head. But I kept driving. And I remember not even seeing where I was going. And I ended up in the driveway. And I remember my wife's voice echoing over and over. She said, I'm proud of you, Terry. I'm proud of you, Terry. I'm proud of you. Because she said, she was there. She saw the whole thing. She said, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. And it kept me and it held me. Man, and now, when I say it saved my life, the question is, is would anyone who believed

• 50:19Terry Crews?

  me had I knocked this guy out? That's the question I like to give to anybody. I could have said, yeah, he did this, whatever. And, and, and, and everyone would have looked at me like, wait a minute, he's the head of William Morris. That makes no sense. Why would he do that? And you knocked him out, maybe because you were angry about something. There you are, a super big, muscular, angry black man who probably got pissed off, probably was drinking too much. And I don't drink at all. But everyone would have had a picture of what happened that night that I would not have been able to overcome at all.

• 51:04Terry Crews?

  And like I said, I even asked the head of William Morris, I asked Ari Emanuel, I said, man, if I'd have knocked him out, would you have had any mercy on me? And he said, no, Terry, we wouldn't.

• 51:19Terry Crews?

  We wouldn't. And I was like, damn it. This is the world we live in. And think about this. When I, when I look at the jails that are full right now of young black men, old black men. How many were baited? How many were pulled? How many were tricked into reacting? In a way, how many were, were baited into turning that chessboard over?

• 51:47Terry Crews?

  And it's so easy. Because again, it's the revenge movie. You know, it's so easy because that's what you're supposed to do. Let me tell you, right now in our community, in the black community, there is an expectation that if anybody calls you nigger, you knock them out.

• 52:07Terry Crews?

  That's the reaction. I mean, this was told to me many, many times. And it's told to each other, like, man, if you, there are videos on TikTok about when it happens, you see it. Somebody calls somebody a nigger. And all of a sudden, you knock the guy out no matter what. But the thing is, and thing that hit me, and it hit me hard, was that I would only really be offended if I felt I was a nigger.

• 52:40Terry Crews?

  But there, there's no such thing as a nigger.

• 52:44Terry Crews?

  So why would you offend me? See, I had to examine all of these things. Like, it's like calling Bill Gates broke. He would look at you and laugh like, mm, okay. You know what I mean? And so if anybody ever called me nigger, I can look at you and go, mm. No, that's not it.

• 53:08Terry Crews?

  And I can count it to ignorance. Instead of it being a bait and a switch and a trigger in order for someone to get me into a position that would make me vulnerable. And let me tell you, Tim, this stuff is tough.

• 53:26Terry Crews?

  This is why I call the book tough because it's it's hard to do. It's very, very hard.

• 53:35Tim Ferriss?

  I want to dive into, I'm actually going to pull up a couple of paragraphs about the book because I've been looking forward to this conversation for many reasons. And the title for folks, just so they get the idea, Tough: My Journey to True Power. So I want to read just an abbreviated two paragraphs and then launch into a question about this. So from Brooklyn99, start Terry Crews, "The deeply personal story of his lifelong obsession with strength and how, after looking for it in all the wrong places, he finally found it." Now, there are several paragraphs, but I'm going to leave those for now and come to the last that I have in this little blur, which is with tough, "Crew's journey of transformation offers a model for anyone who considered themselves a 'tough guy,' in quotation marks, but feels unfulfilled, anyone struggling with procrastination or self-sabotage, and

• 54:20Tim Ferriss?

  anyone ready to achieve true, lasting self-mastery." So let me combine that, and I apologize for the long question, but it will have a question mark at the end of it. A quotation that I love, that I believe you also love, which is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which is, "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards." And the reason I bring that up is that my experience, also just being male and priding myself on having certain characteristics or developing certain types of strength, is that you don't want to be perceived as a coward, you don't want to perceive yourself as a coward.

• 55:00Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you think about the, and I think the reason many people, many men, let's just say, respond hyper-aggressively in different situations is to prove to themselves and others that they're strong and not weak. So how do you, and this might sound like a funny question, but to demonstrate strength

• 55:24Tim Ferriss?

  Think about strength so that you don't have that self-perception. Maybe that's a bad question, but I'd love to just see where that goes. Because if someone, I feel like for someone to have the ability to walk away, they need to have supreme confidence on some level in their own strength, or that maybe that's self-perception. So I'd love to hear you speak to any of that in any direction that might make sense.

• 55:49Terry Crews?

  No, I understand. Listen, I understand your question because that was the conundrum that I dealt with. Even when my wife challenged me on this stuff, I was like, but what if somebody does this? And, you know, and, and the thing is, is that toughness in a supremely hyper masculine world is about how hard can you give a punch? But what I found is that there's a toughness in a right kind of world is how you take them. You know, there's two ways, like to be a great boxer, you have to learn how to take them. You know what I mean? The greatest boxers in the world took punches.

• 56:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if you have a glass jaw.

• 56:35Terry Crews?

  You know, I mean, you can have the hardest swing of all time. I mean, I look at the, all the fight fans out there. When you look at Foreman Ali and all the punches he took. I would never recommend anybody go through that, you know? But what I say is how that right there was is a sign to me that there's another toughness that involves endurance. I guess that's the phrase, endurance, which is not a super fast, two-minute, three-minute event. You know, it's long, it's long-term. It's, it's how much can you take?

• 57:20Terry Crews?

  I love, love, love Viktor Frankl and his story. And I've probably read everything that he's ever put out. And the endurance that this man put up with in the Nazi concentration camps, as he watched all his friends die, his family died, his wife. And, and he came out saying yes to life.

• 57:49Terry Crews?

  I said, man, that's, that's the kind of endurance that transcends. And I think that it's truly, truly one of the things where that level of toughness is where I want to be. Cause this is another thing. The world really, really determines winners way too early. They just do. I mean, and it's always celebrated. I mean, the valedictorian of your high school, but most of these people don't end up winning long term. You know what I mean? It's like whoever's winning at a young age, it's like, wait a minute.

• 58:28Terry Crews?

  I think we need to look at the people who over time have displayed success and really displayed, just have seen the most of life and seen all the lumps and been through all the things. And what have they been through? That's where you get your real examples. I am a results oriented person. Whereas when I see how most of the world celebrates just instant wins. You know what a thing, Tim? I like to call it the sportification of our culture. Things have been sportified. And this is where it goes back to even our last conversations.

• 59:10Terry Crews?

  When I say how I feel that competition is the opposite of creativity.

• 59:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this is so key. I highlighted that when I reviewed our, our first conversation. I'd love for you to just elaborate on that.

• 59:21Terry Crews?

  I will, because I, it's something that's, that I've been challenged on. And people are like, but you, without competition, you'll never get better. And you gotta have competition. You gotta, and I said, no, you don't. You do not have to compete with other human beings. Now, the thing is you don't need competition, but you do need resistance. Two different things. The fact that you get up is a resisting, it's you're gonna face resistance. Going outside, the wind is fighting you. You know, when you, if you plant something, weeds are automatically grow, they grow. Anything good is attacked. You have to build a house.

• 1:00:03Terry Crews?

  You have to make everything is so easy for every, for entropy to happen. But everything that's worth something has to be built, has to be designed, it has to be created. And it has to, you automatically have resistance. But competition, however, I think, imagine if the world had evolved through competition. There would only be one set of people. Doesn't work that way. The world evolved through collaboration. That's how I feel. Society evolved, that's how humanity evolved. It's all through collaboration. And again, that revenge movie, that whole thing that we live, it's about competition.

• 1:00:47Terry Crews?

  It's about putting me on top and now I'm on top. And I gotta cancel everybody else and so and so, you gotta go down. And I am the winner and you're the loser. And it's a sportification. It's like I won, I beat everybody. I'm the best in the world today. It's king of the hill. But someone's coming to kick you off, you know? And when you live those rules, it's kind of like if you, if you go your whole life cancelling everybody, you eventually have to cancel yourself because you're not perfect. You know what I mean? It's like, one thing that gets me, man, Hollywood loves to point the fingers at everybody.

• 1:01:28Terry Crews?

  Hollywood on the, at the Academy Awards, it actually cancelled itself, which blew my mind. The standing ovation after the assault, I was, everyone was sitting there like at home, like what? It's, you cancelled yourself.

• 1:01:44Terry Crews?

  This is crazy. And you realize, wait a minute. Now, when I go into collaboration, when you realize that the world is a house. And this is the way guys like to play, where it's like, hey, man, I'm on my side of the house. I got the kitchen. The kitchen is mine. I can cook whatever I want. And they're flaunting it like, I got all this kitchen. It's all mine. When other guys like, well, check it out. I'm on this side of the house. I have the bathroom. I could take a shower. I'm clean. I'm good. Well, Tim, eventually, the guy in the kitchen's gotta use the bathroom. And the guy with the bathroom's gotta use the kitchen. You see what I'm saying? Like, now, this is the problem.

• 1:02:27Terry Crews?

  Because if it's a sport, who won? Who won? Today, the guy with the bathroom. But tomorrow, the guy with the kitchen. And it's endless. And when you do that, what you're doing, to me, it's like, this is a phrase I love to use. And there was a lot being said. I said things about what was going on with Black Lives Matter, what was going on with a lot of our culture during this whole time. My issue was that any movement that doesn't start with reconciliation, I don't want any part of. We have to reconcile. We have to reconcile men to women. We have to reconcile black to white.

• 1:03:11Terry Crews?

  We have to reconcile Republican to Democrat. We have to reconcile. That's the first rule. Because if we don't, what you're doing is postponing a war. That's all you're doing. It's postponing it. It's a matter of, okay, you know, we strike today. And we'll have to wait. And then we'll get our bearings together. And we'll strike again later. And then they come get you, and you come get them. But with reconciliation, there's an agreement.

• 1:03:45Terry Crews?

  With reconciliation, there's an understanding. With reconciliation, there's peace. Wherever you reconcile, there's going to be peace. You know? And I knew, and I got in a lot of trouble at the time for talking about, hey, I decide to unite with good people, black and white, no matter the race, no matter the color, no matter the creed, no matter the ideology. I said, I am going to unify with good people. And I was really put through the wringer for that. But I feel really good about it because I made my stand in the middle of a lot of name-calling, a lot of people who wanted to fight.

• 1:04:29Terry Crews?

  And, and listen, I understood the anger. I understood it. I was that guy. But I realized if we, if we just turn over the chessboard every time, we're not going to get anywhere. You know what I mean? It's like, these kind of things have to be, there's no winning until we reconcile. There's no, sometimes you gotta stop playing the game. You know what I mean? And, and when I say a game, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You have to walk off the court and say, we're not playing today. Now, we're gonna, we're gonna work together.

• 1:05:04Tim Ferriss?

  One thing that has always impressed me about you and our interactions and looking back at your history, and certainly in our first conversation, we talked a lot about your art and your ability and many, many sort of chapters of life spent with one foot in the art world, which we won't get into right now, but people can really take a look at this very closely, and they should. And also, from the segueing from playing professional sports, then to, say, entertainment, and then folding in the design elements, you're very good at questioning the rules of the game and choosing new games to play.

• 1:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  And I think it really highlights a number of things, one of which is... Your ability to choose creativity over competition. Like Terry Crews is a category of one. And if you create a category of one, it's kind of blue sky. And you can create the rules of the game that you want to participate in as opposed to constantly climbing hill after hill, depending on who offended you or upset you that day to go through like the vengeance marathon, which is not just an exhausting way to live, but it's also a very incremental way to succeed in any given field. So I just wanted to say that I I spot that pattern over and over again in you and I admire

• 1:06:32Tim Ferriss?

  it a lot.

• 1:06:33Terry Crews?

  Thank you so much for that. Just to elaborate on your point, you know, that's what bothered me so much about what James Watson alluded to, because he now race was a competition. And I was like, no, but you need each other. We all, we need everyone. And if you make a competition out of it about this race is smarter than the other, do the genes and this kind of things. I was like, man, what are you talking about? Think about the musical greatness that black culture has brought in. I mean, that's a whole nother kind of intelligence. That's there's several ways to be intelligent. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:07:15Terry Crews?

  And I'll go, you can't do what Thelonius Monk did. You know what I mean? You can't redo that. It's one of these things where you look at John Coltrane and you go, my God, like, how do you even, you can't even put math on that. It's kind of like, how did you create that? It's another level of intelligence that we don't understand. But if you create this game that everybody has to play, and then you determine the winners. And I said, man, it was a huge mistake. And like I said, it hurt me so bad because I love science and I love this stuff. And I, you know, and I, and I see, you know, a lot of scientific racism involved with even

• 1:07:59Terry Crews?

  when you're talking about coding and with with computers and and that world where, um, I believe Shockley, I think his name was, who really came out with some very racist things about just about.

• 1:08:15Terry Crews?

  The ability to learn computers and black people and this whole thing. And I just go, man, these guys, that self righteousness, you can't. But this is another thing. And this is what I had to address. I've seen black people get the same way about what they have. And they go, we are more gifted in this and we're more gifted in that. And I said, man, all of that is the biggest mistake you can ever make. Because that level of self righteousness will allow you to be extremely cruel to anybody else. You can't feel wrong because you don't think you're wrong.

• 1:08:58Terry Crews?

  And you can't even hear what people are saying. And it's so dangerous and so insidious that you have to call it out like a cancer. It's almost like a growth that can grow on any movement, anything. You know, because most things start out with people with great intentions. You gotta agree. I mean, most things, most churches, most events, most movements, most things. And then all of a sudden, people are in Guyana and drinking Flavor Raid with Jim Jones. And it's like, what happened? There was a moment when things twisted. And it's a tragedy. And I don't want to see that. I was in a Christian cult in college. It was nuts.

• 1:09:42Terry Crews?

  But you see how, because you've got great intentions. If they're not checked, if they're not balanced, if they're not really, if you don't really get that self righteousness out of there and start at day one, every day, you're going to be on the wrong path. And this is where I am. I'm constantly learning, constantly saying, be teachable, man. Be teachable. It's so wild because I'm gonna give you a crazy, crazy story. Really funny. I'm doing my first year of America's Got Talent and I'm loving it. I'm doing my thing. And I wear these beautiful suits and outfits and the whole thing. And I love this whole thing. You know, I'm Mr. Creative. I'm like, oh, my God, I got this great shoes. I got this great thing.

• 1:10:26Terry Crews?

  And we had this thing, we had a suit that we had a belt on the outside of it. It was really unique and kind of unique, you know, real high fashion. Well, I decide I'm gonna go on the show. I'm gonna do this. And the NBC rep is like, uh, Terry, could you just take the belt off? I was like. Oh, really? You talking to me? I was like, hey, man, you know who I am? You know, it was like, I am your show. I am the host of this show. I can wear whatever the hell I wanna wear. Tim, it was like that. I switched into this like, what? How dare you talk to me like that? Like, and dude, and it was, it was wild because I was with my representatives and the people

• 1:11:11Terry Crews?

  and they were like, you don't have to change it. You don't have to change whatever you want. Yeah, man, you don't have to do that. Just go out there anyway. Go out, just do what you want. And all of a sudden it hit me, Tim. It said, hey, man, dude, you're driving their car. NBC is their truck. That's their car. They don't want the rims to spin. Take the damn rims off, man. Like, it's like, dude, why are you flipping on a belt? It was like, man, humble yourself. Relax, because dude, these are the boss. I said, it's their show. It's not my show. And I said, oh my God, I was that close to pulling this arrogant move where I was just

• 1:11:55Terry Crews?

  gonna go do whatever I wanted anyway. And it probably would have put everything, my whole future, in jeopardy. And I took the belt off. The show went great. The NBC rep was like, thank you, Terry. Cause a lot of times, people, you know, bosses just wanna be heard. And the show was awesome. And I realized how close I came off one arrogant move to losing probably one of the best jobs I ever had. Because it starts there. It's not one big giant move. It's always one little thing and then it grows and grows and grows. And I said, man, you gotta start at day one, every day, Terry.

• 1:12:40Terry Crews?

  So it's hard, hard lessons, man. Like I think this is tough.

• 1:12:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's hard.

• 1:12:44Terry Crews?

  It's tough.

• 1:12:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's tough. Hence the title of the book. You know, it made me think also about the example, the metaphor you used earlier of walking outside and the wind is fighting you, right? Like the way, maybe that's just the wind. Like that encounter is just the wind. It's not someone attacking you or insulting your manhood, or it's just the wind in some cases, right? And I've taken a lot of notes in this conversation for myself. I'm really looking forward to the book. And I also feel like this balance that you've described, you know, I think especially for, not exclusively for, but I think often for a lot of the men

• 1:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  listening will be one that comes up a lot. It's like, how do you find a place for male strength? If you feel like that has sort of been removed from society? How do you develop not just the self-perception, but the capability of being strong? Having that endurance, that resilience, sort of defining strength in a way that isn't abusive and corrosive. And I also wanted to just mention, because you brought up his name, Thelonius Monk. And one of my favorite quotes is actually from Thelonius Monk. And I wanted to bring it up because I think you exemplify it by constantly revisiting

• 1:14:07Tim Ferriss?

  who you are, starting at day one, asking yourself, not just who is Terry Crews, but like, who does Terry Crews want to be? And the quote is, "A genius is the one most like himself." I just think there is, there is so much depth in that quote. That's Thelonius Monk. A genius is the one most like himself. Of course, that could apply to herself. But every day is day one, like you said.

• 1:14:32Terry Crews?

  That's right. That's right. I love it.

• 1:14:35Tim Ferriss?

  And I know we're coming up on time, Terry. The new book, people can find it wherever books are sold. Tough subtitle, My Journey to True Power. I highly recommend people check it out. People can find you on social media, at Terry Cruz on Twitter, Instagram, and then on Facebook, Real Terry Cruz. Is there anything else that you'd like to say? Any other comments, questions, complaints that you'd like to add before we wrap up?

• 1:15:03Terry Crews?

  Man, first of all, I just always, always enjoy talking to you, Tim. This, let me tell you, this 90 minutes went like, phew. I, it went so fast, I can't even.

• 1:15:14Tim Ferriss?

  Went quickly.

• 1:15:15Terry Crews?

  It went quickly, but I just want to thank you for letting me share my heart, man. What's wild is I tend to get misunderstood sometimes. And a lot of that is because of, you know, the ability to take things out of context. And I thank you for letting me talk so that it's in context. So you can see where it's coming from and where it ended, you know?

• 1:15:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:15:42Terry Crews?

  When I see the future of what this world is, I'm very hopeful. I am an eternal optimist. And I see, we get, a lot has been said about getting things wrong and everybody making mistakes and this kind of thing. But my thing is these errors can push you into better things. One thing I like, quote that I heard that I love that got me through the pandemic, is that sometimes your greatest hopes are destroyed to prepare you for something better. And when you see your hope being dashed, people get disheartened. But I like to see it sometimes as you're being prepared for something better,

• 1:16:27Terry Crews?

  for what is next. And I truly, truly think that we can have that better. And I really do. And I'm not a cynical, this is another thing, you know, a lot of comedians tend to get a cynicism and this whole kind of thing, and I've always resisted that. I'm at war with cynicism. I've decided to be positive and be hopeful and believe the best about every human being and count a lot of this as a lot of negativity as ignorance and until people can figure it out, I'm here for you until I figure, because I haven't even figured

• 1:17:08Terry Crews?

  it out. You see what I mean? So, we're all on this journey because I can tell you 20 years ago, oh, man, I was I was among the ignorant, you know, like, oh, I could easily be making excuses and all thing. And that's why I have so much empathy for everyone out there, everyone, anywhere, because it's just a matter of time. So, thank you for letting me share my heart.

• 1:17:34Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Terry. And I want to say to everybody listening, there are many forces in the world that want you to be apathetic, and I invite you to also be at war within yourself against cynicism, because it is crippling. And what a great way to phrase it. Terry, thank you so much. Again, everyone, check out Tough, My Journey to True Power. You can find links to everything we discussed in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, be a little bit kinder than you think is necessary, both to others and to yourself. And thanks for listening. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing

• 1:18:18Tim Ferriss?

  before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts.

• 1:18:58Tim Ferriss?

  Guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They've launched

• 1:19:42Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:20:27Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:21:13Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:21:58Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:22:43Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:23:27Tim Ferriss?

  Just go to gravityblankets.com/tim and the discount will be automatically applied. That's 15% off at gravityblankets, gravityblankets.com/tim. Get your own original weighted blanket, gravityblankets.com/tim.