Powerlifter Stefi Cohen on Self-Mastery and Visualizing Negative Outcomes

On today’s episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to powerlifter and boxer Stefi Cohen about how she got involved in weightlifting after immigrating to the U. S. from Venezuela, the incremental difference between just being great and being world class, her decision to transition from powerlifting to boxing, and more. Stefi Cohen is a 25x world-record-holding powerlifter and the first woman in the history of the sport to deadlift 4.4x her body weight. She is a doctor of physical therapy, author, co-host of the Hybrid Unlimited podcast, and business owner passionately educating people with her NO BS, evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. Stefi is also the co-author (with Ian Kaplan) of Back in Motion which is all about understanding pain, reducing the fear that often comes with it, empowering you to take control. Centered is a Mac and Windows app that helps you get into Flow and work faster...and healthier. Join thousands of users who have discovered their Flow States by running Centered in the background while they work. Download Centered today at centered.app/stoic and use the Promo Code “STOIC” by October 31st to get a free month of Premium, and also be entered to win a variety of prizes! LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Stefi Cohen: Homepage, Twitter, Instagram, YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I got an email or a text a year ago, maybe, maybe more, from Tim Ferriss. And he said, hey, I just had the strongest woman in the world on my podcast. And I asked her what her favorite book is. And she said, The Obstacle is the Way. He's like, you got to listen to this interview, and you got to meet this person. So I was like, sure, that sounds interesting. And I got connected to Stefi Cohen, who is legit one of the strongest women to ever live. She is a 25-time world record

• 1:33Speaker 00

  holding powerlifter, the first woman in the history of the sport to lift 4.4 times her body weight, four and a half times her body weight. That's insane. She is also a doctor of physical therapy, an author, and a co-host of the Hybrid Unlimited Podcast, which I was on to promote Courage is Calling. You can listen to that. She's a business owner passionately educating people with a no BS, evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. And in addition to being the co-owner of the Hybrid Performance Method Strength Training and Nutrition Program, she also

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Recently got into boxing. She had her first professional fight. And then, as she talks about in the interview, she's got a bunch coming up. Just during the pandemic, she was getting tired of powerlifting, said she wanted a new challenge. And decided to get punished in the face a lot of times. So I was so excited to talk to Stefi. She is fascinating. I'm fascinated with the mental performance of any world-class performer. And she really gets into that in this episode. But you might be thinking, what does this have to do with Stoicism? I would say of all the sports, weightlifting and then boxing are the most intimately connected to Stoicism. Epictetus uses all sorts of weightlifting metaphors. Seneca and Marx really both use boxing metaphors.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  You get the sense that they either trained in these sports or followed them quite closely. The Stoics, you know, the Stoics lived in Rome and in Greece. And the gymnasia, athletics, Olympic sports were a part of life, right? We obviously associate this time with the gladiators and that was a sport. Although most of the fancier folks looked down on that sport. But but being active, being athletic, challenging yourself in the arena, so to speak, was a part of the philosophical journey.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  It wasn't just an exploration of the mind, but also a sort of a two-way street. A strong body and a strong mind, as it goes, a strong mind leads to a strong body.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  And that's why I wanted to talk to Stefi. I think there's a bunch we can learn. And the way she thinks about challenges, the way she challenges herself, the way she pushes her body to the limits is very interesting to me. And I think you will enjoy this interview. You can follow her at Stefi Cohen on all platforms, please do. And listen to this wonderful interview.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Let's start at the beginning. What gets you into lifting really heavy things? How does this happen?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  So I've been an athlete my whole life. I started playing soccer when I was about eight years old. And I moved to the States with a soccer scholarship in hopes of becoming a professional soccer player when I was 18 years old.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  From where?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  From Venezuela, from Nicaragua.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, socioeconomic status of the country wasn't really the best. There was not a lot of opportunity there. And I pretty much came to the States forced by my mom. She packed my bags. She sent me on an airplane and I cried and I complained. And I thought she was the most evil monster in the whole world. And I came to the States by myself. You know, it was hard just adjusting to the language, adjusting to the culture, trying to figure out my place in society and just understanding everything and how things work. And I was having a really hard time balancing both being in a D1 school because I was playing at San Diego State University, California,

• 5:20Speaker 01

  that with academics, just the language barrier, really.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  And I quit playing soccer. In hindsight, it's one of the decisions that I regret most in my life, was quitting soccer at that point because I feel like I quit ahead of time. I feel like I could have still pushed a little bit more.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Oh, you quit early, you mean? Like you still had potential left that you didn't?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like I quit when things got difficult instead of quitting when I felt like I really ran out of options. I didn't, I don't feel like I left all stones unturned.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  And I wasn't really ready to let go of that part of my identity as an athlete. And so that began kind of my discovery phase or like my quest for what the next sport that I could be good at was. And I tried a bunch of different sports from running marathons, triathlons, skateboarding competitively, eventually landing into CrossFit. And CrossFit was kind of the gateway into Olympic weightlifting, which I did for about five years, ended up being ranked top three in the country. And then switching to powerlifting when I started grad school.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Obviously, though, I guess CrossFit's kind of a team sport, at least you do it individually. That must have been a big transition, though, to be like sort of one of a sort of a group identity to, at least the way I see, running and then also weightlifting, is that it's much more a battle against yourself and your own limitations.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's a completely, completely different dynamic. Nobody's relying on you for anything. Nobody's, nobody's holding you accountable for showing to practice or not. You don't have, you don't have to answer to really anybody and you have to have a lot of self-discipline and just inner will to keep showing up and keep pushing forward.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Although I guess you're not really supposed to start lifting weights too early, so you probably kind of came to it at the right age, or were you a little late, like, compared to the people that you would later compete against? Had people been doing it their whole lives, or was it mostly just about being in good shape and then getting serious about it?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  No, oh my god, people, people, kids start lifting weights when they're eight years old. In, in Russian countries, in China, the countries that are, that have the most developed weightlifting teams are, are countries that groom their kids to be able to learn the technique from a really young age. So definitely I started late.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Really? Was that intimidating, or like, how did you feel entering a thing sort of so outside your comfort zone?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  You know what's interesting is that I, I don't know if it was because I was, I was young and naive and I still kind of had that little girl dream in my head that anything's possible, the limit does not exist, kind of thing. That was my, my motto for, for, well, it still is, but it was my motto at the beginning of my weightlifting career. I just never felt like there was any, any goal that was too big. I felt like there was...

• 8:26Speaker 01

  I could, I felt like I could do anything. So on one end, I was, I was bummed out that I was entering the sport later than most people and I did feel like I had a lot of ground to make up for. But at the same time, I, I never doubted my, my capabilities, I guess.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  But it is, it must have been weird. You're going from a sort of a soccer program, not just a team, but like a sort of a whole program set up to help you succeed as an athlete to starting over in a new sport where there wasn't, not only was there not teammates, but there wasn't structure, there wasn't a system, there wasn't, uh, you know, a sort of a set amount of ga, like you, you're, you're just, you're not just competing against your own physical limits, but you're also competing against, I, I guess, I don't even know what the word would be, but, but you're essentially like in uncharted, unregulated territory. Like you're just, how, how does it become something that you end up

• 9:28Speaker 00

  ultimately doing professionally from just like, I'm sure your interest in weightlifting?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I don't know. I've never done anything in my life just for the sake of doing it. Everything that I've gotten myself into has always been with the intention really of becoming, not necessarily the best in the world, although obviously that is my inner personal goal, but becoming the best I can be, you know?

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Like being great at it. You don't just do it for fun.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And you know what? I feel like athlete maturity is something that, that comes with age and obviously setbacks and difficulties. So having quit soccer and, and being mature enough to reflect back on that and realize that it was a mistake and then kind of, I felt like I was given another shot by the sport of Olympic weightlifting and that was my motivation. I, I felt like I took a lot of things for granted when I was playing soccer. And then just having that other, that next chance, next opportunity to make it big in another sport was, was motivation enough for me to, to keep going. Same, similar to boxing now that I'm transitioning into it.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Well, I want to talk about that for sure, but you know, I had a somewhat similar, although lower stakes experience. Like I, I've always, I've always been a runner and I, I loved running. But as I went, I, I started very young. I ran in middle school, I ran in high school. But um, I, there was a part of me, I think, that resented it and didn't take it seriously and didn't want to be, I never put my, my all into it. I think because I was afraid of like really trying at something and thus not, and then not succeeding and what that would mean. And so I, I, I quit it a number of times. I got kicked off the team a number of times. But the, but the point is, I had this potential in this one

• 11:21Speaker 00

  thing that at the time I didn't appreciate and I didn't fulfill. And like you, it remains a regret. I, I look back at it and I see that I, I wish there had been someone who could have helped me, but I also wish that I had helped myself. You know what I mean?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think at a point like that, it's, it's your coach's role to a certain extent to encourage you and motivate you when you're doubting yourself. That's the value of a good coach, a support system, and even a team. And like I said, sometimes it's that immaturity that you don't see how good you have it in that time of your life. And you know, you just, you don't believe in yourself enough and you don't have anybody around you to tell you to keep going.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  But also maybe it's, it's that there, there's um, like the difference between being good at something and loving it. And uh, then being good at something and not loving it is that, that's what gets you the very different results. So like you liked soccer and you were good at it, but then you, you dial yourself a couple of degrees in a different direction. The, all those same skills and drive. That made you good at soccer, but when applied to weightlifting, which you actually loved, the result, like you were a good soccer player, but you weren't playing at the best school in the world, right? So it's also maybe part of that is good. Like if you hadn't quit soccer, you wouldn't have found weightlifting, right?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  And for me, all the things that I like about running are good for me as a hobby, but I don't think it was something I could have gone all the way in. I think maybe part of it is like, you have to be pointed at the right thing. And the difference between being pointed at almost the right thing and the right thing is immense.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, what is the right thing, really? I think it's such a, to a certain extent, is a little bit subjective. It could be a little bit of both. So I see, whenever I'm considering my options, say, for example, professionally or even athletically, I kind of think of three bars on a graph, right? I think of skills, talents, and passions as the three things that I'm trying to balance out to make a more objective decision. So your talent is something that you're innately born with. For example, if you're, if you're seven feet tall, you're probably going to be talented at basketball. You already have one of the physical attributes or characteristics of a basketball player.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Your skills are things that you can improve at, that you have the capability, whether it's IQ, intellectually and also physically, to get better at. And then your passion is something that you're genuinely drawn to. It doesn't mean that you have to absolutely love it, be, be, you know, so obsessed with it, no. It just needs to be something that you more or less enjoy. Because what I've found is that when you get good at something, you can learn to love it. Because there's other things that make you like it, like for example, the

• 14:27Speaker 01

  External praise and admiration that you might get from your peers and others. Winning, you know, some people really get off of of winning and and and that that both the external and internal validation that comes from that, from setting goals and achieving. So I never let kind of my just that passion, love dictate what decision I'm gonna make. I think it's important to

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Put everything into perspective and and and look at it a little bit more objectively.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess I'm just saying it's like sometimes we force something because it's financially rewarding, or as you said, people are cheering you on, and you might be really good at it, but it's not the perfect thing for you. And so we do have to have a certain amount of courage to quit something that we're pretty good at, but not happy with, or or that we're experiencing results on because what our real dream is is to do X, Y, or Z. You have, if you never leave anything, if you're afraid of change, if you only stick with the things that you're good at, you'll never find the thing that you're like truly meant to do.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Of course, I think that's that that is such an important, important point that you bring up. I for many years, and look at how many different sports I tried, and even how many different times I switched eh eh majors in college, like five or six times. And I think, I think it's a, it's almost frowned upon to start something and not finish it.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  You're called, you're called a quitter, right, if you do that?

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And for a long time, I was called a quitter by my ex-boyfriends, by my, my parents, by my sister, friends. Because I, I'm that type of person. I wanna, I wanna try, I wanna try something. I wanna see objectively if I'm, if I'm well fit for it. And if not, then I have no problem quitting and moving on to whatever the next thing might be. So I think that misconception that quitting makes you a failure, or that quitting is bad, is something that prevents a lot of people from finding what that true calling for them is.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it can also be, um, I had Kate Fagan on the podcast who wrote this amazing book called, What Makes Maddie Run, about this collegiate runner who who ended up committing suicide. But but the the tragedy of the book, I felt when I was reading it, was like, this girl is super talented, she's, I think, running Division One cross-country, and she hates it, like she hates the program, she hates her life, she hates what it's doing to her body. Um, she's clearly depressed. But there's a, it's almost like the part of her that was such a good athlete made it impossible for her to be like, I hate this. I don't have to keep doing this. I can take a break from it and go do something else. So I think that's one of the other things.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  It's like, maybe quitting is a problem for 90% of the population. But for like elite performers, or stoics if you will, quitting is really hard because part of what makes you great is that you're not a quitter. But again, if you're doing the wrong thing, or the thing is unhealthy for you in that moment, it almost takes more willpower to transition from one thing to the other, or to take a break from something, or like, I'm sure you experience this. Like, if you wake up and like, you're, you're not feeling it. Like, um, like maybe you're, you're still recovering from an energy, an injury, and you're not all the way there. If you force that, that's how you get really hurt. So you, you know, you need the ability to decide when to push, when to walk away.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  It's like the hardest thing.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, have you read the book, uh, The Dip?

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah. I have it, uh, somewhere. Oh, it's right here. I have it right here.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  So good. Actually, I love that book.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  He talks about, I can't remember what name exactly he gives it, but I think it's reactive quitting versus intelligent quitting, or whatever. And I think that's the difference, you know? It's, it's, it's important to make the distinction between, okay, am I, am I quitting? Or am I not doing this because I have my, my big toenail is bugging me a little bit? Like, can I actually suck it up? Or, you know, or is it something more serious that I really need to listen to my, listen to my body about? Or whatever the decision might be. And there, and there is a difference, and that's when the objectivity comes in. You know, it's, are you quitting when things begin to get difficult? Or did you really try everything that there was to try

• 18:52Speaker 01

  to improve your situation, or to get out of that dip? And you just objectively can't, can't do it?

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had Scott Opberg on the podcast. He's a pitcher for the Rockies and he was saying, you know, he's like, as an athlete, there's a difference between pain and hurt, right? Like, or, you know, that you, every athlete has to push through pain, but if you push through being hurt, that's when you get injured. And I thought that was an interesting distinction. Like, of course, especially in weightlifting, like, if it doesn't hurt, you're not pushing yourself, right? Like, the whole point is that your muscles grow from the resistance of lifting heavy things. If it was fun and easy, you're not pushing yourself. But if you, you can also push through and pull a muscle. If you push through the wrong, the

• 19:42Speaker 00

  wrong sensation, you could, you could end your entire career in one, you know, in one pull.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, every, I think every sport that you do at the highest level at the extreme is gonna have a very high level of discomfort and, and pain. You're, you're bound to experience that if you're trying to be the best at whatever it is that requires physical, anything physical, really. But going back to your story about Kate.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  That you were saying that she hated it. She hated training. She was depressed. I honestly, I, I wrote it down, the name of the book, because I'm interested in reading it, because I, I relate a lot to that statement about that sentiment, especially in my powerlifting career towards the end. You know, it was five or six years, my entire business that I've built, Hybrid, was, it was surrounding my powerlifting career. You know, every, my followers, my, the workout programs that I have, my apparel business, everything kind of surrounds and follows that journey into powerlifting and what that means to me and the empowerment and the inspiration for younger women. And, and I felt sort of that responsibility to keep going, even though after, I don't know, two or three years,

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I hated it. I hated it with everything in my, in my heart. I, I didn't like going to the gym. It felt like a chore. It felt like, like a job that I didn't want to do. And it was extremely painful and it was, it was hard. And I did feel like I couldn't quit, but mainly because of the responsibility that I had for

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  the people that I employ, that are depending on me to show up to competitions and footage and pictures and videos and whatever. And also for myself, right? I felt like I had already that sunken cost fallacy. I've already been doing it for so long. I should keep doing it.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  And it's tough. It really is tough to make that decision to to stop. For me, I think I quit at the I quit late. You know, I got it got to a point for me where I was having so much physical pain and discomfort that I couldn't put my pants on by myself. I couldn't tie my shoes. I couldn't put my socks on. And those are the, you know, that's the non glamorous part about sports that I don't think a lot of people talk about. All the mental struggles that athletes at the highest level go through with the expectations that are placed on them. The fear of letting people down. The the time that you've already invested that you're afraid of. You know, you're afraid that it's going to be for nothing. It's going to be in vain. The responsibility you have to your team.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Everything is hard.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, what do you think of because some people have asked me about it. What do you think of the Simone Biles thing during the Olympics? I thought that was very brave and very self aware that someone could sense the difference between when they're able to compete at the highest level and when they're just on the wrong side of being able to compete on. And I thought maybe what went understated there was that she was a member of a team. And so unlike, say, weightlifting, where the only person who might suffer from that or benefit from you not doing it is yourself. The decision to step aside and let someone from your team take that slot also struck me as a pretty like very self controlled.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  I was impressed by it, but I would be curious what you thought.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I agree with you. It's incredibly mature of her to do that. It's hard to sit back on the on the stance and just watch somebody else take your spot for something that you've been training so hard for. But it's it is the right thing to do. It's what it's the just thing to do because you owe that you owe that to your team. You owe that to everybody that that invested time and energy into your development as an athlete.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  When you also owe it to yourself, right? The, the ability to say like, I'm not going to put myself in harms way. Like sometimes weirdly, that takes more courage, right? Because if you're a competitive person, if you're a driven person, you would rather sacrifice yourself and your wellbeing than take the ego hit of like having to watch someone else take your spot. And so, oh, and just the inertia, like, you know, it's like when something is in motion and plane tickets have been bought and a schedule is set, you know, when you're like, no, I'm gonna cancel, I'm not gonna do that. It's so much easier just to keep, keep going along with it and just let yourself get carried along with it.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  At the same time, I mean, I could argue the opposite point as well about if you've been performing at, at this level and then you know that physically you're not gonna be able to match that or surpass that. Also, you don't want your ego to get hit with that, right? You don't wanna grow up and not be able to, and underperform and kind of damage that record that you've been, that reputation and that record that you've been working on for so long.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  No, you see that with authors, right? They have trouble following up a successful book because they're paralyzed by the past performance. And you do have to walk into everything fresh and go, can I, can I do my best here? And is that enough?

• 24:51Speaker 00

  So I, I would be curious too, I, I've got to imagine as you were thinking about walking away from powerlifting, for example, like, uh, when I interviewed Nita Strauss, uh, she's the guitarist for, um, for Alice Cooper. And she was saying that, uh, you know, any, uh, successful female musician, what you find is that, she said, people have very strong opinions about you, right? Meaning that, that, uh, you know, people talk a lot of crap, basically. I, I imagine part of your success was about proving people wrong, right? Especially the people that doubted you or the people that had preconceived notions of what, uh, female weightlifters were capable of. So, so talk to me about that.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  And then I'd also be interested though, in as you decided to walk away to go do something else, was there a part of you that was struggling with not wanting to feel like those people had won? Do you know, like, like you could keep wanting to shove it in their face, or, or by admitting weakness or admitting that you moved on. There could also be part of you that's maybe like, well, I don't want them to be right.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think, I think a lot of what makes me me in that sense of wanting to prove people wrong and wanting to do things that haven't been done before has a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a, in a very traditional conservative Hispanic Jewish family. And I always wanted to do what was against the grain. My mom wanted me to be a lawyer or to be a physician and I wanted to be my, I don't, didn't know exactly what I wanted to be, but I knew I didn't want to have a desk job. I knew I didn't want to have strict times. I knew I didn't want to have to be tied to a, to a formal job or have to respond to higher ups or anything like that. And my mom always told me that the, the idea that I had for an ideal job

• 26:44Speaker 01

  was impossible for me to, to have unless I created my own job. And I said, all right, cool. Challenge accepted. And I just felt like my whole life, I've been trying to prove myself to my, to my family and to people close to me because the things that I've wanted to do have always been super unconventional and, and against the grain, like I said. So when it came to sports, I remember when I was doing CrossFit, I was in parallel, I was trying to get stronger in Olympic weightlifting because I wanted to compete at the national level, hopefully go to the Olympics. I was taking it really seriously. And I had a coach, back then a CrossFit coach, and I sat down with him and I asked him what he thought I should do, if I should continue focusing on CrossFit and maybe try to make it to the Games

• 27:28Speaker 01

  or if I should switch to weightlifting completely and try to make it to the Olympics. And he looked at me dead in the eye and said, hey Steph, honestly, like, I don't think that you should worry about that decision at all because you're not going to be good at either of those. You're not going to be great at either of those. And I loved that. I honestly, I laughed and I laughed and I said, all right, noted. That's, it's, I'm sorry that you think that. And I'm really excited to prove you wrong. And that was kind of the beginning of what lit the fire under my ass, pardon my French, to really commit myself to Olympic weightlifting and try to prove a point that independently of what age you get started, independently of what your background is,

• 28:11Speaker 01

  you can definitely, you know, if you put your, if you put your mind into something, you can definitely achieve. And man, I spent so many hours in the gym thinking and practicing weightlifting. I, I was in grad or I was in undergrad and I took all my stuff out of my living room and I put up a plywood in the middle of my living room and I bought myself a barbell and I would practice and just watch Olympic weightlifting all day long. You know, it takes a lot of hours and, and, and I was able to prove myself, I guess.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Do you think that coach was right? Like in this, like looking at who you were in that moment, did you have what it took? Or was it that because of the feedback you got, that you went out and acquired the skills or the assets needed to then be successful? Do you know what I mean?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  No, I, I mean, I think it's, it's probably a combination. I do think that I had what it took to be good at that sport. Otherwise, I wouldn't have pursued it. I'm, I'm a realist and I'm objective. You know, some people might consider me even a pessimist because there's times where I can be like, no, like I'm not even gonna try to do that because I'm not gonna win or I'm not gonna be able to get to do XYZ. So I, I had done my fair share of evaluating my own capabilities. And at that point, I, I'd already know that, that I could, I could do either of those things.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  And so what do you think he was seeing? Do you think he was just closed minded? Do you think he was sexist? And what do you think was, I guess you didn't say it was a man, but what do you think was, what do you think? What do you think he was saying when he was discouraging you?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  I mean, think about what are the chances of winning a gold medal in the Olympics? I don't know what the probability is off the top of my head, but it's very, very slim. Imagine, what are the chances of getting into grad school? I think acceptance rate is 6% or 5%, something crazy like that.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  So I understand why he said that. It's, it's, the odds are not in my favor. The odds are never in anybody's favor to do what hasn't been done before. Or to do something great. So that didn't surprise me at all. I wasn't, and I didn't take it to heart because I understood where he was coming from. I feel like if I would have been in his situation, I don't think I would have ever been as discouraging as he was.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  But in my mind, I think I would have still thought that way.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Right. So you know what's funny is that of the two sports that the Stoics talk about the most, and I do love that the Stoics talk about sports. The two are weightlifting and boxing.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Knowing.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, they talk about weightlifting. Obviously, these are the sort of ancient Olympic sports, right? So I think that's part of it. They do talk about running a little bit as well. But it's just fascinating to me that you then become, these are the two sports that you're dedicated to. How do you, how do you approach the sort of mental side of these sports? I imagine, again, weightlifting, obviously it takes the immense physical component, but it's also such a simple sport that, that I can imagine you can get, it's not like football where you're like doing all this stuff and you're worried about getting tackled. Or even soccer, right?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  The movement of soccer is so fast that you can probably get into a flow state much easier than like, knowing that you have to walk up to this bar and pick up like three or four times your own body weight? That must be. As far as a mental game, just like totally overwhelming.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  So I first wanna wanna tackle the second part of your of your question about weightlifting being a simple sport.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  I think the simplistic nature of weightlifting is what makes it overly complex.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  The less, I think the less variables that you have to play with, the more difficult it becomes because the less margin of error you have. So even though to the naked eye, yeah, we're just practicing the snatch and the clean and jerk in weightlifting or in powerlifting, we're just squat, bench and deadlifting. Technique wise, skill wise, yeah, it's, you're right. It doesn't require that much athleticism to do, but in order to continuously make progress in just three movements where there's really, really not a lot of things that you can do. You really have to use your, your intellect and then you have to be good at understanding your body and then understanding the science of lifting to be able to, one, stay injury

• 32:49Speaker 01

  free for a long enough period of time where you can make the necessary adaptations to continue getting stronger.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  And then have the mental fortitude to be able to keep going even when things don't go your way, you know, when in, in strength sports, I find them, I find them the most difficult of all the sports that I've done because progress is so slow and it slows down exponentially the longer that you're in it.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  As you get higher up, right, like to go from not being in shape to being in shape is easy, but to go from being in good shape to world-class shape, those microscopic gains, that, that must be extremely hard and extremely slow.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Extremely, it's, it's honestly nearly impossible to make progress after you've been lifting for over, over, over four or five years.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Oh my God, there's people that don't improve their marks for three or four years. They're just lifting the same amount, the same amount. You're just banging your head against the wall. And I don't know what keeps us going. It's, I always joke, I always joke about weightlifters and powerlifters and say that we're, we are the definition of insanity. Because we just come in and we try something. Sometimes we try the same thing seven times because we're, we're, we just are in complete denial that we don't know what the hell we're doing. And, and that's it. We just stay doing the same thing and, and not make any sort of measurable progress. It's, it's a crazy sport. It really is.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Well, that's the hard part about writing too, although I'm just making analogy to the mental side, which is that you're waking up every day and you're doing your thing, whether it's reading, or researching, or exploring, or thinking, or even writing. But because the project is, you know, 50 to 150,000 words long, even a full day's work or a full week's work might, would make no measurable progress on the goal. You think about some of these people like a Robert Caro, or even Robert Greene, who would work for years and year, like five or six years on a single book. You know, imagine, so if you worked on something for five years, you know, you're measuring progress by months at the smallest thing. Or it could be that you had a bad year, right?

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Like that, that year three, you made no progress, but you still had to show up for work every day. I, I imagine the discouraging part of weightlifting is like, you're keeping the diet, you're going through your routines, you're doing your rehab, your physical, all this stuff. And yeah, the, the plates are not getting any bigger, right? Like you're not posting better results. That would be so immensely discouraging, and yet you have to keep going.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and the amount of sacrifice that you have to make in order to, to stay in shape and keep going as well. But you know what? That's the difference between the people that are good and the good and the great.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  It's that, it's that, it's that mental resilience and just ability to keep going even when you don't experience any sort of significant changes. That is the difference, really. And I think weightlifting a lot because I consider myself now, after almost 10 years of lifting weights at the highest level, a master of the mundane. I feel like I can, I can get better at anything because for 10 years I've been banging my head against the wall. Trying to do what hasn't been done before, you know, breaking records, lifting weights that people thought that were once impossible to do. You know, doing four, 4.8 times my body weight in a deadlift.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  So yeah, I mean, I, I get why the Stoics talk about lifting weights.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  And what's so incredible, I think about weightlifting too, is as you get up higher and higher, the actual burst of the activity is less and less, right? So like, um, you know, sports take a long time, like a soccer game, I forget, I don't know how long a soccer game is, but they, you know, you're talking about an hour-ish of activity, right? I, I imagine as you creep towards that, like that, that deadlift thing, how many times did you do that? What, is it once? Right? Like, you're not doing a, a 10 rep set of that even, like, the, the whole thing might take five seconds, you know, it's like being an Olympic sprinter or something where like, the actual activity

• 37:12Speaker 00

  that you did all these years and years and years of training and sacrifice for is over like that?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have three attempts in powerlifting and weightlifting too, you have three attempts at each lift. And that's it. You see, have you ever, have you ever watched Olympic trials for the Olympic weightlifters?

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  It's, I've been, I've been to many, or not many, to a couple, I guess, live and it's painful to watch when somebody who's been training for an entire quad, they're trying to do their qualifiers and they just, man, training has been going amazing, they've been hitting the numbers that they need to hit and for some reason it just doesn't come together in the platform and you just see them collapse just physically and emotionally.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  And, and like on the next day or the day before, they might've been able to do the exact thing that they're not doing in that moment. So it's not if, it's not simply a phys, it's not like, hey, uh, the three of us lined up and you were faster than me. It's like, we're all capable of running the time that we're trying to do and then just on that day, it's not there. Is that a mental thing or what is it?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't know. If I knew, if I knew, I'd be at the Olympics right now. But it's a phenomenon that I really don't know how to explain. It's like you do, there's weights that you can do for three or five reps. And sometimes you're on the platform, you've done everything you need to do. You've decreased the intensity of your lifts the week leading on to your competition. You ate a little bit more calories so you could feel full. You're well rested, you've done your meditation, your journaling. And you come on the platform and that bar feels like an elephant. A weight that you can lift for five reps or six reps. And it just is not budging, it's not moving, it's not going anywhere. I don't know if it's stage fright, I don't know if it's something to do with your nervous system. Maybe the intensity at which you trained for the competition. I don't know what it is, but it's super common.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  And that's, and again, that adds the complexity of the sport, right? It's just, the only variable being tested on the platform is strength. And if it's not there, it's just not there.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  And so knowing that that can happen, like, it's almost like, you know, I think part of what makes like public speaking scary is you know that you could get up on stage and the thing you practiced not be like, that the word, you just forget it all, right? Like, the idea that you could forget it all is always there, that's the danger, right?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  How do you not think about that as you walk up to the bar? I imagine part of the mental game, just like it is in baseball or kicking a field goal in football,

• 39:52Speaker 00

  is the ability to turn the mind off, right? Because like, you're almost having to turn the mind off and let the body do what you've trained it to do. In your case, for like five seconds.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's called flow state. If you can really get yourself in flow state, then obviously it increases the probability of having a positive outcome at the competition. But sometimes, like I said, it might not happen. So some of the strategies that you use with a mental, with a mental coach are mental imagery. So mental imagery for both positive and negative situations. I think that's the part that people miss. It's easy to sit down and fantasize about winning a gold medal or fantasize about making all of your three lifts. I mean, anybody could do that, right? I also, I wanna only imagine positive outcomes. But it's uncomfortable to even have the thought of a failed attempt. Or whatever going wrong in the, in the warm-up room,

• 40:50Speaker 01

  or you feeling tired, or you feeling weak that day. It's, it's really uncomfortable to think. And most people avoid it out of fear of putting negative thoughts in their mind. But it's an absolutely necessary part of the process of training your, training your, your, your brain to be prepared for those situations. Cause preparation is the key to be more confident, more comfortable. And it's what's gonna allow you to, to react to certain situations in a, in a, in a better way. So besides doing that positive mental imagery, you also go through the negatives and then you think to yourself, okay, if that happens, how am I gonna react? And that's happened to me. I've gone on to take my first attempt and I miss it. Because either I, um, I don't know, my technique wasn't on point,

• 41:35Speaker 01

  or I, or something felt weird, or my reps were wrapped the wrong way, or I ran out of time on the clock, whatever. And I've missed competitions completely because I wasn't prepared for that outcome.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And then through, through doing that, you know, I remember going to the next competition after I was disqualified for not making any lifts. I came back and I missed my first attempt. And I laughed. I went back to the warm-up room and I was just laughing, joking with, with Hayden, with my partner, I'm like, nah, it's all good, I got this. Like, I've been there before, in my mind. In my mind, this already happened and I'm totally okay with it. I know what I need to do going back into a platform. I know the changes I need to make. I'm gonna, I'm gonna remain calm and still and I'm gonna go back to a platform and try it again. That's it.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  This is, I mean, the Stoics talk about this, uh, they call it premeditatio malorum, a premedita, uh, premeditation of evils. Um, you have to think about what could happen, not because you're gonna dread it, but, but so you don't dread it, right? Cause you know what you'll do. And as Seneca says, "The unforeseen blow lands heaviest." I, I guess this also works for, for boxing, right? If you, if you know how you're gonna respond, um, if you know that it's a possibility, then when it happens, you're not like, what the fuck is this? Like, you know, like, you're not like, oh my God, I just, I screwed it up. The, I know, uh, uh, it's over. You have to be able to...

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Like, even with writing, I think about this, like, if you're unprepared for there to be crappy days, your one crappy day is going to turn into two crappy days, which is going to turn into a whole downward spiral. You have to be able to know, this is, this is how it goes sometimes, and this is what you do when that happens. This is the training, or the practices, or the mental exercises that you revert to, to reset and start again.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  But that's, again, the lack of talk about, about negative outcomes, you know, the, the, just how much society glamorizes being positive and happy and things working out, and, and positive self-talk and all of this. And, and then, people just not wanting to talk about when you're, if you're a writer, or an athlete, or whatever, you have a block, or something, a setback, something didn't work your way. Nobody talks about that, you know, and, and again, society glamorizes being okay, whatever that means, being happy and things working out, so that when real people, which is all of us, experience a normal human experience, which is a setback, failure, desperation, being upset, whatever, then you don't know what to do with it.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think people, this is why the law of attraction, or whatever, is such horseshit, right? Like, when you, when you think positively, you're not making things more, you're not bringing positive things to, into existence, just as when you think negatively, you're not bringing negative things into existence. You're rehearsing in your mind, what you will do if that happens, right? So, to me, it's about, I think, positive or negative, what, what's really actually important is visualization. What's the plan? What am I supposed to do here? What does my training say? As opposed to like, Yeah, like, oh, just imagine yourself on the, on the, on the, on the medal stand,

• 44:59Speaker 00

  getting, getting the gold medal. It's like, no, think about how the lift is gonna go. Walk yourself through the list, or through the lift, good and bad, so you can be prepared for, for any direction that it goes.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  I just thought about if, if people in the emerg-, if doctors in the emergency room never prepared for a, for a negative outcome, do you imagine how chaotic that would be?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Well, look, Napoleon, I say this in The Courage, but Napoleon said like, three times a day, a general should say, "What will I do if the enemy appears on my left? If the enemy appears on my right? If the enemy appears in the rear?" The idea wasn't to be anxious or depressed. The idea was to have a plan if that happens, right? Because the only worse thing than that happening is it happening and you not being ready for it, you not knowing what to do in response to it. Like, you're, there's gonna be moments, yeah, where the, the wraps don't fit, or the, the, the, your warm-up doesn't go right, or, or that, that, you know, you, you walk into the boxing room, the boxing

• 46:07Speaker 00

  ring, and the person hits you with something you weren't anticipating. The, the only thing worse than that is falling to pieces because you, you weren't expecting it.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. A hundred percent.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Okay, so walk me through the decision to start boxing, because that does seem, it's not that the, it's the opposite of weightlifting, but if weightlifting is a battle against the self, boxing is quite literally a, a battle against another person. But also, I would say, to me, the big difference is that you're going from, uh, you're going into what I might describe as a cardio sport, right? Like, it's about the raised heart rate over a prolonged period of time. Although, I guess with your background in soccer, you're, you're sort of an all-around athlete in that sense. But, but, but why, why boxing? And how did that challenge you and, and force you to grow?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I I hate periods of my life when I'm too comfortable.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  And I felt that way last year after my last powerlifting competition. I just felt like it was. I hate to say that it was too easy. But I had already done what I needed to do in this sport. I had already proven myself to to to to myself, to people around me, to the industry. Obviously, I could have kept going and kept breaking records and I still might, but I just felt like there was. I didn't feel challenged by the sport anymore. Combine that with the fact that I was suffering physically, just my body was in so much pain and just it didn't make sense for me to to keep to keep punishing my myself, my body like that. Um, so the pandemic hit and we were in lockdown and I was bored and I was just

• 47:44Speaker 01

  trying, uh, again, another discovery period. I feel like those discovery periods happen to me every seven years, every seven to 10 years.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  The seven year itch.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I took I took an epigenetics course from Harvard. I thought I was gonna go back to school to become a PhD in epigenetics. I then took a fashion course. I bought myself a drum set. I thought I wanted to start a band. Um, and then I bought myself a heavy bag and I just hung it in my garage and bought myself a pair of gloves and started hitting it. And I found myself a coach, somebody that travels house to house because all gyms were closed and I had a couple of times a week of boxing sessions. And I felt the same way I felt when I started doing weightlifting, that I had a talent for it. I felt like I was picking up on it very quickly. I felt like

• 48:34Speaker 01

  uh, I had good reaction, good coordination, good footwork. Um, and I was making progress a lot faster than what the norm would be. And those, to me, were good indicators that I had a good potential for the sport. So that's kind of how I started taking it more more seriously and getting myself uh, more and more into it.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  I got to imagine the first time you get punched in the face, you're like, this is a very different sport.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Listen, the first time you get punched in the face in sparring, or you know, by your sparring partner, or by your coach, is absolutely nothing compared to the first time you get punched in the face by someone who's trying to knock you out in a ring in front of people. That was a shocking experience, let me tell you. It was a month ago, I had my first real, I have, I have two professional fights, but the last fight I had, I picked an opponent that was, I don't want to say out of my league, because the fight ended up in a draw, and I think I, I held my, you know, I held my ground pretty well, but this is a girl that has 10 years of combat sports experience, she has five years of boxing experience, she

• 49:43Speaker 01

  has a Muay Thai background, she's from Colombia, super badass chick. And it was all fun and games, until I stepped in that ring, and I looked into her eyes, and I saw that she was there to absolutely murder me. And that was the moment that I was like, oh shit, yeah, okay, this is what people mean when they say that boxing's not a game. It really isn't. This is a, this is the most life or death situation that I've ever been in, in my life.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  How do you, and although obviously, I think for weightlifting, you would have to get good at regulating your breathing, and calming down, and keeping the adrenaline in check, but yeah, going back to, into your soccer days, it had been a while since you were in one-on-one competition with another person, and then you get this sense that they want to literally punch your lights out. How do you calm yourself down? How do you not, how do you not get really, like, how do, how do you, how do you keep yourself in check? Because I imagine that's really, again, the mental side of things, but also the physical side of things, like, I don't know how many rounds the fight went, but you would, you'd had to, you had to pace yourself in a way that isn't a three-second lift.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's what we call in boxing, an adrenal dump. So as soon as you're in the ring, and the lights go on, and the bell rings. You've lost fifty percent of your cardio, like your, your heart has already beaten more times than the entire camp.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  And I spoke to my sports psychologist about that and basically the strategy there was to not try to fight it. You can't, you shouldn't think about it, shouldn't try to calm your heart rate, you shouldn't try to fight it, you just accept the fact that that's a normal physiological reaction to a stressful event. And that's, that's all that is, you know? And, you know, the first thirty seconds, I think, are the most nerve wracking of, of the entire fight, because you're trying to feel the other person out, you're trying to get used to it, you're letting your heart rate kind of go back to a little bit more normal rhythm. But yeah, I mean, you just can't fight that.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Although I imagine the, the only way to, to really combat it is, is to fight a lot of fights, right?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Experience, for sure.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Every match, that adrenal dump is maybe a lower percentage of your cardio. You go from fifty percent to forty-eight percent, and then eventually, you know, the real seasoned pro, although this is the tension, it's where the seasoned pro is, is more in control, uh, hormonally and mentally as your body is on the decline.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Of course. What's interesting is I've heard, Mike Tyson's my favorite fighter, and I've heard a lot of his interviews, and he, he says that he's always terrified before a fight.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  He is afraid of, of his opponent, he's terrified of what the outcome might be, he's scared of getting in the ring. And it's interesting, right? Because how many fights did that guy have? All of them. I don't know what his amateur, uh, record was, but I think he had almost fifty fights, fifty professional fights. And that's a lot, and he still, he still went through that, every single fight.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and you, knowing what...

• 53:01Speaker 00

  The after your first fight, you now know how you feel after the fight, which is also gotta be hard, right? You know how, even if you win, even if it goes well, you know that you're gonna feel terrible the next day.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Listen, it's so uncomfortable during and after. It's it's the most painful and uncomfortable thing that I've ever gone through. And even at the during the last round of my of my fight, I had as maybe three or four seconds where I thought to myself, what the fuck am I doing here? Why am I doing this to myself? And then when the fight ended and I was busted, my head hurt and my nose was almost broken, I I had to really dig deep to answer that question for myself. Why am I doing this? You know, financially, I'm not a I'm not a hungry lifter, like a fighter, like a lot of a lot of them are. I don't need to do that.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  You've already you've already you've already won that battle.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm doing this out of just love for the sport and for a challenge. That's it. That's the reason why I'm doing it, because I thrive off of being uncomfortable, because I want to put myself in uncomfortable situations, willingly in uncomfortable situations, so that when uncomfortable situations arise that are completely out of my control, I'm I'm better equipped to deal with them. And to me, I guess that's the reason why I box.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  But do you feel like that that first plane ride that your mom put you on to send you to a foreign country where you didn't speak the language, you so so in that sense that like you already have been that scared person facing an insane set of unknowns, like you probably have a certain confidence, both on the on the mat and and in the ring, that that you can fall back on, because you've you've been through stuff like this before?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  For sure. I I know exactly what I need to do when I'm faced by by an obstacle or when I'm faced by fear. And that's why your book, The Obstacle is the Way, was one of honestly, and I keep telling you, but it was one of the most influential books that I've ever read because of that very reason. It just explained. It just explained and confirmed a lot of the the things that I've been through, why I've done certain things and why that is actually the only way to go is through.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  A lot of people get so paralyzed by fear and stop doing things out of fear of rejection, fear of failure, um, fear of pain, fear of discomfort, whatever it is. And and that's just such a massive limiting factor to reaching your full potential in life as a human.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  Well, you do seem like you you also blend the, there's that Latin expression, a strong mind and a strong body. Um, but but you seem like you are, you talked about sports psychologist. I know you have a doctorate in physical therapy. Um, obviously you read a lot. You seem like you have really also explored the mental side of things, like you've really studied, uh, philosophy and psychology and peak performance. It's, it seems like that's a big part of how you approach these things, too.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I am, I've suffered from from anxiety and panic disorder since I was 15 years old, and that's a big reason why this, everything related to the mind interests me so much. And one of the reasons why I got into Stoicism as well. Um, it's hard, you know, and and imagine if if being afraid is a deterrent for people not to do certain things, imagine being irrationally afraid.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  All the time of things that you shouldn't, a- about things that haven't even happened. Your mind plays tricks on you all the time when you're, when you have generalized anxiety disorder, when you have panic disorder, you have any sort of like mental health issue like that, your mind is constantly telling you that you can't, constantly putting in the forefront of your mind, the worst possible outcomes, worst possible situations for everything in your life. So I had to, you know, I, I, I finally, more recently, accepted that that's the way my brain is wired. That's the chemistry of my brain. And I can't fight that. But what I can do is I can train my brain to be able to deal with that in a much

• 57:19Speaker 01

  healthier and and and better way. And that's, and part of that is being okay with with that fear, understanding where it comes from. It's coming from your amygdala. It's completely irrational. It's literally your prehistoric.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Monkey brain giving you a signal of threat that's not there. It's a perceived danger, perceived threat that's not actually there. So I, it's just so important never to, never to allow it to make you a victim. And, and always just try to push through that and put yourself in as many uncomfortable situations as you can, so that you have that courage and that, that mental training, mental fortitude to, to overcome any sort of other situation. Cause what I've found is that, you know, the older I get, there's, there's different things that trigger these anxiety, there's different things that trigger this fear. The first, the first anxious panic attack I had was a fear of the dark.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  You know, I'm, I'm, and I was, I was 13 years old when I experienced my first panic attack that was triggered by being in the dark. And so imagine now I'm, I'm perfectly comfortable being in the dark, but now there's other things that trigger my anxiety, like for example, I don't know, uh, losing my mom, losing my parents, uh, being old and sick, being alone. You know, there's, there's other things that as I get older, they just keep coming up and that, that's never going to change. I'm always, there's always going to be something that I'm afraid of, something that I'm anxious about, and it's only through learning how to cope with that and how to deal with that, that, that I'm going to be able to, to keep moving forward.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  Well, it's like sort of realizing like the world, it's this tricky thing where like the world is scary and the world, uh, there are things to be anxious about. And then it's like, oh, your mind is adding on top of that, right? Like, I think that was one of the things I realized during the pandemic, which was like, I, I'd always, you know, I'm someone who gets anxious about things, but I thought it was the, even though the Stoics obviously said this for thousands of years and I knew this, I thought it's like, hey, I'm anxious because like the flight, uh, takes off in 20 minutes and if, if it's late, then I'll miss the connection. And then if I miss the connection, then I'm going to be late for this thing that I'm going to, right? Like I, I was anxious about that. But of course, then you stop flying, you stop doing something because you're in the

• 59:35Speaker 00

  middle of a pandemic and you're still anxious, you realize, oh, I'm the problem. Like I'm bringing this to the situations. And that's one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius. He says, "Today I escaped my, I escaped from anxiety." And then it says, "No, actually I discarded it because it was within me." Like realizing like you're the problem, you're the source of the anxiety or the worry. It's hard to accept, but it's not the outside things that are causing it. They don't care at all. It's you. You're the problem.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  And ultimately, your perception, right, of the world around you. I remember I was so scared of flying. I would force myself to fly all the time because I was terrified. Specifically about turbulence. It's irrational, right? Like turbulence, turbulence. I started looking at turbulence as bumps in the road. If you're in a bumpy road, like an unpaved road, and your car starts making noise, that's the equivalent of turbulence in the air. And once I switched my perspective of what turbulence was, I stopped being afraid of it. So it's interesting. If you change the way you think about something, it could also eliminate fear.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, of course. And also a reminder that in something like a boxing match, it's already, the margin for error is already incredibly low. The idea that you can be wasting time or resources, being worried or anxious or thinking about this or that, like, you can't. You have to focus on the thing in front of you. And any resources spent elsewhere is actually making you more vulnerable.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  So what's next for you? Are you going to keep fighting? Or are you going to go back to weightlifting? Or what do you think your next challenge is?

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  No, I actually have a fight November 21st in the Dominican Republic. Another fight December 26th in Switzerland. Another fight February 11th in Miami. So the plan is just to continue building my pro record and hopefully fight for a world title at some point. You know, my goal, it's not necessarily to be the best in the world, but to be, I guess, qualified to fight the best in the world. That's the goal. To be technically proficient enough and have my skills be on point so that I could compete with them.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  It sounds like whatever it is that you do, you don't fuck around.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  No, never.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  And what's the thing you post every once in a while that I always love you say, waking up and choosing violence? Let's end there. Tell me, tell me what that means.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, wake up, choose violence. It's just a motto that I have to attack every day with intention. I think a lot of people wake up and are doing things mindlessly and without any sort of purpose or intent behind. And we end up just living in like robots, like in automat, putting, putting ourselves in automatic or autopilot. So waking up, choosing violence is just a promise to be intentional with everything that you do from the moment you wake up, you brush your teeth, to your first decision of whatever it is that you want to tackle that day.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  And I also, I do like, I think there's a Latin expression from Seneca. It's basically like, to live is to fight. I, I do love the, the metaphor, the way of thinking about the world, that it's, it's a battle, right? And you gotta be ready for it. And as you said, you gotta be intentional, because if you're not on the offensive, it means that you're on the defensive.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  You're the best. I'm so glad we got to do this and thank you for the very nice words about the book and good luck on your next fight.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Of course, pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the stoia, the stoia poekele, the painted porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place. First off, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space, but we have made a special digital version of the stoia. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You can talk about like today's episode, you can talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts, interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members. You get quarterly Q and As with me.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  You get a cloth bound edition of our best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts. And this is the best part, all our Daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystoiclife.com.

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  You