530 When Violence Is the Answer: Self-Defense Strategies with Tim Larkin

"Look where nobody else is looking." - Tim Larkin If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/530 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 530 with New York Times bestselling author and self-defense specialist, Tim Larkin. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Winston Churchill said, "Danger, if met head-on, can be nearly halved." Welcome everyone to this episode.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  Tim Larkin is in the house and he is America's leading pro victim rights and personal safety advocate. He was named the 2011 Self-Defense Instructor of the Year and simultaneously inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame. He is a former military intelligence officer. He was part of a beta group that redesigned how special operations personnel trained for close combat. He has a 25-year career and has trained people in 52 countries on how to deal with imminent violence. He has trained military special ops, special law enforcement teams, celebrities, high-profile business leaders on how to use physics and physiology to injure any humans trying to

• 1:27Lewis Howes?

  attack them. He is a highly sought-after speaker, as well as the media's go-to guy on self-defense and victims' rights. And his new book is out. It's called, "When Violence Is The Answer." Now, most of you might think that violence is never the answer, and I like to believe that as well. But I also like to believe in having an insurance policy and to being prepared when someone does come at an attack at your life. When there is a scary situation and you feel nervous and fearful and not sure what to do. And half the battle is really being mindful of the situations you're putting in. And Tim will go into more about that. And some of the main things that we'll cover are how to handle our most

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Innate fear when someone bigger than us is dominating us. Also, how women respond to violence training versus men. Why the more you study the tool of violence, the more peaceful your life actually becomes. The social differences between normal people and predators. And why you should look where no one else is looking in your business. Very excited about this one. Tim again has a wealth of information and knowledge and has been a part of this world for many, many years, studying it from the biggest predators in the world. Why they want to be attacking others and how to make sure that you set yourself up to not be in that situation.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  And if you enjoy this episode, please take a screenshot, tag me on your Instagram story. I try to respond to everyone over there if I can. I'm always over on the Instagram, trying to respond to people. So take a screenshot, post it on Instagram story or your Instagram page. Tag me at Lewis Howes there on Twitter, Facebook. Let me know what you think. Let me know what's coming up for you. Let's have a conversation. This link is lewishouse.com/530 and you can check the full show notes out over there as well. All right, guys, without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Tim Larkin. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have the legendary Tim Larkin in the house. Good to see you, man. Very excited. Been a while.

• 3:35Lewis Howes?

  Last time we hung out was at your gun range in Vegas and I got to shoot some really cool guns. Yes. My girlfriend Jen and it's good to see you here, man. And I'm excited about. Love the place, man. Thank you, thank you. And I'm excited about this topic because I think it's timely with a lot of uncertainty, especially in the US, but around the world with all these different bombings and attacks and just people feeling unsettled in general. You are one of the leading experts on violence and self-defense in the world. And you've got this book out called, When Violence Is The Answer. Learning how to do what it takes when your life is at stake. Make sure you guys pick this up right now, Amazon and everywhere books are sold. Now, why, we were just talking about this before we started.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  Uh, most people you were saying don't feel like they need to protect themselves or they need to like take training on self-defense. Is that what I heard? Most people until they get an attack or something happens, they feel like they don't need it?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35Lewis Howes?

  That's what happens?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's a misunderstanding. So, so most people think, uh, in, in, in not even the idea of violence, they, they think the idea of training for say self-defense or something like that, that it's, it's really reserved for the physically elite. You know, they see something like the UFC and they see some of those amazing athletes and they say, well, geez, I can never be that. So therefore there's no reason for me to train. Or they go the opposite route and they say, well, I'm just gonna buy a gun. You know, that's the extreme.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  Or pepper spray.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Or pepper spray. They're gonna default to a tool, you know? And the idea is, you know, what makes us, you know, so amazing, what makes us so dangerous at the same time is the human brain. And so it's the idea of engaging your brain first and training your brain. Um, and, and understanding the principles of violence. And, and you have to specifically say violence because when we say fighting, fighting can be a lot of different things. You know, you know, uh, you can fight with your friend, you can fight with your mom, you can fight with, you know, it's a very vague term. When you say violence, everybody knows what you're talking about, you know? And, and that's the idea. That's really what we're, we're worried about. We're worried about another human being, a bigger, faster, stronger human being dominating us. You know, that's probably our most innate

• 5:45Speaker 01

  fear. And yet we have got to the point in our society where this subject has become so taboo that the only people that have access to it really are the predators or say the first responders in a very different manner. The civilian population, the ones that are most affected by violence, um, have basically been told, hey, don't, don't worry about it. Don't, you know, you don't want to train, you don't want to do these things, you know, just obey the laws, you know?

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  Right, you'll be okay.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Comply, you know, we'll get here. Well, that's just not the case. We're seeing that more and more. And you see extreme examples like, uh, you know, some of the attacks that we've seen lately where people are using vehicles or using knives or using very low tech. You know, violence with intent and people really don't have an answer to it. And so the idea is my, my big goal is to say it's okay to study the, the subject of violence. It's all right for us to look at, it doesn't make us violent. It doesn't make us criminal, you know, but it is a life skill everybody should be aware of.

• 6:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. This, I'm gonna ask my, the ladies in here, have you guys ever done any self-defense classes? One time at girls camp. One, one time at girls camp and you're 15 of you? No to self-defense.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  No self-defense.

• 6:56Lewis Howes?

  Now, do you think this should be a requirement for everyone? You know, not just women in general, cause I think those are the, the individuals that probably experience more attacks or susceptible to more attacks in general, at least in our society. But do you feel like it should be a requirement for all women and for all human beings, whether it be in grade school or middle school or high school at some point, to go through a basic training self-defense class or when violence comes class?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, and here's, and people get skewered for this, you know? We had the former Miss America when she accepted, uh, she's a Miss Nevada. And, uh, when she, uh, got up there, she said, hey, I, I have a black belt in taekwondo and I think every girl should, you know, learn how to defend herself, you know? Just a very vanilla statement.

• 7:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  She got skewered. She was told that, no, you know, you're telling women that they should learn how to, how to protect themselves rather than tell men that they shouldn't be attacking women. I understand that.

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  You're both.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I, I absolutely understand it. It's just like, you know, I don't think anybody should, you know, like this is your studio. I don't think anybody should come in here and rob your studio and take all of your stuff.

• 8:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  But that doesn't mean that you don't lock your doors.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  You know?

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And, and so there, there's some reality you have to put into this. And, um, with women, I think the subject is, is just explained wrong to them for the most part. They, they try, they're, they're taught as a lesser, um, a, a lesser citizen. And, you know, the men, they know how to take care of themselves. Hey honey, we're gonna teach you this way. Male or female, when we train, you know, women, I find women to be better students. They don't try to muscle things. They have a very clear understanding.

• 8:34Lewis Howes?

  They use the technique better, probably.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Very much so. And the interesting about women versus men is, you know, you and I have had to navigate intermale aggression. We've had to navigate locker room, you know, stuff where we communicate, guys communicate sometimes with violence. So we have that social violence that we have to say, is this social violence or is this the real thing? Women don't have that. When they experience violence, it's the real thing. Therefore, their ability to react, once properly trained, is, you know, pretty instantaneous.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  They're not roughhousing a lot and experiencing just...

• 9:00Speaker 01

  No, they know if a man puts their hands on, and it is men, men are the threat to women. Men are the overwhelming majority of incidents involving, you know, physical violence. And that is the biggest threat to women is a male, you know, a male, you know, using violence against a woman.

• 9:18Lewis Howes?

  Do we know the statistics yearly, at least in the US, of like how many domestic violence or whatever violence there is?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  We had, you know, I had the latest statistics in my last book. I just don't want, I don't want to give those because it's a couple of years ago. But I did this book a while back. You know, the telling thing for me was, I was with, you know, mutual friend, Tony Robbins. We were at an event and Tony, you know, Tony being Tony, he goes, it's a couples event. And he basically asked the crowd, he said, listen, I'm not saying you, that anything was about to happen or you really felt that. He goes, but I'm saying the last, what did he say, in the last week, have, has an incident occurred where you felt there was a potentiality for violence? There was a potentiality for you to experience a violent situation?

• 10:00Lewis Howes?

  In your relationship or in life?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Just, he just put it out like that. Probably less than 5% of the men raised their hands. Okay, last week. 95% of the women had their hands up.

• 10:11Lewis Howes?

  Really? Just maybe walking down the street or just feeling weird?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, getting in an elevator, unfamiliar male comes in there, they're far more, women are far more aware of violence than men, for the most part, the potentiality for violence. And what's interesting is it's, they also are the most difficult to get in, to take training.

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  We've been told, they've been told, the society is not, you know, first of all, it's not, you know, ladylike, you know, you have that aspect of it. We're getting kind of past that. And then a lot of the training is not really geared towards women.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  If I have a woman, we have to assume the threat's always going to be bigger, faster, stronger, male or female, you know, if we're facing, we're facing something. Women, though, are constantly put in situations where they're supposed to try to compete on athleticism and strength in certain situations, in certain situations, combat sports. Yes. What we need to do with women is train them to understand how to injure the human body. Injuring the human body, which is a differentiation, it's putting an injury on the human body that takes away the bigger, faster, stronger aspects of things. There are areas in the human body that are all accessible. We're all weak in the areas of our body, you know? So, the big thing, the big mind training, the mind switch that I get with women is I

• 11:24Speaker 01

  train them to stop looking at the differences in their attacker and start looking at the similarities. And the idea is, instead of saying, "Oh, my God, this guy's so much bigger than me", he goes, "Oh, he has a neck like me. Oh, oh, he has a knee like me. Oh, he has..." She starts recognizing right away all the, all the points that are going to, you know, she can go directly to and get a result if her right is on the line. Eyes, neck, knees. Yeah, all of that. And so, and that's the biggest difference in when you're talking about, you know, using violence to protect yourself, is you have to be able to recognize the similarities in the human body and go after those and ignore all the differences, you know? Sure. And it takes a little bit of time to, to get that across, not, not a long time, but you just wrap your head around it. Once you make that switch, it's amazing.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  You look, people laugh all the time. In fact, I was just doing an interview with a friend of mine a while back, and he goes, "You know, I had to stop training last year." He goes, "'Cause I kept, you know, all I saw were targets on the human body when I was talking to people." Really? And he's trained for years with us and everything, and he was, he was half joking, but he, but he wasn't. That's what I want to give everybody, is the potentiality that, "Hey, I know exactly where to go and what to do, you know, should there be a physical altercation." But I don't have to live this crazy paranoid life.

• 12:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  You know, I can actually, what's really interesting is the more you study the subject of violence, the more peaceful your life is. It's crazy, you know, it's counterintuitive. But the idea is it's almost like anything else that you conquer. You know, if you have a fear of swimming and you learn to swim, you no longer are nervous around water anymore. Anything like this. Once you understand the tool of violence and how it applies to you and how you can use it, and you know what you need to respond to and what you don't need to respond to, all of a sudden you look at the world differently and you look at threats differently.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  And that's the greatest thing, yeah, to give people that kind of confidence to understand that, you know, is really huge.

• 13:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think it's more, it's really just setting yourself up to win in every situation. So when you're walking down the street and there's someone walking behind you, you know, just understanding what you should be thinking about or how you should be approaching it. Or if you're in an elevator and then someone comes in who maybe has a weird vibe, like where to stand and how to position yourself and just how to be prepared if something goes wrong, right? And I'm assuming that's a lot of what it is, just like being aware, being mindful and being ready for anything. Not saying you have to have your guard up all the time, but just like, okay, well, I'm gonna turn this way and wait 30 seconds till I'm out of the elevator, then I know I'm good to go and I don't have to worry right now.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Is that a lot of it?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, well, the whole idea is for you to, to sit there and just have an understanding of how the tool, how the tool works, you know, I give extreme examples. But basically if, you know, if, if there was an assault right now, if somebody ran in here and, you know, attacked me, say, say attacked me and it was successful and grabbed a knife and, and, you know, stabbed me and killed me, you know, and put him in the neck, horrible, right?

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  It would gotta be a criminal, it'd be a criminal act and, and, you know, he probably should be prosecuted. Uh, to full extent of law, probably incarcerated the rest of his life.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Or we could have that same scenario. Guy comes in and this time I'm successful. I see that he's, you know, he's getting in a lethal and my life is in danger and I see that knife and I'm able to use that knife. I'll stab him in the same area of the neck and I end up killing him, you know, horrific, but probably should agree that, hey, Tim was justified in doing that. This guy was, you know, this guy was absolutely criminal and trying to kill him and he was in fear for his life.

• 14:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  What I try to get everybody to understand is we love the story on either side of that, but the fact is this, if it was the good guy or the bad guy, the knife to the side of the neck worked each time. It didn't care if it was a good guy or a bad guy. So therefore violence is just a tool and learning how to use it effectively does not make you a criminal. How you use the tool will be determined whether or not it was justified or, or, you know, criminal. And everybody says, well, aren't you afraid putting information out like this, you know, that the predators will have it all? You know, that's the first thought. I understand where they're coming from, but the sad truth is, and the scary fact is, they don't need it.

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they don't need this company. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  The people that really need it are, you know, the, the good people that are out there, you know, your folks that are listening right now, I would say the majority of them need this information.

• 15:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I would say probably 90% of people haven't gone through self-defense. I'm just assuming, but maybe I'm wrong.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  A lot of fault of that is our industry. Our industry puts it out like, you know, there's a lot of machoism in the industry. There's a lot of guru, follow the guru, you know, it's not really client focused. You know, we try to be very client focused. Everybody's human machine is different. You know, you're taller, you know, she's smaller, she's, we work with everybody's human machine because it's a very personal thing and everybody's human machine can get a result. But if you sit there and the whole thing is about, hey, look like me, or I'm going to put you in these really difficult scenarios that basically are going to break your confidence. It's going to make the instructor look good, but it's going to make you, all you're going to come away, if, if any of your training is such that the only thing you can come away and say, Oh my God, my instructor was so amazing. He was great.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  That's bad instruction.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  You know, it really is about, hey, what can he get you to do? You know, and that's my goal. My goal is whenever I I come in contact with anybody, you know, by their end of their time with me, you know, what were they able, what did they come here with? And what did I have them leave with? And that's the most important thing. And that's a very hard thing because there's lots of things I would love to show people.

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  And it's fun. A lot of the fun stuff that I like to do is beyond most people's coordination. You know, it would take me too long to get there, but I can make them effective very quickly. You don't have to be, um, you know, an amazing athlete to be effective with the tool of violence.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Let's just say people listening are never going to take a self-defense class.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  But they're listening here and you've got a few minutes to share with them some basic training verbally, or if they're watching on the video, uh, what would you say are the main things they should be focused on? When they feel an attack, hand to hand, no weapon, but just a physical attack? And it, you know, this is hard to, I guess, put parameters, but just in a normal setting, you know?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Normal violence setting.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  The, the one thing that I would, that I would absolutely tell everybody to do, and it's going to sound like a pat answer, and it's not. Pay attention to the non-verbal cues. Pay attention to your situations. And I'll tell you, I talk to everybody that's had, you know, as I told you, 70% of people come to me, come to me after the fact, after, after violence has already affected their lives. You know?

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  Cause they don't want it to happen again. They want to be ready for it.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they want, it's kind of like, it's like everybody buys a burglar alarm after you've had the break in.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Type thing. I can't undo what's already been done, but I can give them principles and methods to make sure that it minimizes the chance of it happening yet. One of the things that I've learned is when I, when I walk people back, people normally will come to a point to where I felt uncomfortable here. But socially would have been awkward for me to do X, Y, or Z, so I continued on. And then by the time it got to here, you know, it was already, we're talking like, like you're saying, hey, hands on physical. If it gets hands on physical and you have nothing in the toolbox, you know, I can tell you, hey, do whatever it takes, but you don't know whatever it takes. You know, you haven't thought about that. So yes, you're gonna, if, if somebody is putting their hands on you and you're facing grievous bodily harm and you need to be able to physically protect yourself.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Most people though. Can avoid 99% of those incidents by following all these nonverbal cues that we get. You know, our body communicates to us in much different ways. Feeling, fear, sensory. Yeah, all these things and be okay with being embarrassed. Be okay with looking, you know, ridiculous. Better to look ridiculous and be alive. Absolutely, you know, um, I had a friend's wife who, uh, she was a teacher. She was a PhD and she was finishing up her, before she got her PhD, she was finishing up at grad school one night. She was parked on the third floor. Her friends were parked on the second floor. Her friend said, hey, we'll drive you up, you know, and drop the car. It wasn't too bad. It was like, you know, probably nine 30 at night. Um, it was in San Diego and she was like, oh no, there's no reason, even though there's

• 19:25Speaker 01

  a sketchy guy that was walking around in there and she felt bad because she thought maybe she was judging this guy. So she lets her friends go to the car. She comes up and luckily she's one of my instructor's wives and she had been through not a lot of training. She'd only been through like one of our weekend programs and like two years prior.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  When she got to the third floor, the door opens and there he is. No way. Literally right there. That's creepy. And she just knew right away. She had her briefcase in her hand and she just rammed her briefcase into his groin and then she was able to hit him in the side of the neck. Now she's a little woman. She was like five, one, and this guy was much bigger, but you know, he reacted to the strike to the groin and then the neck was exposed and she was able to hit the neck and hit it on to the side of the, uh, of the, uh, door, the, you know, the elevator door that knocked him out at that point. You know, it was, because he was not expecting this. Sure. You know, and she felt threatened right away. And so I'm talking about women, you know, she didn't hesitate. She knew there was something where, wait a minute, he was just on the first floor. He saw me say goodbye to my friends.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I come up and he's not just like there, he's right there, you know, we're getting in there. So she didn't hesitate, which to her credit, you know, probably saved her from a physical assault. Now the question a lot of people say, well, gee, what, you know, you know, like. Maybe he wasn't gonna do anything. Well, it was a good deal, you know, maybe it was a huge misunderstanding and her husband says the same thing every time. He goes, well, I'm really happy it turned out that way. He said, because I still have my wife, my sons still have their mom and it could have been that way, but what they do know is by the time security got up there, that guy was gone. You know, he was, he was out of there. So, you know, most likely he wasn't, uh, he wasn't planning anything, you know, good. But those are the type of stories that that I tell because you know, everybody goes, wow, that's amazing. And you know, look, oh, she knew how to in you're thinking, oh, okay.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  You know, briefcase to the groin and then side of the neck. You're thinking wrong because what she kicks herself about is she said, I knew, I knew, and I ignored it because it was socially awkward. I didn't want to put my friends out. I didn't want to do that. And she almost had a horrible thing happen to her, you know, and she was able to avoid it. And it was just because she did have something in the toolbox. She was able to protect herself.

• 21:35Lewis Howes?

  But she shouldn't even have to go there.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  That's what we don't.

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  Take the ride when she had the feeling. Say, yeah, drive me up. It's two minutes extra.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  That's the goal. That's the goal with every one of my clients.

• 21:42Lewis Howes?

  Or someone walk with me up there, whatever. Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  I had a client, I was talking, I just was thinking about this guy the other day. He was, he was an oil, Texas oil guy. It's probably about 15 years ago. Big dude. And just you could tell former Texas A and M football player. He just liked to go to honky tonks and get in fights. He's just one of those guys, a brawler, you know, like, like, not, not a jerk, but he was looking for fights, you know, he just thought it was fun. And he came to me on the second day of training and he said to me, he goes, hey, I just want to thank you. And like, you know, what are you talking about? He said, he goes, I called my wife this morning and told her, I said, just after the first day of training, he said, I am so lucky all these years that I didn't inadvertently injure somebody, you know, irreparably and, and, you know, get myself in real bad trouble and be in jail.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  He goes, and conversely, that didn't run into somebody that was a true predator that could have easily killed me on that. And he goes, I just want, he goes, I just want you to know, you don't have to worry about me anymore. And his wife was crying on the phone, you know, I was there. But it was a complete behavioral change because when you show people, like, people come to me all the time, they'll say, oh, you know, show me, you know, they'll say it half jokingly, they'll say, oh, well, how do you kill a guy? Like this. Then I show them three or four things, you know, real quick. Whoa, no, I mean, what scares them is it's so easy.

• 22:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  The, the, the human body is very fragile. I mean, we have tons of articles of two guys getting in an argument, one guy pushing the other guy, the other guy braining himself, and he's dead. Okay.

• 23:08Lewis Howes?

  Getting in the back of his neck or something.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  So, so that idea of, you know, when you're talking about just pure violence, it's extremely easy to injure somebody. So they'll say something like that, and then they'll want to back off. And they'll say, no, no, I just want to hurt him just enough. You know, I just want to do it.

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  To get away.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  And the problem is. There's no guarantees when you cross that physical plane, you know?

• 23:27Lewis Howes?

  With adrenaline and power.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  You don't know how it's gonna act. I mean, I show videos all the time in training where I'll show the epic bar brawl, where there's two guys slugging you out and it's horrific, you know, I mean, they're really going at each other. But at the very end, they both walk away and you know, it's one of those type of deals. Then I'll show this, another scenario looks very similar at the start. One guy hits another guy, that guy hits the floor, cracks his head and he's dead. This guy's facing manslaughter now.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And it's over like that. The same exact type of scenario. It was just luck of the draw that one didn't happen. And so you ask yourself all the time, you go, was that necessary? You know, I talk about the idea of looking at an event three days from now, is it gonna really affect you? You know, before you wanna take that action like on a road rage incident, you know, guy cut you off, especially, you know, here we're back in LA again. You know, for me, I bring back some amazing road rage stories, you know, from living here.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  But that urge, before you do that, you go, are you willing? Are you willing to take the consequences of this? Because what you think is gonna be maybe just a verbal or, or a gesture exchange could easily have you run off the road and somebody coming at you for physical violence. It's happened. I've had many of those people show up in my training. And are you prepared for that? It doesn't pass the three day, you know, the three day test I talk about all the time is three days from now, if you're sitting in a jail cell, you know, about this event saying, okay, was it worth it? You know, at that point, do you know, did you really feel your, your life was in jeopardy and that you had no options? And that you were devoid of choice and you had to take action? Very few things meet that threshold.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Or the other aspect I ask is, you know, three days from now, you're six feet under in a grave and your family's lost you and everything. Again, does, do either of those things meet that threshold? And when you look at situations like that, you calm down a lot. You realize, hey, you know, this guy's having a bad day, I'm just gonna let him go. I'm gonna let him have it.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  Take a deep breath.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I joke with people like all the time, kind of half already, and it sounds kind of extreme, but I tell people all the time, you know, I conduct my life in a manner that when I treat, when I meet people I don't know, I basically assume they're six seconds away from a shooting spree.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  I don't want to be the one to trigger it.

• 25:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  So what does that mean? It just means all the things that you you talk about all the time, you know, how to how to live a great life.

• 25:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And how to be be that person or that unknown person, even if they're a little bit aggressive with you or something.

• 25:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  You know, quickly, if you can say, hey, you know, like, people talk about this all the time, something as simple as guy getting aggressive with you or something, you just you just interrupt them. And you just go, hey, I'm Tim.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Hey, man, nice to meet you. I, you know, sorry about what. As soon as you say, hey, I'm Tim or I'm Louis, all of a sudden you're a person now.

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  You know, and it kind of, you know, does pattern interrupt. But people don't do those things. People let their egos get away. And and and women are not immune from this. Women, especially on the road race incidents, you know, they get really, you know, they get something about getting behind that wheel that they just get very, very free with their gestures.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And I've had, unfortunately, I've had a lot of them, you know, have incidents where they've, and that's what motivated them to come for training.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  On that, so, you know, the physical is absolute must for people when I have them. I want them to experience the physical because I want them to know what it takes if they if they ignore everything. So if they, if you're going to ignore that that uncomfortable feeling and you're gonna you're gonna let the social awkwardness, you know, keep you from getting yourself out of that situation. Okay, now I'm going to show you what it's going to take to get out of this because once it crosses the physical threshold and this person is coming at you for grievous bodily harm, you're going to have to do some very straightforward things to take care of yourself.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And do that. And what's interesting is when I kinesthetically lunk it in with training, then they hear the the preventative, the stuff that we've always heard, hey, don't do the, you know, don't go to the ATM at night. Don't.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  All those things that you've heard a million times, but you still do whatever you want to do. Once you've had the physical aspect of the training, you understand what it takes. You go, you know what? I can get up 15 minutes early tomorrow.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I don't need to. I don't want it to get to this point.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can do these behavior modifications, you know, um, and that's, you know, that's that was a motivation for me for for really writing the book. The.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Training your mind correctly is the most important thing. I can train everybody physically, but if I have not got your mind wrapped around the subject correctly, and most, very few people do. And I'm talking like, I, I'm in Vegas, I have a lot of top MMA guys that are there and a lot of them are my friends and they've come to me for training and they don't really have a good understanding of how to deal with violence.

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  Outside of the ring.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, and, and they admit it. You know, a lot of the guys admit it. A lot of guys take additional training and they do some stuff and I've got some really good friends and they're fun guys to train. They're great. Really humble, you know, for the most part, most of the guys that I met. But what's interesting is they understand that the gamification of violence, it can only be gamified if we take injury out of it. So, the way they train, they train to better their opponent. And in order to do that, if you just want to look at what is the difference between violence and combat sport, look at the rules. And the rules basically take out all injury to the human body.

• 28:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And injury to the human body is what makes us all the same and injury to the human body is the one thing that we can all do to each other. Um, now, we all can't compete, I can't get in the ring and compete with any of those top MMA guys and under their rules and they're, they're amazing athletes, you know? Um, they're good. We all have a chance in violence, you know, and that's, and I see it time and time again. There's plenty of video I have of top MMA competitors, unfortunately, out in the real world. Maybe being too aggressive or doing something and then being taken out by just normal guys.

• 29:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Normal guys. I have this one down in Brazil, these two fighters and I show it. I show how great they are in the ring. They're amazing in the ring. And then I show them at a gas station where they're kind of rude to two girls and some just normal, regular guys come in and they can't handle the idea of a whole bunch of guys in an open area. They're, they go right into combat sport mode, which is great and they're doing really good one-on-one and they're not paying attention to anything else. And that's when they, one guy gets in and ends up in a coma, the other guy was severely beaten.

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  On it, you know, and, and it's, it's not because they're, there's something wrong with them. It's just, it's how they, they train. They responded with a, with a competition.

• 29:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  To guys that were using destruction.

• 29:42Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  And, and that's, you know, that's just not a good mix.

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  When you go there.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  What would you say to all the peacemakers out there that say violence is never the answer?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Um, they...

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Are living in a reason, especially if they're living in the United States. The reason they're able to live the life they're able to live and the freedom they're able to live and everything there is because we've been extremely good at violence. I mean, the reason they, we as a human race exist is because we are by far the best species in the world at doing violence. Um, and I don't mean that from a glorification standpoint. I just mean that if, if not, because we are not the biggest, fastest and strongest. What makes us dangerous is our brains. You know, we're, we're good. We, we know how to work together. We know how to do things. Um, violence is part of us. Okay. Now, what they, what, what they're talking about, I would say to them, there is never

• 30:39Speaker 01

  a reason to use, um, criminal violence. I absolutely agree with that. There is no reason for, for that. But when you are facing grievous bodily harm, devoid of choice.

• 30:50Lewis Howes?

  You gotta protect yourself.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  You, you don't have, and you know, I've done these talks. I've done these talks with, with, uh, with pacifist groups and they've agreed with me. You know, on, on there, I've had, uh, tons of missionaries go through my training, you know, that they go through and they understand the idea of justified violence.

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  You know, um, but it, you don't advocate violence, but they're absolutely right. I mean, I think what most people, I think what people do is that they, they misunderstand what, what you're talking about. It would be like saying.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  Like war.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Violence is, you know, and violence just has that, that, you know, the name's so strong. You know, that word is so strong. Um, you have to think of it objectively, you know, it, it, you have to think of it as a tool. So you have to think of it the same way you would think of as a car. You know, okay, a car can, you know, go be great for transportation and everything. It can also, you know, mow a bunch of people down on a city street in France and you know, you can do some horrible things with a car. But the car itself isn't the problem. It's how the car is used. And so violence, uh, definitely has a place in our society. Um, and it has a place in us as, as, as civilians, as, as law-abiding citizens. The tool of violence is absolutely something we all should have, you know, just like we all should have a fire extinguisher.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I mean, The fact that people have say, you know, a fire extinguisher at their house, or they've bought flood insurance, does not mean that they're trying to bring a flood into their life, or they're trying to bring fire into their life.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  What they're doing is they're saying, hey, I realize there's a potentiality, it's rare, but there's a potentiality this might be happen, and I've taken action.

• 32:22Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna have to do this class soon because I've got, you know, a ton of life insurance policies, disability insurance, business insurance. Even though I'm like, do I really need to spend this much money on this thing that I may never use?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  But it's also like, would I regret not having it if something did happen to me?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:40Lewis Howes?

  If I did get injured and I have all these expenses on my team, would I be pissed at myself for not having the disability insurance that would cover my salary for the rest of my life, or whatever it is, for that term that I'm out? And, uh, and that's the way I look at it. Would I regret it not having it? Like, if I, if I didn't do the training and I got injured, would I regret and say I should have done the training?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  Unless you feel so confident in your abilities to like, take on something, and I'm, you know, I'm a big guy, and I've, you know, been in fights before, but I still think that I need the training. Like, even though I haven't done it yet, but I'm gonna come and do one soon because it's just good to have a couple little extra tools. Like, I never know if someone's coming at me, or what to look at, you know? What's the thing that you always look at when you're walking down the street, when you see other people? Are you looking at their hands first to see if they're like clenched, or if they got something in their pockets, or if they're?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It's, it's communication. And so-

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Body language in general.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Body language in general. So, so, you know, we, I talk about anti-social aggression, and antisocial violence. So, you know, the big, you know, the big tattooed biker who's obnoxious at the bar, he's not the guy I'm worried about. You know, he's doing a display, he's doing-

• 33:47Lewis Howes?

  Protecting himself.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  He's letting everybody know that he's the guy, and as long as you give him his social distance, he's fine. He's not the guy. But you look over in the back, and there's the small Latino, you know, gangbanger who's in there, and he's just quietly slipping the knife out.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  He's got something.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  While everybody's paying attention to this guy, and this is the guy who really, because he's not gonna let you know. He's truly a predator, and he's gonna be antisocial, there's gonna be no communication on that. And so that's what I train people. When we train, we train in total silence. And so, you know, I, I'm across from one of the, the best MMA gyms in, uh, Vegas and stuff, and the guys are great over there, and I like to go over there, and, and I lift weights over there, I love to watch the training.

• 34:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Some world-class guys are there all the time. Awesome music, love the way the guys do the grinds, they're always trained, they go at it, boom, and after a good takedown or something, they help each other up, and they're, it's really cool. Go over to my place. No, no communication, no music, people are in, no talking.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  No talking, and if somebody's down on the ground, not because, you know, we're not violent with each, you know, I'm not, we're not like hurting people, but if you get knocked down or something, I'm not gonna help you up.

• 34:48Lewis Howes?

  Why's that?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna do it because it's not gonna be there in the street.

• 34:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  You're not gonna be, you're not, nobody's gonna be there giving you a helping hand.

• 34:53Lewis Howes?

  No, you need to be able to get up.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  They're gonna be stomping on you or something like that. So what I try to do, and what people tell me, that has made the biggest difference in their life, it's not the strikes I show them, it's not the fact that I show them where to go, which is all important stuff, don't get me wrong, the physical training.

• 35:05Lewis Howes?

  It's awareness.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  It's the fact that I recognized when it went asocial. I recognized when there was a lack of communication, and all of a sudden, oh wait a minute, this guy's not communicating with me anymore. You know, he shut off communication, therefore he's about to take action at that point, and that's what saves people's lives.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of having that, that instinct, that awareness, being aware of your surroundings.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've done that, and the other, the other thing, I do training manipulations where I'll have everybody wear ski mask, and the reason I have them wear a ski mask is because we get caught up in the social. And what's amazing with people is, I'll show them all these areas that came in by to get a result, but prior to me doing the drill, they'll all be going basically for, you know, some sort of a headshot, some sort of a head communication shot or something like that. And there's, there's many good targets here, don't get me wrong, but that's what they'll be focused on. They put the masks on, and all of a sudden they see the rest of the opportunities, because they stop trying to communicate first, like, a guy will come, an untrained guy will come in, he'll look at your face first, and then he'll look at a, why, because he's trying to communicate with you even though, we, we're social animals, we wanna communicate.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  The predators, the ones that we have to worry about, are the ones that know how to exploit that, and they'll think you, they'll, they'll get you to communicate while they're taking action.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  Boom.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, that's really what you have to learn how to manipulate.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  Have you ever been in a situation where you missed the cues and you had to defend yourself?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I've had, I've had situations where, um, and what, what has been lucky for me, uh, you know, the, the- The great thing that I tell my students all the time is, there's nothing magical about me. I've been 25 years of doing this stuff. I'm a world-class master close combat trainer. I've trained just about every type of elite unit there is out there. Done it all over the world.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Done knives, guns, weapons.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Done all that stuff in there. I literally walk out this door right now, catch a pipe to the back of the head. I go down just like everybody else.

• 36:53Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  I'm not immune to it, you know? And that's the great thing about it. It's like, you know, what scares everybody is also what should encourage everybody. This works on everybody, you know? And understanding how to manipulate it, it's there. Now, the, the great thing about people that I train and, and, you know, somebody like myself is, they have to get it right, you know? And that's, that's a great thing. People have, you know, for the most part, when they're doing violence, they have lousy accuracy and lousy follow-through. And so they don't get, they don't get a true injury to the human body. And that's where you can, you know, that's where you have the ability then, you know, to respond and, and take advantage of that. Cause it's the first, that's the person that gets the first injury that usually, you know, ends up, you know, being the dominant, you know, person in the, in the, in the equation there at that point. Whoever's gonna win with violence.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And it's strange. It's, it's another difficult part of the subject in, in the book is the one thing that we have to switch when we're looking at acts of violence is, is one of those things where there's, there's, there's nothing to learn from the victim's perspective. And that's a hard thing for us because when we see an act of violence, we empathize with the victim normally.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  And we wanna say, how could the victim have undone the situation? And that puts us behind the eight ball at that point, you know? And that's something that, uh, that, that's something that's hard. And in training people to look at an act of violence from the successful use of the tool side.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Is a real, it, it's one of the more difficult tasks I have for people, but once they do it, it completely changes the way they look at things and the tool.

• 38:25Lewis Howes?

  Well, you talk about the, the brain being the most powerful weapon. Why is that?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Because everything starts at, at the brain. Everything you, the brain will go where you, the, the brain, your body will go where the brain tells it to go. So if you tell yourself, I have. No chance. I, I mean, brains are cool. You don't, you're done.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Give up.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Or if you say, you know, you're looking, go, oh, throat. I can get the throat. And then your brain says, cool. I know how to do that. I'll do that for you. You know, but it's, it's just amazing. It's how we talk to ourselves. You talk about it all the time when you're, when you're, you have some of the great people in here talking them how to use your brain. They're just using it for, you know, either business building, personal development or something like this.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  The biggest, the most, they, I don't want to trump everybody, but I'm telling you the most, the thing that'll affect your life more than any of that. You can get more money. You can, you can rebuild your self-esteem. You can do all those things. Violence comes in your life and you can't undo it. So if you can train your brain to understand violence and to how to respond that and how to really protect yourself. What I want people to do is I want to protect themselves. When they see an act of violence, I don't want them to do things that are going to make them an easier victim. You know, an easier.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Well, like looking at an act of violence and saying, looking at it like, oh, look at this poor guy. How could he have undone that? What I want to do is what the predators do. I was, I, I got to work, um, there's a whole section in here of, of the work that I did with corrections and, and, um, you know, talking to a lot of the top, you know, prison gang members through these guys and learning how they look at violence. Violence for them is a very different subject. Violence for them is like an entrepreneur looking at, at, at.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  They study.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Cash flow.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  They study.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  You know, it's precious stuff. And so they have to get it right because violence allows them like, you know, how we, you know, uh, you know, good sales and marketing campaign can fill our coffers and can give us, you know, the cash runway that we need. For them, that cash runway comes from the successful use of the tool of violence. It allows them to control drugs, the yard. It allows them to control the streets. It's extremely powerful. So they're very judicious in how they look at violence and they're very, uh, utilitarian. So they don't look at it from an opinion standpoint. They look at it from a result standpoint, what works. So when they look, when they were showing these prisoners like, you know, acts of violence. Not one time did they ever see themselves from the victim's perspective.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  They always saw themselves as the success, the person using successful tool. They identified with that person, not just because they're violent. Because that's the easy thing. Oh, well, they're violent guys and they're saying it. No. They understood when the environment that they're living in, they can't afford to look at anything other than the successful use. They don't want their brain to associate it with anything other than the successful use. And what they do is they'd say, oh yeah, that was good work. That guy did good work. The alpha alphas, they go, yeah, that was good, but I would have done this and they improve upon it. Now, you sit there and you go, wow, that's really harsh. Is it any more harsh than world-class golfer visualizing, you know, his, his putt, you know, he's gonna sit there, he's gonna visualize. He's, he's on the, he's on the fairway, fairway, fairway to, I mean, um, tee to fairway.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Fairway to green and one putt.

• 41:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Okay, on there. He doesn't go, you know, tee to the jungle.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Jungle to the beach.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  You know, and I'm gonna four putt.

• 41:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Nobody visualizes that.

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  What's gonna get the best result in that situation?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And so the same thing, same thing with violence, you know, when you look at it, you wanna look at it from the successful use of the tool. It's hard because of the subject and that's why I do it. And this is why it's controversial and this is why I gotta give it a little brown. They, they allowed me to write the book that I've been wanting to write for some time. Because I think this day and age, we are so inundated with acts of violence that we just don't have answers for.

• 42:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  And we look at these situations and we don't, we don't have anything in the toolbox. You know, we've been told there's nothing we can do, which is a lie. A hundred years ago, you and I, one of, one of the things that you and I would have to do, and the reason I say you and I is because it was mostly men back then. I'd do it. We were not complete in our training, in our ability to have a family and go on until we knew how to take care of ourselves. And it was, you know, self-defense and self-protection was just an inherent rite of passage, almost. And then it was expected of you. You're expected to be your own first responder, not a brutal person or anything like that. But it was expected that you knew how to protect yourself and your family and your assets. Um, that's gone away. We've outsourced that now, uh, to a great point.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And like I said, because we've been so successful and we have such an amazing country, um, that we don't have to deal with a lot of physical violence. Like our, our, you know, grandfathers did and other generations had to do it. Doesn't mean that we're any less violent. That's the one thing everybody has to understand. People, you know, will sit there and quote these statistics. And I see there's actually a really good motivation guy who I can't think of his name, but he did a really good video. But videos, we're living the safest times ever and blah, blah, blah. And he's, you know, he's close, the murder rates, this, this and this. I'm saying, yes, the murder rate's that way. But you're looking at the wrong items. Murder rate being down isn't because we're any less violent. It's because our medical technology's gotten better. So something, an act of violence that would have killed you five years ago.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Saves you now.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  We now can respond faster. We have better medical technology. We save them, but is that act of violence any less violent? No, it's just a manipulation of the statistics at that point. And so we are not any less violent. I was in Australia, like about eight years ago. And one of the guys pulled me aside in Victoria. Victoria is kind of where they have their FBI academy. And, you know, they were all saying how Australia, oh, we're very peaceful in Australia. So this guy pulled, he goes, I want to share this with you. And he pulls out this study that they did. And of the five cities in Australia, if you added them all together, it would be a little bit bigger than New York. So it would be kind of one of our bigger cities, you know, on there.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  It would be by far, be the most violent city in the United States.

• 44:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 44:23Speaker 01

  By like quantum leaps and stuff. It's just because it had been spread out all over the country that, you know, they didn't really look at. He goes, yeah, he goes, we're really looking at this. He goes, now we have strict gun laws. We have all these other things. He said, but you can't, you can't stop. He basically said that he goes, you can't stop the human brain. You know, the human brain is what if, if you have the intent to do violence, you will find a way to do it. Which is what's scaring everybody with all these latest attacks. You know, um, you know, these latest terrorist attacks that are coming on. One of the, the, um, you know, terrorism experts, Waleed Fares came in and he announced this. And I think it was, I think it was during one of the European attacks. He said, we're seeing, he goes, he goes, it's the one, it's the one weapon that we can't defeat. And everybody, what are you talking about?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  He goes, the human mind. He goes, we're up against the human mind now.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. He came out and said that and I was just like, oh my God, I've been saying that for years. It's great to, and not great, but don't get me wrong. But that's the truth. The truth is we can't, you know, we, we can, we can outlaw everything, you know? In Britain, they tried it like they've, they have such strict laws on say, uh, on, on knife laws there. To the point to where if you went to go buy like a butter knife, like a regular butter knife, it has a warning label on it.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Do not misuse this, you know, do not stop. I mean, that's, it's a feel-good measure. Because the person that would, you know, they would pick up something, pick up a screwdriver, they could pick up whatever, they'll, they'll use that, you know, what the real dangerous thing is the fact that you have somebody that wants to do violence to you. And what's really scaring us now is this idea of just using everyday tools, everyday things like cars and stuff like, and just attacking, you know, because now we're seeing that, yeah, the human mind, if it's given opportunities, which by studying, when I went in, I studied all the prison gangs, you see how innovative they are.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  These are guys literally with nothing. And they're able to cobble together things and, and create weapons and do things in environments that you and I just can't imagine it could ever happen.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember hearing stories of my brother when he was in prison for four and a half years, just like the crazy stuff that would go down, uh, you know, from inmates in the yard or at night or whatever, it's just like the, I would never want to be in there.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  No, I mean, in times that I was there, I, I had, uh, um, I had a grudging respect, and I have to say this carefully because it sounds like I'm glorifying these guys.

• 46:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  But I had a grudging respect when I studied some of their, uh, their training methodologies. And I don't mean training methodologies just there, but training methodologies from even an entrepreneurial standpoint, the books they read, all the same books that every entrepreneur reads, you know, there'll be like

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  Forty-Eight Laws of Power.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  The, the prints, you know, they'll, they'll sit there and look at abnormal psychology, all the things that we do, the differentiation is they have a heavy dose of anatomy in there.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow, understanding like the organs and this.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Well, because it's the, the one Mexican mafia guy that they interviewed there, he was one of their, their head guys that had deflected, and he, uh, defected, and he, he was given, he said, yeah, he goes, you don't understand, he goes, we study anatomy because violence is our currency. He goes, we have to be good at doing violence, we have to be good at killing because that gives us our power on that. And what's interesting is It's the only thing, like I looked at that book list that he, that he outlined. And I looked at the JFK Special Operations Officer Course. And what they're required to look at it at Fort Bragg. Almost every book was the same there, except for anatomy and physiology. They ignore, our first responders are ignoring, you know, the basics of, you know, what to do, you know, with the human body.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Which I think is really telling and interesting.

• 47:59Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, man. Um, what, let's say, what are the three things, if, if someone can't go to one of your workshops or self-defense workshop, but they choose not to.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  Um, we'll just say the three things they should have in their tool belt, whether from first, I'm, I'm guessing it's instincts and awareness of the situation. And feeling if something's off, like to be aware and to do the awkward or uncomfortable thing.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  I don't know if that's the first thing, but what would be the three things that everyone should have in their tool belts? If they want to have something in terms of self-defense.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  It's not that she has this in the toolbox, they should have this in their awareness, number one.

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  Phone.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Phone. This is the biggest distraction anywhere. I've got a video, uh, in Seattle on a bus. Everybody's lost in their phone like this. There's a guy, there's a guy walking down the middle of the aisle with a 45, robbing people, taking their phones, taking all this stuff. Nobody's communicating with each other.

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  No one's noticing fear, no one's feeling.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  We're this close to each other across, and, and this is happening to you and I have no awareness. And literally this one guy is there and the gun comes right to here.

• 49:07Lewis Howes?

  And he's not even aware.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  And you go, oh, and, and he's the only guy that takes action. And so what does he do? He's there with this hand, he deflects and gets up and he penetrates. He actually goes towards the guy, which is really good move, penetrates in, and this hand he has his.

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  Weapon.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  His phone, what do you think he does with it?

• 49:23Lewis Howes?

  Hits him over there?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Think, right?

• 49:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, what's he do?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Stuffing, trying to stuff it into his pocket.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 49:29Speaker 01

  He's so used to like protecting the phone. His life is on the line.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Smash it in the eye or the throat or something, right?

• 49:35Speaker 01

  I show this all the time. People are like shocked when they see it. They go, you don't understand this. Now, good news is the rest of the group jumped on him. Everything's good. Got away. He got to seven people before that happened.

• 49:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  And they were so immersed in our technology. This, these things are great. Don't get me wrong. They're awesome. They're, but what they've done to us, this, the

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  In public.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Earbuds, you know, I, I mean, people are just taking away sensory system. These are all things that you've heard them before. But until you see it, until you literally, and the one thing about closed circuit TV now is we have all these acts of violence that we see all these criminal acts. Where you can just see people being taken advantage of. That'll cut down probably 95% of it. And it's hard because we're so used to earbuds. We're so used to like, and we like that privacy. We like to be able to get on to a subway or something like that. And they don't have to talk to anybody, you know?

• 50:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's the case. Keep your eyes open.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that's probably the only one thing I can tell everybody is it's, it's taking us over at, at that point.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Then I would say, you know, the general awareness thing is the other thing is just paying attention to your gut feelings on that. And the third thing is checking your ego.

• 50:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  And what I mean by it's so easy and we're so, we, we live in a world where we assume we know what the other guy's thinking. We assume we're on the same page and I come from a world because of who I see in my clients where I understand, no, we actually live in a world that's full of disproportionate responses. And so you and I might think we're in a verbal altercation and we can say something, you know, and I can, I can, you know, I can start using expletives with you and I can, hey MF or whatever. And that's okay for me because my friends and I talk like that to each other. It's not okay with you. That with you, that is a real threat that responds with an overwhelming source of violence at that point. I heard, uh, I heard an interview with, uh, Actually, one of our friends, Ryan Holiday.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  And he was talking in one of his books, he was talking about the fact that, he said, oh yeah, you know, he was talking about the gang members. And he said, you know, this gang member, you know, he's tagging, he's responding because somebody crossed out his tag. And he said, you know, if you just lived a higher life, you know, if you could do that. And I was, I was thinking to myself at the time, I talked to Ryan about this after, and Ryan said, God, I didn't think about it that way. What he doesn't understand is, what most people don't understand is, we see a mark being Xed out. He sees, oh, my ability to make money and territory has just been challenged. If I do not respond to this, I'm gonna lose this whole section.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  And this is, this is it. This is how I make my money. This is how I live, this is how I survive. And oh, not only that, they're gonna come after me if I show weakness at that point. So what to you and I seems as a ridiculous, you know, paint war that's going on to them has real meaning.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  You know, and so it's all context that you think about it. We can avoid so much by not playing into that and not allowing our egos to get with us. And I get it, man, when I was a young guy, you know, I responded to a lot of things I shouldn't have, you know, when I was there. I was overly confident. I was in special operations community. I was doing intelligence work. I was in South America. Yeah, and so I did some dumb things when I came back. I let my ego get the better of me. I wanted to show off. I wanted to show people how good I was at fighting and stuff like this.

• 52:55Lewis Howes?

  How's that feel when you got a stab in the arm?

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't until I lost one of my friends that I realized it's over like that.

• 53:02Lewis Howes?

  It's not worth it.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't matter how good you are.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  No, and over what, you know? Recently I heard, there's a great M and A commentator, former heavyweight champ, Bos Rutten, hilarious guy, great guy. But he told a story, and I thought it was really telling. I thought it was really, I really had a lot of respect for him telling this story. He was in Amsterdam, I believe it was Amsterdam, and he was at a bar, and he got... These guys were giving him a hard time and, and he, he suckered into it and he went out back and two of them jumped him and he beat the hell out of him. And he knocked the one guy down, boom, he needed a second guy, he really hit, the guy hit his head. And Boz ran and he tells us about a terror filled night in a hotel room where he was literally kind of covered in the other guy's blood, just thinking the police were gonna come get him.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And they didn't, he, he conveyed that. They can't get, they got him. Yeah, he, he was fine, he was fine, the guy was there, there's no conviction, nothing or anything like that. But, but Boz knew by the grace of God that, that, and he realized, oh my God, it wasn't, not only was it not worth it, it would have taken everything away from him. His whole life would be over. Yeah, over, over something that was completely ego based at that point. And I thought for a guy like that to admit something like that was really kind of cool because a lot of those guys don't like to, to, to tell stories like that. You know, they like to show a little bit of humanity, basically on something like that. And, uh, and that was it. And it's just not worth it, man. I mean, violence, the way I look at it is, you know, people ask me all the time, you know, uh, how, how can you relate? What, what do you, what do you mean by violence? And I said, well, I'll usually ask a group of people, hey, how many, how many people in this class?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  You know, like it's one of my classes, how many people in this class know how to swim? And, you know, I'll get, you know, just about everybody, you know, raises their hand for the most part. And I'll say, okay, of those of you that know how to swim, has anybody in here ever had to swim for their life? And a few hands will still stay up usually, along with mine, because I've had to swim for my life a couple of times. Wow. And I said, okay, of any of you that ever had to swim for your life, would you ever want to experience that again? And everybody's hand comes down and, and that's what real violence is. If you hear somebody bragging about, I got in this fight, I did, that he chose to use violence. That was, this is, he wasn't devoid of choice. People that experience real violence don't want to talk about it, don't want to ever have it happen to them again and are just very thankful that they survived it, you know?

• 55:20Speaker 01

  It's a tool that. You know, that you hope you never have to use, but you're so thankful if you have the information, you know, at that time, because unfortunately, you know, like my tagline normally, you know, for everybody is violence is rarely the answer, but when it is, it's the only answer. And, and that's the truth. And that's why this is, the provocative question is when is violence the answer? Because we've been told it's never the answer. And that's a lie. There's actually a time, but you have to clearly define it.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  And that's what we're trying to do with this.

• 55:52Lewis Howes?

  I love it, man. I'm excited for this. Make sure you guys pick up a copy. When Violence Is The Answer: Learning How To Do What It Takes When Your Life Is At Stake. Check it out. timlarkin.com. A couple of questions left for you. This one's called the three truths. I don't know if I asked you this last time, but you've written many books. You've done workshops for two decades. You've met with the top fighters, leaders in the world from all different walks of life. Let's say it's your last day and you don't have any work, video, books out there. It's all been erased, but you get to leave a message to the world that is your three truths, the three things that you would share with the world, whether it be three lessons or three ideas. You got to write it on a piece of paper

• 56:36Lewis Howes?

  and that's all people would have to remember you by are these three truths. What would you say are yours?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  First one's pretty easy. Don't waste any time on the wrong relationship. It is probably the biggest, if I look back on my life, it is the biggest time vampire that I've had trying to make a bad relationship work, you know? It, it affects every aspect of your life. And if I tell any young guy, I tell my son this all the time, I tell everybody, because you can get caught up, especially if you're a guy and you try to be like the white knight type thing. So that would be, that would be one. Number two is.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  You have to follow your path. You cannot avoid your path. You know, Steve Pressfield talks about it all the time. He's the reason I wrote this book. You know, I met him years ago and he encouraged me to do this, but his whole thing about resistance. You know, it's gonna get you sooner or later. Whatever that is, whatever's in you is gonna come out and you've gotta let it. You've gotta let that thing go because the more you avoid it, and there's brilliant ways we all figure out how to avoid it. You know, we can avoid it through a bad relationship. We can avoid doing our real work through, you know, saying, well, I gotta take care of the kids. I gotta do all this other stuff, but it's gonna eat at you, you know, during that. I've seen, I've seen literally three people in my life not follow what they needed to do.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  And it took a toll on them on there. So it'd be that. And then the last one is,

• 58:05Speaker 01

  look at the unconventional. Look at things. You're gonna probably learn some of the best information.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Like with this information, I learned some of the best information from the worst people, you know, the people that you thought had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I'm not saying that's, this was from my path, but I would say, look, look where nobody else is looking. You're gonna find some really interesting stuff, you know, when it was jarring when I looked here, you know, for this particular thing when I, when I went there. And every time I've looked in the unconventional path, I've found some really interesting material that I wouldn't find anywhere else. And I see too many people just following, just, just, you know, they, they, they just run down the same path everybody else is running down, you know? And you find your real gems and you find a lot of it with people who aren't very good at communicating.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  You know, you're gonna find some, there's, there's some real difficult personalities out there that you can learn some amazing stuff from, but you have to be able to put the time in.

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, I love that. Is there anything missing from your life?

• 59:08Speaker 01

  That's a hell of a question. Yes, yes, of course.

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Of course, there's stuff missing from my life.

• 59:14Lewis Howes?

  What's the main thing missing?

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Uh, there's not enough time to do everything you want to do, you know, and, and I, uh, at this stage of the game, I had hoped to have spent my time building, um, more of a, uh, instructor base than I have, you know, like to pass the information on. So

• 59:34Lewis Howes?

  Like instruct certifying.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so what I'm doing, and instead of doing, you know, we, we, we've trained so many people and I do have a good group of instructors and we've done that, but we all look at each other going, you know, and, and so we're trying to now archive everything. So it outlives us and stuff, but it is something that I should have been doing 20 years ago and going that path, you know, and put that time in now. So I'd have those people and, you know, I regret that and, and that's missing, you know, professionally from my life.

• 1:00:00Lewis Howes?

  Got it. Got it. Cool. Um, well, before I ask the final question, I'll acknowledge you for a moment for your courage to share and talk about things that most people don't want to talk about and to give us tools, humanity tools to protect good people when bad things happen. Cause I think that's when we should have this information, not using it as a weapon, just because our, we're hurt or we're upset or something in life. But I really believe you're helping a lot of people create awareness that could save their lives. So I want to acknowledge you for all the work you do and for lifting humanity up as opposed to putting humanity down.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Appreciate that. Thank you.

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Um, make sure you guys again, get the book, When Violence Is The Answer. It's out right now, or you can preorder it. If, uh, it's not out, it's out in a few days. Um, Learning How To Do What It Takes When Your Life Is At Stake by New York Times bestselling author, Tim Larkin. Um, where can we connect with you online? I know you have a free video series for this too. When people get the book, they can get access to a free series. Is that right?

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. If they go to either, um, you know, timlarkin.com or we actually have a, for the book, whenviolencestheanswer.com. If you, uh, if you preorder the book, then you just come back and just sign up and I'm going to give you a 10 module course that where I get to go in, you know, you and I talked, I put a lot into this book, uh, that I wasn't able to share. And so I get to do all the additional materials.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  Video lessons. Do you show like techniques in there as well?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're going to show everything. I'm sure video, I'm going to show actual videos of, of acts of violence to illustrate things. I'm going to show interviews from the prisoners. You know, and, and just really good stuff that really highlights what's in the book.

• 1:01:31Lewis Howes?

  So if you can't come to a workshop of yours, all you gotta do is get the book. You get access to his free training online.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  For the people that support, you know, they're, they're good enough to support me with an order, especially on such a controversial subject, I'm gonna go out of my way to make sure they get their values.

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. I love it. Make sure you guys pick up a copy. Um, and then you're Tim Larkin everywhere on social media?

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tim Larkin. If you see me, I'm on, uh, TFT Tim Larkin on Twitter, uh, and then Tim Larkin on Facebook.

• 1:01:56Lewis Howes?

  Instagram.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  All over. Instagram. I'm there.

• 1:01:59Lewis Howes?

  Uh, final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  I should know. I should know you're asking that. I listen to you all the time with this. Um,

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  probably, probably the, the, the real definition of greatness is the ability to

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  have the courage to do whatever it is that you have and you need to actually step out there. In fact, afterwards, I'm asking you to give somebody a push that needs a push. Um, but there are so many people that have things they want to share and, you know, the, the definition of greatness are those that take that fear and make it happen and use it as a motivator and get going. And I see so many people that just, they have great information to share and they just won't take that next step. And for me, that's where the greatness comes from because that's when we get information that we don't get. Yeah. I get to hear some amazing people on your podcast who, that's what they did. They, they stepped forward. And what's really kind of cool is you, you highlight this a lot.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  The other good thing is you find out these are normal people. These are guys that have the same fears as we all have. I mean, that's really what I get out of listening to your, to your show all the time is the story behind the guy and the fact, or girl. And this fact that, hey, they're normal people that have normal challenges, normal fears, and none of that stopped them from taking that next step. And to me, that's, that's just, if you only get one shot at life, that's, that's the greatness you can give.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  That's it. Tim, thanks so much.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  You got it, brother.

• 1:03:28Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 1:03:31Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. And if you did, as always, share it out with your friends. Let them know. Spread this information of greatness so others may benefit. If you have a friend in your life who you think could use some extra information on self-defense, or if you've had someone go through something like this before, make sure to share this out with them. Just send them a text, send them an email with the direct link, lewishouse.com/530. Or if you're listening to this on your podcast app, on your iPhone or Android, just click on the share button and send it to a friend right now. Always tag me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, @lewishouse, and let me know what opened up most for you. I'd love to continue the conversation over on social media.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  And make sure to check out Tim's new book, again, When Violence Is The Answer. Make sure to check it out because it's some powerful stuff in there. In my opinion, violence shouldn't be the answer, but sometimes we need to defend ourselves. We need to make sure that we set ourselves up to win and really just be aware of our surroundings. You know, sometimes people are going through a challenging time in their life, and they make dumb decisions. And you want to make sure you set yourself up to avoid those decisions that they make, where you don't have to be violent because you're mindful of your surroundings, your environment, and you're supporting yourself and being safe. I hope you enjoy this one. As always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.