the book is outstanding and you know it's it's it's more than just sitting with like sitting across you and you telling your story is one thing but this long detailed history of how you became to be the person you became I think it's very educational for people because they can realize like oh he wasn't always this guy right this is what's [ __ ] up about people like you see a guy who's like you who ones I mean how many ultra marathons did you run in a row you were at some stage I ran 808
weekends in a row to stop and think about that ladies and gentlemen 800s means eight 100-mile races eight weekends in a row a 100-mile race will put you out for [ __ ] six months right you know when you ran eight of them eight weekends or it's a [ __ ] it's a [ __ ] insane accomplishment it was nuts you think about a person like that you think of them as in this like static fully formed version right you don't usually get to see and especially someone like you who you went into so much
depth about your rise and fall and rise and fall it wasn't like a straight linear process between you getting inspired and you becoming this bad [ __ ] no it wasn't like what's that show called but that Will Smith plays that that black guy who kind of makes it you know in the financial world pursuit of happiness I never saw that yeah it's a great movie it wouldn't like pursue happiness man like like with the guy struggles and he and he gets over it and he makes it yeah I fell on my ass I thought
got the top of Mount Everest and my neighbors just [ __ ] slide right underneath me my house like I start from scratch again scratch became my friend literally man so you know that's that's how you put in the book man going up going down going up just a real raw version of how my life was in it was so in-depth to go back through your life with a fine-tooth comb that I almost got embarrassed even put it out there to people yeah that's what understand man like even me right now to talk to you
I'm in the car for a [ __ ] hour getting pumped up cuz I'm a shy introverted leave me a long time a guy like I'm still that [ __ ] who is six years old you know at a play who can't say his line because I'm Studdard in front of five people so I walk off the stage that still me so every day I'm fighting that dude so people think oh my god man you're the pod case look so crazy so evil no I'm trying to be locked in to Joe so my mind isn't
veer off saying let's run out the damn door because people are watching me on the [ __ ] podcast I want to open this damn door get the hell out of here man so that's two real me so I'm not sadistic man I'm focused on what I have to do to stay locked into the game of life and that's where and that's why I tell people man III go there I go there that's one of the reasons why this book is so good is because you're so honest about your vulnerabilities and how you overcome them
and for people that see someone who's a beast who's done great things you just assume that they're different than you right but then you hear about your insecurities and your pitfalls and all the things that went wrong with you and you realize what goddammit those the same things that go wrong with me like maybe I have that inside of me and I've just never summoned it right and I'll tell you this I started really realizing that when I started overcoming myself I started getting around these real alpha males these hard hard men and I always
put people way above me I was growing up like my god they had to have a lot more than me to get to where they're at and a lot of them did but once you get around the the best of the best of the best people you can kind of start breaking them down and realizing man you you're just as [ __ ] up as me like we all have but all you did was you hit it better your your your upbringing your mom and dad your society the way you were raised it hit it
better than then did mine you weren't the only black kid or there was like five and in a school you know I can't hide going through buzz I was only black you can't hide but I started realizing just because I look different than you a lot of you my first cannot either so I started giving me courage through watching people that were all have a story we all have a jacked up life in one way or another some of us don't have the guts to talk about it though and that's where I found the guts
to talk about mine well there's some there's purity in physical pursuits right because it doesn't matter what your social status is it doesn't matter how people perceive you when it when it comes down to how long can you stay in that pool when it comes down to how far can you run when it comes down to how much can you push yourself past the part where you want to quit how far can you keep going there's a purity in that that it did dissolve social order all that [ __ ] all the what people think
about you goes out the window it's what who are you right now that's right who are you right now that's a true statement man and I look at the size of psychological warfare and that's where I started learning that that life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself you play on yourself man the most important conversation ever had myself is with myself and the [ __ ] I was telling myself was so [ __ ] up it was so wrong it was so misguided and other people start to write that dialogue for
you also and start to be what you say to yourself every single day and I started creating a whole nother warfare a hold another battle started become them I was like oh hang on a second Congress you have these tools you have these tools your life was basically the perfect the perfect grounds for training for where you need to go in your life all the beatings are the other bullying all that you know you going through learning disabilities all the struggles it was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go do we need to
go and that's how I start looking at my life versus what was me poopypants kick a rock down the street mentality it was not God just hooked you right to [ __ ] up he hooked you right up man with the perfect place you were training for the first 18 19 20 so you were training for this stuff man you have the advantage of everybody else versus my god they're so above me they came from a great family mom and dad loved them they didn't have learned that they started they didn't struggle nah man your
struggle is what made you who you are now so I started flipping this into a whole different I thought it being a master of well scared of I was get up my mind and I became a literally a master of that mind and that's what now from now on it sets me apart from most people I started diving into that well that is a big part of the stories when you go over your childhood and you know your abusive father and then having this great guy that was gonna become your step down and then he
gets murdered it's like right when you're about to get out of it everything looks good boom then he gets murdered it's like these things really did sort of set you up to start from scratch again and just go okay Roger that we start from scratch and now you have that attitude you developed it through all of these horrible personal experiences all the trials and tribulations all the evil [ __ ] that people try to do to you that sort of set you up to be able to deal in a way that a lot of people
can well I used to look at my life from a different vantage point and when you're when you're in all the muck and you're just walking in muck and walking in muck and walk in the muck you don't see that if you look off to the [ __ ] left of the muck there's a sidewalk brother get off get off of it you you have your head down looking in this muck once I saw the sidewalk got the sidewalk I got a little break and I got a different vantage point and then from the sidewalk
I found a cliff and I found a mountain I got way up high on top of my life and looked back down on it and said okay I gotta figure this out man I'm not going anywhere I'm starting to lie I'm started like so we have a messed up foundation I start up lying about everything I wanted people to like me I wanted to be accepted in some Society of life some social Society and I say man this isn't the right way I messed up here I messed up here I messed up everywhere and so
I realized the worst thing that happened to me is I lost myself I never had myself and ever found myself I had no self-esteem so I knew through working out and through learning God it took a lot for me to learn also I started finding self-esteem once I found that that's when doors started opening I started I stopped caring about people that what they thought being judged well if I say this if I started right now are you making fun of me I'll stop caring about that and that's my life started really changing for me
slowly but surely that that's such an important point when you're talking about the working out because a lot of people when they think about working out they think of it as being a physical thing right no no I did it for mental yeah people are saying my god like no don't don't look at it like I didn't care about losing weight I don't give up being the fastest person I came out I wasn't making the Olympics I weren't going to prose I could barely read and write when I was in a junior in high school
I wasn't going anywhere I saw working out as a way for me to build calluses on my mind I had to callus over the victims mentality so I watched these movies I know I talked about rocket last time I was on here I always equated training to mental toughening like it I was like brutal people waking up early and doing all these things and look it looks horrible I was like wow I got started doing that not to get better bigger and stronger but that is what's gonna build me that looks uncomfortable that looks brutal
and getting up early I don't wanna do that some of this long list of things I don't want to do and through that I found myself I started like I'm like you guys aren't doing this [ __ ] in high school you guys are getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning running over here in this golf course so I started seeing myself very differently than the average human being I was like hang on a second I have something they don't have and that's not starts to develop these things do working out it was this
great never-ending work ethic and through work ethic I developed self-esteem now is this something that you learn is this something you learn yourself from from exercise yourself or is it something you had read or heard about like what made you equate this doing this and doing these difficult things physically to mental toughness to being this is the discipline that you need in order to get your life out of the situation you're in so I never read anything you know I could barely read you know so I wasn't reading back then I just saw I watched
a lot of movies and I was really big into visualization and I always equated working out to struggle and I struggled my whole life but I ran from it so I started realizing I got started facing the struggle and I got be mentally strong for the struggle so that's why I started coming up like I'm training for life mentally I'm training for life I'm not training for like set to lift 400 pounds and I found out on my own pretty much is that through this through through discipline through self-discipline through repetition do tons of repetition
the same thing that you don't want to do that's that's the key thing do repetition the things you don't want to do you develop mental like like an armor for your mind start to armor your mind come on say okay we suffer we suffer everyday that's what we do we do stuff that sucks every day so then when the sucks stuff comes you're ready for it and that's how started coming up you know I just start being very uncomfortable now I'm just like just a way of life it's a crazy thing to figure out though
it's like that you figured it out and you didn't just figured it out you embraced it like when you were talking about your senior of high school when you're talking about your your mirror being your accountability mirror like you had a radical shift like you just decided to not be a [ __ ] loser right and to start tightening up and start holding yourself accountable and and get ready for things so I have this my whole life and I mean I don't know if people believe in God or what I don't care what you believe
in there's been this unrelenting voice in my head we all have this voice it's too right or wrong voice and a lot of times that voice guides us into comfort and my boys got it mean to comfort a lot but I had this other voice I heard my whole life say hey [ __ ] what are you doing nah man we got to go over here we had go over here to that rock pile over in the [ __ ] corner where nobody's at that's that's where victories at we're over there that corner so this
voice was giving me all these answers not I went real smart kid growing up but I had this crazy voice in my head saying over there is where the [ __ ] answers are and I will listen to it because over there was pain over there was me looking in the mirror over there was me being accountable for all these things I went through my life you know people put them on me it's now mine to own and I'm gonna go over there by myself but I had to in this voice was guiding me there
out it's God with everyone call it but that's what that's what it wasn't me do you think that's just what you when you separate yourself from your ego and what you were your insecurities and all you like if you were giving yourself advice you would say that's what the thing is to do so do you think that's what it was like your subconscious or though you stripped away from all the [ __ ] when you couldn't lie to yourself because it's a voice in your head it's exactly it it's exactly it cuz it knew it
knew I was a character I was trying to find myself to a character I was making different hairstyles and sagging my pants and I was off I was off man was I was a clown I was a clown and and I was like this is not this is not what you're supposed to be in life man and it's ugly when you look in that dirty mirror and you're trying to do a new hairstyle to go to school you know I had the hairstyle one time where I shaved the top of my head you know how
old men had the hair like leaving their head yeah yeah so I went to school with hair on the side of my head and in my back and I shade the whole top of my head I just I went to school like that you know and then I had like one of the kids I wasn't I don't remember they said but I was just a funny dude so that was my thing I was the funny dude that came into school like criss cross came out when I was in high school so my pants were backwards
I see no pants backwards sag down past my ass crack shirt turn backwards with a toothbrush in my mouth with the reverse part reverse party as your head is shaved and you have some hair on top just a little piece of hair versus like a like a part right new hair the part was on a bald head so it was just I I would sit at home instead of studying I would think about what can I do to impress the [ __ ] at school that became my life and that is it's a long road
to hoe to get to the guy who says now you're never smile on any podcast looks so serious I look at that [ __ ] like you [ __ ] have no idea who I am who where I've come from to get here today you could have probably been an entertainer like you probably because you were doing all that kind of [ __ ] house and joke Joe I got some jokes yeah you do so what people read in this book can't hurt me it's a sad story it's a horrible story it's a tragic story
it's a story that made me who I am today but you have to learn to laugh at yourself too once you once you go through that [ __ ] I now so there's a lot of parts in there was like me against a lot of white people you know and I have a routine that I won't do so people who hire me to speak I'm not going to do the routine I often do it sometimes think about it I was a 36 black gotta go to seal training okay it's not how many people out of
probably looking at probably 11 12 to make it through probably 13,000 seals I was probably the 36 out of the 30 black gotta make it through and over just like they liked in 1940 you know you're looking at almost 70 years Wow yeah so you know you know you know do the math on that so there's not a lot of black guys and so I take that and I make a nice comedy skit out of that [ __ ] you know like like like the first time they tied me up and threw me it's called
drown proofing yeah so I'm negative boring as hell you know me too Oh related to that big-time yes you want a few white boys man they're negative boy you said and that's hard so imagine them getting your hands and feet tying your ass up and throwing the [ __ ] water and say swim ah it was like throwing a cat in the water with [ __ ] a brick on him so I was just losing my [ __ ] mind so is so many things I had to get over you know and I found humor
I found humor in my suffering I was like mother what are you doing out here Gaga it's like this is crazy like you're you're literally trying to reinvent the wheel but I was trying to reinvent my mind I was trying to reinvent my mind and I used every single tactic possible to do that I didn't want to live you know live in this world where I was a fake human being anymore and I was tired of blaming everybody for all that my dad beat me this happened I mean my dad ran prostitutes man my dad
literally snatched the soul out of my mom like my mom is still balan it's like I thought mom left my dad and this one I'll talk about in the book she got married three times for a total of six months you know I'll go there and I'm not gonna talk about the guy she married so this woman was she she's beautiful she's she's so smart all this stuff man this guy literally stripped her soul away tonight and I was young kid watching it and I had no slowly begin with in my and my brother he
has a story that he could write eight books you know my dad this came through this wash this all clean so to to to come around he died about four years ago four or five years you're not for sure I didn't go to the funeral but I forgave them so I saw my dad through an eight-year-olds I so so we left when I was eight and then that 22 I went back to see him through a grown man's eyes and he's the same person I remembered but I had to you can't live with hate you
cannot move forward as much as that guy try to ruin all of her lives that's where I came from I had to figure out the origin of where I started from so when I was going back my life trying to fix Who I am the fucked-up person I was like if your knee hurts is usually not your [ __ ] knee that's hurting it something else man like it could be a tight quad it could be the right leg if it's the left leg you gotta find out the origin of where all this [ __
] began and it was him so I had to go back to where you know my roots and the origin of all this happened and it's hard to do that did you make peace with them I'm a big piece with so we didn't have a peaceful conversation we you know we left very garanimal he's a he's a he's a vicious man he was a vicious man I mean medieval [ __ ] so I had become a medieval [ __ ] at that time I was 22 and I was a big boy and so I was
no longer the guy who was afraid it was not like hey I want to kill you type of [ __ ] and we were sitting at Denny's after an all-night skate or whatever help no he owned bars and skating rinks like that and so we were sitting down and we kind of got into it and I was kind of left and but I had to make peace with it in myself I could not hold on to that hate cuz hold on to that hate was half the reason why I kept falling into the same pattern
of failing I had to get how to start dumping off some baggage I had to start figuring out me through him and that's all he was there for he was the origin I figure him out figure out why he was so evil to my mom to me my brother and I to start studying him like a lot of people have situations where someone does something and we all attacked that person like like on the media if someone does something wrong everybody now is [ __ ] perfect and we now judge this guy I don't judge
him I don't judge anybody what I do is I start studying them why did they do that not in a judging way I want to learn from you and what did you get out of your dad I got that he was he grew up rough he had he was very insecure had a lot of kids and his insecurities just trickled over onto us so yeah he jacked us up real good but he never fixed himself so if you never fix yourself the next person in line is gonna get the wrath and we were next in
line you know his his first wife you know killed herself or whatever happened and you know got burnt up in the house or something some craziness man has lost up goes on there that I didn't put in the book is I'll fly going to court yeah but uh yeah this uh it was law stuff
