What's your advice to young men that are struggling with direction in life? >> Go. Go.
All the whatifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind, the more you sit there and think about it, the worse it's going to get. I'm like, I' I've buried my friends that are 27 years old, 30 years old, 31 years old. Like, if you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless, get your [ __ ] together, man.
I think a bit of your career in situations that would cause most people to feel a ton of fear. I think that fear is related to this confidence, conviction in my decisions. What have you learned about how to deal with and overcome fear?
>> Go. Yep. It's you when all that all that uh fear that's in your head, all the whatifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually going to happen, they all disappear when you go.
So just just take action and and start moving forward. And it that is the that is the moment that can last a million years is waiting to go. And I found I'm pretty good at it now where oh I'm like oh yeah I know what that is and I'm going and then that's it.
And once you go, you know, driving even, you know, speaking of in being in combat, if we were driving to a target and you're, you know, so you're going to go hit a target somewhere and driving to the target, the closer you get, you're thinking about all the things that go wrong, all the bad things that are going to happen, all this stuff. When one of my guys gets wounded, what if they have IEDs in the yard? Like there's a bunch of things going through your mind.
Once you like stop, get out of the vehicle, you all those things go away. Yep. And you're doing the thing and you're not worried about it anymore.
And so it's just go. That's that's the answer. >> Action is an antidote to anxiety, >> man.
Action is an antidote to all kinds of problems in life. Yeah. You know, it's I was uh I I I ski and I was up at I was up in uh Big Sky, Montana, and they've got this this, you know, challenging trail and I was at the top of it and you're thinking, "Oh, well, this could be the end of my ACL and like all these stupid things are going through my mind and I'm like it's like as soon as I got there just boom, just going just go.
" Cuz >> is that something you always had? >> What? >> That uh I feel fear immediately lean into it.
How trained is that versus how innate is that? >> I think it's I think it's trained because you go through you go through situations and it's interesting, you know, in the military, they're probably doing it to you on purpose or maybe it's just the way it is, but okay, you're going to go repelling, right? Repelling is relatively it doesn't feel that crazy.
Well, then you're going to fast rope, which is a little bit of a step up. And then you're going to fast if you're going to repel off of a building, right? And then you're going to repel out of a helicopter.
Then you're going to fast rope out of a tower and then you're going to fast rope out of a helicopter and then you're going to parachute and then you're going to freef fall parachute and all those things are all things that you can be afraid of. Even going back to like the obstacle course, which >> I think the tallest obstacle on the obstacle course might be the the the cargo net, which is a cargo net that you climb up. It's probably >> I don't know how tall it is, but it's tall enough that you are not going to be in good shape if you fall and you have to climb up the t cargo net and then you have to go over the top of it and then climb back down the other side.
But even that, if you're freaked out >> or you're scared, you're going to get stuck there. And there's guys that do get stuck. They don't climb over the top of it.
Not a lot, but there's occasionally guys that say, "Yeah, this it's they're not it's not happening. " M. >> So the longer that you sit, you hang on and look and stare and contemplate the chances of you falling off, it doesn't get any better.
So eventually you just throw your leg over and get over that damn thing. So I think I probably just experienced it enough and was cognizant enough to recognize that at some point, oh yeah, this feeling of caution and fear and all that stuff in the back of my head. Yeah, I just need to get rid of all that and just go.
>> It seems to go away when I move toward it. >> Yeah, it does go away. It 100% goes away.
There's got to be something that you do that you're that makes you a little bit scared. >> What >> What's the stuff? Going out on stage is one of those, you know, >> three and a half thousand people in London, this big event that we've been building up to for six months.
And my least I my two favorite bits of it, three favorite bits of it, half an hour before I'm about to go on >> as I go on >> and then just as I finish and as I come off >> one minute before I go on is [ __ ] awful. And it's the in the Humvey driving to the target with the people thinking about the things like [ __ ] just you know but you see uh greyhounds in the traps before they get set off. It's the exact same.
And that's a really really good way to put it. The fact that the fear of the thing is only present when the thing hasn't started. >> I I wrote a kid's book called Mikey and the Drgons.
And the the story is, spoiler alert, the kid he's he he's uh his dad is the king. His dad dies. The kid now has to defend the village from the dragons.
And you know, he's scared because he's only a little kid and he can't pick up the sword and he can't pick up the shield. It's too heavy. But he's the kid.
He's the son of the king. He's the prince. He's got to go fight the dragons.
And he gets a note from his dad that says, "Hey, stand up. Go attack the dragons. You'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of.
" And he gets up there and enters the dragon cave. And guess what? The dragons are little tiny cute dragons.
And but his fear is the same fear that we all build up for whatever that thing is. Whether it's going on stage or whether it's jumping out of an airplane or whether it's taking risk with some kind of a business situation. >> Well, the more you sit there and think about it, the worse it's going to get in your own head.
>> So good. Common areas I think that people are struggling with. Young men, very directionless at the moment.
What's your advice? You speak to a lot of young men, train a lot of young men. What's your advice to young men that are struggling with direction in life?
>> It's interesting because when I hear this, I'm I'm always a little bit puzzled about who these young men are that are directionless cuz I work with a lot of different companies. I have a I have a leadership consulting company. I work with all different kinds of companies.
And you know whether it's construction companies, energy companies, software companies, finance companies, like they're a bunch of young men out there and they are getting after it. Whether they're linemen, whether they're on oil rigs, whether they're software developers, like there's all kinds of people that are out there crushing. And so when I hear about people that what would you say are lost or >> directionless?
>> Directionless. Yeah. I mean, what do you want to do with your life?
I guess that's my question. What do you want to do with your life? Because you got one life.
It's It's going by quickly. And this is something that years ago I I spent a good chunk of my I guess it was my 30s training MMA fighters. And you know, we had a jiu-jitsu gym, we had an MMA gym, and so in the beginning when a when a a potential fighter would come in and they'd be 22 years old and I'd say, "Hey, how old are you?
" And they'd say, "I'm 22. " And and they say, you know, "I want to fight. I want to there's a fight card coming up.
I want to be on it. " And I was like, I'd tell them, "Listen, you got plenty of time. Like, get better, train, up your skills.
" And I said that for probably three or four years. And then after three or four years when guys would come in, I would start telling them the opposite, which is you need to get on it. You need to be in here every day.
The you're you're almost out of time. You're 22. You're late.
Because I realized I saw a lot of people that didn't have any sense of urgency in their life. And when you don't have a sense of urgency, things aren't going to happen. You need to make things happen.
As we already discussed, they're not just going to happen for you. You're not going to become a good fighter unless you make it happen. And you're not going to do anything in life unless you make it happen.
So if you feel like right now you're looking around with and you're lost or directionless, I would take about 15 minutes and figure out what the hell you want to do with your life and I would start getting after it. So that's that's my advice. Take 15 minutes, figure out something that you're into, and go crush that thing and and make it happen.
>> Yeah. I mean, for better or worse, life is really short. And it's this ridiculous irony that you only see in retrospect how short it is, right?
It doesn't feel short at the time, but I bet when you get to your 80s and you look back, you think, "Holy [ __ ] that went by in no time at all. " >> Yeah. I had that conversation with my with my mom a couple years ago and you know she said you know I was like oh how's it going talking on the phone and she said oh it's been a pretty rough couple months because this person died this person died this person died and you know you know she's almost 80 or something like that and so people die and I I kind of I said to her you know mom all those people that you're talking about that are 80, 85, 87 years old, like they've had a full run at it.
I'm like, I' I've buried my friends that are 27 years old, 30 years old, 31 years old, like that's that's horrible. And so people that got this full run, man, um be thankful that they got that full run. And right now, if you're a dude and you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless, get your [ __ ] together, man, and and go start making things happen.
>> Yeah, that sense of urgency is such an interesting one. You know, we we are prepared prepared to sort of waste years trying to work out what would take us days to do. Um, it's it is it is I I understand why some people have degrees of regret around that because they think, "Fuck, like, I I I don't know where that time went.
I wish I'd known this thing sooner. " But again, if action's the antidote to anxiety, the only way that you can work out what it is that you need to do is by hurrying up and doing it. And again, if the fear of failure, uh, the the fear of the unknown is worse than the actual thing.
You know, it it all ties together, I think, everything that we've spoken about. And by the way, you fail. Like, yeah, you're going to blow some stuff.
You're going to make some bad decisions. You're going to screw some things up. Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Like, that those make for good stories, man. Go go go get them. Go make them happen.
>> Don't sit around >> being afraid that you might screw something up. You're going to screw something up. That's guaranteed.
Go do it. Get a good story out of it. >> And also prove to yourself that you're not made of glass.
This was the first thing that I learned uh in striking which I'm sure that you at some point when you'd first started learned as well which is the probably as a a newcomer to any striking sport the most important day that you have is the day when you stop doing that when a fist comes towards your face because you realize oh actually if this happens it's okay >> y >> and it's that uh symbolically for your life right if I get punched on the nose >> my Life continues and my nose is still there. >> Yep. Yeah.
Go get yourself punched in the face a few times.
