In this podcast episode, Michael Ostrolenk, an expert in transformational leadership and optimal health discusses his views on achieving peak performance, including his participation in the SEALFIT event. Listen in as we explore the Resilience Challenges that Michael and JC Glick have been doing, which involve physical and psychological exercises. The conversation highlights the importance of resilience and the role it plays in our lives, as well as the importance of relationships, recovery, and rituals in optimizing one’s health and performance. Michael also shares the potential benefits and risks of various approaches to personal growth and development, including the use of psychedelics.
Michael Ostrolenk is a Master Coach and Head Instructor with SEALFIT Unbeatable Mind Academy. He worked closely with CDR Mark Divine (Ret- U.S Navy SEAL) in creating the Unbeatable Mind Online Accelerated Learning program in 2010. He also co-created and ran Unbeatable Mind’s Master Mind group called the Inner Circle (2015-2019.) He also worked with Sean Hargans Ph.D. in 2018 in co-creating the Unbeatable Mind Coach in Training Program which included program development, teaching and supervisory roles. He presently serves as faculty for the program. He also helped to organize and coordinate SEALFIT’s annual training and learning summits 2015-2019.
Michael is also a Master Coach for Spartan 7 Round Table Phalanx Executive Experiential and Leadership Course under former U.S. Navy SEAL’s Dan Cerrillo and Chriss Smith.
Michael is the Director of Human Resilience at Apeiron Zoh where he works with medical and psychological staff in creating online and in-person programs seeking to transcend the limits of human performance and health.
Connect with Michael: https://www.michaeldostrolenk.com/
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Now here’s your host, Marcus Aurelius Anderson. Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Michael Ostrolenk.
01:00
has been exploring the relationship between post-commissional living, transformational leadership, and optimal health his entire life. His interest of human growth and the personal development began when he was nine and was working with psychotherapist Pat Lawson, learning biofeedback, meditation, and guided imagery. Now I’m reading off of his micro-optionlink.com about me, bio. There is so much in here. He’s been doing this stuff since the late nineties, got his master’s degree at that point, transformational.
01:29
counseling, psychology, but I could go on and show you all of these accolades. But the other parts that are even more impressive to me are this ability for him to have done the Kokoro event in 2010, which is 52 plus hours of the SealFit event where there’s no sleep. It’s all about pushing on the gas to see what you’re capable of. He was also master coach and head instructor for SealFit’s Unbeatable Mine Academy and worked closely with former Navy Seal Commander Mark DeVine.
01:57
With the immeasurable minds online accelerated learning program, there are so much in here. So instead of trying to spend 20 minutes reading his entire accolades, I’m just going to get the man on here and we’re going to deep dive in. Thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate your time and I look forward to our conversation. Yeah. Thanks Marcus. It’s great to be on. So cool that you reached out to me and we’re engaging in this conversation. looking forward to it. Well, JC Glick, saw you guys working together and if you work with him, he only works with quality people. He only wants to be associated with quality people.
02:25
And on LinkedIn, for those who either weren’t tracking, you have this, were there resilience challenges that you were doing during the day? Is that what you guys were bringing together? Yeah. So every Monday we drop, we call it JC and Mo, Mo, Ostrilink, my initials. Critical challenge. so they’re here of physical ones and then psycho-spiritual, psycho-emotional ones as well. So we dropped two so far. just literally just launched a couple of weeks ago. The first one was actually the most recent one we just did was
02:54
called Mirror Mirror on the Wall. And the first one we did is Crucial Conversations. Crucial Conversations is just literally teaching you to think about what conversations do you need to have with important people in your life, spouse, partner, workmate that you’re afraid of doing, you’ve been putting off a long time. Developing the awareness of like how to do it well. And then the Mirror Mirror on the Wall, which you just released Monday, is if there are traits in other people that you don’t like, look at that in the mirror and ask yourself, do I possess an asset to that trait at least?
03:25
some of the exercises are gonna be more like kick your ass and get on and do like 50 this, 50 that, 50 that. So it’s a lot of physical stuff too, but the first two are more psychologically oriented. And that’s so important. mean, having that young in idea to see where’s the shadow, where’s the darkness, what am I not acknowledging? How is this gonna ambush me later in the future? How am I reinforcing that? All those things are tremendous. And for those that don’t know, tell people about what Kukoro is and what some of your takeaways were from that. That’s awesome. So actually I’ll step back and actually I did,
03:54
the three week soft Academy leading up to Cucura. Wow. Three weeks off Academy is a training program commander Mark design created to train young men who want to go to Navy special warfare. I think he had about an 80 % success rate of people go through that program and make it through. But yeah, I was 39. I wasn’t going anywhere, but I did it anyways. And it was closer to a month. Let’s just say it’s three weeks. I trained with the most amazing young men and all of them that I trained with are now seals. Like these are just.
04:22
top quality young man in their early twenties. was the old dude, but we trained 12, 14 hours a day. And on occasion, we would be woken up at one o’clock in the morning to go do crazy shit in the ocean. That’s cool. finished Thursday night and then Friday we started Cocoa camp and Cocoa means indomitable spirit. And it is about 52 to 53, 54 hours at the time we did it. No sleep. not allowed to sleep. You slept, you got punished. And I’ll share a funny story about that.
04:50
And you literally train you go from one evolution to the other you’re in the ocean you’re on the beach you’re on the grinder In the mountains, I mean except for eating you’re training training training training training and It was amazing because I did it rogue fitness came in videotape our whole coke row camp Wow, yeah, cuz we had CrossFit athletes with us and It’s amazing cuz like, you know, I was in damn good shape for me, but CrossFit athletes are gonna play you there in another world, right? That’s
05:19
Yes. But a lesson I learned watching them, because some of them dropped out is that, and they’re in amazing shape, but it’s different to do prescribed exercise for a very particular period of time that you know the rules. You know exactly what you’re supposed to do from one thing to the other. Co-crow camp is completely not that. I mean, you’ll have two CODGRI giving you different instructions and you’re like, what fuck am supposed to do with that?
05:47
And you got the water hose going so you can barely hear what’s going on. And you’re just being flooded with information. The intent is to put you under immense amount of stress. Absolutely. To see if you have emotional resilience, mental toughness, you’re able to keep your center and work as a boat crew. And I’ll share this story. I don’t know if you saw my posts on LinkedIn, but a good friend of mine passed last Friday. Dan Cirilla is a former SEAL. I worked for him at Spartan 7. I coached for him in his program, but he actually trained me up.
06:17
for three McSouth Academy co-camps. I’ve known him for about 15 years. he programmed me. Uh, big loss to the SEAL community. He’s an amazing man. Big thanks to me. Love that guy. SEAL feel it. I mean, it literally just die last week, but I want to share this will give you some insight, both into him. Cause I love the guy, but insight into like what the intent of co-crow camp is and how it’s different than many other physical activities. So because he trained me up.
06:46
I didn’t realize this, but he had higher expectations of me than all the rest. I’m like, I didn’t know that going in. thought, oh, you’d like me. So like, cool. Like you’d be nicer to me, but it’s a completely exact opposite. So 40 hours in and 40 hours in is like, Hey, we’ve already done Murph. We’ve done Cindy, the CrossFit workouts, know, we’ve been in the ocean. We’ve done, we’ve done the law of PT, thousands of pushups and sit ups and know, 40 hours in this long time. And he walks up to me. He’s like, Australia, like, how did you fall asleep?
07:17
And I hadn’t, right? Cause if you fall asleep back then you get punished and your boat crew gets punished and there’s no fucking way I was going to fall asleep. But I said, no, Coach Rill, didn’t fall asleep. And he says, are you calling me a liar? And right then and there, I’m like, Oh God, like I can’t win. Yep. Cause if I call him a liar, I get punished. say I fell asleep, which I didn’t, me and my boat crew get punished. I’m like, I’m, I’m, I’m apt. Right. So I sat there waiting for the punishment. Right.
07:47
The first punishment was pretty just more emotional than anything. He lined up all my fellow students and all those seals and one by one had to go in front of them and apologize for falling asleep, which, effing suck. Cause I just fall asleep, but okay. You you brace the suck boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I’m like, okay, that’s, that’s it. Emotionally hard, but not too bad. Okay. can handle that. Next thing I know he says, Hey, get on the grinder and start doing four count leg lifts.
08:14
And because I had a boat crew of the guys that did the three weeks off Academy, they all joined me and he’s like, no, no, no. He also only does it on his own. So I’m just doing it. And these guys got a break. Like, it was like probably nice for them. And I’m just doing it for about a half an hour and half an hour of four count leg lifts is a bitch in and of itself. After 40 hours of training, it’s even more of a bitch, but you just embrace the suck. Cause you’re like, there’s nothing you can do. Like that’s just what do. It’s over. like, okay, punishment lesson learned. Cool. I can move on. I thought.
08:44
Go to the ocean, go to the beach. We’re doing beach evolutions. And he walks up to me and goes, stingray. Now stingray was my nickname. Cause unfortunately I got stung twice. I’m not Thursday and Tuesday doing the three week self Academy. And I can tell you that story. If you’re interested is the most painful thing ever. But I’ll tell you that later. If you want to circle back, but of course, ding ray put on that weight vest, like put on the weight vest because go neck deep in the ocean and think about what you did wrong.
09:14
So I go out in the ocean and literally, you know, if you can think about it, the only thing I could do is calf raises. Yes, my head over above water, but you had to time out the ocean. So at time of wrong, I fall forward with a weight vest. I’m drowned. I’m wrong. I fall backwards. It’s like, I’m just doing this, doing this for half an hour calls me back in punishment’s done. But that’s the point. Like he showed me what I’m capable of. And in the ocean evolution, I said to myself, I will die before I quit.
09:45
I will die before I quit. Now it’s kind of silly for a civilian in a non combat situation to do that. But that was, that was my fucking mentality. I’ll die before I quit. And with the four count leg lifts, I’m like, braces suck. And there’s no winning. Like I can’t talk my way out of it. And it’s like, just you, you do it or you quit and I’m not quitting. And those are the kind of the big lessons besides the teamwork, teamwork is huge. It’s part of Koko Broke In that I took away from it. And I’ll tell you another lesson, two other lessons I took.
10:14
One from the Coco camp and one from the three weeks off Academy. do a lot of spraying of the hoses on you. You’re doing pushups, you’re doing sit ups and you’re just spraying, spraying, spraying you. And I have asthma. like, scares a shed of me not being able to breathe period, but then I’m in the water and there’s actually a picture. Like I don’t know the God smile and his name is Brad McLeod is dumping water in me or something like that. it’s a picture of it. And I stopped fighting it. Yeah.
10:42
I’m, I stopped panicking. I’m just going to fucking accept whatever it is. And the minute I did, he stopped because he saw that I got it. And now it’s just a lesson of surrender. Yeah. And then I had another during the three weeks off Academy, Mark Devine, he’s a big dude. He was like, we are fought. We did a lot of hand in combat. And one of the exercises was in the ocean where he holds you down for a minute and you have to fight your way up. And one of the reasons that.
11:10
All the reasons, one of the reasons I chose to do this program with seals is because I had a water fear of drowning just with the asthma. Like I don’t like not breathing. I use just kind of ingrained in me. Of course. And he held me down for a minute and he’s strong as fuck. So like trying to fight, fight my way up. But you know, I made it up and it was successful, but there are many opportunities like that just to get through my fears and overcome them. And Coco Camp and three soft Academy were like awesome opportunities.
11:39
to see what I’m capable of 20 times more than I thought and overcome some pretty ingrained fears of mine. love that lesson because that capitulation, just acceptance, the faster we get through those five steps, the faster we go through denial, anger, bargaining, Depression and then acceptance, especially from a tactical level, like from a martial standpoint, the faster I can get to like the reality, the sooner I can attack, the sooner I can counter, the faster I can begin to respond.
12:09
Yeah. But if I’m in this place, I’m like, why the fuck is this going on? What am I doing? I’m literally putting the brakes on when I should be accelerating. And here’s the other part. The beauty of that capitulation is there’s this shift. There is this change in us from a neurological standpoint, our whole model of cascade changes. And now we say, now what? With my story. Yeah. Um, that’s what it was. I, for four months, I’m paralyzed from the neck down and I’m a victim and I’m mad.
12:37
And this isn’t fair and why is this happening? And I’ve done everything right. And I’m trying to serve my country and I’ve been a good person. I’m 40 and I don’t have anything to show for my life. put all my eggs in this basket and that’s taken from me. Once I finally got to that place of understanding that anger wasn’t helping me. It was literally inhibiting my capacity to breathe correctly, to think correctly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. To control anything that I had control over, which I didn’t think I had much, but once I started actually leaning into that.
13:07
And I embraced it and said, okay, this is a gift. What am I trying to learn? What am I missing? What am I trying to avoid with my anxiety around this thing that I’m not willing to accept? And here’s the thing you can accept it now to capitulate, but it’s this iteration of it. And now once you’ve done that, you can accept what’s going on and now you can move forward because there’s no more bargaining. There’s no more hesitation. You’re fully committed to moving forward.
13:36
And now when you have no other choice, the choice is simple. I’m curious for you, like when you had that shift, huge one, like physical limitation, huge one, like how did that show up other areas of your life? For me, once the, actually accepted it and understood that I was just grateful that I wasn’t in Afghanistan, that I didn’t have a team with me because for one man that’s injured, takes two men to pull him to safety. So if we’d have actually been out there outside the wire when that happened, my team would have been compromised and other team would add a cover down.
14:05
A Chinook would have had to come in. And when I was just like, wow, I’m lucky, not that I’m lucky, but I’m lucky that nobody else has heard. Yeah. That was genuine gratitude for me because gratitude is when you’re happy that it happened, but you don’t get any immediate benefit from it in my opinion. And that’s what helped me knowing that nobody else has heard. I started getting movement back in my fingers, my left hand at that point. But what’s interesting is I started getting that, that hubris.
14:34
That soldier warrior mentality. See, I knew I could do it. They told me I flat on the table. If I can flat line and come back, I can overcome this. I’ll walk this off this paralysis thing. But once that happened, I started slowly regressing. wow. Okay. So I went back. So within two weeks, I’m back to square one. So for me, I got through all of the five stages again. And finally I say, listen, this is what worked before I’m taking my expectation out of it.
15:02
If this is what my life is, if this is the reality, then what can I do right now? If this is as good as it ever gets, how can I live? And I just came from that place of acceptance, that radical acceptance. And then finally I slowly got more and more fully recovered a year and a half occupational physical therapy. And I’ve just never allowed myself the luxury of trying to go back to that place of saying, see, I could do this. See, I could do that. That’s what keeps me moving forward.
15:31
And it also keeps me tethered to that adversity. It keeps me tethered with the physicality to make me understand. This is a celebration. When I was in that bed, I would have given anything to have a 65 pound ruck on and try to run five miles. Yeah. So that’s, that’s where the shift was for me. Yeah. And that’s awesome. I’m blessed you for like, you know, seeing that going through it a couple of times, you know, good for you. Well, and it was that 40 years of I I’ve been doing martial arts since I was 12.
16:01
So you’ve done martial arts, you’ve got many accolades in that. we understand that martial arts, beauty of it is they don’t teach you the philosophy separately. And then the art it’s all baked in. So if your ego’s in the way, you’re to have an upper belt, kick your ass. If you’re not trying hard enough and you’re trying to bullshit that instructor, they’re going to level up on you to force you to get to that place. And once we’re through it, we’re like, huh, I didn’t know I could do that. Just like with Kokoro for you. Right. But when we look back, we understand.
16:29
Look at all these gaps. Look at where I’ve held back. Look at where I was intentionally for whatever reason, sabotaging myself to move forward in these capacities. And once we see that, that’s why it’s the gift because now it’s like, where else am I holding back? What else am I under indexing? And frankly, when we embrace our own adversity and overcome it, we empowered those around us to do the same thing, just like whether it be a team, a leader of our company, a CEO, a father, a husband, a son.
16:57
And that’s where the responsibility comes in. And we were talking before about this human resilience and this capacity to really get in there, but you bring up a great point about these, these relationships. So tell us a little bit more about that. Expand on that. Well, I’m going to come in from a very strange angle. That’s okay. Go ahead and direct on from there. So, um, I’m getting a certificate.
17:20
pre-imperial natal psychology and health. very interested in, in preconception, conception, pregnancy and birth, like the whole process, psychophysiologically. Um, and then relationship wise, I’m trained as a marriage and family therapist of families matter to me, like, know, I’m fascinated by if it’s done by how nature intended not by Madison Avenue tells us to do parenting. Like if, if the baby’s born in breastfeeds, for instance, or the baby is brought to the mother’s chest, you know, like
17:48
We’ve done for millions of years until like the last 30 years and we do weird things now. And I understand there’s some medically necessary things to do separately from what I’m suggesting, but not majority. When the mother brings the baby to the chest, she is co-regulating the baby. Yes. He’s using her temperature to help regulate the baby’s temperature because the baby doesn’t have the capacity to do that. Okay. And just the breastfeeding provides the optimal nutrition for the baby. So just the physical contact is huge.
18:15
to co-regulate. actually helps the mother regulate herself and helps the baby to be regulated. So let’s take that and expand it to just human beings outside of that dynamic. We do that all the time. Like how we show up with people as an effect on people and how they show up with us has an effect on us. And you can look at it many different ways. Energetically, I mean, our fields can be measured three to four feet away from us. If you look at the heart math research.
18:42
art actually projects outward and has an effect on people around you. Just like if you, and you don’t even have to be woo-woo about it, walking through a room you can just feel, like feel the energy of someone, right? Like it’s palpable. Or you can look at facial expressions, are they soured or tightness of the jaw or collapsed shoulders or they’re not breathing well. I mean, the posture tells you a lot about the person even before they open their mouth and their tone and their volume. So like all those things together,
19:11
have effects on people around you. And they can have positive effects or the negative effects, some of the things I just walked you through. Well, if you walk in and you’re thinking, I want to have the positive effect, and we have agreements that how we want to relate to one another, you create the conditions for pretty deep co-regulation and increasing resiliency between and inside each of the people, which makes it more likely for them to thrive in whatever environments they find themselves in.
19:39
It’s like, you know, I had a buddy of mine who always says two is one, two is one. It’s like, yeah, literally. And it could be any relationship. It doesn’t have to be a partner, like spouse, but let’s just stay with spouses. Like two is one. Like if you have deep agreements of how you relate to one another, how you communicate, how you touch, how you talk, how you exchange energies in a healthy way. I don’t mean in a negative way. it’s like, you’ll be unstoppable. I mean, obviously there are physical things that could stop you, but ultimately you’re unstoppable.
20:09
You’ll be able to face and deal with whatever life conditions come your way much better than if you’re dysregulated as, as individuals and together as a couple. love that. And I meet a lot of CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, and they worry about that relationship in their company because they see the direct reflect on the bottom line, but somehow they overlook that with the personal relationships, the relationship with their spouse, their, their kids.
20:35
Yeah. Especially the kids. like the kids are strangers and the spouse is just this person that’s like, Hey, we had dinner. There’s something in the fridge. it’s one of these things where it’s important for us to have that. Not only to be on the same page, but I’ve seen so many people that say I’m doing this for my family. But if they were, then they would be treating their family in that capacity that reflects that with again, like you said, you’d have to say that you love them. They can feel it before you walk in the room almost.
21:03
So it’s the same thing where they’re more concerned almost with their ego or they had this philanthropic, you know, metric that they’re getting reinforcement from, which those things were fantastic. But if you’re claiming you’re doing it for your family and then the relationship with your family is not working well, then what you’re saying and what you’re doing are opposite. And now there’s conflict and now all of a sudden you feel anxiety, you feel unrest, you feel lack of fulfillment. So many times when we’re building a company, that’s what we’re doing for 18 hours.
21:33
And then when we come home, we hope that the family understands that, because we’re disconnected, because they feel like every waking hour, the business is more important. And it’s not their fault, but it’s like, have to be able to clean this slate, clear the air, come in, take some ownership and say, listen, I know for the last 20 years, this is what I’ve done. And then what does our body look like? speaking of like CEOs or entrepreneurs, just entrepreneurs in general.
21:58
You know, it’s not even just a disconnection between them and their spouses and their kids, but from themselves. There it is. Like, you know, and I’m sure you see this all the time. Like, what do you eat? Oh, I barely do where you crap. When you sleep, I don’t, I don’t need to sleep. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. When you exercise when I don’t, you know, it’s like, know, like, so it’s just some basic normal physiological things they can do to benefit themselves for optimizing their capacities to do whatever they’re doing as an entrepreneur. They don’t even do, but then they’re also disconnected from their body.
22:26
That’s like, Hey, they have great minds are working really well, a little cuckoo, but they’re working really well. Hey, what’s going on inside your body? Do you know about your breath? How about like your, your gut? Oh, I’m not, not. What’s that have to do with anything? Like, well, I would love for you to just notice when you eat what you eat, how it feels. Why? Cause you’re probably increasing inflammation by the crap you’re eating and ruining your capacity for your cognition to work really well and actually reduce your chances of being really successful.
22:55
We don’t to go down that path, but like just from being disconnected here, they lose out on a lot of innate wisdom and power of the body to help move them forward and to reach their goals, let alone to be happy, healthy, and productive in other areas of life. so listen to what he just said. If, if something as simple as worrying about your breathing, being concerned about it, looking at vagal tone, looking at how you feel with the emotion, what does your breath do when you feel a certain emotion? Is it vertical breathing? Is it this?
23:23
Again, parasympathetic, sympathetic, all these things. But the most important thing again, is like you’re saying just to be aware of that, because if you don’t have that awareness, if I don’t have self-awareness, how can I have situational awareness of the people around me? How can I have any kind of pragmatic empathy to even give a shit about what this person is feeling, seeing, responding, expecting. If I’m a CEO and I’m in this room and I’m talking about how we’re going to do all these things and I can literally see the room divide, but I can’t understand why, because I can’t read the body language because I don’t care because I’m feeding my own ego.
23:52
What am I doing? I’m failing my team. Yeah. Yeah. I’m my business and my customer. And if I claim that I’m doing this for my family, who else am I failing them? Yeah. In what defense of my ego? Yeah. And you know, and it’s funny because I listen to them going, yes, yes, yes. I completely agree with everything you just said. And obviously agree with everything I just said. And it’s like, I would suggest like, let’s transcend the ego, but just for a moment, let’s stick with the ego. Just for your gulk reasons, do all the things we’re discussing.
24:21
And your ego will explode. Should be that much more successful. Like that. it. So if we could give like a quick checklist of like three or four things that they could do to better regulate, to get more of that ability to connect with themselves so that they can better connect with their environment, impact in a positive way and truly help the world. If that’s what they’re trying to do with their business, can we just go over a few things to kind of check the box to help them? Yeah. So I just walked on my list that I work with my clients on stress management. So what do they do?
24:50
in a healthy way, drugs, alcohol, intelligent porn, I don’t mean things. What can you do to manage your stress? And I’ll walk through like three different things to think about. One is to change my state. I can meditate. So pick up a meditation practice, five minutes, or purchase one of the quantified self bio-acting devices like the HeartMath. HeartMath I love, have my clients use them all the time.
25:18
or amuse like this really, if you love tech, there’s great tech out and technology out there that can teach you to meditate or gives you some biofeedback to show you how, you are meditating. Well, when I say meditation, I’m not talking about the traditional sense of like, what’s the nature of reality? What’s the nature of my mind? This is more like managing the nervous system. Okay. So there’s that exercise and exercise doesn’t have to be like, I’m going to do CrossFit or, know, some major physical trainings, like just move the body.
25:47
In the short run, like for my clients, I want to integrate a training program, but just move the body, go for a walk. And you can do some of your meetings on the walk with staff or clients. I find the reports I get back is people are much more creative, open and honest. Absolutely. They want their movement. like just walk around, you don’t have to like go for a long run, just walk. So movement, so abrupt work or using some of the devices.
26:15
You know, or meditation, should say, and there’s various breathing practices. When I have all my clients doing this is simple. Anyone can do this anytime is a five to five breath, five count, inhale, two count, hold five can exhale, do it for two minutes. And it really will change your physiology kicks in the kind of moderates the sympathetic activation and brings it down. And it just brings more capacity to the free prefrontal cortex. You can think more clearly literally two to three or four minutes of that is really simple.
26:45
And then nutrition, like we can get into paleo and keto and vegan and all that stuff like that. But we’ll just say a whole foods diet. And then I would, and I work in it. do epigenetics works. I teach in the epigenetics Academy. So I would suggest getting your epigenetics done to get the testing done and find out what foods are most appropriate for you, for your genetic predispositions. But until you know that you can basically say, stay away from sugars, stay away from hydrogenated oils, seed oils, you know, just like.
27:12
There’s some common sense things. Don’t eat McDonald’s all the time. Burger King, all the crazy drinks from Starbucks. Like, Hey, coffee, cool. Drink your coffee, but don’t, you know, all this sugar added stuff, synthetic additives, the synthetic sugars. Like some of this is just common sense. Just remove those things from your diet and then figure out what’s right for you as an individual. love those. And those are something that’s actionable. And sleep like, yeah, you’ll sleep when you’re dead. No, you’re going to be dead sooner because you’re not sleeping.
27:39
I love Kirk Parsley, he’s a Navy SEAL medical doctor. He’s a sleep expert and we used to have him come and teach us at SEALFIT. And he would talk about the team guys because they, know, crazy cycles. you know, they’re up all night long operating and then they sleep a little bit during the day and their testosterone is shot and like other biomarkers are just in a shitter. And he’s like, okay, he understands like, if you’re operating, you’ve got to stick to this crazy cycle. When you’re not operating, you need to be sleeping.
28:05
I mean, you literally need seven to nine hours of sleep, depending on how your brain works with sleep. somewhere in there, you know, and don’t compromise that. I think the research shows just one poor night of sleep. You already have some cognitive decline. And I think it’s like 72, three days of poor sleep and there’s already insulin sensitivity is decreased. I mean, those guys, it’s like, holy shit. And we’re not talking about a day or three or five for most people. We’re talking about years. Yeah. I wonder if some of these diseases are increasing, you know,
28:34
So dial in your sleep, stress management, exercise, movement, just some movement. Eat according to your own genetics if you can get there, but at least just get rid of some of the crap you eat. And watch your drugs. Like, you if you need caffeine to wake up or nicotine and you need marijuana or alcohol or a sleeping pill or something at night, that’s a problem. Absolutely. And I’m not going to diagnose and assess anyone right now, but you might want to go talk to someone about that.
29:04
And see if there are, at least in the short run, natural ways to increase your capacities. Why you dial in all these other things to help you sleep at night and wake up in the morning without the need for the stimulants and the depressants at night. So the first thing is like that. Let’s just manage ourselves. The second piece is like when you are stressed, like you’re literally in a stressful situation, you can do one or two things. Well, you can manage yourself. Like I can do my breath. I’m going to relax. I’m going to.
29:33
you think more clearly, but you can see if you can change the situation. Can’t always change the situation, like, give us some thought, like this situation is causing me stress, right? Can I change the situation in the long run? And I do this because we have responsibility for the stress. It doesn’t like cause stress. just, that’s our reaction to it, but yeah, let’s change that situation. Let’s change us. And the third thing I always talk about is like, okay, you can’t change the situation. You can start to learn to manage yourself.
30:02
But maybe you need to change how you think about the situation. And I give the, favorite example, had a client who traveled three weeks out of the month after years of this, like I’m so tired of traveling and so stressful. You know, it’s killing me, but he had to do it for work and he loved his job. So he’s going to continue doing it. So I said, why don’t we change your mindset instead of not looking forward to the travel because it’s stressful. Why don’t you look at each travel period as an opportunity for a new adventure.
30:31
And, you know, it wasn’t, it’s just simple as saying that. he’s like, Oh my God, everything is an adventure. Everything’s great. It took him some time to really sit with that. But what he started doing is like, he would go to new places to go, wait, I can go there a couple hours earlier, day early and like visit and do stuff there. Cause I’m already in this amazing environment. I don’t just have to go in for work, early sleep, fly to the, you know. So he started like having a little bit of fun and adventurous in between his work. And then like one time he said he, he took one of his clients to yoga.
31:02
Like really, I like, yeah, he says, just think outside the box. I’m like, why not? I’ll ask them they’re interested in yoga. then they were, so they yoga together. So it’s like, can think out the box, makes a little bit more playful and fun and make an adventure. it’s no longer a stressful situation. It’s a fun, playful, adventurous situation. So those are kind of three ways I think about stress. love that. And like you said, that’s this ability to, to have curiosity, have the courage to be curious about this and say, no bullshit.
31:31
What’s stopping me from being able to get there a day early? What’s stopping me from being there a day later? What’s stopping me from doing all these other amazing things? And back to the sympathetic and parasympathetic, I think that people, they just see it as one or the other, but what they don’t understand is if we’re in this constant sympathetic stimuli, this fight or flight thing, what happens is there is this overcompensation from a parasympathetic capacity. If you’re not just, like you said, you’ve got caffeine and now you’re just running through the wall.
32:00
And then by 12 after in the afternoon, you’re just like, you’re like, I need another cup of coffee or I need to go do this. And they don’t understand that that is your body desperately trying to regulate. It’s not bad. There is something wrong, but more to the idea of disrespect your body. If you would listen to it, if you’d be connected to it, you understand why does this always seem to happen right around 12 o’clock or why is it that when I eat this, the shitty processed food at one o’clock, I’m just wrecked until almost four and then I’m off of work at five. So.
32:28
I’m just not worth anything until from eight until noon, I have some productivity. there’s so much stuff there, right? You’re exactly right. And I don’t like to pathologize things. I just talk about a dynamic homeostasis. Like listen to your body. You are tired for a reason. You’re energized for a reason. And there are costs to what you do. So I do a lot of energy work. I don’t mean hands on energy work, but like I do that too, but it’s more like what is your natural energetic flows? So I’d have clients kind of track their natural energetic flows in a day, a week, in a month.
32:58
seasonally, because it changes from seasons to seasons. And I say, when are you good at doing certain activities? Role learning, creative thinking, social engagement, physical training, like all the things that are important to them, what are the best times of the day to do those things? And we have obligations. We can’t always organize our day perfectly, but we can to certain extent. And I say, if you need, let’s just say like you have to do a role learning type of activity.
33:23
And you’re usually good at it for 60 minutes and then like you lose focus, but you have a project do like, you you have to do it for like three hours. Well, okay, cool. There are exercises that I can teach you. are biohacking things you can do to increase your capacity to go from 60 minutes to three hours. There’s a cost to that. Just to the nervous system, to the brain. So you need to recognize that and build in recovery on the other side. And it’s the same like with Coke roll, like, Hey shit, if you’re not sleeping for 50 hours.
33:52
There’s a cost to that. You better sleep when you get home, you know? And after training for the four, almost four weeks and then the cocoa camp, like the last thing I was going to do for the first week is like lift weights. I’m like, no, my body was beaten up. needed to recover. needed to get massages. needed to hydrate. needed to go amazing nutrition, you know, that kind of stuff and slow movement yoga, not CrossFit workouts. For those that don’t know after buds, once they’ve gone through hell week, they get them a walk week. call it.
34:22
which is that it’s sort of active recovery because they don’t want these guys to just, you know, not be doing anything, but it needs to be this idea of, listen, our bodies were designed, we’re bipedal, we should be moving around and this will help with some of the inflammation, some of the body’s capacity to heal itself. And it’s so interesting because when we see how all these things, when I work with clients, I have these five circles. When I was in chiropractic school, I didn’t get my doctorate, but I was in chiropractic school leading up to joining the military.
34:50
And it’s this idea of understanding the relationships, the physicality, our business, our monetary capacities, our own edification, what we’re putting into our brains. More importantly, are we actually implementing it? And then the spiritual component, whatever that is for them. And they all overlap in this Venn diagram of our existence in this moment. And we can see how they are all predicated and then reinforced by the others in many ways. So being aware of these small areas that don’t seem like they’re significant.
35:20
Or, you know, this is something that has to be done here, even with the sleeping. Like you said, there’s multiple chronotypes. There’s multiple times in our life when sleeping will change as well. Correct. So if you have a new baby in the house, your sleep’s going to change. But once that’s adapted, now your body will adapt to that. Once you understand what it is. And again, back to what you’re saying, every writer that I know that’s this worth their salt again, Robert greens, even press field Robert greens been doing Zazen meditation for the last 45 minutes for the last 13 years straight.
35:49
Nice, nice, nice. that is his prime. That’s he gets up, he primes himself in that as this state. And now that’s when the pros flow for him. And so for three hours, he’s in that zone. Same thing with Steven Pressfield, but if they try to write outside of that, they said that they can, but it is much more laborious. It does not flow, but they’re still intelligent enough to say, listen, from a tactical standpoint, I’m going to chip away at these four pages.
36:17
and knock it down to two with the worst smithing and just smooth them over. So they can still use that time. But if they had a preference, which they’re in a position now to where they had the luxury of doing that. again, they worked their asses off for years to get to that place. So for those of us that are saying, I don’t have that luxury. Like what you’re saying, well, listen, what is one of these things that we’ve been talking about that you can implement right now? What would that look like? How would you be able to put it into play? And now just that small thing to get to the monumental, we start with incremental.
36:46
And that’s the first step. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of always have my clients create what we call AMMP rituals and transitional rituals. And I think it’s so important to your point with Green and Pressfield, you know, they have rituals, right? And it’s so important, whether you’re a writer or not, like just to have morning rituals, like open your heart, get your energy moving, the physical body, open your mind to whatever the day you need to accomplish for that day. And I have clients figure that out and create them for themselves. And then at the end of the day, it’s like,
37:15
Reflect back. What did you learn not to beat yourself up at lessons? How you bring your nervous system back down, parasympathetically activated, ready for sleep. I do a lot of dream work. How do you prime the mind to work on some cool shit while you’re sleeping? Yes. And then I have some clients who I have for whatever reason, I attract a lot of doctors, surgeons recently. So I have transitional rituals where like, okay, you’re just finished like seven, eight hours of surgery and you’re going to be heading home and your mind’s still on your surgery.
37:45
but you want your mind to be on your family, your wife and your kids. It’s like, okay, what can you do to shift the mindset, shift the body? So when you show up home, you’re like, you’re ready to engage with them. You’re not like worrying about the case you just finished up. So transitional rituals are important as well, but also the bookends for the day, AM and PM rituals. I love that idea of the bookending and like you say, even as warriors, right? When we put on a gi, when we put on a uniform, when we pick up a weapon.
38:12
that in many ways is this warrior ritual where it says, I’m about to engage in something. So once we do those things, we mentally shift everything clicks into this place and it can happen in an instant. If somebody attacks our family, we just go into that place. It’s not something that we have to premeditate necessarily, but again, just the, physicality, when we brush our teeth at night, before we go to bed, we’re telling ourselves, get ready to the, hit the rack. Like this is, this is the time, right? And now we can allow ourselves that ability. And like you’re saying, once you
38:41
build those in, this very ritualistic way, these bookends. Now your body knows, Hey, if you take a hot shower before you go to, before you brush your teeth and go to bed, once you’re in that shower, you’re already starting to allow. Yes, you’re down regulating. You’re allowing yourself the capacity to let all that stuff go. And then again, you can envision all the negative energy or however, what it is, it’s just like going down the drain and there’s a young different things you could do. Right. But that’s, that’s very much what that allows us to do. And that comes from just being.
39:10
intelligent enough to say, listen, no bullshit, what would it take? And then out of a place of curiosity, because it used to be, they said that it was lack of information that stopped people from succeeding. But we know now with the internet that there’s plenty of information. It’s just people aren’t applying it consistently enough, or they’re always chasing the next shiny object. When I first started doing Bruce Lee’s martial arts, G Kundo, I was learning from different people. And then I got to start learning from Bruce Lee’s protege, Guru Dan and Osanto.
39:40
Oh, wow. And that’s coming home and I’m an instructor under him now I’m certified. So we, and for him, he was very much of this idea is like, listen, this worked for Bruce and it worked for Bruce when he was 32. You know, Marcus, you’re 45 now Marcus, you know, you’re going to be 50s soon. Maybe you should look into these other things. Maybe this understanding of, and again, like I’m five nine, I’ve got short arms. trying to fight way out.
40:09
with a guy that has a long reach may not serve me. Maybe understanding weapons, maybe getting better at grappling, maybe transitioning in there, maybe being in tight gives me that advantage that these other people don’t have because they’re not used to that. Yeah. And that is that you studied under Danis onto. It’s incredible. And in my book, there’s this analogy that you told us what an instructor’s camp. He says, Marcus, I’m to show you seven disarms to the blade from an angle one, just coming right here. Two of these will work great for you.
40:39
Two of these will maybe be okay. And three of these you will not like at all. And again, I’m doing them and it’s like, this feels laborious or a little antiquated. And he says, but this is not for you. This is for the people that you teach. Because the two that work for you, because of the way that you’re built, because of your experience may not work for somebody else. It’s tall, somebody else is weaker, somebody else that slender, somebody else that may not have the same kind of experience that you have. But these other five that I’m teaching you will.
41:10
Nice. And then what else happens as we understand we blend. you do workshops? How are you teaching these things? Martial art wise, I don’t teach directly with martial arts, but when I go do any kind of training for companies, I still use the same analogies. still use the straight punch for leadership. use the straight punch and the person kind of blocks. And then if we just keep doing the same thing, it’s the definition of an insanity. And I use it from this idea of if I’m trying to
41:36
convey something from a leadership capacity and this person’s not responding. So again, I have to have that pragmatic empathy to feel what they’re feeling and say, this is not landing. What’s a better way for me to get there? Yeah. I love your use of the martial arts metaphorically in our whole discussion today. It’s so cool. It’s so important. And there was another analogy that he used, which reinforces what Robert Green’s talking about. Robert Green, the 48 laws of power was like this, you know, groundbreaking work 25 years ago.
42:05
And it was kind of contrary to what everybody else was saying at the time. Very full frontal, very adversarial, very Machiavellian. Having said that, if you read it enough times, it reinforces this idea that’s like, I don’t have to live like this, but damn it, I better be aware of people that think like this, that will operate like this because they will assassinate me with this stuff. If I’m not aware of it. Rinosanto had another analogy at the last camp that we went to where he said in judo, were 68 recognized throws and Olympic level judoka used three.
42:36
Now they know all the other ones or they’re aware of them so that they don’t get victimized by them But they have an initial throw they have a contingency then they have a counters to that contingency or they go back to the first one Okay, so we have techniques that we’re good at. Maybe it scores. Maybe it misses. Here’s my secondary And if that doesn’t work, I go back to the first one again or go to the third But it’s not as if we go through throw number one that missed new throw number two with okay I did this and now they’re trying to do this
43:02
It’s too late. It’s too long. have to have that dynamic capacity with the violence of aggression as well as sensitivity so that we can be aware of the opportunity before it presents itself or use our own intention to create the opportunity. Yeah. Cool. And that’s been very much my entire life. Again, being in a bed for months, going through a lot of these things. Some of it just sound like flowery bullshit, but some of it.
43:31
did make sense still, some of it I could still understand and absorb. And then once I started unpacking everything in my life from my parents’ divorce to my own divorce, to the loss of my physicality, I always was very physical. And to have that ripped away from me, I was suicidal, but I couldn’t act on it. I was- got you. Oh, that’s part. That’s what I’m saying. Like I was very much a victim for a while, but once I came to that acceptance and understood that
44:01
There’s not a lot more I can do. can either stay here and play the victim for the rest of my life, or I can change my mentality and my mindset and say, what am going to do moving forward? Yeah. From victim to victor. Yeah. That’s absolutely it. And it’s, it’s easy to say, but, it’s not to say this on the air, but I have two guests that I want to recommend to you all based on these two topics. I’ll share with you privately. Yeah. I would love that. So I know that we’re, getting close on time here, but
44:28
And we could talk for hours and I’m sure that we’ll speak again at some other point. Having said that, there are a lot of things that are being repeated today in these spheres that are just not only erroneous, but frankly, they’re almost dangerous in some ways. What’s the worst thing that you hear continually repeated that’s actually sort of a disservice to people that are trying to get to these other places, whether it be from a biohacking capacity, a mindset capacity, physicality, whatever that may be.
44:54
I’d say something broad and something very specific and you brought this up actually which got me thinking about it discipline Like I like bioacking. I love the books and trying new things out like I I’ll try anything now and I do because I just find it really interesting and I literally I’ve been doing that since I was like a kid like I used to buy my smart drugs from Europe back in the late 80s till they have my access to them off. Yeah, so a long time but There are no shortcuts and there are shortcuts
45:23
I think what’s better for us is discipline practice. Like find out what you want to do and just fucking do it every day. Don’t fuck around and try to find the shortcut to it. Like find something that’s physically challenging for you. That’s a, you know, on a regular basis, mentally, emotionally challenging for you. And you just do those regularly. So be a disciple of something bigger than yourself and pick those practices that are meaningful to you and do them and not say you shouldn’t.
45:52
bio-ac, do a bio-ac in this form, but like, yeah, discipline matters. But specifically something in the culture and we haven’t had a conversation about this, but psychedelics. Okay. For me to kind of go down that path. Absolutely. Yeah. So, um, I did my master’s thesis on the therapeutic uses of LSD and MDMA in 97, a long time ago. Wow. Way in front of the curve. Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. Cause like watching how the culture has shifted literally in the last 20.
46:20
five years, it’s amazing. Like we are literally a year away, maybe 18 months away from MDMA being, they got off the schedule one and maybe saw a sideburn. And so thank God for maps and some of these other organizations have been yeoman’s work. Um, but I have some concerns and I really spoke on a psychedelic panel this last summer. And for the first time I was the conservative. Like I’m usually like, yes, cause like 20 years ago, I’m like psychedelics are really important. They play this role. Here’s what they do. And people are like, that’s crazy. They’re getting all the IP drugs.
46:50
And now I’m like, wait, we have to, we have to slow down. We have to be really careful. Cause what I’m seeing is these two things emerging, these clinics that are rising ketamine, presently, and, or these weekend shamans who like I took a workshop and I’m a shaman. They live in Austin. Half of them do. So let me stick with the ketamine thing and then I’ll go to the weekend work. We can’t the shaman dude. Ketamine is a powerful drug. And I, and I’ve talked to people who work at and participated in some of these clinics.
47:19
And they use the medical model. Like there’s very little preparatory work or you can do it at home. Like they send it to you at home and you do it virtually, but there’s very little preparatory work. There’s very little integration afterwards. And the people who are sitting with you during are not trained in transpersonal psychology. This is not a price statement for everyone. I’m sure there are some people who are open to and study these things and had experiences. But from my understanding for many of them, they’re conventionally trained psychologists or psychiatrists.
47:48
There’s no way they are going to understand some of the states people access. Cause if you look at the DSM for their psychotic states, like you’re talking to God or the demons or devils or past life experiences or whatever’s going on for you, you know, like shape shifting machine elves, you’re talking to Terence McKenna. That’s crazy sounding from a conventional psychiatric psychological point of view. It’s not crazy sounding, it’s a grand personal spiritual perspective. Like, yeah, if you look at the spiritual
48:16
traditions in every religion, they track these things. It’s there in their stories. It’s like people have these openings and experiences, but we’re not trained to help people deal with them. That’s a problem. So that can lead people like, do you do? You have a huge opening and you don’t have the support to integrate it and take it into your life. That’s one problem. Second problem is these weekend shamans. Like I’m no expert, but I’m licensed therapist.
48:45
doing this coaching therapy work for 30 years. I’ve been studying the material, I’ve been in this space. And so I feel a little bit comfortable in this space. And for someone to do like a weekend and they claim that they’re shaman and they blow these people open, they blow these people’s psyches open, it’s not criminal because it’s not against the law, but literally it’s criminal. It’s irresponsible. It’s irresponsible. I don’t think the word, it’s very irresponsible because there’s no support systems for them when they get home.
49:14
around them don’t know what the fuck that’s going on with them. They’re just blasted open. They don’t know how to contain these new energies and new states, these new ways of being. And if you think about it, like you just go to a weekend workshop, like a Tony Robbins, forget the drugs, you go to Tony Robbins, you’re blasted open. Cool. You go back to work on Monday or you go back home on Monday, you get on the support and the clothes is back down on you. Like you’re back to who you were on Friday before you attended the Tony Robbins thing. Maybe, maybe a little bit of opening. At least you had some insight.
49:43
It’s a thousand times more. Like you’re so blown open, but you don’t have the container to help you. What do you do with this stuff? And I’m afraid in the long, in the short run, we’re going to have a lot of walking wounded people. Yeah. If they had trauma, it’s going to be blasted open. They’re not kind of the capacity to deal with it or the support to deal with it. Even if they didn’t have trauma in their past, you’re going to be blown open to these amazing states. They’re amazing without the support. It’s sure you just have a lot of walking, wounded walking around.
50:12
And that’s, think that’s a problem. couldn’t agree more. mean, again, this, is a powerful drug. And, again, with that comes responsibility. And as you say, if this person is just literally blown open and they’re, they’re this open wound and now you kind of push them in and say, go back to this, place that you were before, especially if that’s a place that they’re trying to get away from. Right. That’s, you’re not setting them up to win. You’re, you’re actually setting them up to fail in many ways. now.
50:40
There’s even more confusion. There’s even more anxiety. There’s even more questions. There’s even more fear that this thing was supposed to answer the question for them. And all it did was show them a lot more. But now there’s always more questions that come from that. Oh yeah. So it’s, love that you’re saying that because, and I respect him first and all those people that are doing a lot of this work. I know plenty of people that have done some of these things, but again, at the same time, the medical model originally was this idea of minimum requisite dose. And now let’s see what the best result can be.
51:09
And then slowly incrementally go to these places. You know, it’s a, it’s a scientific methods, a hypothesis. believe I can attend CCS of this and this will happen. But again, if you don’t have that person that’s there with them to support them. And again, even from a physiology standpoint, what if they’re asthmatic? What if they have a seizure? What if they stop breathing? What if they have a heart attack? We need a person that is equipped with all these tools in addition to the, these other skill sets that you’re talking about that to best serve this person.
51:38
And when we try to scale something or we try to put it into a medical model that has a monetary benefit as part of it, again, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage at best. Collateral damage is definitely a good word. And it kind of goes back to the whole co-regulation thing we talked about halfway through our conversation. Yeah. Like I, I’m hoping that this, I’m not one for like major licensure. I’m much more libertarian, you know, but so I don’t like to state time people how to live their lives and what they should be doing.
52:07
But I’m hoping that standards will rise over time and people will start recognizing like, if I’m going to, if I’m going to facilitate these things, have to understand set after understand setting after and send the physiology of the body and how to work with the body, energies of the body and help people through these non-nuclear states. That’s my hope. least people recognize that and start getting trained in those directions. And I know that we’re, getting close to time here, but I always like to ask people like yourself.
52:34
I’ve always seen that there’s a direct correlation to how much adversity that we can go through experience and then eventually work through and the level of success that we can reach in other areas. I’ve never seen a person that’s very high level in any arena that has not gone through adversity. As a matter of fact, they often seek it out in many capacities. Can you tell us about some sort of adversity that you faced in your life in any area that at the time it felt like you may not get through it? Wow. That’s true. But once you were through it, you were able to look back and say,
53:02
I never would have gotten to this place or had this, this sort of questioning to get better. Had I not had that. Yeah, that’s really good. Um, it’s, more than a minute. Go ahead. Sure. Absolutely. have plenty of time. I’ve got as much time as you have. All right. Yeah. A Kokoro camp aside and see through Expof Academy, um, aside. So, um, I was diagnosed with learning disability as a kid. And before I was diagnosed with learning disability, the argument was I was lazy because I was really smart, but really dumb. So they thought I was lazy and.
53:32
It’s a tough place for a kid to be in, because of being lazy, I’m trying. And I had many ups and downs through the education system. I love learning. I hate school. And I was very fortunate to have very, very supportive parents who literally fought the school system on my behalf repeatedly, like repeatedly. And I’ll give you just one example of that experience. Do remember proofs in math? Yes. Okay. So you’re supposed to write them out.
54:01
line by line by line. I could do them in my head and I could tell the teacher what the answer was. I could not write them out. You could postulate it in your mind. Wow. So as an adult, I look back and go, that’s really cool, right? As a kid, it was like, oh, you’re cheating. You need to write them out. I can’t, but here’s the answer. You must be looking at the papers around you. No, I’m not. So the answer was not like, cool. Like, wow, you have this really interesting capacity. Let’s cultivate this a little bit more.
54:31
It’s more like you need to go get a tutor so you can learn how to do it the right way. And there are dozens of experiences in school, right? I did it my way. got in trouble and I had to learn how to do it the right way. And it is the funniest thing. So my father would say, just wait till get to high school. It’s going to be so much different. So just wait to get to college. It’s going to be so much different. Wait till you get to your master’s program. It’s so different. And literally every time I just kept running into like this very rigid, one size fits all approach.
55:00
That’s why one of the reasons I was in therapy, because I had so much stress and the biofeedback that got in imagery, the meditation, all that stuff was really helpful to get me through this whole process. But I came out with kind of two perspectives. One is I can see clearly the dysfunctions in the system. And I spent, I just retired. I still do coaching now. I run groups and work couples and individuals. I’ve been doing that for a long time, but I just retired from public policy work after 20 years.
55:28
And seeing this function of various systems was helpful for me working in public policy. Cause I can just pretty easily see the dysfunctions and come up with creative solutions with a team of people like how we could fix this. So seeing the dysfunctions and then learning to step into my own power. Like, you know, when you’re 10 and nine, eight, 12, 15, it’s kind of hard to fight the system. I did, I did a really good job as best as I could as a kid, but now as an adult, I don’t fight anymore. I just do my thing.
55:58
And there was a moment where I was like, I’m anti this. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
56:25
potentially mess up trying to get from this to this, to this, to this on the proof. yet you still went back into higher to learn more. You still push yourself to try to get through those places to learn more. And I love learning. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a lifelong learner. I’m always taking classes and working and stuff like that. So that’s not, that’s not an issue. Just schooling. I love learning. I hate school. I think that that’s a great place for us to, put a bow on this. Cool. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your work.
56:55
I look forward to speaking to you again. Where can we learn more about you? Where can we learn more about your courses, your coaching, everything that you’re doing? Thank you. Michael D. Ostrilank.com website. I’m on Twitter, M. Ostrilank. I’m on Instagram, M. Ostrilank, Facebook and LinkedIn, Michael Ostrilank. Yeah. And everybody follow him on LinkedIn and look at what he’s doing on Mondays with, with JC. Yeah. Um, tremendous stuff. And for those that don’t remember JC, he’s, he’s a friend of mine. He’s been on my show a few times.
57:24
former army ranger commander, Ted X speaker, incredible writer of army rangers meditations. mean, there are so many things that give us. So again, these are men that have insights from both sides leading men in battle, understanding that there’s a quote that JC’s always use and I’ve loved it. And he says that there are casualties and there are victims. And I think it’s a very important point to understand the difference that again, being a casualty, trying to do the right thing.
57:54
But still having the mentality of a warrior to try to pull yourself out of that or to try to return fire, to give guys cover that are trying to bring you out of that is very much what we’re talking about here. If you’re trying anything, there will be wounds, there will be casualties, so to speak, but it’s what we do after that. If we choose to keep fighting, that’s when we continue to win and elevate. If we just stay in that place and play the victim, then we will be victimized for the rest of our life. At that point, you’re not a victim, you’re a volunteer. And it’s only a matter of time.
58:24
Right on. Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it, Absolutely. I appreciate you. I look forward to talking to you again soon. And I think everybody got something out of this. If you guys didn’t get something out of this, you better check your pulse because there was a lot of great stuff. Thank you. Bye, buddy. Take care. You too. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
