Mark Provost The Power of Self-Love

[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 2:32) Welcome back to Here for the Truth. What's up, bro? Feels like I haven't recorded a podcast in a while. I don't know why. I don't know. Well, we haven't because we recorded a bunch before I went to Mexico because we didn't record while I was in Mexico. So this is our first one back since we recorded Renat, I think, right? Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, so it's a couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's good to be here. Always good to set the container to have these conversations. And today we have Mark Provost in the house, who is a health nutritionist and psychologist from Massachusetts. And he's a big fan of this podcast as well. He has a very, very, very interesting journey and such a beautiful perspective and outlook and philosophy on life, which I'm really, really excited for you guys to really hear and to soak in. Yeah, I echo it. I echo that. I love the conversation. I love his passion. And yeah, I hope you obviously enjoy it as well. Yeah. Guys, two weeks left to sign up for Rise Above the Herd, round eight. This program does absolutely change lives. Tried, trued and tested. Eight rounds now, over 70 plus graduates, loads of testimonials continually pouring in throughout the rounds. In the beginning, when we first started this, we didn't know the effect it was going to have. But now there's absolutely no doubt as to what's happening within Rise Above the Herd, the seeds that are being planted and how they're affecting our students. Even a year on down the road, we're still hearing from round one, round two, round three students whose lives, whose decisions, whose power, whose self-esteem continues to grow. And they continue to see the results manifest externally to them as a result of what took place in their eight weeks with us. So if you're down, if you want to change your life, if you want to shift, if you want alignment, if you want to set that arrow straight on course towards the life that is reflective of who you actually are, what you actually value, what you actually want, then please hit the link in the show notes and sign up for Rise Above the Herd round eight. This program is value-packed, particularly for what it's priced at. That's my personal opinion. There's nothing that exists like this, especially at that price. Guys, much love. Enjoy this episode. [Speaker 3] (2:33 - 2:40) You are now listening to the Year for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 2] (2:43 - 3:46) All right, everyone. Today, we have Mark Provost with us. He's the owner of Provost Personal Training, a very successful personal training and exercise psychology studio in Wenham, Massachusetts. He specializes in a three-tier approach to optimal living, emotional prosperity, sound nutrition practices, and a well-rounded fitness program. He believes that all three are necessary to live our best life with an emphasis on emotional prosperity. True success in Mark's eyes is not about having big muscles and running five-minute miles. He believes that true success is rooted in self-love, where we become our own best friend. This is our greatest challenge in life. Once we accept, have compassion for, and love ourselves, we begin to fulfill our destiny. Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body. Mark's three-tier approach creates joy, peace, and a healthier mind and body. He passionately believes that self-esteem is the immune system of the conscious mind. Oh, we love that, Mark. Welcome to Year for the Truth, man. [Speaker 1] (3:48 - 4:30) Thank you for that kind introduction, Joel. Yes, I do believe self-esteem is the immune system to the conscious mind. I know you talk about that subject a lot, and I've experienced it in my own life. The more I begin to love myself and become my own best friend, it seems like the more successful my life becomes. Success for me is not just about how much money is in my bank account. It's time affluence, time I get to spend with my daughters, and time I get to spend reading great books and meditating and being on the beach with my best friend who happens to be my 12-year-old Australian mini Labradoodle. So, yeah, that's self-esteem in my opinion. [Speaker 2] (4:30 - 4:58) I love it. I have a little best friend too, our dog Rosie. She's about eight years old, so I totally understand it. Mark, just for those listening and those who've obviously never heard your name before, can you give our audience a brief introduction, a burst into how you connected with us and, I guess, what the threads are to you being here, basically? Because I know you're a big fan of the podcast as well. [Speaker 1] (4:59 - 8:43) Yeah. So, what happened was when 2020 happened, I had some experience from about a decade of reading about viruses, germ theory, vaccines. I had dove in at around 2010, and I started listening. A friend turned me on to Jason Kristof in his podcast. The friend was someone I respected greatly, and he said, you got to listen to this guy. He sounds like you. He's nuts like you are. I was like, okay, all right. I'm in if I can find someone. I started listening to Jason. I listened to him, and he was one of the pillars that helped me get through what happened in 2020. And so, from listening to Jason and listening to his podcast and his rants, I used to love his rants. My wife would be like, this guy, he sounds exactly like you, and you're laughing. And I'd be washing the dishes and listening to Jason, and it got me through a very difficult time because I felt like I knew this secret, and I had no one to share it with. And Jason was that person. And then when he was offering his self-sabotage coaching school, and the one thing I know for sure is I don't know. That's the one thing I can guarantee you, I don't know. The more I read, it's that Socratic quote, the less I know. It's so true. And I'm not saying that just to humble myself. It's true. And I just found that there was no one to talk to. So, my clients believed in everything that was happening. I started losing customers. I had spent 25 years building a thriving, financially and emotional business. And it was really hard because now I had to either shut my mouth or lose my livelihood. And I have two beautiful daughters and a wife that I take care of financially, and I'm so grateful to do that. And so, then Jason started talking about other podcasters. And I think it was the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021 when YouTube started Your Amazing Podcast. And I just started listening. And I should have figured Joel was Lebanese, because there was like an instant connection I had with Joel. And then you're asking us, I just loved you with a hat. I'm like, this guy is a good looking dude. I mean, he's got this hat on. You guys are both good looking and fit and strong. And you were speaking my language. And I was so grateful that. So, I ended up going into Jason's self-sabotage school and spending the money. And it wasn't because I felt like he was teaching me anything new, even though I had so much to learn. It was because I wanted to support him. I wanted to financially support him because he got me through some really dark nights. Just knowing there was someone out there around the same age as I, who had the same belief system as I had. And then once you guys came aboard, amongst a few other podcasters, maybe there was two or three others. I just started listening and falling in love with your podcast and your authenticity. And Joel, I worked in the family business and wasn't treated the way I wanted to be treated and got told I could never really do much in my life other than that family business. And I kind of believed those words. And then when I was able to have the courage to break free from that negative programming, and starting something special here, I resonated with your story. And then you moving from Australia to Mexico, and then you two being able to meet in person. I just loved it. I love your podcast. I love how genuine you two are. And so, that's how I got here. And I'm grateful to be here. [Speaker 2] (8:44 - 9:09) Yeah, man. It's great to have you. And I know you've engaged with us on email, and you've shared some awesome nuggets of information. And so, I knew it was only a matter of time before we were going to have a dialogue. But I want to rewind a bit, man, because I know you have a really great story, an inspiring story. And I'd love for you to share, as we often do with our first-time guests, share a bit of your hero's journey and your major rites of passage that have kind of helped you become who you are. [Speaker 1] (9:10 - 9:32) Well, thank you for asking. I don't really tell the story very often anymore. So, yeah, I'm grateful for the opportunity. I was born into a family of four. My mom raised four of us on her own. We lived in a very low middle-class area in Gloucester, Massachusetts. That's where The Perfect Storm, the movie. Do you know Gloucester? [Speaker 2] (9:33 - 9:37) Yeah, I have a crazy story I won't share now, but I ended up at Wingershake Beach. [Speaker 1] (9:37 - 9:39) Wingershake. It's called Wingershake Beach. [Speaker 2] (9:39 - 9:46) Yeah, Wingershake Beach. Yeah. Like seven in the morning after a wild night, but I won't get into that. That was many, many years ago when I was in Boston. [Speaker 1] (9:46 - 23:37) Atlantic Road, yes. I know the beach well. So, I grew up about three or four miles from there. And, you know, mom raised four of us and it was really challenging. There wasn't much money. We were on welfare. My sibling's father had left at a young age when I was very young. And I was the product of an extramarital affair. And there was just addiction everywhere. I mean, you know, I had three older siblings. I was one of 21 first cousins. And growing up, many of my first cousins were dying because of drug overdoses. And I lost my older brother in 2003 due to a drug and alcohol addiction. And it was just sad lives. I mean, no one was going anywhere. You get a job out of high school, you work at the fish plant, you maybe get lucky enough to get married, but that relationship's going to end in divorce. There's going to be acrimony. There's going to be pain. There wasn't any need for any education. You just did what you were supposed to do. I felt like a caste system. And even as a young man, I would look around and I was always very athletic growing up. And I never had any desire to put drugs or alcohol or tobacco or weed. I've never tried marijuana. I've had six quartz lights in my entire life at 54 years old. I got drunk on one Friday night at Good Harbor Beach, a neighboring beach to Wengeshe Beach, Girassos. And right before a baseball game the following morning, and I remember how sick I was playing centerfield for my high school baseball team. And I said, I'll never drink again. And I've never drank again. To be honest with you, that was 38 years ago. But I did get a gambling addiction, a pretty heavy gambling addiction. We all got something growing up in that very toxic environment. And I didn't want to play the lottery or go to the casino. Because I was so athletic and very good at sports, my addiction became betting on sports. Think of it, the Michael Jordan, the Charles Barkley, so many athletes, the Phil Mickelson. Because if you can't participate in a sport, the next best thing is to... If you can't observe, if you can't play, the next best thing is to participate. And gambling took you from being an observer to a participant. And I had that. My best friend at 12 years old was the town bookie. And he was a great guy. I still remember him. And he and I used to go to the track together. And I was going nowhere in a hurry. And I just looked back at those days. And so what happened was, graduated high school, had a compulsive gambling addiction. But my mom was happy with that because she's like, hey, the rest of the family, most of them, they're on drugs, they're on alcohol. At least you're gambling. You're in great shape. You're this athlete. But it was kind of destroying my life. Slowly, I could feel the threads of it. My uncles had gambling issues. It's sort of like whack-a-mole. You're either an alcoholic, you're a drug addict, you're a compulsive gambler. At that time, we didn't really think much of porn, but who knows what was going on. And so anyway, graduated high school, started working at the fish plant, started working in my uncle's business and was miserable. Just absolutely miserable. I had no money. The little money I had, I would spend at the track or gambling and always losing. Even if I won, I lost because it tore me apart emotionally. And then I started, but I always had this still silent voice in my head saying, you can be more. This is a toxic environment. You know you can be more. If you can break this habit, the sky's the limit for you, Mark. It was always there. Even at 18, 19, I would be in the midst of a gambling tangent, losing hundreds of dollars, which was gold to me back then because there was just so little money to go around. And that voice would pop up every once in a while. And I had major anger issues and lots of guilt and tons of shame. And I hated myself. And it's very challenging to talk about those times now, because it seems like a different lifetime ago, but I needed that to be where I am today. And my mom, she's been gone for about six years. And my mom was an extremely bitter, angry, and depressed human being. And she made some poor choices in her life, but she clothed me and she fed me until I could do that for myself. And I'll always be grateful to her for that. But what my mom did, which was so valuable, and I wouldn't have traded my mother for any other mother in the world. And she was a very, very hard, bitter woman. She taught me how not to live my life. And I say that because so many of us make martyrs out of our parents after they're gone. And I don't feel any guilt or any shame in saying that. I pray that my mom learned the lessons that she needed to learn in this lifetime, and she takes them and takes them to her next lifetime. And she can correct those if you believe in that sort of thing. I do. I believe we're here to learn lessons and to move on. And so, my mom, I remember I got into the post office at 20 years old. I was a letter carrier. And it was just more addictive behavior. Because even though that's a great job for some people, and I respect those people, it wasn't for me. It just added to my addictive behavior and the gambling and miserable. It seems that very unhappy and no one wanted anybody to do well. And so, I did that for about three years. And I remember I was going to reside from the post office. And I had met a lovely woman who now is my wife. That was 32 years ago. And she's like, you need to do more with your life. You can do more with your life. And she was the first one who unconditionally loved me. I really believe that. And there was a conditional love in my family growing up. If you do this, I will love you. If you get good grades, if you go get the job after high school, if you do what I say. And she wasn't like that, this woman, my wife, Vicky. She was just amazing. Still is. And so, she was the first one that unconditionally loved me. And I reside from the post office in my mid-20s. And everybody told me I was crazy giving up the benefits. And then I was always a fit guy. And I was always into nutrition. And I started going to college. I never thought I was college material. I started school college at 26 years old. And I started taking exercise physiology classes. And then I started this business around the same time, 26, 27 years ago when I got married in 1997. And just the gambling didn't stop though. The gambling didn't stop. My life had improved. I was following my passion. But yet I was still doing lots of sports gambling. And now I was within a year making double of what I was making in the post office. And then I put a business, set up a business in a very affluent area. And my wife and I moved in this area. We were able to get a house in 2000. And I just started building this clientele. And over the years, this clientele built and it built, but I didn't have any time. So, I would be writing every Friday. I would write note to myself, Mark, you're making a lot of money. You're providing for your wife. And at that time, we just had a young daughter in 2002, who's now 21, Ella, who I adore. And I wanted more time and it was sending me to a shrink. Every Tuesday night, I'd go to Brookline, you know, this area, Erasmus. I'd go to Chestnut Hill where BC is. And I'd go see this shrink. And he'd be like, you know what? And he'd just be, Tuesday night at eight o'clock, I would have 50, 60 training appointments a week. And it was burning me out. And I was gambling heavily on sports. And I was actually at this point, pretty good at gambling because I looked at it as a stock account. I was a contrarian by nature. So, I didn't lose that much money. I actually did very well some years. But what it did to me was it tore apart my insides because I could hear my mother's voice. I could hear that shame and guilt of, oh, you got a master's degree now. You got a successful business. You make more money than anybody in the family's ever made. You just can't give up that gambling habit, can you, Mark? And I would hear her voice and it tore me apart from about 2000 to about 2010. And then what happened was I started meditating in graduate school in 2006, just five minutes a day. Started meditating. And my wife noticed right away. She's like, you're much calmer. You're much kinder. I was like, okay, that voice, you can be more, Mark. You can be more. And then what happened was when I finished graduate school, I had a huge decision. I had got accepted into a very highfalutin PhD program on the West Coast, but I had this successful business. And I was constantly arguing with my graduate school professors because academia, I just didn't get it. I mean, they were telling me to run my business one way. And I was running it another way and making a lot of money and had a lot of emotional and spiritual happiness. And they would tell me I was doing it the wrong way. And I was like, I'm done with the indoctrination of schooling. This isn't education. I'll give myself my own PhD. So around that time in 2008, when I got my graduate degree, and that was the financial crisis, I was meditating. And meditation, it went from five minutes a day to five minutes twice a day. And then after a couple of years, it began to go 10 minutes a couple of times a day. And at this point in 2010, I started meditating for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon and had a lot of self-love meditations. And I started doing other practices, like Louisa Hay talked about mirror therapy. I'd face myself in the mirror every morning and say, I love you, Mark. Even mornings when I woke up hungover from a bad gambling loss, UCLA loss in the West Coast, I'm up at 2 a.m. My wife wants to make love at midnight. And what am I doing? I'm out in the living room watching sports. I'm totally emotionally, spiritually, physically unavailable. And it was eating me. It was just eating me alive. So with this meditation practice, it was like oil and water. Something had to give, this self-love practice. And I just noticed the more I love myself with meditation, mirror therapy, every day I would gratitude journal. I remember reading that great book by, I believe it was David Edmonds called Thank You, that you become 25% happier just writing five things down a day that you're grateful for. So then in 2010, I started doing that and then walking in nature every day. And I completely changed my business model. And you probably remember this with Jason is, I said, you know what? I got these 50 clients. I have all this training, all these certifications. I'm going to be a holistic health coach. And I'm going to be one-stop shopping. I'll be a personal trainer. I'll be a nutritionist. I'll be a psychologist. I'll be a yoga and meditation teacher. I'll be a naturopathic doctor. And I'll be your caring friend. I won't go beyond my scope of practice. And I had a couple of very successful, wealthy clients who took advantage of that. And they started paying me quarterly. I got totally off the hourly roll. I said, if you want me, this is what I charged. And about two-thirds of my clients left in 2010. But about 15 stayed. And that was the moment. And that all came through meditation. And that came like the voice in my head said, okay, you need to change the business model. And so that's what I did. I changed to what I called emotional prosperity programs. And I started being six in one to my clients, and in the same time, becoming more and more self-loving. And back in 2012 was the last time I made a bet. And that was 11 years ago. And I just self-loved my way out of that addiction. And you could put me in Vegas now with $100,000. I'd go find a great gym to work out at, find a tennis court because my family, we're avid tennis players. My daughter's playing my oldest plays in college. My youngest is a high school star. My wife's the best in the family. I play at a high level. And I would have never found tennis. I didn't stop gambling. I wouldn't. And in these 11 years, I've just spent so much time with my daughters, with this new business model. And more importantly, self-love. I have about 15 practices that I do every day. And it doesn't take that much time other than the meditation. And I love Joel. I loved your email. I mean, it was so profound because meditation isn't about... And I meditate for an hour a day now consistently. Half hour in the morning, later in the afternoon. But my meditation in the afternoon may be forest bathing. It may be chanting. I'm the guy that the local people call kind of nuts because I'm singing Indian hymns as I'm walking in the woods. That's what I do. And so I have these amazing practices that are oxygen to me. And you don't have to be sitting for an hour. You can be washing the dishes. You can be doing those mundane tasks that Joel talked about. That's meditation. I have so much respect for the people who do that. So that's who I am. And the business has done really well. And you'll ask us, do I pronounce her name Rina? Rina? [Speaker 2] (23:37 - 23:38) Rina. [Speaker 1] (23:38 - 24:44) Rina. Wow, she was fantastic. Wow, was she good. But we're talking about attention. Over the last decade, I've had clients wanting me to go on Facebook, Instagram. That's why you don't know about me. LinkedIn. I'm not on any social media. I have email and I have my cell phone because my time and my attention is the greatest asset that I own. And you can add a zero or two zeros to my income. I work with people worth tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. They're my clients. They were my clients and some still are. Joy has to precede abundance. It doesn't work the other way around. And that's why so many of them are given to addiction, whether it's alcohol or whether it's busy lives that are fully distracted. So that's sort of my hero's journey. And all I want out of life now is, you know, to love myself and continue to love and respect my family and make an impact in the world. [Speaker 2] (24:46 - 24:48) Yeah, beautiful story, man. Thank you for sharing all that. [Speaker 1] (24:49 - 24:51) Thank you guys for listening. That was long. [Speaker 2] (24:51 - 25:11) Yeah, definitely. No, it's great to hear. I'm always I like asking this question sometimes, like as you've gotten out of the crab bucket, like what is what is your relationship or have you cut ties with a lot of the people from your past? You know, whether it's some of your first cousins or other people from like the town you grew up in, or do you just are you cordial? Like, I'm curious. [Speaker 1] (25:11 - 31:19) You know, it's such a great question. Really is. I have very, very little communication. I have my older brother who's still alive. Yeah. I love him so much. And years ago, he just said, I can't I can't be around you anymore. I think what happened was between my relationship with my wife, he had had a couple failed relationships and my relationship with my children. And this is just me guessing. I think it was too hard for him to see, even though we won. I think it was your guest who said one of the hardest emotions is to want others to do well in life. And I was always the same way. If someone was doing well, it was like, well, what's in it for me? Why are they doing well? And I'm not. Now I root for everyone to do well. I don't think my brother is there. I just reached out to him last week and I said, I love you. And he never responds to me. And I just said, you know, I'm here for you if you ever need someone. But what happened was I became sort of like the ATM machine. If you grow up really poor and you start making money, now you become and it wasn't his fault. It was my fault because I had success. It's called enemy. A-N-O-M-I-E is when you feel guilty and you feel shamed about your success. You know, you talk about Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or, you know, like a baseball player like Darryl Strawberry. So many, they struggle with their success. And what I would do was my brother would give me a ride to the airport, my wife, daughters and I, and I'd give him five, $700 for a 30 minute ride to Logan. My wife would be like, what are you doing? I'd be like, well, I just want to help him out. He doesn't have any money. And he was there for me as a kid. And when this guy wanted to beat me up at 12, you know, he was 11 years older than I was. He would be there and he'd kick the guy's ass. She's like, you've already paid him back over and over and over again. You don't need to, this is about you. This isn't about him. So to answer your question, yeah, I don't really, I call my sister just to check on her maybe once or twice a year. There is an acrimony. It's just, what happens is it's all about energy and frequency. When you start, I don't know if you're aware, I think you are, you're asked the most in Joel, David Hawkins and the consciousness, you know, power versus force. It's one of my favorite books. He talks about when you increase your consciousness, and it doesn't mean I'm any better than they, it's just, I just have a higher level consciousness. I come from a place of love, not all the time. Trust me. My mind is a very dangerous environment from time to time. That's why I need to do these daily practices. But I come from a place of love. And then like, when I stopped gambling, the people who were around me who gambled, they just disappeared. And all of a sudden, people started coming into my life. You begin to attract, you become a mirror of your state of consciousness. I began attracting people who were into poetry and into self-love and into kindness. And then I started attracting people who played tennis. And then my wife and I joined the local tennis club. And we never, I never sent our daughters to school. I got my graduate degree in exercise psychology and education. I'm like, I'm never sending them to school. So we homeschooled them. For the first, my oldest daughter never went to school. She went to kindergarten. We got her out. Totally not homeschooled, unschooled. There was no curriculum. You pursue your own passions passionately. I was a huge John Taylor Gatto fan, even when I was gambling. Huge John Hill, whole. Naomi Aldor, raising our children, raising ourselves, raising our children. So many books. And my wife and I said, I don't want to give my kids away. Now my youngest, she's a different breed. At 14, she said she wants to go to school. We believe in volition, free will. Okay, you go to school. I've watched the way she's been indoctrinated the last couple of years. I love her. I have a special place in my heart for her, but I see what's going on. So homeschooling, other unschooling parents would come to us. And my wife was brilliant at it. She was so good. And I was three miles from home, even though I was working like crazy. So we, I don't even like to say unschool. We just allowed our children to be natural learners and love the process of learning. Play, play, play. And then just new people came into my life. And I have a whole new set of friends, but my daughter's always said if I did have an Instagram account, my label would be zero followers. Because I just like being in nature with my dog and on the beach and meditating and reading. And yeah, I love being with clients and I can be social. But my thing is I love, I mean, you talked about it yesterday. The difference between being alone and lonely is you didn't really, you talked about it, but you didn't really delve into it. And M. Scott Peck, Joel, in The Road Less Traveled, he has the greatest definition. He talks about when you're lonely, you miss being around other people. You sort of feel isolated. But when you're alone, it's a different feeling. Aloneness means that, and this is what Jason and what you two did so beautifully, and was by listening to your podcasts and hearing your voices, I felt like someone was at my consciousness level. Now that may sound arrogant and it's not meant to be arrogant, but it is, okay, there's other people out there who are coming from a place of love, not fear. There are other people out there who are willing to do the work on their self-esteem. There are other people out there that are not believing what CNN and Fox News, and who would know that germ theory is a crock. Wow, these people get it. And so, the aloneness was, I didn't really have anybody to share with. You felt alone in what you knew in your state of consciousness. So, there's a big difference. So, I often feel alone, often. And that's why this conversation means so much to me, guys. Thanks again for having me on. But I very rarely, if ever, feel lonely. I used to feel lonely when I gambled, but no longer. [Speaker 2] (31:19 - 32:09) Mark, you got my total respect, man. From one brother to another man, the path you've walked, the way you hold yourselves, the decisions you've made for your family. Yeah, bro, total, total respect. I struggled with a bit of a gambling addiction as I was moving through adolescence and in my early 20s as well. And a lot of my cousins and the Middle Eastern community in Sydney deals with this as well. You go to the Star Casino, Sydney, any week, and it's chock full of Middle Eastern young men. So, I'm curious if this is something maybe genetic or even like... I want to dive deeper into what do you think are the primary motivations or drivers behind a gambling addiction? [Speaker 1] (32:10 - 34:59) Well, it's a great question. I don't have the answer. I can make a conjecture from my own experience, but I really do not have the answer that you may be looking for. I think all addiction stems from childhood unmet emotional needs. Now, I don't want to say Arabic parents are emotionally unavailable. No, I mean, clients that I work with, they're mostly all Ivy League educated. They're more unavailable. My mom was available. She was mean, but she was available. I just think there are unmet emotional needs. And you see those Arabic, like Asian, like you go and there's tons of Asians, and this isn't about being prejudiced. It's just being real. We're being real right now. And so, I think what happens is, is it thrill seeking? For me, it started at such a young age that that unmet childhood emotional need was acceptance. The only way I could get attention was to be a good athlete or to gamble, because what gambling did and what all addiction does is it makes you present. That's what we're all looking for. So does meditation. But meditation and being in nature and spending time with yourself in your own world and your own thoughts, that creates the little bit spikes, spurts of dopamine. When you have that drink, or you make that bet, you get big bursts. And what happens is with those bursts of dopamine, you create a debt, a spiritual debt that you have to pay. You don't get that debt with meditation. And so, I don't know what it is, Joel. I just know there were unmet emotional needs. My brother got drugs and alcohol. My other brother got self-loathing and weight issues. My sister got all kinds of stuff. And then it's funny because my biological father had another family and had two daughters. And his youngest, one I'm close with, and the other one has a I think, okay, I'm going to say it. What do I get to hide? I think the greatest author, psychological author, psychology, I'm a big young fan, like all of us are, not a Freud fan. He's part of the club. Trust me. Part of the big club, even back then. There's a woman named Alice Miller, and that was her name. You ever read Alice Miller? [Speaker 2] (34:59 - 34:59) Yes. [Speaker 1] (35:00 - 35:09) Very few people talk about her. And she's got many books on the importance of parenting. Drama of the Gifted Child was her magnum opus. [Speaker 2] (35:09 - 35:10) Masterpiece. [Speaker 1] (35:10 - 40:06) Masterpiece. And it's all about we fuck our children up by the way we parent them. And I started reading her when the girls were little. And I remember I read a book called by Mitch Albom. He was a sports writer. He wrote Tuesdays with More. And I loved his book. But then he wrote The Five People You Meet in Heaven. And we were in Turks and Caicos on vacation, and our daughter was one. We didn't have our second daughter, Naomi, yet. She wasn't born until 2007. And he had a quote in that book. And I still have it, but I took it to memory. And I remember being on the beaches of Turks and Caicos, my beautiful wife, my one-year-old's in my arms. I'm reading Mitch Albom. It says, let me see if I can remember it exactly. And this is what's good about not gambling, because it's helped my memory. I have a sort of a photographic memory. I can remember these quotes. All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, bears the imprints of its handlers. Some parents smudge. Other parents crack. And some parents break childhoods into tiny, jagged pieces beyond repair. And I thought, holy shit, I just want to smudge. Just want to smudge. And I'm going to do whatever I can to smudge. And I think that is what, eight years later, got me over the gambling addiction. Because now my girls, they look at me, and they know I've been totally available. Like even the... And that's why I'm not going to be on Instagram. I'm not going to be on Facebook. I'm not going to be scrolling. I'm on them. But they know in order for me to be the best father and husband to my wife, I need to love me first. They'll be like, oh, Daddy's meditating. Leave Daddy alone. Obviously, if it's an emergency, Daddy's always available to his girls. But so that's sort of my philosophy. And once you start becoming your own best friend, and you begin to re-parenting yourself... See, what the meditation practice did was it allowed me over years to re-parent myself, where I became more loving and kind, and it allowed me to forgive my mom. And then I went and I met my sibling's father before he died in about 2010. And I just had this wonderful relationship with the man I shared the last name with. And I'd go home and tell my mom and she'd be so angry at me. How dare you? You're causing trouble. And then I created this relationship with my own biological father and his family. And I just didn't want to get everybody together. I just needed... This is a great Daniel Siegel quote. In order to move forward in our lives, this is so important. In order to move forward, we need to make sense of our past. I needed to make sense of my past. Like, okay, what the hell really happened? And both of my fathers told me the same story. My mother told me the opposite story, not to say they were right. And I look back and I don't blame my mom because what happens is something called the sad game. It's when you just generationally blame. I never want to get into that game. I used to play that game years and years ago. But if I blame my mom, then I get to blame my grandmother and grandfather. And then if I blame my grandma, then I get to blame my great-grandmother. You know what? What benefit is that to me? I want to be present and I want to move forward. And so that's how I've learned so much about even vaccines. And germ theory is there's nothing new in the world except the history you don't know. Once you start diving into the history and start reading really quality books and you start investigating your own past, your future just becomes so much brighter. Just to give you a quick story, side note, I'm going to go get a kick. Everybody's concerned about masks in 2020, May of 2020. They're going to be here forever. And my wife's concerned, my best friend. And I'm telling them, yep, there's a vaccine coming even before there's a vaccine coming. They're like, well, what do you mean? Yeah, there's a vaccine coming. And you guys were great. You guys were on top of that. It wasn't like I was like, how do you know? I said, you don't have to worry. It's over May of 2022. Just going to get through two years. My wife's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, yeah, May of 2022. She's like, what do you mean? I said, Spanish flu. It's the same thing. It's the same, just a different generation. These are the apex predators. This is the same group of people doing the same thing. It's just another generation. It's just, if you understand what happened during the Spanish flu, you understand what COVID is. It's a psychological operation. And I tried to explain that to a few people who were open but they thought it was crazy. And the mass and everything went away like that in May of 2022. Because it's the same playbook. It's the same playbook with wars, with banking crises, with big pandemics. I know I sound like I'm a tinfoil guy, but it's true. I can give you book after book after book. And someone could say, well, how do you know those books are true? I don't. But my life, my meditation practice, what we're seeing in our world today proves those books true. Does that make sense? [Speaker 2] (40:06 - 42:31) And also it's like, well, how do you know the books you're reading are true? It's like you take in the information and then hopefully you're connected to intuition in terms of what resonates the most and you live your life. And a lot of times it's like, I look at you, Mark, the proof is in the pudding. Look at you, you're glowing. The choices that you've made to raise your children the way you've raised them and with your wife. People can do what they want to do and you're busy doing what you're doing. And that's where I've got to in my life now where it's, you know, I used to want to play the game back in the days of playing the food police, playing the, you need to believe and know what I know. How do you not know these things? How have you not read this book? I'm too busy living my life with my wife, building what I'm building with Joel and aligning with people and that share my values. You know, even to that degree, sure, maybe share consciousness, but like just even the simple, like what do you value? Valuing knowledge, valuing connection, valuing learning, valuing, staying humble to the fact that you don't know F in everything. Like the fact that people can sit there and, and, and, and come at you because you bring up a book from the 1900s or whatever. And they like, no, I know. Well, how do you know? Because you watch the news because you're one teacher, because your local doctor told you this, like, how can you not sit there and go, man, like what you said at the beginning, what I ultimately know is that I don't know. Now a short break from the episode. This past week, we hosted our first ever global community hangout for our Heap of the Truths podcast listeners. And man, that was a lot of fun. I had a great time. It was so great meeting everyone and hanging out and laughing. And we had a trivia game too, where someone won a prize. So it was a lot of fun for sure. Yeah, it was great. I just want to thank everyone that rocked up and really made it the success that it was. Community is so important and it was so dope connecting with you all. So thanks once again. There's two weeks left, sign up for Rise Above the Hood. If you're down to go in this transformational process with us, get down to Kickstart 2024 and really get on track, bring deep congruence between your internal and external realities, get on the path of making those deepest inner dreams manifest, then please join us for an incredible life-changing eight weeks. We start January 8th. This round ends March 5th. And you can learn everything at riseabovethehood.co. You can learn more and enroll there. The link is also in the show notes. [Speaker 1] (42:32 - 44:54) Back to the episode. Never come to a final knowing. I know what my knowing is right now, but there's two things that are needed. You need it. Remember the book, The Four Agreements? It was a great book, right? Don't take anything personally, never assume, do your best and be impeccable with your word. That's my favorite one. And that impeccable is to yourself. Be impeccable to your word. Do not say anything unkind to yourself. That is a practice of mine. And I fail on the tennis court because that's a primordial wound. At 12, the only way I could get attention was being a good athlete. So I became really good at baseball and basketball. And now it's shifted over the last 15 years in tennis. So I can still feel those voices. And it's a great opportunity. I bust rackets. I mean, I just busted a racket a couple of weeks ago on the court. And the guy next to me said, in the next court, he said, aren't you a meditation teacher? I said, yeah, we teach what we need to learn. You know, what am I going to say? He's right. But sometimes I'm overtaken. I don't do it perfectly. But yeah, it's like just, I don't know. And I read these great books and they resonate with me. Hey, even with diet, Joel, you're asking this. I was like you. I was trying to change the world. Oh, I have the truth. I have the truth. And then I realized, you know, Mark, maybe it's your truth. So the second book was The Fifth Agreement by Juan Carlos Ruiz. I have it right in my beautiful library to my right here. And The Fifth Agreement, he wrote it with his son, maybe two years later. And then that agreement, he just went over the previous four that I mentioned, but he added one. And the fifth was be skeptical, but be kind. So what I've realized is that the greatest way for me, and if this resonates with you, wonderful. If it doesn't, leave it. Be skeptical, but have an open mind. Because the mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's open. Forgive me for that saying, but I always use it with clients. So if I'm just skeptical, I'm not going to believe what Joel or Erasmus has to say. I'm skeptical because I believe my truth is the truth. And that's the way the world works these days. But if I just have an open mind without any skepticism, then I believe everything, right? But the key is to have them both, to be skeptical with an open mind. And that's what I do. [Speaker 2] (44:54 - 45:15) But that's the tension that's required for truth seeking. It can't be one way or the other. You need to have that friction. And you also need to have the fortitude to be able to stand in the middle of that friction. Yeah. Ayn Rand used to say, have an active mind, not an open mind, which I think integrates the skepticism and the openness that you're talking about. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (45:15 - 45:19) I'm looking at those two books right now. Following ahead and back, Atlas Shrugged. [Speaker 2] (45:21 - 45:22) Required reading, in my opinion. [Speaker 1] (45:22 - 49:07) Yeah, I agree. Heavy, heavy reading. And when I was reading them, I didn't know what the hell I was reading. So I should probably read them again at a different level of consciousness. I might get something more out of her theories and objectivism. But this is great. I just, like I said, I'm grateful to be here. I'm happy that you see the glow. I'm just so joyful. I love my life. And I just wish others... I have a client. And it's a funny story. So, and it's quick. He left me in 2010, right around the time I was changing my pricing structure. And he went to the Philippines and he made a fortune. I mean, he made a fortune. He's a serial entrepreneur. And he reached out to me a couple years ago, because now he's so wealthy. He just says, as he says, his words, he just doesn't want to be a big fat guy who's known for the money he has. He wants to give back. So he created this amazing foundation over in the Philippines where he made so much of his money. And he's like, I need you to help me with this online business. And it was a corporate wellness program. And I'm looking through it. I'm looking over the website and it really did poorly. And he's like, what do you think? I said, I think you're gonna have to trash it. I said, I think you're not specific enough. You're not better, special and different. You need to offer something. But I don't know much about online. I've always been face to face my practice. I'm a word of mouth business. I've never advertised. It's kind of goes along with not being on social media. And he said, okay, I'm done. He had about $100,000 a month in expenses and salary after two years. So I'm shutting it down. Take, you know, I'm like, it's all about training. You gotta get the best trainers and teach them how to be, you know, do what I do. And he's like, well, you do that. Can you do that for me? And I said, I suppose I could. And I'm looking for a second act, maybe now my clients are getting older. I mean, I've been with the same clients, Joel and you're asking us for 20, I have three clients I've been with 27 years, half my life. And I only have a dozen clients left now. And three of them make up over 50% of my revenue. And I say that because, you know, that's a huge revenue concentration issue, but it's offered me so much time affluence, I wouldn't change it for the world. Because like I said, my daughters love me. I mean, when they see me, especially my oldest one, because my youngest is that 16, 17 year old and nothing I can say or do was right, but she still loves me, I can see it in her eyes. But this is just look that they say they know what daddy did to become the father he became overcoming his own childhood programming and negative and negativity and gambling habit and bursts of anger, and I'm just so grateful. And so I said, Okay, I'm in. So right now I'm in the process of teaching my method. He's given me a whole staff. How do I create this online business and, and that's what I'm doing now. I'm zoom calling Philippines, I get a staff. I'm just trying to learn the online business of how to how to help other people feel as joyful as I feel. And, you know, teach people how to holistically heal themselves from the inside out through self love, through because I believe self love and self mastery are interchangeable. I don't think you can have one without the other. And self love in some people confuse that with arrogance. No arrogance is when you really don't like yourself, and you overcompensate to try to show people that you do. Self love is, I hope Joel and in in your ass most, you know, they, you know, had the greatest podcast ever. I want them to succeed in every way. And I never used to be that way. But when you begin to love yourself, you want others to do well. [Speaker 2] (49:08 - 49:31) Yeah, I agree. That's what I've noticed. And even back to what you were saying earlier is like, it's hard for people to be happy for other people when they're doing well, because your success and your self love unconsciously triggers in them. And they realize whether it's again, conscious or not that they don't love themselves at that level. And so it's, it's a lot, you know, so love yourself anyway. [Speaker 1] (49:31 - 51:03) Love yourself anyway, you know, I have these practices, and I and I do them every day. And I've learned so much in the meditation, I'll tell you that. Now it's to the point where I feel like I don't need to meditate as much as I used to. It's like someone who creates lots of goals. If you get a shitty life, I think goals are wonderful. But what happens is goals just create more goals. Once you get to a life that you enjoy, or at least you can tolerate, now it's a time to transfer or switch your mindset, at least in my opinion, if it resonates great, if it doesn't pretend I'd ever even said it to your audience, but it's time to transfer to systems. So I have systems now, I'm going to meditate every morning. I'm going to face myself in the mirror every morning. I'm going to be in nature every day with my dog or without talking about in saying positive affirmations. I love you, Mark. I trust you, Mark. I thank you, Mark. To me, God is, I call it soul intelligence. I have an acronym, SOUL, self-organizing, unconditionally loving intelligence. I believe we all have access to it, like M. Scott Peck talks about in his unbelievable last unit. If any of your listeners want to just read The Road Less Traveled, the last unit is called Grace. It's the best writing I've ever read. And I've read a lot of books, but he talks about how important it is just to love yourself and to be your own best friend. And just where was I going with that thought? I forgot, I went on a tangent. [Speaker 2] (51:04 - 51:06) I'm sorry, you were just talking about- Systems, goals and systems. [Speaker 1] (51:07 - 55:44) Yeah, systems. I have these systems. So it's forest bathing, it's positive affirmations, it's loving visualizations. I'm going to be honest with you. So May of 2020 happens, March of 2020 into May, I start getting, I'm a whole food plant-based eater. I have been since 2009. I was meditating on the couch. I came out of my meditation, I looked at my wife, we were all carnivores. I said, honey, I'll never eat meat again. And I'm not telling anybody not to, your diet's between you and you. And I say that to my clients. I said, I'm just, I'm done. It's all about fruits and it's all about vegetables and it's all about whole grains. And it's all about, that's the way I want to eat going forward. My wife thought I was nuts. I was always a meat and potatoes guy. My mom was alive then, she screamed at me over and over and over again. And I remember, and I was meditating and the things that came out of meditation, they just started to teach me over and over just things that I needed to do to live my best life. Even the business model, I was in France with my family on vacation and it said, it's time to go to a quarterly program system where you can, you're going to lose two thirds of your clientele. So that's the way I live my life. And these systems, and so anyway, I had this terrible stomach problem in May of 2020, terrible. Diarrhea, constipation, I'm a real healthy eater, right? So the keto guys and the paleo guys are like, ha ha, probably, and that's fine, that's their choice. But it's like, well, did I eat some tainted fenugreek sprouts? What was it? And it was just, it lasted for a year and a half. It wouldn't go away. I'd be on the tennis court and I'd have to go out for, and I went to my best friend. One of my best friends at that time was a functional doctor who's still my doctor. I pay him a concierge fee now, but he's totally, he bought into it. He bought into the whole COVID thing, but at least he knows how I think. So I kept him as my doctor. I've been trying to get my wife to drop health insurance now for years, but she doesn't want to because of our girls. I believe the whole thing is a scam to be perfectly honest with you. Health, it's not, nothing to do with health. It's all about disease management as you two know. And I remember I just, my stomach was just in knots and the doctor wanted to put me on Cipro and all these antibiotics. And I haven't taken any antibiotics since I was 13. And I don't believe- What year was this? When you had the- 2020. And I knew what it was. I just couldn't stomach COVID. I knew what it was. It was an emotional thing that was driving me because I had all this information. Not that I have a monopoly on the truth, but, and so I'm meditating and I'm going to be honest with you guys. You might want to cut this out later. You viewers, I'm meditating in November, prior to Thanksgiving, 2021. Yeah, it's 2021 and it's November and I've had this stomach issue for a year and a half. There's nothing getting better. I'm seeing, I'm paying thousands of dollars to natural paths and I'm a nutrition guy, right? I can't get it better. I eat an apple and I'm done. And I even, believe it or not, I even went back to a carnivorous diet for about a week and that even got me sicker. And I have a good friend who's a monk. He was a monk for 30 years. And he said to me, I'll never forget it. A couple of years prior, he said, have you ever drank your own urine? And I looked at him and I said, are you shitting me, John? And he had left the monastery when he was in his early fifties, married a naturopathic Spanish, older woman, beautiful woman with a beautiful spirit, Brisa. And I said, you're crazy. This was back in like 2018. So I'm meditating in my car outside of my studio right here. It's a cold November morning. And the voice, like it told me to stop eating meat. It told me to change my business model. It told me to get my girls out of school. It says, start drinking, start drinking your own urine. You're a plant-based eater. I'm like, you're shitting me. I'm not going anywhere near that. That's waste. I believe what everybody else believes. But what I did was, because I love to read, I started researching. I started reading. And I know the woman that you had on a couple of weeks ago, she touched on it a little bit, but didn't get into it. The woman who worked with the, she's in Thailand, an older woman, sweet, very knowledgeable. [Speaker 2] (55:45 - 55:47) What's her first name? Ena. Ena writes thoughts. [Speaker 1] (55:47 - 56:57) Ena. And I've listened to Ena with Paul Cech, and she gets much more into urine therapy. And I read six books that I found on urine therapy in a course of a month and a half. And by the middle of December, I was able to digest my morning urine. I drank it. And there's always this little saying, you say, you look at it, you bless it. I don't like that word, bless, be less. You look at it, you thank it, blow into your body. I drank three ounces of my own urine. It wasn't disgusting. Remember, I'm pretty much a very clean eater. Within two days, every stomach ailment gone. Within two days. I got told from reading in depth that within a month, I'm going to have a healing crisis. I start drinking three ounces every morning. Within a month, I am so sick for 24 hours. I have about 105 temperature. And the books told me, you're going to have a healing crisis because you're literally, you're literally detoxing your body at a cellular level. I know, sounds nuts. You're like, this was a great conversation until he went here. [Speaker 2] (56:58 - 57:02) I have many friends that are into urine therapy. [Speaker 1] (57:02 - 57:08) I had to go, it's called Amaroli or Shibambo. And I have to be honest with you, it has changed my life. [Speaker 2] (57:08 - 57:28) Yeah, but do you think it's because of the physical properties of the urine? Or do you think it's because you psychologically made the urine the medicine by, through the monk's advice, through reading the books? Because I know you understand German medicine, you've listened to our podcast. Indigestible morsel conflict, you couldn't swallow it 20-20. And psychologically, you decided this is the thing that's going to help me. [Speaker 1] (57:29 - 58:27) Yeah, totally. Joel, I'm on it. I'm on it. And you know, I agree. I think it's a combination of the two of them. So literally, but you got to look at the properties of urine. Urine is not waste. Urine is filtered blood. It is plasma. Your kidneys say, I have enough vitamin C, I'm going to dump the rest into my urine. I have enough vitamin K, I'm going to dump the rest of my urine, especially the water-soluble vitamins. When we look at B, C, K, A, E, and D are fat-soluble, so they're a little different. But even then, it's constantly dumping. There's stem cells in there. There's human growth hormone in there. It's the perfect temperature for exactly what you need. And once I could get over the disgust factor, and I started drinking it, knowing that I was plant-based, which is always better. And then they would say, well, put it on your skin. And you think, oh, I'm not going to smell like a urinal at the baseball game. You don't. You smell like the foods you eat. I mean, and you cannot- This is why he's glowing. [Speaker 2] (58:28 - 58:29) Why I'm glowing. [Speaker 1] (58:30 - 58:36) Every morning, I have a cup of my own urine, and I literally say, and this is before I do mirror therapy. [Speaker 2] (58:37 - 58:39) You glow like gold because of the golden shower. [Speaker 1] (58:39 - 59:27) There's a book called The Golden Fountain that you'd love. But it's become a practice within the last couple of years. And I'll tell you, the energy, even if I have a muscle ache, like high-level tennis, I pull a hamstring, it would take three weeks to heal. Takes me about three days now. I know it sounds sensationalism. It sounds nuts. If anything bothers me, any wound, I'm telling you, your urine is your own medicine. Think about it. We take all these pharmaceuticals that are made of petroleum. So many people, they drink alcohol, they put poison in their bodies, they smoke weed, but they won't- That's part of the self-love. If we really want to get into the self-love, I can hear my wife now. The podcast was so great until you went there, honey. That's what she's going to say to me. Well, we're here for- Listen, we're here for the truth, and this is my truth. [Speaker 2] (59:27 - 59:35) Yeah, I may not 100% agree, but I'm curious. I don't know if I'm into drinking my own urine. I mean, I'm not. [Speaker 1] (59:37 - 1:00:09) Amanda Vollmer talks about that. She's a Canadian naturopath. I enjoy listening to her. She's a little intense, but she's great. But I just had it unbelievable. And I literally drank it, and I love it, and I thank it for nourishing my cells, my tissues, and my organs, for cleansing my waters. So I think, Joel, it's a combination of those things. And that's one of the practices that I've added over the last couple of years. And just doing these daily practices have just completely changed my life. We're here for the truth. So that's my truth. [Speaker 2] (1:00:09 - 1:01:12) Yeah, exactly. And you're sharing your story. So we have different eating habits. So I respect you for choosing a more plant-based life. I tend to have more animal protein. But I think this highlights something that's really important, is that you look at individuals on the internet or in life, and people can't hold space for another person's reality. You just have people trying to argue and change them and project on them their own expectations on what they should think and how they should live and what they should believe. And it's like, just live your life. I'm doing my thing. If it works for you, great. That's cool. It's like the line from Schitt's Creek that I like to say sometimes, where it's like, I love that for you. It's like, cool, I love that for you. I love that you like to drink three ounces of your piss every morning. I probably won't do that. But at the same time, I'm open to the fact that maybe in 10 years, I may sip on my pee and be like, oh, hey, Mark, look, it worked. I don't know. But can you stay open and skeptical? Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:01:13 - 1:02:05) Nothing drives me more crazy than veganism. They drive me nuts. My daughter was like that. I called her vegangelical because we're a household. I'm like, no. We even had our dog, Max, eating plant-based. I'm like, I'm done. He's a carnivore. He's not eating nothing but raw meat, and he loves it. We have steak in the house for him. I'll go buy the best high-quality steak tips, all human grade. He's 12 years old. He looks like a puppy. He's a carnivore. And so, I believe the human body is a temple and it's a water system. But yet, I am completely open to people who disagree with me. And it's not even an argument. Your diet's between you and you. There's a reason why there's die in the word diet. I don't even like to use that word. It's a lifestyle. If you want to eat more animal protein, then you do that. You do what you see is best for you. And if you resonate with something, great. If you don't, leave it. [Speaker 2] (1:02:05 - 1:02:21) And I just think this is where belief comes into play too. If you really believe that what you're doing and how you're nourishing yourself, if you're eating real food, I think that has an impact. But if people are like, I can't believe I have to eat this because it's healthy and I don't like it. What does that do? [Speaker 1] (1:02:21 - 1:04:54) I completely agree. I am 100% on board. If you eat something, the number one technology that human beings have, and this is why the apex predator has to keep us in fear. They have to us in fear with phony pandemics, and they have to keep us in fear with these. Even look at Rockefeller medicine. If you go and study the history of medicine, and I know you guys are well attuned to this, and you realize that it's completely a farce. It's all made up. It's all made up. I believe there's one disease, it's toxicity. It affects people in different places based on their genetic background. And there's a wonderful author in the early 20th century named J.H. Tilden, one of my favorite authors. He's got about five books out that are so good before the Rockefeller. See, I like reading books before 1920 and 1930. There's a sweet spot between 1850 and 1920. And most of these books, you'll never find them on Barnes and Noble or Amazon. They're all censored. I'm looking at 35 books right now over the last couple of years that I've read. I would say two thirds of them are censored. You can't get them. Even on central banking. I know, Joel, you talked about that a lot. G. Edward Griffin, you can get that one, The Creature from Jekyll Island. But when I look at the one right here, it's by Stephen Mitved-Goodson. It's called The Enslavement of Mankind, The History of Central Banking. And then you looked at Nunn-Deacol, Conspiracy. There's just so many books. But the books that you read before a certain time, I'm not saying they're 100% truth, but that's before the financial aspect came in. You can just learn so much from reading that. And that's how I learned so much about the Spanish flu and the smallpox epidemic in the 1880s and what happened with Edward Jenner really back in the late 18th century and how that was completely fraudulent. There's a great book by a man named Edgar Marge Cruikshank called The History of Pathology and Vaccination. And he was like the Tony Fauci of London in the 1880s, and they had a smallpox outbreak. And so the government put him on it. And they said, we'll open up the vaults. You study what's going on with us. And he came back and he's like, wow, Jenner was paid off. He wrote a huge book, Volumes 1 and Volumes 2. Jenner was paid off by the government. It was all a eugenics program. He actually vaccinated the cow that died. It's unbelievable. It was complete fraud and Cruikshank wrote about it. And he pretty much lost his career. He lost everything. [Speaker 2] (1:04:55 - 1:05:58) Yeah. I think anyone who goes down this path ultimately and does a certain amount of research comes to the realization that so many of the things that we think are true today are based on fraud, pseudoscience, et cetera. And some people are going to believe that and other people, no matter what you show them, what books you show them, how you highlight the falsities of the past, they still won't believe it. And that's their path and that's their journey. I'm into truth. I'm into grappling with ideas. And I'm into connecting to my intuition and common sense and finding out what works in my own life for me. Yeah. And it's like a lot of these ideas and a lot of these characters that propagated these ideas like 100 or more years ago that were fraudulent. Back then, because there was a lot less flow of information and technology, it's hard to backtrack and for people to point the finger and be like, this person is obviously a fraud. Look at their character, look at the history, look at the past. But now it's been so long, we just take these ideas as truth and face value and we build upon them. [Speaker 1] (1:06:00 - 1:06:31) Remember the word history, his story. I mean, it's his story. Think of what they've done since 2020. What are they going to remember when my daughter's grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, they changed the definition of herd immunity. They changed the definition of vaccine. Webster just changed the definition of allopathic medicine in the last year. I know it sounds crazy like I'm wearing a tinfoil hat, but whatever is popular is most likely wrong in my humble opinion. [Speaker 2] (1:06:31 - 1:08:01) I'm proud of my tinfoil hat. You're on our podcast, Mark. No one's assuming you're wearing a tinfoil hat here, bro. Yeah, you know what? Maybe I've just listened to it too many times. I'm traumatized. You're right. The consensus is usually wrong. And all we have to do is look at history and look at how many times things that people thought were true or healthy were not. And yet, even though that's happened in the past, people still get their psyches hacked and they keep allowing fear to dictate their behaviors. The antidote is becoming as conscious as you can, as healthy as you can, and doing that deep inner work and self-love and connecting and building that connection to intuition. And becoming as anti-tribal and developing herd immunity because the crowd, the masses, this entity that's not doing the work, is the most easily manipulable, is always going to fruit the indoctrination from this apex predator that you speak of. As children growing up, we want this safety. We want to assume that the crowd is correct. And so we tend to align ourselves with the popular answer. Growing up, filling yourself with self-love, becoming self-responsible, that's about walking away from the crowd. That's an individual journey. [Speaker 1] (1:08:01 - 1:08:12) Yeah, that's the road less traveled, no doubt. And that's what we want. We want it for us, and we want it for our children. And it's easy to go along the way. [Speaker 2] (1:08:12 - 1:09:20) Yeah, man. And this is what I really appreciate about the way you've raised your family. And it's something that's really started to hit home for me as I've dived into the work of M. Scott Peck. It's this whole concept of love. And like I mentioned in the email, he defines love as the willingness to nurture the spiritual growth of oneself or another. And growing up in these toxic family systems, even culturally, like Middle Eastern families, where they define love as following and mimicking my wants and my path and staying as close and connected to the family system as possible. When really, that is anti-responsibility. That's anti-love. And even he talks about, you don't even really love a pet. You can't even really love a pet. You can't love anything that's non-human, because we want our pets to be as dependent as possible. He's like, that's not love. He's like, if our pets start leaving the house, start peeing everywhere, start barking at us 24-7, doing their own thing, our attitude between us and our dog is going to change immediately, right? Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:09:20 - 1:10:03) Yeah. My wife brings home another guy and says, hey, I'm not going to be too happy about that. I mean, I don't know if it's possible for human beings to really unconditionally love. I know it's possible for my pet, for Max. Just the way he looks at me, if I have to leave him for a couple hours, he's here on the floor right now, just waiting for me to take him for a walk. But I question whether human beings, I struggle with it, even with all the inner work. But I do the best I can. I become a little more loving each and every day. The one that I want to be unconditionally loving with, though, is not Vicky or the girls, it's with me. That's the guy. That's the guy, because it's not what I say and what I do that's going to change the world. It's the person I become. [Speaker 2] (1:10:04 - 1:10:07) Yeah. I think that's the only place it's possible. It's with oneself. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:10:07 - 1:12:27) Yeah, I think so. What is that great quote? I put it on the chalkboard at the house many, many years ago, and it's still up there. It's Ralph Waldo Emerson, I believe. What I do speak so loudly, you can hardly hear what I say. If I remember that with my daughters and my wife, I'm golden. But I fail. I fail at it every day, to be honest with you. I believe that ego is very important. I want to have a strong ego. I don't want to have an inflated ego. I want it to be my co-pilot, not my pilot. Higher self is my pilot. I always say to clients or friends, my neuroses are doing push-ups outside my bedroom door every night waiting to come in. That's why I have not missed a day of meditation since, I believe, March 14th, 2006. Not a day. I will not miss a day, because I need that. Yet, there are other things I'll do to stay present, but I need that time where I can be alone, no phone. I feel like even now with my phone sometimes. I have never had notifications on. Never. As a matter of my wife, last week, I was waiting to get a phone call. I didn't have notifications on, so I missed the call. My wife gave me a comment on the way out, taking my daughter, because it was an opportunity for my daughter and me to play tennis. She made a comment. I have an acronym that I created that really helps in conflict. It's called SCROLL. Instead of scrolling on your phone, she really pissed me off. That moment you get with your wife when you just want to react, you get all that programming. I have an acronym called SCROLL. Be silent. That's the S. Calm in the moment. Calm. Relax. Observe. Feel that blood boiling. Observe it all, and then let love. That moment she did that, I was scrolling, breathing. I could feel it. I could hear my mother's voice. I could hear all the voices of the past that just wanted to rip into her. Just kept scrolling. It goes through you. That anger, that fear, that hatred, that momentary hatred, it goes through you, but it takes a lot of work to get to that point. [Speaker 2] (1:12:30 - 1:12:48) It's like the great quote by Viktor Frankl, between stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space, our ability to choose, and within that choice is our freedom. Anyways, I'm paraphrasing it, but it's that idea. Does an individual have the ability to scroll, like you're saying? [Speaker 1] (1:12:50 - 1:13:00) He called it responsibility, and he turned that word around, the ability to respond. From stimulus to reaction, there's that space, and in that space is where all our power is. [Speaker 2] (1:13:01 - 1:14:26) Yeah, it's very true. This is where, of course, if you listen to the podcast, you know I'm a fan of doing nervous system work, whatever that is that can support a person. For you, meditation has had a huge role in your life to allow you to be able to scroll, to be able to be silent, to be able to just relax and be in the moment and feel what's going on. You've built capacity within your nervous system to hold discomfort, to feel the rage boiling without having it just come out in ways that can be destructive to your relationships and to yourself. I think that's part of the work. Whatever techniques, remember, we're all individuals. Different things are going to work for us. For some people, certain meditative techniques may work better than others. It's like you have to figure that out for yourself. What ultimately allows you to do these things that we're talking about? To not be emotionally reactive, to not ruin our connections with others because we said something from an unconscious place, from a reactive place, as opposed to responding more consciously. This is the work that we need. We're, I guess, a young species to a degree, and we're moving towards cultivating more emotional intelligence. You've probably heard me bring up human design. These are things that we have to learn if we're going to evolve. It's like how can we be with one another? How can we know ourselves? How can we feel into what's happening and into that nuance and react more consciously or respond more consciously, as opposed to just screaming at one another and ultimately bringing more drama into our lives? [Speaker 1] (1:14:26 - 1:14:31) So good. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I fail at it every day. I mean that. [Speaker 2] (1:14:31 - 1:14:32) I hear you, man. [Speaker 1] (1:14:32 - 1:14:57) I'm not perfect. I have an expression that says, even Buddha burns their bagels. I burn my bagels every day. There are times that, like I told you on the tennis court, even with my wife, where I just react. It just comes out. I say something. I don't think it's that mean compared to the way I grew up. It would be considered kind. Do the best you can. [Speaker 2] (1:14:57 - 1:15:18) I think you need to express it appropriately as well. What's your relationship with repression, is my question? Because I'm not saying that you do this, but many that purely rely on meditation can often lead down a repressive path. So, where do you get the chance to actually vent and let these emotions come out? [Speaker 1] (1:15:19 - 1:16:36) Oh, yeah. Well, on the tennis court, right? Athletic. I work out hard twice a week. I have a great isometric eccentric strain training program that I love doing. This morning, I ran a couple miles on the beach. I do sprints. So, I do it physically, emotionally, but you're absolutely right. And I was part of a meditation group and I could see that so much, the repression, not only in them, I could see it in me. It is like there are times like I'll get out of a 30-minute meditation and I'll be walking in the woods and I'll be calling this one a mother effer and this one, it just comes up. I'm like, where did that come from? I just spent 30 minutes saying how much I love life and love me and I'm calling this person an effing jerk. It's like, are you kidding me? And it's like that voice, that inner voice that some call it the chatterbox, you know, great book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffress. Wow, what an incredible book. She calls it the chatterbox. That chatterbox. So, Joel, I'm between this part of me that says, okay, feel everything. And that way it will go through you like my scroll technique and you'll be over it. I don't think that's human. I think that's bullshit because I feel everything and I still want to kill that person who cut me off the next day. [Speaker 2] (1:16:36 - 1:18:01) I think it's this comes down, you just said it, a part of me. There's parts of work. We have many different aspects to us. And part of the work is how do we become this conductor of our inner orchestra of different parts? That's an expanded consciousness. Knowing these parts within us, if we repress them, then they come out in these twisted ways, you know, and knowing when to express maybe some anger in a healthy way or sadness or vulnerability. It's not about not experiencing these things. And this is the one thing I have, again, not saying it with you, that I've seen in people who rely on meditation. It's like, I got to be calm. That's the goal. I have to be calm. And then they go into their life and it's just like those triggers and those things are still there. And so, I'm a fan of meditation that includes the whole body, that really allows you to scan the whole body and noticing what's happening and what sensation, what's emotions are coming up. I personally, again, me, I'm not a fan of just wanting to not think or wanting to just quiet things. Sure, you could bring some peace into it, but I'm curious about like clouds passing the sky, like, ooh, that thought, that's interesting. Oh, that feeling in my body. Oh, that emotion. Where did that come from? Huh? You know, like what brings me to become more curious and more aware of the totality of my being? And I think that's where I think meditation can be extremely, extremely powerful as opposed to like the self-hypnosis of like repeating the same thing over and over again and disconnecting from more of you. Again, these are my opinions. You don't have to agree. [Speaker 1] (1:18:01 - 1:18:16) No, they're good. They're real. I'm not just saying it. I'm not just, I would tell you if I disagreed. I love respectful disputation. We don't have it anymore in our society. I mean, that's the greatest form of learning is the power of the dialectic. It's respectful disputation. [Speaker 2] (1:18:16 - 1:18:16) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:18:16 - 1:20:13) You know, Erasmus is more of a carnivore. Why are you a carnivore, Erasmus? This is why, Mark. Mark, why are you a plant receiver? This is why. I learned a little bit. You learn a little bit and we respect each other and we walk away. I don't need to change you. You don't need to change me. But so meditation, what, and meditation allows me to, that flow of energy. I noticed that flow of energy. It's an essence and it begins to flow through me, this self-organizing, infinite loving intelligence, this soul intelligence. And then it comes out, but it always leads to action. I'm with you. The people in the, you know, eight hours, they're sitting, you know, on a mountain top. Great. That wonderful for them, they're sending loving vibrations. I think it's great for them. No judgment here. But for me, that's not it. For me, it's like, I need to take action. And that's why that still voice continues to tell me what to do in my life. Like, I was a pain in the ass with you, Erasmus. I'm like, Erasmus, have me on. Erasmus, have me on. You're like, buddy, we'll get you on when we can. We got a lot of people. I was like, all right, I get the hint. You're being a pain in the ass. Back off, Mark. And that's a little bit of self-awareness, right? And I loved it. You were so kind throughout. And then your kind email yesterday, Joel. But I get it. There's a point where, you know, what meditation does to me is it helps me to notice when I'm losing self-awareness. Okay. Back off, Erasmus. They got tons of people who want to go on. And I'm like, yeah, but you don't want to go on because you want to promote your business. You want to go on because you really want to help people. But so do all your other guests. And so the point I'm trying to make is meditation for me is it's where the being becomes doing. If it's just being without doing, it's like I tell people, I don't want any more information. The greatest thing you can do is shut the news off. Shut it off. You don't want to be informed. You want to be informed from within. [Speaker 2] (1:20:15 - 1:23:09) That's right. That's what I was going to say. It's where you go to recalibrate, right? To process your reality and also to get informed as to what's next. And where your attention and your energy needs to be directed. Yeah. And also it's interesting because like social media, we can say, oh, it's all bad. But then at the same time, social media has changed my life. It's changed my life and even in what we're talking about. I go back more than 10 plus years when I used to get onto arguments and spend all day debating and figuring how to respond to people. Getting triggered and learning about my triggers and feeling what's happening in my body and being like, oh, well, how can I respond in a way that's more conscious? Now, that's been part of my journey. I went from spending hours and hours years ago, like I would get a response. Okay, now I got to think about how I'm going to respond to like now I don't really, I don't respond to really anyone on social media because it's not for me. Like there's other things that I'm focused on, you know? And I've met great people. And at the same time, I have a part of me and I've said this to Joel, like, I want to throw my phone out the window and be off all social media. I don't want to do it. I just want to have an email list and then just focus on that, you know? So it's like I yo-yo because different parts of me want different things because I've also met incredible people. Some of my closest friends and back to what you were saying about with 2020, not, well, Joel, of course, obviously that everyone knows that. But like you talked about like, you know, hearing podcasts and like, oh, these people think like me. When you're on social media very quickly, you meet people that are more aligned in your views, especially with everything that was going on in 2020. So that's one of the benefits. So anyways, it's like pros and cons and ultimately what do you want to live your life and do these things add value? And the downside of it is like there's times I spend too much time on it. Like, it's like, fuck, I gotta be on my phone less, you know? Anyways, it's- Yeah, yeah. I mean, I met my wife through social media. I met you through social media, you know? But then it's like your life changes, your needs change, your values change, you know? There comes a point where it doesn't become necessary to that degree. And then how can you relate to it more intentionally, you know? I read a Laura Maxwell post the other day where she said our relationship with social media should be like a bulletin board. We just say what we've got to say and fucking leave, you know? Yeah. And I literally had that thought the other day as well where I was just like, okay, how can it be where it's like, because I'm not really on Facebook. I was off it for a few years once 2020 happened because it was just, you know, it ended up being too much. But like, we share a podcast thing and that's it. Like, we share our reels, we share our things, even though they're censored and shadow banned. And then I don't need to spend the extra five minutes scrolling. I just don't need to. Yeah. It's a tool. How do you use it? [Speaker 1] (1:23:10 - 1:26:11) Yeah. It's are you a slave to it or are you the master of it? And it's really hard because we're wired to be a slave to it. We have to relate to personalities. And when you have a dopamine rectangle in your pocket at all times, and that's what I call the dopamine rectangle, especially with young children. That's what really impresses me when I see how addicted to my, her phone. My daughter is my youngest daughter and she's great, but it's like the whole generation. So, and as you said in yesterday with your guests, it's you got to get used to it. It's here. It's not going away. You know, my daughters, they see me meditating. All I can hope for is, you know, death is paradoxical. The only thing you can take with you is what you leave behind. And what I'm leaving behind is my daughter seeing their daddy and my wife, you know, go from being a compulsive, angry, self-loathing, compulsive gambler to being the person I am today. And I just can't wait to see who I am tomorrow. I really can't because if you do this work and you do these systems and you make it the most important thing in your life, it's just, I can't begin because there's a huge difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is, you know, I just got a $15,000 check from a client and that's temporary. Happiness is, okay, I just, I'm in the process of making love to my wife. Happiness is, but what happens if my wife didn't want to make love that night? What happens if that client decided not to stay with me and didn't pay me that $15,000, right? It's all based on external events, happiness. For me, joy, just happy for no reason at all. No reason. I'm just happy. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just joyful. And that's like, I can walk in nature and all of a sudden, I start crying because I hear the squirrels running in the leaves. That could have never happened in my gambling days. I was the most, I can't begin to tell you, I had such a chip on my shoulder. I still do to a certain extent, just working at it. It's, M. Scott Peck says in Grace, the opposite of love is not fear. The opposite of fear of love is laziness, is we will not do the work to become spiritually competent and entropy sets in and it makes us spiritually incompetent. And that's why the news, why isn't the news filled with loving stories? You don't think there's tons and tons of loving stories out there. They have to make us afraid because we, with our belief being our best technology, we can accomplish anything. Like Max Planck said, the quantum physicist in the 20s, the matrix of the mind manifests all matter. Reality is not what our eyes show our mind. No, no. It's what our mind creates for our eyes to see. And that's why the pandemics, and that's why the banking crises, and that's why we have these wars. And who knows what's really happening? The media is owned. It's owned and it's operated. Do you, do you two understand what the Smith-Mundt Act is? Have you ever heard of that? [Speaker 2] (1:26:11 - 1:26:12) I don't think so. No. [Speaker 1] (1:26:12 - 1:27:46) Oh, this is huge. This is huge. 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. It's an act that says the government cannot propagandize the populace. It's illegal. You'll go to jail. In 2013, Obama repeals the Smith-Mundt Act, meaning that the government can not only terrorize, and now wearing his tinfoil hat again. I mean, that's what I hear. They can, false flags. The government, the difference is that if China or Russia, if news came from the government, people automatically didn't believe it. Even in Lebanon, Joel. I remember I had friends next door neighbors and they're like, oh, we don't believe anything, Al-Jazari. We don't believe anything that comes from there. But what happened was in 2013, not only did Obama repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, and you can look this up, he joined in with the media, which means that the government can now use the media, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, all the big media conglomerates to do their bidding for them. And you would think, oh, come on, someone in media would say something. How could they? They would lose their jobs. They have families to feed. So the media and the government now are complicit in creating these false flags. And we had, within 18 months, we had three of them. Literally, right after Obama repealed it in 2013. And I won't get into what they are, because they're very controversial, but it's a pretty scary thing. That's why you got to shut off. Shut off the news and turn on. [Speaker 2] (1:27:47 - 1:27:49) I don't watch anything except tennis. [Speaker 1] (1:27:50 - 1:27:58) Good for you. I'm with you on that. I'm a big Djokovic fan. I didn't like what they did to him in Australia a couple of years ago, but I'm so happy he's winning. [Speaker 2] (1:27:58 - 1:28:33) Imagine sitting down on the couch and turning on Heroism TV, the self-responsibility channel. Amazing, inspiring stories are programming us and inspiring us and inspiring our children. This is simply not the world that we live in, unfortunately. Speaking of the Obamas, his family helped to produce this latest Netflix movie, Leave the World Behind, which Christophe just did a podcast on, which I haven't watched, but apparently is incredibly predictive. [Speaker 1] (1:28:34 - 1:29:19) I can't watch that stuff. And I love Jason, as I said earlier. But I think the most important thing we have is the contents of our consciousness. The contents of our consciousness. My daughters will know. They'll watch a Mission Impossible movie with my wife, my two daughters. I leave the room. I go read a book. I go literally put the lights on at the park a mile away from my house, and I hit tennis balls off a wall. I won't put anything. I've worked too hard to make Between My Ears a loving place to be most of the time. I can't deal with it. I don't want to. And even with the COVID stuff now, I don't pay any attention to it anymore. I know what I need to know. Unless someone says, Mark, you absolutely have to read this that I trust, then I will. [Speaker 2] (1:29:19 - 1:29:31) Yeah. Mark, you're obviously an incredibly well-read guy. So can I get your top five book recommendations of every book you've read for our audience? [Speaker 1] (1:29:32 - 1:29:37) Okay. Do you care about a particular subject? [Speaker 2] (1:29:37 - 1:29:46) Because I focus on emotional, spiritual, physical, whatever's coming to your mind, whatever's impacted you. Intuitively, what are the five coming through? [Speaker 1] (1:29:46 - 1:31:27) I think Power Versus Force by David Hawkins is an absolutely fantastic book. I don't think I know Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul. That is just a classic. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. That really resonates with me. The Power of the Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. Now that's four. And I'll give you one on nutrition because I think this man was the greatest nutrition scientist who ever lived. And his name was Arnold Ehret. And he wrote a book called The Mucousless Diet System in 1917. He was murdered in the early 20s in LA. He slipped on ice. I just think he... I have read probably 300 books on nutrition, fitness. I don't think anybody explains it. If you're willing to spend the time with Arnold Ehret, he was this brilliant man who got away from the medical system and healed his body through fasting and through eating a plant-based diet. And he talks each and every step of the way. And I'm not trying to make anyone into a plant-based eater. Like I said, your lifestyle and the way you eat is your personal decision. I respect your freedom to do so. But those are my five books. And tonight, I'll be thinking, oh, I should have said this one. I mean, I'm looking at Redemption. Have you ever read the Redemption manual model? It's a series of six books. I mean, I'm a geek. I mean, see what happened was, and I know we're going to wrap up. But when I stopped gambling and I changed my business model, think about it. It opened up all this time. [Speaker 2] (1:31:27 - 1:31:28) Yeah, more time. [Speaker 1] (1:31:28 - 1:32:52) I almost questioned government. I would call it my germs theory. Government, education, economics, religion, medicine, media, military, and sciences. I always had questions outside of the realm of health and wellness. And so, I just started like, who do you know who has read the 9,000 Internal Revenue Code? I understand the tax code. I mean, is it a coincidence that the ADL, the Federal Reserve Act, and the IRS was created within a three-month period from October to December of 1913? Probably not. I mean, I could go into it so that, like, I have friends who haven't paid taxes since the 1960s on their labor because they understand this stuff. Because all taxes are voluntary. We voluntary. Now, sales tax and property taxes and excise taxes, you have to pay those. But taxes on you. Now, I pay taxes. My wife doesn't buy into it. And I read the Internal Revenue Code. So, these are the things that I read. It just opened up time to give me this amazing opportunity to learn. But I don't want to learn anymore. And that doesn't mean I know everything. But unless I can use the information or the data, imagine just being able to eat and eat and eat and not having a bowel movement. That's what it's turning into for me. So, for me, unless I can use it and turn that knowledge into wisdom where I can, I consider wisdom applied knowledge. I don't want to learn it anymore. [Speaker 3] (1:32:54 - 1:32:54) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:32:56 - 1:33:07) Pleasure to meet you, man. Pleasure to spend some time with you and chat and hang out and get to just get a sense of your essence and who you are. And I'm happy that we got a chance to finally meet in real time and have this conversation. [Speaker 1] (1:33:07 - 1:33:15) I'm so grateful. And you know what? You guys are doing amazing work. And I just, I can honestly say this. I love the two of you. I really do. [Speaker 2] (1:33:15 - 1:33:15) Thanks, man. [Speaker 1] (1:33:15 - 1:33:31) I feel like even though we don't know each other per se and in person, now we do a lot more. Like Jason, you guys are great. I know your hearts are filled with love and you really want to help people. And I have great respect for you and your podcast, Here for the Truth. [Speaker 2] (1:33:31 - 1:33:37) Thanks, man. I definitely hope to meet in person one day. I don't know if I'll make it back to Winger Chic Beach, but we'll see what happens. [Speaker 1] (1:33:38 - 1:33:40) You have a duo. 20-minute car ride away. [Speaker 2] (1:33:40 - 1:33:52) Cool. I echo everything you said, man. So glad we could get you on. And thanks for being here for The Truth. Everyone else, thank you so much for listening. Hang on before we go. Mark, how can people get in contact with you? Oh, yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:33:52 - 1:34:59) Oh, thank you. Pretty much my email, mark at provost-training.com. And then I have a website called provost-training.com. And you can reach me that way. If you have any questions, you like what I said, you didn't like what I said. I'm sort of independent of the good and bad opinion of others now. It's sort of a stoic comment, even though sometimes... So if you think I'm nuts, then that's okay. And if you think it will help you, I just truly want to help. And you guys know that now, after an hour and a half, however long we started. Yeah. I just want to help. I just want people to understand, you put the phone down and say, I love you for five minutes. Set your iPhone. I love you, Paula. I love you, Mark. I love you, Tom. I love you, Cindy. I love you. I love you. And fake it until you make it. When I started doing the mirror therapy, I couldn't stand myself. But I faked it until I made it. I acted as if. And over time, that's what happens. I just want to help people live their best, healthiest, and wealthiest lives. [Speaker 2] (1:35:00 - 1:39:24) Perfect. Guys, stay tuned for the wrap up. Take care. So good to connect with Mark. He's been in touch in our emails a bit. He's a big fan of the podcast, has always been offering nice feedback. And I'm glad we're able to get him on, man. He's an interesting guy. He's led a very interesting life, that's for sure. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And he mentioned the episode, he had connected with us. We have a lot of people that reach out to us wanting to come on the podcast. But the stars aligned, we had him on. I really like what he stands for. And the proof is in the pudding a lot. Do I agree with every single thing that he said? We obviously share different views on maybe health in some ways. And at the same time, we share other ones. But this is life. And I honor people for the choices that they make in their life. And if what they do and how they choose to eat or what they choose to put on their face, if that brings them joy and health and vibrancy, then I'm all for it. So yeah, I really like him. I like his passion. I like how animated he is. I like how he's chosen to have his family and raise his family and the things that he's into. And we had a great chat after we pressed stop record. It was a fun, passionate chat on a lot of different subjects. I just like the guy. I just like him. You can just tell here's someone who cares about other humans, who wants to help other people and wants to live a beautiful life. And especially I have so much more respect when someone comes from, when they tell their story and what they came from and are able to pull themselves out of that generational programming and end the cycle and find success. I value that so much. Yeah, man. It's just another case, another reminder, the beautiful strands of individuality and the individual journey that all of us are going on, the beautiful textures that all of us arrive at and the unique expressions as a result of really consciously moving through those experiences. There's no one-fits-all diet or model of being or psychotherapy method for a maximum number of people. And this is why it's you and your journey and your medicine is by looking at your own journey. Yeah. And different forms of medicine help you depending on different things you're grappling with. Not everyone has the same neuroses or issues or traumas. And so, you got to figure out what resonates with you and what's going to support you to be more committed in life, to continue on the hero's journey and to create the life that you want to create. Yeah. And ultimately, that's what it's about, right? It's about really taking control of one's destiny, becoming the master of one's ship. And as we grow in consciousness, as we strive towards more self-love and self-responsibility, this is what becomes available to us. And to segue, this is why we have our group coaching program, Rise Above the Herd, which is launching again in two weeks' time, January 8th. And this is our goal. This is our intention to hand the power back to you. For you to dig deep and to reclaim it, reclaim the joy, reclaim the power, reclaim the competence, reclaim the nervous system capacity to curate your life intentionally. Yeah. This program changes lives. I'm always just the person who doesn't want to promote something too hard. But this is the truth. This is the eighth time we're running it. Like go to the website, read all the testimonials, listen to the people who have been on the podcast that have gone through it. It's just like if you're ready, literally 2024, you want it to be your year. You want to make those changes. You want to take more ownership over your life. You want to kick ass more in the different areas of your life. You want to love yourself more. Like eight weeks, come hang out with us. Come get inspired. Come get motivated. Come meet other people that share your values. It's going to transform your life if you come and if you're focused and if you put the work in that needs to be put in, your life will change. Read all the testimonials on the website. They're true. Yeah, that's it. Only you know if you're ready. Only you know if you're hearing this message and if it's landing. And if you are, then let's get to it. Guys, thanks for listening. Take care.