The Way of the Warrior — Legendary Green Beret on Pain, Love, and Discipline | Tu Lam

If you train your body, right? If you believe in fitness, then you need to understand that body and mind is connected. You have to train the mind. And the only way that you reach a level of fulfillment and happiness is you train the mind. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jervé, by trade and training a high performance psychologist. And this week, we have a very special conversation for a few reasons. First of all, this is our 400th official episode of Finding Mastery. That number 400 episodes represents a podcast published every single week for over seven years. And I just want to express my sincerest gratitude to you for tuning in and helping build our community. This podcast wouldn't be possible without you. And I'm so stoked that our team at Finding Mastery gets to continue sharing our passion with you. It's been quite the adventure so far in it. It still feels like we're just getting started. And to celebrate our 400th episode, I'm stoked to welcome back a legend to the podcast for this week's conversation to Lam. To is the real deal. He's a literal video game character. And we're talking about Call of Duty, not the Sims. His two plus decades in the military, 22 years in special operations make him an obvious choice, but it's his extraordinary warrior spirit. His inherent resolve in the face of adversity to live completely aligned with his values. Early tragedy and upbringing of horror and hopelessness in years of combat and subsequent PTSD never hardened to. Instead, the hardships of his past only cemented his desire to serve humanity. He's a retired green beret, a tactical weapons expert, a highly skilled martial artist, and the founder of his company Ronin Tactics. With loyalty, courage, and honor at the core of who he is, to shows us what fuels the best kind of fighters. In this conversation, you'll hear from a true warrior, but make no mistake about it. This is a conversation about love. Two is one of our guests back in 2017, and I am so excited to reintroduce him to you, and I can't wait for you to hear his story, and perhaps even more importantly, how he tells it. With emotion and authenticity and truth, with a deep courage and discernment. Two is a special human, and I think we all have something to learn from his approach to life. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Two Lamb. Two, I'm so happy to have you here, mate. Thank you. We had a conversation in 2017 that was unbelievable and it left an imprint on me. I don't normally ask this question. I haven't asked this question to anybody on the podcast, but you have lived the life and the way that you've lived your life. I think warrants this type of depth coming right out of the gates here. What is your best understanding for the meaning of life? I mean, I think that's the ultimate question since man, humanity reached a certain level of consciousness. When I said that, we came from a species, and somehow we reached a higher level consciousness in evolution of man. So life, that question, what is the meaning of life as a green beret? I travel the world. As a warrior, I travel the world. 27 countries. I live with the people, indigenous populations. I ran into the rain jungles and hunted down creatures. Running with the eight teams. You know, one of the biggest thing was what is the meaning of life, climbing the highest mountains of the Himalayas? I searched for the meaning of life, like sitting with Tibet monks, feeling the vibration of the cult oneness. You know, and you know, going through Europe and seeing the crusades and the tombs. So what I feel is that there was one thing I learned that connected us all in our religions and our humanness and oneness. There was one thing I learned. And that was love, man. That is love. Love is the highest frequency and vibration of the universe. So you ask me what life is? It goes back to the highest vibration that created all things. I would not have expected you to go to that word. Yeah. So when I searched for the meaning of life, you know, life is beyond thought. You know, when I say that is like in today's world, we look at things, we form an narrative, you know, based off on our senses of sight, sound, smell, a belief that, you know, we grew up around. But life is beyond that. You ever sat in the stillness of the morning and you focus on breath. It's beyond thought that morning. You know, you can't put a word on it because it's always been here. You know, if you want to know what life is, it's the feel. It's the feel like to live from the heart. Like, you know, there's, you know, in the teachings of spirituality, they talk about there's three minds, right? You get the heart, you get the gut, and then you got the brain, the thoughts, and the thoughts is, you know, really an illusion is based off on your narrative of what, where you've been, you know, and the reason I'm saying this is where I've been was oppression, murder. You know, I was born in war. You know, so my meaning of life was a different angle than the average westerner these days. You know, I was born in war. I was born on a cozy man floor in Saigon hospital. My mother showed my body from incoming auto-retire fire, one in the morning and my birth. At that stage of the Vietnam War, you know, American troops left Vietnam and I was born on that losing side of the war. We lived underneath communist occupation till I was three years old. You know, like, you think about like Afghanistan, right? The news, footage, people hopping on planes and literally throwing their bodies from airplane, trying to escape. Ukraine, you know, we see news footage of them loading up trains and just trying to leave country before the war hit them. Can you imagine Vietnam? Can you imagine the chaos? You know, there's images of families escaping off of rooftops with, you know, helicopters landing, you know, in Vietnam. People holding on to skids of a helicopter, you know. People walked out to neighboring countries and I want to say this is, you know how many landmines are through those jungles? And you have to be willing to walk out of a country. What's the emotion that you are working from right now recapping? And as I'm watching you reliving this war, there's a shadow in me, you know, and that shadow was forced in war, you know, um, death. And you know, that shadow became this commando, you know, the fight against that oppression. But the thing is when I think back to that level hopelessness, like, have we lost connection with humanity like each other? Where we don't care for one's life, you know, to watch families like murdered, sewed into slavery, you know, like for me and my family, we escaped on a bicee. 400,000 refs she's died by sea. And there we were loaded up on the bottom deck of a small little fishing boat and, you know, we had to escape the piety, the seas and, you know, navigation to Malaysia. And when we finally made it, Malaysia didn't accept any more refugees. So they strapped us back and pulled us back out in the South China Sea, cut the line and shot the motor. How old are you? Three years old and left us there to die, you know, 30 days. We drifted. The dead was thrown overboard. You're a dad? The dead. The dead were thrown Yeah, because your mom and your dad, I was with my mom and my biological father and my brother. We were left for dead. How many others? They said around $100. We're on that boat. They took food off of the boats to make more room for refugees. So, you know, in our situation, people were willing to load their whole families up in these small little fishing boats, knowing that piety happens. You know, these pirates from surrounding countries were stopped the boats and board the boats, killed the man, raped the women, enslaved the children. You know, they made a profit off of it and it was easy. So we had to navigate past that and then finally we were not accepted in the country, pushed out into the South China Sea, left for dead. And, you know, and somehow we survived by the grace of God, we survived. You know, then we had to endure a year and a half in the refugee camps where thousands of refugees died from diseases and starvation. You know, in the refugee camps, you're living in the jungles. So, you know, at three, I was laying on a dirt floor with some grass hut. You know, and finally, you know, we made it to the land of the free, you know, only to be spit on, flicked off, called by racist names. So the thing was like, you ask about life, you know, that was my zero to seven. And you know, when I say that zero to seven, it's like, if you study neuroscience, zero to seven is when the subconscious mind is programmed. And it's within those ages when you're unconsciously forming a narrative of the world and who you are in your place, zero to seven, that was my zero to seven. You know, so statistically, you know, you see like in today, the study of mental health today, statistically, if a child experienced trauma from zero to seven, they have a hard time in life. But you know, what do you do when you see that much trauma from zero to seven? So, you know, I want to address this is that that's what you need. I needed that. You needed, I needed to feel that, feel and feel what that level of hopelessness survival. I needed to feel that level of hate in humanity. Because there was a choice at a stage in my life where I was able to take that hate and made it into strength. That weakness that I felt from a refugee boy, there was a certain point during my growing up process where I'm like, I'm more than this. And that's where, you know, when you face that, you face your struggle, then you're reprogramming those zero to seven years old. It's not too late, right? So if you're facing trauma from zero to seven, you're falling underneath a statistic that you're not going to make it in life, you're going to be messed up in life, not be able to, you're going to be a drug addict, whatever, right? That's a statistic. What if I tell you, you need that energy in order to propel you to be something more, okay? So that goes against survivors of mine. So as hunter gathers going back to caveman days, right? We had to have a survival mind. You're sitting across from me because your ancestors did something right to put you here in front of me today. Survival was the number one thing back in the hunter gathers days. I noticed because I live with the primitive tribes. I connected with the land, you know, we're in the world now that we're so disconnected. Me running with rebel forces, living in rain jungles, I connected with the primitive people. So I know what it means to chase survival at that primitive state, right? So survival, man, like that's a powerful thing because in today's world, our survival is what? You know, we were given everything, right? So I mean, like it's not really hard. We know we're going to have dinner on our table that night. So what is your survival these days? And that's where we're going to that mental health crisis in America because, you know, people don't understand that there are minds or program like that as survival mindset. We are human beings and animal species, right? With a higher level consciousness, of course. But if you're able to go against your fear, so it has a refugee boy who lost everything and was spit on called by many racist names like to choose to go back into these countries and to fight for the oppressed. That goes against survival, doesn't it? It does. So in today's world, if you want to be anything more than it goes against survival, you have to be willing to die for what you believe and the code of Bushito, the way to where ancient code ethics of the samurai is to readily accept death for a higher purpose. I'm going to pause the conversation here for just a few minutes to talk about our sponsors. Finding mastery is brought to you by Paleo Valley. When it comes to getting your nutrition right, it's important not only to focus on your main meals, but also the snacks you're using to fuel up during those on the go moments as well. 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Just head to ApolloNeuro.com ford slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout. This is an exclusive offer only available to finding mastery listeners, so be sure to use that code. Again, that's Apollo, APO, LLO, NEURO.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery for 15% off your purchase. And with that, let's jump right back into our conversation. There's two things that I'm struck by. The first is the way that you're able to feel as much as you're feeling and still access thinking in a way that is clear. So I'm watching you travel back to hopelessness and horror and trauma and feel it in your body to its fullness. And at the same time, balance the ability to think and to be eloquent with your thinking patterns. So how are you doing that right now? I think what I'm watching and feeling is it, the thing that makes you special. And I want to get into course like the higher order purpose of life. I want to get into the way that you work with fear. I want to get into the decision moment where you said, I am more than this. I think that there's some other phrase that you said or something like that. How are you doing what you're doing right now? You know, in religion, they call it surrender, right? In Taoism is too flow with the Tao, right? It's a who weighing the flow. You know, and I, the thing is I surrender to my emotions because it's trapped emotions that's inside of me and it moves through my body when I inject a thought because thought is tied to emotion. So if I'm telling you a story that happened in my life, that emotion is going to surface. I understand this. And I allow that emotion to move through me like water. How do you do that? Because what you're, I think what we're doing right now, what you're doing, all I'm doing is holding a space with you, but what you're doing is what strength is. What you're doing is that that space between vulnerability and risk and authenticity, like it's that unique triangle of whether I flow or I'm just trying to like manage and control something. And so this is what I think leaders need to understand. And the old image, which I thought maybe you would have had more of the old image. So I'm feeling something very different than I expected, which I'm so like, I love all of this too, is this old idea, numb your emotions, that shit gets in the way. There's no time to operate in environments of risk or consequence when you have emotions on board. And so you can't be a great operator or even a great human because emotions are so noisy and they're too difficult to deal with and they're that old image is obviously problematic. And you and I could have long conversations about it. How are you doing this? How did you come to be able to have this type of richness in the way that you work with your emotions? They call it muscle memory in a gun world, right? When you practice a movie, muscle memory, you know, in special forces, you're moving through tactics, muscle memory, you build muscle memory. The samurai state, they, they set a term, commotion, no mind, a state of no mind. You see a lot of athletes have that state. It's, it's the state of no mind as in we dump thoughts, okay? Because thoughts are tied to emotion. So if I'm going on to a bad guy's house, and I know he has, you know, four or five positions at a house, he has multiple combatants in the house highly armed suicide vests. They're willing to die because you understand wider fighting for their cause. They're willing to die for what they believe. So are you? You're willing to die for what you believe, right? How many times have you been in that exact moment you're describing? War, you know, I mean, it's the 20 year old war. So, you know, I served at special operations level, you know, so we go after the worst people, right? We get the best intelligence, and we're going after a national target, you know. So, you know, when you're going in and you know that they're heavily armed and they may outgun you initially until you get, you know, your, your support, you know, assault positions in place. So, you know, you make that initial assault. They're supporting assault. There's, there's exterior assault. So the thing is, you have to get certain guns in certain places to take advantage of that terrain. If I'm stuck on emotion of thought, which is, I'm going to fucking die. Then that emotion will surface, right? Because your thoughts are tied to emotion. So in special operations, we're taught to breathe. And there's certain breathing sequences that we do to ground ourselves of thought, separate ourselves from thought, and to move emotion through your body. So you can be present to perform. And then the state of motion is, you done it so much, your body is not thinking, you react, but you react in clarity because there's no emotion present, you know. So when you ask me how to separate, it's just that it's emotion. It's present. You could feel it, you could feel my energy sitting across me. But I'm present with you. There's a separation. It's not tied so much together. It's interesting. You say separation because I would have thought more, there's a harmony. Oh, yeah. I like that word. Yes. Yeah. Like you're not, you're not run over by your thoughts and emotions, but you're, you figured out how to work in the slipstream. Yes. Right. Yes. And so you, if I tie it together, there's a posture that you have that I'm going to surrender, but it's not a surrendering in what many people would think on bent knee, right? There's a surrendering to acceptance. Yes. Is that more accurate? Like I'm accepting that I've got emotions on board. I'm accepting that I can work with emotions. I might fall into a thousand pieces, but that's okay too. But here I am. I'm reliving a moment of horror, stories of horror in my life. And so wouldn't it be weird if I didn't have emotions? Yes. So in the understanding of young and young, right, the polar energy that created all things. So when I say that is, the polar energy, positive, negative, right, it's all one in the same life, death, it's all one. Is, is young a first principle for you? Young is a philosophy that I, so when people ask me like what's a principle? What is a religion? What's a philosophy? You know, I, I travel the world. So I saw religion in some multiple angles, right? Do I believe in God? Decree? Yes. Right. I do. I don't believe in Jesus Christ. I believe it. But I also have a different angle on life too. I saw things, right? I saw things. I felt things, you know, and, and the, like I said, there's one thing that connected us all in, in our humanness, it was in religion is, is a love. Like, look, man, that's the highest vibration in this universe. If you believe in energy, we should, you know, like we are energy scientists have proved it, right? We're just in this flesh right now, but we are energy. So energy is endless, right? Is eternal? And where did that energy come from? It was always here, right? So what I'm saying is, we, we separated ourselves from what is truth. And I, I feel like we chase a illusion in today's world, you know, as in, you know, I have to be accepted by you. You have to like me. I have to get this braze. I need to live this life. I have to please this person because they are, you know, this person in my life, you know, we trap ourselves, you know, and do not. Where do you think the fear of rejection that craving for acceptance plays a role in the modern human experience? Oh, yeah. What a great, I truly think it's programmed in us and handed down through degenerations of our ancestors going to the hunter-gatherer days. You think about like we're hunter-gatherers, right? We're tribe. We live in a tribe. We run into tribe. Everybody's going to do their share within this tribe where you get booted out of the tribe. So it's embedded. It's a survival thing. Like you have to like me because I don't want to get booted out of this tribe because back then it was survival. But what is survival nowadays? But we still have that brain, right? That was wired the same. It's wired the same, right? I mean, there's scientists scan the brain and it's wired the same way. And the thing is what is survival nowadays? It's not, we don't live in these hunter-gatherer tribes. So acceptance, right? It's programmed in our subconscious. From the moment we're born, handed down to us through generations, a survival, that's why I care what you think because my life depended on it when we were hunter-gatherers. Okay, quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation. Finding masteries brought to you by Carol. 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As a man that's aware of the power of the brain from generations ago, like deeply embedded in a generational DNA kind of pass through, and your awareness that that's happening on a regular basis, and your deep desire to live the higher consciousness, the highest form that you possibly can. Like, how do you manage that yourself? This need, and I'll be explicit here, this craving to be accepted, this fear of rejection balanced with wanting the freedom from that. How do you uniquely do it? So it goes back to like, you know, when I was abandoned, I was told I was nothing, I was spit on, I was left for dead, all those experiences, all those emotions, right? I felt them. I felt that emotion. And what I give back to the world is love. I wasn't accepted. I know it feels to not be accepted. I'm going to give you acceptance. Right. I was oppressed. I wasn't slave. But I'm going to free you from oppression because I know that I energy you. You know, I know what it means to live like that. So that goes into being and young. Like what, what you receive, that's your narrative, but you can give back something else. And that can only be done in the present moment. A high percentage of people that go through trauma, some sort of abuse that they've experienced. There's a healthy percentage that reabuse. They find another way to abuse. And a smaller percentage are able to work with that abuse to do what you're doing. And so can you, can you speak to folks that have had trauma, which big T little T, I think no one's getting through this world without it? Can you speak right into people that are struggling at some point in their life right now, where they're hanging on to their survival mechanisms from the trauma that they had when they're younger? Can you speak right to them in a way that might just be able to knock some of that calcium off, some of that, some of that scar tissue that's been keeping them stuck? And you know, trauma, it holds us down. It scars us. You know, it traps us from living a life that's really true to being anything more than who we are today. Like trauma, what does that mean? It holds us back from being anything more than who you are today. Like if you're living today in in in addictions trying to feel the void of this trauma, you're not going to be anything more that state has so much hope. And it does not sound like airy, fairy, new agey, you know, there's so that is such a grounded thought that the way you just said it. You say it one more time so I can yeah, you'll never be anything more than who you are today. That's rad because the opposite of that is you can be more. If you believe in God, you believe in a creator, right? Creation was created from the heart, not from thoughts, from the heart. And if you understand like dad at the root of your being, then man, you're not going to give hate to the world. What if you don't have a foundation of a creator and omniscient? Well, I didn't at one point in my life. You know, I was you know, I was a refugee. I wasn't introduced to religion. I wasn't like raising a normal, westernized family or religion. I wasn't introduced to any of that. I didn't believe in it. And I joined the military and yeah, I served the code of Bushito, but that's like war and combat. And you know, I feel like that's why I deserve it anyways. You know, but I didn't know at the time I was giving back. So the hopelessness and the horror and the trauma you experienced, you made the decision that there's more to me than living a hopeless life, one of internal violence, maybe external violence, but coming from that place of rage, you said, or hopelessness and rage, those are like on the opposite sides of the same expression of trauma, hopelessness and rage, right? So somehow you said there's more. And how did you navigate to eventually become a green beret? And you know, obviously working in the elite ranks of the green beret special operator community. So you know, when I was young teenager, we, you know, I was a big Bruce Lee fan, right? During that age, I was a big Bruce Lee fan. And beside his martial arts, he would talk about Taoism, you know, the way. And it turned me on to Lao Zhu, which was okay. So I want to pause before we go further. So how do you read the Tao Daging? What do you mean? How do I? So the 81 principles there? Yes. Do you read it by yourself and meditate or do you read it in a community with others? Good question. It's about oneness with all things. If you're sitting in a room full of other people's thoughts, then you are avoiding your own thoughts, right? It's one. So for me, how I read is I read a paragraph and it's really deep. It's so flip. It's, you know, 81. You know where I'm going with 81 right infinity, one infinity, like on it, like the whole thing. And we don't even know if Lao Zhu was like a real human. But the wisdoms in that thing are like, it's, it's pretty radical. So I hear you talk about God and I'm a, and Jesus Christ. And I'm assuming that there's a Christian orientation. And then you're, you're introducing Taoism. Yeah. And the practices of, I think you're going to say meditating, you know, per, per, per poem, per page, per, per whatever. And so what are they called? What is each, anyone principles? Yeah. Are they principles? Yeah. So you do it by yourself. Yes. Holy shit. Like, I get so lost in it. Like I feel like I need to talk through. Okay. What do you mean? When you, when you hear the 10,000 things, like, when you think about the, the shadows of the moon, the 10,000 moons, you know, and not the one moon, the source, like I want to have conversations about it. But you do it more of an introverted process. Yeah. Yeah. So who is, so let's do the 10,000 moons or 10,000 lakes for just a moment. They're the reflections of the one. And so it's easy to be confused by the reflections of the one, the 10,000 lakes or 10,000 moons, the reflections of the moons and the lake. What, what is your primary practice to be connected to the one source, which all things turn to one, which is the Yang Yang, it's also the way, the way you will. You know, Lao Zhu says that within the empty spaces at a room is what makes the room useful. That's right. You know, so to be able to sit in the place of void, you know, and when I say that it's the empty your mind. Okay. Okay. So when I say, so imagine you're sitting there and you're going into a breathing technique. What cadence is your favorite? My breathing technique goes into my lower abdominal region. I'm breathing from the gut. I'm breathing in my nose. I'm holding, right. Usually it's about four second hold. I'm exhaling out to eight to 10 seconds, going into the lower abdominal, my guts. And let me explain how this works. Majority of the world is human beings. We shallow breathe. We breathe from our lungs. We don't breathe into, yes, we don't breathe into our lower abdominal area. And as a human species, that's where energy, right, trapped energy is stored. So if you have stress, you're going to push that down through suppressants, right, suppression. And that's done through suppressants, like alcohol drugs, you know, momentary addictions, or repression, which is done unconsciously, both pushing down that emotion to your lower abdominal region. How can you ever move energy unless you breathe into that lower abdominal? 100% right? So, you know, in my practice of breathing, you know, I train with the Indian commandos, you know, up in the Himalayas. So I had, you know, personal practice with Tibetan monks and breathing and understanding at that level, oneness, you know. So breathing into a lower abdominal, you ask me, how do I reach that level oneness? First, you have to follow breath. And then you have to empty thoughts, no thoughts. And then when you sit with emotion, which is your lower abdominal, you breathe into your lower abdominal and you're pushing out that emotion. Imagine there's no thought, there's no emotion. Motion. Yes. And so the way that mechanically that works for me is, I say, yes, yes, yes, everything you're saying is that it's a singular focus on the one thing. Yes. And then that one thing is the inhale. And then over time, it's almost like it becomes its own mantra. And you just kind of get lost in the simplicity of that deep focus. Yes. And the three S's, stillness, silence, stillness in space, is like, those three, I find it faster than I was able to yesterday or 10 years ago at that junction between exhale and inhale. So it's almost like a drug for me. It's which, yes. So at that junction, whether there's a stillness at the bottom, and there's like a oxygen dioxide exchange that's happening. And I, it's, it almost feels my first teacher was a 20 some years ago said to me, he saw this, you know, 20, this 25 years, I guess, no, night, let's see, 1997, how long go was that? I can't do the math that fast. He says, Mike, this is like a full body orgasm. You just don't realize it. And so as a young kid, I was like, what is that? Do you, when I say full body orgasm, do you have any relationship to that? Or does that feel like it's totally different? No, you, you actually go to a state of a joy. Yeah. Right. That's what I call a state of joy. And that's a state of our being. Like, you know, when you think about any religion, they say, you know, the state of your being is happiness. Like if you're able to go to that state of being, right? And, and when I say it's like, let go of thought, let go of, like breathe out emotion, let go of thought. You don't have anything in you anymore. That's like human created, right? Like, why don't you like, I don't like that T mug right here. Why? Because some narrative was formed in my subconscious many years ago. Why don't like that color? Something happened there, right? So imagine like letting go of that narrative, letting go of it all, like just letting it go and just sitting in your root of your being. Like, that's where joy is. You and I are going to like be able to vibe on this for a long time. And somehow I miss, there's a challenge that I have of how how can you how do you put it back to you? Like, how do you create a pull or draw for people to want to have that type of stillness and experience within themselves? Do you do you just square up like in a way that says, you can't have what you want unless you go and work for stillness? Or do you do it more eloquently? You know, I just share my story. You know, I share my story of like where I came from. You know, I came from like the dirt floors of refs you can't sleeping with the rats. You know, like, that's where I came from. And then I made you know, a brand, a name for myself after I got out of the military after serving our country. Like, isn't that the American dream to be able to like come from like nothing and then now be this successful, you know, tasting fame and and and tasting success. And, and you know, and just running a very successful company in my wife. And but you know what was really weird was like, I achieved that state really fast like success. How do you define it? Success in my eyes back then was rich, right? You got to be rich. You got to live in a big house and drive that was my illusion that I lived in because that was the narrative that was given to me. Look, we were refugees. We came from nothing. So what my parents gave me as a success was don't starve like money is everything because they lost everything. So that narrative was handed to me and imagine I reached that state and I wasn't happy. Like I was happy that, you know, I was able to be something more, but I wasn't happy to root in my being, right? And then that started my like entrepreneurship is and, you know, I need to travel around United States and train people. And I needed like, if I believe in like communities and I believe in like, you know, fighting against active shooters and I need to train these police officers. I need to train the community and how to defend themselves because I was a green beret. And I force multiply armies. So do you, do you like success with purpose? I do like, I feel like success comes with multiple angles, right? In this materialistic world, we need to live off of the energy a young, which is, man, we need to be aggressive, right? We need to live with a purpose. We have to be type A driven. That's young. Like that's in this physical world of materialistic things. But there's yen, which is a spirit world that we're all connected to. Internally, right? And we need to develop that too. Because in the energies of yin and yang, if you put too much emphasis on one thing, it's going to fail. That's why it's all one and the same. You have to have one where you can't have the other. There you go. So you practice both. I practice both. And now one final word from our sponsors. Finding Mastery is brought to you by levels. One of the most significant predictors of your lifespan, how long you live, and health span, the quality of those years is your metabolic health. Up until recently, however, metabolic health has been hard to consistently measure. And that's where levels has been a game changer for me. Levels helps you see how the food you eat affects your health by giving you real time feedback on your nutrition using a continuous glucose monitor. The scientists call them CGMs. Monitoring your glucose levels is essential for a number of health implications, not just diabetes, but Alzheimer's and heart disease, stroke, and more. It also affects your day-to-day energy levels, ability to control weight, overall vitality, and even sexual function. When I started as a levels member, I thought I understood my metabolic health pretty well. Turns out, like most people, I was surprised to learn how some foods were affecting me. For example, at this particular healthy salad that I loved to put together, it actually created a spike in my glucose levels, which is not what you want for lifespan and health span. It wasn't until I added avocado and pumpkin seeds of all things that I was able to control those spikes. And right now, because you're listening to the Finding Mastery podcast, levels is giving you a special offer on their annual membership. Punch over to levels.link slash finding mastery. That's levels.link slash finding mastery to unlock this special offer today. And with that, let's jump right back into this conversation. How do you help people understand their purpose? And I want to move to your principles of life, your first principles of life that you're writing about. But how do you help people understand their purpose? You know, a lot of people come from difficult backgrounds, right? So who I teach is I teach the military, I speak law enforcement. A lot of them, they come from, you know, broken households, you know, so they have their traumas. And what I teach, you know, the community as well, the people is that you take that pain. You take that neglect, right? You take that, you know, people putting you down and saying, you're not good, you take that energy. You turn into something more because creation is found within you. So you're going to teach people to take it where you need to feel it. Look at that. You need to, there's a level of sophistication here that if you give me a present that makes me better as a human being, will I say thank you to you? So the universe gives you a present in suffering and hardships and it made you into the successful entrepreneur that the world looks up to you in life, right? In happiness. Why not say thank you. That squares up deeply with this idea that is very Buddhist and principle, which is to know suffering. Without it, you just can't quite work with real compassion. So, and I'm oversimplifying a beautiful ancient tradition. That's a big part of your life and your life approach is to embrace suffering and you're calling it a gift. And many that experience suffering, myself included for a long time, didn't want anything to do with it. It was too much. It was overwhelming. And I didn't have your suffering. I had different, different experiences in my life and would never try to compare. But the idea that to sit with the discomfort and the prickliness of that and the heaviness of that, you're suggesting is the gift. If I didn't experience that, I wouldn't have this strength to change. I wouldn't have the emotion and the pain to be something more. So, do you have kids? No. Would you want your kids to have the level of suffering you had? No. Okay. So, where's the threshold for the amount or intensity, the duration or intensity of suffering that I grew with you? And so, but I'm confused because I'm giving my son all the things that I didn't have. And hopefully the things that I did get, I'm also giving him, but I'll tell you a phrase that an athlete shared with me that I vibe with, but it's not accurate and whole for me. As I said, it's a professional athlete, multiple championships that he won. I said, how's life? And he said, it's pretty good. He's a basketball player. And I said, how the kids? And he said, you know, they're good. And I kind of paused. I said, what does that mean? He said, you know, they've got the best shoes, the best private coaches, all the right camps. He's doing great in basketball. He likes it. But the one thing I can't give him is nothing. I can't give him the thing that I came from, which was nothing. And so, I can't relate at the depth of that statement, but I can relate to the spirit of it. And so, when you hear me talk about this, can you frame the level or intensity of suffering that you would hope a child would be able to experience to live the good life? Well, unfortunately, I understand that's the process, right? You like, you need a sufferer to be anything more, right? Like, if you go to the gym and you're working out at a gym, you're going to need to hit muscle failure where that lack of access is going to build to tear down that muscle group to build into anything more. But the thing is, you know, as a human being, I don't want people to suffer because I understand that we're all one in the same. You know, that's the hardest thing for me is to look at other people and to judge. Now, I used to judge a lot, right? I had to, in special forces, you're a threat. You're an author. I had to judge. It was life dependent. And that skill set was refined. I had to judge. I was reconnaissance, right? But the thing in today's world now, who I am today, Seth Wandsman, you know, and Husband, you know, and beating the statistics of a veteran, what a veteran is, you know, after the 20, at the spec ops level, you know, my thing is to folks, what spec ops means at the special operations level is that, you know, we are a national asset. We are what the country lies on when we have terrorist group attack our countries, when when we have attacks against our homeland, we are the ones under night vision that will go into the country covertly, find fix and kill the enemy. You know, at that level, you know, if I was compared, that's an NFL NFL, NFL level, you know, in the middle of you are the top. So at that level, you know, I had to judge people. What do you think made you special that you went the distance there? I was willing to die for what I believe in. And I go, what do you believe? What do I believe? I was willing to die for what I believe in. What was that? You know, the values of my beliefs, like God, family, country, like, you know, but the values that the Bushito code encompassed, compassion, it was spearheaded at all, like compassion. So how does that square with the violence that you would, yeah, that you were engaging in? Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's the thing is like humanity is like, it's going to be war. It's going to be conflict. I came from war. I was oppressed. You know, and, and the thing is like, my violence that I inflict to our enemies work was to in the teachings of Bushito, Bushito, bull means to stop the spear, to intercept the spear. I intercept what the enemy does to humanity. As in, you know, in Bune Magida Cameroon, we're fighting the Chad rebels because they're coming in, killing wildlife or killing these animals, taking their ivory, taking their legs to fund their terrorist training camps. We're stopping that bullshito to stop the spear, right? So in that aspect, and in the teachings of the samurai, where he said, if, if, if you have a man that oppresses thousands and tortures thousands of his people, hundreds of thousands of his people, tortures them, oppresses them, and you take out that one man, did you not save the hundreds and thousands of lives? So in my, in my understanding of warriors, I understand the polar energies of the universe without darkness, there will never be light. There will never be light. Like without evil, we would never know what it means to be good, the contrast, but my eternal soul chooses light. I choose to walk in the light. You know, what the world gives me in oppression and hate and I return back in the light. And that's, understanding how the universe works, you know, was there a moment in time that that happened for you or was it a slow drip? Eventually, where you said, I'm more comfortable or I feel more aligned with the light, because you could also, we could also create a narrative where you were one of the leaders of the dark. And some people would maybe consider you, you know, a leader of dark because their, their value systems are exactly opposite or in contrast, you know, like this is a complicated thought, right? Like the, there's two, there's two questions. Let me separate them out. And the first question is, was there an experience that took place like a lightning bolt or was it a slow drip of experiences that led you to the light? You know, I, the slow drip came from being dark like, yeah, finally going to what it means to be dark in that space of hate, like to understand how to hate the enemy at that level where, you know, you see your teammates die, like you're fighting a multiple conflict areas, 20 year war, you see the worst in humanity. You see women and chill are mean towards your body enemy. And you see war at that level of humanity. So you made, you made the light decision. I became dark. So prior to green beret or or I feel like a warrior is the light, right? Like, yeah, to, to, to reach that state of what it means to be a warrior, to protect like the, the, the shock three us, the ancient Hindu system, like the warrior class has a dharmic, it has a dharmic path within this, this lifetime, what does that word mean? Oh, dharma. Yeah. The, the Cosmo law, right? Yeah. If you go against that, you will pay in karma for eternity, right? In Western religion, we call hell, right? We have, we have a value that we have to, you know, so the warrior is, it's the light like to pursue that, but then war, which is hate, and hate is a powerful tool. Like hate will, will, when that explosive happens on the door, you have to go in, you have to kill that enemy. Hate is a powerful energy. And you use that in war, right? You're going to win battles, but you're not going to win over a war, which is yourself. And, and, and the thing was like I, when I said I became dark, was I embrace hate at a certain point. It became such a powerful tool in time of fear, right? So, but, but what hate did for me was I saw only darkness in the world. I hated myself. I hated everything. And that's not what life is about. Life is, it's about experience, the wholeness that comes with knowing who you are. You're really, you're being, which is love, man, like creation. Like we're more powerful than hate. If you sit in the center of your being and devoid that place of emptiness, Lao Xu, that place of void, there is the answer. I chose the light, you know? So when I was in that place of darkness, look, look, I sat for eight years in this place of darkness, of darkness, eight years. Can you imagine in, in the teachings of meditation to sit within dark, when, when I say darkness, when people don't understand what that means is imagine every fear, every emotion that you felt that it's painful, you're sitting with it. In that place of void, in, in the place of no thought, you're sitting with emotion and you're feeling all of that again, and because you're moving that emotion now, right? Because you're breathing to your lower abdominal, you're moving it out, you're exhaling it out. Because look, as human beings in today's world, we're not educated on how to release our traumas. Are we? Like, that's why we're having such a mental health crisis in America. We're not, we don't understand how to move our traumas, you know? Like to be anything more than who we are today. Like we don't know how to do that. Besides like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to get up earlier and I'm going to run on a trip. No, like how, how do you better yourself as a human being? Not just like titles and decisions that work, you know, chasing richest and fame. Like, who are, like, how do you better yourself as a human being? And what is the technique to that? We had a trauma expert on Dr. Dave Raven from Apollo Neuro, and he talked about the systemic denial of our feelings. And you know, it's the thing that's keeping us stuck. So you've, you've had two wars. You've had the external war that you fought. And you've also had a mental internal war. And so how, how do you win the mental internal war? And so for me, I'll just be more specific. Sometimes when I sit, it feels like an internal civil war. And the narrative is, is unbecoming to say the least and difficult to feel and observe and that you go to places. But for me, I don't know if my experience is similar to yours. So how have you worked through, or how would you suggest others work through the internal war? And you might say there's no war internally. You don't have to agree with the premise. No, there's a war, right? There's a war in our size ourselves. Every single day with negative thoughts or beliefs, the, uh, exteriors and the outcomes that are outside of our control. Like we, there's a war inside our heads every day of thoughts. And that war to you, if you oversimplify it, sounds like what emotions, right? So every, so in trauma is like, okay, we, we pushed down our emotions to our lower dominoor gut, right? And then all it takes, all it takes is a thought to activate that emotion. I'm not good enough. I can't get this done. Uh, it's a bad morning. Well, it was a bad morning because, dude, we haven't had our coffee yet. Just simple narratives like that. Yeah, right. You know, um, you know, it's, it's not a normal morning. Oh, because I woke up late, I woke up early and I have more time this morning instead of running out the door and driving sporadically to work because I'm used to driving sporadically to work, right? You're firing a neurological pathway often enough and it becomes your state of being. I need this to experience this morning. I need to drink this coffee to experience this experience in the morning. I need to drive the world really sporadically because I'm used to that adrenaline, right? We program ourselves over and over in a narrative. And how do you break that narrative? That's, that's the question, right? That's the question. So, you know, the program is a program is a program, right? So as a green beret, I look at the intelligence. I don't just hit an indigenous force. I look at the train, I look at the environment, I look at the people, the infrastructure, I look at their level of training, their equipment, their tactics, their history. I look at every data and I extract what is useful for me on how to effectively kill my enemies. So my enemy was me. So I started reading, studying data, how does the brain and everything gets connected. You know the power of journaling? You know, a lot of like coaches, right? A mental coach is like journaling is like everything. And in the morning, you should write three things that you're grateful for. So I did, you know, during my healing years, I would wake up in the morning, meditate and then I'll write down three things I'm grateful for. You know, my wife, my parents, my health, what happens in time is you're changed in a narrative. So let's just say that something happened to you, right? And you can't get over it. 20 years later, that's, that's still playing in your neurological pathway because that becomes your norm. That's your highway, right? Of thoughts repeated. It happens, you know, there's cases that happen the whole lifetime. People can't get over to their traumas. And you know, let me tell you what it does, health wise, it pushes you to a fight or flight state, right? Because you're, you're activating the anxieties and you're not present. And when you're not present, your immune system is not combating diseases. So you're killing yourself, you know, see you're an advocate for gratitude training, for journaling. Yeah, if you train your body, if you train your body, right? Which you seem like you, you run, you, you, you work out of the gym, like you take pride in fitness. If you believe in fitness, then you need to understand that body and mind is connected. You have to train the mind. And the only way that you reach a level of fulfillment and happiness is you train the mind. The mind, this survival mind that was handed down to us over 200,000 years of human love, this survivor's mind, it looks for the negative in the day. It's a survivor's mind. So you have to train the mind to be grateful. And that goes into journaling. So when I tell people like, okay, so let's say you have a bad day, right? I journal a night, so I have a bad day. And I write down that, first I go into meditation, I breathe out the thoughts, I breathe out the motion, I ground myself, now I pull out my journal and I write down the event that's bothering me. And this, this can be ongoing, right? So this is a practice exercise. You write down that as is, not your narrative, what happened? And you write one, two, three, three different narratives. You're hijacking the narrative. That's why that needed to happen. That's right. Yeah, you're hijacking the loop that you're on. Because if you change your narrative, and that's, that's the thing is, he victimize ourselves all the time based on narratives. So a practice that that I found to be meaningful is a little like a three inch by three inch pad of paper, you know, on my nightstand. And I call it a dump pad. And it's a way to dump the things that are running in my mind. So I just write it down, but I'm going to add now your practice, which is one, two, three, and those are three reasons that I needed to experience that mini trauma or that thing that's bothering me for the better, for the better. So that is actually taking me off the loop that I'm on. I'm just using the dump pad to just get it out of my mind. And I'll go think about it later, right? And you're saying, yeah, just do that now. Three things of why I needed to experience that for the better. Because you're a survivor's mind. So let's just say today, let's just say today, we're walking around a hundred people and say, Mike, I like your outfit, man, looks good, right? And then one guy said, what are you thinking? You're going to be stuck to that because you got a survivor's mind. It's the danger. Hey, pay attention to that. Yeah, right. He just insulted you. So that's the one that could could eventually convert the other hundred to get you kicked out of the tribe. That's why we're so attuned to that negative bit of information. Yes. As humans, we conspire. Right. We're social, how we're programmed. That's right. And if you understand how your program, you can beat the program just like the special forces. If I understand how you work, I can defeat you. If I know how you communicate in the jungles and how you push out your supplies in the front line and how these rebels work and how they grill attacks work, I can probably kill you. This is okay. You scare me right now. This is where this is where I think are the harmony between your insights, the places you've gone and the or the wisdom you've worked through or to experience. So I have the same framing. If I understand you and I understand who you're working on becoming, I think I can help you. And so we're both talking about understanding. Yes. And I think you and I are in a place in our lives where we're both doing what I just said. If I can understand you and understand who you want to become, then maybe I can help you. But first, it's the same framing. If I can, and because the objective was to kill the Bushito to intercept the sword, do I have that right? I need to understand deeply and then I can do the objective better. Okay. So I want to figure out a way that we can work together. And at the same time, you've got great clarity. You've been writing. And you've got, yeah, and you've got the way of the modern samurai. And so can you spend a moment and just open up modern samurai, what that means? And then I'd love if we could just quick hit the seven principles. Yeah. So you know, modern samurai, like the samurai came to me when I was very young, just kind of painting a picture as I was that weak, refugee kid, trying to make it in America, spit on it. And I saw like the code of Bushito. And you know, during the 80s, you know, they had the big ninja kick. And so I'm like, big samurai, right guy. And it drew me into Shinto and the study of spirituality and Bushito. So the religion. Yeah. And how like a warrior plays in in the path of religion. Like there's a there is a relationship that a warrior. How did you find Shinto? Because samurai. Yeah. Because like it's one of the 11 world religions that people do not know about or talk about. So the way, so your attraction to the samurai, the way the samurai led you to Shinto. Yeah. And in my attraction to Bruce Lee led me to Laozu, Taoism. Yeah. Right. And Confucius. Right. Because he talks about that. So like my my teaching stemmed, you know, from from those things. So the first principle you have is rise before sun. Open that up just a little bit. So you know, and is all of this in your in your the way of running? Yeah. This is this is this is the writings. Yeah. And in fact, that's how I heal myself. Because look, if if if I tell you we go in your room and you're like, Mike, why is your bed unmade? You're like, I don't make my bed. Not a priority to me. And and the thing is that's not right or wrong. That's not right or wrong. The thing is when you look at that unmade bed, is that your standard? Like, is that who you wish to be? And not right or wrong? If you're like, no, hey, then that's fine. But if you wish to be anything more than who you are today, then it starts with the day in that morning. So rise and for the morning is like, you know, in today's world, we wake up and we're more reactive to the day. Right. You're running out of house. You're almost late. Like you're reactive. Like what happened if I tell you wake up early in the morning and let go of thought and exhale out the residue of emotion because that's just energy. Let it out. And how long of a practice meditation practices that for me? You know, for me, it's an hour now. Whoa. Yeah. I could sit all day in meditation. And meditation is actually changing the chemistry or brain. Yeah. And dropping your brain waves to, you know, beta mode, which is like sleep day dreaming. Theta. Theta. Yeah. It's like day dreaming modes. So if if you're present in that state where there's no thought or emotion, there you go. Okay. So what time are you going to sleep? Just working backwards on the minds when I try to wrap it up and go to bed and what time are you waking up? I wake up before. Okay. So you're you're getting up eight hours of sleep, seven to eight hours of sleep. So you're getting your proper. Okay. Set in intention. Yeah. So like when it's for me, the samarayas did this practice. And when I say samarayas, they were shinto was tied into brutalism, right, which tied into the monks and the monks reflected on death within the hours of darkness and light that the bad monks would sit in our death. So I don't go quite down a stream. I sit more like 10 minutes of death where I would sit in that state when the sun went into darkness between darkness and light when that sun creases over. I think of death. Right. And is that a reverence for death? Death is like if this is the last day in our earth, like what are we going to do? Like try to better ourselves. And and what are we going to do to better the world? Like this is our last day. Cool. And so that's just a quick little meditation you have. Yeah. Setting an intention. Knowing that we're this is transient. This physical life is transient. All things are temporary. Right. And this is temporary. Like what to be given this opportunity called life, like seriously, like Mike, think about like the endless universe, like they're still seeing light particles from like the big bang, right? Like how endless is this universe? And and and the distance that the moon had to be from the sun and the rotation that that gives us in our in the ways, right? Like it has to be precise. So what I'm saying allows you said that nothing in this universe happens by accident. Everything is the way it is. And it is perfect. So you that's a first principle. And what you align with the world is not chaotic. There's harmony. I understand that peace starts within me. And I have to write myself first. And I vibrate at the frequency of the universe, which is love. And if I vibrate at that frequency, I have to dump out all these thoughts and emotion as man made, right? So that's done in the mornings. There you go. I got totally have that. Okay. Okay. So then intention is set. After I think about death for like 10 minutes, you know, and then I'll pull out my notebook and the attention is set for that day. Gratitude. Can you give me an example of an attention like a powerful intention? Like, you know, I'm entrepreneur these days as God give me strength to to continue to do what I do. And this is who I want to be today. This is what I want to be today. And you'll you'll say you'll describe who you want to be. Yeah. Yeah. So powerful. I want to be loyal. I want to be a great husband to my wife. I want to be a role model to my community. Like I name it out. There you go. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And then I name out the things that I talk about like when I said intention is. But hold on, hold on. I'm watching you come back with motions right now. Yeah. This again is an unlock for me. Is that just you calling up the man you want to be is not an intellectual exercise alone. It's an embedded emotional plus intellect, you know, thoughts and mind and body are harmonized. So that also speaks to the power of your imagination and the power of how important it is to you. Intention is a powerful thing. There you go. You know, like because you are the creator, if I say to you believe in God and you know that God's inside of you and God created all things, you just got to vibrate that frequency, which is love. Like there is a frequency. You know, shame vibrates at a frequency. So what I'm saying is love is a very powerful vibration. And if that's the energy that created all things that you need to harmonize who you are within, pass your thoughts and your illusions, right, of desire, what you think you want to be. Like if you let go of all that and vibrate at love, if you look at somebody, you just wish them the best. Even under being a jerk, you wish them the best because you understand like we're all in this journey and we're all different phases in our journey, right? And you surrender to the creator, then you understand that he is he, she, whatever to enter is it's amazing. And it's beyond anything that we can ever replicate in words. And he is perfect, right? And he's going to make us perfect. So we have to surrender to that journey. But we don't because we were we we attach, you know, and that goes into bullism, but we attach ourselves to desire to to illusions like fame and money is going to bring us happiness, right? It bring you joy at that moment. One of my favorite Zen coins is the the monk says to the student, you want the good news or bad news? And so good news, I'm sorry bad news is that life is like falling through the air without anything to grasp or hold onto. The good news, there's no bottom. So I like to enjoy the ride basically. So how do you sharpen principle three, sharpen your sword? How do you do that? You know, you sharpen your sword by first developing a skill on life, like what is your skill? And your skill should be defined by a purpose, like, you know, the way of the samurai is the way of two swords, like to two swords, only the samurai class, the warrior class can carry two swords. It was a symbol. If you are caught without those two swords, your head will be lobbed off your head because you're not in status of what it means to be a warrior. Two swords is in service of the dimule, the Lord. So in the way of that two swords is develop a skill that's going to affect humanity. When I say affect humanities, the better humanity, you know, for me, it was a warrior to fight for a deal pressed, fight for an enslaved who where I came from, you know, and to serve that higher power. So to develop a skill is to sharpen the sword, develop a skill. Okay, whatever that is, if you're an artist, if you're you know, coach, whatever that skill is in your life because everybody has their only individual journey. Okay, sharpen the mind. Like what are the mental skills you're most interested in? You know, a lot of like athletes, a lot of military guys, like the biggest hurdle that we face is ourselves. As in like, you probably see an athlete that practices movement over and over and over. He's like one of the best at it. And in his head, he's going to fuck it up because the emotion of failure. What happened if I tell you that I said illusion and you let go of that thing because they don't serve you, right? And if you're like, you come to me, you're like, man, I'm not happy, where I'm not happy because this, you know, my dad treated me like this growing up. I'm not happy. What happened? I say, hey, man, it's not serving you. Let it go. Most people think that that's accurate, but don't know how to actually mechanically let it go. And that's where that's where a lot of my practice came from is in theory, if this is trapped emotion, you should be able to let go of emotion. But we don't know how to let go of emotion because we don't even know where it's trapped in our bodies. So in my study of like, you know, mental health and the body and mind and energy, you know, it goes into Kung Fu teaching as well, you know, Chi Gong was a practice that they used to pull the energy from the earth, chanulated into their Chi, right, their state of being in this person, you know, and that was loved like the highest energy. So Kung Fu practice that channelization of energy. So if I tell you like, if you're not living a life that like you're happy with, right, and and happiness don't come from a survivor's mind, then you need to practice. You need a form, right? Because that's martial art. It's like, what is martial art? Proper form. So you need a proper form. And that begins with the day. I love that. From form to form less is the first principle that matters to me from from, you know, like, so understanding form so you can create form, form less at some point. And then so pursue motion number four. Motion, you know, a lot of people compare motion to like muscle memory and in a way it is muscle memory. But I want you to think deeper in a state of zuzin, right, in a state of no mind, zuzin is to be totally present physically informed. This is zuzin is the the form that I actually study. Yeah. So to to be totally present, right? And in the practice of zuzin, they'll they'll talk about emptying one's mind. Can you imagine that like, to go into your breathing sequence where you can empty all thoughts, you're not thinking about anything. And if you're if you are aware of your thoughts throughout the day, and you realize that we replicated like 70,000 thoughts throughout the day, and it goes everywhere, right? What happened if you control these thoughts and you make it serve you because each thought is tied to emotion, right? And if your survivor mind keep on thinking of negative thoughts, you're going to feel that negative emotion. But if your purpose is to be happy in life, you got to change your thoughts. So it goes for changing your thoughts. So in mooshin, it's about being present as in in the weaponry in in the state of close quarters battle, which is swords, right? Back then, close quarter engagement. The fear of death kicks in survival, fight or flight like 200,000 years of evolution kicks in. This is why I love action sports. It's not the highest form of risk, meaning military and operations of what you're doing because it's still a luxury, but it forces a present moment focus. So to sitting in a pillow, you know, sitting doing some meditation, you can get there. But when you're at the edge of the cliff and you have a choice to make, think about my laundry or focus deeply on this line that's never been cut, you know, in the back country. And if I miss that deep focus, I'm in trouble. There is a forcing function in environments of consequence, whether they're your environments or a lower level of it, you know, in action sports or whatever. But so do you think that there's multiple ways to get to mooshin? Or is it, are you saying double down on meditation? No, no, there's different ways to get to mooshin. Mooshin needs to be practiced different like it as it is two different subjects. This is my way. Okay. Getting there first is the action of the skill, right? So if we're talking about, you know, weaponry is the action of that movement. So the moot, the repetitive moment, you can be an athlete, it comes neurologically, completely neurology, yeah, mind and body, right? So without thought, you can execute that movement. So now weaponry is done. I'm just comparing to a weapon. And then what, what, what meditation does, it allows you to empty thought because thought is tied to emotion. Imagine if you're not feeling fear in the moment of battle. Like you don't feel fear. So if, if I ask you to perform a task, sitting here talking to me, you're probably going to do better because there's no stress. But if I pull out a knife and I'm going to say, I'm going to stab you in a face, you're scaring me again, right? Unless you perform this movement within this time, your survival instincts kick in, but also fear is there. And when fear is present, it, it doesn't enhance your movements. It hinders your motor skills. It'll keep you alive, but nothing won't necessarily keep you, allow you to get into the slipstream. Well, okay. So fight or fly, it shuts down certain motor skills, right? So if I have to have better vision, right? In a fight or fly situation, a gunfire, I have to have better vision. It's going to shut down. It's going to increase my breathing. That's right. So I can get more oxygen to my brain. Subconsciously, things are changing chemistry wise in my body. Technically, your attention goes internal. Yes. More than you would like. And it goes narrow more than you would like. So that's why you lock onto one thing and it could be a lock on a bearer. And then we go internal too much. So we miss the external frames in the way that we need to see that. Yeah. So okay, if you were to work with an athlete that was choking or was micro choking, really struggling out there, what would be, would you say that the, just practice the modern samurai principles, or would you have something specific that you would go after? No. So if he's stuck in his mental head, right? So he's mental head. Yeah. If he's stuck in now, he needs to go into a pattern of breathing technique right away. You just stuck there. Right. So we do box breathing technique. And what it does, it increases the oxygen into your brain, changes the chemistry of your brain. He's like a 5555 or 666. You know, for me, it's five, four, eight, four, five, a hold for, yeah, five in, got a hold for eight out. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. And then next principle, and I'm mindful of our time. So I just want to rip through these because they're so important prepared to die. And this is a samurai practice. And I'm the idea that you think about the way that you want to die, not the method, but the experience you'd like to have at the moment of death is a practice that shaped me. And so is this how you're thinking about prepare to die? Or do you think about it differently? You know, it depends on which state of death I'm focusing on because death happens to our lives. Like you die to who you were in your 20s. Yeah. That's a really cool thought. But who you are in your 20s, right? The world does not need a 20 year old like you're right. Right? Yeah. We don't need. You know, they don't need a 20 year old me anymore. Like, but it made me who I was. That's her portion of my life. So you died a certain phase of your life. Let's just haven't been a physical death yet. That's cool. Right. And there's going to be one day of physical death. So the thing is like, you know, if, if I say to you that if you're chasing riches of fame, you're living off illusion, which is temporary, what's the eternal? Right? What is the eternal energy? And if I'm saying that love is the creation like they created all things, then if you live in the frequency of love at that final moments in your life and you reflect back on life and you're like, man, we live the great life. Man, look, look at all the people we helped. And we made a difference. Imagine that being your final words like, thank you. That thought is so grounding and important to me that I don't want to have the final physical form and be anything other than graceful or kind. And I have to work my ass off for that because I know that if I go unchecked and untrained, I'll live a life of anxiety and frustration and intolerance. And that will be my last breath as well. I don't want that. You know, I want the, I want the handshake to be kind. And so I have to train on a daily basis to have that kindness. And so that samurai's go at right-minus. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Modern samurai protects those who need it. I love that principle. And the last is stand by a code. What does that mean? You know, a lot of us, we just kind of walk through life like without a map. You know, we just wander aimlessly through life without a blueprint like what we want to be. Like, you know, we let the externals influence who we are, right, shaping us to who we are to be. Like, who are you in your being of who you are? Like, and how do you even know that unless you first live by a code that requires discipline every single day your life to be that? Like, you even say, I want to die and I want to be this. Well, and you just said, I have to work my ass off every day. That's living by a code, right? So if you don't live by a code that's higher than yourself, you're going to slip down into survivor's mind, which seeks comfort. There you go. Right. You don't have like a blueprint. What is your code? Like, what, what is the code? Where do you draw your code from? Because it sounds like Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Christianity, that I say, Buddhism. Like, so you've got in the way of samurai. Like, you, it sounds like you've sourced code from a lot of different ways. But I don't want to take that liberty. No, no, yeah. I mean, like, what is aware? Like, you know, people say to you speak a piece, you speak of God, like, love, but yet you're aware. Like, you had to kill, right? And that's the thing was like a lot of my philosophy base is wear base because warriors in the past had to live with us like, to kill. So you are living the Paschito code. Well, I lived the Paschito code in certain aspects. And like, you know, when I say that is, it ties you to a religion like the warriors path lives by purpose of a higher self, which is tied to God, the creator. You know, so as a warrior, if I walked the path of Bushito, it was, hey, you're a dictator that's killing 1000 of people. The universe aligned us up where my job is to take you out. And, and I have to live with that, like, and to understand how that ripples through the universe. Like, how does, how does that affect lifetimes and generations? If I stand here as a human being and I watch this dictator, kill, mutilated and hand his dictatorship to his son that continues to do the same. How many lifetimes those people suffered? If I freed them, how many generations experience freedom after that? Like, and that's that to me is the way to wears to understand the fine balance. Like, between humanity, God, like, what is our relationship between that? Because you are taking life to you are, you are living in alignment with the first principles of your life. You are definitely live. I feel it in this conversation. And I'm grateful to know you in this way. Thank you for being a warrior of good. And the Peshito code is not lost on me. And I feel like I got to witness it and feel it here, which is I'm just going to make sure I have these right courage, compassion, respect, honor, loyalty, duty, righteousness, which is about right-mindedness. And of course self-control. What a gift. I just want to say thank you. I want to encourage people to follow what you're doing, but from a business standpoint as well as for your book that's coming out soon. And we'll have that posted and we're definitely going to support it the way of Rodin. The way of Rodin. I want to explain what's the title mean. Rodin. The way of Rodin. The way is Confucius, right? It's the flow and harmony. It's talism in religion, in Christianity, the ways God, you know, we call that to me is the ways to flow and harmony with the universe. The universe in our existence within this space is we have a purpose. We're given life for a purpose and we are to inject that purpose into this physical world. You know, we are to make a difference in this physical world. So the way to surrender, to flow and Rodin came to me later on in life is to walk alone, to be masterless. And you know, the book of five rings by Miela Musashi was a Ronin. And he wrote the 21st principles of Doku Dull, the way of walking alone. And that's what saved me after I got a military was to be Ronin, to have the strength to walk alone and to sit within this space of void and to find a root of my being again because I was surrounded by the hate of the world. So the only thing I felt was the hate. But when I sat with what has always been, that's where I fell in love, right? Creator, peace. And that's what I give back to the world. So that's why I named a book the way Ronin. What a gift. Honor to know you and honor to spend time with you. I hope that, um, you know, this is this time that you we spent together was as impactful to you as it even or even close to what it was for me. So I just want to say I appreciate you. Thank you. Arigato. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. 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