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“I don’t like this,” I said after dying.

Two hours before I had found myself in a roomful of people I hated. They were hippy types who dressed in that leather tribal gear. They probably didn’t like me, either, as I looked like a gymbro, but it was too late for any of us to leave the room without seeming like we were afraid of what was to come.

Although I had read DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, no book can prepare a person for entheogens.

I went into the experience without any expectations and a lot of judgment. 

5-MeO-DMT, I would later learn, is unlike DMT or ayahuasca. Part of a class of medicines known as entheogens, DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a fast-acting compound that enhances or induces a spiritual experience. Ayahuasca is a tea containing DMT, and the experience lasts longer.

To explain what can be explained in words: You might see some weird stuff on DMT, but you still exist. You have a sense of self. You can face your fears.

5-MeO-DMT kills you. You no longer exist. This is known as “ego death.”

Before you smoke 5-MeO-DMT, you sit on an air mattress on the floor, because you’ll fall backwards within a few seconds of inhaling.

The smoke was harsh and metallic. It tasted like a lick on a Duracell 9 volt battery. Just as I was about to cough, I was gone.

People on DMT come back with reports of conversations with aliens and gods. People who come from from 5-MeO-DMT come back with reports of…not much of anything. You don’t remember anything, because there is no you.

Your ego – another way to describe consciousness – is the self-knowledge that comes from knowing that you exist separate and apart from your material world. “I think therefore I am” is the ego. 5-MeO-DMT kills the “I.”

After inhaling the 5-MeO-DMT, it’d be wrong to say I fell backwards. I disintegrated, which is another way of saying integrated.

My “soul” felt like it had been ripped from my body had had started moving moving at warp speed through space.

As my soul moved at uncomfortable speeds, angelic/fractal wings overtook my field of vision.

Then it got weird.

“No, I don’t want to die,” I kept repeating to myself.
“I am not going to die.”

I was able to open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. The ceiling tiles started coming into focus, but I was still on my back, helpless.

I looked to the left and right. I knew I was in a room. But I did not feel present in my body.

I kept fighting to come back. I remembered a trick from lucid dreaming. If you want to take control of your dream, ground yourself by looking at your hands. Looking at your hands puts your consciousness in touch with its embodiment.

I kept staring at my arms – which at first did not seem like my arms, because there was no me.

Finally able to sit up, I looked at my legs. My legs had not returned to me, or I to them.

What does it mean to say that your legs exist in two dimensions rather than three? What does it mean to say that your legs are as connected to the floor as they are to your body?

Finally able to reclaim my body, I ate a piece of fruit.

When you put a piece of pineapple in your mouth, your senses process data. Your tongue feels the weight of the pineapple resting on it. Your tongue tastes the tartness. Your teeth press into the fibrous shell containing citrus-flavored water.

When I bit into the pineapple, the pineapple consumed me as I much as I it. The pineapple and I merged into one.

Although present in my body, my ego was still dead. I felt a deep sense of love for the people I sneered at only moments ago. “I wonder if any of these people need help? I wonder if there is anything I can do for them?”

After coming to my senses an hour or so later, I was my usual judgmental self. But that day has stayed with me for years.

When we no longer view ourselves as separate egos – when we destroy the distinction Us and Them – we open ourselves up to an infinite source of compassion and love.

The ego, a mystic will tell you, exists to protect ourselves from the pain that comes from loving others. The ego above all else fears injury. The ego fears death. There’s no decision riskier than committing yourself to love others, because people will disappoint and maybe even betray you.

I haven’t done 5-MeO-DMT since, because it was the only truly terrifying movement I’ve had in my life.

My life has been in danger many times, and yes I’ve been afraid. But I’ve never felt true terror and helplessness, and for that reason I must go back.

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“This might not be enjoyable,” Nic cautioned. “Ayahuasca isn’t a trip. It’s medicine that forces you to perform deep spiritual work. You may seem some dark images.”

“The medicine” is what shamans and experienced users like Nic Gabriel call ayahuasca, a powerful entheogen derived from a vine found in the Amazon. The medicine is spoken of with only the highest reverence.

“The medicine will show you whatever you need to see. It will bring out whatever you need to work on the most. But you will leave the experience a better person.”

The medicine showed me my fears.

Before taking ayahuasca, you must begin cleansing your body and mind. You’re not supposed to ingest any caffeine or eat any dairy. You want your stomach to be empty when you take the medicine.

More than that, you must prepare your mind for the medicine. I spent several hours alone hiking while thinking about whether my life is where it needs to be. I focused on my goals, and more deeply, my shortcomings and inadequacies and insecurities – and yes, my fears.

“Who are you running from?”

During an intense hike at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, I stopped to rest and drink some water. A man was there with his wife and children. Seeing me sit down exhausted, he said, “Who are you running from?”

Myself, I responded. He gave me a knowing smirk.

Focus your intent.

“What is your intent when taking the medicine,” the shaman asked as we gathered around a fire. “You may answer silently, but you must focus your intent.”

My intent when taking the medicine was to face my fear of taking ayahuasca.

My biggest fear is losing control of my mind. We all identify ourselves in various ways, and while I may be handsome to some, I don’t think of myself as a big guy or cool guy. I think of myself as a smart guy with a strong self of mental fortitude.

The medicine strips away the illusion of control. I wrote the book on How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions. Fighting a medicine far more power than a human’s free will scared me.

Facing my fears.

Fear occurs when we leave the present moment, as fear is based on our perception that a bad outcome with occur.

As fear set in, I performed more and more sets of Wim Hof breathing exercises. Fear occurs when you lose control of your breath, and by controlling your breath you maintain control of your fear.

The day of the ceremony, Nic and I both stretched. He did a bunch of Yoga and I did 10 Wim Hof breaths while holding stretches.

We were ready.

The ayahuasca ceremony.

The shaman holding the ceremony was sensible and didn’t ruin it with woo-woo nonsense. By possessing ayahuasca, many men for the first time in their lives have power. They use this power to create lengthy, silly rituals.

Our shaman was different. His ceremony was simple. We sat around the fire, stated our intent, and then went inside the temple to take the medicine.

He gave us each one shot of the medicine. After around 30 minutes, nothing had happened. He asked me if I’d like another.

The fear set in. I could walk away with my ego intact. “You showed up. It doesn’t work.” That was my way out.

Looking for a way out emerged as a theme during the night. I was looking for a way out, and had to overcome that fear-based mindset before taking my third shot as well.

My two mantras – Be Open, Embrace Pain.

While facing the fear, I controlled my breath and repeated my two mantras: “I open myself up to the universe and all of its possibilities.” That is my statement of acceptance. I also reminded myself, “Growth is painful,” which is a way to reframe a painful experience as a positive, powerful one.

The Smiling Monkey.

The medicine hit everyone before it hit me, and it hit them harder. From where I was laying Nic appeared to the shaman, “This is some strong medicine.” Nic’s face was outlined by the luminance of a lamp. His expression was one of pure joy, and he looked like a smiling monkey.

Facing my fear eliminated the fear.

My ayahuasca journey was a positive one. While seeing fractals and chakras while meditating, no dark images appeared from my unconscious.

Instead, the medicine brought out issues I had overcome and showed me ways to improve my life.

Yes, it’s true that I’m a fearful person. Few realize this, as I face those fears. There’s a rule to follow, “If this makes you afraid, do it.”

I wrote an entire book on fear in my head while on Ayahuasca. I pictured the book cover and outlined every chapter. Maybe I’ll write a book on fear after my next couple of books come out.

Our fears never leave, but they lose power once we face them.

Some of our fears are real. If we see a rattlesnake about to bite us, we can and should fell feel.

Yet most of our fears are artificial. They are socially derived.

We feel rejection, which is a fear that others will view us as being beneath them. This fear prevents us from taking action. But what happens when you face the fear? Will being rejected harm you in the way a snake bite would? Only if you let it.

When you see a path leading two ways, always remember that danger is play.

I left the ceremony feeling stronger.

The secret to my success is that I don’t think as highly of myself as you do of me. Compliments still leave me shaking my head. “Why would anyone listen to me?”

Confronting my fears and life obstacles one-by-one, I realized that feeling feel is nothing to be ashamed of, and that fear is not a weak emotion.

Fear gives us the opportunity to push through limits. We aren’t afraid of the known. We are afraid of the dangerous and unknown.

How do you face your fears? Become open to the world and its possibilities, and when life hurts, as it invariably will, remind yourself, “Growth is painful.”

The best views will always be at the top.

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My next event will be:

• TBA

In the meantime, you can watch a full seminar here.

You can take the Mindset Master Class here.

Gorilla Mindset Seminar – Full Transcript

Mike Cernovich: What is mindset? So you in the blue shirt, what is mindset?

Male Audience: Control of whatever situation comes up.

Mike Cernovich: Okay. What do you say?

Male Audience: I was reading the book on the way in and I’m blanking right now.

Mike Cernovich: So you, okay … Dr. Jane Ruby, what do you say?

Female Audience: It’s the way you’re thinking.

Mike Cernovich: Okay.

Male Audience: How you keep track of your thoughts.

Mike Cernovich: Okay. I’ll give you the official dictionary definition, which is, a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people that are so well established that it creates a powerful incentive within those people or groups to continue to adapt or accept prior behaviors or choices. In a way, mindset is your culture but within yourself.

If you every take your cultural anthropology 101, they’ll say, “Well, what is culture?” They’ll say ABVs right? Attitudes, beliefs, and values that are shared collectively by a group of people, or a country, or a sub-culture. That’s how you define a culture. Well, ultimately that’s the same thing that mindset is. It’s a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people.

A classic example I always give is that, you can view the world as one of scarcity or abundance. That is the fundamental way you can view the world and a lot of people … Once you understand this, by the way, you’ll see how a lot of people interact with the world. For example, cheap people view the world, generally, as one of scarcity. Well, how do I cut corners here? And then, not only are they not tipping well and being cheap about everything, but that same value that the world is scarce, cheat everybody. So, then if you go into business with them, they’re going to cheat you. If there’s a business opportunity, they won’t take it because it’s going to be too much risk. That’s because fundamentally they have a belief that the world is one of scarcity and then so then if you believe that, that the world is scarce, then everything you do is going to be limited.

Whereas my fundamental mindset believe is one of abundance and overwhelming opportunity. That’s why when people go, “Well, what are your goals?”, or “How do you do what you do?”, or “How do you do this?” I go, “I just don’t really actually know.” All I know is that I tune in and I resonate and I look at the world as one of opportunity. I look at people as a way to connect and one of opportunity and then once you change that fundamental mindset and you no longer view the world as closed off, then opportunity does present themselves and you see opportunities you wouldn’t already see and you enter places you maybe wouldn’t otherwise go. I’ve taken a lot of people who try to study my story arch. Like, “Well, how did you end up over here? What you’re doing today.” Versus where I was. I go, “I have no idea. I just viewed it as a new kind of opportunity, a new challenge, a new growth.” That is going to change everything you do.

What if you just said, for example, I’m open to possibilities. Right? What if you just woke up every day and you said, “I’m open to possibilities. I’m open to what might happen today.” And you interacted with the world as being an open place. Well, you’re going to be less fearful. Right? Because if you view it was scarce, you also view people as kind of trying to, out to get you. If you have an open attitude, an open mindset and you view the world as having endless opportunities, which I mean, honestly it does. In the next three to five years, I’m very concerned about the direction of the west of the US especially, but we’re right now in another golden age that most people don’t realize. I think the age we’re in now is going to be looked back on in the ways that the roaring 20s are looked back on before the great depression.

Then there are people who are like, “I don’t know. I’m depressed.” You can learn anything. Anything that you want, you can come to a mindset seminar and you learned about me through an online app, right? I’m talking to a telephone. I looked like crazy. Shawna’s parents, I was living with them for the summer and her mom was like, “What does Michael do? He’s just sitting down there. He has a tripod. And he’s talking.” Right? It seems a little goofy and it is. You’re sitting out there, but you view it as wow, that camera phone is an opportunity to connect with the world and to talk to millions of people around the world. Some people could view their camera or their phone, they view it differently. That’s why too, when journalists or whatever come to my house and try to study what I do, they no longer … their conspiracy theories about Russian robots, it ends right away, because they just didn’t have any idea. No, it’s just a computer and a phone is a portal to the world, if that’s how you view the opportunity.

People in the media are saying, “Oh my God, it’s the worst time to be a journalist. You can’t make a living. You can’t do this.” And I’m thinking, are you kidding? This is the golden age of doing what I’m doing. If you read the conventional wisdom, they’ll say MTV has fired people, VICE has fired people, this is bad. This is the worst time in the world to be a journalism major. Well, I think that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I think that’s fake news. I would say, it’s Saturday morning and you have a journalism degree, why aren’t you walking down everywhere just asking people questions? Hey, who’d you vote for? Who do you like? Who do you don’t like? What do you think about this issue? That’s the way I see the world. That’s how I’m able to predict things other people can’t.

I’m an Uber driver or in an Uber car, and I don’t think, “Oh, this guy is just my driver.” Right? That’s how they’re treated. You know how it is. I’ve been in the service industry. I think, “Well, this is amazing. I’m sitting down here and I’m going to talk to somebody who’s going to have a different view of the world.” Maybe from a different country. Maybe he’s new. A lot of people I’ve learned, who Uber, they had maybe a good pension job at UPS, they lose that. What are the economic concerns that this person has? What are they thinking about the world? What are they thinking about the news coverage? All throughout the election, I would just talk to every Uber driver, because I viewed that as an opportunity for me. Right? Cause that’s the way I view the world.

It’s, openness, opportunity and abundance. Now, if you’re a snob, or whatever, or you have a scarcity mindset, you’re going to say, “Well, what could that guy have to tell me? What does the janitor have to tell me? What does the regular working guy or working girl have to tell me?” That’s the way most people in media view is, “Well, these people don’t know anything. I went to college and everything.” They have a scarcity mindset. They think that knowledge is limited. They thinking that an understanding of the world is limited. Largely it’s limited to them and their little sub-culture, their little bubble. Whereas me, it’s a human condition. Right? Throughout my travels … Actually, one of the funnier moments I had was, I’m not going to get too specific, cause I’ll out the person, but I was having dinner with a very successful person that everybody in here would know who it was, and then after dinner I was like, “Oh, do you have any espresso or whatever?” And they were like, “Well, we’ll try to make one.” And I thought, “Man, this guy doesn’t even know how to make good coffee.” You know? How do they not even know that? Right?

That’s the way I’ve always viewed the world is, how do I figure things out and be open to new knowledge and open to new experiences and that is fundamentally, what your mindset is. I just spent five minutes on that, which seems like a small point, but that’s what mindset is. You make tiny little shifts every time. So, if all you left with was a mantra is that I’m open to possibilities. I’m open to explore what the world has to offer. Your relationship with the world is going to change fundamentally. For example, whenever I travel, I go to Thailand. People would be like, “Oh my god, you’re going to Thailand? Must be so dangerous.” Actually, it’s way more safe than the US. You’ve obviously never been. They view the world as kind of scary, where even I might … Even if it were dangerous, which it’s not, I would say, “Well, that’s amazing. I’m going to be in a dangerous situation and that is going to give me an opportunity to learn what it feels like to be in danger.” To learn what it feels like to fear for my safety. To learn what it takes to get out of a desperate situation and to figure things out.

In my view, then you could take a dangerous situation and you could turn it into an opportunity. If that’s all anybody ever leaves with, with this stuff is, I’m open to the universe and all of its possibilities, which is what I say every day. I’m just open to the universe and all of its possibilities. Actually, you’ll have more opportunity. People think we live in a scarce time and it’s trying times. That’s why you never hear this from me. Even when I get political or … You never hear from me, “The economy could crash tomorrow. It was terrible.” You would never hear any of that from me. Now, you might in a couple years. It might change. I’m worried about what’s going to happen in maybe three years from now or five years from now. You’ll never hear that from me now, because there is so much opportunity that we’ve never had in all of our lives. If you change that, and you say I’m open to the world and all of its possibilities, I’m open to people, I’m open to communications, I’m open to connections. That’s why you’ll see the second half we talk about charisma and connection.

If you’re open to the world and possibilities, that means you’re open to people and possibilities. If you meet people and you’re not open to possibilities, how are you going to persuade them? How are they going to find you to be a leader? How are they going to find you charismatic? If you’re closed off or you view them as nothing more than the hired help or something like that. It all starts here. It all starts with mindset and that’s why it’s just very simple, if you change your mindset at this fundamental level, your whole life opens up. Again, it opens up in ways that I don’t even know. What I do, people tell me, “What do you do for a living?” And I said I don’t know.

Then what is Gorilla Mindset and what’s the difference? Carol Dweck, or Dweck, or however you say her name, she wrote a book Mindset and it’s one of those pop social psychology books, which is that there’s two types of mindset, growth versus fixed. If you teach students that their intelligence is fixed, their capabilities are fixed, then they’re going to quit. They think, “Well, I gave it my best shot and it didn’t work and that’s just the way it is. I don’t have that talent. I don’t have what it takes.” We’re all that way with math, right? Well, I’m not naturally good at math. Who has said that? Right? I’m just not good at math. That’s like a mindset thing. You don’t even realize that you’ve just said, “Well, I’m just not good at math.” Well, the question is, how do you become good at math? You have to study it and practice it and you might not become naturally good … I’m not naturally an extroverted person. I’m naturally an introverted person. That was an issue I had to work with before years ago. People go, “I don’t believe you’re introverted.”

Ask Shawna, I don’t know where Shawna went, but ask her after this is done I’m going to crash. Right? I’m not going to talk to anybody tomorrow, probably not even her. Then she’s going to be upset. I said, fundamentally, well, okay, I’m naturally introverted. You can end it, “Well, I’m just naturally not that kind of guy.” For example, Paul Joesph Watson, very, very amazing person. Super high profile and we’re hanging out. I’m with Alex Jones and I’m like, we’re doing an intervention. We’re like, “Paul, you’ve got to promote yourself more. You’ve got to shill more.” He’s like, “Well, I’m just not that kind of guy. I’m British. I’m just not …” I’m like, you’re a pop culture icon. You’re the biggest guy right now. You’re the biggest star, you’re bigger than I’ll ever be. He’s like, “Well, I’m just not that kind of guy.” Right? That’s the way we define ourselves in certain ways. Of course, he’s great. That’s not throwing shade at all, but it’s just saying even people who are really high up, sometimes have these mindset beliefs that fundamentally change how they interact with and engage with the world and then that’s going to limit your possibilities.

Where if you just say, “You’re right. I’m not that kind of guy. Then how do I become that kind of guy? Or that kind of girl.” That’s what the model does, it works you all through the definitions of yourself. We start with self talk. Emotional control. Everything kind of connects. We talk to how you define yourself by your identity.

We’re going to go back one. Maybe. The mindset model is … this is how everything’s connected. If you’ve read Gorilla Mindset, you know there is 10, 11 or 12 chapters, something like that. There’s one on self talk. There’s one on framing. There’s one on mood or state. There’s one of posture, vision, health, fitness, lifestyle. Each chapter is separate, but each chapter is also connected. That’s what I mean by the model. They’re all connecting together at the same time and interacting in ways. It differs for the person. For example, me, I’m naturally introverted. Who here is naturally introverted? Right. 25% of the population is introverted. 75% of people who read my stuff and come to my stuff are introverts. We have this high introvert population, that’s why self talk is for me, the most valuable mindset tool that I ever learned.

If you’re an introvert, this is by far the most important. I’ve been to Tony Robbins seminars. I’ve been to a lot of these events and I just didn’t like it. That’s how Gorilla Mindset is a little bit different. You go in and they wind you up and you’re motivated and your hyped or whatever and maybe if you’ve ever been to a Pentecostal church or something. Then, you leave and the feeling dissipates and that’s it. Right? You shook around and you jumped and everybody was happy and everything. Then you walk away. That’s more of an extroverted thing. An extrovert and how their body responds to dopamine is going to be different from an introvert. With an introvert you constantly have this running conversation in your head.

Am I good enough? Am I worthy? Am I this? Am I that? Except the way that we talk to ourselves is different. The way we talk to ourselves, well, it’s primarily bad. Right? Who here felt like they were going to be late this morning? Anybody? Alright. Cole, you thought you were going to be late. What was running through your head when you thought you were going to be late?

Cole: I was starting to get really upset.[inaudible 00:15:38] red light. Starting to get all frustrated. Started talking bad about the city and how much I hate the city.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, stand up. Let’s hear you. This is good.

Cole: More?

Mike Cernovich: Yeah.

Cole: I said I hate Santa Monica. I started naming people I don’t like to see. Certain people here.

Mike Cernovich: I’m going to be late. I’m not going to get a good chair. What are you saying? Were you judging yourself though?

Cole: Yeah. I mean, when you were saying, is it funny that I’m going to this thing today?

Mike Cernovich: Right? Exactly. And were you saying to yourself, “You’re always late, Cole. You always do this. Why don’t you plan better?”

Cole: I say, I get really stressed when I’m late.

Mike Cernovich: Right? What were you saying though? What were you saying to yourself? The monologue in your head.

Cole: I was saying, it’s not necessarily about myself. It’s more about my surroundings. I feel like I said the city. When I’m late, I start to really question this place that I’m at. Why are you here? Is there a better place than Los Angeles?

Mike Cernovich: Right. As you’re saying that to yourself, what happened to your mood?

Cole: Oh, it definitely changed.

Mike Cernovich: Then as your mood changes for the worst, what happens to the conversation you’re having?

Cole: It changes. I get angry.

Mike Cernovich: A vicious cycle, right? Exactly. I hate LA, there’s traffic everywhere, this is stupid, I’m not going to get a good seat, I’m mad. Right? That’s the conversation that you’re having with yourself. Thanks Cole. That’s the conversation you’re having with yourself and then that changes your mood. Then your mood gets worse and then when you’re in a bad mood and all the things you say to yourself are inherently more negative right? You create this feedback cycle and that’s what I mean by … That’s why we’ll keep referring to the model in itself as they’re all kind of connected. For example too, mindfulness. There’s a lack of mindfulness there. I’m frustrated. I’m looking at every red light now. Instead of just being in the moment and present, I’m driving my car. You’re thinking, I’m going to hit another red light. This car is going to cut in front of me.

It isn’t just Cole. That’s the thing. I’ve never pretended to be better than anybody else because I was screaming in my car like three days ago. Cause I went to bed, and I had 26 miles on the gas tank, and I had to drive 11 to Irvine and I had a media thing going on at 11:00 AM. I’m driving, and the people that have me on the show, they run this very expensive studio, so you need to be on time. I’m driving and then it says eight miles. I’m like, oh my god. I’ve got to make it 11. Then I turn on my Google Maps, and I’m going to turn off. Google Maps still thought I was on the freeway, which I didn’t know, so it’s giving me the wrong directions. Then I’m on the toll road, then I get off the toll road, and I’m like, I’m going to get hit with another toll and my tax dollars and I’m just working myself up. I’m going to get hit with two tolls now for this ride. California is stealing my money. They’re not doing anything. I screamed in my car.

That’s the thing, I don’t pretend like I don’t have those moments, I definitely did, because I just lost control of the model. All I had to do was intervene at one of these points. I could have just changed my self talk. I could have just said, oh yeah you’re going to spend five bucks, but it’s a tax write off and yeah they’re stealing your money, but at least you get the tax deduction. Not a big deal. Or I just could have been more mindful and just said, okay … We’ll go much deeper into each kind of section but when I start to get frustrated or angry, I just say, okay. I’m sitting in a car. I’m wearing brown shoes. Both hands are on the wheel. I see a car. You just converse with yourself about what you’re doing and then all this other stuff goes away because if you’re mindful of what you’re doing right now in the moment, then you’re not becoming frustrated with what possibly might happen in the future. Oh, I’m going to run out of gas, or I’m going to be late or this is dumb.

Again, it all spirals out of control so that’s why it’s so systematic right here and that’s why especially for introverts that self talk is so important. There are ways that we have that you can deal with your self talk. The number one most highlighted, you can look this up in any book if you have, on Kindle, you can type in the 10 most highlighted passages and that’s what I based my seminar around. Okay, I’ve sold a few number of books. If this is the passage that comes up all the time then this is what I’m going to focus on a lot in my seminar. The number one is, “Talk to yourself like you talk to your friend.” The way I put it is, if you talked … If Cole talked to a friend of his, who was driving, the way he was talking to himself, he wouldn’t have a friend. Right? His friend would be like, “God, I don’t want to be with this guy. He’s freaking out over nothing. Oh well, you’re going to be late. 10 minutes late. Not a big deal, dude. Right? Who cares? This isn’t a life or death situation.”

If you talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend, then immediately your mood is going to improve because you’re not beating yourself down all the time. Now, the way you talk to your friend, too, it doesn’t mean … You don’t lie to a friend. If I friend says, “Hey, I broke up. I’m really sad here.” You’re not going to be broken with because you’re pathetic, and you’ll never have a relationship. Nobody is ever going to love you. You’re just not good enough. The friendship is going to end there, but who here has been in a relationship where you break up, and that’s kind of what you’re saying to yourself. Right? I’m never going to be loved. I’m never going to meet anybody. I’m just not good enough. I always ruin things. You don’t want to do that.

That also goes to avoid speaking in absolutes. When you’re frustrated with yourself, you always talk in absolutes. I always make the same mistake. I always do this. I’m never doing to be this. I’m never going to have that. I’m never going to be deserving of this. Which is, of course, it’s nonsense. You have no idea. You have actually no idea … In a way, too, it’s also like, life is going good for me. I don’t even speak in absolutes like, your life is going to be great all the time, because I’m like, man it can all be take away real fast. But then you have to build yourself back up.

The big self talk key is, you want to avoid speaking in absolutes. Why does this always happen to me? Well, no, it doesn’t always happen to you. It’s happening to you right now. The only reason you’re frustrated is because it usually doesn’t happen. If it always happened to you, then you wouldn’t be frustrated because that would be your normalcy. That would be your baseline state. That’s why things are always going wrong, all the time in my life and you would just be immune or numb to it by now. It’s just not true. It’s counterfactual. You want to avoid that. Why does this always happen to me? Everything is ruined. I know people like this. I don’t talk to them anymore. Everything is ruined. It’s the worst day ever. If everything is ruined man, I don’t know how you get out of bed, because everything won’t always been ruined. I’ve been in some bad situations before and even then it wasn’t ruined. You want to avoid speaking in absolutes. Again, what you’re doing is you’re hijacking the conversation with yourself. That’s what I mean by these practical mindset shifts. Yes?

Crew Member: Just one thing.

Mike Cernovich: Yes.

Crew Member: There’s a little mic popping. Could you move your pack around to the front?

Mike Cernovich: This pack. Yes. Gotcha. Broke the fourth wall right there. You’re not supposed to see this guys. Alright. Better now?

Crew Member: Yeah.

Mike Cernovich: The way this works is, again, it’s specific things. That’s why when I teach people, I never pretend like I’m some kind of guru or God. I’m just a regular guy figuring things out as you go. If all you do is you find yourself frustrated. If all you do is you stop saying, “My god, this always happens to me.” If all you do is say, “Oh, you know, this is happening to me right now and thankfully the biggest problem in my life right now, is I’m stuck in traffic. What a blessed life I live. Right? This is what I’m worried about.” If that’s all you do is you flip the stuff. I’m so blessed that I’m frustrated by what essentially is a trivial situation. A problem that most people in the world would love to have. Of course, the reason you have to learn this stuff, is because [inaudible 00:24:16] we’re not equipped for that. [inaudible 00:24:18] adaptation.

No matter where you are in life, even if it’s really bad, you get used to it. If it’s really good, you get used to it. The way dopamine interacts with … That’s why a novel experience is always more fun than the experience, even if you have it again. Rationally, if we were rational human beings, which of course, we’re not. If you were rational, every time you did something, it would feel as good as the first time. Objectively nothing has changed. The only thing that’s changed is your subjective interaction with that experience. Thus, your hormonal [inaudible 00:24:50] is different and changes. That’s why you think everything is ruined, even if it’s a trivial problem, because you got used to a pretty good life where the kind of problems that most of us have are beautiful. Especially compared to say, you know, when I was in Cambodia. Then you want to turn a critical statement about yourself into a question. Rather than blame and talk down to yourself, ask how could I prevent making the same choice in the future?

Here’s why this is highlighted too. A lot of this is based on my own life. People always go, “Hey, the haters ever get you down?” I’m like, man if you heard what I said to myself. What the nastiest person on the internet said to me is like a three. The stuff I say to myself is like an eight or a nine. Of course, they don’t. All those, and that’s true for everybody, right? Haters only get you down if you believe the haters. You only believe the haters if you adapt what they’re saying to you into your own head and then of course, that is where self talk originates. If you told people, you have a conversation in your head, most people think you’re insane. You learn how to talk from your parents, your teachers, your authority figures. Everybody that wanted to control you. Right? That’s where you learned self talk. People tell you, cause you rarely get in society and life, you rarely get people expressing gratitude. You rarely get people offering you assurances.

If you tell a friend, I have a business idea. He’ll tell you, or she’ll tell you, five reasons it’s going to fail. Rarely does somebody say, hey that’s a good idea. How can I help? What can I do for you. Great. You almost never hear. Instead, here’s five reasons it won’t work and then you wonder why is it that you’re running dialog is that this will never work? Well, cause that’s where you’ve got … You’ve been brainwashed for 20 years by culture and by society into believing that there’s always going to be a problem and then you’re focusing on all the problems instead of all the possibilities. What I mean is, you take the critical statement into a question and that’s why the Gorilla Mindset isn’t the feel good, you’re beautiful, just learn to love yourself. There’s nothing I hate more than that. Just learn to love yourself. Namaste. And then everything will work its way out. I don’t know. Maybe you’re a bad person. You might be. Right? I used to be a pretty bad person. I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t kind of insufferable, especially in my early 20s.

Rather than just say you’re an insufferable person, you just say, how can you become less insufferable today? Are you being insufferable right now? Are you in the present moment being the kind of person or doing the things that you want to do to become a different person? Rather than just say, “God. You’re insufferable. I can’t believe it. I’m stuck inside.” Of course, the conversations with you are recursive. Where you’re telling yourself, “God you’re insufferable. I can’t believe I’m stuck with you. This is my life.” And you realize that it’s just you though. You’re just one consciousness. There’s these running dialogs. Instead of that, you just say, how can you do one thing that’s making you to be less insufferable. Or like a big self talk, I would just say, if you have a vision for self, you might just say, right now in this moment am I doing something that’s going to make me less insufferable? And then you find out, just be nice to people. That’s what I always tell people. If you want to make more … Just start being nice to people. Be nice to everybody. Interact with people and of course we’ll talk to that in charisma. Just interact with people and be nice to people, and you’re going to become less insufferable.

Then you get into affirmations and mantra, which is again, part of self talk. Affirmations, Scott Adams uses them, Hulk Hogan uses them, everybody’s are a little bit … They do. True story. Everybody’s are a little bit different and people have a different kind of perspective so, Hulk Hogan, when he was going through the gawker trial, you can read the article about this, would say, God is on my side. I’m worthy of love. I’m worthy of God’s love. I’m going to win this. I’m worthy of God’s love. For me, that wouldn’t work. For me, I’d say … I wouldn’t like that. That is up to you to decide. That’s the whole point. That’s why there’s a whole chapter on mantras. I wouldn’t just say, if I were in a stressful situation, I wouldn’t say you’re worthy. You’re worthy of God’s love. God loves you. You’re going to win. That’s going to have no impact on me. That might work for you, that might not. I can’t tell you that. That’s why you have to work on everything by yourself. That was Hulk Hogan’s.

For me, mine is just like I’m unstoppable. That’s how I view myself. Is, you keep hitting at me, hating on me, trying to take me down, hit pieces, coming after me. My mantra isn’t I’m liked. My mantra isn’t I’m worthy of love. My mantra isn’t I’m a great human being. My mantra isn’t God loves me and therefore everything is going to be okay. My mantra is just like, I’m unstoppable. I don’t care. Keep hitting me with your dumb little things. Keep coming at me with your snobby little hit pieces. I don’t care. For me, that’s just the thing, I’m just going to keep pushing through it. I’m unstoppable. That works for me. Again, it might not work for you. You might need something else and that’s why I don’t judge that.

Another one is, and this isn’t really a mantra, this is more of a reframe, but a lot of this stuff, there isn’t … Here’s kind of a segway is, a friend of mine is big into mindfulness training, and he read Gorilla Mindset and he got very frustrated. I go, what’s wrong? He goes, your mindfulness section is wrong. I go, well, you’re not being very mindful right now. Right? Sounds like you’re making a judgment about my mindfulness section. And why do you care so much if my mindfulness definition is wrong. It’s the same way with mantra. I’m not going to say, oh, this is what a mantra is and anybody who does something differently, that’s not a real mantra. That’s so weird, but I thought that was really funny. I was like, wow, you’re not present right now, because you’re being very judgemental and you’re not just perceiving my definition. One, this is a great challenge, it will test my resolve and will even if I don’t win I’ll grow stronger. Right?

For me, whenever I face adversity, i actually enjoy it because, wow, I got through this. This is amazing. You don’t always get through it and feel great about yourself but if you just realize that things are going to happen anyway and you think this is a great challenge. I get to test myself. That’s something that we do in high school or college or occasionally. Rarely do you put yourself in a situation that’s challenging. Right now, you’re testing yourself. Right? You’re testing yourself by showing up, by interacting, by being non-judgemental. Then, as you do that and you adapt that mindset then you want more and bigger challenges.

In a way, that’s why I do some kind of, like my stunts, is when I was in an event I’m going to keep it non-political so, I won’t give specifics but there was like 800 to 1,000 people who really particularly didn’t like somebody so I just said when they’re over I’m going to get on the microphone and just lecture these 1,000 people. I took over the microphone and starting saying things about somebody that they liked and I did it in a very crass way and the energy turned and they’re flipping me off and they’re screaming and-

Male Audience: That was a good one.

Female Audience: Excellent Mike.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah. It was like Cersei’s walk of shame in Game of Thrones. And I did that just for, not the lols, just for the challenge. What is it like to have 1,000 people hate your guts. Right? That’s a challenge. That’s why I did it. Yeah. Then I come in, and I’m like, 75, 80 people actually like me, that’s easy. Public speaking, go public speak to 1,000 people that hate you. Get through that and feel alright and then if you have a presentation or a slideshow or something for a sales pitch, that’s going to feel like nothing.

We covered that already, which is, you want to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend, a close family member, something like that. Which is, interrupt the pattern of conversation. We use that word a lot. We use hijacking, jamming and interrupting. Those are my three biggest concepts, because our default state as a human being is kind of pathetic frankly. We’re pleasure seeking beings, we avoid pain, and we seek pleasure. That goes back to the utilitarians and that’s what we do. We don’t want to challenge ourselves too much. That’s why it’s hard to do things that are healthful. Just our default state is kind of pathetic, frankly. Then, when we get things we like, we do get pleasure because we are pleasure seeking then through hedonic adaptation we adapt to that new level of pleasure and won’t even enjoy it anymore. We are cursed creatures. That’s why I’m so obsessed with mindset because if you think about just the base state of humanity, it’s not an easy ride. Nobody with consciousness and a body has an easy ride because even when you get what you want, you want more because now everything that you do today, you judge by what you did yesterday and then you’re holding yourself up to a new standard and eventually that new standard becomes impossible.

To me, that’s fun. To me it’s fun to know what I did last year, as big as it was, this year is going to be bigger. Right? The flip side to that is, if eventually I hit a plateau, I’m not going to say well, you blew it. You lost. You’re over. The ride is over. I’m going to talk the same way I talk to a friend, and you deconstruct the situation. Look to new habits. Look to new patterns. That’s how you want to talk to other people. That’s the way you want to talk to yourself, the way you talk to the friends.

Chances are, it’s not chances, it’s just 100% true, unless you’re a serial killer or something, you’re way meaner to yourself than you are to other people. That’s why you’re not having a good relationship with yourself. That is where the traditional self help stuff, which I don’t like, does have some value. Most people have very bad relationships with themselves. This is how you build a better relationship, through open and honest communication with yourself.

See how we talk self talk, then that links to mood, links to mindfulness, links to vision too. You have to have a vision for your life. We’re going to get there at the very end. That’s why we keep referring to this, because I want to reinforce the point that even if you get really good at self talk, it isn’t over. You might be really good at self talk but then if you let yourself become in a bad mood, get into a bad mood, then your self talk is going to change. You always want to think of how everything interacts. The same thing is true of vision. How do you say to yourself, am I in this moment, doing what I want to do to become who I want to be, if you don’t know what that end destination is, or who you want to become? Or what you want to do? You have to have a vision too. They always connect.

Frame control is part of self talk. It’s probably the most important part of self talk. Frame control is how you reword things. If you’ve ever seen anybody who ever tries to interview me, they get very frustrated with me, because they’ll say, well you said this thing. What I do, is I mention five other people who said way worse things, and I go, well have you written articles about those five people? They said way worse things than I did. Well it’s not about them. It’s about you. I’m not gonna cuss but F you. No, it’s not. Who are you? Just cause you work for New York Times, you can tell me what the conversation is about? No, you don’t get to tell me what the conversation is about. It’s about whatever I want to talk about. That’s the way I view it. I don’t view it as they just get to ask me whatever they want, and I’m going to answer it. I view it as, I’m going to talk about whatever I want to talk about. I’m going to reframe it, and the same thing is true with the own conversations you have. If you don’t like the conversation you’re having with yourself, change it. The number one rule of marketing, public relations, if you don’t like the conversation, change the conversation.

That works for everybody from Coca Cola to all of us here. If they’re saying Coca Cola has too much sugar, then you say it’s a shame there’s so much saturated fat in bacon. Even though it’s a lie and bacon is actually way better for people than Coca Cola, you’re reframing it now. Instead of them saying there’s sugar in Coca Cola … Or if they say, Coca Cola uses high fructose corn syrup then I would say, well yeah and that supports farmers. Do you hate farmers in America? Do you not like farmers in Iowa? Right? Rather than let the opponent set the frame and then defend myself against whatever acquisition they’re making. What I’m doing is, I’m just going to completely reframe the conversation to talk about whatever I want to talk about.

That’s because that’s what I do all the time in my own head. In my own head when I’m saying, I can’t believe you did this. This time it’s over with. You finally went too far or whatever. I reframe it and think it’s amazing. I just pushed myself to a new boundary. To a new level. To a new limit. That’s why I feel insecure or raw or venerable  because I did go too far. I went too far and that’s fantastic because most people never go far enough. All I’m doing is changing the conversation I’m having with myself. It’s a different conversation and then of course once you do it, you gotta be careful with friends and family. They’ll find you tedious. They’re like, you know we’re going to talk about you right now. Enough about me.

That’s how you reframe. You’re changing the conversation. There’s also, I forget his name, somebody here knows the answer to this. Who are the two behaviorally micanonymous, they just had the book out Thinking Fast and Slow? There you go. I knew that. Kahneman. They did a bunch of research on framing, and it goes, with a classic example is, if I’m a doctor, and you say to a patient, and you go, here are your treatment options and there’s a 20% chance you’re going to die. Well, most people would … Look your eyes got bigger. What? That sounds terrible. Horrible right? What kind of monster would tell a patient … Well, okay. Well, Peter, there’s an 80% chance you’re going to live if you try this treatment. Oh, okay. It’s the same thing.

Rationally there’s no difference. It’s 80/20. 80% you’re going to live, 20% you’re going to die. It’s how you frame the alternative. If you frame it as there’s a 20% risk that you’re going to die then you’re going to be like, this is terrible. I would never take that chance. If I said, here’s your options. There’s an 80% chance you’re going to live. Well then you’re going to think, oh that’s actually pretty good. That’s more than a coin flip. Okay, maybe I’ll play those odds. It’s a different way. That’s the way you frame things. We tend to think because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that humans are rational and that we’re rational, which we’re not. Humans aren’t, and we’re not. We can try a little bit. Maybe 5% or 10% of our chances are free and rational.

For the most part it is the way we frame things. If you’re rational, you would say, it shouldn’t matter if I tell you there’s a 20% chance you’re going to die and there’s an 80% chance you’re going to … It’s the same. How can you be bothered … Cause we’re not. Once you fundamentally accept and just embrace your own irrational nature, then you can become, as Dan Ariely said, predictably irrational. Which is a great book. That’s probably what got me into mindset. When I read his book, I don’t know 10-15 years ago, whenever it came out. This idea that whatever decision you make today can change in 30 seconds if people put you in an aroused state. They did a lot of really creepy stuff. They did college kids, and they go, would you have intercourse with somebody who is passed out? Everybody is like, god no. Right? Who would do that? They asked a bunch of questions and then they had them watch internet pornography. Then, a few minutes later, they start asking the questions and then their minds differently and they’re answering a little bit differently. Situational ethics that you’ve heard of, well there’s also a mood based ethics.

If you change your aroused state, you’re going to make different decisions. Now, if we were rational, that would be of course that would never happen. It’s not so much based on the state that you have, which again, is your mindset. You’re always reframing things whenever possible. You always want to, when you can, reframe a problem as a possibility. Ryan Holiday wrote the book, the obstacle is the way, which is sort of a whole book on this, which is kind of the same way. You’re hitting an obstacle, oh my god, what do I do? You think well, that’s where you want to be. Most people aren’t going to go there. If you want to live a life better than most people and get rid of the wretched human experience that we all have, then you have to find the obstacle and then you overcome it so you can view it as, I hit a wall. We’ve all done. I hit a wall, right? Well okay, I hit a wall. I’m going to go around it.

I’m going to dig a hole, I’m going to go underneath it. I’m going to build a ladder and climb up on the ladder or maybe a friend of mind has a ladder, so I’m going to reach out to that friend and say hey there’s this wall over here. Can we get a ladder? Will you help me climb up the ladder? What you’re doing is, you’re reframing a challenge as a possibility. You can view a problem as an end state, or you can view a problem as a beginning, and you can view a problem as possibility. Maybe you’ll connect with a person in a way that you wouldn’t have because you’ve reached out for help. Because you said, perhaps, you could help me get over this wall. Do you have a ladder? Can I use your ladder?

That’s ultimately what communities are build on. That of course is why my politics are ultimately based on my mindset. Communities are based on trust, possibility, believing you can reach out to others and then once you destroy the trust of a culture, then you’ve now destroyed the culture more than anything else. Mindset, even everything you’re learning here, it applies to the collective hive mind that we’re part of. Here’s a good one. Who here has had a baby? There we go. Who else? We got moms here? How painful is childbirth right?

Female Audience: They shot me up. So. The pain went away.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah. You were afraid before you went in labor right?

Female Audience: The natural was much better than the epidural.

Mike Cernovich: Did you do a natural child birth?

Female Audience: Up until a certain point then they gave me the epidural. It was better before, but I didn’t get to the critical point.

Mike Cernovich: Everybody is different. It’s painful, right? We can all agree.

Female Audience: Yeah. It’s painful. Did you do natural childbirth?

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, Shawna did it. Shawna did natural childbirth. And we did a whole mindset coach for the whole thing. Mindset, whole program. That doesn’t invalidate anybody’s experience or more validate hers, but no pain medication, it was just all meditation, self hypnosis. We took a course, Hypnobabies and then we combined it with Gorilla Mindset. Right? We reframed everything. What you learn in Hypnobabies, cause I couldn’t have come up with this, because I don’t know. How would I know? Right? An example is that you have a contraction. Everybody knows what a contraction is, right? Well, if you view a contraction unconsciously like, oh another contraction. What you learn to do in the hypnobabies course, which I don’t sell, I’m not an affiliate. So if you guys sell it, I won’t make any money off of this. Which is a problem, I need to reach out to them and tell them I can sell a lot of courses.

It might not seem on brand for you, but trust me. If you got me as a spokesperson. If you call a contraction a pressure wave, it feels different, right? It just sounds different. If I said you’re going to have a pressure wave and the wave is going to last 30 to 60 seconds, unconsciously you’re like, oh so it’s a wave. It’s going to peak and then it’s going to flow down. I know what a wave is. The truth is that we all think we know this truth. This absolute fundamental truth, but so much of life outside of laws of physics, there is no truth. It’s socially constructed and it’s constructed within ourself. Who is to say a pressure wave is inaccurate and contraction is the right term. Who decided? It became socially constructed. Doctors or whoever decided well, it’s going to be called a contraction.

We’re going to call it a contraction. We’re going to teach it as a contraction. That’s the truth. That’s been socially constructed. If you deconstruct it, you can realize that it’s a pressure wave. It’s a wave. It’s going to come, and then if you’re thinking to yourself, oh I got a pressure wave. Oh, okay, but I know what a wave is. Intuitively I know what a wave is so it’s not going to be the end of it. It’s just a wave. It’s going to flow. It’s going to flow. You learn that in hypnobabies. Labor becomes birthing time. Let’s think about what we do to women. It’s terrible with the baby … I don’t think anybody is going to call me some kind of feminist or something, but when I learned about pregnancy I was like, dude, this is terrible what we’re doing to women. I can’t believe this.

The brainwashing right? Labor. You’re going to go into labor. That doesn’t sound fun. You’re about to have a new life. Your life is about to fundamentally change and you’re going to have the experience of being a parent. What a magical, amazing … no, you’re going into labor and you’re going to have contractions and you’re going to have pain. That’s what women are told. Then you get that message from culture, the water broke. That’s actually BS. Any woman knows that. It isn’t like you watch a TV show, oh my god, the water broke. Get in the car. Everybody rush in the car. It’s an emergency. No. It’s actually not true at all. You measure the pressure waves. You can time the stuff. There’s apps that can do all this stuff. I went into this experience thinking, oh my god, the waters breaks, you better run. It’s like an emergency. People call ambulances and stuff. Actually that’s all nonsense.

Then you have contractions and then you go into … you have all this pain. Just call it discomfort. Who’s to say what’s true or not. Who’s to say that it isn’t discomfort. Why call it pain? Right? That’s a choice. It’s a choice you make and it’s a choice … actually it’s not a choice you made, it’s a thing you’ve been brainwashed to believe. Women are brainwashed to believe it’s painful rather than it’s just discomfort. We’re all brainwashed one way so this is one of many … if you ever want to deconstruct society, there’s a social construct up here around the concept of birth. I don’t want to get too political even, cause this really makes people mad, but watch the business of giving birth. Is that the film, Shawna? The business of being born. We could talk about c-section rates and everything. I’m very passionate about childbirth.

I stay out of it because it’s a little off brand for me to talk about. I can go on and on about it, cause I get really fired up about the way we handle it in America. Then of course, when Shawna and I worked together, with this. She’d gone to the gym with me so I just felt like, hey, we’d done leg day. We just decided hey, your pressure waves are like a rough set of squats. You’re going to do some squats today and you can do anything. Then, another thing that we had used, is you can do anything for 60 seconds, right? If you know it’s going to be over and you just tell yourself and you reframe it instead of just saying this is pain and then focusing on the painful state. I can do anything for 60 seconds. It’s a pressure wave. It’s going to pass. You’ve no re-conceptualized your definition of pain and because of that, you’re subjective experience of pain changes.

That’s another thing. Pain is … there are some things like if you came in and hit me with a bat and broke my arm, there’s going to be a certain pain that’s going to effect that, but subjectively that’s going to influence your pain in many ways. Subjectively it’s still going to be discomfort. Nobody is ever going to have an easy birth necessarily, but we did it, well not we, Shawna, two and a half hours or so? From the time we got to the center though? Three hours from the time we went to the midwifery and then we had it. She had a doula again, I could talk about this stuff all day. Not really the Mike Cernovich brand. Don’t tell anybody about this. And then of course, too. Speaking of pain rather than just discomfort.

Once you just realize it’s inevitable. Naturally our primary base state is, that’s painful therefore I won’t do it. That’s pleasurable therefore I’m going to kind of seek it out. Once you just accept, hey man, life is just going to suck sometimes. There’s no way around it. Then you become more at peace with it and that is more of a stoic thing. That’s where I differ from the stoics is, I think they can become too emotionally numb and in a lot of ways, stoicism is about running from problems and running from the human condition and the human experience. Whereas I think emotions and feeling are beautiful. I don’t want to be enured and numb to all feeling. But that’s where the wisdom of stoicism is. Sometimes, it sucks dude. Yeah. Get over it. It’s going to suck sometimes. That’s the way life is. Once you’ve accepted that, you feel like you now have control. A lot of this stuff too is, you feel loss of control. Mindset is a choice and when you accept that mindset is a choice and then you can control that choice in the moment. Then everything makes more sense and your subjective reality changes.

Spiritual growth and physical … This is why pain is good. My best writing is 2013 to 2015. Everything I’m doing now is riding that wave that I did. I don’t know if anybody has seen the pictures of me where my skin was falling off and my neck was bleeding and I couldn’t move. Yeah, I couldn’t get out of bed. Agonizing pain. Agonizing pain. The only reason that I’m able to do what I’m doing and play the game at such a high level is because physical growth leads to spiritual death. In our post, God is dead society, we can’t use the word spiritual. What is that? Religion or something? We’re supposed to hate religion. How scary is that? The idea that you have a spirit or an essence or an aura or the ghost in the machine or whatever you want to call it, that there’s something more to it than this simple pleasure seeking pain avoidance machine. Then you just reframe it I’m in physical pain, but that’s spiritual growth.

I’ll give you an example. When I was in a lot of pain, I thought to myself, this is great because once I get through this, I’m going to be able to do other things that I thought were easy. Or that I thought were hard. I used to think public speaking was hard. I used to think that going to a meetup that I hosted where a bunch of people would show up and want to say hi to me, I would complain about that. God, I’m just so tired. I’m an introvert. This isn’t my way. I used to think that was hard. I viewed this horrific experience in my life as an opportunity for spiritual growth so I just kept thinking once this is over, this is like a training camp. Once this is over, I’m going to be so well equipped to handle anything bad that happens in life. That’s where the spiritual growth is physically painful comes from.

Embrace the suck. It’s going to suck dude. You learn that in the army or whatever. Any kind of military thing. You have a ruck sack on, your feet are bleeding and your hips hurt and your hunched forward. Guess what? Everybody is in pain. Everybody around you is in pain. You might as well just embrace it because it isn’t going to go away. You can either complain about it and fight it, or just embrace that it’s going to happen. Again, mindset is about changing your objective interaction with your experiences.

Again, you see how everything is coming together, right? Is that all making sense? Self talk, frame. Vision, which we’ll get to at the very end. Vision is what I call playing offense. Right now, we’re doing what I call doing defense. As you know, I’m an offensive player. By defense, I mean is, how do I solve this problem that I have? I’m in a position I don’t want to be in, how do I get through it? That’s defense. Vision is offense. Vision is, okay I know how to go through the bad days, how can I live an amazing, spectacular, aspirational existence? We’ll get to there, but not yet.

We need to go back. Mindfulness. What’s mindfulness mean? Rob? Stand up please, sir.

Rob: Alright. Being present in the moment. Taking in your surroundings. Not constantly imagining.

Mike Cernovich: Okay. What do you say David?

David: I would say the same. Being present in your being and being present with your thoughts in the moment. Not projecting forward or back.

Mike Cernovich: What about you Brad?

Brad: Just taking control, overcoming.

Mike Cernovich: I’m supposed to have the perfect … I don’t know what happened. Alright Shawna, you’re fired from slid show. Mindfulness is being or is perceiving, not judgment. I don’t know if anybody has taken a Myers Briggs kind of thing. The archetypes they give you are basically nonsense but there are people who are more judgers versus perseveres and I’m definitely a judger. This guys an idiot. I hate this person. I have a lot of hate … to be honest, I have a lot of hate in my heart and I have to work through it every day of my life. Immediately when I’m in a situation, I’m just going to list 10 reasons why this is a bad position and I should have just stayed home. Why don’t you just go home? Everything is great there. You have to dogs. [inaudible 00:55:12] and Shawna is there. Why are you talking. Right? Not to you guys, but I’ve found myself in some dodgy situations. The exception is where you’re just in the moment. Now, taken too far, if you just perceive things then you would die. It’s kind of dumb to say never judge. If you’re just perception and not judgment. Namaste. You’re going to walk into a wall then.

You wouldn’t know it’s a wall. You wouldn’t know there’s these constructs that exist in the physical realm and you walk into them. I’m just perceiving, not judging. You would fall over a cliff because you wouldn’t have a conception that this is a cliff and you don’t want to walk over a cliff because you’ll die and dying is bad. The fact that you think dying is bad is a judgment. Hippy dippy people take this stuff was too far, but everything is a Hegelian dialectic. Most of us judge. Too much. The problem most of us have isn’t that we’re going to fall over a cliff, because we’re so in the moment and so in the flow that we don’t realize there’s a cliff. The bigger problem we have is judging people, judging ourselves, judging our environment. That’s why we live in such an entitlement age. Judging the environment and the environment isn’t giving me enough. I’m not having what I should have. That’s a value judgment you make. The question is how can you become more mindful, right?

Earlier, we mentioned Cole, he lost his mindfulness and because he lost his mindfulness, he was angry and the reason he lost his mindfulness is because he judged the situation. He judged LA traffic, judged the people in traffic, judged the cars, judged the entire state of California. That’s what I do. Let me find a pot hole. I’ll talk to you about my tax dollars and how I’m being robbed and everything. You don’t want to be there. One of the best ways to do it is, when you’re judging yourself or judging a situation. That’s where you want to go, am I choosing in this moment to be the type of person I want to become? Which, by the way, that is the number one most highlighted passage in Gorilla Mindset. Big data. Everybody thinks we got robots, we just got big data and we know how to read it. Big data is, am I choosing in this moment to be the type of person I want to become? That could be a mantra that you live by because it embeds so many different structures.

Choosing. One thing I like to do, I’ve taken a lot of courses on language and semiotics and things. You can deconstruct a sentence. If you’re asking yourself, am I choosing? You’ve actually played a game on somebody. Right? You’re presupposing it’s a choice. Most of us don’t. Most of us passably accept the bad moods. I’m in a bad mood, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, that’s just the way it’s going to be. It’s going to be one of those days. Who has ever said that? It’s just one of those days. Why? Cause you chose that. You chose to passively accept it. You’ve chose to just say, give me one of those days, I’m going to passively accept the day and that’s the end of it. This here is just saying, wait a minute, am I choosing to feel this way? Now you’re holding yourself accountable. In this moment. Well, that’s fundamentally mindfulness. Am I choosing right now, in this moment. So now, you’re checking in. To be the type, right? Of person, I want to become. Becoming is a vision. Becoming is who you want to be. Finding who you are.

That encapsulates everything. Am I choosing in the moment to be the kid of person I want to become? If you’re being mean to other people, or being mean to yourself or being in a bad situation … or you’re afraid, then that’s just the way to check in. That’s the Gorilla Mindset hack or the Gorilla Mindset shift. It’s the jam that’s am I choosing in this moment to be the type of person I want to become? Then, a lot of times you’re like, no I’m actually not. Right now I’m home, I’m hungover, I drank so I’m choosing to never have a successful business on the side. Right? People always go, “How’d you get into this?” And I was like, well, contrary to the fake news things about alimony and stuff, which I made up by the way, cause I thought it was funny. I like to see what people will believe. I’ve actually thrown out things that I thought were so ridiculous that nobody would ever accept as true and I’ve learned that you have to be more careful because people are more gullible maybe than you think.

You have the idea of who you want to become, so people go, oh well how do you do what you do for a living. I go, I was a lawyer and I went home and for 20 minutes a night I wrote a blog and it was a wordpress.com blog. I didn’t even know how to have my own domain. I couldn’t even have cernovich.com and install WordPress into a blog. I just went and had a free WordPress blog and I typed away and then things picked up. On the weekends I worked on it. I kept going. That’s where it started. There are people right now, hung over, how are you going to become anything in your life if that’s what you do on a Saturday? You’re hung over being a degenerate. Brad?

Brad: Did you do anything like an anchor or something to lock in the mind point when you see it slipping? Like when he was pissed off in traffic or whatever. Do you have any anchor words or something you do or say?

Mike Cernovich: Right now. There’s this guy in front of me, he has a rectangular badge, B-R-A-D. The R is kind of hooked, there’s no loop on the other end, it sort of kind of floats kind of like an R. He has a blue shirt on. There are five buttons. That’s the way you just check in. If I’m just checking in, now I’m mindful, now I’m present, now I’m connected. Right? Instead of thinking, what question did he just ask me? What did he just say? What’s my answer going to be? Am I going to give him a good enough answer? Is he going to like it? I’m just thinking okay … I’m actually, physically looking at what is going on. I’m not making judgments either, at least initially. First of all, when I first started doing podcasts, nobody taught me how to do one. I would just say okay, I’m looking at this microphone, it’s this orb, there’s some little slits on the side and then I would just start doing things and then it would happen. That’s how I check in.

If you’re driving … yeah, go ahead.

Male Audience: On your podcasts, how do you keep yourself from saying um?

Mike Cernovich: You learn. You can’t be afraid of pause. Everybody is afraid of silence. I would rather say something dumb, than to say nothing at all, because a pause, to you, feels like a long time. Was that a long pause?

Male Audience: No.

Mike Cernovich: If you’re thinking, what am I going to say next? I better just keep talking. Better just keep rambling. A lot of that too is breathing, which will connect too, just say, here I am. Right now. There’s a pause. I’m breathing. I’m collecting myself. Left foot in front of the right foot. Yes?

Male Audience: [inaudible 01:02:25] I try to stop it, but I still go in.

Mike Cernovich: What does racing look like to you?

Male Audience: Like machine gun blasts, just over and over again.

Mike Cernovich: What thoughts?

Male Audience: It’s show time. Interview is coming. You don’t know what’s about to happen. You don’t know what they’re going to throw at you.

Mike Cernovich: Are you afraid?

Male Audience: The fear of the unknown.

Mike Cernovich: What are you afraid of?

Male Audience: The competition [inaudible 01:02:46].

Mike Cernovich: You’re afraid you’re not going to get the job?

Male Audience: Yeah.

Mike Cernovich: Why do you want the job?

Male Audience: Cause I don’t want them to be my boss.

Mike Cernovich: Who don’t you want to be your boss?

Male Audience: It’s like in a promotional setting type of thing.

Mike Cernovich: You see how you just had that self talk? You see how you were talking about things that you don’t even know are going to happen? If you allow yourself to get worked up like … What you want to do, when you analyze your behavior, you go, my thoughts race out of control. That’s a metaphor. There’s a great book called Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff. The fundamental premise of the book is that there are all these metaphorical structures embedded in our language that affect how we live. You say my throughs spiral out of control. You don’t think about this. It’s a spiral right? My thoughts are racing out of control like an engine. I can’t control it right? That’s a metaphor you have. Rather than just say my thoughts are racing out of control, how can I stop my thoughts from racing out of control? You just look at your thoughts. What are your thoughts? Right? You examine those. Then, as you examine those thoughts, you can change them. If all you do is, things are going out of control. What am I going to do? I want this job. Then, you’re going to lose control and you’re not going to be present in the mood. Of course, you’re not going to get what you want.

For example, I don’t know what I’m going to say next. I don’t know what I’m going to do before I give a seminar. I’ve given five, six of these. [inaudible 01:04:10] can tell you, is this one different from the last one? Yeah. Every seminar I’ve ever given is different because I don’t know what I’m going to talk about before I get in. I just become fully immersed and fully present. Shawna will tell you, I just don’t talk to anybody. I become immersed in the moment and the mood and then as I talk to people and hear what people have to say, then I know that we can change things as we need to. That again, is about being present. If I come into … I’m not saying don’t be prepared. Always be prepared. If you think that you’re going to dominate the conversation, you’re going to have a worse conversation and that’s why we’re going to talk about charisma in the next segment.

You think that you have control over the interview, but you really don’t. The other person has control over the interview. You’re going to have to learn how you can gain power by giving the other person power.

Male Audience: I was just thinking about that, you highlighted things that I think [inaudible 01:05:14] and so I think that’s a bigger issue is that to re-examine what types of, and figures and archetypes etc. are valid archetypes to pursue.

Mike Cernovich: Exactly. That’s where you have to eventually decide … here’s a funny example actually. Der Spiegel just did an article about me and if anybody from Der Spiegel, these publications write about you, they all say I have a small house. I think I live in a mansion. To me, I’m like, wow I live in this amazing house but if you buy into the culture game and the social status game, then you’re just like wow, this is a small house and it’s in a subdivision and of course you wonder … They’re wondering why can’t we connect with normal people? You say things like that. That’s how most people live. To me, I think it’s fantastic. I’ve lived in a mansion before and I don’t know why anybody would want to do that. There are empty rooms. People could hide in there. Be assassinated easier. I want a small house. You can hire people to clean, but there could be people hiding in the third guest bedroom over there. Deep State will have the whole thing wired so … I’ll be in a small house. Then I can watch things.

That’s what you mean though, become. A lot of what people chase, they don’t really want. A lot of the disaffectioned people have is because you’re allowing culture to define what you want or who you want to be. An example of that too is a lot of women are like, well I just want to be a mom but society tells you that you can’t just be a mom. Society says if a woman just wants to be a mom, that’s a bad thing. You should really want to do PowerPoint presentations to big pharmaceutical companies because that’s what success looks like. Right? You got that, of course, from culture. Men are taught that if you’re a man, you want to be a ladies man but most men just want to be in a relationship. Maybe there’s a phase, but that’s not what most men want. Men will get into a relationship and then they’ll be immediately disaffected because they’ve been taught that you actually want to be in a Corona commercial with five girls in bikinis even though they’re going to be drunk and throwing up and you’re going to try to get rid of them and you’re going to be like, how do I get away from this? What’d I just do? This is … I know a lot because I bought into a lot of lies. I bought into the lies.

Check into the present moment. That’s what we talked about earlier. This is where self talk kind of comes in. You’re just saying, I’m here, I see a box in front of me. Whenever possible you want to try to define things abstractly, wherever possible. You could say, I’m checking in, I could say okay there’s a computer. That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is, I’m walking, there’ this, I’m not sure what it is, but the shape here that’s kind of curved and it’s leading to this kind of rectangular thing that’s opened and maybe an oblong leg. If you can abstract, that usually helps. It depends though. Then, once you do that with self talk, you become more mindful. Again, you’re using the techniques you learned earlier with the self talk. This wouldn’t work if your self talk isn’t fixed. If your self talk is judgemental and angry, then you’re going to make yourself angry. You’re not going to be mindful. That’s again, why each thing is separate, there’s a reason these separate, but then there’s a reason why they also connect.

If your self talk is better, then you’re not saying negative things, not saying bad things, so then you’re present and you’re mindful. If your self talk needs work, then that won’t work for you.

Joe: Mike, so, we all have particular times when we check in right? I mean, during stressful situations or at a point that we reach-

Mike Cernovich: Stand up. Make eye contact with me.

Joe: Hi, my name is Joe.

Mike Cernovich: Yes, hi Joe. Joe, you’re looking at me, right now.

Joe: Alright, man.

Mike Cernovich: You’re going to look at me, or you’re going to come up here and you’re going to look at everybody else. Those are your choices. So we have all those times-

Joe: For me, the biggest flaw that I see in myself is when I have the kids with me and the wife with me and we’re shopping, right. For a guy with my military background, what I’ve been through, I have a moment in time where I perceive what’s going on, the chaos, and in that chaos, I’m more apt to chose to feed that chaos rather than maybe soften it. Do you experience … What is that [inaudible 01:10:41]?

Mike Cernovich: How much better did his eye contact just get? Did you guys notice that? Really, you just answered your own question. You go, we all have these problems … You’re creating chaos. We all have these problems and there’s this chaos and we choose to be in this chaos, and you’re completely disconnect from the situation, but you’re here having a conversation with me, but we’re not connecting at all, because you’re not looking at me, you’re in your own head. Then, you’re letting whatever is in your own head is saying control the reality and then change the reality. Where, the answer to your question is, neurological complicated event is going to neurologically have impacts and rewire your brain in certain ways but you can change and that’s just a very specific way you can do is. If you see chaos, it’s because you’re not connected to anything. Chaos is, by definition, abstract art. It’s a Jackson Pollock painting. That’s chaos. Well, chaos is a lack of focus.

If all you do is you look at your wife, or you look at your children, and you start checking in with them the way you’re checking in with me now, the way you’re listening to me now then there’s not going to be chaos around you, because chaos is a lack of clarity. By focusing in and looking in and connecting with a person, you’ve now shown clarity, right? Does that make sense? That’s one thing you can do today that will change your life in very big ways.

Yes?

Tom: I was listening to that and that reminds me of something about myself. I used to really have a lead foot and I liked driving very fast. That’s chaos. You engage chaos and you become mindful. You become mindful of it all. You begin to observe patterns and within the patterns you engage this [inaudible 01:12:45] aspect of being, having a kind of complete awareness of it. That’s how I engage mindfulness.

Mike Cernovich: Actually, thank you, Tom. Yeah, being and doing, there becomes this sort of, where it’s all the same. They would say that mindfulness is being rather than doing but your being is based on what you do. Who you are is based on habits. There is that state. If I’m talking over here to Joe and I’m making eye contact, in theory there’s chaos all around me. Are people looking at me? Is there secretly a person here that’s going to kill me? There’s all this stuff going on. There could be. If I let it. Or I could just choose to focus on one specific aspect and the chaos kind of goes away because now you have focus. I wish I knew how to load video on this. There’s an incredible video and I forget the exact concept from [inaudible 01:13:40] but, there’s a … Then somebody made a funny beer commercial, but it’s intentional blindness. That is a concept. Intentional blindness, which is that we’re blind and we’re not paying attention to and the way they illustrate is quite humorously.

They have five people passing a basketball to each other, back and forth. They go, okay count the number of times, the number of passes. You’re a good little student and 11. I won. They go, okay. Did you see the guy in the gorilla suit who walked right by? You’re like, bullshit. The guy in the gorilla suit was always there walking and because you were focused on one aspect of the experience, the number of passes, you didn’t even notice something that happened. It works both ways, right? It works both ways, there’s always going to be life going on. You’re not going to notice everything that’s going on. Chaos is trying to imagine that you can comprehend everything all at once, when really what you want to comprehend is the present moment. Ruthless focus is, this is where Shawna and I disagree. This is about just cutting people out of your life. Really. When you get really good at mindset, then people think that they can just say whatever they want to you because, hey your mindset man. Walk it off. Who cares what I said? No, because there’s a connection between lifestyle and mindset.

The way I put it is, if I didn’t sleep at all tonight and I got up and I tried to give this. My mindset wouldn’t be where it is. I need a certain number of hours of sleep. I need certain things to happen. Ben and Alejandro are great organizing it. If my lifestyle here where I’m checking people in, I’m doing this, I’m doing that and I’m keeping track of everything. Then, I’m not going to be able to give as good of a seminar. Right? That’s a lifestyle choice. Ruthless focus is, and I do this, this goes against all cultural conditioning is, whenever you interact with somebody, friend or family, once you’re done, write one through five. One is, that was amazing. I’m inspired. I’m encouraged. I can’t wait to talk to this person again. Five is, I feel drained. That was like a spiritual vampire. Three is intermediate. You rate every time you interact with somebody. Fives go away. Every time you have a five, goes away. Every time you have a four, it goes away. Then every time you have a three it goes away. That’s what I mean by ruthless focus is because, if you’re with negative people or allow negative influences in your life, you’re not going to be able to focus on your life vision.

You’re not going to be able to get everything you want in your life. You do have to be ruthless. You also want to rate activities. A lot of us do things that we don’t enjoy, because we think we’re supposed to enjoy them. For example, I’ve been on a big yacht. I don’t really like it that much. Maybe you guys do, but to me, I don’t really enjoy being on a yacht. I’ll occasionally do it for the social media pictures and social proof and create an image or whatever, but I don’t actually like it. You just rate those activities. A lot of times you’re doing things that you’re supposed to like, because it’s high status, or because society has brainwashed you to like it. You find out you don’t even like it. The reason this is under mindfulness is because mindfulness is higher consciousness. You’re now realizing you can be more mindful of how I spend my time. I’m being mindful of what I do. I’m being mindful of who I spend my time with because fundamentally we are our habits and our lifestyles.

We are the people we’re with and we are the activities we engage in. If you want to get very reductionist, you are the totality of the people you spend your time with and the activities you engage in. If you go do these things, that’s what you do. If you go to the gym, you’re going to become a gym guy, which is a good thing. I’m not denigrating it. You’re the total of that. You’re the total of the people you spend your time with. If you think it isn’t true, just try to imagine a time that you’re not engaging in an activity or where you’re not spending time with people, and you won’t find one. See how self talk connects to mindfulness. Mindfulness connects to mood. Frame control is connected to self talk. We even got a little bit into vision. All around. Posture is what Alejandro talked about and the way to think about posture is the unconscious conversation that you have with yourself. Go back to the first part, mindset. Open or closed. Right?

If you’re sitting like this, unconsciously you’re closing off the conversation you’re having with yourself. You’re closing yourself off to the world. That’s signaling all types of negative responses to your body, cortisol and everything, it’s been proven. There’s a great picture that I posted on my website, I don’t have it here. The chimpanzees, you can find them, whenever the bigger chimpanzees around, the other chimpanzees all squinch down, right? Fundamentally, space is status. It’s a very irrational thing, but the most important guy has the bigger office. That’s why people want a big house. People think if you have a big house, you have more social status. What a lot of people don’t understand about Gorilla Mindset, especially people who’ve never read it, they just like to hate on me on day on the internet. There’s almost nothing in the book, if anything about how to dominate other people, that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about learning how to control yourself and dominate your own life.

Part of that, is reframing these things. A lot of people … The reason I’m bringing that up, there is a point to that. Unconsciously, space is status and that’s within DNA. We’re going to unconsciously think the person with the biggest house, the bigger swimming pool, the bigger office, is the more important person. That’s fine, but you don’t have to buy into that consciously. You don’t have to think, well I need a bigger house and I need a bigger car. I bought my car used. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a new car. You have to know that if you’re sitting around in a closed off position, you’re signaling to your body that you’re a low social status. You’re signaling to your body that you’re demonstrative, that you’re small, that you don’t matter. This is an ongoing, unconscious, conversation that you’re having with yourself. We’re going to run into some posture exercises. In on second we’ll do a couple more.

Another thing to keep in mind, when you recognize when you’re in a bad mood. A lot of what we’re doing is mindfulness is plotting the way you feel, outlining it, note taking and then improving it. You’re not going to leave here with the whole way to live your life forever. You’re now going to learn how to observe yourself, diagnose yourself, figure out what is going on and then building on there every day. What you’ll notice is that when you’re in a bad mood, you always want to look at where your posture is. Great example of that is anger. Again, everybody should read George Lakoff’s book, Metaphors We Live By.

Male Audience: What’s it called?

Mike Cernovich: Metaphors We Live By. It’s about how our language has deep metaphorical structures that we don’t think about and I’ll give you an example. When you’re angry, people say take a step back. Have you ever thought why that is? Why do they say take a step back? What does that mean? Because anger is a forward moving emotion. Nobody who is angry, is floating backwards, right? If you’re angry you’re moving forwards. Unconsciously we get it, but you never actually examine these language structures. A really fun exercise and activity you can do, actually, is every time somebody goes take a step back you want to think well what metaphor is embedded in that? What you find out is that emotions have movement.

Big mistake people make is they try to stop … How do I stop being angry? That would be like a guy coming to run after me. How do you stop it from … You just want to move it. If a train is on the tracks rather than stop the train, just divert the track. Right? You can’t just stop anger. How do I stop being angry? You can immediately hijack that feeling through a body language intervention. Real simple one is if you find yourself angry, you’re like this, right? We all know what anger looks like. I could show a picture, and it’s been studied by Paul Ekman and others about reading faces, there’s a culturally universal expressions like anger. I could go anywhere, it doesn’t matter. If you’re angry and you feel anger, rather than say stop being angry. Why don’t you just step back, right? That’s what people tell you. Take a step back. It never really meant anything. You can actually make yourself become less angry by simply making a posture adjustment.

If you feel yourself getting angry, that’s forward motion. The way to deal with that emotion is to change your posture, become more open. Sit back. It won’t immediately dissipate the anger but then it hijacks the feeling because you’ve now changed your self talk. Your body language is your self talk and it’s probably the most important conversation that we all have. Again, the feedback loop. Bad posture, leads to bad mood. Now, what we’re about to do is based on Amy Cuddy’s work. She did Ted Talk, very internet famous and all that. Then, a lot of people came out and said oh they studies were actually fake. Most social psychology is actually fake. I don’t want to get into all that but it’s not replicable. They’ve done all these studies and they write these big books on this great phenomenon. [inaudible 01:23:27] writes a book and then people like five years later try to replicate the studies and they’re going, no actually it’s complete BS. Not true at all. I’m not claiming this is scientific at all, but I’ve noticed from dealing with countless people, that if you do this, it is harder to be in a bad mood and I’ll tell you why.

There’s vulnerability. You’re expressing vulnerability when you do these posture exercises. Alejandro is going to come and he’s going to help me lead this workshop up here. He’s going to come up on the stage. Alejandro that would be you. Everybody is going to do it too and then Alejandro and then Ben is going to lead you. This is why I had you sign the waiver. I don’t think anybody is actually going to be injured for anything we do but I don’t want somebody to be like, oh my god I stretched my arm out and my ligament, you know. Then we’ll fund a lawsuit, you know. That’s the stuff I gotta worry about here. What we’ll do is, we’re going to analyze Alejandro. What’s the body language most people have? What is the posture that most people have. Demonstrate it. Right? Hunched over. You’re leaning forward. Interior pelvic tilt. Right? And you look at the ground, right? Everybody looks at the ground.

Female Audience: When you’re driving you should always look ahead and it’s the same for walking.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah. That’s the unconscious schlub right? People walk around like schlubs all day and then they’re like why am I not getting what I want out of life? That’s what the world looks at you as. You walk around like that and it’s like, well you’re getting everything that you deserve out of life because that’s the conversation you’re having. iPosture is another one. I’m just as bad. I didn’t make that term up. Somebody else did. iPosture is, you sit like this all day and your neck kinks and I’ve took some really good pictures of that over the years. What we’re going to do is we’re going to show you how to not do it. We call this the abundance posture pose, and the reason we do it is because you’re immediately signaling unconsciously to your own body and your own mind of one of openness and abundance.

The way you want to do it is you want to deconstruct it again. We’re going to show you and then we’re going to lead everybody through it. Ben is going to help, and Nester is going to help, he’s been to this part. Scott’s going to help you guys too. If you turn around, look over your shoulder, Miles can help too. Scott, Miles, Nester, they’ve been here before. Ben’s over there. They can kind of lead you through it. The way you want to deconstruct it, is step by step. A lot of you might feel like you’re going to fall over initially when you do it. You won’t actually fall over. It’ll feel unbalanced because most people have never actually opened themselves up. The first thing you want to do is you want to correct your hips. If Alejandro standing like this, he’s hunched forward.

You want to open your hips up and bring your hips in. A way that’s helpful to actually do that is to kind of put your hands on your own hips and flip it almost like you’re moving a knob or a switch. Most people, so you see how he’s like that, right? Most people, that’s how you are. Unconsciously, you want to just flip it a little bit. You gotta watch.

Male Audience: [inaudible 01:26:53]

Mike Cernovich: That’s why people will help you through that. Step one is, grounding with your feet and then you want to just bring your chest up as if you’re trying to lean back and when you do that, it will initially probably hurt a little bit because most people, myself included, if you do work at a desk it feels unnatural and your abdominal muscles are probably tightly constricted. You might have something that feels like an ab cramp. You start like this and then you lift yourself up here by the chest, right? Then you rise yourself up and then you outstretch your arms as if you’re about to lean back and fall into a swimming pool. That’s one repetition and the do that again. That’s another repetition. Don’t lean as far back as he is if you’re new to this, because I don’t want anybody falling back, but you did sign a waiver. That’s on you, whatever happens.

You will feel a little bit off balance and that’s natural because you’re going against the flow or the natural state, which is a kind of a slug. If you really think about it, again, it goes back to my fundamental view on the human condition, which is that we’re just kind of slugs. We’re not particularly good people unless you really work on it.

We wanted to do that before the workshop, but as you can see, you feel better right? You feel more open, you feel loose, you’re more checked into your body, you’re more present. You always want to examine your posture throughout the day, that’s just one exercise you can do. Gorilla Mindset, which I imagine everybody has already, there’s a bunch of exercises in there for specific issues and then foam rolling and everything can’t … I live on a foam roller. I have a travel foam roller. When I fly anywhere I have a travel foam roller that’s hollowed out in the middle so I can throw my socks and underwear in the foam roller. A foam roller. Next time we do a more longer one, I’ll get into foam rolling.

Remember, angry, take a step back. Sad, down in the dumps. Has anybody ever heard the expression, take to the bed? Take to the bed. It’s a Victorian era expression and the idea was, it’s not exciting at all. It was the idea that Victorian women were so prim and proper that if a man cussed in the presence in the salon, they would faint and they would take to the bed because they were so over whelmed. That’s an actual expression. You guys are learning Victorian history here too. You know, when you’re getting beat up by life, which happens to everybody, you just want to lay down. That’s the natural physiological response. You feel weighed down by life. The weight of the world. I’m down in the dumps. Those are, again, the metaphorical patterns, language patterns, that we all live by. That’s why the great book is called Metaphors We Live By. We live by them and you don’t even know it. If you feel sad and you lay down, that’s the worst thing you can do. Just sit up. That’s sometimes all you need to not feel a certain way. If you’re angry, sometimes all you need to do is just sit back. Stretch out. Do some posture poses and then you’ll find out that the anger dissipates and goes away.

Again, posture, it really is self talk, right? You learn non-verbal communication within the context of persuasion but nobody ever tells you, everybody says 80% of communication is non-verbal, I don’t believe that. A large percentage of it is. Nobody tells you that your posture is actually another form of self talk. Your posture is another way to be more mindful. Here I am, I’m standing, I’m opening myself up, I’m opening my body up, I’m opening up myself to the universe. Then, mindfulness again ties into self talk. If you do these stretches, I just say I’m opening myself up to the universe and all of its possibilities. That’s what I say. People say, how do I be more creative? How do I do this? How do I do that? Just be more open. That’s all creativity is. How do I come up with so many ideas all the time? Because it isn’t that I’m creative, it’s that I’m open to the universe and all of its possibilities. A lot of times you are going to invite some negative energy too, because if you open yourself up fully, then you are inviting negative energy in the universe but you know how to handle that.

With frame control, even though you’re inviting negative energy, you recognize that the negative energy is a component of positive energy. Very concrete example is that, and this is why the internet is what it is, does anybody know what the makeup girls are on YouTube? I’m obsessed with the makeup girls. I’ll tell you why. Marketing and branding. Go to Sephora, they have makeup lines now at Sephora. There’s this entirely new genre of people where they did makeup tutorials, build massive, big, global, worldwide brands, and now they have their own lines of products and they were nobodies. People go, how do I do what you do? I go, watch a bunch of make up girls. They’re like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That was ironic. Yeah. That’s what I tell people. Watch them. They created something out of nothing. That’s alchemy. There was no such thing as a genre of entertainment or entrepreneurialism, whatever you call it, based around makeup. Somehow they created that out of nothing. That’s about being open to the world and all its possibilities. If you would have told people 10 years ago, hey yeah, there’s going to be these girls, they’re millionaires now. They have their own line of products in the stores and they started off by doing YouTube videos with makeup. You would be arrested probably. Right? That would be just loony.

If you tried to create that, creatively, you couldn’t even come up with it because it’s such an absurd idea that you wouldn’t even think of it in a creative process. If you just say, well hey, I’m opening myself up to the idea that I do something every day, all I’m doing is filming what I’m doing every day, all this magic kind of happens. That’s the universe. The downside, this is why I brought up the makeup girls, I get a lot of hate.

A lot of it’s deserved. I own that. I don’t have a problem with that. If you read the makeup girl comments, they get way worse hate than I get. I deserve it, what did they do? What did they do? They’re just trying to be nice and help people cover up blemishes and stuff and look nicer. They’re just very positive people. There’s no politics there. Their comments are way nastier than anything I get and that’s just because when you open yourself up to new genre, you open yourself up to the world, you’re going to attract negative energy like that, too. No matter what. No matter what you do, when you open up to the positive, that’s always going to come with negative energy too, but you’re not afraid of that now, because you recognize that’s frame control. The only reason they have haters, is because they have these empires. They have the many empires. The only reason I have haters, is because I have influence.

The only reason people want to write hate pieces on me is because they think I’m a powerful voice and they have to silence me or else they can’t continue to lie and deceive people into more wars that we never should have been involved with. The deep state hires the media to attack me because there’s a lot of money in war. That’s why when the hit pieces come on me, I’m like, well of course. Of course, they want to come after me. I’m trying to stop wars, right? That’s what they want. You’re inviting that and you’re reframing that kind of negative energy into positive. Vision is putting it all together. Aligning habits with vision and then manifesting personal day.

What I said earlier, I go, what are you? You are the sum total of the activities you engage in and the people you spend your time with. The activities that you engage in are your habits. Good habits, bad habits. We all have habits. Right now, you have learned a bunch of new habits. What’s one habit you learned today? I already called on you, I’ll leave you alone. Who haven’t I called on. How are you doing Miles? Always good to see you. What’s one habit you’ve learned today, Miles?

Miles: How to reframe when they hit you with one.

Mike Cernovich: Exactly. How will you use that in your life?

Miles: Any time someone comes at me from anything that I don’t like just redirect and throw it back at them in a different direction [inaudible 01:35:47].

Mike Cernovich: Exactly. HC, what’s a habit that you’ve learned today that when you leave, there’s one thing that you can do differently?

HC: Make sure I’m standing as tall as possible.

Mike Cernovich: There you go. See. Habits and vision. Everybody here is going to leave with some specific habits and they’re going to be different for everybody. For me, my habit is, and it shows in my work product, not everything I do is A work. Right? This, I have to have a work. There are days when people are like, you look tired. Well, yeah. Thanks. I am tired. Why? Cause I work every day. Why do I work every day? Cause you don’t become relevant if you take days off. You can’t be relevant in the 24 hour news cycle they way I am, if you take days off. Now, you maybe only work a half day, but you don’t. There’s no vacation in my world. Sometimes you show up and your hair’s a little off and maybe you’re not looking your best. It doesn’t matter. If your vision, which is again, back to mantra. Lining it all. My vision is too big to ignore. That’s why I don’t care what people are saying, as long as they’re saying it. It doesn’t matter. If my vision is too big to ignore, then the habit to align with that vision is I have to do it every day.

I have to show up every day. I have to kill it every day. And again, even thought it might not always been A work, I don’t say, today was just a B day. I figure, okay, but you showed up every day. And then you get better at it. The truth is that when I started I didn’t know what I was doing. Some people go, how’d you do it? I don’t know. I was at an event and there was a big protest outside and people were screaming. There are hundreds of people out there screaming at a protest and I go, there’s no media here. Just go talk to the people. They’re all yelling and I go okay, there’s this thing called Periscope and I don’t know how to use it and I just went up and I was like, hey who wants to talk to me? Why are you here? What brings you out here? All of a sudden I had like 4,000 live viewers. I didn’t have a Mofi or any kind of charging … I didn’t know what I was doing. My phone was dying, I would sprint to the car, I’d have to recharge it. Turn on the AC. I’m over heating and then I’m sprinting back just to try to get good footage, cause I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t plan it.

Because I’m open to possibility, right, which goes back to earlier. I just said there’s all these people, there’s a protest, there’s screaming, nobody is talking to them, I’m just going to go up and talk to them on this phone using this app called Periscope. That created a whole new genre of it, which is kind of the modern day Gonzo journalists are people who march with the protestors. I march with the democrat protestors. I march with care. I march with everybody and just live stream. I don’t check mate them. I don’t say oh I’m going to ask you a thing and edit it and try to make you look stupid. I just say, you’re live there’s 5,000 people watching, what do you want people to know. Why are you here? That created an entire new genre now where you just go to the march with them. You just hold it up and then you can do participatory stuff. Again, that’s just a habit. You have to show up where the people are.

If you’re home on a Saturday doing nothing, then what’s your life vision? Maybe you don’t have a life vision. That’s why these work in sync, is that you need a life vision and then your vision has to align with your habits and of course you fold that into a day. The way I always like to do this is, it’s covered in full in Gorilla Mindset, for today we’re going to do it a little bit differently because there’s like 10 people who have already been, so I’ll just like … Todd, what’s your vision here for yourself?

Todd: I want to create an impact. I want there to be something left in my wake.

Mike Cernovich: You want a legacy.

Todd: Yes.

Mike Cernovich: A legacy for what?

Todd: A legacy for other people. I like people.

Mike Cernovich: This is good. It’s a good start. See how vague it is though?

Todd: Right.

Mike Cernovich: I want to leave a legacy. Jeffery Dahmer has a legacy. Right? Legacy is a value neutral kind of term. Stalin has a legacy. [inaudible 01:39:55] has a legacy. Mile has a legacy. I like what you’re saying. When you’re designing your vision, the reason I asked you that is, because you want to think more concretely. Legacy is a very abstract term. Life is a very concrete event. The way you do it is you align it to your perfect day. Here’s what I do. I wake up, I roll over. Are you next to somebody? Are you next to two people, three people? Maybe by yourself. I don’t know. That’s not for me to judge or tell people. What do you do from the minute you wake up? Who do you wake up next to? Where do you wake up? Do you hear the ocean crash? The waves crashing because you’re by the beach. Maybe you smell the sea. You have to make it an immersive experience, because that’s how you craft your life vision.

If you craft your life vision, then you’ll know what habits you’re going to need. If you just say I want to have a legacy, that isn’t specific. If you say, okay, I wake up and I’m really excited for what I do because I’m going to go to my job at a children’s hospital. I’m volunteering at a children’s hospital so I have to get in there. I usually get in there at 10:00 AM and there are these kids and they have burn victims and I go talk to them and I read to them. Whatever, right? Now you’re thinking about that definition of your life vision. Definition of your life vision by basing it around the day and then from there, your habits are going in line. If your life vision, when I wake up and I hear the waves crashing. For me, I don’t care about that anymore. What got to me was, I was 19, grew up in the Midwest, when I went to visit my sister and we went to the beach for the first time and her in-laws had a beach house. I thought, wow, this is amazing. The water is right there.

I can hear the waves crashing and all that. I go, I just want that. At the time, I was 19, I didn’t even know what wanting that looked like. As it turns out it was a time share for like five grand a year. It wasn’t even anything. For me, that was a huge thing. I didn’t even know what that was. I just knew that was what I wanted. I know that you’re not going to get a house on the water if you’re hung over on a Saturday. Right? That’s me specifically. For you it might be different. If you think … For me, the way I would do it is, I said, before I started doing the Gorilla Mindset stuff, I said my perfect day is I wake up and I work out of a coffee shop. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I can work out of a coffee shop and I’m doing something there. I can control my schedule, I don’t have a boss and I like the people that I work with and work for. That was my vision. I talk to the people and they email me.

I don’t get angry cause I like the people that I meet. That became my vision and that would even dictate what I write. There was a time that I wrote stuff and then people were around me and I was like, I don’t like these people who are around me. That’s not part of my vision. Of course, I was manifesting the people that were around me through the energy I was sending out. That was my own fault. That’s what I mean, if my vision is, I like the people I work with, I like all of you, but then I’m saying things and doing things that attract people that I don’t like, then that is a misalignment of my habits and vision, which is what people have. The best example of this is, we all know people who would be amazing in relationships. They say they want a relationship and then they’re at bars till 4:00 in the morning. Right? Well, you don’t. Don’t tell me you do, you want that, if your habits aren’t aligning with your vision. A lot of that is most people don’t know they have a vision, but a lot of that too is accountability.

You have to align your habits with your vision so, I had a guy … I get this a lot, I don’t want to pick on him and maybe he’s here, but he said … he messaged me, I want to create the ESPN, but for republicans or conservatives or whatever. Is that a good idea? I clicked over to his social media profile. He’s not doing live streaming. He’s not tweeting sports. He’s not covering local games. I go, he doesn’t want to do anything but waste my time. That’s all he wants to do. Waste my time because maybe I can fill a void in his life that he has. If you tell me I want to start an ESPN, then I should be able to go to your social media right now and you might not be getting any retweets, maybe nobody is tweeting you out. Maybe nobody is linking to your stuff, but I should be able to find 10 videos, 100 videos, a bunch of blogs. Again, maybe nobody is reading them, but people say, oh I want to do what you do, Cernovich. I’m like, anybody can do what I do, but having an audience is a different thing. You don’t build the audience until you do all the grinding for a year.

Then you ask yourself, if I claim that I want to be a whatever, then are your habits aligned with that supposed vision? To align your vision, you have to, of course, create your perfect day. It has to be concrete, specific. You have to see it. You have to own it. And then you have to brainwash yourself that it’s possible. I had a vision to sell a lot of books. I didn’t know how to do it, but if you have a vision that I want to sell a lot of books, then unconsciously you’re going to go read books on how to sell books. Right? That’s what people don’t miss, if in your own head you say, I want to do this and then earlier the first question, the most highlighted passage, am I in the moment becoming the person I want to be? If I say I want to sell a lot of books, or whatever your goal is, if you say I want to make a lot of money, then I’m saying well if you want to make a lot of money be in venture capital, sales or fiancee.

If you really want to make a lot of money, that’s where you make the money. Then you would be reading books on sales, going to public speaking events, you would be maybe networking with venture capital or trying to start a dot com. Something. If you want to make real money. I’m not talking like my money, but real, real money. That’s what you would be doing. It would all become unconscious. People tell me, I want to have a podcast. I’m like okay, well, where are your podcasts? Right? You can’t do one? Well, nobody listened to it. Nobody listened to mine. Right? Nobody listened to my early … I’ve got 100 listens and I thought I was hot stuff. Right? Now if I did a video with 100 live viewers, I would delete it. I’d feel demoralized, right? You ask yourself constantly, you check in, if you say I want this, am I doing something right now that’s going to bring me what I want? Then you align your habits and your vision. Yes, David?

David: My question is, for you, how long should we embrace the suck? For playing to the empty room?

Mike Cernovich: Depends on what you want to do. There’s a right answer to that in another one of my seminars I gave before. I always say don’t be afraid to quit. I boxed when I was younger, I was good. Good enough … those guys have no idea what they would get into. I was good enough to get my head smashed in and be a mid-tier journeyman kind of guy who could have been something maybe on ESPN once or twice. Then you go, so maybe I’m good enough I’m going to maybe be on ESPN once or twice in my life and have headaches the rest of my life. Maybe that’s not a right choice, right? Or if you train in a sport, like Jiu Jitsu, you think you’re getting pretty good. You’ve got the blue belt. A guy comes in and he’s been doing it for three months and he’s like steamrolling you. Well, then your idea of being a BJJ world champion, you probably say well reality has its own vision for you.

That’s what I mean. Life, as Mark Twain said, it’s not dance. It’s more of a wrestling match. I don’t tell people that they can do anything, cause I don’t believe that’s true. I can’t do anything. I couldn’t be in the NBA. I never could have been a championship boxer or championship UFC guy. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how many times I read Gorilla Mindset, in ever would have been a high level boxer, high level UFC guy. I still enjoyed it and went a long the way. What’s going to happen is, you’ll find out what you’re good at and then Scott Adams, of course, in his great book talks about this, which is passion is bull crap. There’s a reason I don’t say how to find your passion. If you find something you’re good at, people are going to say wow you’re really good at that. Then you’re going to get reinforcement for what you’re good at and then that is going to become your passion. You have to try, you have to get hit enough times and the flip side is you always have to know am I quitting too soon? It’s hard to specific. The flip side to that too, is you want to get in a room with real contenders.

Another thing too, I went to Arnold Classic when I was in college. I was a big guy. I was in good shape and everything. I went to the Arnold Classic in Columbus. It’s like a big fitness comp and you look around and you’re like, dude, I’m nothing. I wouldn’t have been a world level body builder. That’s not going to happen. You go into a room like that and you can see that you’re so outclassed in everyway that that isn’t going to happen. That comes too. That’s where you have to face your fears like we said earlier. Challenge yourself. Push yourself. Sometimes you have to go into a room where you’re going to be low man on the totem pole and then you’ll get an assessment, do these people just have some kind of x factor that I don’t have? Then it becomes a judgment call. The flip side too is, and this is another reframing technique, is that everything you fail at is transferable to something you’re good at. Right?

If I, for whatever reason, couldn’t do journalism anymore, I can use all these skills for … I could be a big time real estate agent tomorrow if I wanted to. Everything I know about brand building, marketing … For whatever reason I wasn’t good at this, I now have transferable skills, which is why Scott Adams’ book is so good too. If you can public speak … Maybe you say I want to be the number one whatever, actor in the world. But you learn public speaking. You learn how to feel emode, emotional depth. How to read people. How to read a room. How to read energy. Maybe you don’t become the number one actor in the world, but you now have a whole bundle of skills that you can take and what he would call talent stack, you can take that to anywhere. You can take it to anything. It isn’t that you failed at the endeavor, because the game is never over.

That’s what nobody tells you. Successful people … That’s why I like Adams’ stuff so much and why, even if I weren’t me, I would like my stuff. We don’t lie to you. Become a success and now you’re a success and it’s great and every day I just wake up and success, success everywhere you look, right? The best illustration of this was election night. You know, I’m right, everybody was wrong. Big party. Big election party. I go home and I take the trash out. Right? That’s the reality. The reality is, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to take the trash out at night. Your wife or husband or whatever is going to say you need to spend more time with them. If you have a dog, you’re going to have a dog. You’re going to have a dog that gets away. There is no end point of success. Anything you do, you want to build transferable … You can never go wrong. Be in good shape. Even if you’re never going to be Ky Green, the biggest body builder in the world, learning how to workout, psychical coach. Take care of your body. You can take that to anywhere in life.

Is there a specific sort of endeavor you were looking for?

David: It was general.

Mike Cernovich: That’s the general answer, but do things that are going to allow you to carry over those skills into other activities and endeavors. Anybody have any questions? Yes?

Female Audience: I’m in a transition period, so I’m kind of figuring it out, right? Do you have any advice or … to focus in on next if you’re in a transition period?

Mike Cernovich: Define transition. Transitioning from where to where?

Female Audience: From what I was doing prior to figuring out what I want to do now. It’s going to be in the same realm, design or something. I’m just …

Mike Cernovich: Transitioning is one of those scary words that we talked about earlier like a contraction. I think transition is a scary word to use. We’re always transitioning. Right? We think, I’m in a transition phase-

Female Audience: What’s a better way to say it?

Mike Cernovich: It’s called living life and you’re moving forward and you’re moving towards your life vision. Rather than saying I’m in a transition phase and you’re looking at this phase. You’re thinking about your life vision and then you’re asking yourself, am I doing what it takes to work towards my life vision. Then, you won’t know you’re in a transition phase until you’re past it.

Female Audience: What if you’re not sure what your life vision is then?

Mike Cernovich: The perfect day. You have to decide how you want to wake up. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? That’s the soul searching. That’s why I can’t give anybody the answers for themselves. That’s why the perfect day is how you find your life vision. Where do you want to wake up? Does a person say I want to wake up, I’m hard of hearing, I have Cheetos on my face, I’m watching the news, waiting to die? A lot of people end up there. Right? 10s of millions of people that’s where they end up, but I think if set this out, where do I want my life vision to be, most people say that’s crazy. A lot of people end up there. That’s because they never took the time early on in their life to figure out okay, that’s where I’m going to end up. That is where I want to be. I want to focus on a live vision and clearly define it. It takes time. Years. This stuff, I wrote the book, I still live it. I’m not perfect. You do reach a phase where then life intercedes. I have a daughter now.

How does my life vision work with my daughter? I go from kind of a hedonistic, selfish person to okay, now I have to be more attentive. We got a daughter. Shawna as a wife. We got stuff going on so you have to work through that and it’s never over. The game is never over. All of life is a transition period. I never thought I’d be in the field I’m in, doing the stuff I’m doing. That was never on my goal board. I just said that I always wanted to have an impact on the world. Another tip too, don’t over psychoanalyze. There’s a lot of people obsessed with psychoanalysis. What is it that you want to do that perhaps you didn’t get enough attention as a child and everything. It doesn’t work. Empirically it doesn’t work. It’s been proven. Analyzing your motivations and why you really want it, it almost never works. You have to just say this is what I want to do. I’m going to work towards it. Then you keep working towards it. Yes, Israel?

Speaker 15: Do you have any tips on, let’s say you want something, but you feel like you don’t have [inaudible 01:54:31] because what you want is maybe not socially acceptable or you have some sort of hangup. Is there some way to over come that? Or to move past that?

Mike Cernovich: Yes. I’m not ignoring you. I actually have that line in Gorilla Mindset. It’s actually covered, because most people want permission. Most people think they need to have permission because of social constructs. I actually have early on in the book is, you have permission and the tools you need to succeed. The way I frame it is, I go, when is the last time someone sat next to you and asked you your hope and dreams? Right? You always hear about duty. What you’re supposed to do. What you’re supposed to want. When has somebody actually said, hey what do you want? What do you want out of life? How can I help you get what you want out of life? Almost nobody. When’s the last time you sat down with yourself and said, what do I want? As long as it’s not illegal or something truly sociopathic or whatever, then I live a certain way that people find appalling. Right? I know what people say. I don’t care.

That’s what they don’t understand. I go your moral judgment doesn’t mean anything to me. You’re judging me and you’re trying to take some moral high ground. I just don’t care. I don’t need your permission to live the way that I want to live my life. That’s something you have to reach within your self and then you have to use a mindset tools because people will shame you. If you’re living the way the herd doesn’t want you to live, or the hive mind doesn’t want you to live, then they’re going to shame you and then you have to unwrap those feelings and why do you feel ashamed? You feel ashamed because you were brainwashed at some point in your life that you’re supposed to live a certain way. Then you deconstruct that feeling and then you realize that, wait a minute? Here’s the way I always put it. Shouldn’t they be ashamed that they’re shaming me for not doing what I want them to do? Right?

That sounds like bullshit to me. I would often hear this, you’re selfish. Why? Because I won’t do what you want me to do? That’s what makes me selfish? How about you? You’re the selfish person. You’re twice as selfish because you want to control me. All I want to do is be left alone. Once you really realize that these emotions like shame and guilt aren’t yours. You didn’t come up with it. You didn’t come up with the rules. You weren’t Moses. You didn’t go up to Mount Sinai and God came and he had divine revaluation. Right? You were given those bullshit rules by somebody else and they don’t follow them. How many people talk about global warming from their private yachts. Private jets. Right? Whether or not a person thinks global warming is man made or not, people believe what they believe, I’m not going to argue that, but if you’re flying a private jet to your yacht, to talk to me about global warming and now you’re turning on a thermostat. I’m not particularly interested in hearing what you have to say. The people who give you these rules, the rules are usually bullshit, they don’t even follow them, so then why would you follow them.

Of course, that gets into like, slave morality. The idea that I’m going to follow rules given to me by the masters but they don’t even follow their own rules. Then you realize you’re a slave. Then you have to decide, is your life vision constant with being a slave to the motivations, the expectations, and the entitlement of other people? There’s so much of that. People feel entitled to how you should feel and what you should do. If you say what you want to do … Even my friends do stuff that I don’t like. The flip side, I don’t care if somebody wears a hijab. It’s none of my business. Why do people feel entitled to be upset by how other people dress and what religions they practice? Right? That’s an entitlement that, that person is doing something that I don’t like. What was said to you. I’m the same way when other people try to say I don’t like the way you talk to people or whatever. I don’t care.

You don’t have that kind of moral authority. You have to ask yourself whether there’s anybody alive today, myself included, who has moral authority to tell anybody else how to live? I sure don’t have it. Hilary Clinton doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. I don’t think there’s any public figure that I’ve seen … Maybe Elon Musk is a pretty good guy it seems like. Maybe Charles Munger. Maybe there’s a couple people, but the point is, who has moral authority to tell you how to live? Look around. Nobody. You have to live how you want to live.

Male Audience: Does this limit your effectiveness in any way? If you’re not public about what your vision is?

Mike Cernovich: No. It’s better to not be public about your vision. For me, I’m very public. Yeah. It takes a long time to get here to where I am. Yeah. But, I’m not really truly public about my end game. Nobody knows my real end game. Right? A nod from here and there, but nobody actually knows my real end game or what I’m actually really up to. And nobody will. Even without the camera I’m not going to tell you guys. Maybe somebody has a microphone. It’s not an evil end game, but I’m not going to tell anybody my end game. It’s better … I definitely do not want to be president. I wouldn’t want to be president. The thing with your vision is, you have to have it for yourself. It doesn’t limit your effectiveness if it’s public or if it’s private. Let’s say for example, you shared your vision with your friends. Some of them are going to hate on you. That’s good to have. Get rid of them. Cut them out right away.

I had a guy the other day, I was like oh, I’m going to start a super pac. He goes, be careful. People come after you for the super pac. I just go okay, I’ll never talk to this person again. Like I don’t know. I don’t know I have a target on my back every day of my life. I don’t know that people aren’t looking to catch me slipping up with the paperwork thing or something so I won’t have a lawyer to make sure things are good to go? That’s that person’s first thought, was let me tell you why that’s a bad idea. Even though I think I have it under control. If you share your vision, you’re going to get hate, but then of course if you share your vision, you get people who get bought into your vision.

I’ll take a couple more questions, we’ll move into the next segment which is, charisma and connection. A lot of people, I’ve never taught this stuff publicly before, because the world wasn’t ready until you have the Gorilla Mindset. If you don’t have a vision for your own life, how do you create a shared vision for people? You don’t even know what you want to do with your life, how do you get buy ins from people? That’s what always cracks me up when the media people try to cover what I do as, they think I just lead this thing and I don’t. I go, you have to get buy in from people. People have their own needs, desires, expectations that they’re going to push back. I have to have a vision first in order to have a shared vision with the world. That’s where charisma comes in and connection. How to specifically make that happen. Before we flip over and have Ben, Ben’s going to help me with that. I’ll talk a couple more questions.

Male Audience: I actually had two questions but if you can only answer one. Okay. My first question is about the military. I’m thinking about joining the military and kind of what you were saying is kind of how I feel about fighting unnecessary wars going on, so I’m kind of battling with that in my head. I want to be able to feel like my [inaudible 02:01:38] the flag, and at the same time, I don’t want to go into an unnecessary war.

Mike Cernovich: Once you’re in you don’t have any control over what happens next. That’s for sure. Yeah, I get that question a lot. A lot of people want to join the military. Whenever it’s a man who’s asking me that question, cause I’m pro joining the military, I was in for nine years got the DD214 and everything. I’m pro, but nine times out of ten, when a man asks me that question, he’s really saying my life is lacking adventure and spirit and I want more adventure and spirit in my life. I’m not saying that’s the case with you, but I’m saying, cause that question comes up. Other people say, well, it’s patriotism or whatever. You want to find the real reason that you want to do that. You should spend a lot of time reading internet message boards on what military life is really like. Wake up at 5:00 in the morning, go clean house, shave, wait for formation, stand around and do nothing, go do PT, go have breakfast, stand around and do nothing for another … That’s what most of life is. Standing around and doing nothing. It isn’t want people think it is. Active duty, unless you’re with a special operations unit, is for the most part, tedium. You’re around early, you’re standing around doing nothing, you’re not 19 are you?

Male Audience: No.

Mike Cernovich: You’re going to be with 19 year olds, never been drunk before. Never been away from home. Chugging beers, which might be fun, but for me that’s not my … That’s the reality of barracks life. Are you married?

Male Audience: No.

Mike Cernovich: So you’d be living in the barracks. 18 or 19 year olds, beer everywhere. That’s the thing. Make sure you have a realistic idea of what the military is and Army life is like, or Marine life or whatever life is really like versus the glamorous image that we have of what it’s like. They are definitely two different things. Yes?

Male Audience: You talked about, maybe a little different situation, so grow, grow, grow, I have everything I want and then kind of plateau because the vision that I had I’ve reached and so now it’s like I’m in this transition. What do I do? Do I keep plateauing? Or do I recreate the vision, what does that like?

Mike Cernovich: There’s that word transition again. Right? It comes up. That’s the whole point is that, we talked about earlier. I’ve got everything I wanted. Right? That’s what people think that happens. I can’t believe I live this life. What do you do? How do you keep pushing yourself into something else? The answer is that, if you’re doing well in life, it’s okay. There’s no hurry to have to find a vision tomorrow. You meditate on it. It might take you two, three, four, five, six, seven months. In fact, people like Miles will tell you, the current life that I’m living now is not what I wanted 18 months ago. Two months ago. Where I am now, I didn’t even want to be. I actually resisted it, because I thought well it’s a waste of time. What’s it matter? I would kind of step in and then I would step out and I’d kind of flip it both ways. Now, I think oh wow. This is great. At the time I was in a transition period but I didn’t even know it. The idea is that when you’re I a transition period, you don’t want to focus on how this is a transition period. You want to get to the next stage and then focus on … then you focus and then you reflect. Then you think about where you were.

It’s a good problem to have though. I deal with a lot of high achievement people. Usually the best answer to that is, you want to challenge yourself in unrelated realms. If you’ve made a bunch of money, that’s why they go try triathlons. Why is the average age of a triathlete 37? Well they’re like, I did the business thing, I’ve been successful, now I’m going to push myself and … There’s a reason for that. A lot of things that are cliché aren’t really cliché, it’s just a smart way to live. Oh okay, I did it. I did the money thing. I did the whatever, the party thing. Now I’m going to do something completely unrelated to that and then you’re in a new area and then you become a beginner in a new subject.

I was new to journalism, didn’t really know anything about it. That was fun. It was like a new challenge. Then I had to kind of figure it out. Then you realize the same thing you know, the same stuff you knew from the other area of your life, flips over to new areas of your life. That’s the thing, find something completely unrelated and then learn from there. Right behind you?

Male Audience: Why did you call it Gorilla Mindset with an O instead of a U?

Mike Cernovich: The answer is that, there’s actually a lot of unconscious stuff going on here. I listen to the haters. I listen to chapeau, taphouses and all those guys. I think it’s hilarious. They’re like oh, Gorilla Mindset. Big Gorilla, there’s actually nothing about that. I always tell them just come to a seminar. There’s no alpha male bullshit in any of this kind of stuff. Unconsciously, the idea of a gorilla, or treat it literally, a gorilla is actually an unintelligent animal. So what you’re really trying to do is teach people to not be intelligent. Well, gorillas unconsciously is a strong animal. People want to have a strong mind. So then you have the little gears with the gorilla and then it’s an unconscious precisian method. Even the colors. I could go a while thing on the consonant psychology of color.

There’s a teaching course on that actually. The cognoscente of psychology of color. The colors are actually specifically designed based on how people react to colors. If you look, there’s a light blue. That’s a cooler kind of color, but then there’s the bright red and black which are very aggressive colors. You’re creating though the colors of font, a sort of balance between hot and cold and then unconsciously you think, well i want to have a balanced mind, but I want to have a strong mind, but I want to be intelligent too. There’s nothing to do with gorillas. My editor was going crazy. He was like, Mike you still haven’t explained why you call it gorilla mindset. It’s unconscious man. It’s unconscious persuasion and there’s actually a lot of science that went into that.

It depends on how literal you are. Some people are more literal thinkers. It’s just a different mode of thinking. If you’re a literal thinking, you’re like well why? It should actually be gorilla because it’s an unconventional mindset. Right? Because gorillas are kind of dumb. If you view the world through that literalism, then it doesn’t make any sense at all. If you view the world more metaphorically, or visually, then right away you’re like, I mean, who wouldn’t want to have a stronger mindset. It’s making unconscious connections. Nobody should want to think like a gorilla. Right? Literally, that would be-

Male Audience: I never even thought of it that way. It never even crossed my mind.

Mike Cernovich: Exactly. That’s your way of dealing with the world. It’s maybe more figurative and metaphorical and unconscious rather than-

Male Audience: I thought it was brilliant. The first time I heard it, I’m like, what a name? That’s perfect.

Mike Cernovich: Exactly. I’m glad, that’s why it did so well.

Female Audience: Mike, earlier you said learn how you can gain power by giving the other person power. Can you say a little more about that?

Mike Cernovich: Yeah. That’s the next segment actually, of the whole seminar. Exactly.

Female Audience: Perfect.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, there’s a good segway. Nester?

Speaker 16: When you were saying that when [inaudible 02:08:39] you get a lot of negative feedback, how do you know if it’s negative or if it’s positive. A lot of times people give me their life vision and I say you better be careful before you do this and I don’t mean it to be negative. I actually want them to be careful with it. How can you tell?

Mike Cernovich: Life is going to hit them anyway. That’s the way I look at it is. Your delusions about the world, if you’re actually living life, you’re going to be smashed in the head so hard that whatever delusion you have about the world are going to be confronted with you. As a friend, you job is not to warn people of anything other than serious pitfalls. Right? If a guy is going to be in a bad relationship with somebody then that’s the kind of thing that matters. For the most part, most people are like, oh I’m going to start this business. I’m going to make 10 million dollars. No they’re not. Right? They’re not.

If a friend of mine says I’m going to start this new business. I’m going to get 10 million dollars out of this business, that’s awesome dude. I encourage you. Have you read this book? There’s this great blog out there. Charlie Monger is great. You should think like that. It’s not going to happen. 90% failure rate. Let reality be his shack. As a friend you want to guide them in a way that’s helpful, because you gotta realize we all get so much negative feedback from the world that your job as a friend is to give positive feedback. Which, again, there are exceptions. If it’s legitimately a nasty risk where there’s a really serious downside. If your friend says I’m going to build a 10 million dollar company and to do that I’m going to mortgage my house. Well, think that one through. Yes, Shawna? Josh?

Speaker 17: I was just going to say, the thing I’ve noticed lately with friends is figuring out, real friends will ask you more about your vision. If you don’t fully know what your vision is. My wife doesn’t get my vision and I’m still figuring it out so she will just ask me questions and it’s like … One of my best friends does the same thing. He called me the other day and he’s like, dude I think I get your vision. He’s like I’ve been doing this and I’ve been reading this stuff. He’s like, I think I get it. I’m like, what is it? Having people that are asking you questions instead of just trying to tell you how impossible it is or all these obstacles, is such a good ally to have.

Mike Cernovich: I have one question from Shawna I have to take. Shawna? You had a question? Oh, it’s time to segway to charisma. You heard it from Shawna. Charisma. Shared vision. Giving power to other people, right? We’re going to talk about charisma. Ben’s going to teach most of this. I’m going to bring him up to kind of cover it. He has a different perspective than I do but one of the … I don’t like to plagiarize people, so I don’t name drop to show people I’m [inaudible 02:11:20] or whatever. It grates on me when people steal my stuff and I’m like I know you stole that. I know you took that from me. If that bothers me then I try to not be the person doing it to others.

Charisma without empathy is fear, right? People are afraid. That’s why so many people are afraid of Trump. If you want to get down to whatever your politics are. The visceral fear is that there’s charisma without showing enough empathy to other people. To maybe people you disagree with and that would be one of his fundamental things that he could do … Not right now. That would be one of the fundamental things that he could do that would improve himself is if you have power you have to show empathy. If you have power you have to show shared vision. Otherwise people are going to be afraid of you and if people are afraid of you then it’s hard to steer a guided mass movement. There’s so many different context of it.

The way people think of charisma is, people think of who’s charismatic? Right? Bill Clinton. Even if you didn’t like him. He’s a charismatic guy. I don’t care what your politics are. People would meet him and they would say they’re going to go into his office, they were going to just light him up. Then they go I left the office five minutes and I was so pissed off I didn’t even bring up what I went in there to talk about. Right? He opened himself into his world. He had that power but he guided it with the human connection. If you feel like people care about you and are concerned with where you’re going, you’re going to let them lead you. Right? You have to have a shared vision. With people who believe you want to take them somewhere but maybe they’re not willing to go, but maybe they don’t think you have their best interest in mind, you’re less likely to get what you want out of the deal. Right? You’re less likely to have the charisma to close the sale.

That covers everything from business, sales, persuasion … Do people here for the most part feel like I care what happens to you? Right? For the most part. I mean, you’re thinking Mike cares. He’s got me on. If I asked you to do something a little wild, which I’m not going to do, there is a certain trust there that wouldn’t exist if I just came in and started screaming at you and talked about how great I was and that you’re all lucky to be in my presence and how dare you, right? There would be no persuasion. All of life is ultimately a influenced persuasion. Everywhere you look at life is influenced persuasion. You’re persuading people not just to sell, but if you’re walking down the street there’s an unconscious conversation going on right now. There’s a flow of people. Have you ever just watched people move around? It’s unconscious, but that’s persuasion in action.

People are being moved and guided and that’s because of the hive mind that we’re all part of. The collective conscious. People kind of move and flow. If you want to be a charismatic person, for whatever reason, you have to learn how to tap in that energy and then how to redirect it into your certain way. You can’t move things too far either way too. That’s what you learn is they’re going to push back so just to go to the question we had earlier is, from David I think, what about when life hits you back or whatever? You have to get that feedback cause you’re plugged in too. We’re all connected into the same flow, aura, source, whatever people want to call. To talk about charisma, we do like to do things a little differently. A friend of mine, Ben, the reason we’re friends is that … He has a different source of power than I have. My source of power would be a more direct, I can be very militant and rigid and aggressive. That’s one kind of flow of power and you sort of see it in how I live.

That’s not the only source. There’s actually immense power in other perspectives. The reason I met Ben was, I was out and about talking to somebody at a bar. Then I had to go meet a girl at another bar. I walked to the other bar, with this guy that I had met, the girl said, Ben, oh my god it’s so great to see you. Then she looked at me and said, well how did you know Ben? I said we just met at a bar. The girl was Shawna. Who knew Ben and I met Ben completely independent of knowing Shawna. That was a kind of synchronicity that tells you that you’re plugged into something that maybe a lot of people don’t really understand. The reason I knew Ben is he’s very open and expressive, welcoming, has a lot of interesting things to say. That’s why right now, for this part, we’re going to have Ben here come talk about charisma. Not hopefully, you do, you have a lot of things you can take away from this.

That is what he said which is so important is, the work, this is not the work. This is the warm up. This is a few tips. A few tactics you can take and then you’re going to have to do this for 10 years. You’ll get better at it in a day. You’ll get better at it in a month. This is a whole life long process. The game doesn’t end.

“What’s past is prologue,” is the mantra of the West. Your past determines your future. Who you are now is a product of who you were or what you’ve done. In the past.

If you doubt people view the world this way, listen to them as they tell you about their lives, and their problems. Answer with, “Now what?”

But I’ve had a terrible life and everyone treats me unfairly.

Now what?

People won’t see me for the person I am.

Now what?

I don’t have the relationships I deserve!

Now what?

Watch how angered people get when you say, “Now what,” “And,” and “So what?”

The only way to change your life is to reject the proposition that your future life story is dictated by your past life story.

Now some people with negative thoughts will say, “BUUUUUT” and list some ways that the past dictates who they are. And that’s fine. Leave now, you are squandering my time and yours.

A future-oriented person would say, “You’re right. My life isn’t where it needs to be, and I need to focus on how to change the future.” And yet this so rarely happens.

There is simply no reason I ever should have broken the John Conyers story. 99% of professional journalists who work a media job for their entire lives will never have a scoop like that. Nothing in my past suggested this outcome. And yet it happened. Why?

You cling to the past because familiarity is comforting.

Public speaking is listed as one of a person’s greatest fears. People aren’t afraid of public speaking, they are afraid of what might happen. They are afraid of the unknown. If I told you everyone in the crowd would love your speech, and if you believed everyone would love your speech, you’d love public speaking. The fear is of the unknown reaction of the crowd.

People don’t fear death, they fear what happens when they die. They worry about the unknowns, such as what will happen to their family.

The unknown is seen as more dangerous than the known, and thus people choose to be miserable rather than begin anew, because nothing is as unknown as the new.

How do you improve at life?

A man named Daniel Coyle asks a question that I answered incorrectly:

Question: How much better would you be if you practiced a skill every day for one or two years? Would you be ten times better? Twenty? Fifty?

I expected the answer to be “10” or so. The real answer is your improvement is nearly immeasurable:

You wouldn’t be ten or twenty times better; you’d be immeasurably better. Comparing their skill at the beginning and end of the process is like comparing a Model T to a Ferrari — it’s not an increase; it’s a complete transformation.

Which raises a question: if intensive daily practice is so transformative, then why aren’t we all doing it? In other words, what do these people have that the rest of us don’t? I think one answer is this: they have a willingness to feel stupid. To endure the unique social-emotional burn of repeated clumsiness. And this willingness is the secret foundation of their development.

I once attended a Tony Robbins seminar, and the person said the biggest internal barrier stopping her was the fear of looking stupid. This person had stopped taking risks because she was afraid of looking stupid.

I have looked awfully stupid over the years. Many times. I’ve looked insane at times, too.

And yet I’m still moving forward, accomplishing what should be impossible.

A media person was asking me some questions, and I started asking my own questions, because it’s more fun that way:

“Is there any reason in the world I should be where I am today?”

He laughed. “No, actually there’s not. You should have been out of public life long ago.”

“Why then,” I continued, “do none of you guys asking me how it is I’m able to do what I do?”

 

If you aren’t making mistakes, your game is stale.

Being a white belt in jiu jitsu is great. You suck, and everyone knows it. The problem arises when you get a blue belt. Now you’re afraid of being tapped out by a white belt.

People stop at mediocre because they feel like they have a game, but mastery requires error after error.

My life is like a cautionary tale, but whatever. I keep moving forward and don’t let the past dictate my future.

YOU are allowed to define your identity.

Identity is the story of yourself.

“I am a…” precedes a story about yourself, and yes it’s a story you tell yourself.

“I am a father” contains a story, and often the definitions you use determine the story you live.

We see this most often when people won’t do something because, “I’m just not the type of person who…” This phraseology is almost always used to justify why you won’t take an action that would improve your life.

“I’m just not the type of person who takes risks.” You’ve created an identity based around the story of a risk-averse person. What if you could change that story?

Your identity is often defined, by the way, by your lowest point or greatest mistake.

Did you know Mike Tyson went to prison? I bet you don’t, or if you knew, you forget. That’s not what you think about when you think about Mike Tyson’s story.

“I think about the future.” – Mike Tyson

When a news anchor asked Mike Tyson about the biggest regrets of his boxing career, Tyson said, “I don’t have too many highlights, I don’t think about my boxing career much.”

You don’t look back and reminisce about your boxing career?

Never ever.

Really?

Never. Really. I’m telling the truth. I think about the future.

That’s what the world knows about you, Iron Mike…boxing champion of the world.

I’ve done other things, I’ve done movie, I’ve done television, that’s where I want to stay.

 

How do you practice for life?

What skills do you need to succeed in life?

• If you want to be a comedian, take a comedy class.
• If you want to be a dancer, take a dance class.
• If you want to be a tennis player, take a tennis class.

If you want to be good at life, well, tell people you’re going to take a class about life. Get their reactions.

Life is hard, and yet it’s assumed anyone who wants to learn more about life is weird. How does this make any sense?

When you phrase the question the way I did above, you see immediately how silly it is to suggest that taking a class at life is a bad idea. You see that taking a class on life would be the most import project you could ever undertake.

How would you practice for life?

Practicing presupposes you’re learning a new skill, and to make it in this life you need to stay healthy, develop personal relationships, and earn money.

Most people aren’t practicing at life. They are living the only way they know how to live, which for most people means they aren’t living effectively.

You’d think that someone who was practicing for life would regularly go to the gym, learn more effective ways of communicating and connecting with others, and they’d take courses to improve their skills. What percentage of the population does that describe?

I’m re-listening to How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I’m taking a writing class from Masterclass (not an affiliate, nor sponsored).

Because why?

Because how else will I improve my relationships with other people, and improve my writing skills?

How do you start a new life?

You start a new life by doing something else. Simple to understand and hard to live.

You start a new life by practicing something new every day.

What would your life look like with an hour of concentrated effort on a new life?

Within a year, it’d be unrecognizable.

Why doesn’t everyone who wants a new life start practicing?

Because they’ll look stupid, or feel stupid even when alone. (Go stand in front of a mirror and practice public speaking. I get you’ll feel stupid. Why? No one else is there.)

What is your greatest fear?

Is humanity’s greatest fear the unknown or the fear of looking stupid?

Maybe they are the same fear.

If you want to change your life – to truly take it to another level – get used to both.

There is no shortcut.

You can use some mindset tools to push past them. For example, when life isn’t going my way, I tell myself this is practice for something greater.

This requires a life vision, a belief you are working for and heading towards some place.

Those techniques work, and you’ll still have to get used to waking up not knowing for sure what will happen. And you’ll have to get used to looking stupid, if not now then in the future.

I started doing videos. Some of the older ones make me cringe. The ones that make me cringe are the reason I’m here.

I started writing blogs. Some of my old blogs are poorly worded or outright nonsense. The blog posts that make me cringe led to the book that lets me live.

Mindset. Identity. Story.

What stories are you telling yourself about yourself? How can you change these stories?

She stopped crying the first time I spoke to her. That’s what I’ll always remember most about the birth of my daughter. She recognized the sound of my voice.

We had our daughter in a birthing center, and Shauna used self-hypnosis throughout the process. It makes people angry when we say this, which is why we don’t usually tell people. Sharing what we did not an indictment on what anyone else did. A lot of people don’t seem to understand this, and people take parenting personal. How dare anyone do something differently?

We do parenting (and life) differently in a lot of ways.

“The first time I held my daughter, my life purpose was fulfilled.” This is what you’re supposed to say about parenthood. The truth is that not everyone’s experience is universal, and some people don’t know what to feel the first time you hold your child.

When your newborn wakes up crying, that’s when you know it’s real.

If you’re a thoughtful person, the process of parenthood is surreal. “You mean that’s it? I just take this new living being, strap her into a car seat, and go be a parent?”

Yes, that’s it. Welcome to the jungle.

1. I care if I live or die.

Life has always been about the story. Living or dying is less important than the story. Rush into a violent mob of ANTIFA thugs, get closest to the fire, get pepper sprayed by police, have the most powerful people in the world hate you? That’s not scary, that’s interesting. It’s part of the story. We are all going to die, anyway.

With a daughter at home relying me, I actually care what happens to me.

2. I’ve become much less impulsive.

Part of my success is due to my risk appetite. I’ll take risks others won’t. Because of this, I’ve had some rewards others haven’t. (And also taken some major lumps. Don’t believe the success hype. Anyone successful has had his or her ass kicked. Repeatedly.)

I’m more risk averse than before. Someone else is relying on me. Of course I stashed bitcoin in her trust fund and 529, so I can still take some risks, and she’ll be more than OK.

3. I care what happens to America.

My feelings on America are complicated. For the most part, it’s over. China is the future. I don’t understand why everyone can’t see this.

The future belongs to those who want it, and we in America and the broader West aren’t playing to win.

On the other hand, I can’t not fight. Having a child is putting skin in the game. You must think beyond yourself. What world are we leaving for your children?

4. I have re-examined my views on the world, and care more than ever about Truth.

Media is my hobby, Mindset is my business. My words matter, and I’ve always wanted to give the best advice and analysis.

Yet my advice is given to adults. If you believe me, that’s fundamentally your choice.

When thinking about my daughter, I constantly ask, “Is this true?” Children follow you. You must lead them. Are you telling them the truth? This process should lead you to re-examine every view you have. Why do you believe what you do? Why do you give the advice you give? Why do you believe you are right?

5. I’m more anti-war than ever.

One day I reached into my daughter’s crib to pick her up. A vision flashed before my mind. Bombs were going off. People were screaming. Parents were crying. A dead mother was wailing as she held her dead child.

What’s it like living in one of these nations we (or our lovely allies the Saudis) bomb?

What’s it feel like knowing you may have the roof of your bomb blown out (or worse) when all you want to do is pick your child up from her crib?

6. I have a new-found respect for single mothers.

I’m an involved parent, and Shauna is super mom, and even one child is…a challenge. I don’t know how single moms do it, and a lot of people will point to some statistics about outcomes, and that doesn’t really help, does it? They know what it’s like.

Indeed, the issues of single mothers is a microcosm of the ethical paradoxes of writing. You don’t want to glorify single motherhood, because that doesn’t help women or their children. But pointing out negative statistics to people who already know the risks doesn’t help much, either.

7. I realized how much of my life was vanity and social status.

While it’s not healthy for a relationship to go straight “Dad Jeans Mindset,” and dress corny and be out of shape, it’s easy to see why some men slip into that pattern. Why do we do what we do? We want to impress others in order to have a mate, and to reproduce, and once that happens, you realize the priority is on your child.

8. I have a newfound respect for moms. 

Before having a child, I’d sort of laugh at the “miracle of child birth” line. How can something that happened billions of times be a miracle? Being a great mom is one of the most important roles anyone in civilization can perform.

9. I realized what a judgmental a–hole I was. (Hint: You’ll do everything you judge parents for.)

If you don’t have kids, take it all in. You know it all. You’ll never give your child an iPad. There are thousands of thing you’ll never do because you just won’t.

Or at least that was me. Now I do everything I judged others for.

(Maybe there’s a bigger life lesson there…)

Parenting, like consciousness itself, will always force you into the paradox of believing you’re important (or else why do anything) without being self-important (no one cares that much, bros).

10. I realized how important extended family is.

Society teaches women to date men who sweep them off their feet, but are those men good fathers? Think about it.

Likewise, most men want to date someone they meet at a bar. Is a party girl going to reform her ways and become a good mother?

You don’t marry a woman you’re passionated for, although passion and love matter.

You’re marrying the mother of your children. (Gasp! My audience is largely male, so chill out with my use of pronouns.)

You’re marrying the grandparents of your children.

When you think about that, you’ll date differently.

Issues of Being a Celebrity Parent.

Some friends say I should never post a picture of my children. Some say this is out of fear and others privacy.

And yet we’ve grown this huge extended worldwide family. Do I hide from the world? She brings great joy to the world, and right now we need more joy.

At some point I may not post pictures of my daughter.

I honestly don’t know.

Being famous is new to me, and we are figuring it out as we go along.

 

For the first time ever, I think about the Google results my daughter will find.

I’ve always said wild stuff just to get a reaction out of people. Some call this “trolling,” though I see it as being a “talk show host.” Throw out ideas and see what people have to think.

Now I’ve started to think about the burdens that my children will face, for while CERNOVICH is a strong name, it does come with certain weight.

Where as before I never cared what anyone thought about me, I do care what my daughter and children will think about me.

The balance between speaking my authentic truth and looking out for them….As with so much in life, “We shall see.”

Has being a dad made me soft?
Maybe.

That’s for others to decide.

I’ve certainly become more emotionally nuanced.

And a bit more empathetic.

Maybe more cautious and kind.

But I don’t think I’ve lost my edge.

I still hit the gym, do some boxing training, run sprints, work hard, get too focused and intense, and live the Gorilla Mindset lifestyle.

P.S. As a parent, Gorilla Mind is a major edge, and keeps me super productive. Check it out here.