who's the stronger tougher boxer the guy who

who has an unbelievable

block that you can't get through it or

the guy who doesn't

need a block because you can literally

just pummel the guy and it doesn't affect him

that's a great analogy

it's exactly kind of what it is yeah

you don't get hurt by it

and you become kind of an alpha in a in a circuses way

you become so confident that nothing really matters

again I use self mastery because

what that means is you're able to talk to yourself

and manage your own thoughts

manage your own vulnerabilities to recognize

those vulnerabilities are yours and yours alone

welcome back to raising

Men our guest Today Dave Rossi built

two multi million dollar companies in Silicon Valley

but despite all the success he found himself

burnt out and disconnected and what he discovered

after losing almost everything

became the foundation of his important work today

that true success isn't about winning

it's about awakening

Dave thanks so much for joining us it is an

it is a pleasure to have you on Raising Men

are there any topics you feel particularly passionate

about that you want to center on I think I have the answer to that is there anything

you want to avoid talking about

no I I'm an open book I I mean though

what I'm passionate about is helping other people

from a life

where I was in the past I was competitive and I

would not promote my competitors

uh which is everybody now all I want to do is

promote my competitors because I

there's nothing that hurts me

helping someone else doesn't put me down

there is a real wisdom to

that and it's funny because we all live in this

society that has so much

wealth right and and that wealth was generated because

we have a variable pie mentality we understand that

if Person a gets more

that doesn't necessarily take away from person B

there's a way to organize things such that

A plus B equals more than just

double it it it creates additional value

but that's an enlightened view

yeah yeah and and and so that's

that's what I call a a fixed pie mentality

versus a variable pie mentality the variable pie

mentality is okay Dave

you and I are gonna get together and we're gonna do a podcast

together and the result is we all gain we benefit

you benefit

I benefit and whoever listens to the podcast benefits

whereas a variable pine mentality is the

is the is the thing okay well

I'm gonna do this thing but I wanna benefit

more than Shawn

or I wanna benefit more than Dave and I'm gonna

I'll give him a little bit of my ideas but

not all of them or whatever right

and that just creates less value

and and that's you know

so that's kind of a spiritual view consciously hey

there's an abundance

of the world and I wanna share and I wanna build a

a a partnership with Shawn

but there's still the the the the tussle

between the animal of us the Homo sapiens in us

that wants to hoard and that use the world as scarce

and I need more and I need more and I need more

and let me protect what's mine and so that that

that um belief of scarcity

and abundance only goes so far

on the animal scale until you have enough spiritual

behavior or

spiritual power to say I don't need to be an animal I can choose

with logic and reason and not fear

as an animal and so those things kind of

counter each other and they fight

alright I call this squirrel nut theory

squirrel will look for nuts constantly

no matter how many nuts it has as it's

den it will keep looking for nuts right

that's just what it does it's an animal and doesn't

have that's why it

doesn't share just keeps taking

yeah and you know there's that famous

quote to to a billionaire how many millions is enough

well I guess just one more

yeah

yeah and and you're you're you're feeding that hole

yeah and I and I did that

yeah I was very competitive as younger and I would

I would even

talk down about to other people

to make myself feel better about myself

with a scarcity mentality

that if I promoted somebody else or helped somebody

else it would just be more competition for me

and so in my past life when I was competitive and I

I look at the world as scarce

and I was relatively insecure um I

I would do that and now all I wanna do is help people because

that's not real

yeah I I it's

the the the thought that brings the mind for me is is

in sports

I used to be a a competitive volleyball player and

there's a there's a there's a real value

to competition there's a real value

in the kind of fiction that alright I you know I'm

I'm gonna go against my enemies and I'm gonna train

hard and I'm gonna

I'm gonna defeat my opponent but

then when the game's over

that is over and you're all buddies

and you all hang out at the bar afterwards

and you know tell war stories essentially

and there's a way that that spirit of competition

can sour

and turn into a little poison where you don't just

it's not just a game anymore it's not just a

we're not we're not pretending to hate our enemies

we actually do hate our opponents

and that is poison

yeah you're not gonna get any better

what you end up starting to do is look for opportunities

to um

to to to hobble them

as opposed to you want your opponent to be

as great as possible so that if you prevail over them

that means you're even greater right

well I think it goes to an underlying premise

you know there's this phrase if you love to walk

you walk longer and farther

than if you're walking to a destination

so if you're playing

volleyball for the destination of winning

then your opponents are your obstacle to winning

and you hate them and you despise

them and you want to pummel

them because that's an obstacle to the goal of achievement

if you love the sport

if you just if you just love volleyball

then these competitors

are a way to get better at your sport

and you actually value their prowess

you value their skills

cause it only makes you better and you can be grateful for that competition

yeah and the competition is about

about self enjoyment of of your craft rather than

destination

and so we need to

almost redefine the notion of winning

so we think of winning as prevailing over our opponents

but winning is really improving from the experience

absolutely yeah yeah and again

let's go back to the paradox of animal

human and being right the animal side and the being

side that

that Nietzsche talked about in in in his book

you know it's the paradox of animal versus spirit

which is I have to win and I have to gain

and I have to survive there's an instinctual DNA in us

that we have to survive every tree every worm

every fish every bird it's out there just surviving

and we are part of the animal kingdom

however we have cognition and so we have this crash

of animal and cognition

we're more than just an animal but we still have those innate

DNA drivers those drivers are still in us

the more evolved you are as a as a human being

right you go off of being

uncivilized and become civilized

and then you become more cognitive cognitive and you

become more civilized as you keep going up the scale

more and more civilized what do you

become you become less and less of an animal

and more and more of a

spirit and I don't mean spirit is a woohoo

I mean it like I have power over my body my body says

stop running my spirit says keep running

it's good for me the things that give you pain the more

spiritual you become more power over your body

you win and so there's always this tussle

between those two factions and your

and the way you talk about volleyball is obviously

on the more evolved side right less from the animal

more to the spirit cause you are you appreciate

the competition it will make me better at my craft

I love this this is great

you don't look at your competitors as a threat

to your goal like an animal would like a lion would

I'm gonna get this meal and get it from them

and that Tesla exists in everything all the time

yeah I I like that definition of spiritual as in

you know so the the definition being it's

it's your power of your mind

over your body your body is sending you signals

and your mind can either

become a slave to those signals

and you're an animal that's what the squirrel is doing

or it could be the master

of those signals it can take in the data

and then make the appropriate decision

based on your values

right and I and I think to to distill it even easier

you you you said it very well it's data

so when you're running

or exercising the data is lactic acid heart rate

body temperature

and your body is now processing all this information

and the brain says stop you're tired

this is harder than you've ever gone before your brain

will tell you to stop right yeah

and you say no no no no no I wanna do more

that is a spiritual

that I call that spiritual behavior you're not acting

beyond the the the senses the the biomarkers

that your body is telling you

and that's a spiritual act now the the issue is

your brain will start rationalizing

you really should stop

this is really hard you might hurt yourself

is this really what you want to do no

no I do I do I do this is

okay this is okay and you keep trying to counter that

these are physical things

where this gets more complicated is emotional things

and what we're talking

about in terms of competition is more emotional

and not physical but the mechanism is exactly the same

there are still cursors that your brain is sending you

it's not lactic acid and and an elevated heart rate

it's worry doubt fear jealousy competition scarcity

anger all of these emotions

right are the biomarkers now

what's the feedback your eyes and ears hear things

right I could lose if I lose

people won't like me if they won't like me I'm less valuable

if I'm less valuable I'm not winning

if I'm not winning I'm not survival of the fittest

if I'm not survival of the fittest I won't procreate

then I'm a loser this is not going to be survival

what am I going to do and that that conversation

with your subconscious mind produces

all kinds of emotions and your neurotransmitters

and rationalizations

and you have to go beyond those fears

fear emotionally is lactic acid physically

and you have to be able to act beyond those

those signals that your body is giving you

yeah I

that is that's really powerful I I I had an experience

uh yesterday in fact with my boy

and I would love to get your

feedback about it so on Sundays I take

my boy to a workout

I do a Crossfit workout on Sunday mornings and uh

I bring him with me and we do you know he does

a modified version of whatever workout I'm doing

and in the case of this past Sunday it involved um

there were five different rounds

and each round had a run in it and and the run started

at 200 meters

and then it went to 400 and 600 and 800 and then

uh and then 1,000 and so we were constantly running

and running more and more and um

he's only six years old he's

you know 2,000 meters is a lot of running for him

yeah and um and so I remember

pulling around the last bend

on the 800 meter run we were kind of pulling

around the corner and we just had

another hundred meters to go

before we were done with that run and he was

he started to complain

about how tired he was and his side

hurt and all of this stuff and

I wanted to cultivate in him

I wanted that that vision that okay this is the place

where your mind

has to take over you have to override your body here

and I wanted to I wanted to

to get that feeling viscerally in him

and so I'm interested

so I'd love to know what you think about what should I have done in that moment

and then I want to tell you what I did and

and get your feedback so what should I have done oh

I'm sure you did a great job John

I'm listening to you already I'm sure you

you was well thought out and you did a good job um

you know usually when people ask those questions

of me I usually always give

responses based on spiritual principles

and I don't mean again I don't mean spiritual woo woo

I mean spiritual in terms of just being able to power

over the body and so yeah and I think the value to that advice

is it's not situational

and it's not moralistic or ethical

it's across the board this is spiritual advice

and you just apply it you don't you don't marginalize it based on where you are

sure now six year olds a little bit different

but you know I've had kids that age and usually my goal

and well

one of the most powerfully spiritual things you can do

is stop being a parent in terms of biological parent

the second you can say I'm not this biological

person's master is

is one of the most powerful things you can do to connect

with your son cause you look at him like an equal

spiritually

but you have more experience and more advice

that you can give them

and so there's a very powerful distinction

when I treated my kids as equals

but I gave them advice from an adult

and I gave it to them as if they were my boss

or if they were a client that level of respect

really made a huge difference in my relationship

and in a situation that you explain

I would just try to give them information

and empower them to make their own choices

but I'm sure you know um

a lot of people consider my parenting

a little bit unconventional that I really give my children

carte Blanche to make their own decisions

yeah good bad or indifferent

I'm not afraid of them suffering

and I accept their suffering

and the suffering is actually a lot of value

in them becoming better people

so I would give them information

the kind of information I would say is yeah again I

I my kids are older

now they're in their 20s and my my oldest

my youngest is 17 but 6 I don't quite remember how

cognitive they would be with this advice

but I would say something

like did you know that your body

gives up at 40% of its capacity

40% of capacity your body

says I'm tired because your body

doesn't want you to get hurt

yeah going past that 40% you have 60% more effort left

and I just want you to know that

and if you can't push past that 40% marker that's okay

don't worry about it maybe you're not ready for it yet

but real success the champions the greats

the greatest the world's ever seen

they learn how to push back that 40

and if you want to be that person

and you have to learn how to push past

that and if you don't that's okay too

and it's just information

at that point and I think at that age you don't wanna

push them

you just wanna educate them and then model behavior

you can say you know I'm gonna push back that 40

it's okay if you wanna sit and watch

but I feel like I wanna vomit and my side hurts too

and I know that success comes from

pushing past that point so I'm gonna do it

and it's okay

that you don't and at some point I'm sure you'll be able to if you want to

I think that so that's a fantastic way to handle it

what I ended up doing

is and I thought this was a good idea at the time and

we were you know we just had that last hundred

meters and I said

I said boy this is this is the workout right here

this is the whole reason we do all of this other stuff

and all of the rest

of the in all of the exercises that we're doing

leads us to this moment and this right here pushing

through that feeling and finishing anyway and

continuing the run when you know you wanna stop

that is the workout that's the whole point

and I ended up pushing him through it

and I do think that was

I actually do think that was the right thing to do in the moment because he had

decided to engage in the run but overall

um he wasn't feeling the workout that day

and I kind of pushed him into doing it

and it ended up being kind of a negative thing

between us and it was it was after the workout

there was a little bit of a sour feeling

because I had pushed him farther than he really

wanted to go and I think the lesson

that I'm taking from you in this moment

is that has to be his choice

I can set up all the dominos

and I can put them arrange them in the way that I think

is best for him

but he's got to be the one to push the dominos over

and if he doesn't want to do it and if he's not ready to do it today

that's fine there's no and and I've actually

internalized that from before

like I I started just bringing him to the

to the workout with me and just letting him

play on his tablet over on the bench

while I worked out and then eventually

he wanted to participate

well you know at the time when

when he was playing I was like man

you know come and do the workout with me but

he would just do a couple exercises and then go sit down

again

and now you know based on the knowledge

based on your knowledge in your brain at that moment

your brain said everything

I'm doing is the right thing

but that was based on your understanding

and your knowledge based in your brain

and also your attachment to this child to

you want his success okay and

part of what you push for is cause you want his

success a bit for you

some of this for you is you want his best so you

will look your best as well

we all want our best for our kids now I'm coming to you

from a place where my my oldest son is a um

on a claim musician he he

played the Carnegie Hall at 13 years old

he won a competition played on a national orchestra

so submitted an audition he was first chair trumpet

player in the entire nation at Carnegie Hall

13 he went to a music school my middle son um

was an all American water polo player he's

playing Division 1 water polo right now I'm at UC San

Diego and my daughter who's 17 is on a nationally

ranked high school water polo team

she's being recruited by Division 1 schools as well

and I do not push my children

I've I've never pushed any of them I don't

ask them for anything

I give them information and I'll tell you something

they're not me I was a college football player um

and they're not me I work way harder

than they do they're just really talented

and so I see them not work as hard as me

and I just hold my tongue and I realize

that they have to choose their own path

I don't get how all this talent so I say things to them like

you know

please don't leave anything on the table if you have

talent on the score of 100 maximize your talent don't

maximize 80% of your talent

maximize 100% of your talent

nothing would be more devastating

than being given these great gifts from from

whatever source or God or your DNA your family

and then not using it

so I see you have more talent and I see you not

utilizing it's for you to decide

what to do with but I see you could be doing more

no shame no judgment I'm just telling you what I see

and that was really hard for me

not to do what you said which again

nothing wrong with what you said

the concern is that they they feel shame

they feel that they disappointed you

they just want to make their parents pleased

and part of your drive is a

appears to me a bit more parent child relationship

than than equals

because if your boss was running with you or a client

or an advertiser you may not take such a

pronounce position with them being tired right

and that's how you should look at your son

is that he is that client or advertiser or boss

but he just doesn't have the experience

to know how to respond so

give him the experience and the knowledge

let him choose

and as a parent your most powerful influencer

is modeled behavior it's not words

or or motivating them

you know there's a there's a great quote

don't don't teach don't pay people to build a ship

make them love to want to sail right

and so your son will want to work out harder

just by watching you you

modeling excitement and exuberance and

talking about your experience without his experience

will make him want to be like you naturally at that age

yeah

that makes me

that makes me realize something which is that

there are times when I have a reflex

for whatever reason to make my son feel shame

and there has never been a time in my

in his entire life where

that was ever the right thing to do

um or that was ever the the

constructive thing to do and I felt good about it

I've never and there have been times I usually resist

that temptation and that that's actually

become kind of a red flag for me if I start to feel

I have this urge to to want him to feel shame

I I withdraw from that it it's kind of gross

that's a spiritual act

yeah those are the emotional precursors of biofeedback

that you as a father

just like a mother bird kicks her bird out of the nest

right they kick him out of the nest

based on instinctual data

not necessarily what they see in their baby bird

they just kick him out sometimes those birds die

right they don't have cognition to say maybe I'm pushing them out too early

we're not birds and we're not primates

and so we have to break

away from that animalistic behavior as a parent

above a child

and use more logic and reason

and more emotion and more you know

information that we have and don't do what

you think is natural to you

but do what's best for the child

and I treat all my children differently

because they're different people

and so I work really hard to have the

self mastery to say OK I really want to say this

I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do

slow down let me just think about this for a second

what is my goal what am I trying to achieve

yeah what are the the pitfalls

of me sharing this or saying this and what's the gain

and it doesn't mean you can't say hard things you have to say hard

things I do say hard things absolutely

but the question is is it for me is it for them

is it my my patterns the way I was raised as a parent

or is it

good parenting now as a as a more spiritually minded

uh parent so I debate that as well all the time

that's awareness

yeah I I have this metaphor that I like to use um

for that dichotomy the what what what you're calling

the spiritual versus the animalistic

it's like we have two brains in our heads

and there's and I mean it's literally two brains

there's the limbic

system and there's the prefrontal cortex and

um and one of them is the Conan the barbarian brain

and you need that brain to

protect you from the sabertooth tiger or whatever

there's a lot of those or the danger the oncoming car

right yeah

and then there's the Sherlock Holmes brain

which is the analytical side and the vast

majority of the time you will have better

results if you keep yourself in Sherlock Holmes brain

and let Conan the barbarian brain send you signals

and say danger is here or

you should be mad about this or any of those things

but then take those signals

apply your deep core values and then

make an informed decision about

the way that you want to proceed

well there's two aspects

to that you're I agree with you 100%

but I wanna I wanna I'll up

level it or or I'll add a couple layers to that um

you know first of all there are no saber to tigers

anymore um the saber to tigers are

I don't want my son to be a wuss

is a saber to tiger you feel

that neurotransmitter in your body that says

there's a possibility

that this kid might be a wimp and that's not what I want for him

so I'm going to do this

now that that information is limbic

because what's happening is

the amygdala in the limbic system

um takes information and what it sees and hears

my son's tired and he's not gonna finish

his workout and then it processes it in your brain and it compares

it to belief structures

and how you were raised and in your amygdala it says

in the past

I've seen this before with my sibling or myself

and this result into a weakness and

this is what I'm seeing

and this is what I'm feeling and then you have these

emotions kick out of fear or drive

that's very animalistic OK that's all

animal that's all biology OK now

you have to break out of that and your son is having a different

limbic reaction

you know everybody's experience

is through their own belief structure

in their own amygdala

that's part of the Olympic system okay and you're right

getting add Olympic system is where your your frontal

your frontal lobes

where enlightenment and consciousness

resides there's a lot of executive functions

and the Olympic system has chemicals

right it has neurotransmitters the new cortex does not

the new cortex

does not have any connection to the hippocampus or or

these other facilities in the brain that can release

these neurotransmitters

that are exactly the same neurotransmitters

that were served

when we were running from a saber to a tiger

so it feels pretty stressful right we're literally

giving our son advice as if a saber tooth tiger is

attacking us

right I don't want you to be a wimp I want the best for you and you

better push through this right but we're not

we're not primates

there's so much more complexity to us than that

that rudimentary you know system now we have cognition

we have shame we have guilt we have fear

we have anger we have self esteem

which are all biological and they're not real

because they're based on programming

they're based on experiences

but they feel real at the moment and so you know the

the thing that I try to do with my children

is give them the power to act over their body express

to them I know this must feel

hard I know this must be scary but this is where

growth really comes from

you know I'll give you an example my my kids

and I I was a very adventurous

individual I take my kids to this river

and we jump off this bridge

into the water and my kids would do it and they did it as young kids and we'd all go do this and

we were there once with my brother and his son

my brother

I had a had a um a wife who was very conservative

conservative by nature

her son was raised very conservative

my brother was very conservative I mean

they they just didn't take risks

and so I'm jumping off this bridge

my 5 year old daughter's jumping off this bridge

into water and my nephew my brother's son

is like I'm not doing it this is scary right

yeah so his brain is telling him this is dangerous

yeah it's a thought and the emotion is fear

thought is danger emotions

fear you can't have an emotion without a thought okay

and if you look at the pictures of this of this

little jumping exercise

my kids are smiling dripping wet and here's my nephew

dry with this

horrible smirk on his face because he wouldn't do it

right because he didn't have the the amygdala

he had the amygdala memory of danger yeah

heights are danger

and so was it dangerous well not really his his

his cousin the same age was doing it

she was safe so it really wasn't objectively dangerous

but it was dangerous to him and he still felt

that and he still felt that fear

now it took him two more years and he would jump

that's because he began to change his belief

structure hey every single

year my cousins are doing this and they're safe

maybe it isn't dangerous anymore

you see and so I want to get into my kids heads

I don't know what how they've been programmed I don't know what their belief

structure is I don't know what they grabbed

from me as an adult or my my ex wife as as their mother

and what they grow with all I could do is give them the mechanism

to have power over it and make good choices

so that that's

that's kind of how I know there's spiritual

principles and spiritual practices

you know get out of the body yeah and it's a Marathon

it's not it's not a sprint so if he doesn't want to jump off the

the the cliff today

that's you know it'll eventually happen

yeah and so I I got remarried I I was

married for 17 years and then I was single

for many years and then I I met someone dated them for

six or seven years and we got married and um

she never had kids she was never married

and so I'm a very she considers

me a very unconventional parent

and and so I'll give you an example of being more of a

of an adversary

or I'm sorry or more of an emissary than a than a

parent my daughter's

just got her driver's license

and she says hey I'm gonna drive to my friend's house

at 9:30 at night I'm like well it's raining she's

like yeah I know I said well you're 16

you've only had your license

for a short period of time yeah I know

and you're driving

over Highway 17 which is over to the beach which is

kind of a slippery road she says I know

and I says well I think it's dangerous she says I know

I said well I'm not gonna tell you what to do

you can make your own choice but if you crash and die

that's on you

and I'm not gonna demand that you don't go

and I'm not gonna demand

and what if you just slide out and hit the hit a car

and you smash your hand on the on the steering wheel

and you can't play water polo anymore

these are your choices are you willing to risk

the possibility of that happening

she says why I'm aware of the dangers I said okay

I I'm not sure that you do

and I hope you're not over your head

but you make your own decisions

I'm not gonna live your life for you it's all on you

and and and my

my girlfriend at the time

said how could you let her do that

demand her not to I said hey

she's gotta live her life and

and I can't live it for her

which is relatively unconventional

and you know I have to realize that if you smashed her hand and

she broke her hand and she can't play and she doesn't get into college

well

that that's what life wanted her to go and I accept that

I I think it's more

important to make her be an individual

and have the power to make choices then always did and

she was 16 I think she's old

enough to know what right and wrong is and you know

she she makes very good decisions

and I I don't give her curfews

I don't tell her what to do and

here's a great kid with great grades and and and great

discipline and all these things so so I'm I'm

I feel fortunate but that's the level that I've taken

to give my kids information and let them make choices

that's a gutsy call I I well and but

yeah part of what enables you to do that is

you laid the foundation of that wisdom and so

you know you're you're just dealing with

this in the margins

you don't have to worry about her doing

so something so ridiculous

that it really is a danger to her um she's

you know she can be a rational consumer of the risk

exactly right and I do everything

her friends her friend choices I'll say hey

this friend looks like they're taking

advantage of you this doesn't look like

the kind of relationship

with this friend that I think you want

this is what I see but yeah

do what you want I'm just telling you what I see and

and you know ask me any questions if you need to

it's your life I'm not gonna tell you what to do

um and for that reason

she has all the accountability of her choices

and because of that she'll come to me and ask me questions

hey what do you think about this or what should I do here or what do you do see

there's no fighting I don't I don't really

tell them what to do right right diet is the toughest

thing I'm like hey you're eating pretty poorly

you know no I'm not well I think you are

let's not argue

you think you eat well I think you eat poorly

that's okay we got differences of opinion you can

decide if you want to listen to me or not

but this is what I think

and I don't argue with them I'm not gonna argue

this is my point this is your point let's move on

uh huh it's very unconventional

um and again I have to say that um

my kids have met

high standards for the world's report card

but I still don't know exactly

what's going on in their minds and I can't

but in terms of achievement that the world looks at

um they get good grades they're in good colleges

they're all they're all healthy and and

you know they do all the things they're supposed to do

I do see their dysfunctions and I do see where

they're sad and my oldest son has a bit of add

diagnosed with add and he comes to me crying hey

you know I don't have the friends I want to have and

and I said look you're 21 years old and

I'm really sorry for you but you're not doing the things you need to do to not

be in that position you you still eat

poorly you still eat

processed foods you still eat sugar which

you know promotes add behavior you're not working

out as much as you could so I'm really sorry for you and I really

feel bad for you

but sorry dude you're not making the steps you need to

make not to be in this position that's on you

yeah that's man that's a tough call

that's a tough conversation to have

well I mean honestly

Sean the thing about it I think that that

my model behavior is probably the best

role in this is I don't get sucked in like my stoicism

and I'm not trying to say compliment myself

but they see the fact that I actually am not gonna let

their suffering

ruin my life I have a life to live as well

and so I walk it for myself

as well and I care for my children I love my children

and I'll do anything to help them

but that doesn't mean I'll take

away their life to prevent

them from having their mistakes

so if they have to live their mistakes

I I have to accept that that's their life

and that I took on the role as a as a parent

um to do that

but so how do you deal with like really

how would you imagine dealing

with just really really extreme

behaviors like that like I I have a friend

who has a child who's addicted to drugs

and the child's an adult now um but this

and the child is miserable

and the child is on a path

that is just absolute tragedy and it affects my friend

very very seriously how do you well

how do you cultivate the wisdom there

well you know I wouldn't I wouldn't let it affect me

well it's gonna naturally affect you

but I would work really hard not to let it affect me

I've had some you know when I got divorced I lost

my whole life I mean I lost my house I didn't file

bankruptcy

but but literally I started over with $16 I mean

on this engine I literally had $16 in my bank account

and had to go get a job and start over after making

you know $500,000 a year owning a business

to to literally saying I I'm not gonna

be married to you anymore and I'll lose

the business if I have to and I did and it was dead and anyway it's a long story

but the point is I've suffered as well um

I've drawn on a couple strengths during that period

one of them was Viktor Frankl's book

Man's Search for meaning

and I said hey this is a tough time

but it's not as tough as what that guy went through

I mean wow

you know that guy made it through

and this is bad but not as bad as that guy and

and for your friend and this is just

perspective yeah it's right and you know

it's gonna be bad but he has a life to live and every second

that he doesn't live his life

is a second he's not promoting his own life your friend

has a journey and maybe his biggest challenge

and this kind of comes from another book

um journey of souls

your your friend has a has a journey as well

and maybe one of his journeys is to live his own life

and to understand what it means to dis decouple

his own child's

journey from his and to act as a support and not um

connected to it in that part of his journey

and and those can run parallel paths you don't have

you know

being an empath actually isn't that great of a thing

right the only value in being empathetic

is that it gives you insight to what they're feeling

but it's kind of painful to be empathetic

you know compassion is a much different

emotion than empathy empathy you feel their pain

and you're wrapped up in their pain

and you're living their pain and you're losing

your own life and their own lives and that yeah

two lives being sent down a path

for one person's journey

is not a spiritual path for me it's not reverence

for life it's not reverence for your own life

and so I think he I think he has to live his own life and he needs to recognize

that that is his son's journey

and he needs to do whatever he thinks he can do

as an individual emotionally separate

okay it means I pay and I support and

and whatever that means to him

however that means to him how do we get him help

but it's that kid's life and that kid's decision

and if he can't make that kid want to save himself

and there's nothing you can do about it

and lots of times

kids have to hit rock bottom before they change yeah

and that's a difficult thing to see your kids suffer

it's a very difficult thing um

in the midst of my divorce my middle son

had suicide threats and I had to see

his mom who would travel um you know and

he was on suicide watch one weekend

and the school said just don't leave him

alone and this was a transition day

and I called him at school

says your mom picking you up from school

he said oh yeah she's picking me up from school

well I realized

I Learned she wasn't even in town and I

I I text her and said do not

let Uber pick him up I will pick him up do not

give him a ride if he's

alone I'll pick him up and she's basically

leave me alone it's on my time f off

so call my son hey do not I'll pick you up

you're on off to Kiwa

there's no no I'm with mom I'm fine

well he lied cause he wanted to

protect her and she got him a

a a ride from Uber to go back to the house by himself

he was home alone till nine PM at night and I knew that

she wouldn't let me bring him dinner

he wouldn't let me bring him dinner and he sat alone um

the point is I had to let him suffer

there's nothing I could do and I had to learn that lesson

to let my kids suffer

and it's not necessarily a bad thing

tough to do as a parent

I know it I'm not saying it's easy

but it's their path it's his path yeah it it's like

it's like the suffering is a is a debt we owe somehow

and if we pay it early

it's a lot less and but if we pay it later it's

it can be everything it feels

yeah Eckhart Toli would say that suffering

serves one purpose

it serves a purpose of really realizing

you no longer need to suffer

and you'll suffer as long as you need to suffer

until you realize that and so again

talking about your mind it's your amygdala batting

around its memories and its beliefs and its epigenetics

and its traumas right and so this kid had traumas

where he's trying to escape pain

and he's using drugs to numb himself and that's deep

inside of his amygdala the kid keeps on getting

stimulus that says I need to numb myself you know um

and that's that kid's journey

and he's gotta beat it cause if his dad

keeps hijacking him yeah save him

that that's not gonna solve the problem

it's just a band Aid

until the next one is needed it's just not you know and

as a parent again you're you're trying to

protect your child but you really can't at that age

they're adults yeah that's right

they need to live their life no matter how painful it is

yeah

yeah and it's tough to hear and I don't mean to I don't mean to be

brash about it I don't want to come off

insensitive no it's gotta be the toughest thing

to deal with it's gonna be the absolute toughest thing

yeah yeah I I have a friend once

a guy used to work for me and his uh

him and his wife are users

and their daughter got taken by CPS

and he started

cleaning up his life and he said will you

will you come speak on behalf of me in front of the court

you know and and

and before that he was angry and and he was still using

even when the courts took her and

he hated CPS and I said look Child

Protective Services is actually helping you

you should be thankful for them

you're not capable of having a child right now

and I know you hate them for taking your child

but they literally their objective is to help you

you should thank them and if you want your child

it isn't to fight them it's to fight yourself

and fix yourself now eventually he did get cleaned up

he got custody of his daughter

back he left his wife cause she couldn't clean up and

who knows where she is

but now he's completely cleaned up his life

stable job got his daughter back single parent

raising her all on his own and he's fixed that in him

but he had to kind of hit rock

bottom and lose his daughter

to be able to put his life back together and

you know your friend

son if they're gonna hit rock bottom at 20 or 25 it's a lot

sooner than in his 40s or or or early 50s

you know yeah do it that's right so that's our path

you know I you've you've written a new book

about masculinity and I I I feel like

we are at a moment where that kind of thing is just

we need

these messages we need a healthy form of masculinity

to be an aspirational vision for us

tell us about your new book

well you know I am I wrote it kind of to help my boys

and I wrote it to help men

I wish I knew these things when I was

when I was younger and

and the things that I write about really aren't mine

it's it's it's it's my experiences um

that I have Learned and read through other books and other texts and other

philosophers and other

other psychologist Carl Jung is a lot in this book

and also the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell

talks about in the book a Man with a Thousand Faces

we all go through this hero's

journey and maybe your friend's son

is is on his hero's journey we all have these crashes

in our lives or we should

and what emerges from that crash is is the new you

you go away you fight your demons and you come back

and so I wrote this book

really to help men and the original

title of the book was

stop being a real man so you can be a real man

and and the essence is still true to that

the name is changed but the the essence is

what people think is a real man isn't actually

real masculinity yeah um because the perception

of an alpha male or the perception of a real man

changes from person to person and so

a young man is trying to be real

he's trying to be viral he's trying to be an 800 pound

gorilla he's trying to survive

in the world and he's looking at these

definitions saying maybe I need to be more like that

and I'll get more success

or I'll get a a better mate

it's a very primal kind of animalistic Darwinian

survival of the fittest drive that we have in us

we're being pushed as men to do that

we're being pushed to be

and procreate that's just in our DNA it's just what mammals

do right yeah but we're not mammals anymore

and this confusion of what's pushing us to compete

and pushing us to meet a definition

is we become something that we're not

purely for the sake of succeeding

but it's not really us and when we're

not really us we're unauthentic

and it's not sustainable and it leads to grief

because we fall

we can't sustain something that we're not

and so I see a lot of men

looking at social media and and uh you know TV

saying maybe I should act like this or maybe I should act like that or a lot of

Republicans say that Democrats are are are wussies

and they're not real men

so maybe I should have different political views and so

you know all of these these

the society is telling us what to be and men

don't know who to be anymore

they're confused on what it means to be

a real man and that confusion

leads to a lot of unauthenticity

a lot of bad choices a lot of masking

a lot of pretending

and oddly enough

the perception of masculinity or the perception

of being a real man works

for a lot of young men and they emulate

things that aren't even real yeah because to me

the strongest thing you can do

isn't lift a weight but actually face yourself

and express vulnerabilities there's nothing stronger

than looking inward

and saying I suck at this and this made me cry

and this I I feel weak about

those are the strong things to do that most people

steer away from

and so I really just want to help people I really want to share what I've Learned

and share how you shed all this

you know masking and and portrayals

um archetypes

and just get rid of them and learn how to be yourself

and how to look inward and what that looks like and

what do you have to do to be vulnerable

and to express vulnerability and oddly enough

and I I practice this a lot the more used to

stepping up to that strength of being vulnerable

what ends up happening is you become invulnerable

become so strong

that you don't care about cherry pick ins

and that makes this

massive amount of confidence that you exude

energetically and in a social setting

that it's way more powerful than pretending to be an alpha male

or pretending to be masculine

yeah it's like who's who's the stronger tougher boxer

the guy who who has an unbelievable

block that you can't get through it or

the guy who doesn't need a block

because you can literally just pummel the guy

and it doesn't affect him that's a great analogy

it's exactly kind of what it is yeah

you don't get hurt by it and and you

become kind of an alpha in a in a circuitous way

you become you know so confident

that nothing really matters you you

again I use self mastery because

what that means is you're able to talk to yourself

and manage your own thoughts

and manage your own vulnerabilities to recognize

that those vulnerabilities are yours and yours alone

and they're brought and and and

carried to this stage in life from your past

and these memories and these experiences as a kid

and that those vulnerabilities are just yours

and they're not really real they are programmed

and they didn't have a spam filter

and so when you can contextualize

that only you're having this experience

and it's really not real

and you can talk about who you want to be I always say

behave in the way you want to be

even if you're not that person yet

still behave that way

cause now you're building a muscle

memory so when I would feel really insecure

or really vulnerable that's exactly when I would say

that was an invitation

to step into weakness and say it yeah

and that was the invitation

and that's what built the strength

is is behaving in the way I wanted to be

I wanted to be so strong that I could share my deepest

weaknesses with anybody and just say it

and so that's when I said

this is the life I wanna live

and I had to say this and I did

yeah

is that is that a journey or or

I mean so for example do you have to be the boxer

who has the impenetrable block

so that you can become the boxer who can get hit or

can you skip directly to

the the spiritual version that you're talking about

you can definitely skip um

all this is again back to spirituality right this is

again the spirituality that we talked

about going over the body

reacting beyond the body okay um you know Nietzsche

described this character called the Ubermensch in 1880

the ubermensch is the is the man of self

mastery the man of self control

and he he talked about this man starting on

this side of the ravine as an animal

crossing a rope over a ravine to God

so as a human your path was this path okay and the path

along this rope this tightrope as he called it

was chaotic

and difficult and things would keep pulling

you back to the animal side right fear jealousy anger

despair grief all of these emotions and also

people would laugh at you if you tried this journey

which they do now they don't always conform

to you breaking free of where they are okay

now you can choose to cross this path

which which I would suggest

people try to do it's and even in his book he would say

that that's a very noble

trait as a human even if you fail

it's noble to try and most people don't try

they don't understand

there's two parts of us like you described

you called it the the

you know the primitive side and then the the

Sherlock Holmes side right yeah we do have that

in the Sherlock Holmes yeah right

right and so and so you know we do have those in us

most people the Conan side is more powerful

because it has physical neurotransmitters

that are very powerful fear is very powerful and so

but you have to try now your friend's son

may not have a choice at some point

he may have to just pick a new path

I got taken to my knees in my life I had an injury

my friend died I lost my house through my divorce

which I decided to leave

I wasn't talking to my parents like my life got so bad

that I wasn't

given a choice either I had to find a new way

but for those who want to try to head it off

they can do it now

and if you don't this path is for all of us

all of us have this journey

this is the journey of

understanding who we are beyond the body

we are the only animal on this planet that has cognition

and our understanding to reconcile between Conan

and Sherlock Holmes is everyone's journey

Joseph Campbell wrote about it in in his book everyone

has this journey and it's been going on for thousands of years through history and time

it's just our path it's just our journey and

whether you do it in this lifetime or the next lifetime

you're gonna do it it's just the way that it is

you know I think

part of

what we need to do in order to cultivate that in our

sons is definitely model that behavior

and that maybe that's 80% of it maybe that's 90% of it

but what else can we do to help cultivate that self

mastery in our sons

well I think encouraging them

to have the courage

to feel pain encouraging them

to have the courage to do difficult things

and praising them as young men as young boys

for the courage it took to do something

rather than the achievement of it

I I always praise courage more than achievement

because I think you know promoting courage

is ultimately what this takes it it takes

a lot to act over fear yeah

it takes a lot to act over things you don't wanna do

I I think anytime anything we've done

our mind tells us it's a good thing to do at the time and then

you know a year later

like yeah that really wasn't a good

idea right that's for sure

and sometimes it's just too hard and

and I think you know one of the

the I have this thing on my book called The Basics

one of the basics is awareness

awareness is to know what you don't know

awareness is to stop and recognize

when there's a moment

for you as a parent or you as an individual

maybe as a teenager to have the awareness

to know that you're in that situation

that you really should try to figure out what you don't

what you can't see and that takes a lot of courage

um and so to to help help raise our kids you know I

you know you don't want to always fight with your kids

so I don't always critique them as much as I want to and

and my you know

girlfriend now and now wife would say hey you should tell them

you should have said this it's like I can't

critique them every second

right like it takes time for them to have better

manners so I'm not gonna

tell them every time they didn't open a door for a lady

like I know they have bad manners but I just

I don't wanna fight with them every time and so as a parent

I need to balance my goals

with them and then how I approach it to them and now they're older so it's really not they're not really a child I'll say

as an adult you know I'll say things like you know

a lot of people value manners

a lot of places in society

looks favorably on having manners

I just want to make sure that you know that you know

and that's all I can do at this point and then I

model behavior

I think that's that's spectacular

at the end of every episode I like to ask

what is one principle that you try to live by

in order to raise amazing men

oh boy that's a great question you know I think

where my parenting changed the most from my past

life when I was married and I was very um

on the animal side of that equation

to the more spiritual side

is to treat my children like equals when I

looked at them as equals

spiritually they could be even an older soul than me

and that's harder to practice once you understand

it you actually have to practice it

which means is my role isn't to parent them

it's to give them information

that my humanity my human body has more experience

than them I can reach a higher shelf

than them I can show them where failures might occur

but to respect them to make their own choices

and treat them like equals or if not higher uh

has created

such a more powerful relationship with me and my children

I don't talk down to them I don't demand

things of them I respect them

I don't say no for the sake of saying no

um I tell them why things are important I

respect them and explain to them why I'm saying

no or why I'm saying

yes but ultimately it's up to them

I think that's probably the No. 1 thing I wish I would have had

um as a parent previously before I Learned this

I think that's spectacular

Dave is the founder of Dave Rossi global

best selling author of

The Imperative Habit for a deeper dive

check out Dave's new book

Alphas Die Early and his work

at Dave Rossi global.com the link is in the show notes

raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez

this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino