SPEAKER_01: 0:02

The nutrition that goes beyond food and substance, alcohol, that is the thing that we're not paying attention to. It's because your body has no nutrition. So just like a plant, it doesn't matter how good the foundation is. If you feed it bullshit over time, it's going to grow bullshit. So you have to be very mindful of all the little things that you allow in your life. Failures podcast, we're back with another one. Rich, really serious topic we're getting into today. We're talking about young men suffering in silence. Some articles, some Harvard business reviews, some journals we've seen in psychology have been written on the, they're calling it the loneliness epidemic, the suffering in silence epidemic. And frankly, this subject hit us pretty hard when we started getting into it. It's just thousands of men sharing their really caring beneath surface, you know, not the anger everyone sees, but the stuff where no one ever talks about. And it's interesting because I think we both resonated with it. At some point in our lives, we can identify with a lot of the stuff that we read on this subject. Just so our listeners are filled in, Rich, how did this subject come about? Why did you choose to make this a point of emphasis for one of our episodes?

SPEAKER_00: 1:19

Yeah, man, for sure. Just recently, there was a shooter, active shooter in New York City, a young guy, a 27 years old who played high school football, ran inside of a building with an AR-15, shot and killed a police officer, including four people. His main target was the NFL headquarters, which was located in that same building. And he left a note, a suicide note saying that he blames the NFL for giving him CTE. And they're still trying to investigate, put the pieces to the puzzle together as to why he wrote that note. I don't think he ever played for the NFL but that was probably his dream but it really got me thinking like man this guy is 27 years old like what young guy right like what possibly triggered this anger and this negative action to pick up an assault rifle drive from Nevada to New York City and shoot innocent people right there's clearly a lot of mental health illness going on with this gentleman yeah when I shared this story with you, it kind of clicked for us. Like, man, we've definitely had our own moments where we haven't been our greatest with our mental health. Obviously, it's never gotten to the point as this gentleman, whether he's taking it to the ultimate extreme, but we've all suffered with mental illness. And yeah, I think it's just something really important to talk about. And I think we categorize it as suffering and silence is probably the number one killer amongst men. I saw a very scary statistic that 80% of all suicides are primarily from men. So that's just beyond fathomable

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

to think about. That's crazy. We know we have a very nerdy and highly intellectual audience that all they do is think about and work on themselves for self-improvement, but 80%? Yeah. I think I told you this when you texted me that number. It's like 80% of anything is... You never see a number that high for something. 80%? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 3:26

that's a state of emergence Right. In any category.

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

Yes. That's what I text you. I was just like, that doesn't feel normal. Yeah. That's an emergency. 80% of anything for any group of people is a state of emergency. So, you know, needless to say, I'm so happy you brought up the idea of doing this as an episode because I didn't realize how dire it was. And I mean, when we're talking about suicide, you're talking about just erasing yourself, right? Like think about all the men that are not necessarily at the point of taking themselves out. But that means there's probably a lot more men that are at that point, but just won't do it. So they take other routes, right? Like they choose violence. They choose extreme action. They choose isolation. They choose chaos. I mean, shit, if you're going to take out yourself, you might as well do something that is going to make a point. And I think I don't want to get too much into the story because to be honest, I'm not very educated on it, but it's almost as if the message was deeper than his action. It was like, hey, I'm going to walk with an assault rifle through the busiest city in the world and I'm going to make a point. But there's something deeper than that. And I think that's what this episode is about, whether it's suicide, whether it's take extreme action, like shooting up an entire facility for what you believe they did to you. I think today's episode has to be more about like, how does one even get there? And we do this sometimes too. So we're to blame for it, Rich. I think sometimes we point the finger, right? And you just say, man up or no one's coming to save you. We actually just did an episode called No One's Coming to Save You. And after I went down a deep dive of this epidemic, I was like, damn, that's probably not the best advice to give somebody who's on the edge?

SPEAKER_00: 5:21

Yeah. I mean, think about the amount of trauma and pain that you have to be feeling for you to feel like suicide is the only way out. Like taking yourself out equals stopping the pain. The whole time, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to stop themselves from suffering or feeling what they're feeling. So the route they take is to just end it. Extremely tragic to even think about. And yeah, that's what we're going to do is just peel back the layers as to how does one get to that breaking point. And hopefully we can share some insights, some strategies, some actionable advice as to how to just navigate around getting to that breaking point. I know one of the things we talk about was like emotional suppression. When we were kids, what did they used to tell us? Like, man up, you know, stop crying. Like only girls cry. So at a very young age, that's sort of like embedded in us that men are not vulnerable. Men don't cry. Handle it like a man. So

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

I'm going to be honest. I use this phrase to this day. I might've used it yesterday.

SPEAKER_00: 6:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:24

Someone asked me, how you doing? And I said, I'm good. And even if I wasn't doing good, who would give a fuck? And it's always a funny thing that I say to other men whenever they ask me like, bro, how you been? How's everything? And yesterday I was having a rough day. Rough day. I've been pretty sleep deprived. I've been going through a lot of stuff at work. I didn't get great news at work regarding my performance. And it's been fucking with me and I've been lacking a lot of sleep because of it. You know, that, the doubt monster, that loud fan just buzzing in my brain all night. And, um, the people who love me, you know, they, they know my ability to just kind of isolate, which I've noticed from reading a lot of these reviews and a lot of these studies that that's always the number one thing that men do is they isolate themselves whenever they're in a fucked up situation. And yeah, bro, I'm a product of it. When I ran into like an old co worker just outside. I was actually on my way to the gym and we chopped it up real quick. He was like, bro, how's everything? According to social media, you're crushing life. And I was like, yeah, man, don't believe everything you see on social media from someone who does marketing for a living. I could paint any picture. I could be a fucking five-star Michelin star chef if I wanted to be on social media, which I'm not. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm good, man. I really didn't want to talk about it, but it was on my mind. And I was like, bro, I'm good. I would complain, but who would give a but I'm fine. And I wasn't fine. I just wanted to work out. And after the workout, I felt way better. Got some sun on my skin, worked out, moved around, you know, felt better. But like the episode is not about me, but it is crazy how we talk about these subjects and they're in our day-to-day lives. So I don't know, as we unpack this suffering and silence epidemic and this young men and men in general take an extreme action, like as we unpack this conversation, I'd be lying if I said I myself would wasn't even a product of it not that i want to take extreme action but i can relate with this one more than i can relate with a lot of things we talk about because i think a lot of the subjects we touch on are like primarily something that i've conquered as a younger man i think walking around the world a little aggy at five foot seven you know my napoleon complex mixed with my ego mixed with some anger

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 8:41

i can relate to a lot of these stories man genuinely i do feel bad for a lot of these guys that are going

SPEAKER_00: 8:46

through this yeah i listen i think this is a topic that there is unfortunately no solution for. I feel like every man is just going to have to continuously navigate these difficult thoughts, right? These hard patterns of behavior. If you think about like emotional suppression, right? When I think about that term, I feel like something overflowing, right? If you fill up a balloon long enough, it's bound to burst, right? You pour water in a cup and you just keep pouring that water. eventually it's going to overflow and that's what we're talking about when it comes to emotional suppression it's just like bro you have feelings of anxiety depression anger trauma and you just bottle that in you bottle that in you don't talk to anybody you don't go work out you don't go for a walk you don't meditate eventually that cup or balloon of emotion is going to pop and unfortunately i think that's what happens when you get to that level of uh trauma, you end up becoming the New York City shooter, right? Yeah. I'm not saying that's the case for everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

No, no, you're right. You're right. One thing that came up in one of the deep dive of research we both did, which I thought speaks to what you're saying right now is the line is, society loves talking about men's mental health until a man expresses anger or sadness, then suddenly it becomes toxic. And it's exactly what you're saying. It's not a tasteful example, but it's a truthful example. The less The levees that broke in New Orleans, after the fact, they realized someone should have checked on these things a long time ago because they were inevitably going to break because a wall can only hold water up for so long. But they blamed the politicians. But realistically, it's like you're saying, it's like, man, that balloon has been getting inflated for quite some time. In order to have a real conversation about these type of extreme incidents, we might want to look into what's at the root of a lot of these extreme incidents. And I think that's what you're saying. You're trying to unpack this idea of emotional suppression is usually a sign that this young man is not trending in the right direction. So I love that quote that we pulled from our research is society loves talking about men's mental health until about anger and sadness, then suddenly as toxic masculinity once something extreme happens.

SPEAKER_00: 11:14

Yeah, that's right. I think that's on point. Another thing that I feel like causes a lot of confusion when it comes to emotional suppression is just like how expressive a man is about his emotions, right? Just in general, right? That one's big for us. Latin, man. Yeah. What do we say? We just say, we go to our girl, we go to our best friend. Ponte tu pila. Ponte tu pila. We just say like, hey, I don't feel right. I feel off. Yeah. Like that's like the go-to phrase for like 95% of men. But bro, there are emotions are tied to that I don't feel right or I feel off. That could be anxiety. That could be depression. There's specific words, emotional words that are tied to that. Only way you know how to address those things is by knowing how to classifying them. So if you don't know how to identify the root problem of what you're feeling, fixing that just is going to be incredibly difficult to do.

SPEAKER_01: 12:14

Yeah. I mean, easier said, right? Easier said than done because Yesterday, I just felt off and I didn't talk to anybody about it. I just went to the gym. I'm probably still dealing with that thought right now. But if we're going to be honest about the solution, Rich, we could use our friendship as a personal story, at least for our listeners. I don't think there is an exact answer. You mentioned that. But there are non-medical, non-coping, non-isolation suggestions that we could have. And one thing that I could say about Rich Sanchez, a friend of mine for a very long time and someone I have to call a business partner because we've made money together, but it's been more of a friendship than anything. Man, it's been 20 plus years. We've been rocking out. We've lived on two different sides of the country for the last four years. I would say even before that, you traveled a lot. I traveled a lot. We weren't always physically around each other, but having a common mission always gave us an excuse to communicate with each other. And in the common mission of starting a business or running a play or investing in a startup, Latin men will tease men for being gossipy, talking about your feelings. My father used to tease me when I was younger for sitting at the table and talking to my mom. He'll call me a girl because that's what girls do. They sit around and talk about their feelings. And I always kept that in my mind, but But what I did realize as I got older and as it relates to me and Rich is that if you put a car engine or a business plan in front of two men, the common mission is to conquer or solve a problem. But you'll find while working on a car ignition, two men will find time to gossip because the way we unpack our emotions are different in the sense that I believe me and you unpack our feelings and our life experiences and all the pressure we have, but we need a common goal to be working towards. Like we have to be climbing a mountain or working out or working on a car or working on a business. And you'll find that a lot of our conversations, Rich, 30 minutes in, we'll be talking about life and our parents and our kids. And that's us getting it off, but masking it around a common goal that's masculine. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It wouldn't be appropriate for two guys to be like, hey, hey, Rich, I got a lot of shit going on in my life. I'm me there i gotta tell you the latest it's just the foundation of that conversation sounds insane but if i said yo i found this really good mma class that teaches taekwondo and it's like more cardio than anything let's go there and then we'll get lunch after but we'll still gossip yeah and we'll still share all these like pressures of life but i don't know there's something about having a like a masculine common goal or conquering something while you want to seems a bit more fitting. And I know it's been very helpful to our relationship because when me and you spoke about building this platform, you had told me, bro, I'm going to be honest with you. I think I needed this right now. And you can speak to why and how maybe that can help somebody who's listening that probably doesn't have a why right now. They're not working on anything, but they're sitting in this silence and suffering in silence.

SPEAKER_00: 15:43

Yeah, I agree with you that first of all, our working relationship has, I think, benefited from just us having a personal relationship because we, like you said, we both have something to work towards. We would find commonalities in our own personal lives. Either you're going through something, I'm going through something. And nine times out of 10, either you've been through it and you're coaching me through it or vice versa. I've been through it and I'm coaching you through it. Damn, that's true. So that personal relationship has hardened like all our other other business dealings and we're just that much stronger as a tandem together. So I think that's a great point. The other great point I think you made is like, we definitely mask sharing feelings. I wouldn't want to call it gossip, but I call it just like venting, catching up, checking in. But how many times are you like, yo, you want to go to a concert? Yeah, we're going to go see Travis Scott or whoever. And on the car ride over there, you're not even talking about artists or music. You're just venting to each other about life shit. That's probably the most important 30, 40 minutes is the one-on-one with the homie just venting about life than the actual concert. So yes, I 1000% agree with you. I think that is a man's way to sort of be as vulnerable as we're willing to allow ourselves to be while masking that vulnerability into a manly type of outing or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 17:11

I'm taking notes on our actionable advice while we talk it through. And I didn't even think about this till you just said it. You kind of pivoted my point. And I think it's a better piece of actionable advice and it's find a hobby or a mission to work towards. It doesn't have to be about money, just something that takes you out of that headspace of negativity. But I think the companion actionable advice for that would be in that hobby or in that mission, partner up with people that you can trust and are either role models to you or people that you respect. Because sometimes your friends are just people you respect. They're not necessarily like role models. But I think in that exchange, which you just mentioned, which I appreciate it. Thank you for saying that about our friendship. There's something about in the exchange of like-minded people that respect each other and respect how each other live. It's hard just to make a friend. That's what I'm starting to see online with a lot of these young guys. It's difficult for them to even make friends. after high school. Yeah. How do you do that? Maybe we save that for another episode. If you would have told me three months ago, like, yo, Justin, we should do an episode on how young men should make friends, I would have fucking laughed. Like, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. There's no way people are having trouble with that. Bro, it's a real problem. A lot of these young guys are having trouble making friends because they spend a lot of their time with their family, like helping their family or working, and then they want to numb themselves by playing video games and smoking and just kind of putting the brain on autopilot by just numbing it with TikTok and TV. And if you put that into a 24-hour day, I could see why it's hard to make friends after high school because where are you going to meet guys? Where are you going to meet? I'm not stating the point clearly, but there is something about having a positive tribe or at least one person you admire and either latching onto their hobbies or missions or creating a hobby or a mission with them just so you guys can get out of the funk of that social ice and you're not constantly feeding yourself with information that is a cope for what you're going through. And I want to be careful about attacking this specific group of people that would gravitate to this episode because this is not the kind of person that you want to put too much weight on because they obviously have a lot of weight on themselves. It's almost like their bone is already broken and you keep trying to speak to the bone so it could heal versus putting it in a position to heal is the best way to say

SPEAKER_00: 19:41

it. I think that's an excellent point bro and you got to be careful with this right you can be so eager to sort of quote unquote find your tribe and end up with people who just add more pressure to the already pressure that's building up internally inside of you and just actually cause you to move faster on the brink of collapse

SPEAKER_01: 20:01

your bone is not healed you're gonna you're gonna damage it more yeah I think that's what's behind a lot of racism in America a lot of politics a lot of well this is not a political show and I refuse to get into it but a A lot of politics is taking people that are hurt or are financially unstable or in a really fucked up spot in life. And politicians, I work in marketing for a living. I know this to be a fact. The best thing you could do to a man in pain is give him a false target for the reason for his pain. And then continue to drive that narrative to get you out of your seat and mobilize you in a way that makes you vote for me. But what happens in that is you're taking a lot of young, suppressed, testosterone-driven anger, and you've given it the wrong target. So Rich, I'm sorry to jump in, but that's such a fucking great point.

SPEAKER_00: 20:55

No, it's good.

SPEAKER_01: 20:56

If your bone is broken and I just put more pressure on it, it's not going to help with the healing. It's just going to make you feel like, fuck it. It is what it is. But I think what we're talking about more, and again, I'm sorry for cutting you off, what we're talking about more is about healing it, just making sure that you get strong. And the way you get strong is being around people that are not blaming the world for the problem, but more looking introspectively so you could try to figure out what's the problem. And we're going to keep saying it from a foundational level in the root. It's not somebody else's fault necessarily. There is a more deeper rooted problem that we should be discussing. And it's all case sensitive. That's what makes it so tough.

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

Yeah. No, but I think you're right. I think if you're picking a tribe and you end up picking the wrong tribe, vulnerabilities in your life could be seen as a weakness, right? And this person is just making you feel worse. Vice versa, if you pick the right tribe, the right set of group of guys or gals who can resonate with how you're feeling and can associate with your vulnerabilities, that's a form of strength, right? That group of friends could be like, bro, that's normal. I felt that before. Here's what I did, right? And offer you some like piece of advice or be like, hey man, don't think about that. Let's go to a skate park and like try some tricks, right? And at least for that temporary moment, just get your mind off of whatever's bothering you. So I think that's a great point.

SPEAKER_01: 22:26

I'll put it like this, and we've somehow answered a question that I've always had. Why would anybody go to a sporting event and fight someone wearing a team jersey of a team that you have no equity in? That comes from male aggression, going to places that feel tribal, but the target, I think Boston's Celtics fans and Boston Red Sox fans are the shittiest people in the world. And that's just because I'm a Knicks fan and I'm a Yankees fan. So within the tribalism of my youthful anger, I would take it out on people who are wearing an opposing jersey. As I got older, I realized how you can weaponize tribe. I'm just mad at another person in another jersey that literally has nothing to do with my anger, but it's given me a reason. The same works for gangs. If you get enough young emotional directionless men you can get them into a gang because it's a tribe that has pointed at another opposition as the reason why we're not thriving and then politics I think I added those two to the politics I don't want the fucking tribes within political worlds to flood our comments with bullshit it even happens in sports it even happens in local gangs happens everywhere you can weaponize youthful anger if you point it in the wrong direction and I think people have become a of that. Hell, I think that's part of the reason why we created our platform, right? Because we noticed that people were weaponizing and creating these little platforms so people could be more angry about women. The young men blame women, and they weaponize their anger towards them. And we've seen that in some school shooter incidents. So I want to pivot into another segment, Rich. This is a little unprompted, but I do think it's something that's really important to me. It's a way that I've helped myself get through a lot of these angry moments of my life, and it's about the story that you tell yourself every day, the frame that you carry your worldview in. I think that is really crucial. If your son believes that he has no friends and no girls like him, and he's only 13 years old, 12 years old, he hasn't even seen what's to come in the next five years of his life. But as long as he bought into that narrative and he told himself that story every day, that slowly becomes who he is. And I think that's dangerous. I think a lot of the stuff that a lot of these these guys that are suffering in silence, a lot of it is feeding the same narrative. And you watch content with the same narrative. And when you talk to people outside, you share that narrative. And then it slowly becomes you. It's this really toxic loop that slowly becomes you. It was an idea before, but now it is you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:09

Yeah. And I think that all starts with self-isolation, which is why we're encouraging you to find your tribe. Because when you're suffering in silence, when you're in isolation, when you're not sharing hobbies with another person and you're in your own head you start to create these false narratives about yourself right like oh man look at my luck look at my circumstance look at the neighborhood i'm in look at my parents who have no money right and you start to build this false identity of like who you are and what your life is and that isolation is deadly right but when it comes to just being able to see yourself more than what you actually are right i think that's a great point

SPEAKER_01: 25:53

rich has there ever been a time in your life where you were going through a lot and the narrative that you kept telling yourself slowly manifested itself and yeah you obviously broke out of it you're at where you're at now but is there a time in your life where you could remember where that narrative was crippling you from taking the next step in your life

SPEAKER_00: 26:14

yeah for sure i remember being 17 18 living at home with my parents drinking alcohol smoking cigarettes right like not going to college just working full-time just trying to figure out and navigate life and I remember just thinking to myself like oh well I guess this is this is how life is right like I'm stuck in this bullshit apartment still living at home with my mom not going to college and smoking cigarettes drinking alcohol and slowly starting to feel that these like substances started to have control over me and bro I was on a path like had I continued that pattern, I was on a pattern of self-destruction. I wasn't concerned with amending any negative thoughts that I had or thinking about how to improve or thinking about any vulnerabilities or thinking about my circumstance. Like at that very moment, I thought like, this is who I am and this is how my life is supposed to be, right? And it took a lot of mental gymnastics for me to be like, wait a minute, I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough to get into a college or a university, right? And then taking those steps and those strides to get there. Then I thought, I don't really like alcohol. Like, why do I drink alcohol? I'm actually suppressing how I feel because I'm upset about where I'm at in life. So when I feel that buzz, that little bit of tipsiness or a little bit of drunk just makes me forget about where I currently am in life. And once I figured out, well, I'm on the path to changing that, I don't need the substance to numb me anymore. And I started to put down the beer and the alcohol and then on with the cigarettes and so on and so forth. So yeah, bro, I've been there. And you know, my personal story, we've been friends since we were like 15, 16. I've done a complete 180 with my life. Everything from substance abuse to going bankrupt, like just blowing all my money to climbing all the way back to not the tippy top, but certainly still climbing that Mount Everest of success.

SPEAKER_01: 28:26

Well, I do want to stay right there because this is merging with an old topic that we discussed on this show, which is the feeling of feeling stuck. It's a lot easier after the fact to look back and go, yeah, that was a crazy time in my life. But there's nothing like what probably someone that's listening to our podcast is going through right now, right? They're probably in it. They're in hell right now. 40 or 50 pounds overweight, no real girlfriend or options for a girlfriend in their lives. They have friends, but they probably see their friends on social media doing really well, which that is a lie in itself, but we'll get into that another time. Your parents have given you a lot of responsibility. We've seen a lot of it, and we should talk about this. Growing up Latino and growing up in an inner city, your parents put a lot of responsibility on you growing up as the parents of immigrants. You're in hell. You're not looking at, wow, I remember when I was there. That's a tough spot when you feel stuck. Like, damn, the world is against me. Damn, the only thing that makes me feel good is when I indulge in food, drugs, alcohol. And it goes beyond substance. It's even content. The content you consume makes you feel better about the situation you're in because there's other people blaming the world and you can agree with that because it makes you feel better in that moment. So that feeling of feeling stuck, man, I don't really have a point. That's a fucked up feeling. I I remember feeling that feeling.

SPEAKER_00: 29:55

Yeah. I think we feel that feeling all the time, even as adults. I summarize all that into one bucket that I like to call, if you're feeling that way, you have relinquished control, right? If you're overeating and you become obese, if you're...

SPEAKER_01: 30:13

You've given up control of your own life, you're saying.

SPEAKER_00: 30:16

You've given up control. And the only way to move forward or make any substantial change is to a take back control. That's exactly how I felt when I was smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and not going to school. I had no control. I was stuck in this vicious negative loop of thoughts and I didn't see a way out. It wasn't until I realized it all starts with your mind, right? It wasn't until I started to realize mentally that I got to get out of my head. This is not who I am. I need to gain back control. Let's say that mind

SPEAKER_01: 30:52

frames is like a very dark cloud, you know, like a really gray, dark sky that it's about to rain. Do you remember what was that moment where like a little bit of sunshine came through and you started getting a positive momentum or at least a positive insight?

SPEAKER_00: 31:07

Yeah, I think for me, it was starting to think about the future. You had your son by then, right? I had my son at 23. So this was even before my son. But once I started to think about my future, I'm like, this is not it. Right. No one in my family has gone to college, right? So I would be doing something that's sort of the first in my family. And that started to seem exciting to me. I'm like, damn, I really think I could, I'm smart enough to go to college and really be the first one in my family to obtain a degree. Then I started to put all these ideas together of like, damn, my mom smoked cigarettes. I grew up watching her smoke cigarettes. Like maybe I could be like the first child who like, you know, started it, but then like quit, et cetera, et cetera. So I think That's big. Yeah, bro. The sunshine for me was just thinking about my future. Once I started to think about my future and look at my present, I'm like, we are way too far apart from where I want to be and how I see my life unfolding. And that was sort of like the little bit of sunshine that I needed to actually start to make some actionable changes. You know, something I

SPEAKER_01: 32:14

just thought about, and it's going to pretty much bring this bullet point to a close, is right before we came on air, my girl and Now we're just having breakfast. We're on the West Coast and we record pretty early. So this afternoon for Rich, still morning for me. And she asked what we're going to talk about today. And I don't want to put her personal business out there, but she does have brothers and sisters and whatever. So do I. I brought the topic up and it resonated with her in a personal way. And she had mentioned something from a woman's perspective, obviously. And she said, the way I see it with my family is, here's a metaphor. We just Just bought five beautiful six foot plus plants to put in our apartment, right? Five, just like off top. We bought like a lot of them. I don't know shit about plants. I'm from the city. So like, whatever, bring the plants. Within six days, two of the plants were so crippled by the new environment and where we placed it in the house that they went from being these beautiful, delicate, bright red plants to like literally dying in five days. She's from LA, so she was quicker to pick up and call her dad, and she's FaceTiming her dad. He's showing her what to do with the plants. She's moving them from the sun to like half sun. Anyway, all these little tweaks that she was making to all these plants, and she used it as a metaphor when we were talking, and she was like, I think the lazy thing that people talk about on the internet that people don't talk about when it comes to real life and young men and their families is, yeah, drugs, alcohol, TV, whatever, TikTok, But we don't talk about enough of the nutrition that you feed yourself beyond food. Meaning, the content that you consume on the daily is the root of a lot of your thoughts. So if you spend eight hours a day listening to content that is about blaming someone else for your situation and you're not holding yourself accountable, you're not controlling the steering wheel that is your life. If there's zero of that information coming through on the daily and you're just constantly eight hours a day driving Uber, working security, a bag check app, fucking food bazaar Ralph's like you have really mundane jobs just to get by and you're constantly consuming the nutrition that goes beyond food and substance alcohol that is the thing that we're not paying attention to is because your body does has no nutrition so just like a plant it doesn't matter how good the foundation is if you feed it bullshit over time it's going to grow bullshit so you have to be very mindful of all the little things that you are And I know that's not like a bright yellow bullet point that we could put into a great YouTube video, but I think it's what you just said. It's deeper than the basics. It's taking a step back and being like, man, I can't be rich tomorrow. I can't change my life tomorrow. But what I can do is really think about what am I feeding myself? And you had the perspective, Rich, which was the moment of clarity, which was like, man, I'm not going to change my life tomorrow, but I do. do notice that my family does have a lot of poor habits that I've adopted. I'm not blaming them. I'm just going to change the frame and say, what if I'm the first person in my family to quit smoking? That's a small win, but that's a great perspective change. I'm going to start listening to audio books or reading books or consuming content that's going to put me in a more accountable headspace and remove me from the frame of negativity that is the world is the problem I'm not the problem and I believe again we want to be sensitive with this group of guys that we're talking to I believe they don't even know that that's where they're at right now sure but just like a plant if you neglect it in very small ways you'll be surprised by the results you get positive and negative

SPEAKER_00: 36:20

yeah I think that's a great point it's funny that you spoke to your girl about the show topic because I did the same thing last night and I got some insights from a woman's perspective and she actually overcame opened up to me and shared that one of her friends at 27 years old committed suicide. She was from New Jersey trying to obtain her master's, I believe, in medicine. And the pressures of college and life were so much so that she decided to unfortunately end her life. So this issue of suffering and silence is not agnostic to men, right? Women also face it as well. And I'm glad that you you brought up that point where small wins can end up compounding for you and start to pivot where your life trajectory is going. So that's definitely one of the actionable advice items that we definitely need to

SPEAKER_01: 37:21

share. Rich, I want to touch on the three things that came up the most in about, I want to say we scrubbed through Discord, we scrubbed through Reddit, we went through our community. Went through some top line videos about the same subject and I was able to consolidate the top three things that came up, at least in our research about this specific issue of suffering and silence. And I'm going to go through them and you just react naturally to whatever comes to mind. At Failures Podcast, we try to skew towards younger men and men that come from urban communities or black and Latin communities, just because that's the audience that we come from and we find that that we speak very clearly towards. It's not exclusive to them. It's just the kind of the lens that we put on it. Number one was responsibility without recognition. And that one was something that we accidentally brought up about immigrant families. I don't know if you remember, we quickly touched on that. This idea of just getting hit with all these responsibilities as a young man, and you're paying it to the family. You're not necessarily paying it to yourself and your future self. That's number one. Number two, Loneliness masked as stoicism. And this one, I told you all fair, the stoicism shit used to confuse me because I would always wonder why do people in these young male spaces that are looking for self-help, they love stoicism. Figured it out. It's loneliness masked by stoicism. So You make pretend that being the rock in a storm that is your life is like this honorable thing. It's a trick. Nothing wrong with stoicism, but it's a cope. It's a trick. And then the third one was the quiet grief of lost dreams and your fading youth while you take care of your family and the people around you instead of taking care of yourself. Those are powerful, man. Those three, I can relate to all those, honestly.

SPEAKER_00: 39:25

Yeah, I can relate to all of those. as well and when you think about the mounting pressures of a man in order to deliver provide like you have to be a provider both you know financially and building a foundation for your family right you have to be a protector right you got to defend your wife defend your children block out any negativity

SPEAKER_01: 39:50

what was the phrase that you have for your girl so why you go to the gym so much

SPEAKER_00: 39:54

oh yeah I told her I said in case I got to kick somebody's ass I got to defend this family I got to be strong enough to defend this family.

SPEAKER_01: 40:00

Right. Little things that we say on the daily, by the way, I agree with you. I love that framing, but that could be a burden to a younger man who doesn't have it all together yet. If he hears you say that and he assumes that's his role, but there's a lot more to it, but we don't ever talk about the, a lot more to it. You could say that now. Cause you're in your late thirties. Yeah. But an 18 year old rich, you wasn't like that. I wasn't like that, but we're working towards it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:27

Yeah, for For sure. Definitely the scrawny version of me. It wasn't until I realized. Actually, I started to go to the gym to want to look appealing to find a woman. Then what I found out by going to the gym, and probably we should save this for the advice section, is it started to improve my mental health, right? So then I started to like going to the gym even more. And then obviously it became a whole lifestyle, cultural change for me that netted a positive in the time investment that I was putting into it. So

SPEAKER_01: 41:00

hold on. I do want to talk about this one because I could relate to it the least, but I swear to you, Rich, before we were even calling it failures, the early stages of me being confused by this wave of younger men who were into Andrew Tate, Huberman, bro, for some reason, I forgot the author's name, but he was like a God in this category. And, and he was only rewriting like ancient Roman journals by Marcus Aurelius or Ryan Holiday. He was crushing in this category. The whole shit was about stoicism. I did my homework because I was looking for good advice, good information. Stoicism never stuck with me. I just always was like, what do you mean? You just got to let everything wash over you and the problem's going to go away? That's fucking impossible. I didn't agree with it because it was non-action. You got to be like, I get what it means all the fucking I'm about to like stoicism hive is like Taylor Swift fan they're going to attack us I get the premise but there is something odd about not doing anything being the solution that shit just blows my mind and I know I'm misinterpreting it on purpose to make the point but it's a cope for being lonely that's all it really is and that's obvious from the research we've done it's a placebo it's a fake drug that is solving the problem I don't think so

SPEAKER_00: 42:26

all right I think that I'm I'm personally naturally stoic and I've been told this by a lot of people and what I've found is that once you have the ability to be stoic and to your point like not react to everything but be methodical on what's happening around you you're able to make better decisions like I feel like if somebody like the president of the United States or like the CEO of a fortune 500 company if he would react to the 500 problems that are put on his desk every day, he'd be going bald, right? He'd quit his job or he'd stop running the country. You need a level of stoicism to know what's worth reacting and what isn't, right? If you're just reactive towards everything, right? Like if every single thing in your life invokes an emotion, like I said earlier, you relinquish control, right? Because now you're basing your decisions or your reactive action on how something made you feel. I'm not saying to be 100% stoic. I say every man needs some sort of level of stoicism to understand what's worth reacting and what isn't. Because for example, I'll give you an example. How many guys end up having road rage and cursing the guy out and one guy gets out of the car and the other guy gets out of the car and they get into it. One guy hits the other guy, knocks him out. The guy hits his head, cracks his head on the skull. And now he's in the hospital and now the guy is going to jail for attempted murder. You know what I'm saying? That whole thing could have been prevented had you had a little bit more self-control. And yeah, bro, did somebody cut you off? That pisses anybody off, right? But are you going to allow your emotions to get you so angry to the point that you're going to pause, get out of your vehicle and physically confront this person just because they cut you off? You got to be selective about who you give your your emotions to, you know, or what situations you give your emotions to.

SPEAKER_01: 44:31

Book it right now. Book it right now. We're going to do an episode on the placebo that is stoicism. Okay. Stoicism has been rebranded. What you're saying, Rich, is the actual definition. Okay. It's being calm under pressure. But the dot, dot, dot for the calm under pressure is that you have a wife, you have kids, meaning You met a woman. You convinced woman you were handsome and responsible. Woman takes clothes off, have sex with you. You have child. You've accomplished your fucking civic duty to living on this planet. Stoicism is eff- A grizzly bear attacks your family, you must remain calm under pressure because you can't overreact and you got to be decisive under pressure. I agree with that. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor. You said the president of the United States. I couldn't think of a more difficult job than being a Roman emperor at a time where battle was the only means to a conclusion for any problem. These motherfuckers are using the word stoicism as a cope to do nothing. There's a difference between taking action to solve problem as a stoic person not letting your emotions take lead and then there's this cope this placebo that is sold to a lot of young men as while you're a stoic you have to be alone fuck that bitch you could do it alone you don't need friends you could do it alone build for the next two years in silence and then pop out and everybody's gonna love you women are gonna fall and just start gobbling the mic that's not stoicism that is stupidity that is somebody that is found a group of people that are lonely, bro. They're lonely. The weight of the world is on their shoulders and it's a fake solution to a non-problem. And that's why this shit does so well because the algorithms are primed to hunt for people that are alone, bro, because you're on a device. And the more I feed you bullshit quotes from Marcus Aurelius that are misinterpreted to keep you alone, the longer I could keep you on my TikTok page, the longer I can keep you on my YouTube chat. Yeah. That's fucked up. These people know what they're doing. No, no, no. Listen. These guys are targets. Your definition was right. Marcus Aurelius was a fucking Roman emperor. If he's the leader of stoicism, then you guys misunderstood the message behind stoicism.

SPEAKER_00: 47:03

Yeah. I agree with you in

SPEAKER_01: 47:06

that sense. Not you, by the way. I'm sorry. I'm saying you guys. No, no, for sure. This shit gets me hot. It's like, I'm being stoic. It's like, no, bro. Your life is playing out in a way that's not favorable to you and you're not doing anything. Yeah. You're not the fucking yogi on the top of the mountain. Be the samurai fighting the fight at the bottom of the mountain. Be calm under pressure. To me, that's really the solution that's transferable to real life specifically

SPEAKER_00: 47:33

for these guys. Yeah, for sure. In that example, the stoicism is the product and the consumer is like the lonely, isolated guy and you find the product to sell them and you continue the sales funnel that way. So,

SPEAKER_01: 47:46

yes. Let me ask you a question. Just off top, because you're a very fit guy. Give me the top two ways that you know to get abs.

SPEAKER_00: 47:54

What would you have to do? I mean, believe it or not, walking helps you get abs. Okay. I love the Stairmaster too, just like getting your legs moving, but doing legs, right? I know people that don't do any ab workouts and have abs just because of the natural strength training that they do.

SPEAKER_01: 48:15

Okay, so I'm going to flip it. A young man asks you, hey, Uncle Rich, I love your failures podcast, sees you in the streets. What's the best way for me to get control of my life? Man, getting abs is hard. It takes a lot of things you got to do to get it right so you can see your core because your stomach carries most of your body fat even when you're lean. That's the same question they're asking you. How do I get my life together? You're like, oof, that's a little complicated. It depends. But best advice I can give you is Be a stoic. Do you know what that advice is in the health world? The best advice I got for you is a machine that works on your abs while you're sitting at home watching TV. Because you don't have to do anything. You just let the machine do all the work. And then the abs, they grow. That's what stoicism is for kids that are in a fucked up spot. You can't be this jammed up in life and think that no action is the best action. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_00: 49:10

I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 49:12

And these motherfuckers are extreme. They're going to take the next step. left and be like, all right, so I got to do the most. I'm not saying that either. I'm saying you're being sold a placebo. You're being sold eight minute abs by people that are trying to give you non-action as the action. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman empire. He was a leader of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, millions and millions of people. That motherfucker was choosing action, not inaction.

SPEAKER_00: 49:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:41

Done.

SPEAKER_00: 49:42

Listen, I think we could do a whole episode on... No,

SPEAKER_01: 49:45

we're going to do the stoicism. No, I mean, listen, we should... Fake

SPEAKER_00: 49:48

gurus. Fake gurus, fake self-help. Listen, there's a lot of bullshit content out there. So if we could help people... We're just reacting to it all day? We could probably do that.

SPEAKER_01: 49:58

We'll get some enemies. That'd be good.

SPEAKER_00: 50:00

That's all right. That way we have a position in the space. But no, I think bringing the topic full circle on suffering and silence, we should get into some actionable strategies, right? If you're someone out there who is suffering in silence, what are some of the things just that come to mind for you to help a person like this out?

SPEAKER_01: 50:23

You know, every week, I want to make sure our listeners know this. We're always going to give actionable advice. Some topics are a little bit, I mean, we said it in the beginning, right? Like this one's heavy. So we're going to be mindful that when we give advice, it's because actionable advice is what people who seek content want. They're searching things to find actionable advice. But the caveat for this one and maybe some of our future episodes that are not so black and white is that everything is context-based and we understand that. But here's the advice that we want to give based on that disclaimer. The one thing I will say, Rich, you brought it up and it's worth talking about is the word vulnerability. You mentioned it during our pre-production before we got on air and we had a little bit of a debate over it. But I do think there's probably a healthier way to go about, you have to find outlets where you can be vocal about your struggles I do not enjoy the word vulnerability because I think it gets abused and I personally couldn't be around a young man who was quite literally always crying not crying and like complaining but literally always in tears maybe I'm fucked up maybe I'm broken but I don't think vulnerability and being sensitive is the answer I find that a lot of platforms talk about that I think having the proper outlets to discuss and unpack what problems you're going through with someone or even Chad GBT. There's really great models that you can go back and forth with, but seek and share with the goal of finding a solution or taking an action. I think that's good actionable advice.

SPEAKER_00: 52:02

Yeah, I like that. For me, it's move, go to the gym, walk, join a MMA gym, join a boxing gym, like get in the sauna, go swimming, do something physical that at a bare minimum will distract your mind from any sort of pain that you're going through or any negative thoughts you're having. I think just doing a hobby or doing something physical that requires focus usually can distract you from anything negative going on in your life. And it's helped me tremendously There's been times where I've been working out and I'm solely focused on the workout. A specific song will come on. That song triggers a negative thought. And then I take that negative thought and I'm like, all right, I'm going to rep it out. Well, what does that mean? Is I'm going to beat that negative thought by bench pressing 125 pounds for 15 reps. And after that 15 rep, I'm like, that was my way of fighting that demon monster, that negativity monster and conquering that negative thought. And I've repeated that cycle over and over again. And the only way that that was available to me was by going to the gym, living in the moment, having these aggression experiences mentally. The way that I visualize myself in the gym is like, it's a fight against myself, right? How do I fight against myself is by making my physical body do hard labor. right so not only am I improving my physique but I'm also battling my mental sort of like negative doubt monsters and saying you are not going to conquer me I'm going to conquer you watch how many reps I'm going to do and that's helped me more than I could put into words

SPEAKER_01: 54:04

yeah I mean Rich that might be one of the best pieces of advice even though I'm telling you if we had like a PC or yeah watch out for the PC police they would probably say that's bad advice and i would tell them to go kick rocks because i too can quadruple down on that because sometimes fuck sometimes more times than none you're not going to have the answer to all the aggression you have especially man i remember being a teenager that level of uh anger mixed with that testosterone mixed with insert my the girlfriend at the the time not being a good person mixed with my mom mixed with the narrative bro if teenagers could throw fire through their body they would forgot somebody explained this way and I thought it was so good it was like I'm like a mother of four kids said no creature on the planet transforms more in three years than a teenager we're talking about the window you're about you're in that window right now rich with your son he's about to go into the three-year window where who Who he came in as and what he comes out as is about to be like the equivalent of 20 years of transformation in three years. If you expect that person to be the same person going in and coming out and the level of hormones and it's not, then you mix masculine energy into that. Young males are filled with a lot of rage. And all you got to do is throw a match on that rage and they're liable to do anything. There's nothing wrong with that. But as long as you have an outlet, a mission, a tribe, a hobby, a team, a fucking gym. I don't even care if it's a hill that you run on. You have to let that energy out somewhere because if you don't, it gets pent up. I agree with that so much, Rich, because at 39 years old, I'd be on the brink of taking somebody's fucking head off at work and then I go to the gym and I don't feel bad anymore, bro. I don't want to hurt people after I come out of the gym because I It's almost like the equivalent of a punching bag. There's something about letting it out. And you're like, man, I was bugging. I'm not even that mad at that person. I was just in a mode. So I agree with you, bro. And the short term, and I think you said this, but I want to make it more specific for the fucking stoicism nerds out there. There's something about having really small wins inside of a bigger win, inside of a bigger win, inside of a bigger win. Case in point, the small win is getting up, putting on the gym clothes and getting in your car, getting up, putting on the basketball shorts and going to the park to play basketball. That's a small win. Even if you went and no one was there, at least you took the action. Small win number two, I'm going to do 20 pushups today, just 20, but I'm going to break it into five clips because I can't do 20 straight. Small win five, small win five, small win five. Your body falls at three. You only do 18, but in your mind, there's There's something about the little wins that got you feeling like, man, we're really doing this. You're walking out of the gym and at the lobby, there's a beautiful young lady that works there. And it's her job to tell you, hey, how's it going? Welcome to whatever, whatever gym. You want to check out our merchandise? Once you're in that flow of feeling good about yourself, you'll see how the world starts bending in a way that's a little bit more positive. You took the small win of putting gym clothes on. You took the small win of getting in the car and driving to the gym. You took the small win of doing five pushups in three increments and getting to 15 and then you do three more. You know what's going to happen when that girl tells you, hey, you want to see what clothes we have in our little consignment shop? You're going to have an energy about you of a winner. And you're going to be like, yeah, sure. And you just might smile. You just might crack a little joke. You just might flirt with this young lady and she just might be single. I believe that That feels a little mystical. And I could see the nerds being like, well, one plus one is two. If you carry the three, I'm saying it's not going to work out exactly like that. But when you put yourself in that headspace of getting small wins and surrounding yourself with a small mission, you'll see how the tides turn. So I love that, Rich. And I just wanted to compound that with my next piece of actionable advice, which is find a small tribe. At the very least, find a friend, one friend. Go out into the real world. Do not stay inside. Go outside in the real world. real world. Because in the real world, reality is king. I remember saying in the last episode, reality is the boss. No one is better than reality. You're living in a virtual reality. Even though we don't wear the VR goggles outside, if you spend your whole day doing this and this, you're living with VR goggles on, whether you know it or not. A beautiful woman that walks by you, if you're living in a VR state, that's what I'm going to call it, VR state of mind, you're not in the same reality as that person. So you're talking to them about shit that they don't know about because they're not in that little bubble you're in. They're living in the real world. Find you some real world friends. Do some real world shit. Get outside. Let some sun touch your skin. Let your feet touch grass and be amongst people. You'll see how your world will change a little bit. And don't go to fucking Target and come back home and then hit us on the chat like, damn, I got negative, Rich. I wasn't supposed to get negative.

SPEAKER_00: 59:41

As the young kid say touch

SPEAKER_01: 59:43

grass bro that phrase has been around

SPEAKER_00: 59:45

since like 1700 but they

SPEAKER_01: 59:47

can have it

SPEAKER_00: 59:49

I think my last actionable advice and this ties into a couple different points that we hit on but I think the ability to unplug and what I mean by that is just unplugging from social media unplugging from the algorithm unplugging from the comparison scrolling as they like to call it where you're just like that's good bro you're looking at what other people are doing what your friends are doing, what celebrities are doing, what politicians are doing, what influencers are doing, and you're letting their lives and how their lives are going, you're naturally making a comparison as to where your life is and how big of a distinction there is between the two. And then that starts to trigger some negative thoughts and then you're in isolation. And this goes back to our original point of just suffering in silence, being alone, creating this false sense of identity for yourself and then getting into this negative loop of negative thoughts. What we're saying is find the ability to unplug, right? I know people that have deleted Instagram and X and TikTok. I know people that put... I think you could put screen time limits on different apps. Give yourself an hour a day. I know people who've unplugged for a week at a time. I know people who've gone up to cabins where there's no internet reception and just really unplugged. Whichever way...

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:17

Don't give our audience an excuse to be detached from people. Fuck the cabin idea. Don't do that. No, I mean,

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:25

you could

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:25

go up to the cabin with friends. No, no, no. No cabins. Not for our audience. No, no, no. Because they're going to be like, I'm being a stoic in my cabin. I'm saying, all right,

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:34

so I'll summarize it and say-

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:36

Leave your phone at home.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:37

Go outside. That's what he's saying. Unplug from the algorithm and get out of this negative thought loop of seeing things that you end up comparing yourself to. Because chances are 90% of what you consume is either AI content or the best version of someone's fake life as people like to do. They always put their best out there, but what they're putting on social media isn't exactly what they're actually living. Yep. The last

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:12

one, which you just said it, but I think it'll be our sixth piece of actionable advice. You've said it in your fifth one, but negative thought loops. The life script thing that we touched on earlier, I think that's huge, Rich. That's one that Justin Duran is a victim of. And I can speak frankly to our community that that's something I suffer from. If you know me personally, you know that I've clinged on to this identity that comes from my family and my upbringing that is not the most. positive. And that's how I see myself. I've always seen myself that way. And that's just a life script that I've given myself. That's just the story that I always tell myself. And whenever I fall short of anything, the script is my net. Oh yeah, I couldn't do it because you know where I come from, man. And you know my family, you know how that is. And when you don't got shit, nobody teaches you. How are you supposed to know better? It's just crutches. It's just crutches. I read a very powerful quote this week, which I loved. It was more about letting people borrow money consistently, but I do think the quote fits into this situation. If you want to make a man a crippled, just give them crutches. Hmm. It's powerful because you would think in reverse that if you were already crippled, you would need crutches, right? Because you need some. But if you want to make a man a crippled, just give him a set of crutches, meaning he will lose the ability to put any weight or pressure on himself and he will slowly begin to depend on this thing that are these crutches. So same goes for constantly lending someone money and not allowing them to figure it out on their own. But more relevant to this suffering and silence episode, if you continue to create a narrative in your mind that always excuses you of your responsibility and gives you an exit or a way out, those are your mental crutches. I've suffered from that in my life. And I always, even at 39, I try to do a good job of being aware of the crutches that I give myself that don't allow me to push past the story I tell myself, the convenience of the story that I've told myself. I blame a lot of people outside of the Latin and minority communities and black community. I blame a lot of people for what I don't have. And as I've gotten older, I stopped doing that and I started taking more accountability. So I think just be very aware of the life script and the narratives that you tell yourself and it's swirling your mind all day. And if you don't know how to do that, just ask ChatGPT, promise and say, hey, I'm trying to have a better idea of what are the narratives that I tell myself that allow me to have a crutch in my life. Please give me five questions to answer that can help me understand these narratives that I have. How do I know it'll work? I've done it before. So there you go. Ringing endorsement for the LLM.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:27

Yeah, man. Listen, heavy topic, but I'm glad we touched on it. It's a topic that's not spoken about enough on the internet. And, you know, I don't think we have all the answers. I think this is very much something case by case. It's very fluid, right? Like you're never going to not stop feeling angry or depressed or uneasy. It's just a matter of learning how to cope with it. Right. So, yeah, I hope any of these actionable advice sections were helpful. If you're struggling with mental health, if you're suffering in silence, you know, feel free to leave a comment. Leave a comment, email us. We're open, man. I love to talk to people, even strangers, trolls, whoever. I'm more than happy to hear somebody out. Rich, we're not going to have a problem with comments on

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:20

this episode. Yeah. Because the stoicism hive is coming. It's coming. They're going to explain it to me in deep, deep details.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:30

With Marcus Aurelius and Carl Jung quotes. And it's all good. This is what we're here for. We are your big brothers. We're not gurus. We're not gods. We don't claim to be anything other than two dudes. Look, my co-host got his daughter just crying in the background. He has to deal with that reality in like about two minutes. So we are living with reality with you guys. We're not saying we're above it. We're just looking to help. So it's a various podcast, man. Another one's in the books.