SPEAKER_01 0:01

Your past is the first loss you took in your life that you had nothing to do with. We forgive you. You didn't birth yourself. You were born into a fucked up situation. But the double L is when you allow your past to dictate your future. Now you're letting other people drive you around. Now you're letting the Waymo of your life's past drive you wherever you're supposed to be going. Stop, man. Pull over the car. Get in the driver's seat. Start taking control of your own life. Failures Podcast. Today we're talking about being trapped in your identity. Why do we grow old into our late 20s, 30s, even your 40s? But as an adult, you still say things like, Man, I don't know, I'm just the type of person who, or I'm just not good with money, or I'm just the type of person who would never do that. This one is my favorite. I'm guilty of it. In my family, we just didn't learn that. What is it about getting older, changing your environment, being around new people, experiencing new things, being literally 15 years away from your 15-year-old self and still saying things that your 15-year-old version of you believed, but you know is not true. The simplest analogy I could think of is imagine getting a new iPhone, brand new iPhone, and you keep the old operating system. You have the iPhone 1, brick breaker, snake operating system in a brand new phone. Why would you do that? The capabilities of new technology have nothing to do with what came from the past. So, what the real problem is here is young men know what to do. They just can't break themselves free of their old mentality. Rich, this subject came up because we were going back and forth on episode ideas, and this one was kind of a counterpoint that you were like, nah, we should actually talk about this, Justin. Why come up with this episode? And how would you describe this issue that we're discussing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Man, just I love the analogy, the operating system, because that's exactly what our brains are, right? They're operating systems. And if you update your phone every year, right? You update your Chrome browser, you update your laptop, your antivirus, all this technology around you, but when do you ever get around updating your brain, updating your lifestyle, right? Taking action on the things that you want to take action on. I think that's what we're here to highlight today. It's just like, why is it that as a young man, you live with this pre-programming of what your old self used to be, or how you were raised, or how you were taught to view the world, right? Because once you cross over and you're 21, 22, 23, right, and you're entering adulthood, there's a new perspective that you need to take on, right? One that involves you taking action on the things that you want to do for your life, not necessarily things about your old past or how you were raised. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

I mean, Rich, if you think about it, we're a self-help platform for young men. Simply put, the type of topics we get into, they're a little bit more about like dating and wealth and fitness and things that are important to young men. But when you think about this episode, this one feels a little unique. And this one came from you. What is it about this episode that you felt so passionate about? When you hear words like past self or childhood identity, why even make an episode like this for failures?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Just this is ground zero, bro. It sounds cliche, right? But it all starts with your mentality and how you view the world and how you view yourself. And if you are constantly battling mental psyche of your pre-programming, then it's going to be very difficult for you to progress in your life and break out of that cycle. You are your own worst enemy. You tell yourself bad things that you cannot progress because that thing doesn't happen in your family. You can't go to college because there were not any college graduates in your family. You could never get a job in corporate America because you view yourself as not being smart enough. There's a lot of like bad things and bad fuel that we tell ourselves that ultimately limit our potential and our growth.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah. And we did a little exercise before we started this episode just to remind ourselves that we are not authorities in everything we discuss. This particular subject, Rich, is something that I still struggle with. I am 40 years old and I still struggle with the identity trap. This is an old idea of my younger self that still lives inside of me as a grown adult male who has accomplished a lot of incredible things in my lifetime. Every now and then I got to get myself out of this little jail that I put my brain in. And Rich, you and I did this exercise, and I want to rattle off some of the things that came from my personal vetting to be like, okay, what are my identity traps? What are things that I still have to conquer that are old ideas of Justin from his past? I still see myself as a young man who didn't grow up with a lot of money. I still see myself as an underdog, somebody who was poor. I come from a poor family. So a lot of the things that I struggle with on the day-to-day is like this little whisper in the back of my mind when I'm spending too much money or I don't put money into my savings, I have this crippling paranoia that's like, yo, you're broke. You shouldn't be spending a lot of money. Yo, you're broke. You shouldn't be enjoying yourself too much. Stay humble. Don't get too excited. You could be back in the hood tomorrow. That is an old identity that I had to conquer. And I'll be lying if I said I've already conquered it. A lot of my work ethic comes from that paranoia. So that's kind of what we're talking about, Rich. And I thought the self-audit is something that you've pretty much patented on this show. And I think it's good that we self-audit before we go into any life advice because we still struggle with this.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Oh, yeah, definitely, bro. And listen, my identity traps and my self-audit was growing up without a father, right? Living with that identity of being abandoned. I grew up thinking that I would never be financially stable because we grew up on every government assistant possible. We had WIG, food stamps, Medicare, all the assistance possible. I grew up with this feeling, and sometimes this feeling still creeps up to this day, where I'm smart but wasted potential. It's like the world views me as this very articulate and intelligent guy. Yet when I look at myself, I'm like, we're not a millionaire yet. So how smart are we really? Right. Like I battle these like thoughts between me and myself. And my brain sometimes isn't the nicest uh thing to me.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah. I mean, Rich, that's probably why we get along, right? Because everything you said, I agree with and I went through and I experienced. So the better question is this episode is for you because you keep looking at yourself as this guy from a past. You didn't just carry your disadvantages from your past, you're wearing them as your identity. So the better question is how do you get rid of this old identity? Rich, I don't know if you even have that answer while you're explaining something you're still struggling with. So how do you start?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

That's a great question. And to me, it all starts with just releasing that pre-programming from your brain, right? Hit and reset. Take the PC of your brain and unplug it, remove the hard drive, put a new hard drive in, and just start from scratch, right? Like completely relief yourself from that pre-programming, that toxic information that you received as a young man that is contributing to limiting you and your potential and how you view yourself in the future. I think that's a pivotal place to start.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah. A note that I pulled from our source of material was if you've ever said, I'm just being realistic, what you're really saying to yourself is, I'm scared to find my potential. If that's how you feel about this subject and why you clicked on this episode, this episode is definitely for you because we mask a lot of our insecurities in what we call our limits. But there are no limits. It's what you believe you have the potential to do. So, Rich, I'm glad you brought up that word potential. Why is that so important when you talk about someone that lives in their past?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, I mean, listen, sometimes when you hold on to your past, it's sort of a comforting thing. Great point, right? Like you're afraid to be embarrassed, you're afraid of failure, you're afraid of not succeeding, you're afraid of being an inadequate, not being smart. So you hold on to this old identity because if you do that, then that means you don't have to try, right? You've tied yourself to this place of comfort, right? You gravitate to what feels familiar, which is comfort and not feeling friction of trying something new. But that is the the poison, bro. That is all part of the pre-programming that limits you from moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Speaking of pre-programming, I have a funny story that is basically what we're talking about here. That doesn't have anything to do with anything like sad or dark. It was just an old idea that I kept in my brain from my childhood that I thought was true. And as an adult, someone in his early 20s, this is when I was at Ruckers, I was embarrassed while I was out with a whole bunch of girls and some of my friends, and I was telling everyone that I was allergic to seafood. But I wasn't allergic to seafood. Where did I get that idea from? My father absolutely hated seafood. We couldn't even cook it in the house. He hated the way it smelled, he hate the way it looked, he didn't like that a fish had eyes on it. And my brother, legitimately, my older brother, was allergic to shellfish. So he tried shellfish one time when I was younger, and his whole face like exploded, and he got like hives, and his lips were big and his eyes were puffy, and he had to get a shot to bring all this swelling down. And I don't know when and where in my brain that I registered that I was allergic to shellfish, but I think I was so impacted by that moment of my brother having an allergic reaction that as a 21-year-old in college, out with friends, after we hit the bars, we go out to eat, we go to this sushi spot, and I'm telling everybody, damn, I can't eat because I'm allergic to sushi. I'm allergic to this fish. Bro, one of the girls pressed me so much. She was like, Are you sure? Do you know if you are? You should just try it. Bro, I never had seafood in my life until I was in my 20s. When someone gave me a fucking sushi roll and I had it with some soy sauce, bro, shit was amazing. I wound up eating two sushi rolls that night, eating all sorts of fish. First time in 21 years I had fish was because I was operating under an old idea that had nothing to do with me, that I thought I was allergic to seafood. And it was this self-limit that I put on myself. God only knows how many other limits came from my childhood that were a little bit more serious and more urgent that was about this pre-programming that came from my earlier operating system. So when I think back, I'm a little embarrassed of all the shit that I didn't even know I was capable of because of my old programming.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah, bro. Your old programming sets limits that you didn't even know you had, right? Like I can recall one moment I was actually flying to LA to see you just because we had a I think we had some sort of business dealing that we were working on. And some of my homies from back home decided to join me on that trip. So I'm like, all right, cool, knock out two birds with one stone. Me and you work on some business shit, and then I get to hang out with the homies after. So one of my friends, I hope he doesn't get mad at me for saying this story, and I won't say his name, but he he's you know, heavy set dude. And I tell him the same day we get there, yo, let's go hiking. You gotta see this this beautiful hike uh on a canyon. You see all of LA. It's it's beautiful. I've done it a couple of times. You gotta join me. He's like, All right, let's do it. Bro, five minutes into this hike, he starts huffing and puffing. He can't breathe. He's like, Yo, Rich, I can't do it, bro. This is way too much. How many miles do we got left to go? He's like, we gotta go all the way to the top. Start looking at the top. He's like, nah, man, I can't do it. I'm gonna stop right here. I'm gonna turn around. I said, bro, I've done this hike plenty of times. I know you can do it. We'll do this hike as long as it takes, but I know you could do it. Long story short, does the hike, right? Can't believe it. Calls his wife, yo, I did this with Rich. You know, I never thought, never thought I could do this, right? The crazy part about this story is that the next day when my other boy flew in, he wanted to do a hike too. So we hiked it again the next day, and he did the whole hike again the next day. No more huffing and puffing. Wow, like a champ. And I turned to him and I said, Bro, you went from not being able to do this hike to doing it twice in two days. Like, do you not see how your old programming told you that you couldn't do something? How you set your own limitations upon yourself? No one said you couldn't do it. Your brain said you couldn't do it, and then you went and did it twice. The moral of the story is that you have to relieve yourself of that old programming. Your brain will tell you that you can't do certain things when in fact you really can.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, I mean, I've said the story about me learning how to swim. How many times? How many times? I've probably said at least five times on the show, and it's worth mentioning again. I come from a family that did not swim. There were barely any fucking bodies of water that were worth getting inside of growing up in New York and New Jersey. If we did spend any time by a body of water, it was by Coney Island. Everybody knows you don't get in that water, and it's only warm for like one month of the year. Seaside Heights, which is up on the Jersey coast, nobody really gets in that water for real, for real. And the 60th Street Pool. Rich, you know what time it is. 60th Street Pool, there's about a thousand motherfuckers in that pool. It's a tiny pool. Yeah, right. Was anybody really swimming in that pool?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

You're just bumping into people.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah. So I like this as a metaphor, and I use it a lot when I think about my childhood. I moved out to LA for work. There are massive bodies of water here. Beautiful people hanging out by the water in a pool, in the lake, in the ocean, in the fucking river, whatever. There's beautiful people playing the beaches out here. Guess who's the only asshole that didn't get in the pool? Me. Because I would tell people, nah, man, I don't swim. I didn't grow up swimming. Bro, how do I look 37 years old, 38 years old, telling people, nah, I can't swim? It's like, well, why don't you learn how to swim? I just grew up not knowing how to swim. What an idiot. All these fucking beautiful moments I could have experienced, and I'm telling people, I don't travel, I don't swim. That's just not what I'm the dude wearing Timberlands in the beach. Well, what are we doing? You know enough to know that if you want to have fun, you want to have a good time, if you're gonna play the beach, you should learn how to swim. And stop wearing boots on the beach, get you some sandals, at least get you some Crocs. Bro, enjoy the environment that you are currently in. Stop living in this idea of your past. And I had to teach myself that, Rich. I still don't know how to swim very well, but I took swimming classes, I hired a swimming instructor, and I started learning because the shit was getting embarrassing and I was living in my old identity and I had to free myself of it. Now, was it uncomfortable being a grown male being taught how to swim by another grown man? Absolutely, because I took swimming classes where other little kids were in it. I'm talking about 10-year-old little fat Asian kids wearing life vests, being like, Well, you don't know how to swim, but you're a grown-up. And I'm like, Yeah, bro, I'm learning. And I had to humble myself. To me, that is an idea of my old self. I used to tell myself I didn't eat seafood. I used to tell myself I didn't know how to swim. I eat seafood now and I can doggy paddle and fake swim at least for a cool 10 minutes till I get the fuck back to shore. But I don't live in my limit anymore. I don't live in my old limit anymore.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yeah. Just do you think this old programming comes from a place of like survival instincts? Like you gravitate to what's comfortable. You're operating with the only evidence of information that you have at hand, which is your past, versus moving forward and entering unknown territory is a bit discomforting, right? And having to experience failure by trying something new is a little bit scary for these young guys. So curious to know your thoughts. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

100%. Rich. I'm glad you asked that because my favorite part about doing this show, outside of bonding with you, one of my close friends weekly, and also helping out young men. My favorite thing about this show is when we do deep dive research pre-show and we learn a little bit about ourselves through these things that we think are life limits. And you learn that a lot of this shit is like wired in us from birth, from being a young person. And part of the research package, it teaches you this thing called tribal rules. Tribal rules come from a theta brain state, T-H-E-D-A. I'm not trying to go over nobody's head, but this shit is in our wiring. From the ages of three years old to eight years old, theta brain state is a brain state that is the most sponge way your brain operates. Think about it. You're born from birth, you don't know anything, so you're just absorbing everything from the world for the first time. Rich, how old is your youngest daughter?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

About to be two.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Two years old. So that means from two all the way till 10, any information she gets is going to be part of her theta brain state, which is essentially she's absorbing information for the first time. And you want to know why our programming from birth carries us into our adulthood, is because you don't have any sense of real logic outside of what the tribe of family that you're in. So whatever it is that your family tells you are the rules, those are the rules for your life to survive as a little person. So that sponge that soaks up all this terrible information winds up using it as a survival mechanism as you move forward. So all this ideology that I carry with me until my 30s, going into my 40s, comes from being a little jelly bean that is experiencing the world for the first time, and I am nothing but a little sponge. Logic is not real, it's only real based on who's giving you what is logical. So if my father told me fish is bad, seafood is bad, I absorbed that as a little kid. If my brother said, yo, I'm allergic to seafood, and my brother is my hero, he's the only male in my life that I look up to when I do everything he does. We're mimetic creatures. We do what we see, we do what we think gets rewarded. So naturally, I, for whatever reason, just grew up believing that I was also allergic to seafood. Why does that happen? Because we only know the environment we're exposed to. So I would give myself the benefit of the doubt. And I want to give any young man listening to this that feels like they're trapped in that pre-programming, give yourself a little bit of grace, give yourself a little bit of freedom. You're only as good as the world you live in and the information you absorb. You have to give yourself a little bit of grace for only knowing what you know from where you come from. But the next step has to be give yourself the freedom to learn and recreate that wiring. Like Rich said, don't just reset the computer. Get rid of the fucking hard drive, get rid of the battery. You have to start from scratch because if not, you're living in that limbic brain that wants to survive. You want to survive because it comes from being a kid. And Rich, I know you're raising a daughter, so you have to see it on the daily. Whatever you guys do, she probably does, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, absolutely. Man, that's such a great example you gave. And I feel like this reminds me of like the flea in in the jar analogy. And the analogy goes that there's an experiment where you place a bunch of fleas in a jar, yes, unlid without the lid, right? And they jump as high as they can, right? But they never really make it out, right? But they can jump as high as they can. They go to where the lid is at. Yeah, you put the lid on top, leave it for some time, they start hitting the lid over and over, right? And then after a while, you remove the lid and they only go as high as to where the lid used to be, right? They've programmed themselves that limitation. Wow. When there is no limitation anymore. So, in that example, that is us as humans, right? We place these limitations. Limitations upon ourselves that don't necessarily need to be there. They were just pre-programmed from either our parents, our upbringing, our circumstance, the things we've experienced. And you have to have the ability to take in all this past information and evidence and use it in your favor, right? So I view the guy who I made reference to in the beginning of this episode, where if you had your entire family not go to college with zero college graduates, you can take that data and be the anomaly. Yep. Be the one guy in your family that actually goes to college and graduates with a degree. Just because your family didn't do it or you don't have any prior history of anyone around you doing it, doesn't mean that you can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

And Rich, this is a heavy ass topic because we're talking about something that may not seem urgent to an adult who has their life together. And they kind of deal with this issue. But you know what we're learning and where we got this topic from was young men that live in the trauma of their past. And they don't see themselves as anything important. They don't see themselves as a man that can accomplish things, a man that can get over adversity, a man that can dig themselves out of a hole. That to me is the 9-1-1 of the episode. I know we were talking about our own situations, but there is a lot of trauma that lives inside of these young men, ourselves included, that is the catalyst for them not being able to get out of their situation.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Just take our own country as an example. Zoom in on Chicago. All those kids, young kids are living in a fucking war zone. They do not see a way out other than killing the ops. That is their reality. That is their pre-programming. It is going to take a lot of resources to reframe the mindset and the thinking of young men who are growing up in that area, unfortunately. So, yes, I agree with you. This is the urgency that we're bringing this topic to the forefront. It's like just me, you might not grow up in Chicago, but you might grow up in another neighborhood that might be a little bit similar.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, I mean, trauma is trauma. Trauma is trauma for a reason. This is why kids that have traumatic episodes with a dog bite as a kid, if they see any dog, they freak out. It's not because they want to be disruptive, it's not because they want attention. If you got attacked by a dog as a little kid, you have a traumatic relationship with animals. That is to be expected. We're nothing but survival creatures. So your analogy with dudes in Chicago that's living a drill lifestyle that everything is straight survival, they are living in a traumatic past that is their reality. But if you live in your traumatic past, if you have let trauma define you, I have news for you. Your environment is very much associated to your trauma, but you are not your environment. Step number one would be trying to remove yourself from the environment that triggers your trauma. The evidence of who you are today has to be the thing that's pushing back the trauma of who you were yesterday. This reminds me of a scene from a movie that we brought up recently. Goodwill hunting. In goodwill hunting, the young man, Will, is a troubled youth. He's a guy that's burnt the fuck out. He had a lot happen in his past, but he's a genius and he doesn't even know it. And his teacher, his teacher grabs him and he starts shaking him and he's telling him, It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And the more he tells him that, the more Will starts breaking down. He's crying. Why? Because it's almost like the dude from Goodwill Hunting is listening or watching this episode. He knows that in order to get this young man to move forward in his life, is that he has to remove him of the trauma of his past and let him know, no, man, you are what you are today. Today is the proof. What you are doing right now, the motion you have moving forward right now is your proof. It should push against your past. Stop letting your past define you. Start living in your truth. Start living in your proof of today because it's not your fault. If you grew up in a family that was wicked, if you grew up in a hell, if you grew up believing you weren't good enough, that's okay. A lot of people grow up like that. But just know it's not your fault. It's not your fault. The proof and the work you put in today, that is your truth. Keep living in that truth of today. Stop living in the trauma of your past. It's not your fault.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah, absolutely, bro. And I love that you mentioned truth, just because that is the distinction that we want these young men to understand is that there's pre-programming, there's your past life experience, and then there's the truth. The truth is you have the ability to break out of any one circumstance or situation, no matter how negative or traumatic that upbringing was, as long as you have the desire and the willingness to want to do more for yourself, to want to do better for yourself, right? To want to live out your true potential. But that distinction is pivotal because the truth is you can break out of it. And the pre-programming is you're living based off of information that you have at hand. So I'd love if we've unpacked those two to give the listener a little bit of a clear understanding of these two distinctions.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Well, when you bring up truth and pre-programming, they go hand in hand because your truth back then is a real thing. That's why I was saying it's okay to forgive yourself, it's not your fault. You did live in a truth that was filled with trauma. You did live in a truth that was building your insecurities and allowing you to believe you're not somebody that's worthy of anything. I do want to give our listeners that grace because this is a grace I give myself. Sometimes I'd be so lost in the sauce at work and being around cool artists and driving around in black trucks, being driven from event to event. And I gotta remind myself like, life is pretty cool right now. Why am I feeling paranoid? Did I make up my past? Was my past really that bad? Or did I don't know, but I do know that truth that I used to live always creeps up into my present and it stops me from enjoying whatever blessings I've been able to receive myself and it freezes me. And then I'm like, you know what? You're a kid from the hood. Your parents didn't graduate high school. You don't deserve any of this. And I start getting paralyzed in the moment because the truth of my past creeps up into my present, and it's almost like this cancer that starts spoiling everything that I'm existing and I've earned from myself. So my heart does go out to any young man that's paralyzed by his path. Yes, that was a truth, but now you're living in a new truth. And whatever you're doing today to get rid of them old demons is something that should be rewarded. It should be acknowledged. Your action should become evidence. And when your action becomes your evidence, your evidence becomes your belief. This is the new you, this is your new truth. So I say that with so much passion because this is something I have to remind myself, Rich. I don't know if you've struggled with that, but in order to get rid of the old identity, I have to start believing in my new identity and the new proof of what I've done.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Just I love that, bro. New truth, right? Like that's what you should be moving forward with. And I want to be clear about something because we are saying to unplug the PC, remove your hard drive, right? Like reset your programming. However, that pre-programming is important for you to understand that it exists. This is your past truth. This is your story, this is your trauma, your trials and tribulations. Those things, if you package them correctly, can propel you and influence you to want more for yourself. Because you know what rock bottom looks like. You know what getting it out the mud looks like because you've lived it. Facts, right? So I'm saying reset, unplug, but don't forget where you came from. Yeah, you're not a victim, you're a survivor. You're not a victim.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah. And because you know how to survive, you're dangerous. You you do know how to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yes. And my point is just take this past pre-programming, this past truth, and use it as fuel to propel you to move forward. Use it to inspire you, use it for ambition, weaponize it in a positive way to move yourself forward.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah. I want to play a quick little game, totally unplanned, but I think getting your reaction from both of us on this would be helpful. There's this idea of an inherited self. The inherited self is how I grew up, my life circumstance. It's not my fault. This is where I come from. You know, you had mentioned this earlier. You came from a lower income family. You came from a family of people that came from the Dominican Republic. So I'm going to assume that you didn't have all the advantages maybe other people had in life. So when we talk about inherited belief in yourself, we'll just turn that word into your old operating system. And what I'm going to do, Rich, is I'm going to say a phrase that came up a lot in our community that is the old operating system, the excuse language. And I want you to help me help these young men in our community redefine how you should say that. So you're not living in your excuse and you're taking accountability. You have agency over your own life. So I'm going to shoot out a phrase and then you give me a better response to how you should approach it. For sure. Man, I just can't do what you do, Rich. I started late and my family didn't have a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

I mean, listen, I felt that way for a long time too. I started late, right? But where is the predefined starting line that you're setting for yourself? Right. We all feel like we're starting late, we're late to the journey, we're late to the destination. But if it's your journey, that's proprietary to you. Your start line is not predefined by any other person's starting line. Your starting line is now, right? So that's how I would reframe that to this young man. It's just like start where you're at. If you made the decision to make a positive change for your life, then the starting line starts today.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Listen, if you started late in life, just know that Rich and myself started very late in life. I didn't graduate college till I was 25 years old. I was embarrassed to be on a stage with a whole bunch of 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old kids talking about geniuses, smart ass kids. So if you feel like you started late in life, I'm gonna give you a very simple rule that I gave myself when I had no choice other than to keep climbing up the mountain, even though I started late. If life already gave you an L, do not make it a double L. Meaning, the first loss you took in your life came from your childhood, came from circumstances, came from your family. You didn't ask to be born in your situation. You were just born. But the way you make one L and turn into a double L is that you let that first loss of your life define you for the rest of your life. You don't have to make one loss, two losses by taking that unfortunate situation and doubling down on it, and now using that as the only way you see yourself. Don't make one loss, another loss by defining your entire life by it. Turn that loss into a W by using it as fuel, using it as motivation, using it as proof that you can change your circumstances. So starting late is definitely something I relate to. Rich, I know you relate to it too, but don't turn one L into a double L.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah. Listen, having past L's, having failures is actually an advantage, right? Because you can use these things to propel you to move yourself forward. And you know what's funny? I saw this clip from Obama, I think it was like yesterday, and I loved absolutely loved the clip. And he was basically saying that sometimes you view millionaires, world leaders, tech billionaires, and you get intimidated, right? You're like, oh man, I could never be around the presence of greatness or this level of intelligence. And when you really get to know them, they're not all that. You know what I'm saying? Like I say that to say that you know, you might put a limitation on yourself saying, I can't work a corporate job because I grew up in the hood. But I promise you, if you meet the CEO of that company, you probably have more in common than you would possibly believe. But you don't know until you take the plunge and the action. But that pre-programming, right, will limit you because I grew up in the hood, I could never get a corporate job. Why the fuck not?

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Why not? I mean, Rich, I know you have hella stories. If you want to share, please share about someone that came from the hood, but now you're in rooms with people in higher places. You've said it to me personally, and I don't know if you're comfortable with sharing, but like it always in the first few minutes, you're like, whoa, this is a little different. A little insecurity creeps in, a little anger creeps in, a little frustration because you guys are not culturally on the same page. But with time, you learn everybody's pretty much average. They got money, they came from money for sure, but that doesn't mean they're better than you. And with time, you gather more information and you realize that they have insecurities and flaws the same way you do. It's just a little different.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Yeah, and that's how I've reprogrammed my mindset to view other men and to view the world. It's just that no one man is better than me. We're all flawed men, we're all flawed humans, right? And that reframing has helped me out so much because I do work a corporate job, but I also grew up in the hood, right? So I've had to move differently in a lot of different phases in my life to get to the point where I'm at today. And now that I'm in these rooms, in these boardrooms, I'm speaking to CEOs, I'm speaking to other leaders of different companies, and I don't feel intimidated by these people, right? Their upbringing was their upbringing, their journey was their journey, right? My journey was my journey. But guess where we all ended up? In the same room, right? What's the common denominator? We all worked hard to be in this one room together at this one time. My struggle was just a little different than theirs.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Rich, it's funny you say that because there is a young lady that I used to work with at my old job, and she graduated from Harvard. And I promise you, nothing is more annoying than talking to someone that graduated from an Ivy League school because they will remind you every time that they graduated from an Ivy League school. Yeah. And one time me and this young lady got into a disagreement, and she felt so bold to bring up the fact that she graduated from an Ivy League. And her opening sentence was I graduated from Harvard, and that's definitely not something that they would do there. And what you said just triggered me because my response to her was interesting, you graduated from Harvard, I graduated from Bergen Community College, and it's funny we ended up in the same exact place.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

You get me? It's like everything in life is about a perspective. If you feel like life dealt you five shitty cards, you have every option to accept all the disadvantages that came with those five cards, but you have to take all the excuses, write them down on a piece of paper, take that paper, rip that shit up, throw it into the wind, and use that paper as fuel for the fire to move forward. If you want to live in a prison, just fucking make excuses and then live inside of those excuses. And I can guarantee, I can guarantee you will never move forward because you live in the prison of your excuses. You live in the prison of your handicaps. You live in the prison of your limits. If you really want to get out of that, you have to use that as fuel. Because if not, everybody around you is a threat. I I don't want to get into the episode of being a dangerous man. We've we've already unpacked that. But a lot of these roads lead to the same places, Rich. Yeah. Oh man, I can't really do anything in my life because I didn't have the resources that you have, Justin. I didn't have the access to all those people on music that you had, Justin. No one showed me how to do that. My parents didn't even know English. How am I gonna have an advantage?

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Yeah, and listen, though those are crutches at the end of the day. And the more you hold on to crutches, the more you limit taking any action on the things that you want, right? Going back to the operating system analogy in your brain, right? Your brain can also work for you. Well, how so? In the form of affirmations, in the form of manifestation. You can literally trick your brain into thinking that you're the smartest motherfucker in the room. And no one can ever change that, right? Because you sold yourself a narrative that you started to believe about yourself. So you could also weaponize your brain to work positively for you instead of against you using this pre-programming that you grew up with.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Simply put, what you just said was a note that I had prepared. Environment is connected to identity. Where you hang out, who you hang out with, the people you surround yourself with, the content you consume, that becomes your identity. Environment is so important. And if you want to live in a world filled with crutches, then continue to stay in that environment. You're safe, you're good. Your left arm is on the wall in this big body of water, and you feel nice and safe leaning on the wall. But you cannot go out there and swim into the unknown and figure out who you have the potential to become. And by the way, you could be one of the greatest living human beings on the planet. You can fulfill every fantasy you have in your body, but you have to let go of the wall. And that wall is your comfort zone, the environment, the people you hang around with. If you want to feel like a victim, hang around victims. If you want to feel like somebody who's broke, hang around motherfuckers who scheme and scam the government for money and run 10 team parlays on fanDuel all day. If you want to be around that type of energy and you want to have that in your headspace all day, just keep doing the same thing. You're gonna be good. But if you want to change something, you have to change something. I don't have pity for someone that wants pity all the time.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Oh, I agree. Listen, and you have to have the desire to want the things that you want, right? I'm assuming that this person has acknowledged that they were fed bad information and they were dealt some bad cards. If you clicked on this episode, you want solutions for that pre-programming. Yep. And we're giving you the solution right now. You have to reframe your brain to not view yourself as a victim, not view your old circumstances as an excuse for not taking action. If you want to take action, you need to have the desire and the willingness to make the changes necessary for you to move forward. And unfortunately, unfortunately, those changes come with friction, they come with failure, they come with ugly execution, right? They come with all these things that feel really hard and really difficult to do, but you have to start somewhere. In the pre-show, just we used our show as an example for this episode, and it was such a great marriage between this topic and what we're currently experiencing right now in real time. 12 months ago, we started this brand and this company and this YouTube channel and this podcast, and there was an enormous learning curve. I texted you yesterday. 12 months ago, we didn't have microphones, right? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. We have over 200 videos, 50 episodes, etc., and we're off to a great start. And we didn't sound that great, you know, in episode one. We probably don't sound that great now, but we're still executing, we're still learning week by week, we're still iterating and modifying and improving. And that's what we're telling you to do. This is what execution looks like.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Rich, that right there is the secret sauce. What you just said is the secret sauce. If you want to know the secret sauce to not living in your past and not living in this negative version of yourself, you have to know that action, simple action, creates evidence. And the evidence, if positive, creates a belief in yourself. And in that belief, That came from the action you took and the evidence that you can do something right. That belief slowly turns into a behavior. And if you look at this as a loop, it feeds itself. And it's a positivity loop that gains more momentum and more velocity that just turns into a proof to yourself, to your old self. Man, I can do this. I am capable. All you need to do is start with some action. Trust me, Rich and I know because we've lived it. Like you just said, we have a platform dedicated to this proof of concept. I personally was in a very bad place when I broke up with my college girlfriend. We moved in together into a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. This young lady made a lot of money. I did not make a lot of money, but we still thought, hey, moving in together is gonna solve the problems of our relationship. And Rich, when I tell you that relationship ended, and I was fucking devastated because I didn't know no other reality other than the reality I had with this woman. And I remember going to my job on 55th in Madison Avenue and thinking to myself, damn, I don't have no motion. I don't have no girlfriend. I don't even know how to approach women anymore. Because I've been with the same girl for four years, five years. And right there, the old identity of my past self started creeping in. Uh, Justin, you're a little chubby, man. I don't know if girls like chubby guys. Uh, Justin, I don't know. You don't have a lot of money, man. I don't know if girls want to be with guys that don't have a lot of money. Hey, uh, you just broke up with a girl that you lived in her apartment. Where do you live? Where are you gonna take a girl if you want to take it back home? So all these insecurities of my past started creeping in. Damn, I'm not good with money. Damn, I'm a chubby guy. I'm not that handsome. I don't really feel that good about my body, my confidence. This is all facts. This is a true story. I went through this, Rich. And I remember I used to have to walk through uh uh like a shopping center to get to work. And there was this beautiful Argentinian girl that worked at sex, and she used to work like the perfume counter. Like, and I used to always like smirk at her when I would walk in, but I would never have the confidence to say or do anything because I was living in my insecurities, I was living in this past version of myself, and kind of like you said, Rich, but just flipping it more into girls. It took me a minute to make believe that I wanted to buy a cologne. And I eventually just walked up to this girl and was like, Hey, do you have, I don't know, polo sport, whatever the fuck? And she was like, Oh yeah, bro, we got into a nice little conversation, we wound up talking, I wound up flirting with her, and then the identity of this fucked up situation I was in, it was paralyzing me. It started melting away once I started having conversations with this girl. Long story short, I used to talk to her all the time. Every time I would go for lunch at my job, I would go hang out with her, and we wound up hanging out, we wound up hooking up, and we wound up doing the goddamn thing that grown ups do. But it didn't start with me living in the hell and the fear of like who I saw myself as based on my old identity. The pain was removed in my life when I started taking action, and that action led to evidence, and that evidence led to belief, and that belief allowed me to remove all the fucking insecurities I had from who I thought I was versus who I was becoming.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Yeah, listen, that action is so important, just and it compounds, right? One action gives you that momentum, then you start building upon that, and then you have motion, and then you know what happens, just you become the fucking anomaly in your life. You become the one guy in your family that went for something that no one else in the family has ever done before, and that you have no prior history or or recorded recollection that anyone has ever gone after something, you become that guy, and then you know what happens? The program, the matrix, resets itself, and that becomes the new programming for the family. It's just like Justin went to Rutgers, so now going to a four-year university becomes the baseline programming for the family, right? Justin moved to LA and has a great music career. Great point. That becomes the baseline. Like you have the ability to make modifications in your own life that end up influencing and reprogramming the other people that come after you. And that could be relatives, that could be friends, that could be your best friend's kids, that could be a lot of people. There's gonna be a lot of people that come after you that you know would want to potentially model their life after you, but that only came by proxy of you taking action and having that reprogramming for the people that come after you.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Yeah, there's a Jay-Z quote from his, I think it's the book he dropped with one of his albums. I forget the book, but the one thing I remembered being a big Jay-Z fan that he said in that book that stuck with me was if you're gonna dream, dream that you're going to be the exception. Think about it. Talking about a guy that came from Marcy Projects, Brooklyn, New York. Not many people make it out of that place. And if you know anything about Jay-Z, just know that he is the exception. So if you're gonna believe in yourself, you might as well believe you're gonna be the exception. Not the rule. The rule is man, everybody that comes from where I come from, my whole family has experienced this. And I think Rich, you're living proof of that. I know you don't enjoy bragging about your life for many reasons, but is there a time that you can date back to where you felt very insecure about the progress you were making? But now that you have the luxury of hindsight, you can look back and be like, that was the beginning of me destroying my old operating system.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, absolutely. Listen, I used to be at 19, 20 years old. I was a smoker. I was out of shape. I was drinking alcohol, abusing alcohol daily. Um, I was not in a great mental headspace and in and out of relationships, very unstable, going from roommate to roommate, living in different houses. And it was not a bright future for me. But filing bankruptcy at 19, like there was a lot of shit about my upbringing and my past that was not working in my favor. And it wasn't until I relieved myself of that old programming, right? Of that crutch that I was living with, of where I came from, what my circumstances were, what my childhood trauma was. Once I relieved myself from those things, bro, I signed up for the gym. I got fit. Uh, I used to wear glasses, I went again and got lise surgery, right? Like to try to get my vision right. Uh, started eating better food, got my own apartment, just completely did a 180 because I started to believe that where I was starting at, my starting line was going to be different than what my previous past had laid out for me. And that was a pivotal moment in my life. I had to make that conscious decision that from this moment forward, all the action that I'm going to take is going to be for things that evolve Rich, update Rich's hard drive, makes him 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, right? Like anything that serves me in a positive manner, that is what the things I'm going to be taking action on and the things that I'm going to be working on. But that all came by a mental reframe that I decided on a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

That's a mental reframe that I love. And I want to simplify this for the young man that may not admit it to anyone else, but he knows deep down inside he finds himself blaming other people, blaming his parents, blaming his financial situation growing up, blaming anything other than himself for the situation that he's in. If you live in the identity of your past and you find yourself using your past as a crutch, I want to present you with a very simple analogy. If your life was the car that you are in currently, do you want to be the person driving the car, or do you want to be the person that's being driven by someone else? Allowing someone to drive you around is allowing your past to dictate your future, and you have no control over it. But getting in the driver's seat, pulling over the car, getting in the driver's seat, taking control of the steering wheel, driving as fast as you want, making whatever turns you want to make, that is agency. That is you not playing the victim anymore, and now taking control of your life. Yes, your past is the first loss you took in your life that you had nothing to do with. We forgive you. You didn't birth yourself, you were born into a fucked up situation. But the double L is when you allow your past to dictate your future. Now you're letting other people drive you around. Now you're letting the way mow of your life's path drive you wherever you're supposed to be going. Stop, man. Pull over the car, get in the driver's seat, start taking control of your own life. Now that is not a demand. You can do whatever the fuck it is that you want to do in your own life. Rich and I are just saying you can either be rich that used to smoke, used to be overweight, used to be unhealthy, or you could be the rich that decided to take control of his own life.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Yeah, be me. No, bro, in all seriousness, I think we need to remind our listeners and our viewers that your past is real, right? Like we're not pretending that your past didn't exist and that your trauma doesn't exist and that your childhood upbringing that wasn't ideal doesn't exist. Like these things happen to you, right? And they're part of your story, they're part of your journey. What we're saying is that at some point you have to wake up in the morning and understand that you are your own man. You want to build a life for yourself that starts today, not from your past, not from your trauma. Like, stop asking your past for permission to move forward in your future. No more permission slips. Like let the shit go, put it in a box, put your core memories of past trauma in a box in a container, seal it, put that shit in a fucking bottle, throw it in the ocean, let that shit float away. But like, you have to find the ability to hit reset on your life and understand that you want change for yourself, you want to do better for yourself, and holding on to past trauma, holding on to things that weren't ideal in your childhood is not gonna serve you in the future and moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

Yeah. Well said, Rich. I mean, we can go in circles on this episode for a very long time, but if I had to say one last thing that would be helping a young man that is living in his past self, is that I definitely relate to it because a lot of the stuff that stops me from achieving any goals that I currently have at the age of 40 is the trauma of my past. And I can go through them list by list, but just know I have these problems. But the way I see it is a very simple analogy. Life is just clothes piling up, and the more you complain about it, it doesn't really change anything. You have to take action. In order for things to change, something has to change. And I know we've said that before, but it applies to this one very much. If you don't like the road that was given to you, you have to carve out your own road. And that takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of grit, it takes a lot of action, it takes a lot of positive momentum. But no one gets to live your life but you. So if you enjoy complaining about what other people have and what uh what you don't have, it's cool. You can do that. But unfortunately, you have to live your own life. So, you know, you have to take action if you want something to change.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah. I'll end with this very famous quote: the only limitations that we have are the limitations that we place upon ourselves. Failures podcast. There you have it. Listen, man, your old past was not clicking on this episode. Your new reality is clicking on this episode. You want to move forward in your life, you want to be different, you're ready to take action. You ain't shit. You ain't shit.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Listen, you don't have to subscribe to anything. Live your life. But if this is helpful to you and you think it can help one of your friends, feel free to share it. We don't give a fuck. Be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 57:01

No, we do. Failures podcast, we out.