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Hello my friends, welcome back to another episode of the C&S podcast.

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Our guest today is Philip Folsom. He is an anthropologist, an army veteran, an executive

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coach, and an author. Today we will discuss why everyone feels so disconnected, how we can use

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tribe dynamics to excel in our lives, why alignment is the number one driver of a successful team,

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the role of initiation in a modern context, why most people are dragged by life, why vision is

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important for creating kinship, why so many people feel lost in our culture, and much more.

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If you like this show and want to support it, then the easy way to do that is to go ahead and

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subscribe and share it with someone that you think may enjoy it as well. Could be a friend,

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a family member, or on your feed, every share helps out a ton. And if you go ahead and do

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the following, I promise on my end to continue to bring on better and better guests with insights

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to tell us and continue to grow this podcast and make it as helpful as it can be. Thanks

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for your support. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode. Thank you for coming on, Philip.

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It's great to see you. Cheers. Oh, you're cheersing me. Little ceremony. Rituals. Yes.

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And in the medieval courts, this is a ritual of trust and safety that we used to poison each

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other so much that we would slosh wine back and forth. So we would pour some of my cup into your

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cup to prevent... We would slosh back and forth and then make eye contact while we drink. And that way

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you've ensured that you're not being poisoned. I see. So you're not poisoning me. Correct.

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Perfect. Nor myself. I didn't know about that. That's interesting. Yeah. But you're an

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anthropologist, your ex army and your leadership coach at very large companies such as SpaceX,

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Tesla, Red Bull. So you know a lot about human psychology, about how humans behave,

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how cultures evolve. You have this new book, Team to Tribe. And in it you talk about how to create

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a culture of winning, of high performance within a team, a family and any organization or structure.

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Mm-hmm. Right. And in it you talk about alignment, you talk about kinship,

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you talk about healthy conflict and you talk about sustainable success. And I want to first

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go through all of these four with you and have you tell me a little bit about them. So we can

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start with alignment. What is alignment? Well, just backing up a little bit. The thrust of my work

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would seem to be high performance because that's a relevant dynamic with humanity is that we want to

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get our needs met and we want to achieve and thrive. And in business those are called profit

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drivers. They want innovation, they want competitiveness and efficiency and engagement

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and retention because that's what makes them money. So they hire me for that. My secret agenda

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around doing team development through an anthropological lens is that I'm here for the

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kinship. I'm here for the resiliency, the mental health, the meaning, the purpose, the significant

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impact that human beings need to feel successful in their life. And we have a kinship shaped hole

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in our heart as a society because we're designed for deep, intimate connections with other members

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of our tribe that provides us with trust and safety and resiliency. And that's where we get

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our meaning from. And we're a society that has currently lost our kinship systems and therefore

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we've lost all of that trust, safety, meaning, purpose. And so people are desperately spinning

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to try to find that. And so my work of reintroducing kinship systems or honor-based culture back into

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society is really addressing our core human destiny or legacy of kinship. But the downstream

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effect of that is that it makes people ferociously effective, high performing, adaptable, successful.

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So there's pretty much two big agendas that culture answers. And I'm really interested

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in the resiliency, the human experience. And I totally acknowledge that organizations,

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whether they be sports teams or big corporations, they're looking at the performance part.

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And they're both valid end games. But for me, the kinship piece is clutch.

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Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we've lost historically these structures that held

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together society. They used to be religions. Now politics has somewhat taken a bit of that role.

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Religions were what created community, it created kinship between each other. We were selfless

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and we were rewarded in an afterlife. And I think I'm curious about why is your

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avenue or your agenda in creating more kinship in a modern lens aimed at corporations or

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teams that are trying to be high performers? I ask this question almost every program or

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keynote that I'm doing with people. Where do you spend most of your waking hours?

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At work. And they say, well, at work. Where do you, with whom do you spend most of your waking hours?

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With these people. So work and your coworkers are the most important things in your life.

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And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to own that. But it's irrefutable.

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If that's what you're doing with most of your life and those are the people you're doing that with.

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And if you've surrendered that as a primary source of meaning and fulfillment,

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then you've lost the center of the chessboard. And you're not going to win the game trying to

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play on the edges. And those are the people who are desperately trying to find me.

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And in their two week vacation every year or going to Burning Man and just trying to gather

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meaning through that, it has to be at what we're doing regularly. So culture is the number one

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driver of resiliency and performance. And it has eight times the efficacy of investing in either

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strategy or technology. It is the big driver. And that's fairly well established.

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And that series of questions of, so where are you doing, you know, the things you're doing with most

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of your life, that has to be answered. And so people need to be able to look at, and then we're

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going to start with alignment is what is something that is aspirational enough that it's worth

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offering you my sword? Because that's what the Knights would do. You know, when they would,

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when they would find a Lord, whether it be a samurai or a medieval Knight is like,

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this is me. This is everything I have. And so you offer your sword to something. And that's your

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vision. That's an organizational vision. It's the thing that answers the why are they there?

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And if it's a shallow vision of we're here to make money, that's what you're going to give the sword

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of your life to. And it's, it's shallow. It's unfulfilling. And so when we look at culture

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creation, that's the first thing we lead with is your, your big why. And Nietzsche talks about the

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why, you know, if you can have that, that big why, then you have engagement, you have retention,

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you have buy-in, you have the ability to persevere with grit and resiliency, because it's

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significant enough that, that I'm willing to sacrifice my life for it. Yep. He who has a why

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can bear anyhow. Yeah. So, you know, I use wolves as a very good analogy, something that we'll talk

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about, but the wolves are not scavengers, and they're not rabbit hunters. Wolves hunt big game,

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because it's fulfilling, it's meaningful, it's significant. They're, they're designed at a cellular

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level to hunt significant things. And, and that's, that's their vision. Their vision is not

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to survive scavenging or to hunt mice and rabbits, like they find fulfillment in pulling down big

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game. Yeah. Everyone eats. So vision is the most important thing leaders can do. And Napoleon calls

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leaders dealers in hope. And that's really what a vision is. Here is a future that does not currently

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exist, that we can commit to. It's the, it's the Holy Grail. Yeah. And without a Holy Grail,

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the Knights will turn on themselves. They'll turn on the people. They, we need to be questing.

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Yeah. So that's the, that's the big, that's the first pillar of alignment. Yeah. So how do you

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think about this concept of work-life balance, work-life harmony, when we're talking about,

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this is where we spend most of our time at work, yet most people want to have a level of alignment

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in the sense that they don't want to spend all their time at work, right? They want to have fun

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outside of it. They want to have other relationships outside of it. And even if, let's say we have a

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strong why at work, how are we integrating that within the rest of our lives? Right? So how are

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you thinking about those things? Well, there's obviously a big overlap of where we spend most

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of our time and the need for fulfillment there. But then we also have to have a reintegration back

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home. And that, that's part of a, you can call it a warrior reintegration strategy, which every

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culture, culture in the history of our species has had people that go off and do hard things

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and then be able to transition back home again successfully. And that's, that dynamic is missing

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in our culture. When the, when the Knights came back from the Crusades, they took their armor off

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at the church and they, they did the rosary and they walked the labyrinth and they wrote love

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letters and they reintegrated back home. The samurai did the same thing. Every warrior culture,

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the people who are doing significant, potentially trauma inducing activities have to be able to

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reintegrate back home in some capacity. Otherwise you have to wall it off, which is what so many

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people are doing is it that's work. And then this is me at home. Yeah. And it's not possible to do

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that psychologically. Like we need to be able to have an acknowledgement of it needs to be fulfilling

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at work. I need to be engaged fully and currently less than 17% of Americans are fully engaged in

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their jobs. So that's catastrophic. How much we're leaving on the table of our people, our

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communities, our organizations, our society itself and our lives too. Right. If I'm not engaged at

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work and I'm spending 40 hours a week at a desk doing something I don't enjoy, like half of my

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life is essentially disappearing. Yeah. Right. And it's the, it's the best of you. And that analogy

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of the chessboard position is more important than pieces. You should be willing to sacrifice a piece

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to gain position. So those four squares in the middle, that's how you control a chessboard. And

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so whatever those four squares are is in our life is where we're spending most of our time.

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And there are people who work from home. You better get that tight, you know, whatever it is,

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people are doing in their life. Make sure that those, those four center squares are aligned with

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our vision, our values and our mission. Yeah. How are you thinking about this concept of alignment

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aimed at leaders at building a culture of success versus an individual? And maybe it's me, maybe

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it's you, maybe somebody going into a desk job, maybe they're working in a corporate structure.

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It feels very lifeless. They're one of those 83% of people that aren't engaged at work. How can they

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take this concept of alignment of finding that why within their work and making sure they're not

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wasting that time and make sure that they're living that? Most people, if you ask them what

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the vision of their life is, they won't have an answer because we're not a culture that has held

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that as a priority. But in most other eras, if you were to pose that question, there is,

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there's an answer and it is, and it's going to have to do with at an adolescent level, ambition,

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its glory, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is your basic needs. So that's the

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adolescent version. As people progress in life in the pursuit of meaning, then at some point,

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it's connected to service, to something larger than yourself. That is very directly a form of

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initiation into an adult psychology. An adolescent psychology, which is based on external gratification

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or immediate gratification, that's a shallow currency. And as soon as you start going through

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the initiation, right? A passage process of, okay, what is life really about? It's always going to

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have to do with service to others. That is a, you know, a very, very, very, very, very, very

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big, you know, swapping out the Prince psychology to the King psychology. And so service and meaning

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to something bigger than yourself is always going to be that higher level. And so individually,

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when I'm doing executive coaching, it's like, what are you here for? What do you stand for?

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What is your ethos? What is your code? And that's really what your vision and your values are,

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is that thing that makes up your identity. It's your brand, it's your reputation.

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And when you hear somebody who has a vision, it resonates and it differentiates you from everyone

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else in the world. And I also encourage people who are watching, this should be something that

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your family has. Your family should have a, you don't have to call it a vision statement,

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but it should be something that you can raise up the flagpole and go, that's what we're here for.

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This reminds me of an idea that Naval Ravikant likes to talk about, which is becoming one of one

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and finding the one thing that is so you that there's nobody else that does it. There's nobody

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that can be better than you at being you. And so maybe what I'm taking from what you're saying is

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that as individuals, we should be continually striving to find that thing. And we might not

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know it yet. Maybe we are at that disengagement level, that 83%-

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It's your competitive advantage is being that person that defines the blue ocean.

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There's no other fish that are hunting here. And people are afraid of doing that because when

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to be blue ocean or to have a narrow brand, a narrow target audience, an ideal customer

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means you're saying no to all the other customers. And that's a terrifying thing for people who are

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a part of a pride-based culture is that they're basically scavengers. And the moment you say,

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I'm hunting, I'm not scavenging, then you've just shut down all of the things that you have managed

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to survive by. But it's a brave and needed transition to if you want to get to the big

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game hunt, you have to pick a target. You're not just going out, whatever I can do, whoever

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I can do, whoever I can meet, whoever I can connect with, it's like, no, I have my person,

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I have the thing that I provide. That's your brand. That's the type brand. You want to be

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identified as, oh, you're that person. Earlier in my career, I used to attempt to dress in

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a manner that would allow me to easily engage with clients. So if I was going to go work at

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a bank or a big law firm, I would wear a suit. And I started to get this feedback that

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they wanted the anthropologist in the vest that they saw in the video. Where's the vest?

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And where's the khaki? And I realized that I had permission. In fact, I have received the call to

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adventure to be the person that provides something. That's why I am that one of one. And I'm

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that one. And everybody should be able to have something that they can identify as providing

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value and that you do have to provide value, which is not a power question. It's a value

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question. And all hierarchies are built on value. And it's indispensable before you make a fluffy

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statement, which is prevalent today, particularly in men's work. I'm going to be a breathwork coach.

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I'm going to be the... They're providing something that they believe is a form of value, but unless

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your clients acknowledge that that's value. So it does need to have some efficacy behind it.

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And the greatest efficacy is going to be, how are you living your life? So as soon as you start

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transitioning into that one of one, I'm a person to be providing some value to people. You need to

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get your own house in order. You need to be somebody who is modeling that because our lives

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are evidence of our efficacy. And that's a brave and very revealing process to continually look

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at ourselves and say, am I modeling the things that I'm providing? Because you don't want to

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hire a fat trainer. You don't want to hire a single relationship coach. You don't want to hire

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a broke financial coach. So you have to be that person before you can really put that flag in the

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sand. As soon as you go public with that vision, you need to make sure that you're living it.

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Yeah. I think that the results that someone has brought in their own lives is a heuristic for the

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effectiveness of their training, their coaching, et cetera. And I think a lot of people want to

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start on a thing. They're like, I want to be a personal trainer or I want to be a leadership

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coach such as you. But no one's going to trust your brand unless you can prove that you've

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already done it yourself. And you said one more interesting thing, which is about this blue ocean

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thinking, leading us down another path that looks similar, but doesn't get as quite there.

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And I think this happens a lot in entrepreneurship, people trying to start their own thing.

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They might sit around with their friends and say, I have this great idea for this app. Everyone's

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going to love it. And they spend two years building the app, release it. Nobody wants it. Right. They

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think they're doing blue ocean. Nobody's thought of this before, but they've never validated that

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people want it, that they have the value. Right. What you think is valuable for people

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is irrelevant. It really is. It is what they value. And that doesn't have to be a mercenary,

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manipulative pivot. It should be in alignment. The thing that you're providing to the world

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should be the thing that you believe is valuable, but it also has some legitimate efficacy to it

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because it's worked with you and then it's worked with your family and it's worked with

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your past clients. And at that point, there's a different level of legitimacy to that statement.

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Yeah, definitely. And we also talked about leaving opportunities on the table when following this

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strategy of diversive or of individualizing oneself in what they do is that it can feel

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as though I'm leaving opportunity on the table. If I create a brand where I am Philip Folson,

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leadership coach, anthropologist, I can no longer be something else. And it might feel like, oh,

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but all those clients want this thing. I want to get them there. The thinking makes sense. I've

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fallen into this before. It's like, but they want this. I'll do what they want. But no, you want them

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coming to you for what you provide. It's a race to the bottom. The red ocean is a race to the bottom

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because as soon as you've joined what everybody else is doing, then at some point, you're going

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to have to differentiate yourself by something. Price. Yeah, usually it's going to be price,

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service, quality. You're going to have to start degrading all of that. Yeah. And there's been

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many times in my career where I've had to do that. There's numerous clients that I have

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chosen not to work with because it's not a good match in terms of, you call it my integrity.

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Like, I don't agree with that. So that is a sacrifice on the altar of what your brand is.

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Yeah. And how did that feel when you had to turn away clients to pursue your brand, your integrity?

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See, it kind of depends on the season. If I'm doing really well, it feels really good.

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It's scary otherwise. And I guess to have a measure of success to be able to do that,

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it's easier. It makes sense. It's altruistic. But when people are struggling, then there is a

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certain amount of practicality. You can call it compromise. So yeah, sometimes we compromise

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our values for. Yeah. And that's a slippery slope. Yeah. You mentioned initiation within

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people who don't really have a vision. They have a fluffy vision of what they want. It's not

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thought out. It's not well-defined. When going from that vision to, I know what I want. I know

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who I am. What have initiations looked like from an anthropological lens that you've seen?

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First of all, initiation, just like reintegration, is universal in every culture. There is no

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reintegration strategy, a resiliency strategy, a purification strategy, because life is hard.

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And it's always been hard. It's not like we're just dealing with stress for the first time

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in human history. Our ancestors had exponentially bleaker lives, and yet they still managed to

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persevere. The human race is undefeated and successfully defeated. And that's the

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reason why we're so successful. And so when you look at cultures that have lasted a long time,

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there's a reason why they've done that. And so the reintegration, the purification,

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the resiliency, all of those components are battle-tested techniques. And in our current

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culture of comfort and sloth and immediate gratification and addiction and all of those

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dynamics, we no longer have to do those things. They're seemingly optional, and they're not.

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They're mandatory for healthy, happy, high-performing humans. And you can look at that

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with the skyrocketing rates of clinical anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide, chronic illnesses,

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like we're not doing well. That's the brutal truth of Western civilization, is that we're

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simply not doing well. By all these really vital markers of mental, physical, emotional health,

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we're not doing well. So we're losing. And that should piss people off. And it kind of has.

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There's a reason why there's a big movement for change happening right now, is that it's

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people are angry, and they don't want to lose. They don't want to lose this game. I don't want

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my kids to lose this game. I refuse to have my kids lose this game. We have to look back to see

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what is our birthright. How do they do it? How do people survive the ice ages? Famine, tremendous,

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legitimate trauma, not just perceived trauma that we're experiencing now of crying rooms and

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safe spaces and mental health boxes. And trauma should not, therapeutically, you don't compare

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people's traumas. Combat vets have a certain type of trauma, which is very loud and very clear. And

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it's like, OK, you saw somebody get blown up. And then you look at a privileged rich kid,

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and they didn't get the car they wanted. Internally, they're experiencing the same thing.

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It really is the same level of a perceived threat to their physical or emotional well-being.

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And so they become anxious. They become depressed. They have thoughts of suicide. It can be really

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small, simple things. So we don't compare trauma. That's one of the things therapeutically,

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and particularly the symptoms of trauma. But there certainly is a lot of trauma.

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There certainly is just a raw irrefutable evidence of what we're capable of persevering through.

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And we're living in this artificial time right now where we don't have

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the external enforcement vehicle to make us resilient. If you're paleolithic or an earlier

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culture, and I carefully don't use more primitive culture, they're not any more primitive than we

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are. In fact, they're much more advanced in a lot of ways. If you don't resolve conflict in your

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tribe, you die. You have to. If you don't ask for help, you starve. If you don't have some sort of

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spiritual system that allows you to connect with the world and each other and your purpose,

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then the world doesn't work. So the world dictates resiliency, and it dictates cultural success.

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It dictates a need to have values and affiliation with the tribe. And because we've lost all those

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drivers, enforcement vehicles for being great and resilient and successful, then they become

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they become seemingly optional. And we have basically lost about two generations of people

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with none of those skills. And back to the initiation process, that's another one of those

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is human beings are required to go through a formal initiation for them to be a psychologically

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mature human that can carry the next generation of culture and raise great kids and perpetuate

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what we are. And so because we've lost that initiation process, you have a lot of

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mature humans who are psychologically adolescent, and they are focused on what I want now,

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immediate gratification, external validation. And it's probably the core root of why we are

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not being successful as a culture currently is a lack of initiation. That's the big one.

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And it's not something you can do alone. And so in this giant pride based world where we're a bunch

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of individuals, you cannot self initiate, you need other people as a enforcement arm or

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accountability system to be able to go through that arduous process. And there are it still exists.

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Military is an initiation. Being part of a successful sports team is an initiation.

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Joining a jujitsu gym is a initiation. So it exists in very narrow veins of our society,

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which is why those are becoming so popular, particularly young men. They instinctively know

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that they have been denied something that is really important. And so, you know, the nature

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abhors a vacuum. So it's coming out. And there's a reason why ice baths are popular now.

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Yeah, the Joe Rogan ice baths, sauna.

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Yeah, it is an artificial adversity. We require adversity. Who would have thought? But, you know,

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artificial times require artificial means. And so we need to artificially create community now

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because it's not going to happen otherwise. We need to artificially create a certain amount of

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adversity to build resiliency. We need to artificially create institutions to hold us

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together. And we've lost the church, we've lost government, we've lost all of our big traditional

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pillars of society have been revealed as being corrupted. And we've recently lost science.

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That was the dagger for me. Dagger to see how much money is in science. And it is no...

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In many ways, the scientific method is a religion. It's a philosophical school.

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You know, here's my hypothesis and here's how I test it. And, you know, it's clean.

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It's a philosophical or spiritual system. It's a truth system. And to have that one taken away,

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that was deeply disheartening for me. If they ever decide we didn't go to the moon,

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I'm gonna be mad about that one. I'm gonna be mad at that one. Like, no, don't take that from me, man.

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When you asked about why, you know, why offer my sword to corporate work, it's because that's the

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last pillar. It's the last thing that requires us to come together. And that's the last thing

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that requires us to come together. It used to be the church or it used to be, I'm an American,

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or it used to be, I believe in science or any of these other things, which were

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institutional tent poles that hold up our society. And so the last place is our corporations.

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So they need to provide meaning. They need to provide affiliation. They need to provide purpose.

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They need to provide relationships and community. It's really important.

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Yeah. Yeah. And how, as individuals existing without these structures, how can we try

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to get initiated to stop being these mature adolescents or swimming through the world with

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no direction? Is there any hope for us? Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%. That's the hero's

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journey that we were talking about before the camera came on. The hero's journey, which is the

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big kind of a universal map of the sequence of steps that human beings go through. That's why

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we keep telling the same exact story for 10,000 years. At the nadir, that's the bottom of,

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it's the dark night of the soul in everyone's quest for meaning, or it might be this fiscal year or

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training for whatever it is. There's always a bleak moment. And Campbell says that's the cave

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you fear to enter that contains the treasure you seek. The treasure you seek is transformation.

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It's the crucifixion that leads to the resurrection. It's the phoenixes burning to death so that they

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can be reborn. And that's the initiation moment. And nobody wants to burn to death and nobody

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wants to be crucified and nobody wants to hit rock bottom. But that's initiation, that moment.

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Because it's the thing that breaks our old worldview of I'm the center of the world,

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of I'm the center of the world, and I deserve, little boys deserve, men do not, men earn,

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and we demand and we provide. And so that adolescent psychology, which views the world as

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victims that are being victimized by perpetrators and villains and malevolent forces,

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whether it's the government or your boss or your dad or whoever it is. And then there's the third

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role of somebody's going to save me. And we pivot through those different roles of I claim my power

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and now I'm a villain in the story to somebody else's story. I'm going to try to save the world.

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That is the trauma triangle or the Dharma triangle. And that's the adolescent view of the world.

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The mature view of the world is I'm responsible for it all. Everything within my sphere of influence

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is mine to own. That's the radical responsibility, ownership, truth that an adult person views

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everything. If there's something that is not as good as it could be in the world,

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it's because you're not as good as you could be. That's the bottom line. Take a look at the

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bottom line. Take a look at your bank account, your fitness, your sex life, your spiritual practice,

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everything in your world. If that's on you, now the things that are outside of your sphere of control,

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then you can surrender that. That's the faith. All those things that are within your sphere of control

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are the things that the adult person owns. That level of responsibility, which is a good word,

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it's the ability to respond instead of react. Kids react, boys react, adolescent people react,

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but mature people, they respond. The ability to respond is responsibility.

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That's the heaviest burden you can carry is launching out into the world, realizing you're

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responsible for everything. It's so heavy, at least initially, that people run. I don't want

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that. It's so much easier to blame the government or your dad or anything else. It's way easier.

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It's comfortable. It's a rotten blanket. To go through that very initially bleak transition,

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you need to have accountability. Men initiate men. Women initiate women.

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It means that when you try to run, when you try to slide, when you try to fall back, when you try to

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rationalize and make excuses and all that, your old game that you ran your whole life,

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then you have brothers that go like, no, don't buy it.

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They call you out. Most men I know don't have any of those men,

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unless you have fostered those relationships and they're owner-based, which means you've done the

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same for them. If you remove alcohol, sports, your job, men have no friends. Everybody listening,

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remove alcohol, sports, and your job. Who you got left that you can call and say,

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I know you have a truck. Can you help me move? How many men would help you move?

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Most of the men listening to this have zero. That's why we're not initiating anymore,

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is that the system's broken. That's a big portion of my work, is instilling the infrastructure to

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make that possible again. Yeah. Realizing you have no real friends is a rude awakening,

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a very rude awakening. It should be terrifying. It should be absolutely anxiety producing.

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And yet we have so much distraction that it's easy to just mask that with some doom scrolling,

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whatever your distraction junk is, so you don't have to face that bleak reality,

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is that, oh, I'm a lone wolf and I'm going to starve to death eventually.

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Maybe for a lot of people listening or young people in general,

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that awakening is the call to adventure, the call to transform, to go on your own hero's journey.

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What was that hero's journey like for you? Back that up. That call to adventure,

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which is there's something wrong in the world, there's something wrong in your life. There's

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some, you know, that's the moment when Luke is asked if he wants to go back to the past,

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asked if he wants to go be a Jedi. This unfulfilling little farm gig you got is not your destiny.

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You know, that's the cubicle life, right? Rocky being a thug in Philly, breaking kneecaps,

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Harry Potter under the stairs, Neo in his cubicle, you know, being a hacker, Dorothy, Dorothy in Kansas.

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That's the call to adventure moment and they all refuse and so do you. It's a form of absolution

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that all of these stories, the hero refuses the call. That's why it exists. That's why

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when we tell a great story, the hero isn't winning because we're not winning. Everybody goes through

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big, big portions of life and even if you are currently winning and you took a very sober look

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at your life, there's aspects of your life that you're not winning. Whether it's your faith,

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your fitness, your sex life, your money, like there's something that you've been like,

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when I get to it or, you know, Luke's reason is I've got work Monday. I can't go do this crazy

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spiritual journey and that's the answer. You know, people aren't undertaking this

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radical lifelift because they're busy, they're burned out, they're tired or Rocky's excuse

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of why he doesn't choose to fight Apollo Creed. I'm just a bum. Who am I? Who am I to

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undertake this epic adventure? It is a form of absolution for all of us that, yeah, you're

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not as good as you could be and that's universal. You are forgiven, but don't wait too long

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because the old Greek proverb, fate guides those who will and those who won't, she drags.

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So if the longer you wait, the harder she drags and at some point she's going to win.

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Fate wins, she bats last and she's coming with two by fours to help you build a life

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and if you don't start building, then she's going to hit you with it. She's going to break

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you with it and that's the moment when Luke's family dies. Luke's family dies. Luke's family

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dies and it's like, oh, is that your sticking point? Let me just handle this for you. Oh,

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you're not addressing your health because you don't have time? Well, let's make some time

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because you're going to deal with cancer. Oh, okay. So we're always going to wish that we got to it

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earlier and that portion of the hero's journey is just saying we've all done it. You know,

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every hero in the history of our species has refused the call until they were forced and then

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they're off and running at that point because they're forced and eventually, you know, they're

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going to gather the skills through adversity of needing people. You need to find your allies.

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You need to find some sort of faith system that's bigger than you that you can surrender

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control to. You need to be able to find the missing pieces that you don't have. That's

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the elder wisdom piece. And once you've gathered those three heroic gifts, then you can take a shot

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at initiation. Once you have your allies, elder wisdom, supernatural aid, then you've got all

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the tools you need to get through that cave and that's the dragon, right? That's the big scary

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beast. That dragon in the cave has our face on it. It's always us. Always us in the cave.

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And nobody wants to look at that. But once you have your allies and you have faith and you have

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knowledge of things that you didn't have before, then you can address that issue.

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And then that's the resurrection. That's the initiation. And then the rest of the back end

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of the hero's journey is a much more... It's equally arduous and daunting and demanding and

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challenging, but it's way more fun. And unfortunately, most men are not getting access to that.

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And I've been kind of teaching and exploring the hero's journey for 30 years.

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And I had a very solid grasp of all those stages up to initiation. And then the back half was like,

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oh, Joseph Campbell says this and this and this. And it was sort of really fast and bleak.

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Because the reality was I hadn't gone down that path. I hadn't lived it. I'd never been in the

382
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:26,160
garden. I'd never returned with treasure. I hadn't done these things in a significant way.

383
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:34,000
So the last decade has been a big illumination of what the back half of the hero's journey is. And

384
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:40,320
it's awesome. And I guess one of the things I really encourage, get through the initiation

385
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:47,520
process, do the things you need to do to be the captain of your fate. Because that's where all the

386
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:52,800
good stuff is. All the greatness, all the fun, all the meaning is that.

387
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:55,680
Yeah. We can't get there without the initiation.

388
00:43:55,680 --> 00:44:01,920
Yeah. So that's the moment back to the initiation or the rite of passage is to be able to

389
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:06,720
die and be reborn. Have you ever read...

390
00:44:06,720 --> 00:44:15,120
Oh gosh. It's a great samurai book. The Hagakure.

391
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:17,120
Oh, Hagakure. I've read parts of it. Yeah.

392
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:25,920
The Hagakure, it was a samurai guy in the 16th century. And they just passed a law

393
00:44:26,720 --> 00:44:31,760
in feudal Japan that samurai who lost their master are no longer allowed to kill themselves.

394
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:36,160
It was deeply disheartening. It was like losing an election for that poor dude. He's like,

395
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:40,080
oh, my whole life is gone to shit. Now I have to be ashamed and

396
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,480
wallow through the rest of myself. The only thing he figured out how to do is like,

397
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,640
I'm going to spend the rest of my bleak existence just cataloging all this stories

398
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:55,520
of samurai culture. So it's a wild book. It's called the Hagakure.

399
00:44:55,520 --> 00:45:02,400
There's a really funny part where he says, it's almost impossible to find a man who could do a

400
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:10,240
proper beheading anymore these days. We're always complaining about the current generation of kids

401
00:45:10,240 --> 00:45:15,360
these days. Yeah, they can't get a job, won't take responsibility. Proper beheading.

402
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:23,360
The theme that runs through that book is the samurai are... it appears to be morbidly obsessed

403
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:30,720
with death. They're always talking about dying and the best way to die and why you should die.

404
00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:34,400
And always you wake up and meditate on your death and death, death, death, death, death.

405
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:39,520
But what he's really talking about is the internal death.

406
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:51,360
Samurai are ferocious predators of inner frailty, weakness, character flaws, lack of discipline,

407
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:57,120
and that's what they're killing. That's why they're so obsessed with death. That's what they're doing.

408
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:08,000
It's a culture built on... they're the first human optimization dudes. They were living the Joe Rogan

409
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:15,840
life before that. They're obsessed with it. And that's part of that initiation process is that,

410
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:22,400
yeah, there's parts of us that have to die for another part to be born. It's the deciding.

411
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:30,400
The word decide has the same root as the words homicide or suicide, and it means to cut or kill

412
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:40,560
in Latin. So every intentional deciding we make is the death of other things. So when you decide to

413
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:49,600
decide to get in shape, it's not free. You're killing off comfort, what you would choose to eat,

414
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:54,400
what the people you hang out with, what you do on Friday nights. You're killing off a bunch of things

415
00:46:54,960 --> 00:47:01,200
to do that one thing. Even that is an example of an initiation. You want to get in shape?

416
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:05,680
Okay, well, here's the thing that have to die. And you're not going to be able to do that alone.

417
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:11,520
You need the accountability of people that when you have your moment of weakness and it's Friday

418
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:17,600
night and you're like, f it, I'm eating, drinking, doing whatever you do, that you have guys come in

419
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:21,600
and go like, ah, ah, ah, ah, I'm guarding the exits. You don't get a run like that. You're getting

420
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:29,040
in shape. So initiation occurs constantly in the self-development or leadership process.

421
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:35,200
And that's our job for all the leaders of whether it's a family or a work team or our country,

422
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:42,640
that's your job is to undertake that heroic journey of getting your shit together. It's just,

423
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:51,360
it's mandatory. Yeah, definitely. I'm curious about your experience with coming into that call to

424
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:59,280
adventure. I'll share my experience with it. When I was in high school, I had a moment where

425
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:05,120
I was very prideful. I was full of myself with my intelligence. I thought I was very smart. I thought

426
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:11,360
that was the most important thing ever. And I examined my life and I was like, I don't really

427
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:18,560
have any friends. I don't have like the body that I want. I don't have like a happy life. My mental

428
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:23,520
health sucks. All of these things suck. Right. And I'm like, oh, but I'm smart. That's all that

429
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:29,200
matters. And once I took that away, I was like, I have nothing. And so I realized that and I asked

430
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:35,760
myself the question, if you're so damn smart, why can't you figure out how to be happy? And that,

431
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:42,960
just that question just broke my current state of being and I, and I had to change. I had to

432
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:49,840
change immediately. And so that developed a process where it was hubris. Yeah, I had hubris

433
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:55,680
and I couldn't change because of the hubris until that hubris was broken. And that developed the

434
00:48:55,680 --> 00:49:00,240
process of me actually getting in shape, trying to build the physique that I wanted. I started

435
00:49:00,240 --> 00:49:03,120
learning how to make friends. I was like, okay, I'm going to connect with people. I'm going to

436
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:10,880
learn how to do that. Reading books, doing the self-improvement stuff. Right. And, and yeah,

437
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:19,920
that, that I think that that moment was so pivotal and just acknowledging that call to adventure and

438
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:26,400
getting pushed down by fate, just steamrolled everything else forward and there was no other

439
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:36,080
option. Yeah. It's a, what's the quote? The awakening process is irreversible. It really,

440
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:44,400
I mean, it is irreversible. Once you, once you see it like, oh, to go back is, is fraudulent.

441
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:51,280
You're a charlatan. You're a coward. Yeah. Like, oh, so yeah, the awakening process is irreversible.

442
00:49:51,920 --> 00:50:00,640
Who said that? Jamie, look it up. Jamie said that. I'm going to claim it. If you can't find anybody.

443
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:06,400
No, it's probably Hume or someone else. Yeah. I don't know. Churchillian drift. You know that one?

444
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:13,040
Uh, Winston Churchill. Yeah. Quotes that don't have an attribution tend to drift towards being

445
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:18,480
attributed to Churchill. I, the other day I was trying to guess where a quote came from

446
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:24,080
and I was thinking, is that a Shakespeare? And we were both like, it's probably Churchill.

447
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:31,440
Yeah. It was Churchill. He said a lot of cool things. It was some obscure British Lord, but

448
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:36,880
it could have been Churchill. Yeah. But I guess my, my follow-up to that was what was your experience

449
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:46,240
like in that awakening, getting yourself up off your couch, being a non-mature or an adolescent,

450
00:50:46,240 --> 00:50:54,480
right? Before your initiation. Firstly, um, congratulations for getting that early. Most

451
00:50:54,480 --> 00:51:03,600
people are, most young men are not self-aware enough that they can see, be the witness of

452
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:11,680
themselves. There's a vague understanding of, I don't have the things that I want, but there

453
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:18,960
isn't the connection of I'm responsible and I can like that. That's a, that's a developmental

454
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:24,960
process that you get from older men who were modeling that. And if you don't have a mentor

455
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:31,120
or a coach or an active engaged dad or some other cool uncles or we, you know, we're supposed to

456
00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:36,320
provide you with that roadmap, you're pretty lost. You're going to be in a multi-decade

457
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:44,240
slog until fate breaks you. And then you'll start figuring it out. You know, um, I see a lot of

458
00:51:44,240 --> 00:51:49,680
young men getting it earlier. And I think, I think a lot of it because it's being modeled for you.

459
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:58,400
Like the reason why you're doing this podcast is that you've, you've seen other podcasts that

460
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:05,280
provided value for you. Like, Oh, there's a, there's a path and there, this is an era of the rebirth

461
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:13,520
of great men. I'm clear about it. There's no gloom and doom about society or masculinity collapsing.

462
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:19,200
This is the rebirth of great men. And there has always been eras of great men and they come

463
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:30,400
right at the period of time where there's enough, um, call it comfort or resources or freedom to

464
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:36,560
explore deeper thoughts. Cause if you don't, if you're worried about defending your country or

465
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:43,680
feeding your family, you are not exploring philosophy. So you need to have enough freedom

466
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:50,720
in there that you have the opportunity to explore deeper things. Yeah. No, I love what you're saying

467
00:52:50,720 --> 00:52:58,960
right there with philosophy. That was probably a huge driver in me having that awakening was I had

468
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:06,160
a philosophy professor who was standup guy, very masculine, loved working out, wrestled, did

469
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:11,600
philosophy. And this was like, I was like, yo, I want to be like him. I want to be like this guy.

470
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:20,400
So just seeing a role model, a mentor to model after was something that was so useful in the

471
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:26,320
philosophy portion of thinking through things of being able to consider deeper ideas as opposed to

472
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:32,240
as opposed to, I'm just trying to survive. A hundred percent. The, all the great Greek philosophers,

473
00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:39,360
there was a, they landed in a certain perfect era or our founding fathers, like those,

474
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:48,080
those men could speak multiple languages. They're, they architects of their own house. They ran,

475
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:51,840
you know, they, they, they did a bunch of things and they could duel and they could fight and they

476
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:57,680
could do agriculture and they could do business and they could do philosophy. These were multifaceted

477
00:53:58,240 --> 00:54:05,680
men that did great things were at that time where, you know, I look at, you know,

478
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:13,120
Jocko or Rogan or a whole number of men and they're, they're doing things at a professional level

479
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:20,000
across multiple spheres, which shouldn't, which is not perceived as being something that

480
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:25,520
you should be able to do. Like, no, pick your lane and you stay in it. They're doing multiple

481
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:32,080
things at a very high level. So it's a very exciting time and you get to witness that and go,

482
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:37,360
Oh, that's available to me. So I can be financially successful and spiritually robust and have a

483
00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:51,040
great relationship and do all the, all the things. And that's possible. And that, you know, for me,

484
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:58,960
that, that guy was a drill sergeant in the army and I was 18 and, you know, just a total basket

485
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:10,400
case, basket case. And we were doing stupid, just adolescent things in basic training. And so we were

486
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:16,400
getting punished, getting just our asses smoked and grass drills at three in the morning. He was

487
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:23,440
hosed. I mean, it was horrible. And, and I remember him saying his name was drill sergeant Thomas.

488
00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:29,840
I remember this is, I don't know, it's 40 years ago. I remember drill sergeant Thomas, you know,

489
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:36,960
handsome black guy, the hat, sing, he's with a beauty. He could sing beautiful cadence. He was

490
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:44,880
Jack. He was like, Oh my God, like that dude. Wow. In the middle of this abyss, he said,

491
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:51,120
you know, if first of all, a million or more, you know, young men have gone through what you're

492
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:58,480
going through and they have persevered, you have everything that they have and more, you absolutely

493
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:05,680
are able to do it. I was like, Oh, I hadn't, nobody ever told me that it was, Oh, there's

494
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:09,920
the rich people, there's the successful people, there's the jacked people. They're different than

495
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:16,160
me somehow. I'm cursed. I have this just, Oh, that's me. I was born like that or whatever.

496
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:22,400
That's not the reality. And the reality is everybody watching this has all the tools you need

497
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:28,480
to be as great as any other human out there that's doing it. They have all the wrong ingredients.

498
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:35,280
And, and then he said, um, he pointed a, you know, big street light above us. He goes, if I

499
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:41,600
see another man climb that pole, jump off, not get hurt, he goes, I can do that. And I was like,

500
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:49,440
Oh, like it resonated with me. It sounds crude and adolescent, but for me that, that was one of

501
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:56,720
those seminal moments of, that I continually refer back to of when I look at a man I admire and would

502
00:56:56,720 --> 00:57:03,840
be intimidated by or maybe covetous or what, like why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am

503
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:10,160
I like, why am I not doing that? Why am I not capable? What, what are they doing that's different?

504
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:17,040
What do I need to learn? What is my initiation into that, that level of, um, excellence,

505
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:27,760
erraté? Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people attribute a lack of achievement to a, Oh, I just

506
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:33,360
don't have what's available. What would I need to get there? Right. I need to go study about this

507
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:40,800
for three years so I can finally do it. And it's like, no, you're, you have the tools and you most

508
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:47,120
likely have enough knowledge to get started. Like at least with like fitness, with the gym,

509
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:52,640
a lot of people will sit there and watch the most optimal training program and the most,

510
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,400
these are the exercises you have to do. And it's like, Oh, I have to study this stuff to,

511
00:57:56,400 --> 00:58:01,920
to be optimal, to get jacked. It's like, you could do the basics for the rest of your life,

512
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:08,080
like five exercises. Yeah. And you will get jacked. Start. Yeah. And that's the hard part,

513
00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:12,320
right? Is the starting. Yeah. That's refusing the call. I'm refusing the call because

514
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:20,560
everyone in my family's fat or nobody has money or it's, it's the victim story.

515
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:27,680
Somehow I am a victim and other people are villains and I'm waiting for somebody to save me.

516
00:58:27,680 --> 00:58:32,800
And it's, you know, we go through all of these struggles until we realized, no, it's you. Oh,

517
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:40,320
that's the, that is the liberating moment. The burden of that is, and Peterson does a

518
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:47,120
genius job of unpacking Exodus. That's his, we who rest with God kind of thing, you know? And

519
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:52,960
so when the Jews are liberated from the tyranny and slavery of Pharaoh,

520
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:59,920
then they get to go to the promised land. It's like, awesome. No, you've got desert time.

521
00:59:01,520 --> 00:59:09,280
And that is a portion of the hero's journey is it post initiation, you don't get all the good stuff.

522
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:15,040
You're not jacked. You're not rich. You're not, you're not those things. You have to go through

523
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:21,920
the desert, which then is the thing that integrates the initiation. The desert is a trackless place

524
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:31,600
that is designed to test the faithful. That's why it exists. And in the Exodus analogy, they get

525
00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:39,520
lost and they get disgruntled and disenfranchised and disappointed. And they start worshiping false

526
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:48,160
idols and their journey's done until you have your pillar of smoke, pillar of fire and your

527
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:55,920
commandments. That's the metaphor. And that's your vision and your values. That's the foundation

528
00:59:55,920 --> 01:00:01,920
of culture is your vision and your values, which is why when I'm doing organizational development,

529
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:09,520
that's where we start. I start with the executive team. You need to have a very, very clear vision

530
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:15,520
for why this organization exists. And you need to have a set of values that guide the decision-making

531
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:22,160
process of your people. That's your pillar of smoke commandments. And if you don't have that,

532
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:31,040
your people will eventually quit and they will either leave to find another tribe that has a

533
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:39,600
vision and values, or they will just, they will become disengaged and become that 87%. Yeah. Who

534
01:00:39,600 --> 01:00:44,880
is going to just park it wherever they are and start worshiping false idols. Yeah. And you'll

535
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:52,240
see them doom scrolling. Computer is going to die. Take five. Yeah, man. Let's charge it up. Okay.

536
01:00:52,240 --> 01:00:59,200
We're live. Yeah, we're live. Okay. All right. So shout out Jack Donovan for the shirt. We're

537
01:00:59,200 --> 01:01:06,800
talking about power brands or maybe I'm this camera power brands. All right. Well, we talked

538
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:15,520
a lot about initiation. Talked about that was a while ago. It was a little bit ago. We talked

539
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:21,920
about the mission, the shared values, all of this alignment, the things that deal with alignment.

540
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:28,320
And in order to have initiation, to have this process occur, you need kinship. You need people

541
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:33,200
around you. Right. So talk to me a little bit about kinship. What does that mean?

542
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:43,840
Kinship is the same root as the word kind. So we can't have kindness without kinship and kindness

543
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:54,640
is the specific behavior that we reserve for our kin. And we can't be kind to everyone on the planet.

544
01:01:55,360 --> 01:02:02,000
Otherwise we will run out of resources. At some point we have to recognize that there is a

545
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:08,240
core group of people that deserve our sacrifice. And if we're sacrificing for everyone in the world

546
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:13,760
and it's not reciprocal, then eventually we go extinct. And so we can be respectful and we can

547
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:22,080
be nice and we can do all these great things for the world. But in terms of the kindness that

548
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:29,440
involves sacrifice, that needs to be reciprocal. So earlier we talked about how many men will

549
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:36,800
actually help you move. Well, it's not free. They're giving up a day of their life,

550
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:41,280
which they would have rather be doing something else. And they're willing to do that for you.

551
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:50,240
That's kindness. That's kinship. And when another man does that for you, you owe them.

552
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:55,200
That's how the reciprocity works. It means that they have one in the back with you. That's honor.

553
01:02:55,200 --> 01:03:02,480
Honor is a relationship-based behavior. And so a kinship system is an honor-based culture.

554
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:08,080
And that's the biggest thing that's been lost in our current society of pride is that there is no

555
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:21,040
reciprocity. There is no honor. And so kinship is that foundation of sacrifice to other people within

556
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:27,840
your community that will be reciprocal. And that engine creates so much trust and safety and

557
01:03:27,840 --> 01:03:37,520
resiliency that it enables us to engage with things that are risky. Yeah. And so in regards to

558
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:45,520
this idea of kinship creates altruism. It creates sacrifice. It creates helping other people. And

559
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:53,920
we've lost it in a modern era. How can we go about building kinship, recreating these systems where

560
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:59,360
the community surrounds you, you take risks, they pick you back up? How do we create that?

561
01:04:00,160 --> 01:04:05,520
Well, one of two ways. The first one is you join an existing honor-based culture.

562
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:12,240
And the popularity of jujitsu is that you can't join a gym

563
01:04:12,240 --> 01:04:23,680
that is teaching and participating in a lethal technology without honor. I mean, it's a deal

564
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:28,800
breaker. There are very strict codes of what you do and don't do in a jujitsu gym. Otherwise,

565
01:04:28,800 --> 01:04:36,720
you are removed from the... You're excommunicated because it's lethal. It's deadly. And that is an

566
01:04:36,720 --> 01:04:43,200
anchor back to how we used to live, which is the world is deadly. There are competing territorial

567
01:04:43,200 --> 01:04:49,040
tribes. There are animals that eat us. There is starvation. There is predation. There is environment.

568
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:55,760
It's lethal. We're perfectly adapted for a lethal environment. And our protocol for dealing with

569
01:04:55,760 --> 01:05:03,920
that is kinship. It's a mandatory operating system for people who deal with lethal things.

570
01:05:03,920 --> 01:05:10,240
That's why the military is honor-based. Police, fire, sports, jujitsu, those are honor-based

571
01:05:10,240 --> 01:05:16,320
cultures because they're lethal. So join one of those and then you will get to reap the benefits

572
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:22,640
as long as you're willing to conduct yourself in an honorable way. Then you get all the benefits of

573
01:05:22,640 --> 01:05:29,440
that. The other avenue of kinship is you create it. And that's the responsibility of leaders.

574
01:05:29,440 --> 01:05:35,280
And you create it by that foundation of we have a shared aspirational vision for the future,

575
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:41,520
which is significant enough that it requires our full commitment. But we also have a set of

576
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:47,440
values, behaviors, a code, a creed, your articles of agreement on a pirate ship that you sign

577
01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:57,360
that says, we will abide by these rules. And that behavior will drive us towards our future.

578
01:05:57,360 --> 01:06:01,440
That is the foundation of your kinship system. And it comes from leaders. Leaders have to

579
01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:10,400
model this. We don't decree it. We recognize that our people and our kids are not listening to us.

580
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:18,960
They're watching us. So that's part of the evidence of our efficacy is our life. We have to be living

581
01:06:18,960 --> 01:06:26,560
whatever the operating system is that we're promoting. The people who are falsely adopting

582
01:06:26,560 --> 01:06:34,960
that get revealed very quickly. Yeah. And when we're creating these systems of kinship,

583
01:06:35,520 --> 01:06:41,120
there are people who might try to take advantage of these systems. People are giving, people are

584
01:06:41,120 --> 01:06:48,400
sacrificing, people are being heroes, and some bad players come in. How do we deal with those people?

585
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:55,680
Generally speaking, culture is a critical mass. There's a tipping point. And particularly when

586
01:06:56,720 --> 01:07:02,880
you're looking at the people who are engaged in culture creation, organizational development,

587
01:07:02,880 --> 01:07:11,440
and they're getting up to speed with culture change, that as soon as you get past 50%,

588
01:07:11,440 --> 01:07:17,600
then the rest of the people will fall into line. Because they realize that that's how I reclaim

589
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:24,320
belonging. And belonging is the biggest driver of humanity. We need belonging. As soon as you have

590
01:07:24,320 --> 01:07:31,280
that 50% buy-in of leadership, then the rest will fall into line. The ones that do not abide

591
01:07:31,840 --> 01:07:36,720
will self-select out. You don't have to fire people. You just have to keep running your game.

592
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:41,600
And very quickly, people will be like, oh, this is not my culture, whether that's because they're

593
01:07:41,600 --> 01:07:49,440
not willing to or they're not able to. And there are many different versions of culture with a

594
01:07:49,440 --> 01:07:54,880
different vision for the future and a different set of values. And people need to find one that

595
01:07:54,880 --> 01:08:02,560
makes sense for them. And that's legitimate. That 50% marker is one that solidifies culture change.

596
01:08:02,560 --> 01:08:10,160
And the people who, once that's intact, people who come in that are not aligned with that will

597
01:08:10,160 --> 01:08:16,160
very quickly realize it. Oh, I'm going to be revealed as not in alignment. And they will

598
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:23,520
self-select. Yeah. Through, well, be it shame from the group or be it other people talking about

599
01:08:23,520 --> 01:08:30,960
them that they're taking advantage of the system. Oh, yeah. Shame is, you know, it's a

600
01:08:30,960 --> 01:08:39,280
shame is a really powerful emotion because it's the way that communities police behavior. So

601
01:08:40,000 --> 01:08:47,120
it's a deadly sharp sword. And when people use the shame sword indiscriminately, then just

602
01:08:47,120 --> 01:08:51,600
massive amounts of trauma in the world. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, where it really should

603
01:08:51,600 --> 01:08:57,600
be the stick of fate, where it's like, if you don't, and here's why, then you don't get to

604
01:08:57,600 --> 01:09:03,120
participate in all the things we're doing. When people are experiencing shame, it triggers the

605
01:09:03,120 --> 01:09:10,960
same part of your brain, your amygdala, as a literal threat to your life. Yeah. It's a death

606
01:09:10,960 --> 01:09:18,800
response. Shame is a death response. And horses do it. Wolves do it. Every, almost every communal

607
01:09:18,800 --> 01:09:28,480
species has a shame function, where if you're not abiding by our norms, then we run you out and you

608
01:09:28,480 --> 01:09:35,360
die. That's how the game works in the real world. And so obviously, you know, a horse that gets run

609
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:40,800
out into the plains, they get eaten that night. The safety is in the herd. The dark part is when

610
01:09:40,800 --> 01:09:50,080
you see that happen in school, when the culture is maladaptive and you're having people getting

611
01:09:50,080 --> 01:09:56,000
shamed for not being part of a toxic culture. Like, oh, that's really dark. People who don't

612
01:09:56,000 --> 01:10:02,400
participate in the alignment foundation, and then they're being held accountable, they interpret it

613
01:10:02,400 --> 01:10:09,600
as shame. Whereas if you are part of the team and you're receiving coaching, critical feedback,

614
01:10:09,600 --> 01:10:16,240
improvements, if you're part of that, you don't interpret it as shame. You interpret it as

615
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:21,440
coaching or investment or accountability. That's an incredibly important nuance from leadership,

616
01:10:21,440 --> 01:10:28,880
is you want to solidify alignment and belonging, and then give critical feedback. That way,

617
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:33,520
it's not shameful. It's called accountability, which is what every high performing team in the

618
01:10:33,520 --> 01:10:40,080
world recognizes as a central part of their success. Can you have critical feedback and

619
01:10:40,080 --> 01:10:43,200
have people hold themselves and each other accountable for success?

620
01:10:43,200 --> 01:10:51,680
Yeah. And so shame access this mechanism within large groups to change behaviors of people who

621
01:10:51,680 --> 01:10:58,880
might take advantage of the system. Correct. And then, you know, shame is just a dark word.

622
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:04,320
The brighter version is accountability. And again, people who want to take advantage of the system

623
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:08,960
and they're held accountable, they're going to interpret it as shame, but, you know,

624
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:11,920
that's because they don't belong. Yeah. And from what you're saying,

625
01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:19,040
it reminds me of modern politics in a sense, in that if you're on the, be on the left,

626
01:11:19,040 --> 01:11:25,360
be on the right, there seems to be a weaponizing of shame on both sides, where it's like,

627
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:29,520
you don't agree on this issue with me, we're going to kick you out of the group, or you better

628
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:34,960
align with us right now. And it's happening on both sides at a very massive scale. Even with this

629
01:11:34,960 --> 01:11:41,520
recent election, I keep seeing posts online that are very shaming towards whatever group they don't

630
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:49,440
like. Yeah. Yeah. Alignment first. That's the biggest leadership axiom that I would leave with

631
01:11:49,440 --> 01:11:56,240
everybody is if there's something going wrong culturally within your team, look at the level

632
01:11:56,240 --> 01:12:03,040
below and, you know, and those four levels are alignment, kinship, healthy conflict, sustainable

633
01:12:03,040 --> 01:12:09,600
success. So if there's something that is missing, then look at that foundational step before it

634
01:12:09,600 --> 01:12:16,400
and do that work. Yeah. And so you have the alignment, the kinship, both of these things

635
01:12:16,400 --> 01:12:22,560
create conflict. They enable you to have the tools and the solidity and the foundation to

636
01:12:22,560 --> 01:12:30,160
deal with conflict. Conflict is inevitable. Okay. Say more about that. Life is conflict in a,

637
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:37,680
in a certain way. You can't innovate without failure. That's conflict. You can't hold somebody

638
01:12:37,680 --> 01:12:43,280
accountable without having some potential blowback of hurt feelings, resentment,

639
01:12:43,280 --> 01:12:50,960
miscommunication. That's conflict. You can't make a critical decision without acknowledging that

640
01:12:50,960 --> 01:12:56,960
I'm going to make bad ones and there's conflict. Competitiveness inherently involves conflict.

641
01:12:56,960 --> 01:13:01,600
There's, you can't be competitive and not recognize that, Ooh, somebody's going to lose.

642
01:13:01,600 --> 01:13:09,440
That's part of the game. So the ability to have the resiliency to be able to engage with conflict in a,

643
01:13:09,440 --> 01:13:15,680
in a functional sense, it comes straight from kinship. Otherwise you're going to have people

644
01:13:15,680 --> 01:13:20,080
either avoid it. They will not innovate. They will not make decisions. They will not be intrinsically

645
01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:25,120
motivated. They will not hold each other accountable. They will just acquiesce. They will fight,

646
01:13:25,120 --> 01:13:30,560
flight, freeze, appease. One of those four dysfunctional trauma responses. So if you want

647
01:13:30,560 --> 01:13:38,080
your team to actually engage in a competitive, successful, innovative manner, you have to have

648
01:13:38,080 --> 01:13:45,040
that foundation of trust and safety. Yeah. And in the culture of comfort that we're talking about,

649
01:13:45,040 --> 01:13:52,240
I think a lot of young people are afraid of conflict, afraid of pissing someone off,

650
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:58,320
doing the wrong thing. So a lot of people will avoid speaking out on values or speaking out on

651
01:13:58,880 --> 01:14:04,000
this stuff that you're talking about alignment. So how as young people can we have the right tools

652
01:14:04,000 --> 01:14:11,520
to handle conflicts in this modern lens? First of all, that honor culture or tribal systems

653
01:14:12,400 --> 01:14:19,200
only works at 150 people or less. That's the Dunbar's number. When you get bigger than that,

654
01:14:19,840 --> 01:14:26,960
then we lose the intimacy of our connections. The situation you're talking about with small groups

655
01:14:26,960 --> 01:14:33,600
of young people who are struggling with that run the same protocol. Hey, alignment. And even if

656
01:14:33,600 --> 01:14:39,520
your alignment is different than somebody else, you can still honor what their vision for the

657
01:14:39,520 --> 01:14:47,040
future is. You can honor their values. You don't have to dismiss that. There still can be a consensus

658
01:14:47,040 --> 01:14:53,840
of, okay, we're different. And those differences is actually what makes us great. Our differences

659
01:14:53,840 --> 01:15:00,640
drive our adaptability. That difference is great, but we still have to have some foundation of

660
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:05,680
a respectful acknowledgement of different people's things. And once you have that,

661
01:15:05,680 --> 01:15:12,880
then you can explore that kinship level and so on and so forth. In big organizations that are above

662
01:15:12,880 --> 01:15:19,920
150, you have to now start relying on some external structures. And this is when we have

663
01:15:19,920 --> 01:15:26,080
organized religion and we have organized governments and we have those pillars of society

664
01:15:26,080 --> 01:15:32,480
that hold us together in groups that are larger than 150. So when we see those being corrupted

665
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:41,520
and not revitalized, that's society threatening. It really is. America is a great example of that.

666
01:15:41,520 --> 01:15:49,520
It was a revolutionary idea in human history that we're going to hold together all these

667
01:15:49,520 --> 01:15:56,160
different states with completely different cultures and economies and worldviews. And we're going to

668
01:15:56,160 --> 01:16:04,400
create this alignment system that holds us all together. I mean, it's a radical, it's radical,

669
01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:12,080
deeply radical. Our constitution is a radical document. So that is what holds America together,

670
01:16:12,080 --> 01:16:19,440
is our articles, our amendments, the constitution, like we have this foundation of alignment that

671
01:16:20,160 --> 01:16:28,800
is the only thing that holds us together, that thing. So if we lose that, then you see the raw

672
01:16:29,520 --> 01:16:35,440
dysfunction of tribalism that we're experiencing today. Tribalism is the dark side of tribe.

673
01:16:35,440 --> 01:16:41,040
You can't have tribe without the other. There's always the other, because that's what welds us

674
01:16:41,040 --> 01:16:44,800
together as an affiliation and identity. To beat the other guy.

675
01:16:46,400 --> 01:16:50,880
That comes with it. You're not going to be competitive until you realize there's another.

676
01:16:51,760 --> 01:17:01,680
And so how do you make that healthy? And USC and UCLA, there's a rivalry, but they're both

677
01:17:01,680 --> 01:17:07,360
Los Angeles teams. They're both football teams that play by the same rules. So there's built in

678
01:17:08,320 --> 01:17:18,240
alignment. And when we lose that alignment piece, then you have a much darker, more volatile

679
01:17:19,280 --> 01:17:22,320
thing. And politically, we're sliding towards that.

680
01:17:22,320 --> 01:17:28,400
Yeah. But I guess for tribes on a global scale, that would look like acknowledging that they're

681
01:17:28,400 --> 01:17:34,880
on a global scale that would look like acknowledging the humanity, having empathy for other groups,

682
01:17:34,880 --> 01:17:39,360
regardless of, oh, they're on the other team. I want to beat them. But I can acknowledge

683
01:17:40,080 --> 01:17:44,160
that they have the same humanity as me. And on that level, we're aligned.

684
01:17:44,160 --> 01:17:51,920
In World War I, they pause the war for Christmas. All these dudes who are gassing and machine

685
01:17:51,920 --> 01:17:56,320
getting each other, come out of the trenches, give whatever gifts they had, hooking it out

686
01:17:56,320 --> 01:18:04,960
on Christmas. That's alignment. There's something that we can share that we can have this moment.

687
01:18:04,960 --> 01:18:07,440
Yeah. We all want to celebrate Christmas. Yeah.

688
01:18:07,440 --> 01:18:18,800
And that is the solution to our political tribalism is that, fly the flag. That's a symbol.

689
01:18:19,520 --> 01:18:25,600
Symbols are a deep form of affiliation that we all carry. And until we have a global

690
01:18:25,600 --> 01:18:31,200
flag and there's aliens that we have to fight or negotiate with or whatever it is, then what we

691
01:18:31,200 --> 01:18:35,680
have is nationalism. And even that symbol has been somewhat

692
01:18:35,680 --> 01:18:40,800
degraded, right? Someone flying the American flag is immediately pitted as being a Republican.

693
01:18:40,800 --> 01:18:42,160
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

694
01:18:42,160 --> 01:18:47,360
And so that symbol that used to represent our unity now represents our division.

695
01:18:47,360 --> 01:18:51,360
Yeah. Yeah. And if I'm, let's say, a young person

696
01:18:51,360 --> 01:18:55,920
listening to this and I do want to have alignment between my friends, my family, my community,

697
01:18:55,920 --> 01:19:01,920
what is, it seems weird to have these conversations, right? Maybe a little bit awkward, a little bit

698
01:19:01,920 --> 01:19:08,080
just like, you want to talk about values? Like in a team, it might make sense, but within your

699
01:19:08,080 --> 01:19:13,520
community, it feels a little bit weird. How can we tackle those things tactically?

700
01:19:13,520 --> 01:19:22,480
Yeah. You have to talk about them. I did this with my family. I do this with big organizations.

701
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:28,560
I grind them on their vision statement and we wordsmith it and we make it memorable and

702
01:19:29,120 --> 01:19:35,200
tamed with values, try to find an acronym, like whatever we can do to make that vision values

703
01:19:35,200 --> 01:19:44,480
applicable. And I hadn't really done it formally with my family. And so we got together and I asked

704
01:19:44,480 --> 01:19:51,920
my wife, like, okay, what's our family vision? What's our big why? And she immediately came out

705
01:19:51,920 --> 01:20:00,320
with, I think our big vision is to live life so well that it serves as an example of what is possible.

706
01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:08,880
It's like, damn, honey, it was done. That's our family creed. I love it. Like,

707
01:20:08,880 --> 01:20:14,480
now I'll put that in Latin under my coat of arms. You know, live life so well, it serves as an

708
01:20:14,480 --> 01:20:20,960
example of what is possible. And again, and I do this professionally and I didn't do it. So that

709
01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:25,760
conversation, that's the best dinner conversation you can have. Go out and get beers with your

710
01:20:25,760 --> 01:20:30,320
friends and have that conversation. Like, you know, what's your creed? What's your ethos? What's

711
01:20:30,320 --> 01:20:38,240
your why you hear? Oh, like that's the pro level conversation. And then the ancillary piece, which

712
01:20:38,240 --> 01:20:45,760
is around the values, that's work. You know, that's some work you have to do. I have a big war board

713
01:20:45,760 --> 01:20:53,920
in my office and I write down kind of principles or quotes that I hear that are navigating

714
01:20:53,920 --> 01:21:00,480
statements, commandments. I have a commandment list, you know, and I hunt those actively. I don't

715
01:21:00,480 --> 01:21:07,680
know whatever my algorithm is, but it feeds me a lot of inspirational shit. Mine too. And every

716
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:14,560
once in a while I hear something that, you know, Hormuzi and he shared this one that the solution

717
01:21:14,560 --> 01:21:18,560
to something is the work you're avoiding, in the work you're avoiding. Oh yeah, the magic you are

718
01:21:18,560 --> 01:21:28,160
looking for is in the work you are avoiding. So good. And both those dudes are like, yes, yes.

719
01:21:28,160 --> 01:21:36,240
So we're getting inundated with that. And so the more structured part is to actually start

720
01:21:36,240 --> 01:21:43,360
crystallizing a worldview of what is this about? Yeah. And so I think I have 12 of those statements

721
01:21:43,360 --> 01:21:49,440
on my board, which are kind of like the way that I refer to it. It's right next to my desk. I look

722
01:21:49,440 --> 01:21:55,920
at it. I'm like, okay. And so for young people, at some point when you're going pro with your life,

723
01:21:56,880 --> 01:22:03,600
you have come up with that thing and it's your elevator's, you know, speech and a networking

724
01:22:03,600 --> 01:22:11,120
event on a first date. You lead with that. This is who I am. You should lead with that. Job interview,

725
01:22:11,120 --> 01:22:17,280
lead with that. Every meeting you go to, if you're a leader, you lead with that. This is why we're

726
01:22:17,280 --> 01:22:24,320
here. These are our values. Work it in because it's super powerful. Yeah. What do you mean by going

727
01:22:24,320 --> 01:22:31,600
pro on your life? Going pro. Yeah. That's a Pressfield. We were talking about Steven

728
01:22:31,600 --> 01:22:37,760
Pressfield. He's a big historical fiction author and he wrote a book called The War of Art,

729
01:22:37,760 --> 01:22:44,160
which outlined his creative process. And the one piece in that book that a lot of people gravitated

730
01:22:44,160 --> 01:22:51,520
to is the difference between an amateur and a pro. And what's the difference? People think that

731
01:22:52,240 --> 01:23:03,200
amateurs have a certain casual nature of their life and pros have a level of success and money.

732
01:23:03,200 --> 01:23:09,920
That's a pro. You get paid, you're a pro. And he's saying that's not it at all. To be a pro is to

733
01:23:11,120 --> 01:23:16,800
take your life seriously. So if you want to get in shape, you need to address it professionally.

734
01:23:17,920 --> 01:23:21,680
If you want to write a book, if you want to have a great relationship, you want to be a great parent,

735
01:23:22,720 --> 01:23:30,880
you look at it professionally, which means an endless commitment to growth that you prioritize

736
01:23:30,880 --> 01:23:35,920
it, you're willing to sacrifice for it. That's the difference between an amateur and a pro.

737
01:23:35,920 --> 01:23:44,240
And it's not that you have a God given gift and you get paid a lot of money to throw a football.

738
01:23:44,240 --> 01:23:49,360
It's that that's what you do. It's your identity. And it really comes down to an identity.

739
01:23:49,360 --> 01:23:57,360
If you identify yourself as somebody who you're a healthy fit person and you live your life

740
01:23:57,360 --> 01:24:03,360
according to that identity, you're a pro. So that's how he writes his books. He sits down at nine

741
01:24:03,360 --> 01:24:10,640
o'clock in the morning and he just opens the document and he waits for the muse. And sometimes

742
01:24:10,640 --> 01:24:16,880
it's bumpy and terrible and unreadable. Stephen King calls that his the closed door version,

743
01:24:17,520 --> 01:24:25,280
where you just allow yourself to write crap for days, just unreadable junk. But you're

744
01:24:25,280 --> 01:24:31,040
doing it. A professional goes to the gym when they don't want to. And they don't crush,

745
01:24:31,040 --> 01:24:36,640
they're not impeccable, they're not flawless, they're not skilled. They just show up, show up.

746
01:24:37,200 --> 01:24:43,200
That's what pros do. Do you think we can take life too seriously and go in the other direction?

747
01:24:43,200 --> 01:24:49,200
Like in my head, I'm imagining a person who has so many goals they want to accomplish and

748
01:24:49,200 --> 01:24:54,320
responsibilities and they just don't have fun. You can only go pro on a few things. And you pick those

749
01:24:54,320 --> 01:25:01,840
with great intentionality. With your values, with your alignment. You can go pro on anything. There

750
01:25:01,840 --> 01:25:08,720
are people who build their entire life around travel. Not my version of pro. But for them,

751
01:25:08,720 --> 01:25:14,720
they're pros and they have seen the world and it's what they do. It's great. But they're not

752
01:25:14,720 --> 01:25:20,640
pros and they have seen the world and it's what they do. It's great. There are professional

753
01:25:20,640 --> 01:25:28,320
parents. There's professional... Like if you look at my house and how my wife builds this house,

754
01:25:28,320 --> 01:25:34,240
she's a pro. It's her identity, it's what she does. You can go pro on anything, but all the

755
01:25:34,240 --> 01:25:37,040
things that are important for you, you need to go pro.

756
01:25:37,040 --> 01:25:42,400
Talk to me about the last step of the pyramid, sustainable success.

757
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:48,720
It's legacy. That tribe triangle that were of those four levels of culture creation

758
01:25:49,280 --> 01:25:54,080
are very similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You have to start at the bottom,

759
01:25:54,080 --> 01:25:59,680
otherwise you don't get the ones above. Maslow ends with self-actualization and

760
01:26:01,040 --> 01:26:10,800
that's pride-based. That's individualistic. It's me focused on myself. And sustainable success is

761
01:26:10,800 --> 01:26:17,760
the recognition that there is another level above self-actualization in every indigenous culture.

762
01:26:18,080 --> 01:26:25,680
There is the responsibility for the creation of the next generation that is following you.

763
01:26:25,680 --> 01:26:31,040
It is honoring of the ancestors and the ancestors to come and that you're a part of that. It's the

764
01:26:31,040 --> 01:26:38,480
perpetuation of culture. It's adaptability. It's long-term. It's the persistence hunt

765
01:26:38,480 --> 01:26:44,880
that every significant thing that humans or wolves have ever done is a persistence hunt.

766
01:26:44,880 --> 01:26:52,080
That means that it involves consistency and investment and recommitment and reconnection

767
01:26:52,080 --> 01:26:59,600
over time. And sustainable success is where all the big meaning is. It's fulfillment, legacy.

768
01:27:00,560 --> 01:27:07,120
And when you talk about legacy, what are the things you're looking at in legacy?

769
01:27:07,120 --> 01:27:12,560
What impact are you looking for? That's going to vary person to person, organization to organization.

770
01:27:13,040 --> 01:27:22,320
But whatever it is, it's the acknowledgement that what you're doing is standing on the shoulders of

771
01:27:22,320 --> 01:27:28,800
your ancestors and appreciating and acknowledging that. And then realizing that you're that person

772
01:27:28,800 --> 01:27:33,760
for the next generation or generations to come. That you're part of something that is deeper and

773
01:27:33,760 --> 01:27:40,560
more significant than any individual could ever be. That's legacy. What's your legacy?

774
01:27:41,440 --> 01:27:47,040
My legacy is reintroducing kinship back into the world and reclaiming that as our birthright.

775
01:27:47,680 --> 01:27:55,520
And I guess I want to get behind the why of what's why that legacy. Why you listed your five why's

776
01:27:55,520 --> 01:28:02,080
in the book. I guess I want to go through the five why's with you. Why? Why I've landed at kinship

777
01:28:02,080 --> 01:28:09,360
is that it's the solution to our two big problems. Those are the cratering mental, emotional health,

778
01:28:09,360 --> 01:28:17,680
our resiliency, our physical health. We're losing that game. And then the other component is

779
01:28:17,680 --> 01:28:26,000
abundance, success, legacy, service, meaning, all those action-oriented things. One's defense,

780
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:32,320
one's offense. The solution to both of those is the kinship system. It solves both of those issues.

781
01:28:32,320 --> 01:28:38,400
And it's catastrophically missing. That is the place that I've landed in terms of the master

782
01:28:38,400 --> 01:28:46,240
lever of humanity is that piece. And what's the why behind solving those problems? Why do you want

783
01:28:46,240 --> 01:28:50,800
to pull the master lever for humanity? Because it solves those two problems. It solves the two big

784
01:28:50,800 --> 01:28:57,920
problems. It solves the two big issues facing humanity. It creates freedom and meaning

785
01:28:58,560 --> 01:29:03,200
for humanity is our kinship systems. Yeah. And what do you find important about humanity?

786
01:29:04,640 --> 01:29:10,880
Oh boy. I think we're going to launch into another rabbit hole down here, but

787
01:29:10,880 --> 01:29:20,640
humanity is consciousness, is divinity. It's the universe waking up to itself. That's humanity.

788
01:29:20,640 --> 01:29:30,800
So we occupy a unique and rare position in life that we are both animal and base and

789
01:29:31,760 --> 01:29:37,760
all of those tribal things, but we are also divine. We have the ability to

790
01:29:37,760 --> 01:29:45,040
create. We have the ability for self-awareness and humanity is

791
01:29:48,000 --> 01:29:55,760
God in the world. We are that. We're either one of those two things. And so I'm a big fan.

792
01:29:55,760 --> 01:30:02,000
I'm a fan of humanity. I believe that it's divinity expressed.

793
01:30:02,000 --> 01:30:07,920
No, I think even that is a unique take because I find a lot of people are anti-humanity these days.

794
01:30:07,920 --> 01:30:15,120
Like seeing that humanity is important in some way and for you it's divinity. That reminds me

795
01:30:15,680 --> 01:30:21,040
of this practice that I've been participating in called circling. And it's an authentic relating

796
01:30:21,040 --> 01:30:28,960
practice, which one of my mentors introduced me to. And in it, one person is centered in the

797
01:30:28,960 --> 01:30:33,840
middle of a circle. There might be five people and there's one moderator. And this person acts

798
01:30:33,840 --> 01:30:41,040
as a sounding board of the human experience for everyone else in the room. So the way of

799
01:30:41,040 --> 01:30:46,240
operating in a circle is that everyone is trying to understand this person's authentic experience

800
01:30:46,800 --> 01:30:54,080
through questioning, through sharing emotion, and through sharing what they perceive of this

801
01:30:54,080 --> 01:31:00,880
person's experience. And in my experience with circling, every time the circle would go deeper,

802
01:31:01,840 --> 01:31:10,080
everyone would just have this sigh of understanding and feeling just the same as the other person.

803
01:31:10,080 --> 01:31:16,880
Like, oh, it all makes sense. You are me, I am you. And that's that divinity, that God,

804
01:31:17,680 --> 01:31:20,080
whatever you want to call it, between all of us.

805
01:31:20,080 --> 01:31:27,120
It's a universal experience. It's a universal quest, freedom of meaning.

806
01:31:28,000 --> 01:31:32,720
In that heroic journey, those are the grails, freedom of meaning for everyone.

807
01:31:32,720 --> 01:31:41,680
Yeah. And so that commonality is divine. There's something that is, you know,

808
01:31:42,400 --> 01:31:45,360
quite special about human beings. Humans are cool.

809
01:31:45,360 --> 01:31:52,880
Humans are hella cool. Yeah. And as we talk about your book, we talk about these things you've

810
01:31:52,880 --> 01:31:58,240
learned, these things you teach, I want to know about how your experience in the army

811
01:31:59,280 --> 01:32:06,320
influenced these teachings. Like, what did you experience there that changed your outlook on

812
01:32:06,320 --> 01:32:12,400
life? The first one that I talked about with the drill sergeant is the ownership and response

813
01:32:12,400 --> 01:32:24,000
ability that we have available, profound. I also had some experiences not having money at a bar

814
01:32:24,800 --> 01:32:31,280
and a stranger who happened to be wearing a uniform gave me money.

815
01:32:34,320 --> 01:32:37,680
No way of recouping that money. Never had met me before.

816
01:32:37,680 --> 01:32:42,720
Oh, here's another, here's a brother who doesn't have five bucks for a beer. Yeah.

817
01:32:43,680 --> 01:32:50,800
And that was a very foreign concept to me. When you talk about we are together,

818
01:32:51,600 --> 01:32:56,720
and it's because of the uniform. That was affiliation or your circle is that, oh,

819
01:32:56,720 --> 01:33:02,800
there's a we here and it's profound. It's a profound thing. And I never had any we growing up.

820
01:33:02,800 --> 01:33:12,160
So that was remarkable. It was big enough that it overrode everything else. There is no race

821
01:33:12,160 --> 01:33:19,040
doesn't exist in the military. It does in the sense that, oh, there's the black guys and

822
01:33:19,760 --> 01:33:25,120
they have their own unique culture and it's interesting. And there's the Hispanic dudes

823
01:33:25,120 --> 01:33:31,120
and there's the rednecks and they have their little cliques in language and they have their

824
01:33:31,120 --> 01:33:37,120
little cliques in language. But the moment the uniform goes on, oh, you're green. Everyone's

825
01:33:37,120 --> 01:33:44,240
green. That was profound that there is something bigger than all these other divisive issues

826
01:33:45,120 --> 01:33:54,240
around religion or race or any other type of specialization that when you put alignment on

827
01:33:54,240 --> 01:34:02,240
top of that, that's the trump card. That's kinship and experience a culture of kinship

828
01:34:04,000 --> 01:34:11,200
is a profound experience. If you get stuck behind enemy lines, you get injured. They will not stop.

829
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:18,000
They will not stop to get you out until they get you out. There's a code in our military that

830
01:34:18,000 --> 01:34:26,800
you leave no one behind. And it's built in and that's the kinship system is that we can't afford

831
01:34:26,800 --> 01:34:34,400
to because if you have one moment where, oh, those people are wounded, let them go. It erodes the

832
01:34:34,400 --> 01:34:39,840
whole structure. Like, oh, maybe I can't afford to take those risks because they'll leave me behind.

833
01:34:39,840 --> 01:34:46,480
So they enforce that with ferocious regularity. And even if you have one knucklehead,

834
01:34:46,480 --> 01:34:50,320
it's your responsibility to take care of the knucklehead who always forgets to fill his

835
01:34:50,320 --> 01:34:56,240
canteen. You better fill his canteen. That's part of the game. And one of the ethos of the military

836
01:34:56,240 --> 01:35:05,440
is that you watch out for the guys in your unit. And you almost don't have to watch out for yourself

837
01:35:06,000 --> 01:35:12,400
because you've got nine other guys watching out for you. That was a profound paradigm shift for me,

838
01:35:12,400 --> 01:35:17,440
who didn't have any of that growing up. So that code, that brotherhood, that alignment is a

839
01:35:17,440 --> 01:35:24,320
really important dynamic. That gave me a glimpse into the power of a kinship system or an honor

840
01:35:24,320 --> 01:35:32,480
culture. And I'm not promoting the military as something that everybody should do or could do.

841
01:35:32,480 --> 01:35:44,400
We have 73% of our young men unfit for duty. 73% chronic disease, obesity, 73% of our country.

842
01:35:44,400 --> 01:35:52,960
The young men are not fit to serve. Woo. That's not just lifestyle. That's an epidemic.

843
01:35:52,960 --> 01:36:00,400
Yeah. That is a threat to our very existence. We've gone that far down the road.

844
01:36:00,400 --> 01:36:07,040
And it's not even just in unfitness. I think young men are falling behind on all metrics.

845
01:36:07,040 --> 01:36:13,280
They're falling behind in education. They're falling behind on jobs. They're falling behind

846
01:36:13,280 --> 01:36:23,280
on mental health. Men are 4% more likely to die by suicide. 73% of men are 73% of opioid deaths are

847
01:36:23,280 --> 01:36:34,800
from men. So homelessness, suicide, incarceration. It's catastrophic.

848
01:36:34,800 --> 01:36:38,080
Yeah. And it seems like we're failing young men, right?

849
01:36:38,080 --> 01:36:40,000
Yep. Up until now.

850
01:36:40,000 --> 01:36:42,240
Yeah. Up until now.

851
01:36:42,240 --> 01:36:44,320
Up until now. It's the Caldo Adventure.

852
01:36:44,320 --> 01:36:52,960
Yeah. I think the point that I wanted to get to there was that there's a lot of young men looking

853
01:36:52,960 --> 01:37:00,320
for meaning. And then there's this dynamic of like parasocial relationships with online influencers.

854
01:37:01,200 --> 01:37:06,560
And I don't know if you have seen this at all, but you have even like Jordan Peterson,

855
01:37:06,560 --> 01:37:13,360
some people see him as a guru. I'll do everything he says or like Joe Rogan or you have Andrew Tate.

856
01:37:13,360 --> 01:37:21,440
You have these figures that pop up feeding a story and young men without a story grab onto the story.

857
01:37:21,440 --> 01:37:31,120
100%. Yeah. That's tribalism. It's the same dynamic with gangs. You will join any gang that

858
01:37:31,120 --> 01:37:37,440
will have you because you know you're going to die alone. Like the lone wolf dynamic, even if

859
01:37:37,440 --> 01:37:45,920
people look at the romantic mythology of the lone wolf, the independent man, Rambo, the lone ranger,

860
01:37:47,520 --> 01:37:54,000
you know it intuitively that is a death sentence. You will find whatever click that will take you.

861
01:37:56,480 --> 01:38:01,920
And then there are probably some bad operators in that space on both sides. So the,

862
01:38:01,920 --> 01:38:11,280
yes, the part of that is we need to stop villainizing men as just a scapegoat for the

863
01:38:11,280 --> 01:38:19,520
issues of the world. And it's contentious to say, but kind of my response to that, being a man in

864
01:38:19,520 --> 01:38:27,520
the world is that we have certainly perpetuated the majority of the ills in the world. If you look at

865
01:38:27,520 --> 01:38:33,920
environmental catastrophes and the wars and the, you know, all the blights on our record, it's men.

866
01:38:34,560 --> 01:38:43,600
However, we also built the world. So you need to speak to both of those dynamics. Thank you. And

867
01:38:44,480 --> 01:38:51,440
do better. Great. I don't know a man in the world that would not acknowledge that. Like, okay, I got

868
01:38:51,440 --> 01:38:57,600
my, I got acknowledgement for who I am and what I did in the world. And the fact that you have running

869
01:38:57,600 --> 01:39:02,880
water and nobody's eating you and nobody's freezing to death and you have more food than we were. We

870
01:39:02,880 --> 01:39:08,400
have obesity issues, not starvation issues. Thank you, men. Good job. And now get your shit together.

871
01:39:08,400 --> 01:39:15,040
Like, okay, got it. Yeah. Thank you. That's that being seen portion and being included in the

872
01:39:15,040 --> 01:39:21,200
kinship, right? It's like in the way that we're failing them is that we're putting them away from

873
01:39:21,200 --> 01:39:28,400
the kinship. We're using shame as an attack on, oh, men suck. Oh, men did this. And I would say

874
01:39:28,400 --> 01:39:33,840
the same thing about institutions. Yeah, the Boy Scouts did some terrible things. The church did

875
01:39:33,840 --> 01:39:41,440
some terrible things. Government did some terrible things. Okay, fix it. You don't remove it. You

876
01:39:41,440 --> 01:39:51,440
don't just yank it out like it's a dead thing. The analogy of that is the, when you look at fossils,

877
01:39:51,440 --> 01:39:56,240
you know, or skeletons, when you see a broken leg, that's what killed the animal.

878
01:39:57,760 --> 01:40:04,560
Unless they have people around to heal them. And that means that they're worth investing in.

879
01:40:04,560 --> 01:40:14,720
They're worth the sacrifice that it takes to have that broken-legged man, you know, who did bad

880
01:40:14,720 --> 01:40:22,720
things or made mistakes, particularly when they're in their adolescent phase, which is me, me, me,

881
01:40:22,720 --> 01:40:29,760
instant gratification, external validation. Like, you made a lot of mistakes, but unless we can

882
01:40:29,760 --> 01:40:37,360
invest in them to heal them, then we're suffering because they are us. They are part of us now,

883
01:40:37,360 --> 01:40:43,360
and they're part of our legacy for the future. And I would say the same thing about incarceration.

884
01:40:43,360 --> 01:40:50,000
You know, it's that we have, I don't know, 10,000 prisons or something in there. Yeah, something

885
01:40:50,000 --> 01:40:56,080
that's crazy. Yeah, we're leading the free world in our incarceration numbers, and we have written

886
01:40:56,080 --> 01:41:04,000
them off. And it's not a successful strategy, bringing these valuable people who have been to

887
01:41:04,000 --> 01:41:09,840
the darkness. And then the people who have been through the abyss and come out the other side,

888
01:41:10,560 --> 01:41:14,240
those are the greatest people we have. They really are. They've done the hero's journey.

889
01:41:14,240 --> 01:41:20,560
They have done it. And the same thing with combat vets and addicts. And like, they're the people who

890
01:41:20,560 --> 01:41:27,520
we revere because they've come through the other side. But if we are not going to invest in those,

891
01:41:28,400 --> 01:41:34,480
whatever they are, heal them, then they can't hunt with us anymore. We are lessened. We need to make

892
01:41:34,480 --> 01:41:40,400
that pivot. And so with our institutions, those need to be revitalized. I mean, we need science

893
01:41:40,400 --> 01:41:47,040
back. We need our government back as a vehicle, a virtuous vehicle for our country and not just

894
01:41:47,040 --> 01:41:53,600
dismiss it. Oh, government's bad. It's like, no, our lawyers, everybody dismisses lawyers.

895
01:41:54,480 --> 01:42:02,640
They're the glue that holds our system together. Heal them. And so that's part of the faith,

896
01:42:03,360 --> 01:42:07,680
or even the kinship system. I would bundle that under kinship as well.

897
01:42:07,680 --> 01:42:13,760
Yeah. But ultimately, we have to continue to reinvest into people

898
01:42:13,760 --> 01:42:18,480
into processes and into systems, right? We can't just throw them out, throw the baby out with the

899
01:42:18,480 --> 01:42:23,520
bath water. This sucked. Yeah, we're throwing ourselves out. Yeah, we throw ourselves out.

900
01:42:23,520 --> 01:42:29,840
And as we come to the end of the podcast, we have a tradition. The podcast is called Carrots and

901
01:42:29,840 --> 01:42:37,120
Sticks, which has an accountability element to it. So we always ask the guest to think about a

902
01:42:37,120 --> 01:42:44,080
challenge that takes two weeks that would push them to live a little bit more courageously.

903
01:42:46,720 --> 01:42:48,240
Two week challenge. Yeah.

904
01:42:50,880 --> 01:42:57,760
For me, that would be the recommitment to the next book I'm working on. And

905
01:42:57,760 --> 01:43:04,560
I'm really busy right now with a lot of work. And so I have backburnered that.

906
01:43:05,360 --> 01:43:14,720
And so I'm no longer a pro. I have surrendered my professionalism based on other things. And so

907
01:43:16,320 --> 01:43:22,240
that challenge to be accepted would be reclaiming my professionalism as a

908
01:43:22,240 --> 01:43:28,640
author. And what would that look like? Every day. In the next two weeks? Every day. You will write?

909
01:43:28,640 --> 01:43:32,640
Yeah, every day. That's awesome. And it doesn't mean that it's going to be great

910
01:43:33,440 --> 01:43:38,960
or productive, but it would mean that I show up at the gym every day. Yeah. And if it's 30 minutes,

911
01:43:39,520 --> 01:43:45,360
show up. One paragraph. Yeah. That's great. And the stick portion of that is you create

912
01:43:45,360 --> 01:43:51,360
your own accountability. And that's what we're doing. And so that's what we're doing. And so

913
01:43:51,360 --> 01:43:57,280
you're own accountability for that as if I don't write every day for the next two weeks,

914
01:43:57,840 --> 01:44:04,160
I now have to X or I lose X. I would lose my integrity.

915
01:44:06,000 --> 01:44:16,880
I would lose my ethos. Yeah. And my wife's a big one. And I have a lot of good men on my team

916
01:44:16,880 --> 01:44:26,640
who I behave honorably towards. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on. That's a deal. Yeah.

917
01:44:26,640 --> 01:44:31,920
Let's do it. You'll be the right man. What's yours? I can do one. What's your two week challenge?

918
01:44:31,920 --> 01:44:38,720
Oh, come up with a two week challenge. You know what it is? I've been really putting off doing

919
01:44:38,720 --> 01:44:48,080
clipping and clipping for the podcast, doing different clips on different social media platforms,

920
01:44:48,080 --> 01:44:54,720
posting shorter versions of it. And partially it's because I don't have the time. And then

921
01:44:54,720 --> 01:45:01,120
another part of it is because I am like, if I put in this extra investment of all these hours,

922
01:45:01,120 --> 01:45:07,040
is it going to bring me anything? And so it's a fear of failure, a fear of not wanting to

923
01:45:07,040 --> 01:45:13,200
do a bunch of more work without any promise of a return. But that's what pros do. Yep.

924
01:45:13,200 --> 01:45:19,440
And that's what pros do. So I guess my commitment for the two weeks would be to at least on one

925
01:45:19,440 --> 01:45:27,680
social media channel, clip up three of my podcasts and then actually send out clips for those on that

926
01:45:27,680 --> 01:45:34,960
social media channel. Deal. Deal. My man. All right. Well, this was super fun, man. Yeah. This was so

927
01:45:34,960 --> 01:45:38,880
great. Where can people find you if you want to be found? Where can people reach out?

928
01:45:39,920 --> 01:45:46,400
Let's see. My website is mywolftribe.com. That has a lot of resources on it and my name is Philip

929
01:45:46,400 --> 01:45:54,720
Folsom. So Google me. Easy to find. Instagram, Philip Folsom or WolfTribe. Yeah. Well,

930
01:45:54,720 --> 01:46:05,360
anywhere. Awesome. Thank you so much.