Hello my friends, welcome back to another episode of the C&S podcast.
Our guest today is Philip Folsom. He is an anthropologist, an army veteran, an executive
coach, and an author. Today we will discuss why everyone feels so disconnected, how we can use
tribe dynamics to excel in our lives, why alignment is the number one driver of a successful team,
the role of initiation in a modern context, why most people are dragged by life, why vision is
important for creating kinship, why so many people feel lost in our culture, and much more.
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for your support. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode. Thank you for coming on, Philip.
It's great to see you. Cheers. Oh, you're cheersing me. Little ceremony. Rituals. Yes.
And in the medieval courts, this is a ritual of trust and safety that we used to poison each
other so much that we would slosh wine back and forth. So we would pour some of my cup into your
cup to prevent... We would slosh back and forth and then make eye contact while we drink. And that way
you've ensured that you're not being poisoned. I see. So you're not poisoning me. Correct.
Perfect. Nor myself. I didn't know about that. That's interesting. Yeah. But you're an
anthropologist, your ex army and your leadership coach at very large companies such as SpaceX,
Tesla, Red Bull. So you know a lot about human psychology, about how humans behave,
how cultures evolve. You have this new book, Team to Tribe. And in it you talk about how to create
a culture of winning, of high performance within a team, a family and any organization or structure.
Mm-hmm. Right. And in it you talk about alignment, you talk about kinship,
you talk about healthy conflict and you talk about sustainable success. And I want to first
go through all of these four with you and have you tell me a little bit about them. So we can
start with alignment. What is alignment? Well, just backing up a little bit. The thrust of my work
would seem to be high performance because that's a relevant dynamic with humanity is that we want to
get our needs met and we want to achieve and thrive. And in business those are called profit
drivers. They want innovation, they want competitiveness and efficiency and engagement
and retention because that's what makes them money. So they hire me for that. My secret agenda
around doing team development through an anthropological lens is that I'm here for the
kinship. I'm here for the resiliency, the mental health, the meaning, the purpose, the significant
impact that human beings need to feel successful in their life. And we have a kinship shaped hole
in our heart as a society because we're designed for deep, intimate connections with other members
of our tribe that provides us with trust and safety and resiliency. And that's where we get
our meaning from. And we're a society that has currently lost our kinship systems and therefore
we've lost all of that trust, safety, meaning, purpose. And so people are desperately spinning
to try to find that. And so my work of reintroducing kinship systems or honor-based culture back into
society is really addressing our core human destiny or legacy of kinship. But the downstream
effect of that is that it makes people ferociously effective, high performing, adaptable, successful.
So there's pretty much two big agendas that culture answers. And I'm really interested
in the resiliency, the human experience. And I totally acknowledge that organizations,
whether they be sports teams or big corporations, they're looking at the performance part.
And they're both valid end games. But for me, the kinship piece is clutch.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we've lost historically these structures that held
together society. They used to be religions. Now politics has somewhat taken a bit of that role.
Religions were what created community, it created kinship between each other. We were selfless
and we were rewarded in an afterlife. And I think I'm curious about why is your
avenue or your agenda in creating more kinship in a modern lens aimed at corporations or
teams that are trying to be high performers? I ask this question almost every program or
keynote that I'm doing with people. Where do you spend most of your waking hours?
At work. And they say, well, at work. Where do you, with whom do you spend most of your waking hours?
With these people. So work and your coworkers are the most important things in your life.
And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to own that. But it's irrefutable.
If that's what you're doing with most of your life and those are the people you're doing that with.
And if you've surrendered that as a primary source of meaning and fulfillment,
then you've lost the center of the chessboard. And you're not going to win the game trying to
play on the edges. And those are the people who are desperately trying to find me.
And in their two week vacation every year or going to Burning Man and just trying to gather
meaning through that, it has to be at what we're doing regularly. So culture is the number one
driver of resiliency and performance. And it has eight times the efficacy of investing in either
strategy or technology. It is the big driver. And that's fairly well established.
And that series of questions of, so where are you doing, you know, the things you're doing with most
of your life, that has to be answered. And so people need to be able to look at, and then we're
going to start with alignment is what is something that is aspirational enough that it's worth
offering you my sword? Because that's what the Knights would do. You know, when they would,
when they would find a Lord, whether it be a samurai or a medieval Knight is like,
this is me. This is everything I have. And so you offer your sword to something. And that's your
vision. That's an organizational vision. It's the thing that answers the why are they there?
And if it's a shallow vision of we're here to make money, that's what you're going to give the sword
of your life to. And it's, it's shallow. It's unfulfilling. And so when we look at culture
creation, that's the first thing we lead with is your, your big why. And Nietzsche talks about the
why, you know, if you can have that, that big why, then you have engagement, you have retention,
you have buy-in, you have the ability to persevere with grit and resiliency, because it's
significant enough that, that I'm willing to sacrifice my life for it. Yep. He who has a why
can bear anyhow. Yeah. So, you know, I use wolves as a very good analogy, something that we'll talk
about, but the wolves are not scavengers, and they're not rabbit hunters. Wolves hunt big game,
because it's fulfilling, it's meaningful, it's significant. They're, they're designed at a cellular
level to hunt significant things. And, and that's, that's their vision. Their vision is not
to survive scavenging or to hunt mice and rabbits, like they find fulfillment in pulling down big
game. Yeah. Everyone eats. So vision is the most important thing leaders can do. And Napoleon calls
leaders dealers in hope. And that's really what a vision is. Here is a future that does not currently
exist, that we can commit to. It's the, it's the Holy Grail. Yeah. And without a Holy Grail,
the Knights will turn on themselves. They'll turn on the people. They, we need to be questing.
Yeah. So that's the, that's the big, that's the first pillar of alignment. Yeah. So how do you
think about this concept of work-life balance, work-life harmony, when we're talking about,
this is where we spend most of our time at work, yet most people want to have a level of alignment
in the sense that they don't want to spend all their time at work, right? They want to have fun
outside of it. They want to have other relationships outside of it. And even if, let's say we have a
strong why at work, how are we integrating that within the rest of our lives? Right? So how are
you thinking about those things? Well, there's obviously a big overlap of where we spend most
of our time and the need for fulfillment there. But then we also have to have a reintegration back
home. And that, that's part of a, you can call it a warrior reintegration strategy, which every
culture, culture in the history of our species has had people that go off and do hard things
and then be able to transition back home again successfully. And that's, that dynamic is missing
in our culture. When the, when the Knights came back from the Crusades, they took their armor off
at the church and they, they did the rosary and they walked the labyrinth and they wrote love
letters and they reintegrated back home. The samurai did the same thing. Every warrior culture,
the people who are doing significant, potentially trauma inducing activities have to be able to
reintegrate back home in some capacity. Otherwise you have to wall it off, which is what so many
people are doing is it that's work. And then this is me at home. Yeah. And it's not possible to do
that psychologically. Like we need to be able to have an acknowledgement of it needs to be fulfilling
at work. I need to be engaged fully and currently less than 17% of Americans are fully engaged in
their jobs. So that's catastrophic. How much we're leaving on the table of our people, our
communities, our organizations, our society itself and our lives too. Right. If I'm not engaged at
work and I'm spending 40 hours a week at a desk doing something I don't enjoy, like half of my
life is essentially disappearing. Yeah. Right. And it's the, it's the best of you. And that analogy
of the chessboard position is more important than pieces. You should be willing to sacrifice a piece
to gain position. So those four squares in the middle, that's how you control a chessboard. And
so whatever those four squares are is in our life is where we're spending most of our time.
And there are people who work from home. You better get that tight, you know, whatever it is,
people are doing in their life. Make sure that those, those four center squares are aligned with
our vision, our values and our mission. Yeah. How are you thinking about this concept of alignment
aimed at leaders at building a culture of success versus an individual? And maybe it's me, maybe
it's you, maybe somebody going into a desk job, maybe they're working in a corporate structure.
It feels very lifeless. They're one of those 83% of people that aren't engaged at work. How can they
take this concept of alignment of finding that why within their work and making sure they're not
wasting that time and make sure that they're living that? Most people, if you ask them what
the vision of their life is, they won't have an answer because we're not a culture that has held
that as a priority. But in most other eras, if you were to pose that question, there is,
there's an answer and it is, and it's going to have to do with at an adolescent level, ambition,
its glory, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is your basic needs. So that's the
adolescent version. As people progress in life in the pursuit of meaning, then at some point,
it's connected to service, to something larger than yourself. That is very directly a form of
initiation into an adult psychology. An adolescent psychology, which is based on external gratification
or immediate gratification, that's a shallow currency. And as soon as you start going through
the initiation, right? A passage process of, okay, what is life really about? It's always going to
have to do with service to others. That is a, you know, a very, very, very, very, very, very
big, you know, swapping out the Prince psychology to the King psychology. And so service and meaning
to something bigger than yourself is always going to be that higher level. And so individually,
when I'm doing executive coaching, it's like, what are you here for? What do you stand for?
What is your ethos? What is your code? And that's really what your vision and your values are,
is that thing that makes up your identity. It's your brand, it's your reputation.
And when you hear somebody who has a vision, it resonates and it differentiates you from everyone
else in the world. And I also encourage people who are watching, this should be something that
your family has. Your family should have a, you don't have to call it a vision statement,
but it should be something that you can raise up the flagpole and go, that's what we're here for.
This reminds me of an idea that Naval Ravikant likes to talk about, which is becoming one of one
and finding the one thing that is so you that there's nobody else that does it. There's nobody
that can be better than you at being you. And so maybe what I'm taking from what you're saying is
that as individuals, we should be continually striving to find that thing. And we might not
know it yet. Maybe we are at that disengagement level, that 83%-
It's your competitive advantage is being that person that defines the blue ocean.
There's no other fish that are hunting here. And people are afraid of doing that because when
to be blue ocean or to have a narrow brand, a narrow target audience, an ideal customer
means you're saying no to all the other customers. And that's a terrifying thing for people who are
a part of a pride-based culture is that they're basically scavengers. And the moment you say,
I'm hunting, I'm not scavenging, then you've just shut down all of the things that you have managed
to survive by. But it's a brave and needed transition to if you want to get to the big
game hunt, you have to pick a target. You're not just going out, whatever I can do, whoever
I can do, whoever I can meet, whoever I can connect with, it's like, no, I have my person,
I have the thing that I provide. That's your brand. That's the type brand. You want to be
identified as, oh, you're that person. Earlier in my career, I used to attempt to dress in
a manner that would allow me to easily engage with clients. So if I was going to go work at
a bank or a big law firm, I would wear a suit. And I started to get this feedback that
they wanted the anthropologist in the vest that they saw in the video. Where's the vest?
And where's the khaki? And I realized that I had permission. In fact, I have received the call to
adventure to be the person that provides something. That's why I am that one of one. And I'm
that one. And everybody should be able to have something that they can identify as providing
value and that you do have to provide value, which is not a power question. It's a value
question. And all hierarchies are built on value. And it's indispensable before you make a fluffy
statement, which is prevalent today, particularly in men's work. I'm going to be a breathwork coach.
I'm going to be the... They're providing something that they believe is a form of value, but unless
your clients acknowledge that that's value. So it does need to have some efficacy behind it.
And the greatest efficacy is going to be, how are you living your life? So as soon as you start
transitioning into that one of one, I'm a person to be providing some value to people. You need to
get your own house in order. You need to be somebody who is modeling that because our lives
are evidence of our efficacy. And that's a brave and very revealing process to continually look
at ourselves and say, am I modeling the things that I'm providing? Because you don't want to
hire a fat trainer. You don't want to hire a single relationship coach. You don't want to hire
a broke financial coach. So you have to be that person before you can really put that flag in the
sand. As soon as you go public with that vision, you need to make sure that you're living it.
Yeah. I think that the results that someone has brought in their own lives is a heuristic for the
effectiveness of their training, their coaching, et cetera. And I think a lot of people want to
start on a thing. They're like, I want to be a personal trainer or I want to be a leadership
coach such as you. But no one's going to trust your brand unless you can prove that you've
already done it yourself. And you said one more interesting thing, which is about this blue ocean
thinking, leading us down another path that looks similar, but doesn't get as quite there.
And I think this happens a lot in entrepreneurship, people trying to start their own thing.
They might sit around with their friends and say, I have this great idea for this app. Everyone's
going to love it. And they spend two years building the app, release it. Nobody wants it. Right. They
think they're doing blue ocean. Nobody's thought of this before, but they've never validated that
people want it, that they have the value. Right. What you think is valuable for people
is irrelevant. It really is. It is what they value. And that doesn't have to be a mercenary,
manipulative pivot. It should be in alignment. The thing that you're providing to the world
should be the thing that you believe is valuable, but it also has some legitimate efficacy to it
because it's worked with you and then it's worked with your family and it's worked with
your past clients. And at that point, there's a different level of legitimacy to that statement.
Yeah, definitely. And we also talked about leaving opportunities on the table when following this
strategy of diversive or of individualizing oneself in what they do is that it can feel
as though I'm leaving opportunity on the table. If I create a brand where I am Philip Folson,
leadership coach, anthropologist, I can no longer be something else. And it might feel like, oh,
but all those clients want this thing. I want to get them there. The thinking makes sense. I've
fallen into this before. It's like, but they want this. I'll do what they want. But no, you want them
coming to you for what you provide. It's a race to the bottom. The red ocean is a race to the bottom
because as soon as you've joined what everybody else is doing, then at some point, you're going
to have to differentiate yourself by something. Price. Yeah, usually it's going to be price,
service, quality. You're going to have to start degrading all of that. Yeah. And there's been
many times in my career where I've had to do that. There's numerous clients that I have
chosen not to work with because it's not a good match in terms of, you call it my integrity.
Like, I don't agree with that. So that is a sacrifice on the altar of what your brand is.
Yeah. And how did that feel when you had to turn away clients to pursue your brand, your integrity?
See, it kind of depends on the season. If I'm doing really well, it feels really good.
It's scary otherwise. And I guess to have a measure of success to be able to do that,
it's easier. It makes sense. It's altruistic. But when people are struggling, then there is a
certain amount of practicality. You can call it compromise. So yeah, sometimes we compromise
our values for. Yeah. And that's a slippery slope. Yeah. You mentioned initiation within
people who don't really have a vision. They have a fluffy vision of what they want. It's not
thought out. It's not well-defined. When going from that vision to, I know what I want. I know
who I am. What have initiations looked like from an anthropological lens that you've seen?
First of all, initiation, just like reintegration, is universal in every culture. There is no
reintegration strategy, a resiliency strategy, a purification strategy, because life is hard.
And it's always been hard. It's not like we're just dealing with stress for the first time
in human history. Our ancestors had exponentially bleaker lives, and yet they still managed to
persevere. The human race is undefeated and successfully defeated. And that's the
reason why we're so successful. And so when you look at cultures that have lasted a long time,
there's a reason why they've done that. And so the reintegration, the purification,
the resiliency, all of those components are battle-tested techniques. And in our current
culture of comfort and sloth and immediate gratification and addiction and all of those
dynamics, we no longer have to do those things. They're seemingly optional, and they're not.
They're mandatory for healthy, happy, high-performing humans. And you can look at that
with the skyrocketing rates of clinical anxiety, depression, addiction, suicide, chronic illnesses,
like we're not doing well. That's the brutal truth of Western civilization, is that we're
simply not doing well. By all these really vital markers of mental, physical, emotional health,
we're not doing well. So we're losing. And that should piss people off. And it kind of has.
There's a reason why there's a big movement for change happening right now, is that it's
people are angry, and they don't want to lose. They don't want to lose this game. I don't want
my kids to lose this game. I refuse to have my kids lose this game. We have to look back to see
what is our birthright. How do they do it? How do people survive the ice ages? Famine, tremendous,
legitimate trauma, not just perceived trauma that we're experiencing now of crying rooms and
safe spaces and mental health boxes. And trauma should not, therapeutically, you don't compare
people's traumas. Combat vets have a certain type of trauma, which is very loud and very clear. And
it's like, OK, you saw somebody get blown up. And then you look at a privileged rich kid,
and they didn't get the car they wanted. Internally, they're experiencing the same thing.
It really is the same level of a perceived threat to their physical or emotional well-being.
And so they become anxious. They become depressed. They have thoughts of suicide. It can be really
small, simple things. So we don't compare trauma. That's one of the things therapeutically,
and particularly the symptoms of trauma. But there certainly is a lot of trauma.
There certainly is just a raw irrefutable evidence of what we're capable of persevering through.
And we're living in this artificial time right now where we don't have
the external enforcement vehicle to make us resilient. If you're paleolithic or an earlier
culture, and I carefully don't use more primitive culture, they're not any more primitive than we
are. In fact, they're much more advanced in a lot of ways. If you don't resolve conflict in your
tribe, you die. You have to. If you don't ask for help, you starve. If you don't have some sort of
spiritual system that allows you to connect with the world and each other and your purpose,
then the world doesn't work. So the world dictates resiliency, and it dictates cultural success.
It dictates a need to have values and affiliation with the tribe. And because we've lost all those
drivers, enforcement vehicles for being great and resilient and successful, then they become
they become seemingly optional. And we have basically lost about two generations of people
with none of those skills. And back to the initiation process, that's another one of those
is human beings are required to go through a formal initiation for them to be a psychologically
mature human that can carry the next generation of culture and raise great kids and perpetuate
what we are. And so because we've lost that initiation process, you have a lot of
mature humans who are psychologically adolescent, and they are focused on what I want now,
immediate gratification, external validation. And it's probably the core root of why we are
not being successful as a culture currently is a lack of initiation. That's the big one.
And it's not something you can do alone. And so in this giant pride based world where we're a bunch
of individuals, you cannot self initiate, you need other people as a enforcement arm or
accountability system to be able to go through that arduous process. And there are it still exists.
Military is an initiation. Being part of a successful sports team is an initiation.
Joining a jujitsu gym is a initiation. So it exists in very narrow veins of our society,
which is why those are becoming so popular, particularly young men. They instinctively know
that they have been denied something that is really important. And so, you know, the nature
abhors a vacuum. So it's coming out. And there's a reason why ice baths are popular now.
Yeah, the Joe Rogan ice baths, sauna.
Yeah, it is an artificial adversity. We require adversity. Who would have thought? But, you know,
artificial times require artificial means. And so we need to artificially create community now
because it's not going to happen otherwise. We need to artificially create a certain amount of
adversity to build resiliency. We need to artificially create institutions to hold us
together. And we've lost the church, we've lost government, we've lost all of our big traditional
pillars of society have been revealed as being corrupted. And we've recently lost science.
That was the dagger for me. Dagger to see how much money is in science. And it is no...
In many ways, the scientific method is a religion. It's a philosophical school.
You know, here's my hypothesis and here's how I test it. And, you know, it's clean.
It's a philosophical or spiritual system. It's a truth system. And to have that one taken away,
that was deeply disheartening for me. If they ever decide we didn't go to the moon,
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.
When you asked about why, you know, why offer my sword to corporate work, it's because that's the
last pillar. It's the last thing that requires us to come together. And that's the last thing
that requires us to come together. It used to be the church or it used to be, I'm an American,
or it used to be, I believe in science or any of these other things, which were
institutional tent poles that hold up our society. And so the last place is our corporations.
So they need to provide meaning. They need to provide affiliation. They need to provide purpose.
They need to provide relationships and community. It's really important.
Yeah. Yeah. And how, as individuals existing without these structures, how can we try
to get initiated to stop being these mature adolescents or swimming through the world with
no direction? Is there any hope for us? Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100%. That's the hero's
journey that we were talking about before the camera came on. The hero's journey, which is the
big kind of a universal map of the sequence of steps that human beings go through. That's why
we keep telling the same exact story for 10,000 years. At the nadir, that's the bottom of,
it's the dark night of the soul in everyone's quest for meaning, or it might be this fiscal year or
training for whatever it is. There's always a bleak moment. And Campbell says that's the cave
you fear to enter that contains the treasure you seek. The treasure you seek is transformation.
It's the crucifixion that leads to the resurrection. It's the phoenixes burning to death so that they
can be reborn. And that's the initiation moment. And nobody wants to burn to death and nobody
wants to be crucified and nobody wants to hit rock bottom. But that's initiation, that moment.
Because it's the thing that breaks our old worldview of I'm the center of the world,
of I'm the center of the world, and I deserve, little boys deserve, men do not, men earn,
and we demand and we provide. And so that adolescent psychology, which views the world as
victims that are being victimized by perpetrators and villains and malevolent forces,
whether it's the government or your boss or your dad or whoever it is. And then there's the third
role of somebody's going to save me. And we pivot through those different roles of I claim my power
and now I'm a villain in the story to somebody else's story. I'm going to try to save the world.
That is the trauma triangle or the Dharma triangle. And that's the adolescent view of the world.
The mature view of the world is I'm responsible for it all. Everything within my sphere of influence
is mine to own. That's the radical responsibility, ownership, truth that an adult person views
everything. If there's something that is not as good as it could be in the world,
it's because you're not as good as you could be. That's the bottom line. Take a look at the
bottom line. Take a look at your bank account, your fitness, your sex life, your spiritual practice,
everything in your world. If that's on you, now the things that are outside of your sphere of control,
then you can surrender that. That's the faith. All those things that are within your sphere of control
are the things that the adult person owns. That level of responsibility, which is a good word,
it's the ability to respond instead of react. Kids react, boys react, adolescent people react,
but mature people, they respond. The ability to respond is responsibility.
That's the heaviest burden you can carry is launching out into the world, realizing you're
responsible for everything. It's so heavy, at least initially, that people run. I don't want
that. It's so much easier to blame the government or your dad or anything else. It's way easier.
It's comfortable. It's a rotten blanket. To go through that very initially bleak transition,
you need to have accountability. Men initiate men. Women initiate women.
It means that when you try to run, when you try to slide, when you try to fall back, when you try to
rationalize and make excuses and all that, your old game that you ran your whole life,
then you have brothers that go like, no, don't buy it.
They call you out. Most men I know don't have any of those men,
unless you have fostered those relationships and they're owner-based, which means you've done the
same for them. If you remove alcohol, sports, your job, men have no friends. Everybody listening,
remove alcohol, sports, and your job. Who you got left that you can call and say,
I know you have a truck. Can you help me move? How many men would help you move?
Most of the men listening to this have zero. That's why we're not initiating anymore,
is that the system's broken. That's a big portion of my work, is instilling the infrastructure to
make that possible again. Yeah. Realizing you have no real friends is a rude awakening,
a very rude awakening. It should be terrifying. It should be absolutely anxiety producing.
And yet we have so much distraction that it's easy to just mask that with some doom scrolling,
whatever your distraction junk is, so you don't have to face that bleak reality,
is that, oh, I'm a lone wolf and I'm going to starve to death eventually.
Maybe for a lot of people listening or young people in general,
that awakening is the call to adventure, the call to transform, to go on your own hero's journey.
What was that hero's journey like for you? Back that up. That call to adventure,
which is there's something wrong in the world, there's something wrong in your life. There's
some, you know, that's the moment when Luke is asked if he wants to go back to the past,
asked if he wants to go be a Jedi. This unfulfilling little farm gig you got is not your destiny.
You know, that's the cubicle life, right? Rocky being a thug in Philly, breaking kneecaps,
Harry Potter under the stairs, Neo in his cubicle, you know, being a hacker, Dorothy, Dorothy in Kansas.
That's the call to adventure moment and they all refuse and so do you. It's a form of absolution
that all of these stories, the hero refuses the call. That's why it exists. That's why
when we tell a great story, the hero isn't winning because we're not winning. Everybody goes through
big, big portions of life and even if you are currently winning and you took a very sober look
at your life, there's aspects of your life that you're not winning. Whether it's your faith,
your fitness, your sex life, your money, like there's something that you've been like,
when I get to it or, you know, Luke's reason is I've got work Monday. I can't go do this crazy
spiritual journey and that's the answer. You know, people aren't undertaking this
radical lifelift because they're busy, they're burned out, they're tired or Rocky's excuse
of why he doesn't choose to fight Apollo Creed. I'm just a bum. Who am I? Who am I to
undertake this epic adventure? It is a form of absolution for all of us that, yeah, you're
not as good as you could be and that's universal. You are forgiven, but don't wait too long
because the old Greek proverb, fate guides those who will and those who won't, she drags.
So if the longer you wait, the harder she drags and at some point she's going to win.
Fate wins, she bats last and she's coming with two by fours to help you build a life
and if you don't start building, then she's going to hit you with it. She's going to break
you with it and that's the moment when Luke's family dies. Luke's family dies. Luke's family
dies and it's like, oh, is that your sticking point? Let me just handle this for you. Oh,
you're not addressing your health because you don't have time? Well, let's make some time
because you're going to deal with cancer. Oh, okay. So we're always going to wish that we got to it
earlier and that portion of the hero's journey is just saying we've all done it. You know,
every hero in the history of our species has refused the call until they were forced and then
they're off and running at that point because they're forced and eventually, you know, they're
going to gather the skills through adversity of needing people. You need to find your allies.
You need to find some sort of faith system that's bigger than you that you can surrender
control to. You need to be able to find the missing pieces that you don't have. That's
the elder wisdom piece. And once you've gathered those three heroic gifts, then you can take a shot
at initiation. Once you have your allies, elder wisdom, supernatural aid, then you've got all
the tools you need to get through that cave and that's the dragon, right? That's the big scary
beast. That dragon in the cave has our face on it. It's always us. Always us in the cave.
And nobody wants to look at that. But once you have your allies and you have faith and you have
knowledge of things that you didn't have before, then you can address that issue.
And then that's the resurrection. That's the initiation. And then the rest of the back end
of the hero's journey is a much more... It's equally arduous and daunting and demanding and
challenging, but it's way more fun. And unfortunately, most men are not getting access to that.
And I've been kind of teaching and exploring the hero's journey for 30 years.
And I had a very solid grasp of all those stages up to initiation. And then the back half was like,
oh, Joseph Campbell says this and this and this. And it was sort of really fast and bleak.
Because the reality was I hadn't gone down that path. I hadn't lived it. I'd never been in the
garden. I'd never returned with treasure. I hadn't done these things in a significant way.
So the last decade has been a big illumination of what the back half of the hero's journey is. And
it's awesome. And I guess one of the things I really encourage, get through the initiation
process, do the things you need to do to be the captain of your fate. Because that's where all the
good stuff is. All the greatness, all the fun, all the meaning is that.
Yeah. We can't get there without the initiation.
Yeah. So that's the moment back to the initiation or the rite of passage is to be able to
die and be reborn. Have you ever read...
Oh gosh. It's a great samurai book. The Hagakure.
Oh, Hagakure. I've read parts of it. Yeah.
The Hagakure, it was a samurai guy in the 16th century. And they just passed a law
in feudal Japan that samurai who lost their master are no longer allowed to kill themselves.
It was deeply disheartening. It was like losing an election for that poor dude. He's like,
oh, my whole life is gone to shit. Now I have to be ashamed and
wallow through the rest of myself. The only thing he figured out how to do is like,
I'm going to spend the rest of my bleak existence just cataloging all this stories
of samurai culture. So it's a wild book. It's called the Hagakure.
There's a really funny part where he says, it's almost impossible to find a man who could do a
proper beheading anymore these days. We're always complaining about the current generation of kids
these days. Yeah, they can't get a job, won't take responsibility. Proper beheading.
The theme that runs through that book is the samurai are... it appears to be morbidly obsessed
with death. They're always talking about dying and the best way to die and why you should die.
And always you wake up and meditate on your death and death, death, death, death, death.
But what he's really talking about is the internal death.
Samurai are ferocious predators of inner frailty, weakness, character flaws, lack of discipline,
and that's what they're killing. That's why they're so obsessed with death. That's what they're doing.
It's a culture built on... they're the first human optimization dudes. They were living the Joe Rogan
life before that. They're obsessed with it. And that's part of that initiation process is that,
yeah, there's parts of us that have to die for another part to be born. It's the deciding.
The word decide has the same root as the words homicide or suicide, and it means to cut or kill
in Latin. So every intentional deciding we make is the death of other things. So when you decide to
decide to get in shape, it's not free. You're killing off comfort, what you would choose to eat,
what the people you hang out with, what you do on Friday nights. You're killing off a bunch of things
to do that one thing. Even that is an example of an initiation. You want to get in shape?
Okay, well, here's the thing that have to die. And you're not going to be able to do that alone.
You need the accountability of people that when you have your moment of weakness and it's Friday
night and you're like, f it, I'm eating, drinking, doing whatever you do, that you have guys come in
and go like, ah, ah, ah, ah, I'm guarding the exits. You don't get a run like that. You're getting
in shape. So initiation occurs constantly in the self-development or leadership process.
And that's our job for all the leaders of whether it's a family or a work team or our country,
that's your job is to undertake that heroic journey of getting your shit together. It's just,
it's mandatory. Yeah, definitely. I'm curious about your experience with coming into that call to
adventure. I'll share my experience with it. When I was in high school, I had a moment where
I was very prideful. I was full of myself with my intelligence. I thought I was very smart. I thought
that was the most important thing ever. And I examined my life and I was like, I don't really
have any friends. I don't have like the body that I want. I don't have like a happy life. My mental
health sucks. All of these things suck. Right. And I'm like, oh, but I'm smart. That's all that
matters. And once I took that away, I was like, I have nothing. And so I realized that and I asked
myself the question, if you're so damn smart, why can't you figure out how to be happy? And that,
just that question just broke my current state of being and I, and I had to change. I had to
change immediately. And so that developed a process where it was hubris. Yeah, I had hubris
and I couldn't change because of the hubris until that hubris was broken. And that developed the
process of me actually getting in shape, trying to build the physique that I wanted. I started
learning how to make friends. I was like, okay, I'm going to connect with people. I'm going to
learn how to do that. Reading books, doing the self-improvement stuff. Right. And, and yeah,
that, that I think that that moment was so pivotal and just acknowledging that call to adventure and
getting pushed down by fate, just steamrolled everything else forward and there was no other
option. Yeah. It's a, what's the quote? The awakening process is irreversible. It really,
I mean, it is irreversible. Once you, once you see it like, oh, to go back is, is fraudulent.
You're a charlatan. You're a coward. Yeah. Like, oh, so yeah, the awakening process is irreversible.
Who said that? Jamie, look it up. Jamie said that. I'm going to claim it. If you can't find anybody.
No, it's probably Hume or someone else. Yeah. I don't know. Churchillian drift. You know that one?
Uh, Winston Churchill. Yeah. Quotes that don't have an attribution tend to drift towards being
attributed to Churchill. I, the other day I was trying to guess where a quote came from
and I was thinking, is that a Shakespeare? And we were both like, it's probably Churchill.
Yeah. It was Churchill. He said a lot of cool things. It was some obscure British Lord, but
it could have been Churchill. Yeah. But I guess my, my follow-up to that was what was your experience
like in that awakening, getting yourself up off your couch, being a non-mature or an adolescent,
right? Before your initiation. Firstly, um, congratulations for getting that early. Most
people are, most young men are not self-aware enough that they can see, be the witness of
themselves. There's a vague understanding of, I don't have the things that I want, but there
isn't the connection of I'm responsible and I can like that. That's a, that's a developmental
process that you get from older men who were modeling that. And if you don't have a mentor
or a coach or an active engaged dad or some other cool uncles or we, you know, we're supposed to
provide you with that roadmap, you're pretty lost. You're going to be in a multi-decade
slog until fate breaks you. And then you'll start figuring it out. You know, um, I see a lot of
young men getting it earlier. And I think, I think a lot of it because it's being modeled for you.
Like the reason why you're doing this podcast is that you've, you've seen other podcasts that
provided value for you. Like, Oh, there's a, there's a path and there, this is an era of the rebirth
of great men. I'm clear about it. There's no gloom and doom about society or masculinity collapsing.
This is the rebirth of great men. And there has always been eras of great men and they come
right at the period of time where there's enough, um, call it comfort or resources or freedom to
explore deeper thoughts. Cause if you don't, if you're worried about defending your country or
feeding your family, you are not exploring philosophy. So you need to have enough freedom
in there that you have the opportunity to explore deeper things. Yeah. No, I love what you're saying
right there with philosophy. That was probably a huge driver in me having that awakening was I had
a philosophy professor who was standup guy, very masculine, loved working out, wrestled, did
philosophy. And this was like, I was like, yo, I want to be like him. I want to be like this guy.
So just seeing a role model, a mentor to model after was something that was so useful in the
philosophy portion of thinking through things of being able to consider deeper ideas as opposed to
as opposed to, I'm just trying to survive. A hundred percent. The, all the great Greek philosophers,
there was a, they landed in a certain perfect era or our founding fathers, like those,
those men could speak multiple languages. They're, they architects of their own house. They ran,
you know, they, they, they did a bunch of things and they could duel and they could fight and they
could do agriculture and they could do business and they could do philosophy. These were multifaceted
men that did great things were at that time where, you know, I look at, you know,
Jocko or Rogan or a whole number of men and they're, they're doing things at a professional level
across multiple spheres, which shouldn't, which is not perceived as being something that
you should be able to do. Like, no, pick your lane and you stay in it. They're doing multiple
things at a very high level. So it's a very exciting time and you get to witness that and go,
Oh, that's available to me. So I can be financially successful and spiritually robust and have a
great relationship and do all the, all the things. And that's possible. And that, you know, for me,
that, that guy was a drill sergeant in the army and I was 18 and, you know, just a total basket
case, basket case. And we were doing stupid, just adolescent things in basic training. And so we were
getting punished, getting just our asses smoked and grass drills at three in the morning. He was
hosed. I mean, it was horrible. And, and I remember him saying his name was drill sergeant Thomas.
I remember this is, I don't know, it's 40 years ago. I remember drill sergeant Thomas, you know,
handsome black guy, the hat, sing, he's with a beauty. He could sing beautiful cadence. He was
Jack. He was like, Oh my God, like that dude. Wow. In the middle of this abyss, he said,
you know, if first of all, a million or more, you know, young men have gone through what you're
going through and they have persevered, you have everything that they have and more, you absolutely
are able to do it. I was like, Oh, I hadn't, nobody ever told me that it was, Oh, there's
the rich people, there's the successful people, there's the jacked people. They're different than
me somehow. I'm cursed. I have this just, Oh, that's me. I was born like that or whatever.
That's not the reality. And the reality is everybody watching this has all the tools you need
to be as great as any other human out there that's doing it. They have all the wrong ingredients.
And, and then he said, um, he pointed a, you know, big street light above us. He goes, if I
see another man climb that pole, jump off, not get hurt, he goes, I can do that. And I was like,
Oh, like it resonated with me. It sounds crude and adolescent, but for me that, that was one of
those seminal moments of, that I continually refer back to of when I look at a man I admire and would
be intimidated by or maybe covetous or what, like why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am
I like, why am I not doing that? Why am I not capable? What, what are they doing that's different?
What do I need to learn? What is my initiation into that, that level of, um, excellence,
erraté? Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people attribute a lack of achievement to a, Oh, I just
don't have what's available. What would I need to get there? Right. I need to go study about this
for three years so I can finally do it. And it's like, no, you're, you have the tools and you most
likely have enough knowledge to get started. Like at least with like fitness, with the gym,
a lot of people will sit there and watch the most optimal training program and the most,
these are the exercises you have to do. And it's like, Oh, I have to study this stuff to,
to be optimal, to get jacked. It's like, you could do the basics for the rest of your life,
like five exercises. Yeah. And you will get jacked. Start. Yeah. And that's the hard part,
right? Is the starting. Yeah. That's refusing the call. I'm refusing the call because
everyone in my family's fat or nobody has money or it's, it's the victim story.
Somehow I am a victim and other people are villains and I'm waiting for somebody to save me.
And it's, you know, we go through all of these struggles until we realized, no, it's you. Oh,
that's the, that is the liberating moment. The burden of that is, and Peterson does a
genius job of unpacking Exodus. That's his, we who rest with God kind of thing, you know? And
so when the Jews are liberated from the tyranny and slavery of Pharaoh,
then they get to go to the promised land. It's like, awesome. No, you've got desert time.
And that is a portion of the hero's journey is it post initiation, you don't get all the good stuff.
You're not jacked. You're not rich. You're not, you're not those things. You have to go through
the desert, which then is the thing that integrates the initiation. The desert is a trackless place
that is designed to test the faithful. That's why it exists. And in the Exodus analogy, they get
lost and they get disgruntled and disenfranchised and disappointed. And they start worshiping false
idols and their journey's done until you have your pillar of smoke, pillar of fire and your
commandments. That's the metaphor. And that's your vision and your values. That's the foundation
of culture is your vision and your values, which is why when I'm doing organizational development,
that's where we start. I start with the executive team. You need to have a very, very clear vision
for why this organization exists. And you need to have a set of values that guide the decision-making
process of your people. That's your pillar of smoke commandments. And if you don't have that,
your people will eventually quit and they will either leave to find another tribe that has a
vision and values, or they will just, they will become disengaged and become that 87%. Yeah. Who
is going to just park it wherever they are and start worshiping false idols. Yeah. And you'll
see them doom scrolling. Computer is going to die. Take five. Yeah, man. Let's charge it up. Okay.
We're live. Yeah, we're live. Okay. All right. So shout out Jack Donovan for the shirt. We're
talking about power brands or maybe I'm this camera power brands. All right. Well, we talked
a lot about initiation. Talked about that was a while ago. It was a little bit ago. We talked
about the mission, the shared values, all of this alignment, the things that deal with alignment.
And in order to have initiation, to have this process occur, you need kinship. You need people
around you. Right. So talk to me a little bit about kinship. What does that mean?
Kinship is the same root as the word kind. So we can't have kindness without kinship and kindness
is the specific behavior that we reserve for our kin. And we can't be kind to everyone on the planet.
Otherwise we will run out of resources. At some point we have to recognize that there is a
core group of people that deserve our sacrifice. And if we're sacrificing for everyone in the world
and it's not reciprocal, then eventually we go extinct. And so we can be respectful and we can
be nice and we can do all these great things for the world. But in terms of the kindness that
involves sacrifice, that needs to be reciprocal. So earlier we talked about how many men will
actually help you move. Well, it's not free. They're giving up a day of their life,
which they would have rather be doing something else. And they're willing to do that for you.
That's kindness. That's kinship. And when another man does that for you, you owe them.
That's how the reciprocity works. It means that they have one in the back with you. That's honor.
Honor is a relationship-based behavior. And so a kinship system is an honor-based culture.
And that's the biggest thing that's been lost in our current society of pride is that there is no
reciprocity. There is no honor. And so kinship is that foundation of sacrifice to other people within
your community that will be reciprocal. And that engine creates so much trust and safety and
resiliency that it enables us to engage with things that are risky. Yeah. And so in regards to
this idea of kinship creates altruism. It creates sacrifice. It creates helping other people. And
we've lost it in a modern era. How can we go about building kinship, recreating these systems where
the community surrounds you, you take risks, they pick you back up? How do we create that?
Well, one of two ways. The first one is you join an existing honor-based culture.
And the popularity of jujitsu is that you can't join a gym
that is teaching and participating in a lethal technology without honor. I mean, it's a deal
breaker. There are very strict codes of what you do and don't do in a jujitsu gym. Otherwise,
you are removed from the... You're excommunicated because it's lethal. It's deadly. And that is an
anchor back to how we used to live, which is the world is deadly. There are competing territorial
tribes. There are animals that eat us. There is starvation. There is predation. There is environment.
It's lethal. We're perfectly adapted for a lethal environment. And our protocol for dealing with
that is kinship. It's a mandatory operating system for people who deal with lethal things.
That's why the military is honor-based. Police, fire, sports, jujitsu, those are honor-based
cultures because they're lethal. So join one of those and then you will get to reap the benefits
as long as you're willing to conduct yourself in an honorable way. Then you get all the benefits of
that. The other avenue of kinship is you create it. And that's the responsibility of leaders.
And you create it by that foundation of we have a shared aspirational vision for the future,
which is significant enough that it requires our full commitment. But we also have a set of
values, behaviors, a code, a creed, your articles of agreement on a pirate ship that you sign
that says, we will abide by these rules. And that behavior will drive us towards our future.
That is the foundation of your kinship system. And it comes from leaders. Leaders have to
model this. We don't decree it. We recognize that our people and our kids are not listening to us.
They're watching us. So that's part of the evidence of our efficacy is our life. We have to be living
whatever the operating system is that we're promoting. The people who are falsely adopting
that get revealed very quickly. Yeah. And when we're creating these systems of kinship,
there are people who might try to take advantage of these systems. People are giving, people are
sacrificing, people are being heroes, and some bad players come in. How do we deal with those people?
Generally speaking, culture is a critical mass. There's a tipping point. And particularly when
you're looking at the people who are engaged in culture creation, organizational development,
and they're getting up to speed with culture change, that as soon as you get past 50%,
then the rest of the people will fall into line. Because they realize that that's how I reclaim
belonging. And belonging is the biggest driver of humanity. We need belonging. As soon as you have
that 50% buy-in of leadership, then the rest will fall into line. The ones that do not abide
will self-select out. You don't have to fire people. You just have to keep running your game.
And very quickly, people will be like, oh, this is not my culture, whether that's because they're
not willing to or they're not able to. And there are many different versions of culture with a
different vision for the future and a different set of values. And people need to find one that
makes sense for them. And that's legitimate. That 50% marker is one that solidifies culture change.
And the people who, once that's intact, people who come in that are not aligned with that will
very quickly realize it. Oh, I'm going to be revealed as not in alignment. And they will
self-select. Yeah. Through, well, be it shame from the group or be it other people talking about
them that they're taking advantage of the system. Oh, yeah. Shame is, you know, it's a
shame is a really powerful emotion because it's the way that communities police behavior. So
it's a deadly sharp sword. And when people use the shame sword indiscriminately, then just
massive amounts of trauma in the world. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, where it really should
be the stick of fate, where it's like, if you don't, and here's why, then you don't get to
participate in all the things we're doing. When people are experiencing shame, it triggers the
same part of your brain, your amygdala, as a literal threat to your life. Yeah. It's a death
response. Shame is a death response. And horses do it. Wolves do it. Every, almost every communal
species has a shame function, where if you're not abiding by our norms, then we run you out and you
die. That's how the game works in the real world. And so obviously, you know, a horse that gets run
out into the plains, they get eaten that night. The safety is in the herd. The dark part is when
you see that happen in school, when the culture is maladaptive and you're having people getting
shamed for not being part of a toxic culture. Like, oh, that's really dark. People who don't
participate in the alignment foundation, and then they're being held accountable, they interpret it
as shame. Whereas if you are part of the team and you're receiving coaching, critical feedback,
improvements, if you're part of that, you don't interpret it as shame. You interpret it as
coaching or investment or accountability. That's an incredibly important nuance from leadership,
is you want to solidify alignment and belonging, and then give critical feedback. That way,
it's not shameful. It's called accountability, which is what every high performing team in the
world recognizes as a central part of their success. Can you have critical feedback and
have people hold themselves and each other accountable for success?
Yeah. And so shame access this mechanism within large groups to change behaviors of people who
might take advantage of the system. Correct. And then, you know, shame is just a dark word.
The brighter version is accountability. And again, people who want to take advantage of the system
and they're held accountable, they're going to interpret it as shame, but, you know,
that's because they don't belong. Yeah. And from what you're saying,
it reminds me of modern politics in a sense, in that if you're on the, be on the left,
be on the right, there seems to be a weaponizing of shame on both sides, where it's like,
you don't agree on this issue with me, we're going to kick you out of the group, or you better
align with us right now. And it's happening on both sides at a very massive scale. Even with this
recent election, I keep seeing posts online that are very shaming towards whatever group they don't
like. Yeah. Yeah. Alignment first. That's the biggest leadership axiom that I would leave with
everybody is if there's something going wrong culturally within your team, look at the level
below and, you know, and those four levels are alignment, kinship, healthy conflict, sustainable
success. So if there's something that is missing, then look at that foundational step before it
and do that work. Yeah. And so you have the alignment, the kinship, both of these things
create conflict. They enable you to have the tools and the solidity and the foundation to
deal with conflict. Conflict is inevitable. Okay. Say more about that. Life is conflict in a,
in a certain way. You can't innovate without failure. That's conflict. You can't hold somebody
accountable without having some potential blowback of hurt feelings, resentment,
miscommunication. That's conflict. You can't make a critical decision without acknowledging that
I'm going to make bad ones and there's conflict. Competitiveness inherently involves conflict.
There's, you can't be competitive and not recognize that, Ooh, somebody's going to lose.
That's part of the game. So the ability to have the resiliency to be able to engage with conflict in a,
in a functional sense, it comes straight from kinship. Otherwise you're going to have people
either avoid it. They will not innovate. They will not make decisions. They will not be intrinsically
motivated. They will not hold each other accountable. They will just acquiesce. They will fight,
flight, freeze, appease. One of those four dysfunctional trauma responses. So if you want
your team to actually engage in a competitive, successful, innovative manner, you have to have
that foundation of trust and safety. Yeah. And in the culture of comfort that we're talking about,
I think a lot of young people are afraid of conflict, afraid of pissing someone off,
doing the wrong thing. So a lot of people will avoid speaking out on values or speaking out on
this stuff that you're talking about alignment. So how as young people can we have the right tools
to handle conflicts in this modern lens? First of all, that honor culture or tribal systems
only works at 150 people or less. That's the Dunbar's number. When you get bigger than that,
then we lose the intimacy of our connections. The situation you're talking about with small groups
of young people who are struggling with that run the same protocol. Hey, alignment. And even if
your alignment is different than somebody else, you can still honor what their vision for the
future is. You can honor their values. You don't have to dismiss that. There still can be a consensus
of, okay, we're different. And those differences is actually what makes us great. Our differences
drive our adaptability. That difference is great, but we still have to have some foundation of
a respectful acknowledgement of different people's things. And once you have that,
then you can explore that kinship level and so on and so forth. In big organizations that are above
150, you have to now start relying on some external structures. And this is when we have
organized religion and we have organized governments and we have those pillars of society
that hold us together in groups that are larger than 150. So when we see those being corrupted
and not revitalized, that's society threatening. It really is. America is a great example of that.
It was a revolutionary idea in human history that we're going to hold together all these
different states with completely different cultures and economies and worldviews. And we're going to
create this alignment system that holds us all together. I mean, it's a radical, it's radical,
deeply radical. Our constitution is a radical document. So that is what holds America together,
is our articles, our amendments, the constitution, like we have this foundation of alignment that
is the only thing that holds us together, that thing. So if we lose that, then you see the raw
dysfunction of tribalism that we're experiencing today. Tribalism is the dark side of tribe.
You can't have tribe without the other. There's always the other, because that's what welds us
together as an affiliation and identity. To beat the other guy.
That comes with it. You're not going to be competitive until you realize there's another.
And so how do you make that healthy? And USC and UCLA, there's a rivalry, but they're both
Los Angeles teams. They're both football teams that play by the same rules. So there's built in
alignment. And when we lose that alignment piece, then you have a much darker, more volatile
thing. And politically, we're sliding towards that.
Yeah. But I guess for tribes on a global scale, that would look like acknowledging that they're
on a global scale that would look like acknowledging the humanity, having empathy for other groups,
regardless of, oh, they're on the other team. I want to beat them. But I can acknowledge
that they have the same humanity as me. And on that level, we're aligned.
In World War I, they pause the war for Christmas. All these dudes who are gassing and machine
getting each other, come out of the trenches, give whatever gifts they had, hooking it out
on Christmas. That's alignment. There's something that we can share that we can have this moment.
Yeah. We all want to celebrate Christmas. Yeah.
And that is the solution to our political tribalism is that, fly the flag. That's a symbol.
Symbols are a deep form of affiliation that we all carry. And until we have a global
flag and there's aliens that we have to fight or negotiate with or whatever it is, then what we
have is nationalism. And even that symbol has been somewhat
degraded, right? Someone flying the American flag is immediately pitted as being a Republican.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And so that symbol that used to represent our unity now represents our division.
Yeah. Yeah. And if I'm, let's say, a young person
listening to this and I do want to have alignment between my friends, my family, my community,
what is, it seems weird to have these conversations, right? Maybe a little bit awkward, a little bit
just like, you want to talk about values? Like in a team, it might make sense, but within your
community, it feels a little bit weird. How can we tackle those things tactically?
Yeah. You have to talk about them. I did this with my family. I do this with big organizations.
I grind them on their vision statement and we wordsmith it and we make it memorable and
tamed with values, try to find an acronym, like whatever we can do to make that vision values
applicable. And I hadn't really done it formally with my family. And so we got together and I asked
my wife, like, okay, what's our family vision? What's our big why? And she immediately came out
with, I think our big vision is to live life so well that it serves as an example of what is possible.
It's like, damn, honey, it was done. That's our family creed. I love it. Like,
now I'll put that in Latin under my coat of arms. You know, live life so well, it serves as an
example of what is possible. And again, and I do this professionally and I didn't do it. So that
conversation, that's the best dinner conversation you can have. Go out and get beers with your
friends and have that conversation. Like, you know, what's your creed? What's your ethos? What's
your why you hear? Oh, like that's the pro level conversation. And then the ancillary piece, which
is around the values, that's work. You know, that's some work you have to do. I have a big war board
in my office and I write down kind of principles or quotes that I hear that are navigating
statements, commandments. I have a commandment list, you know, and I hunt those actively. I don't
know whatever my algorithm is, but it feeds me a lot of inspirational shit. Mine too. And every
once in a while I hear something that, you know, Hormuzi and he shared this one that the solution
to something is the work you're avoiding, in the work you're avoiding. Oh yeah, the magic you are
looking for is in the work you are avoiding. So good. And both those dudes are like, yes, yes.
So we're getting inundated with that. And so the more structured part is to actually start
crystallizing a worldview of what is this about? Yeah. And so I think I have 12 of those statements
on my board, which are kind of like the way that I refer to it. It's right next to my desk. I look
at it. I'm like, okay. And so for young people, at some point when you're going pro with your life,
you have come up with that thing and it's your elevator's, you know, speech and a networking
event on a first date. You lead with that. This is who I am. You should lead with that. Job interview,
lead with that. Every meeting you go to, if you're a leader, you lead with that. This is why we're
here. These are our values. Work it in because it's super powerful. Yeah. What do you mean by going
pro on your life? Going pro. Yeah. That's a Pressfield. We were talking about Steven
Pressfield. He's a big historical fiction author and he wrote a book called The War of Art,
which outlined his creative process. And the one piece in that book that a lot of people gravitated
to is the difference between an amateur and a pro. And what's the difference? People think that
amateurs have a certain casual nature of their life and pros have a level of success and money.
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
take your life seriously. So if you want to get in shape, you need to address it professionally.
If you want to write a book, if you want to have a great relationship, you want to be a great parent,
you look at it professionally, which means an endless commitment to growth that you prioritize
it, you're willing to sacrifice for it. That's the difference between an amateur and a pro.
And it's not that you have a God given gift and you get paid a lot of money to throw a football.
It's that that's what you do. It's your identity. And it really comes down to an identity.
If you identify yourself as somebody who you're a healthy fit person and you live your life
according to that identity, you're a pro. So that's how he writes his books. He sits down at nine
o'clock in the morning and he just opens the document and he waits for the muse. And sometimes
it's bumpy and terrible and unreadable. Stephen King calls that his the closed door version,
where you just allow yourself to write crap for days, just unreadable junk. But you're
doing it. A professional goes to the gym when they don't want to. And they don't crush,
they're not impeccable, they're not flawless, they're not skilled. They just show up, show up.
That's what pros do. Do you think we can take life too seriously and go in the other direction?
Like in my head, I'm imagining a person who has so many goals they want to accomplish and
responsibilities and they just don't have fun. You can only go pro on a few things. And you pick those
with great intentionality. With your values, with your alignment. You can go pro on anything. There
are people who build their entire life around travel. Not my version of pro. But for them,
they're pros and they have seen the world and it's what they do. It's great. But they're not
pros and they have seen the world and it's what they do. It's great. There are professional
parents. There's professional... Like if you look at my house and how my wife builds this house,
she's a pro. It's her identity, it's what she does. You can go pro on anything, but all the
things that are important for you, you need to go pro.
Talk to me about the last step of the pyramid, sustainable success.
It's legacy. That tribe triangle that were of those four levels of culture creation
are very similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You have to start at the bottom,
otherwise you don't get the ones above. Maslow ends with self-actualization and
that's pride-based. That's individualistic. It's me focused on myself. And sustainable success is
the recognition that there is another level above self-actualization in every indigenous culture.
There is the responsibility for the creation of the next generation that is following you.
It is honoring of the ancestors and the ancestors to come and that you're a part of that. It's the
perpetuation of culture. It's adaptability. It's long-term. It's the persistence hunt
that every significant thing that humans or wolves have ever done is a persistence hunt.
That means that it involves consistency and investment and recommitment and reconnection
over time. And sustainable success is where all the big meaning is. It's fulfillment, legacy.
And when you talk about legacy, what are the things you're looking at in legacy?
What impact are you looking for? That's going to vary person to person, organization to organization.
But whatever it is, it's the acknowledgement that what you're doing is standing on the shoulders of
your ancestors and appreciating and acknowledging that. And then realizing that you're that person
for the next generation or generations to come. That you're part of something that is deeper and
more significant than any individual could ever be. That's legacy. What's your legacy?
My legacy is reintroducing kinship back into the world and reclaiming that as our birthright.
And I guess I want to get behind the why of what's why that legacy. Why you listed your five why's
in the book. I guess I want to go through the five why's with you. Why? Why I've landed at kinship
is that it's the solution to our two big problems. Those are the cratering mental, emotional health,
our resiliency, our physical health. We're losing that game. And then the other component is
abundance, success, legacy, service, meaning, all those action-oriented things. One's defense,
one's offense. The solution to both of those is the kinship system. It solves both of those issues.
And it's catastrophically missing. That is the place that I've landed in terms of the master
lever of humanity is that piece. And what's the why behind solving those problems? Why do you want
to pull the master lever for humanity? Because it solves those two problems. It solves the two big
problems. It solves the two big issues facing humanity. It creates freedom and meaning
for humanity is our kinship systems. Yeah. And what do you find important about humanity?
Oh boy. I think we're going to launch into another rabbit hole down here, but
humanity is consciousness, is divinity. It's the universe waking up to itself. That's humanity.
So we occupy a unique and rare position in life that we are both animal and base and
all of those tribal things, but we are also divine. We have the ability to
create. We have the ability for self-awareness and humanity is
God in the world. We are that. We're either one of those two things. And so I'm a big fan.
I'm a fan of humanity. I believe that it's divinity expressed.
No, I think even that is a unique take because I find a lot of people are anti-humanity these days.
Like seeing that humanity is important in some way and for you it's divinity. That reminds me
of this practice that I've been participating in called circling. And it's an authentic relating
practice, which one of my mentors introduced me to. And in it, one person is centered in the
middle of a circle. There might be five people and there's one moderator. And this person acts
as a sounding board of the human experience for everyone else in the room. So the way of
operating in a circle is that everyone is trying to understand this person's authentic experience
through questioning, through sharing emotion, and through sharing what they perceive of this
person's experience. And in my experience with circling, every time the circle would go deeper,
everyone would just have this sigh of understanding and feeling just the same as the other person.
Like, oh, it all makes sense. You are me, I am you. And that's that divinity, that God,
whatever you want to call it, between all of us.
It's a universal experience. It's a universal quest, freedom of meaning.
In that heroic journey, those are the grails, freedom of meaning for everyone.
Yeah. And so that commonality is divine. There's something that is, you know,
quite special about human beings. Humans are cool.
Humans are hella cool. Yeah. And as we talk about your book, we talk about these things you've
learned, these things you teach, I want to know about how your experience in the army
influenced these teachings. Like, what did you experience there that changed your outlook on
life? The first one that I talked about with the drill sergeant is the ownership and response
ability that we have available, profound. I also had some experiences not having money at a bar
and a stranger who happened to be wearing a uniform gave me money.
No way of recouping that money. Never had met me before.
Oh, here's another, here's a brother who doesn't have five bucks for a beer. Yeah.
And that was a very foreign concept to me. When you talk about we are together,
and it's because of the uniform. That was affiliation or your circle is that, oh,
there's a we here and it's profound. It's a profound thing. And I never had any we growing up.
So that was remarkable. It was big enough that it overrode everything else. There is no race
doesn't exist in the military. It does in the sense that, oh, there's the black guys and
they have their own unique culture and it's interesting. And there's the Hispanic dudes
and there's the rednecks and they have their little cliques in language and they have their
little cliques in language. But the moment the uniform goes on, oh, you're green. Everyone's
green. That was profound that there is something bigger than all these other divisive issues
around religion or race or any other type of specialization that when you put alignment on
top of that, that's the trump card. That's kinship and experience a culture of kinship
is a profound experience. If you get stuck behind enemy lines, you get injured. They will not stop.
They will not stop to get you out until they get you out. There's a code in our military that
you leave no one behind. And it's built in and that's the kinship system is that we can't afford
to because if you have one moment where, oh, those people are wounded, let them go. It erodes the
whole structure. Like, oh, maybe I can't afford to take those risks because they'll leave me behind.
So they enforce that with ferocious regularity. And even if you have one knucklehead,
it's your responsibility to take care of the knucklehead who always forgets to fill his
canteen. You better fill his canteen. That's part of the game. And one of the ethos of the military
is that you watch out for the guys in your unit. And you almost don't have to watch out for yourself
because you've got nine other guys watching out for you. That was a profound paradigm shift for me,
who didn't have any of that growing up. So that code, that brotherhood, that alignment is a
really important dynamic. That gave me a glimpse into the power of a kinship system or an honor
culture. And I'm not promoting the military as something that everybody should do or could do.
We have 73% of our young men unfit for duty. 73% chronic disease, obesity, 73% of our country.
The young men are not fit to serve. Woo. That's not just lifestyle. That's an epidemic.
Yeah. That is a threat to our very existence. We've gone that far down the road.
And it's not even just in unfitness. I think young men are falling behind on all metrics.
They're falling behind in education. They're falling behind on jobs. They're falling behind
on mental health. Men are 4% more likely to die by suicide. 73% of men are 73% of opioid deaths are
from men. So homelessness, suicide, incarceration. It's catastrophic.
Yeah. And it seems like we're failing young men, right?
Yep. Up until now.
Yeah. Up until now.
Up until now. It's the Caldo Adventure.
Yeah. I think the point that I wanted to get to there was that there's a lot of young men looking
for meaning. And then there's this dynamic of like parasocial relationships with online influencers.
And I don't know if you have seen this at all, but you have even like Jordan Peterson,
some people see him as a guru. I'll do everything he says or like Joe Rogan or you have Andrew Tate.
You have these figures that pop up feeding a story and young men without a story grab onto the story.
100%. Yeah. That's tribalism. It's the same dynamic with gangs. You will join any gang that
will have you because you know you're going to die alone. Like the lone wolf dynamic, even if
people look at the romantic mythology of the lone wolf, the independent man, Rambo, the lone ranger,
you know it intuitively that is a death sentence. You will find whatever click that will take you.
And then there are probably some bad operators in that space on both sides. So the,
yes, the part of that is we need to stop villainizing men as just a scapegoat for the
issues of the world. And it's contentious to say, but kind of my response to that, being a man in
the world is that we have certainly perpetuated the majority of the ills in the world. If you look at
environmental catastrophes and the wars and the, you know, all the blights on our record, it's men.
However, we also built the world. So you need to speak to both of those dynamics. Thank you. And
do better. Great. I don't know a man in the world that would not acknowledge that. Like, okay, I got
my, I got acknowledgement for who I am and what I did in the world. And the fact that you have running
water and nobody's eating you and nobody's freezing to death and you have more food than we were. We
have obesity issues, not starvation issues. Thank you, men. Good job. And now get your shit together.
Like, okay, got it. Yeah. Thank you. That's that being seen portion and being included in the
kinship, right? It's like in the way that we're failing them is that we're putting them away from
the kinship. We're using shame as an attack on, oh, men suck. Oh, men did this. And I would say
the same thing about institutions. Yeah, the Boy Scouts did some terrible things. The church did
some terrible things. Government did some terrible things. Okay, fix it. You don't remove it. You
don't just yank it out like it's a dead thing. The analogy of that is the, when you look at fossils,
you know, or skeletons, when you see a broken leg, that's what killed the animal.
Unless they have people around to heal them. And that means that they're worth investing in.
They're worth the sacrifice that it takes to have that broken-legged man, you know, who did bad
things or made mistakes, particularly when they're in their adolescent phase, which is me, me, me,
instant gratification, external validation. Like, you made a lot of mistakes, but unless we can
invest in them to heal them, then we're suffering because they are us. They are part of us now,
and they're part of our legacy for the future. And I would say the same thing about incarceration.
You know, it's that we have, I don't know, 10,000 prisons or something in there. Yeah, something
that's crazy. Yeah, we're leading the free world in our incarceration numbers, and we have written
them off. And it's not a successful strategy, bringing these valuable people who have been to
the darkness. And then the people who have been through the abyss and come out the other side,
those are the greatest people we have. They really are. They've done the hero's journey.
They have done it. And the same thing with combat vets and addicts. And like, they're the people who
we revere because they've come through the other side. But if we are not going to invest in those,
whatever they are, heal them, then they can't hunt with us anymore. We are lessened. We need to make
that pivot. And so with our institutions, those need to be revitalized. I mean, we need science
back. We need our government back as a vehicle, a virtuous vehicle for our country and not just
dismiss it. Oh, government's bad. It's like, no, our lawyers, everybody dismisses lawyers.
They're the glue that holds our system together. Heal them. And so that's part of the faith,
or even the kinship system. I would bundle that under kinship as well.
Yeah. But ultimately, we have to continue to reinvest into people
into processes and into systems, right? We can't just throw them out, throw the baby out with the
bath water. This sucked. Yeah, we're throwing ourselves out. Yeah, we throw ourselves out.
And as we come to the end of the podcast, we have a tradition. The podcast is called Carrots and
Sticks, which has an accountability element to it. So we always ask the guest to think about a
challenge that takes two weeks that would push them to live a little bit more courageously.
Two week challenge. Yeah.
For me, that would be the recommitment to the next book I'm working on. And
I'm really busy right now with a lot of work. And so I have backburnered that.
And so I'm no longer a pro. I have surrendered my professionalism based on other things. And so
that challenge to be accepted would be reclaiming my professionalism as a
author. And what would that look like? Every day. In the next two weeks? Every day. You will write?
Yeah, every day. That's awesome. And it doesn't mean that it's going to be great
or productive, but it would mean that I show up at the gym every day. Yeah. And if it's 30 minutes,
show up. One paragraph. Yeah. That's great. And the stick portion of that is you create
your own accountability. And that's what we're doing. And so that's what we're doing. And so
you're own accountability for that as if I don't write every day for the next two weeks,
I now have to X or I lose X. I would lose my integrity.
I would lose my ethos. Yeah. And my wife's a big one. And I have a lot of good men on my team
who I behave honorably towards. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on. That's a deal. Yeah.
Let's do it. You'll be the right man. What's yours? I can do one. What's your two week challenge?
Oh, come up with a two week challenge. You know what it is? I've been really putting off doing
clipping and clipping for the podcast, doing different clips on different social media platforms,
posting shorter versions of it. And partially it's because I don't have the time. And then
another part of it is because I am like, if I put in this extra investment of all these hours,
is it going to bring me anything? And so it's a fear of failure, a fear of not wanting to
do a bunch of more work without any promise of a return. But that's what pros do. Yep.
And that's what pros do. So I guess my commitment for the two weeks would be to at least on one
social media channel, clip up three of my podcasts and then actually send out clips for those on that
social media channel. Deal. Deal. My man. All right. Well, this was super fun, man. Yeah. This was so
great. Where can people find you if you want to be found? Where can people reach out?
Let's see. My website is mywolftribe.com. That has a lot of resources on it and my name is Philip
Folsom. So Google me. Easy to find. Instagram, Philip Folsom or WolfTribe. Yeah. Well,
anywhere. Awesome. Thank you so much.