Huggy Bear McNiff

Punishment creates better criminals. Train yourself the exact same way that you would train your dog. So, I am not a believer in motivation. Things are hard because you lack a skill to make it easy. My favorite thing is Trevor says, "Language isn't important. It's everything." So, here we have another episode with Hoggy. Hoggy, thank you so much for being here. And just to give the audience context because they probably have never had exposure to your work, you come from Trevor Cashy. Trevor Cashy I think is one of the smartest people on earth. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I

think it was the young he was the youngest PhD on America. That is correct. That is correct. One of the one of the youngest. And I I'll let you like elaborate on what you do exactly, but just this is like if you want for the audience, if you want some nutritional guidance from real experts, I think this is the podcast for you. And just I guess let's start puggy. What do you do? What problems do you solve and we go from there? Appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for your time and I appreciate you guys having me on. Uh as we said, my name is Huggy Bear McNiff. That is actually my

real name. I work for Dr. Dr. Trevor Cashy at Trevor Cashy Nutrition. I'm the head coach. And if you've read Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis, which is where most people were introduced to Dr. Cashy from, I'm the Navy Seal that Dr. or that Professor Easter writes about who worked with Dr. Cashy. Uh I started working with Dr. Cashy, I want to say probably about 10 11 years ago. Uh it was shortly after uh he got his PhD and he had just been getting started out in nutrition and one of the other

strong men that I had competed with at the time showed up just looking absolutely fantastic. And so of course I wanted to find out what this gentleman had been doing and of course my mind immediately went to drugs. I'm like hey what were you taking to be able to look like this all of a sudden? And he told me no. He had basically just gotten his nutrition squared away and that's how I got introduced to Dr. Cashy. And then through working with Dr. cashy and my nutrition. What you find out is that most of our nutritional problems, so to

speak, really aren't nutrition problems. What they are is problems with our own autonomy, problems with our own environment, and problems with our skills or lack thereof. And so, if you focus your energy and your resources on acquiring those things, well, you're going to make much faster progress than worrying about a perfect macronutrient distribution or a perfect diet at any given time. And so that's really what we started diving into is how to focus and teach people how to solve problems. And

we do it through the context of nutrition because everyone was taught something different. We all have some type of dysfunctional idea or belief around what we eat. And so if we can teach people how to separate your emotions, how to problem solve effectively, and how to identify things using precise language, well then you can expand that out to other areas of your life. Well, thank you for much so much for that, Ki. And yeah, I guess for people for context like this will be nutrition a bit oriented, but really it's about behavior change. Correct. Correct me

if I'm wrong. Really is how do you change the problem to solve is how do you change your own behavior? That's right. We all know what we should eat. We all know what we should be doing. It's why can't you do that on a consistent enough basis to produce the results? And it's because human beings think that we deserve certain things. Well, hey, I had a great day, so I deserve to go ahead and treat myself. And if we trained ourselves the exact same way we trained our dog and we rewarded ourselves with the things that would reinforce the proper behaviors, we would make faster

progress. But most people are like me and we're all spoiled brats. Totally. So, I guess let's start from the beginning. Um, because you touched about some like three different topics that we can go really deep on. One is behavior, the other is words and the other is like touching cognitive behavioral therapy if I'm not mistaken all the masturbations etc. But let's unpack it because I want I want you to understand that my audience has never probably never had uh exposure to these subjects and I think it's one of the

most important subjects you can uh try to learn. So starting with behavior, how do you change your own behavior? So many people know I should eat less, move more, I should do more cold calls to get more sales. And then including myself, you can't seem to uh do it. Why is it? And how do you change your own behavior? Okay. What we need to do is we need to look at where the dysfunction lies. Like is it a lack of skills that's preventing you from uh exhibiting that behavior? Is it a problem with your environment? Is it a problem with your overall family? Like you know, are you

not getting support that you need? And once you identify that, well then you need to meet yourself where you currently are and then basically build a system from there. So let's say for example, we want to get somebody that gets up to go exercise every single morning. This is a person that usually loves sleeping in till like 9 or 10 every single day. So how do we get them excited enough that they want to get up at like 6:00 a.m. so that way they can go for a run? Well, number one, we need

to get them used to the idea of waking up at 6:00 a.m. So, that' be the very first place I'm going to start is, hey, we're going to start setting an alarm for 6 a.m. every single day. And every single day that you make that 6 a.m. wake up call, guess what? You just earned yourself a dollar. And we bank that dollar for something that that person would want at the end of the month. Let's say we're going to go ahead and get a new pair of Jordans for them or something like that. So, every time that they go ahead and make that 6 a.m.

wakeup call, boom, they get a dollar. And then once they've gotten acclimated to that, well then we can go ahead and increase the intensity and the frequency and then increase the reward. Well, hey, now you're going to get up and you're actually going to go for a walk every single morning and that's going to be worth $1.50. And we continue on that till that becomes to normal. And then it's like, okay, now guess what? Now we're going to go ahead and go for a run or a jog. And we continue to do that.

It's such a point that then your biology starts to reward the behaviors. But think about it. We all do stuff that we hate every single day. We all get up every single morning to go to work because there's a paycheck to be given. So all we need to do is figure out how to give ourselves a paycheck for the things that we want to do ourselves versus relying on that external stimulus. Explain a little bit about the part that your biology rewards it because I think a lot of people um when you say uh they need a reward to change they think an external reward but what other types of

reward exists in order to motivate behavior? Most of us Why did we all start dieting and start working out? because we want to look amazing naked. We want to appeal to, you know, our partners. We want to just feel confident in our own bodies. And so, we all have this expectation that, dude, once I get in the gym, man, I'm going to start looking like Arnold. I'm going to start looking the way that I want. And unfortunately, biology doesn't work that way. Like, there's got to be some consistency. There's got to be some acclamation of overall workload volume.

Like, you have to have put in years to be able to create those types of results. And so you need to find a way to reward yourself to keep showing up until such a point that you can actually see the visible rewards of the biology rewarding you because I'm not going to lose the 5 lbs right away on my first day of the diet. And it since it's going to take a couple weeks and there's going to be some frustrating times if there's nothing to keep me motivated so to speak during that period of time. Well, I'm

probably going to fall off and then that's going to create a very frustrating, hopeless situation, which is probably going to create avoidant behaviors about me doing something like this in the future, which man just creates a spiral, and this why you end up with so many unhappy individuals. I I I think this is like a key point that I've always been curious about is uh you talk about like rewarding uh the behavior, right? But we know that the most powerful way to reward someone's behavior is with inter like um how do

you say it like not consistent rewards like every three or four have like a big reward like like as how casinos work. You know that uh okay so that that's dependent. So you have to realize the problem that casinos are trying to solve is to keep you pumping money into the machine. The problems that we're trying to solve as individuals are to make sure that we're continue showing upward trajectory and progression. Those aren't the same thing. And so, as long as like if the casino stops you from having an extinction event where either you run

out of money or you get pissed off at the machine, you'll keep going. Keeping going is good enough to maintain your current baseline. But we want to make sure that we're getting better, which is why the rewards have to continue increasing and why you have to continue looking for bigger challenges. But how is it possible for someone to reward themselves? That's I guess the biggest question I have because right now you say okay a dollar you probably have a a mechanism on Trevor Cashachi

nutrition where someone deposits money and every time they do something they get paid but if you don't have a coach or someone external that is uh like giving those uh reinforcements h how do you reinforce yourself in order to change if you're alone in this fight the exact same way you would treat yourself the same way you would you would treat a child. Okay. So, if you've got a kid that you're giving them an alliance every single week and you're teaching them the value of being able to save up, you're teaching them the the

value of abstaining from certain behaviors. That way, you can have a a reward at the end. Well, you would do the same thing for yourself, just breaking it down. Well, hey, you know what I usually like to do is I'm a big person. I love taking baths, man. It's like one of my favorite things in the entire world. So, I buy bath bombs. I buy the really fancy bath bombs from Lush. Yeah, I make enough money that I could pretty much go out and buy those anytime, but in my household, that would

be something that's considered a treat. So, what I do is now that's my reward system. So, every dollar I bank goes to Huggy getting to go buy his bath bombs, which then he banks towards time that he can go ahead and spend on a Saturday where everybody knows leave him the [ __ ] alone because he gets to go take an awesome bath because that was his reward. And so, what you need to do is figure out what is something that adds value to your life. What is something that gets you excited that you want to be able to do? And then you find a way

to make that your reward system and then reverse engineer away backwards from it. Element two guys. element. Maybe I want to talk about the constraint that you would have in a high income household where you can buy whatever whatever the thing you want at whatever time you want. How would a person that wants to cut sugars for example reward himself? That is a great question but and what we need to do is find out what that person considers as a reward. So if you in a high-income household, well then we're

probably going to have to look for something that maybe isn't money related and we're also looking for something that's not calorie related. Now what do a lot of highincome people really wish that they had more of? Time. So what we want to be able to look for if for a high income person is probably, hey, how can we go ahead and get you some of your time back? Well, rather than banking money towards something you would buy for yourself, maybe you could bank money that you're going to have somebody do all your yard work. That gives you an

entire Saturday back that you can have this time to go ahead and work on projects or do something for yourself. Maybe we can go ahead and have somebody come in and do your laundry for you, which then gives you this. We can have somebody hire out your meal prep for you. All of these things that would become rewards now then begin integrated into a system, which then feeds back upon itself. But let me expand on this question. Let's say you are on a situation where you have all of that met meaning you have someone who was your yard work

yard work food all the like basic stuff that would take a lot of your time and you have everything. Yeah. And so what problem were we trying to solve at that point in time? He wants to cut sugars for example. Let's say he yeah he wants to lose weight but he has everything he needs and the only let's say external uh reinforcements something like status something else is not in his control like another human has to give it to him. So my question then, does he want to cut sugars or does he want to lose weight? Because those are two different problems. Let's say lose weight. No.

Yeah, lose weight. Okay. So if he wants to lose weight, then we're going to have to find out what is his impetus for losing weight. Because if it's just like, hey, something that I thought of one morning and there's no deep desire to do it. Well, then there's no reason for him to change his behavior on a regular basis. Now, let's say, for example, he's not able to have sex with his wife anymore, or all of a sudden he's insecure with what he sees in the mirror. Well, then what we're going to remind him is, dude,

do you want to continue to emotionally feel that way every single day? Look at this amazing life that you have built, but look, there's still a hole in your heart from you lacking this one area. So, what we want to do is we want to be able to give that back to you. So, what we're going to look is teaching you how to delay gratification so this way we can build this esteem. We can go ahead and build these skills so that way you don't feel that emptiness inside. So, that's actually the problem that we're

trying to solve. It's not really a weight loss problem. and say, "Hey, look, I've gone ahead and solved all these other areas of my life, but I never actually taught myself how to prioritize myself. I never taught myself how to be important." And so, that's what we need to do. And then in that which case, then it's going to start to show up aesthetically also. And so, the reward at that point in time would be, look, we're going to get you confident. We're going to get you back to having

sex with your wife. We're going to get you confident taking your shirt off at the pool. and in which time then we need to kind of work backwards to what's going to keep you motivated in the short term so to speak. Did I answer the question or did I bring up another one? Yeah, I I'm going to another subject right here like hoi um I have a question about GOP once that right now that we're talking about weight loss. Yeah. And I I think it's the easy way out. Can you help me expand expand on that because uh following the example that we had

before of a wealthy person that has everything uh doing GOP once uh isn't it the easy way out or or is there another way? Interesting way to put that because I just look at these things as tools. That would be like saying that the person that took their car to work every day took the easy way out. Well, no. They looked to make sure that they could accomplish the job using the resources they had available. Now, using your example, you've got somebody that's very affluent. Well, they've never learned

the skill set of of uh delayed gratification. They've never had to do that. You know, they they've never been in a situation like you and I where they grew up poor and like went to bed hungry at different points. So, you know, God bless them. They never had to worry about those types of problems. So what we need to do is we need to find them a tool to be able to bridge that gap because they know that they can go into the kitchen and eat something anytime. Well, I if I give them a GLP1 that

allows me to go ahead and bring awareness to their actual biology and then we can modify the behaviors and teach them that skill. So it depends on intention as with anything. Is a gun a bad thing? Well, it depends on why you're using it. Is a GLP an easy way out? Depends on why you're using it. If you're using it with no intention of ever changing your lifestyle and you're just like, "Man, I'm going to get these LBs off so I can look good at the beach and as soon as I come home, I'm going back to my binge eating and binge drinking. I'll do this again." Well, then yeah, it sounds like you're taking

the easy way out. If you're using this because you're like, "Dude, I have no idea where to start and I can actually use some type of biological feedback while I try to change my environment and behaviors." I think that's an amazing tool at your disposal. You talk a lot about um skills, Hoggy. Yeah. First of all, let's just define it. what is a skill? Um, and how do you acquire it? You can learn to make a part of your life easier. So, what I always say is things are hard because you lack a skill to make it easy. And so, all we need to

look at is where am I currently experiencing challenge, what's hard in my life, and what would make that easier and then I learn how to do that thing. So, that's a skill for me. How much how much can you um learn? How much is uh let's say genetic like because we have limitation as humans, right? Like if I want to be the fastest runner in the world, probably my like my hardware, my biology wouldn't allow it. Like it's not it's not physically possible. So how do you know the limit um like the limit to where how much skill how much

genetic and how much do you think of our own behavior is u genetic? Okay, so that's a great question. How much of our own behavior is genetic? I don't know. And there's really no way to test that because the only way to be able to test something like that would be to take a baby and isolate them from birth onward. So that way you could see what they naturally did and that would just be inhumane. I don't think anybody's going to sit there and isolate a kid. So there's no way to be able to

test these things. So unless I can measure it and unless I can repeat it and test it, I don't worry about it. That's just, you know, it's imaginary at that point to me. So I only concern myself with things that I can measure and repeat. Now, as far as h how intelligent somebody is, their upper limits of being able to learn, that's like me asking you how big can you get muscularly, how fast can we we're not ever going to know unless you try to push those limits. So, the only way

you're ever going to be able to find out when you're able to stop learning is to try to learn as much as you can till you finally hit that roadblock. So, we don't know. Now, what I can tell you is that everybody can increase their rate of learning from where they currently are. And I actually wrote an entire spreadsheet, an SOP on how people can learn, breaking things down step by step, and how you can get better at learning. Okay. So, you're saying learning itself, like the meta skill of learning, it's a skill. You can get better at learning and you get better at learning and that

generalizes into all the areas that you want to apply it. That's it, man. That's it. And so if you can learn how to learn properly, well then you're going to be able to increase the probability of your success in every other area. I want to double click on that because I have so many questions um on this subject. Sure. And it's it's really a passion of mine. First of all is like I've seen the both of the aisles. Some people say like IQ is so important, right? And it's like I think I I may be wrong with this but I think below an 80 IQ score like you have a lot of problems doing like basic uh

functions. And then you have other people like you in Trevor Cashashi saying like you have so much more potential. Um but you're scientists like you you because a lot of people say like yeah you have so much potential but like you you guys actually like measure stuff and and and do it. How much like does IQ influence let's say this type of thing? like how do you how much you can change and what skills you can acquire. That's really important. What skills are at your disposal and after that is how do you even like go about acquiring a

skill? Great question. I don't know how much IQ influences it and there there's no way to be able to test that because human beings are so diverse that we would we wouldn't be able to have a control group for like you would need sets of identical twins. one that was raised like without any type of education see how fast they can develop skills versus one that was raised with the application of skills so that way we can see how much IQ actually identifi so the utility behind an experiment like that that that's where I actually spend a lot of my time is like what is the utility for these questions cuz people ask questions

the questions themselves are very very intelligent but where are we going to actually apply any of this knowledge how is it going to help us get any better and so unless I can answer that immediately I don't usually worry about it well then those are just nice what if questions Now, the next thing then with how can you go ahead and apply the skill and get better at learning? Well, like I said, if you've got the time, I can go ahead and go over my actually like checklist with you step by step and tell you how I tr coach people through getting better at learning.

Yes, for sure. I think this is awesome. Exactly. That's what I wanted to ask. Can you break up your SOP that you made about how to get better at learning? Absolutely. Yeah. And if you guys want to uh get some more of this, please feel free to uh email me huggy@cashycommand and then you can also sign up for us at uh trevocashy.com. So what what I always look at is like we want to make sure that we are giving ourselves appropriate standards to be able to meet and that's what's going to keep the reinforcement going. So number one, we want to identify what problem we're trying to solve and then that way

we can set an appropriate short-term performance standard. Meaning is this going to be realistic and manageable within the time frame that we've allotted? Because that's the main thing is a lot of people will say something that is completely just like way off track like hey I'm going to be a pro football player by the end of the summer. Okay, no you're not. But so let's let's go ahead and make sure that we are breaking this down into bite-sized pieces that will allow us to continue progression. Then the second thing we want to do is we want to ensure

that you have the time, the space, and the resources to practice until you meet the short-term standard that was determined. Now this is important for most people because this is the shortterm standard, not the ideal performance standard. So, think about this in terms of driving. This doesn't mean that you would be able to pass your driving test. It just means for the time being that you're comfortable driving around the parking lot. So, that way we can take the next steps. Is that all track so far?

Yeah. Just double click because I think this is really important. Uh I heard this before, but the audience doesn't. the importance that you say choosing the right problem because a lot of people have goals and I think Trevor says that goals are stupid because you I may say I want to read read 10 books a week and then someone is like why because I want to make more money and it's like I don't know exactly look at what problem we're trying to solve what is the objective here and then that way we can manufacture a solution

how do you choose the right problem like how do you know if it's the right problem that you're actually trying to solve instead of a goal that masks the problem. I go for lowest hanging fruit because I find that if you can go ahead and take low care of lowest hanging fruit that is currently causing a problem in your life. Number one, it's going to build up your overall efficacy cuz hey, look at me. I'm a guy that takes care of problems. It's going to also start to break inertia. It's going to build up momentum as far as getting things going because hey man, once I took care of that problem and I see how easy it was,

well then I'm probably going to go to the next lowest hanging fruit and eventually I'm going to start working my way up. And so if you just continue this on a daily basis, well, you're always on top of things. Most people have an issue because they end up either not taking any action at all because they're waiting for instructions or they end up in analysis paralysis where hey, I want to do the perfect thing and then therefore they lose a window of opportunity to be able to take any action at all.

Let's say now, okay, you choose the right problem. Okay. Um, and we're going to use weight loss for this example because it's easy and everybody can understand it. Now what like do you have to measure like what are the steps that you need to take? Wait, so let's be let's go ahead and be precise here. You said weight loss. How much weight do we want to lose? Let's say I'm going to use myself as an actual subject here. Okay. Let's say I first of all I have a I want to give you like the whole scope so we can we can use an example. Okay. I don't

know. I've been uh on the gym for four years, five. I don't know how much muscle mass I have left on my let's say genetic potential natural. Uh ideally I'm I'm 88 kilograms. So I would like to weigh 90 and 8% body fat. And let's say I have now 14% body fat. Okay. So what we want to say then is let's go ahead and break this down into manageable standards first. What's going to be more important to you for the short term? Do you want to gain the muscle or do you want to lose the body fat?

let's say lose the body fat. Okay. So, let's focus on getting you cut first so that way we can then build back up. Great. So, short performance standard is we want to go ahead and say in 12 weeks, let's say Nick wants to lose 5 kg in 12 weeks. Great. That's where we're going to go ahead and set the measurement. Now, do you have the time, the space, the resources to be able to do this until the short-term uh standard was met? Meaning, do you have any trips in the next 12 weeks? Do you

have any parties? Do you have any celebrations? Do you have your family coming over and being like, "Nick, we brought you your favorite food and I'm going to have the most hurt feelings if you don't sit here and eat this with me." Or do you have control over your environment for the next 12 weeks where I can be like, "All right, Nick, we're going to go ahead and get you cut and then we're going to go ahead and jump into a rebuild." That's that's actually a really good question and I'll give you the answer. And then an extra question is for for

me, for example, I don't have complete control over my environment. I don't know if in three weeks somebody will come to my house with a with pancakes, you know. Yes. That's not up to me. Sometimes it's just random. Like I just arrive and sometimes there's dessert, sometimes there's no dessert. Like how what do you do there? Because you also live with other human beings. And excellent question. And this is where most people will fall short because what they'll do is they'll have the expectation that hey, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to give myself 12 weeks to get cut. and they think in

their head, well, that means 12 weeks I'm going to do everything perfectly. And they forget to account for the fact that they operate within a continuum of other individuals. And so then they get frustrated because then other individuals aren't sitting there caring about their goals as much. Well, man, I told my wife I was going on a diet. Why is she still making cookies? She should be suffering just as much as I. Well, no. Did you ever express that? Did you set terms on that? Did you give her these types of instructions? Or are you

just getting mad for no reason whatsoever? And so this is where people really set themselves up and shoot themselves into a in the foot as far as problem solving goes because they sit there and they say that they want to solve one problem and then when you bring the other things to their attention, they're like, "Well, I don't want to deal with that." Well, dude, if you want to go ahead and lose weight in the fastest way possible, well, that means that you're probably going to have to have some difficult conversations with the people that you love. You're probably going to have to give them new

ways to love you during this point. Because if your mom loves bringing you pancakes every 3 weeks, Nick, and that's her way of coming in and saying, "I love my son and he's the best." Well, how are you going to give your mom a new way to love you if all of a sudden you're on a diet and you can't have pancakes? Well, you're probably going to have to have a conversation with your mom and be like, "Mom, I'm really doing something to try to improve my life. I love how you make me pancakes. It's something that we used

to connect over. Unfortunately, that doesn't fit who I'm trying to be anymore. So, the next time you come over, instead of bringing me pancakes, could you give give me a hug?" And if you give her something to replace that with, now you can go ahead and start building a system around it. And then you can start changing your environment to then create the Nick who's going to be successful long term. And that's why skills are so important. And that's why identifying the precise problem is so important because it's not really a weight loss problem. It's a hey, Nick's

not happy with who he is or where he currently is at. And that's why you look the way that you do. So in order to change who you are, you need to change everything around you, which means helping all your family get better, too. And this is the the part you say about skills acquisitions, right? Because for someone losing weight, that's when Trevor says 90% right and 100% wrong. Meaning everybody knows that you need to eat less and move more, but it touches so many other uh skills you need to have

in in this case you say communication skills. For example, you need to be able to have hard conversations. Uh you need to modify your environment. And I want to touch uh on that. I want to double click on the environment part. I think I read on atomic habits that uh people that went to war and tried heroin uh when they came back 90% left heroin no rehab and then I think people that do go to a rehab center uh when they come back to their old environment 90% get back into their drug addiction. So what is environment first of all? Why is it so

important for our own behavior and how can we modify an environment when we don't have full control over? Great question. So, environment is your surroundings, including the people in your lives. Okay? So, your house, your job, where you hang out after work, your gym, your grocery store, your car, the people that you hang out with on a daily basis, these are all contributors to your environment. Now, what we need to realize is that we've trained ourselves to react a certain way to all these different things. And so if you develop

an addiction, especially to something that is going to be also have a physical addiction component to it, well then you're going to continue to exhibit these signs anytime you put yourself back in the confines of having to display that training. Which is why changing the environment is so important in being able to break signs of physical addiction because it allows you to manipulate so many different variables. Well, hey, if instead of the people that I used to drink with, well, now I'm hanging out with all brand new people, which means that now I'm not going to the same places anymore, which means now

nobody has preconceived notions of me. Because if all you ever knew me as is the huggy who got drunk and showed up, but now nobody knows me anymore because now I don't go to bars and I instead I go to the gym. Well, now I'm just the guy that starts working out. And so I get to recreate my identity and I get to rebuild who I am. So this is why becoming a master of your own environment and making your environment a product of you is so important. I think that's a a really great point because unfortunately um and then Fran will have an example with alcohol. Uh

but unfortunately I think most people don't like when you change as a person and and yeah and I'll give you the point is that they don't want to lose their relationship with you. And so keep in mind like using the the the addiction example if you have a friend that every single time you got together with that friend you had beers and you guys talked about your problems. So, your friend starts to rely on you as a support system because he knows that if he ever has a problem, he can call you up and you can have a beer and you're going to talk about your problems, but then you decide to stop drinking. Well,

dude, now he's lost his friend. So, it's not that he doesn't like that you changing. He doesn't like that all of a sudden he's losing something that he had in his life before. I used to have a friend that I could sit there and talk to my problems about, but now my friend doesn't drink anymore. So, am I still allowed to talk to my problems? And so that's why the communication becomes so important because if you're the one that's changing and you want to maintain that relationship, you need to set terms and put in the work. You need to go up to him and hey man, I know that we used

to always get together for beers and talk about our problems. I'm not drinking anymore because all those extra calories are making me fat, but man, I would still love to get together and talk to you if you ever got a problem. And that way he still knows there's that connection. That way you don't lose a friend. You actually made that friendship stronger. And then they're going to probably find that your friend is supporting you then. Dude, hey Nick quit drinking, man. That's awesome. Good for you for getting healthy, man. Good for you for getting jacked. We're still

friends. He still said you'd show up for me. But I think in that case, you're you're uh putting a really supportive friend. And at least my my empirical experience, I may be wrong, but it's like uh it's not always the case. Maybe you provide value sometimes because you uh are someone that someone can go in the to the club with, you know, and that's the the whole sometimes um sometimes your I I've seen it before and I heard and I think it's true. Sometimes your your own willingness to change makes the other person like gives them like a little like like a negative reinforcement

because it's creating like a discrepancy between like your your habits and like there's a lot of other stuff going uh it's not just like take beers and and and and talk about problems. Sometimes it's a status thing. Sometimes there's like a lot of uh components to this problem on on social dynamics. But then what you find is if you have a person like that then then they're really not your friend because a friend is somebody who is sitting there supporting you and you want to continue

to grow that affiliation. So if you find that somebody is not adding value to your life and they're only sitting there talking to you, interacting with you when you're able to do something with them, well that gives you data to be able to be like, well this relationship is not beneficial for me. And so that's not losing a friend. That's actually you getting enough data to be able to enforce better boundaries for yourself, which means that, hey, now I'm becoming a stronger human being. My autonomy is

getting better because I'm not letting somebody take advantage of me anymore. I want to go deep into alcohol and um I'll give you the context about Mexico so you can give the example to our audience. It um the culture in Mexico with alcohol is [ __ ] up. it like everything resolves around alcohol and every weekend is everything is around alcohol. So you can imagine so I had to quit drinking for a year and because of health pro problems I couldn't drink for a year and then I started drinking little by little or

there were some times in that year that I drank I drank maybe in that year four or five times and right now it's been so difficult to stop drinking or to change my habits because of the environment that I am Like I feel like an outsider if I'm not drinking. And people are like they even they even pressure you to drink. Like everything revolves around drinking. So how would you change that behavior and what recommendation or tip would you give to someone in Mexico that wants to

stop drinking? Great question, man. Very first question I'd ask a follow-up is, do you want to change the behavior? A lot of people get this idea that, hey, drinking is bad, so I want to stop drink. Do you want to stop drinking? Do you want to start participating in this? Yes, I would love to. Okay, that's that's the hardest part right there because most people can't actually make a decision because it'll be like in their head, yeah, hey, I'm going to quit drinking until my friend offers me beer. So, they always have one foot out the door. So, if you can sit there and say,

"Yes, I want to be able to do this." Then all we need to do is say, "Okay, well then how do we make this happen for you?" Well, great. It probably means that, bro, you're going to have to have a lot of conversations with your friends and tell them, "Drinking is not good for my health. It doesn't make me a happy human being. I still want to hang out with you guys. I'm just not going to drink. Here's what we're going to go ahead and do instead." And again, give them substitutions. Make sure that you can continue to reinforce those relationships and understand that everything is going to change over time

because you're changing. And that way, you can continue to collect data to see what relationships are worth nurturing. It's going to be very very difficult because as you said, you are going to be an outsider. That's not a bad thing. I I think that a lot of people look at changing as like, hey, I'm getting better now. I'm starting to, you know, have distance from the people I love. That's what happens when you improve. If everyone was on the same path, well, then we wouldn't have these issues and we would have zero friction in our lives. You're going to have to make some tough

choices. Same as using Nixon's example, Alex Warmosi. Dude, how many parties did that guy miss out on because he was going to bed early so he could be up at 4:00 a.m.? If you're going to stop drinking, that means that you're going to lose out on that social connection. So, it's going to be up to you to find another one to continue to maintain these types of friendships. What are you going to be able to do to continue to create those connections when you go to a party? Are you going to be the type of

human being that only drank because it created a social interaction for him? That's why I used to drink. I'm very awkward, you know, socially. I'm deaf and so put me in a party. I didn't know what to do. So drinking gave me some courage, you know, gave me something to talk about. So if I stop drinking, what am I going to be able to do to carry on a conversation? Cuz I don't want to just sit in the in the corner awkward and have people stare at me. So then we just have to look at what problem you're trying to solve at that point in time. So is it going to be solved in a

oneanddone situation? [ __ ] no, dude. This is going to be a long-term problem. This is going to like need constant reinforcement, but it's absolutely doable as long as you're committed to it. two guys learning about life. Capital Valentia, you touched two parts about why it's so hard. Uh first of all uh what recommendation would you give someone that goes to that party and everything revolves around drinking and your friends come up and come on man have a shot don't be boring come on uh have a

beer you used to be fun like uh what are you doing here and how would you replace in a culture that everything resolves around that that if you stop drinking you're really an outsider you you stop you you might stop seeing your friends because they hang out in nightclubs or whatever. Girls more most important girls like where do you go and find girls like it's so difficult all the things that you have to sacrifice. So this is where a lot of people will sit there and paint themselves into a corner because the problem you're not trying to solve is stopping drinking.

The problem you're trying to resign yourself to is, "Hey man, I want a better life than what my current environment allows for. If I stay here and I keep doing the same [ __ ] that I'm doing and I keep hanging out with the same people, I'm going to be exactly the same person in 5 years." And that's uncomfortable because you don't want that. You already want better for yourself and it bothers you that all your friends are like, "Hey, let's just get drunk every single weekend." And so

a part of you is like, "Dude, I really miss my friends." And the other part of you is like, "I don't [ __ ] want to be drunk every single weekend. I've got big plans for my life. And so that's a choice for you then, Mom, is what problem do you want to solve at this point? Do you want to stay the same or do you want to make the sacrifices needed to make to get better? And the really cool thing about this is there's no right or wrong answer. And it's all done on your timeline. So it's not like you need to decide this right now. But

you have to realize that if you're going to get better, you're going to have to start creating some space because nobody that's successful, I don't know any billionaires out there that are getting drunk every single weekend. I don't know any really highquality marriages that were built off of girls in nightclubs going out and having indiscriminate sex every single weekend after getting drunk. Doesn't mean it's not fun at certain points of your life. It doesn't mean that we all don't do it. But can

you continue to build a successful life doing those types of things? I don't know. I think you you're touching an important point that is that is trade-offs, right? uh a lot of people including myself want a lot of stuff but when when you see the price uh in order to get what you want then do you really want it and I think there's um talking about this subject a quote that I have in my head I don't remember exactly but it's like either release yourself from the desire if you're not willing to pay the price or um or pay the price like my point is if

I want to be the fastest runner in Mexico I probably have to train three hours a day. Am I willing to do that? For me, [ __ ] no. I I don't care about going fast with my legs. It's something I don't care at all. If you gave it for 10 minutes of of work, maybe just for fun. But then if I know I'm not willing to pay the pay the price, then I I I just release myself from the desire, right? Is that the kind of the line? I have a really thing too is to consider is a lot of people will sit there and they look at these types of things as all or nothing situations. like, "Hey, I either need to

stop drinking or I need to sit here and do this." Well, maybe what you could do is start small. Hey, maybe all I'm going to do is I'm going to go out drinking once a month with my friends. And then you just limit yourself to that. And that way you have three more weekends every month to practice doing something different. And then over time it'll become easier because you'll be sitting there diversifying your interests. But start wherever you're at and build your efficacy by building those successes.

Like it doesn't have to be. I'm just going to go from going out every single weekend to never going out ever again. Well, no. Hey, how about instead of every weekend, we just go out every other weekend. And on the weekends where I don't go out, maybe I go to the library. I commit to reading a book that weekend. I do something different. I build my skills in a new area. And then that way I can continue to improve. Kogi, but don't you think uh I know the all or nothing comes from according if I'm mistaken from like CBT and all of

that, but don't you think um that in this case or and all of these behaviors, it's really different and powerful to change from I'm trying to stop drinking because you are giving um something to negotiate with versus I don't drink. Like if you drink once a month and you say, "No, next next weekend is my um is my people probably will be like, "Hey man, come on. Just next weekend don't drink do this uh this weekend." But if you change it to like I don't drink period like at all. Don't you think it's

easier to just like set the line there? I I think that's a really useful tactic. I prefer to I don't like giving instructions to a negative. So instead of saying I'm not going to do something, I will just tell myself to do something instead. So rather than saying I don't drink, if somebody's like, "Hey, you want to go out drinking this weekend?" I would just be like, "I'm going to the gym. I already have plan. I'm doing this instead." I don't have to tell them I don't drink because like whatever my

action is going to show them that I don't drink. Like I'm getting up at 5:00 a.m. that day so I can go run 10 miles. They're going to be like, "Oh well, I guess you're not going to come out drinking with me then because that would make it really hard." So, I think it's much easier to just tell yourself instructions for something that you will do versus saying you're not going to do something. Because even if you say you're not going to do something, the last thing that's in your head is still that thing. I'm not going to drink. I

don't drink. What's the last thing you hear? Drink. And someone said, "I go to the gym. I go running." Hi, don't you think um and how would you solve the problem that the price of change has some loneliness right because you are constantly changing friend groups and and changing your environment and the likelihood that the people that you went uh to school with when you were 12 years old 14 the likelihood that they're align on your goals nothing wrong with that good or bad taking out of the equation just but the price of that is a lot of

loneliness because you have to constantly If you want to change, you have to change your environments and that includes the people in your life. How do you solve that problem? I think that's a great question and we want want to differentiate between loneliness and being alone by choice. Loneliness is when you're isolated and you don't have the choice. So, you know, it's it's an affliction. If you're alone by choice, well, hey, I'm separating myself from things don't don't serve me. I'm fully committed to getting better. And that means if I'm going to be the

fastest runner, people are going to have a hard time catching up with me. If I'm the strongest person in the gym, there's not going to be anybody that's trying to work in with me because nobody can handle my weights. If I'm trying to get better, I'm going to be spending a lot of time either by myself or trying to catch up with the people that are ahead of me. So, am I going to be lonely? No. I'm going to be alone by choice because I'm in the pursuit of a goal. And when people are actually around me, they're

probably going to be on my level versus me having to pander down to them because they were also trying to improve. So tactical advice, but what what if what if the price of that like there's a temporary moment where where you don't have like that next friend group that on your case, let's say, or or your environment. You don't have anyone that is like stronger than you in the gym or like someone you're trying to catch up and it's like um like just you're all alone. Yes. Exactly. you get out of the box and

you're alone. Dude, I think we've all been there before. Like there's there was plenty of years that you spend by yourself, that you're single, that you don't have very many friends, that you're not going out. And that's when you actually build your tolerance. That's when you get better as a human being because at that point in time, you're making the decision every single day. Because if you're by yourself with any distractions, it has to be 100% intentional. Because I could

easily distract myself by going out to the bar. I could easily distract myself by lowering my standards to go ahead and date somebody who isn't in 100% alignment with my goals or the lifestyle I'm trying to lead because I don't like being lonely. Or I can delay gratification and understand that hey, in order to pursue excellence, the only thing I'm going to be able to tolerate in my life is excellence. And it doesn't have to be one and done all the time. There's been plenty of times where it's been like, "Dude, all I want to do for the time being is I'm

really tired and I would just like to hang out with my friends. I'm going to act like an entitled spoiled brat for a few months." And then there will be other times where it's like, "No, I am in very, very heavy pursuit of my goals right now. I don't have time for anybody else. Life is like enjoy the experience, but focus on what means something to you and that way you can always be working towards something. Make sure that you're making choices versus having reactions. That's really interesting and I want to double click on those two parts. But

first, let's say delay gratification. Basically, everything that we're talking about comes down to that is like doing actions today that has have a payout tomorrow and then the things that hurt you have a benefit today that have a downside tomorrow. And you have like things like the marshmallow test, you know, that it's like I don't know if it's biological, like kids have different tolerances for how long they can wait for that reinforcement. Um, but I guess my question is if you were in an environment when you were younger where you never learned delay gratification,

you never had a positive reinforcement from delaying u an action, it's going to probably be a super hard for you for for that like let's say first uh delay gratification reinforcement to happen. What do you recommend to that people that they have literally never delayed gratification in their life or like long term? Well, you would meet them where they're at. So if they've never delayed gratification, well then we want to make sure that number one, we show them that it's possible. So let's just say, let's

use the marshmallow example. You give somebody a marshmallow and this person's every single time they've ever gotten a marshmallow, they've immediately popped it in their mouth. So all we're going to do is say, "Hey, look, I'm going to put this marshmallow right here and you're going to wait 10 seconds." And you show them that they are capable of waiting 10 seconds and then they eat the marshmallow. Well, look, I just proved to you that you're capable of delaying gratification. you have that skill. Now,

all we need to do is strengthen that skill so that way we can mess with frequency and intensity. But number one, you need to prove to people they're capable of it. And then you sit there and develop the training program necessary to strengthen it up. Okay, great. Now, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to give you a marshmallow and you have the choice of waiting 10 seconds to eat it or if you wait a full minute, I'll give you two marshmallows. Well, now they've learned that if I delay gratification, I get a bigger reward. And so now we start training in

that and we develop their efficacy in that manner. And then over a period of time then you can begin to expand that out into other domains. But this this is the best thing that I love about what we do at Trevor Cash and Nutrition is literally what we do is we teach the definition of hope because if you've learned one way of behaving, if you've learned way one way of doing something in your life, that means that you are 100% capable of learning a brand new and a totally different way of doing it.

Because think about it, most of the things that you do, you never thought, "Hey, I'm going to learn how to put on my pants this way. This is going to be the way that Nicholas puts on his pants. This is going to be my signature pant putting on move." No, you just kind of do it. So, think about it though. Now, you know how to put on your pants every single day. If I sat there and said, "Hey, Nick, now I want you to learn how to put on your pants left leg first." And you intentionally did that, you would probably learn how to do that in

two days because there would be intention, there would be awareness behind it. And so you learned most everything that you've done in your life with zero awareness and zero intention. It just happened to you. You were a product of your environment. So what we do is we give you the power to sit here and assess, audit your environment effectively using facts and data. And now you can begin to influence it with intention. And now you can do things on purpose, which means you have the ability to get better every [ __ ] day by choice. And that's just awesome to me.

So what what I'm understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is the definition for you of improvement is being on purpose. What do you mean by that is being able to assess with skills, data, information, etc. what you want to accomplish? And most of the things, if not all of the things we learn, it was like on like an NPC mode, autopilot, and it was like I just like send it randomly and put my pants and this is how I do it for the rest of my life. And you learn all the behaviors. I have two questions here. Um

the first one that is um Oh, I I I actually missed the first one. Let's go to the to the to the data one like what do you mean by by data and behavior? And for someone that is listening that has never had exposure to this world measurement like all of these how like what what does it mean? Oh, great question, man. data is just metrics or uh me units of measure that are going to be important to you. And so for most people when they're looking at fat loss, we're going to go ahead and look at pounds on the scale. We're going to look at inches on the waist. We're going to look at body fat by calibers. It's

whatever measurement you choose. Now you have businessmen that will go ahead and they they measure their success in the realm of profit in the realm of hey how much money did I make versus the amount of time I worked per week. So the measurements are really going to be entirely individual and that's where we focus on what the utility behind it is because man we can show success in a lot of measurements but who [ __ ] cares for a lot of it right? So that's that's really interesting the utility one. Um I'm going to give you two questions. I'm sorry I give them

like a little bit randomly because if not I forget the questions but I remember the other one it's local versus global skills. So you have something really interesting where you say I'm I'm going to give hope to someone on the marshmallow test. let's say they they can see that they can influence their behavior and they're going to give How much does that generalize versus the person just being like, "Okay, I understand that I can um delay gratification at marshmallow, but I don't know if I can delay it on my relationship or on other alcohol." Yeah. Or alcohol. How do you

generalize first of all if it if it it's possible to generalize these skills? And second, if so, how? Okay, great. Yes, it is possible to go ahead and diversify the skills on a global scale like that. And that's actually what we focus on. What you look for is the roadblocks and the barrier for entry that allow that to happen. And for most human beings, that's going to be an emotional reaction and response because we all delay gratification. We all know, hey, I get this much in a paycheck and I need to put this much aside for my rent and I need to put this

much aside for my food, etc. And we know that we don't overspend. But what do we do? And we know, hey, if I eat more than this, I get fat. But for some reason, if I have a great day at work, well then that allows me to go ahead and say, you know what, I deserve to go ahead and get fat today. But because I can't sit there and give myself permission to get fat, well, I'm going go ahead and say, I deserve to go ahead and eat something nice. Well, that something nice is basically going to overdraft my bank account and make me fat. So, if I put that in money terms, I'd be like, "Fuck

no, dude. Like, I have rent to pay." If I came in here and said, "Nick, you had a great day at work. Go ahead. We're going to overdraft your bank account and you're not going to be able to pay rent on Monday." you'd be like, "No, I I'm not going to do that." But you can have a great day at work and be like, "Nick, we're going to go ahead and buy a pizza tonight and get a six-pack to treat yourself for that great amazing week of work that you did." Then you be like, "Yeah, that's awesome." And then now you start to reward yourself and now you've created conflated behaviors that are

really not going to serve you at all. And so for most people, it comes down to precision with their language. What problem are you trying to solve? And are you willing to go ahead and accept responsibility for your own emotions? Meaning, can I validate? Can I understand that my emotions are important to me, but nobody else cares? Nobody else cares if I'm having a bad day. Nobody else cares if I'm having a good day. I'm responsible for that. Okay. So, at the end of the day, what you're building is confidence on yourself that you can do that task

little by little. Okay. I have a differentiate. I'm building efficacy. Confidence. I think you can just people I've seen way too many people that are confident with no right to be confident. You've seen a lot of stupid confidence. Efficacy means that I have done this thing enough times that I have a belief in my ability to replicate it. And so I want you to have done this thing successfully so many times that you're like, "Yeah, I could do that. I could do that in the dark. I could do that on a bad day. I could do that on a good day. I could always do that."

That's the difference between confidence and efficacy. And that comes from evidence, right? That's right. Because evidence of not in your delusional because if you tell me right now what how confident are you in winning if I put you on this uh Olympic soccer games on scoring a goal I will say zero maybe I can like maybe it's one in a million but my point is I I have zero evidence that I'm good at soccer therefore I have like it's and that's the part you say about data and I want to double click on that because if you don't measure how can you have the

evidence that you are effective. Yes. And that's why get so frustrated with so many people that try to avoid taking measurements and they will take measurements in so many other areas of their life, but they won't track their food. Here, I'll be meticulous with tracking my checkbook. I'll be meticulous with going ahead and tracking my points and my attendance at the gym and doing all these other things, but oh man, if I track my food, that's going to go ahead and give me an eating disorder. It's just another unit

of measurement that allows you to be more precise and make faster progress. Let's talk about precision of of language. And I think this this topic is is really profound. Um because I want to touch of course precision of language to uh with all the conversation we had, how do you change your own behavior? But most importantly, I would like to touch on what Trevor says that most of human misery comes from. And that is um what Albert Ellis said kind of the masturbation all or nothing. Um I want to like double click on on on the

whole language part of of of humans basically. Where would you like to get started with that? My favorite thing is Trevor says language language isn't important. It's everything. Let's go from chill to hardcore. So what what I mean by that is chill let's say from the things we were talking about uh changing your your own behavior your goals etc. What is how is important your the language and then let's go to the hardcore about uh human suffering depression and and okay all the other subjects

language is going to be incredibly important across the board because it's our ability to express ourselves. It's our ability to identify what's going on in our life. If you can't properly identify why you're unhappy, well, you're never going to be able to solve the problem of being unhappy. Just like, hey, if you can tell a doctor that something hurts, but you can't tell them where or why it hurts, they're just going to be looking at you like, wow, man, that really sucks. And so, if you

have a problem in your life that you can't properly or precisely identify and express, well, then you're not going to be able to solve that problem. And then that gets to be very frustrating over a period of time because then you just start to think that this is the way life is and that's why people start to feel hopeless. And so this is why I really encourage everyone to develop the most immense vocabulary that you can think about it like look at terms of uh children, look at autistic people, things like that. Like people that lack a vocabulary, what do they usually do

when they get frustrated? They have a physical response. They will lash out, punch walls, break things because the level of emotion actually exceeds what they are currently able to verbally express. And because now I don't have common ground because I can't relate to that outburst and I don't know what they're trying to express. Well, now I've created distance both physically and emotionally between that person and myself and I can't help them solve their problem, which now makes that person

feel more isolated, which is going to sit there and continue to produce more problems over an extended period of time. And so if we give people the patience and the precision in words, then we're going to be able to enhance problem solving, which is going to increase the probability of a happier life. How how do you learn to communicate then? Let's say I'm someone that uh okay, I buy the the idea, I need precision language um in order to get better. How do I even go about learning how to communicate better in order to solve my problems better?

Great question, Bob. So very first thing we would have to do is we would be treating this on an individual basis. So if you and I were sitting down to solve a problem, what we would do is we would set terms. We'd identify what problem we're trying to solve and then we would start looking at what words we would have to use to make sure that we're using language in the same way. Because what you're going to find is that language is very dependent upon environment. How many times have you seen somebody from one region of the

country use a specific word and it means something completely different in another region? You know, like I that happens in the United States all the time. Like if you say wicked in Boston, it means really cool. If you say wicked in California, it means that you're talking about a Republican. Now, if I have somebody from Massachusetts and I have somebody from California talking and they're using wicked as a point of conversation, that can create a lot of conflict in the future. So, what we want

to do is we want to make sure that we're using words in the same way and they mean the same thing to each other. And once we've done that, then we can start to open up that conversation to then begin to expound. Now, what you're going to find though is that's a very frustrating thing because that takes a lot of time. So then you start to have to differentiate between is there utility to having and setting terms with everybody in my life or do I only need to do this with the important people

because dude, do I really need to set terms with the cashier at the grocery store to make sure that she's using have a nice day in the same way that I do or can I just be like, yeah, this is I'm never going to see this person again. I can just nod and smile and go about my day. Yeah, that's that's really interesting because if you take this to a natural extreme, you would be such a weirdo by every conversation being like, first of all, define your terms. Write it down. Explain to me what do you mean by these

words and then we can have a conversation. Yes. But on the other side, if not, you're just having face noise. Meaning, there's a book I I think called I saw it on the back of the bookshelf of Trevor that the map is not the territory. Um, and it's it says that basically I I have a a couple of problems with a premise and I want to double click on that with you in a bit. But how do you distinguish between when to spend the energy to use this skill versus when not to? And if so, if you need to um, how do you say if

you need to articulate and define each word before you talk so people don't misunderstand you? Then does that mean that you only talk with people who understand what you mean by that word? Because if not, it's so easy to get uh miscommunication, people getting the wrong point out of your mouth. Great question. Okay, so again, these things only become important if you are working with the other person trying to solve a problem. So the only people I really worry about setting terms with on a consistent basis is my wife cuz obviously like we live in the same environment, so I want to make

sure that we're communicating effectively. Set terms with Dr. Cashy on a regular basis. I set terms with Mrs. Cashy on a regular basis. I set terms with my team on a regular basis. Any of my clients that we're currently in problem solving mode, I just make sure that we're using the same words in the same way. Does that mean that every conversation I have to do that? No. Because there's plenty of times where somebody is just conveying information to me. Maybe they're just telling me a story. I don't need to set terms so that

I can listen to you tell a story about your family because what problem are we trying to solve? Well, you wanted to entertain me by telling me a story. Great. I'm I'm entertained. I'm really appreciated that you got to share that with me. Now, if it's something important and I need to ask clarifying questions, then I can go ahead and dive in from there. But again, it really just comes down to intention behind everything. And the reason this also gets frustrating for people is because how many people actually have

conversations without any intention? Most most people don't have conversations. Most people just make noise with their face. How many times What do you mean without intention? What do you mean without intention? Is there a purpose to the conversation or are you just going up to fill the time? Okay. Or is the purpose filling the time or the purpose solving a problem? Like you and I, we got on this call with intention. We wanted to be able to convey uh information to an audience. We had some points of topic to go ahead and discuss to. Now, let's just say like,

"Hey, I ran into you at the grocery store and I'm, "Hey, Nick, what's going on?" There's no intention. There was no purpose. Now, what happens if I start talking to you and I just start telling you and I just You don't really care because there's no So, do you actually need to set terms? No. you're just waiting to get out of that call. And so again, what problem are we trying to solve? Hey man, if somebody's just trying to have a greeting, if somebody's trying to create a connection, trying to

be friendly, great. I can speak to you in the vernacular, I it's nothing important. There's nothing that's going to be life-changing about this that I need to make sure that we have 100% clarity on. Now, me talking to Dr. Cashy when we're getting ready to undertake a big project or something like that, I want to make sure that he and I have our ducks in a row because I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to let that man down. Now, me doing something for my wife, I want to make sure that she's

identified exactly what problem she's trying to solve because I don't want to let her down. I want to make sure I'm showing up for the people that are important to me. So, that's all it comes down to when I say intentional is, hey, what problem am I trying to solve? And that way, I can allocate my resources to it intentionally. I have one question about the map is not a territory not the book itself but the idea that you're talking about and it comes from the um why root fallacy. So

this is a point actually disagree with Trevor Cashy and um and I would like to see your opinion right because my thinking has been influ influenced a lot by a guy called David do that he wrote the beginning of infinity and then you have um Trevor Kashi I don't know if the word is instrumentalism or what I don't know what the word is but is when you just care about the that you just care about the formula you just care that if I do this this happens if I build build a building like this it doesn't fall and Then uh David do plants the argument

that that is a completely wrong frame and that the why that goes against the white root fallacy is so important and I want to give an example and then we can land it on behavior. So my example is is is the following. Um when viruses were invented first of all there was the that if you wash your hands you will not get sick right it was really um local you know uh doctors that wash their hands did not get sick or their patient sick but people didn't know why why why it was working they just knew knew that if you wash your hands that's it right uh you don't get

sick but then when um the bacteria and theory and everything that came with it came out and we we knew Why? Because we have some microorganisms on the hand and they can infect you. The reach of that explanation gave us the possibility to solve so many other problems globally. You know what I mean? It's not just it's not just your hands. It's now antibiotics and it's what happens on another planet if if there's uh life there and what happens if we eat a a animal that has that. Like am I communicating clearly? Like having the why gives you so much reach to solve

problems because you have an underlying theory to attack all the problems. Having the that gives you local. So how does how do you like manage those two ideas? Again I look at what problem we're trying to solve. Now the point that you bring up is only going to be applicable if you have somebody that is trying to solve problems on a global scale. Do you and I really need to know the why behind washing our hands? Is it really going to have any utility or make a difference in our lives? Or is just, "Hey, Nick, wash

your hands after you go to the bathroom a good enough explanation?" And so for 99% of the population, do they really need to worry about why? No. So I don't worry about the N equals one situations because they usually work themselves out in the wash because they're so exceptional on one, you know, swing of the pendulum or the other. Now, speaking to the Gen Cop, so to speak, I don't worry about why. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is my explanation, my opinion on why I don't worry about why. Why is an opinion? If you ask the

interrogatives to a group of people, let's say we have a group of witnesses. I ask them who, what, when, where, how, I'm getting five pretty similar responses from that group. Now, I ask everybody why something happened. I'm going to get five completely different answers. That's because why is an opinion. So, I don't worry about dealing with people's opinions. All I worry about is how can I manufacture the behavior and in the environment to produce the result I want going forward.

And that has nothing to do with why because hey, why did I overeat? May maybe it's cuz my dad didn't hug me enough. Maybe it's cuz my dad hugged me too much. It doesn't matter. All I need to do is say in order to not overeat in the future, I'm going to do these things. Doesn't matter about why. So, if I have the time and I want to use my imagination, then I'll spend the time talking about why. But other than that, I just worry about producing results and not not only the imagination part and correct me if I'm wrong because now I have a clearer picture is that you're

saying why is really important but just not for most people like there's going to be a couple of people scientists and and people that are are moving the knowledge frontier that in my opinion there is the highest good you can do. Uh moving the Y barrier on top but for most people we can grab the consensus um that we know that if you wash your hands this happens. Now I have a question for you as an expert hoggy because you are giving uh clear instructions formulas to people. If you do this then this happens but in order for you to know that this

formula is correct you need to know the why right because if you don't know I'll give you an example in my own case. Um for a lot of time I tried uh getting fit and I didn't understand macronutrients the why behind how you get fat right? I just had a really vague idea that salads equals good and sugar equals bad. But my knowledge and my skills on that subject were really limited. And what it made me to do, it was really hard for me to change my body because I didn't have enough flexibility um on my own

behavior. Now when I understood calories, I understood that I could basically eat anywhere I want in any restaurant I want, any trip I want. All I need to do is just give uh protein a priority. Like it gave me like a a depth and and and a width of different environments where I could influence them. um for you as an expert, do you try to see the why? Because including this reinforcement part you're taking from BF Skinner. It's a it's like kind of a why. This uh whole theory you're building up I just read because what you're saying has nothing to do with the why. Your

success had nothing to do with your understanding of macronutrients or calories. It had to do with your execution of the instructions you were given. Now, here's what I give to an example for all of my clients to tell everybody that no, you don't need to understand a why. Can you explain to me the technology and that's used in being able to facilitate this phone call right now? How am I able to be here in my house in Texas speaking to you on a video screen live and you're able to see me and everything? Can you explain how that works to me?

Some parts like some I have a small and why now? Same thing. You go to swipe your your your ATM card at the gas station. Can you tell me why that works? Nobody understands why you get in your car and you know, hey, if I press on the gas, my car goes forward. Most people don't understand the process of combustion and how that actually takes place. But what they do have is they have trust in the process. So people don't need to understand why. They need to have trust. And that's where most

coaches fail is they don't either have enough evidence or they don't have a relationship to establish that trust. Which is why they try to overexlain the why to make themselves seem smarter. Because hey, if I seem smart, then you'll trust me and you'll do what I say. So instead, I say, I don't understand why, and neither do you, and you don't need to. All you need to worry about is, hey, does it work? Then yes, how do I take advantage of it? I don't care why my ATM card works. But you want to know what? Now that I know it works in all these situations, I'm definitely going to use the [ __ ] out of it.

I think you bring a really important point that I never thought about and reflecting right now, I think I I always uh search for the why because of trust. Because if I understand the why, then I know um it works. So in your case, I I give you the point completely. If you trust the coach and you trust it with evidence, not with like uh something else, not even I think a relationship, I think evidence. Hey, I grabbed a 100 people like you and this is the average result and they take four hours every week. Do you think you're going to be different? I totally agree with that.

But let's say on my case on the macronutrients, I I had to create my own instructions. I don't know if if that makes sense. Like I didn't have anybody that told me eat this way. So I had to understand the why of macronutrients in order to create my own instructions for the for for the different environments. So when I understood why I knew that my instructions were when I go to a restaurant I try to eat protein first uh before dessert. If I have dessert I don't have dinner like this subconscious things that I I haven't like written down but rule of thumbs if you want to

see it like that. But the only way I could create those rule of thumbs for me personally to change my own behavior it was knowing the why behind uh changing your body. But that doesn't have a why in changing your body. That has to do with a why on energy distribution. That's all you did was say, "Hey, I finally educated myself on calories in versus calories out." It didn't have anything to do with why you wanted to change your body. Like it like because you learned about calories in versus calories out, did it make you less

insecure in yourself? Did it make you like, "Dude, I now know about this, so guess what? I'm fully confident in taking my shirt off at any point." Did it solve the emotional problems of why you started lifting? No, because the why doesn't matter. But what you did was you gained the skill of learning how to manage your energy distribution. You learned how to keep a budget for your body. Same as you did with your checking account. That's completely different than an emotional why.

Okay. So maybe I have the uh wrong we have wrong terminology speaking about the convers the conversion earlier and this is yeah you're always going to have to learn skills to be able to get better at something but that doesn't mean why like yes I have to learn about like calories in so that way I can get leaner more muscular faster stronger now why do I need to learn about those things why did I decide to change my body well that's individual to me okay so you're saying that correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that why you

have a mot a motivation. Why do you act the way you act? Like on the whole spectrum of human behavior, let's say that that's what like Freud and those other guys that were like full of [ __ ] in my opinion tried to do. It was just write pages and pages of wise. Um, and you're saying that doesn't matter on human behavior, but on the specific subject itself, I'm saying to me and my clients, it doesn't matter because I've worked with people from all walks of life. I've walked with worked with very very rich people. I've worked with very very poor people. I've worked with people that

have been in prison. I've worked with people that have never had a hardship in their life. And all you need to do is structure their environment and make sure you reinforce the behaviors that they want to see versus worrying about why they're doing what they're doing. Correct. But just in terms of we have I think a different definition of terms for your own. Yeah, you I I agree with you like environment and change. But let's say the why in terms of the subject does give you a breath of skill.

So understanding what are macronutrients and micronutrients does give you better skills in order to modify your own health. Right? And again I I don't look at that as a why for the subject. I just look at that as I'm expanding my knowledge on the subject to make sure that I have utility for what problem I'm trying to solve. Because if I'm trying to solve the problem of losing weight, then I need to learn this much about macronutrient distribution. If I'm trying to solve the problem of getting somebody contest shredded, I'm going to need to learn this much more.

If I'm going to solve the problem of making sure that I keep somebody healthy and well nutri uh wellfed during chemotherapy, I'm probably going to have to learn this much more. So, it's really expanding my knowledge base versus learning why. And I think that the core point of this is expanding your knowledge to where it has utility, right? Uh because we could say that macronutrients are a why or if you ask the question why do humans get fat you can answer it with calories right that's a a why a small why but

what you're saying is just uh consume or try to understand information that has a utility and in the case of human behavior understanding if you eat a lot because your mother didn't hug you or hug you too much first of all you can't know it and second of all you don't know how much genetic and third of all it doesn't even matter because you can change it without knowing that Correct. Correct. Yeah. I just I worry about the things I can measure and manage and those other things are really interesting, but I'm not that smart and I don't have that much time to really worry about them.

Trevor Hogy, sorry. I want to go in a question to stay in the same loop that is how hard is change really? because um a lot of people sell it easy and I want to know from you that you're a coach in this that what what what would you think is the honest failure rate and what separates the guys that make the change from the ones that don't make the change? That is a great question and I don't have any measurable data on that. What I can say is based off my personal observations, the people that have

the biggest reason to change, meaning some type of pain point is usually what I've seen that in institutes a change either I have such a desire to be better. I have such a gift like you know you want to make a change in some way and then the decision to actually follow through on it. Now, the reason that I think that most people don't follow through on the change is because most people haven't trained themselves to be uncomfortable for an extended period of time. And we're all really entitled that we think that we should be comfortable. Like, hey man, I had a bad day at work,

but nobody ever talks about the great day at work they had. But like, you can tell everybody about the worst day at work that you had, but like very few people come home and talk about the best day at work they had. And nobody just talks about just the average day at work they had. And what we should be doing is we should only be talking about the great days at work that we have. Those should be the entitled things. Those should be the things that we get excited about because they shouldn't be very frequent. And if we look at things of

making ourselves, one of our other coaches always says uh inoculate yourself against these things or vaccinate yourself against vaccinate yourself against being comfortable. Get used to being uncomfortable and then guess what? you'll be able to continue persevering during difficult times because it's just expected. But I'm a spoiled brat. And that's that was my issue with things. It's like, man, I worked hard. I should deserve these results. And if I'm not getting the results, then guess what? I'm going to go ahead and give them to myself. And that creates a negative feedback loop over time.

Well, you brought me to another terminology that I wanted to touch to. I I don't remember it was at the beginning if you said it or Nico said it. Um masturbation. Could we go deep into that please? Okay. And give the context to our audience that for me personally it's the first time that I hear that word. Okay. You've got words like should, have to, must. Musterbation is a great terminology. It's these expectations that are completely unrealistic. Like nobody said that these things are necessities, but we have this in our head that I I must do this. And

then we get so caught up on the idea of perfection that we would rather just not start because it couldn't be done exactly the way that it went in our head. And that masturbation is what prevents progress because it must be done this way otherwise I'm not going to do it. And that just doesn't make sense in other any other area of your life. Like do any of us sit there and say, "Well, you know what? I'm only making minimum wage right now and I'm only going to start saving when I start making X

amount of money." No, we start saving whatever we can to start making ourselves go for. So none of us are going to be like, "Well, you know what? the first day of the diet didn't go exactly the way I had planned, so I'm just going to start over next. That just doesn't make sense. But because we're emotional creatures, well, now we've gone ahead and reconciled that idea and it creates some cognitive dissonance because we know it's not true, but we're treating it like such and that starts to erode your integrity over a long enough period of time.

Thank you. What is like the So many people have shoots including myself and sometimes I catch myself. I think Trevor said and on the same subject he got a clicker um for every time he said the word should. I don't know if he said it or thought about it. Um but if if we want to release our ourselves from the masturbation from the should need to have to or else and all of these uh thought patterns that create so much misery and also they're false factually false like I shouldn't get nothing. I

can do the actions that increase the probability that I get it. But that's that. Um, how can we change our own internal monologue? Great question. You do that first by bringing awareness to it. So, just a second ago, you mentioned Trevor being able to track how many times he said should, shouldn't using a clicker. So, I actually recommend that everybody get yourself, you know, one of those uh door counters that that a doorman use to keep track of how many people go in. And if you have something that you're trying to change throughout the day, such as, hey, how

many times do I say should or how many times do I snag the jelly beans off the receptionist desk or well then you keep that counter with you and every time you go to create that action and participate in it, you click it. That way it creates a baseline of that behavior. Well, man, 10 times every single day I sit here and I go to reach for the candy on the receptionist desk. Okay, that's 10 chances every single day that I have the opportunity to create a change to be less fat. Great. Well, now once I've gotten ahead in those 10, now I can

start saying, when do those 10 happen? Okay, they happen before lunch, they happen after lunch, they happen, you know, midafter afternoon, and then once I've got a time, well, now I can start to implement behaviors around those times. Well, dude, I noticed that I always grab the most candy from the receptionist desk in the 3 hours after lunch. Great. Well, then in the 3 hours after lunch, I'm going to make sure that I never go to the receptionist desk. I'm going to go and I'm going to work outside of the office from 1 to 4 every single day. And that way I can eliminate

that problem. And then you start to look at other ways that you can implement changes in your behavior. So it starts with tracking. Then it starts with once you've had the awareness, then you bring intention around that awareness. And then you start to sit there and implement that on a global scale. I think there's three really interesting subjects I want to talk. Um, we could go on and on, but I promise this won't be too long, but I'm just a huge fan fan of you guys. Um, how girls are a fan with Taylor Swift. I'm a fan of Taylor.

Real. So, um, the first one is you you said replacing um the behavior. And if you read Don't Shoot the Dog that we were talking about it a couple minutes ago. I'll show it to the camera if someone wants to buy it. Great great book. Um it says that punishment basically does not change behavior. So I want to to kind of expand on that. It it shows um example I I have on mind is someone walks on the lawn. I'm a I'm a parent and I shout when they walk on the lawn. The negative reinforcement of my existence makes them so they slow down, right? Uh because if they run they get punished by my simple

like eyes. Um but then if I'm not there, they're going to still run. And then they probably run because the uh wet the grass is wet and their feet are cold and they want to move faster to their side. punish if punishment doesn't work what are the implications for that for raising a child and not just a child your your relationships human relationships question you yourself I'm a believer that punishment creates better criminals because what you're going to find is if somebody is punished

enough times they don't stop doing the thing they start creating behaviors that allow them to avoid the punishment. It's not that somebody's going to stop stealing. What they're going to do is they're going to get better at looking around for cameras. They're going to get better at watching. They're going to get better at sneaking around. Using your example, hey, if the kid wants to take that shortcut across the grass every single day, well, they're going to start to get really good at learning when that person sits on their porch and when

they're not. And then because they know that they only have a limited window. Well, now I'm probably going to be tearing across that grass at twice the speed, which is going to do more damage than before. So over a period of time, you're just creating a better criminal. And so rather than punish somebody, again, what we want to make sure is identify what problem we're trying to solve and then give specific instructions to do that. So it's not that you don't want your kid to be

noisy. It's that, hey, I want to make sure that I'm creating some space for myself at night. So then, how do I make sure that I can do that in a realm that allows my kid to be able to express themselves? And so if you're just yelling at your kid cuz they're being noisy all the time. Well then your kid is going to just learn how to make noise when he's at school because dude my teacher can't hit me but dad [ __ ] takes out the belt so I'm going to be super noisy at school. And so you've created a problem child then but he's going to be super quiet at home and now

you're never going to be get a chance to observe those types of behaviors because you've created avoidant behaviors. So instead if every single time the kid gets noisy well hey maybe we can go ahead and create some space. Let's go and stop that behavior right now. Boom. Using whatever tactic you want to, whether that's going to be a physical cue, whether that's going to just be, you know, something to be able to change the environment. That's why you have teachers turn off the lights when kids start getting moved. Change the environment first thing. Then you can

then create and set terms with that child. Hey, we don't sit here and do this at this time because this is inappropriate behavior. This is what you do instead. And you tell them what to do. You obviously have a lot of energy right now, but it's not good to be shouting at 9:00 at night. So, what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to teach you how to jump rope or do push-ups. And then you go ahead and reward them for doing that behavior because the next time they come in

shouting, you're going to turn off the light. That's going to create that. They're going to be like, "Oh, that's right. We don't shout. We do push-ups." And then you drop down, they start doing push-ups. And then it's like, "Dude, great job doing push-ups, son." You give them a quarter. And then over a period of time, well then you don't need to give them the quarter anymore because they are going to have be rewarded by not being yelled at and they're going to start looking great for doing all these push-ups. So correct me if I'm wrong. Basically

instead of punishment, if you want to change a behavior, you have two ways. One is reinforce a new behavior on top of the other one. In the case that you said jumping rope, so the kid has a lot of energy. He can shout. He can do exercise. If he does a rope, you have to as a as someone who is instructing, not just a parent, you have to say, "Hey, don't shout, but I I'm offering you an alternative. I'm giving you the correct behavior that will get you a reinforcement. Not just don't do this, but don't do this. Do this instead. So,

don't do this. Go jump the rope." And not only that, if you jump the rope, then I'll give you money, appraisal, affection, approval, and attention, whatever other uh reinforcement um you want to do. But the other part is also modifying the environment. So you say, let's say uh the the because I'm saying this so I can so you can attack my idea so I can get them better. Um so if let's say it's a neighbor's kid and you don't have full control over changing their own behavior and you don't want to spend that resources on changing someone else's kid behavior but

it's still affecting you because he runs on your lawn. Um maybe you can change the environment, right? So maybe you put a a automatic thing for water that if it detects something on the grass, it shoots water and then the environment itself makes it so the child learns to not go through the uh grass. Correct? Okay. So I'm going to stop you right here cuz this is where people will start to conflate things and this is why they start thinking that why is important. If what problem we're trying to solve is just keeping the kid off the grass, then

do I really need to worry about going to all of these extremes and putting No. What's going to be the easiest, most effective way? I'm probably just going to go talk to that kid's [ __ ] parents. Hey, dude. Every single morning your kid is on my lawn. Could you keep your kid off my lawn? I'm going to go for the lowest hanging fruit to solve that problem. That's going to be the easiest possible thing and that's probably going to produce the greatest possibility of success. But what do

people do? Well, I'm going to make things as as complicated as possible. And if it's as complicated as possible, that's actually going to decrease the probability of me being consistent with that behavior every single day. Because if every single day I have to set up some type of electric eye and sprinkler on my lawn to keep a kid, dude, it's probably going to last for 3 days before that kid's back on the lawn. If I go over on day one and I talk to the kid's dad and be like, "Dude, your kid tearing

up my lawn and it's really making me upset." And that kid [ __ ] dad whoops his ass one day. problem solved in the very first day. So look at what problem you're trying to solve and then look for the easiest way that you can do that. That's it. I guess my my example was uh a little bit wrong. I was just trying to double click on the environment. So let's use the child that is uh really energetic. Well, maybe if I don't give them sugar at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. or I don't use any other type of stimulants that will make

them uh hyperactive. Maybe if I change the environment, he he wakes up at 6 am and goes to the gym. Maybe he'll be tired by 8:00 PM. That's what I mean. Like you have also that tool, right? That uh lever to to to pull. Correct. Change the environment. Absolutely, man. There's so many things that you can do to reinforce the behavior that you want. Train yourself the exact same way that you would train your dog. And I have I guess one more question on on this subject and then Fran has one more. I'm sorry. This is really

interesting. I don't know if we're taking a lot of your time. You can tell us anytime. Oh, brother. I love talking to you. Thanks. Um, but I want to talk about the observer effect. And I think it has a such a huge impact in my life and I think it's one of the biggest ideas uh for changing your own behavior. What is the observer effect? How does it work? And why is it important? Uh, I think that's called the Hawthorne effect. Basically, when you start observing your behavior, it's going to change your behavior because you're observing it, right? And so I think it's fantastic. I

I don't understand what question you're trying to get to from that. I am a big believer in bringing awareness to a situation if you want to get better at it because unless you understand the full scope of things, how are you going to improve? Unless you understand where the boundaries are, how are we going to push them to continue to get better? So and but that's the point that that observing itself changes your behavior. That's what I wanted to get get to like uh measuring as a way of intervention. That's what I I wanted to touch on. But there's

my question back is my question is who cares? Because if you're trying to change your behavior to institute something new and you observing your behavior then starts changing it, who cares? Because it's still not the behavior that you want. So, all we need to do is get a starting point and then get instructions to where we're trying to go. So, it doesn't matter if our starting point is exactly here or if it's one street over because now I start observing myself right here. It's still all I need is a starting point and now I

can actually start to put a target into the GPS to get myself going. So, I guess I'm miscommunicating. I what I'm trying to say is that if you follow the advice you hear in your postcard from you Hogi and you start measuring uh your own behavior that I think people don't know and I I would like to expand maybe I'm wrong but you will start to change your own behavior just by observing your own behavior meaning if I start counting my calories I will probably eat less calories than I ate before changing nothing about what we talk about implementing nothing but just the fact

itself of bringing awareness to the problem itself is a way of fixing the problem. And why is that a bad thing? This is where this is where I that's a great thing. So I did not then that's why I don't understand what the question is. If the point of you starting to observe your behavior is because you want to change your behavior. I don't. So let's just use your example. I look in the mirror. I hate being fat. Okay. Well then I'm going to start counting calories so I can be less fat. By counting calories, I end up eating less, which then

contributes towards me being less fat. Where's the problem? No, no problem at all. I think just what I'm trying to double click and for you to explain to people is that uh it's a self itself. It's a way of getting better, just measuring without any other intervention. It's and it's a great way to get better. like there's not at all like a problem or a or a bad thing or like the opposite side that is such a powerful tool that just measuring yourself will lead to better results. It's what I was saying before about

doing things on purpose because as you said, how many of us go through our lives every single day just doing things as an NPC? Like, hey man, I got dressed this morning. Do you could you tell me every detail about you getting No, because I just went through it. Now, let's imagine that you just had a near-death experience and you are now going through and enjoying every part. You're going to be able to tell me, "Dude, it took me three tries to button up my shirt this morning." Doing things intentionally changes how you interact with your environment. Measuring things

is going to change that. Observing things is going to change that. So, doing anything on purpose is going to change your results. Period. Thank you, Trevor. to start closing this out. Huggy again. Sorry, I get confused. I've been talking so much about Trevor that I get confused. Second time today Hogy to start closing this out. Um, I want to talk about the seal in you and how Goggginings turned suffering into a brand. And after that, I would love to know that where's the line that we can draw between discipline and

self-destruction? has he crossed it or That's great. Um I don't really know what the question is like as far as turning it into a brand. I personally I don't see the utility and suffering just for suffering's sake. Now suffering in pursuit of a greater goal, I'm absolutely all for. But if it's just like, hey, I'm suffering just to tell everybody I'm suffering. How does that make me better? How does that make you better? How does that make the world a better place? And so I always look at things as I said often, what problem am I trying to solve? Well, the problem I'm trying to solve daily is

I'm trying to make the world a better place. I'm trying to add some value. So if me suffering is going to add value to the world, then I will gladly suffer. If me suffering isn't going to make the world a better place, well then what's the point of me doing it? So if he's suffering to make things better and his suffering is allowing other people to get comfortable with their own suffering, which then is allowing them to do great things, I think that's awesome. But you'd have to ask him what

his intention behind art because I don't know. Huggy, and if you if you could say what was the biggest lesson you took out of being a SEAL, what would it have been? That's a great question. the value of teamwork. Honestly, there was nothing I could have done that I could have done by myself. I did everything because of the value other people were able to add to me, because of the belief other people put in me, and because of the behaviors they modeled for me. Like, I was literally just standing on the shoulders of giants. So, that's why I'm a big

believer. I think the putting that in current terms, the biggest thing I took away from that experience was learning how to be a more of a producer versus a consumer. How can I look at creating an experience that is going to add to people's lives and give value versus what am I taking away from things? I love that because uh I think we base our lives and our measurement is being creators, not consumers. It's it's a much better life if you know that you're adding value to everyone else. If you're making their lives better, like, hey, you're going to have a better sleep at night, right?

Yeah. That's why we try what what what we try to do every day and what we're striving for. That's a good place to be, brother. Yes. So, Huggy, so thank you so much. And before we close out, uh I have one more question around behavior and then we closing. Exactly. And this is a little bit some a lot of these questions for you are selfish because I'm trying to understand it better. So that's why we're going like because I was like I need to get all my questions out of the way. Um

So I have a question around motivation and I know it's hard to define and it's the opposite of deprivation but at least in my life um maybe sometimes logically the payoff makes sense but it's just on some short spree of motivation where I'm willing to as you said suffer in order to get the outcome. So I'm going to use weight loss as an example. It's not my problem but I have that problem in other areas of life. Um let's say someone looks itself in the mirror and they see they're fat. On that moment they're really motivated to or the other example

you put uh they can't have sex with their wife on that Thursday night like they will be really motivated to change but the problem is that on Sunday or Saturday of the same week that uh like punishment or or drive whatever you want to call it changes. So I guess my question is how can you stay uh motivated through the whole process without losing the the thread or do you even need to get motivated? Great question Bob. So I am not a believer in motivation. I think motivation is one of those buzz like willpower. If we sat there and we went

into a morg, we take out a cadaavver and we cut open that cadaavver. Show me where the motivation is located. Show me where the willpower is loc. like you can show me everything else that the body sits there and produces but for some reason you have these nebulous things that all of a sudden are ruling our life. So motivation is important. What we need to do is we need to look at reinforcing specific behaviors creating efficacy. And so this is where I usually speak to people about the idea of mental toughness. You get this idea of like oh hey guys are just like mentally tough.

No all mental toughness is is integrity. It's hey I did what I said I would do when I said I would do it. And how do you do that? by practicing doing what you said you would do when you would do it. And so what do we do to be able to improve that skill? Well, you start small and then you be able to build your way up. So if I say that I'm going to be the guy that gets up to run 10 miles every single morning at 6:00 a.m., but I every single day of my life, I've slept till 8:00, but like I said before, what I'm going to start doing is I'm going to train myself first to prove that it's possible that I can actually get up

every day at 6:00 a.m. And then once I get up every day at 6:00 a.m., then I'm gonna train myself to actually start moving. And then I'm gonna train myself to start going. So that's not motivation and I don't feel like doing those things. So number one, I need to identify how I'm going to do it. And then number two, I need to identify how I'm going to reinforce the behavior. So I keep doing it even on the days where my body hurts or it's pouring down rain outside or my dog got sick in the middle

of the night and tore everything up. That's what keeps you going. It's not motivation. It's making sure that I understand that that delayed gratification is going to produce a reward at the end. And that's just training. For example, for example, on the and thank you for that. For example, for the let's I'm going to use a simple example to illustrate the point because I want to like understand it better. I I I'm more motivated. I know you hit the word, but more deprived of food the hungrier I I am, right? And maybe right now I'm not

that hungry, so I wouldn't be able to walk five miles, but if you leave me on this office for 3 days, I'll bet you that I will go and walk 10 miles for to get a the worst meal ever. just because I I'm starving. And I think it's that deprivation part does give you some u let's say if the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change that part like if the pain of me being hungry is greater than the pain of me walking then I will walk. Don't you see if that is true and maybe it's not and

correct me if I'm wrong but if that assessment is true don't you see as an intervention maybe using the thing that creates the deprival itself because on the on the physiological side yes you can be hungry and the more hungry I am the more I'll walk but on the psychological side maybe if I see a picture of me fat every day that will give me some deprivation to get thin or I check this saying or a note of my wife saying uh I want you to leave to seven years old to see your children and right

Now, because of your weight, you can't. Don't you think some type of that intervention can create that deprivation? I think you'd have to test it to find out. Like, I think way too many people try to look for a oneanddone solution that they're going to be able to use from the general population. And there's no need for that. Like, why do we have to make everything a nail? I've got more tools than just a hammer. So, there's no need to sit here and try to make everything a problem that is only solvable by a hammer. Can I go ahead and

use something like that? Yeah, if the problem calls for it. But I'm going to use the most effective tool for the job. Now, using your example, if I sit here and put up a picture of myself fat on the fridge every single day, is that going to motivate me or is that going to make me ashamed and create avoidant behaviors and I'm going to start avoiding that picture? And is that going to sit here and then create a harder? So, again, that's why I don't like to worry about those types of things,

deprivation, punishment. Instead, just focus on reward and reinforcement. And I think it's just so much easier, less stuff to keep track of. So if I can give a TLDDR before going to closing and and books, it's define your problem well. Um make actionable steps uh that you can actually do and and I think this is really important what they wouldn't touch too, correct if I'm wrong, but inputbased uh actions, not output based. So instead of saying my goal is to run this uh well you you go ahead and and

say that part. That was excellent man. I love the way that you phrase that like focus on something that is going to be processoriented versus resultsoriented. It's not that I want to run a marathon. It's hey man I would love to get up and get to the point where I enjoy going for a morning run every single day. And if I go for a run every single day then maybe in like 2 years I'll be able to run a marathon no problem. Maybe it's going to take me five years. But I want you to do

something that you enjoy because then you'll keep doing it. Because if I just tell you to do something you hate it, you'll do it so you can cross the finish line and then you'll never [ __ ] do it again. And the other part is the outcome you don't have control over, right? So if I say I want to run a marathon over three hours, well, I can guess that if I run every day 10 miles, the probability that I get there on two or three years is high. But it will be stupid to have the goal um like instead I can just focus on

the input that's run 10 hours 10 miles every day reinforce myself from running maybe join a run club to have the social aspect maybe give myself a dollar as you said at at the end of the day and then over three years that probably that I hit that outcome is inevitable right because you just did the math right focus on what you can control like you can't control your time who knows if you're going to break your ankle who knows if it's going to be pouring rain on the day of the marathon But you can

control your training, you can control your output. Awesome. And for closing. Yeah. So at the end we always like to close with uh book recommendations but I think it will be more appropriate this time no to give um people you can follow in this space. I I think people books like all the podcast. Yeah. If someone wants to doubleclick on everything you say, give all the data you have so they can study it on their own. Like what would you recommend? We can go step step by step. Like we can go make it easy and we're just going to send everybody to trevorasheutrition.com.

That's going to be the baseline for pretty much everything that we talked about today because what we dive into today is behavior training, cognitive behavioral therapy, nutrition, making sure that you can structure your environment, utilizing your affiliations, all of those. you're going to get the baseline for at trevorcashion nutrition.com and then we can discern what it is that you want to do a deeper dive into and send you out from there. Thank you. Well, Hog, thank thanks so much. And for

me, a a I guess selfish question is I've consumed everything that Kashi has and everything your website has and I'm still thirsty for more knowledge. So, what else do you recommend I can go in that rabbit hole? Okay, man. I'm going to tell you the same thing that Dr. K said to me. what problem are you trying to solve? Because unless you are reading a book with a specific intention of solving your problem, essentially what you're doing is just mentally masturbating. And what you're going to find is too many people read books just to acquire knowledge with no intention of actually applying or executing on anything. And that's

just a waste of time. So if you're reading something, it should so that you can immediately go out, take action on and start making a better place. So my question to you is, what do you want to take action on and what are you going to go make the world a better place? and then find a book that is interesting to you in that in that domain. But I I I I want to double click on this before we close. I'm sorry for so many side quests. But I think there's a lot of books in my life that maybe that

immediate uh action I could take was not obvious but by exploring the idea just from a let's say philosophical side uh from a a what are your values like that this idea that you say of contributing positively. Maybe if you read a book like um Stephen Pinker, Enlightenment Now or something like that, you maybe change the idea that capitalism is not wrong and maybe from there you start a business, right? Because maybe you thought before prior that it was something evil. So do you think there's some value on the like exploration of

the ideas with the hope that maybe now or in the future it changes some idea that changes your behavior? Dude, that is a great question. And what you're going to find is the people that are diving into that are in the N equals 1 territory of why things are important. Because the only reason they're concerned about those things is because they're trying to make the current system better. They're trying to change things. Because why do you care about capitalism if you're just an NPC that's going through an everyday life? Do you

need to read about it? No. It doesn't make any [ __ ] difference to you. Now, if you're Warren Buffett and you're sitting here trying to turn everything on its ear, well, then you're going to probably try to learn everything you can. You're going to try to advance your knowledge. And so again, what are you trying to make a difference in the world on? And why do you need to learn more about that subject? And if you don't, then you know, you're just jerking yourself off mentally to make yourself feel good about reading. And there's

nothing wrong with doing that. I've done it plenty of times for myself, but just understand that that's what you're doing. In which case, it doesn't matter what my recommendation is. Just read what you want. Yeah. It's entertainment. Exactly. And dude, I always think you should be reading because it's going to improve your vocabulary and it's going to sit up there and just light up different neural pathways. So reading is a fantastic thing but always just look at dude are we reading for our own pleasure we like what are we trying to

do by reading sometimes it's just fun to read but maybe reading itself give you as you said more precision in your language as a side quest because you and so dude for me I love to read because I hate sitting still and so this was a good way for me to increase my frustration tolerance to increase my vocabulary to get me comfortable sitting still and so I started rewarding myself that hey huggy every night you're going to do a minimum of 5 minutes of reading and a maximum of 30 minutes. If you do that, then you get this thing instead.

So, but dude, does that mean everything I read was absolutely val? No, man. You know how many comic books I read? Kis, thank you so so much for your time. I know your time is really valuable and you basically gave us like a coaching for free. if someone would like to work with you um someone from our right audience that I I almost never do recommendations but I think this is I have full conviction on your process on Trevor Cashy on all of you guys. So I think if someone is struggling with weight loss you are the highest shot they have into fixing the problem. So

how can people work with you? Uh just go to trevorashnutrition.com and that will give you all the information necessary and we'll make sure that you are getting the support that you need. Really looking forward to seeing people over there. Thank you, Ky. Thank you so much for the time. So much for the time. It was really great. Really enjoyed myself today. Thank you. Thank you. Hope we meet someday on on real life. I will hold you to that. Punishment creates better criminals. Train yourself the exact same way that you would train your dog. So, I am not a

believer in motivation. Things are hard because you lack a skill to make it easy. My favorite thing is Trevor says, "Language isn't important. It's everything." So, here we have another episode with Hoggy. Hoggy, thank you so much for being here. And just to give the audience context because they probably have never had exposure to your work, you come from Trevor Cashy. Trevor Cashy I think is one of the smartest people on earth. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the young he was the youngest PhD on America. That is correct. That is correct. One of the one of the youngest. And I

I'll let you like elaborate on what you do exactly, but just this is like if you want for the audience, if you want some nutritional guidance from real experts, I think this is the podcast for you. And just I guess let's start puggy. What do you do? What problems do you solve and we go from there? Appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for your time and I appreciate you guys having me on. Uh as we said, my name is Huggy Bear McNiff. That is actually my real name. I work for Dr. Dr. Trevor Cashy at Trevor Cashy Nutrition. I'm the head coach. And if you've read Michael

Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis, which is where most people were introduced to Dr. Cashy from, I'm the Navy Seal that Dr. or that Professor Easter writes about who worked with Dr. Cashy. Uh I started working with Dr. Cashy, I want to say probably about 10 11 years ago. Uh it was shortly after uh he got his PhD and he had just been getting started out in nutrition and one of the other strong men that I had competed with at the time showed up just looking absolutely fantastic. And so of course I

wanted to find out what this gentleman had been doing and of course my mind immediately went to drugs. I'm like hey what were you taking to be able to look like this all of a sudden? And he told me no. He had basically just gotten his nutrition squared away and that's how I got introduced to Dr. Cashy. And then through working with Dr. cashy and my nutrition. What you find out is that most of our nutritional problems, so to speak, really aren't nutrition problems. What they are is problems with our own autonomy, problems with our own

environment, and problems with our skills or lack thereof. And so, if you focus your energy and your resources on acquiring those things, well, you're going to make much faster progress than worrying about a perfect macronutrient distribution or a perfect diet at any given time. And so that's really what we started diving into is how to focus and teach people how to solve problems. And we do it through the context of nutrition because everyone was taught something different. We all have some type of dysfunctional idea or belief

around what we eat. And so if we can teach people how to separate your emotions, how to problem solve effectively, and how to identify things using precise language, well then you can expand that out to other areas of your life. Well, thank you for much so much for that, Ki. And yeah, I guess for people for context like this will be nutrition a bit oriented, but really it's about behavior change. Correct. Correct me if I'm wrong. Really is how do you change the problem to solve is how do you change your own behavior?

That's right. We all know what we should eat. We all know what we should be doing. It's why can't you do that on a consistent enough basis to produce the results? And it's because human beings think that we deserve certain things. Well, hey, I had a great day, so I deserve to go ahead and treat myself. And if we trained ourselves the exact same way we trained our dog and we rewarded ourselves with the things that would reinforce the proper behaviors, we would make faster progress. But most people are like me and we're all spoiled brats.

Totally. So, I guess let's start from the beginning. Um, because you touched about some like three different topics that we can go really deep on. One is behavior, the other is words and the other is like touching cognitive behavioral therapy if I'm not mistaken all the masturbations etc. But let's unpack it because I want I want you to understand that my audience has never probably never had uh exposure to these subjects and I think it's one of the most important subjects you can uh try to learn. So starting with behavior, how

do you change your own behavior? So many people know I should eat less, move more, I should do more cold calls to get more sales. And then including myself, you can't seem to uh do it. Why is it? And how do you change your own behavior? Okay. What we need to do is we need to look at where the dysfunction lies. Like is it a lack of skills that's preventing you from uh exhibiting that behavior? Is it a problem with your environment? Is it a problem with your overall family? Like you know, are you

not getting support that you need? And once you identify that, well then you need to meet yourself where you currently are and then basically build a system from there. So let's say for example, we want to get somebody that gets up to go exercise every single morning. This is a person that usually loves sleeping in till like 9 or 10 every single day. So how do we get them excited enough that they want to get up at like 6:00 a.m. so that way they can go for a run? Well, number one, we need

to get them used to the idea of waking up at 6:00 a.m. So, that' be the very first place I'm going to start is, hey, we're going to start setting an alarm for 6 a.m. every single day. And every single day that you make that 6 a.m. wake up call, guess what? You just earned yourself a dollar. And we bank that dollar for something that that person would want at the end of the month. Let's say we're going to go ahead and get a new pair of Jordans for them or something like that. So, every time that they go ahead and make that 6 a.m.

wakeup call, boom, they get a dollar. And then once they've gotten acclimated to that, well then we can go ahead and increase the intensity and the frequency and then increase the reward. Well, hey, now you're going to get up and you're actually going to go for a walk every single morning and that's going to be worth $1.50. And we continue on that till that becomes to normal. And then it's like, okay, now guess what? Now we're going to go ahead and go for a run or a jog. And we continue to do that.

It's such a point that then your biology starts to reward the behaviors. But think about it. We all do stuff that we hate every single day. We all get up every single morning to go to work because there's a paycheck to be given. So all we need to do is figure out how to give ourselves a paycheck for the things that we want to do ourselves versus relying on that external stimulus. Explain a little bit about the part that your biology rewards it because I think a lot of people um when you say uh they need a reward to change they think an external reward but what other types of

reward exists in order to motivate behavior? Most of us Why did we all start dieting and start working out? because we want to look amazing naked. We want to appeal to, you know, our partners. We want to just feel confident in our own bodies. And so, we all have this expectation that, dude, once I get in the gym, man, I'm going to start looking like Arnold. I'm going to start looking the way that I want. And unfortunately, biology doesn't work that way. Like, there's got to be some consistency. There's got to be some acclamation of overall workload volume.

Like, you have to have put in years to be able to create those types of results. And so you need to find a way to reward yourself to keep showing up until such a point that you can actually see the visible rewards of the biology rewarding you because I'm not going to lose the 5 lbs right away on my first day of the diet. And it since it's going to take a couple weeks and there's going to be some frustrating times if there's nothing to keep me motivated so to speak during that period of time. Well, I'm

probably going to fall off and then that's going to create a very frustrating, hopeless situation, which is probably going to create avoidant behaviors about me doing something like this in the future, which man just creates a spiral, and this why you end up with so many unhappy individuals. I I I think this is like a key point that I've always been curious about is uh you talk about like rewarding uh the behavior, right? But we know that the most powerful way to reward someone's behavior is with inter like um how do

you say it like not consistent rewards like every three or four have like a big reward like like as how casinos work. You know that uh okay so that that's dependent. So you have to realize the problem that casinos are trying to solve is to keep you pumping money into the machine. The problems that we're trying to solve as individuals are to make sure that we're continue showing upward trajectory and progression. Those aren't the same thing. And so, as long as like if the casino stops you from having an extinction event where either you run

out of money or you get pissed off at the machine, you'll keep going. Keeping going is good enough to maintain your current baseline. But we want to make sure that we're getting better, which is why the rewards have to continue increasing and why you have to continue looking for bigger challenges. But how is it possible for someone to reward themselves? That's I guess the biggest question I have because right now you say okay a dollar you probably have a a mechanism on Trevor Cashachi

nutrition where someone deposits money and every time they do something they get paid but if you don't have a coach or someone external that is uh like giving those uh reinforcements h how do you reinforce yourself in order to change if you're alone in this fight the exact same way you would treat yourself the same way you would you would treat a child. Okay. So, if you've got a kid that you're giving them an alliance every single week and you're teaching them the value of being able to save up, you're teaching them the the

value of abstaining from certain behaviors. That way, you can have a a reward at the end. Well, you would do the same thing for yourself, just breaking it down. Well, hey, you know what I usually like to do is I'm a big person. I love taking baths, man. It's like one of my favorite things in the entire world. So, I buy bath bombs. I buy the really fancy bath bombs from Lush. Yeah, I make enough money that I could pretty much go out and buy those anytime, but in my household, that would

be something that's considered a treat. So, what I do is now that's my reward system. So, every dollar I bank goes to Huggy getting to go buy his bath bombs, which then he banks towards time that he can go ahead and spend on a Saturday where everybody knows leave him the [ __ ] alone because he gets to go take an awesome bath because that was his reward. And so, what you need to do is figure out what is something that adds value to your life. What is something that gets you excited that you want to be able to do? And then you find a way

to make that your reward system and then reverse engineer away backwards from it. Element two guys. element. Maybe I want to talk about the constraint that you would have in a high income household where you can buy whatever whatever the thing you want at whatever time you want. How would a person that wants to cut sugars for example reward himself? That is a great question but and what we need to do is find out what that person considers as a reward. So if you in a high-income household, well then we're

probably going to have to look for something that maybe isn't money related and we're also looking for something that's not calorie related. Now what do a lot of highincome people really wish that they had more of? Time. So what we want to be able to look for if for a high income person is probably, hey, how can we go ahead and get you some of your time back? Well, rather than banking money towards something you would buy for yourself, maybe you could bank money that you're going to have somebody do all your yard work. That gives you an

entire Saturday back that you can have this time to go ahead and work on projects or do something for yourself. Maybe we can go ahead and have somebody come in and do your laundry for you, which then gives you this. We can have somebody hire out your meal prep for you. All of these things that would become rewards now then begin integrated into a system, which then feeds back upon itself. But let me expand on this question. Let's say you are on a situation where you have all of that met meaning you have someone who was your yard work

yard work food all the like basic stuff that would take a lot of your time and you have everything. Yeah. And so what problem were we trying to solve at that point in time? He wants to cut sugars for example. Let's say he yeah he wants to lose weight but he has everything he needs and the only let's say external uh reinforcements something like status something else is not in his control like another human has to give it to him. So my question then, does he want to cut sugars or does he want to lose weight? Because those are two different problems. Let's say lose weight. No.

Yeah, lose weight. Okay. So if he wants to lose weight, then we're going to have to find out what is his impetus for losing weight. Because if it's just like, hey, something that I thought of one morning and there's no deep desire to do it. Well, then there's no reason for him to change his behavior on a regular basis. Now, let's say, for example, he's not able to have sex with his wife anymore, or all of a sudden he's insecure with what he sees in the mirror. Well, then what we're going to remind him is, dude,

do you want to continue to emotionally feel that way every single day? Look at this amazing life that you have built, but look, there's still a hole in your heart from you lacking this one area. So, what we want to do is we want to be able to give that back to you. So, what we're going to look is teaching you how to delay gratification so this way we can build this esteem. We can go ahead and build these skills so that way you don't feel that emptiness inside. So, that's actually the problem that we're

trying to solve. It's not really a weight loss problem. and say, "Hey, look, I've gone ahead and solved all these other areas of my life, but I never actually taught myself how to prioritize myself. I never taught myself how to be important." And so, that's what we need to do. And then in that which case, then it's going to start to show up aesthetically also. And so, the reward at that point in time would be, look, we're going to get you confident. We're going to get you back to having

sex with your wife. We're going to get you confident taking your shirt off at the pool. and in which time then we need to kind of work backwards to what's going to keep you motivated in the short term so to speak. Did I answer the question or did I bring up another one? Yeah, I I'm going to another subject right here like hoi um I have a question about GOP once that right now that we're talking about weight loss. Yeah. And I I think it's the easy way out. Can you help me expand expand on that because uh following the example that we had

before of a wealthy person that has everything uh doing GOP once uh isn't it the easy way out or or is there another way? Interesting way to put that because I just look at these things as tools. That would be like saying that the person that took their car to work every day took the easy way out. Well, no. They looked to make sure that they could accomplish the job using the resources they had available. Now, using your example, you've got somebody that's very affluent. Well, they've never learned

the skill set of of uh delayed gratification. They've never had to do that. You know, they they've never been in a situation like you and I where they grew up poor and like went to bed hungry at different points. So, you know, God bless them. They never had to worry about those types of problems. So what we need to do is we need to find them a tool to be able to bridge that gap because they know that they can go into the kitchen and eat something anytime. Well, I if I give them a GLP1 that

allows me to go ahead and bring awareness to their actual biology and then we can modify the behaviors and teach them that skill. So it depends on intention as with anything. Is a gun a bad thing? Well, it depends on why you're using it. Is a GLP an easy way out? Depends on why you're using it. If you're using it with no intention of ever changing your lifestyle and you're just like, "Man, I'm going to get these LBs off so I can look good at the beach and as soon as I come home, I'm going back to my binge eating and binge drinking. I'll do this again." Well, then yeah, it sounds like you're taking

the easy way out. If you're using this because you're like, "Dude, I have no idea where to start and I can actually use some type of biological feedback while I try to change my environment and behaviors." I think that's an amazing tool at your disposal. You talk a lot about um skills, Hoggy. Yeah. First of all, let's just define it. what is a skill? Um, and how do you acquire it? You can learn to make a part of your life easier. So, what I always say is things are hard because you lack a skill to make it easy. And so, all we need to

look at is where am I currently experiencing challenge, what's hard in my life, and what would make that easier and then I learn how to do that thing. So, that's a skill for me. How much how much can you um learn? How much is uh let's say genetic like because we have limitation as humans, right? Like if I want to be the fastest runner in the world, probably my like my hardware, my biology wouldn't allow it. Like it's not it's not physically possible. So how do you know the limit um like the limit to where how much skill how much

genetic and how much do you think of our own behavior is u genetic? Okay, so that's a great question. How much of our own behavior is genetic? I don't know. And there's really no way to test that because the only way to be able to test something like that would be to take a baby and isolate them from birth onward. So that way you could see what they naturally did and that would just be inhumane. I don't think anybody's going to sit there and isolate a kid. So there's no way to be able to

test these things. So unless I can measure it and unless I can repeat it and test it, I don't worry about it. That's just, you know, it's imaginary at that point to me. So I only concern myself with things that I can measure and repeat. Now, as far as h how intelligent somebody is, their upper limits of being able to learn, that's like me asking you how big can you get muscularly, how fast can we we're not ever going to know unless you try to push those limits. So, the only way

you're ever going to be able to find out when you're able to stop learning is to try to learn as much as you can till you finally hit that roadblock. So, we don't know. Now, what I can tell you is that everybody can increase their rate of learning from where they currently are. And I actually wrote an entire spreadsheet, an SOP on how people can learn, breaking things down step by step, and how you can get better at learning. Okay. So, you're saying learning itself, like the meta skill of learning, it's a skill. You can get better at learning and you get better at learning and that

generalizes into all the areas that you want to apply it. That's it, man. That's it. And so if you can learn how to learn properly, well then you're going to be able to increase the probability of your success in every other area. I want to double click on that because I have so many questions um on this subject. Sure. And it's it's really a passion of mine. First of all is like I've seen the both of the aisles. Some people say like IQ is so important, right? And it's like I think I I may be wrong with this but I think below an 80 IQ score like you have a lot of problems doing like basic uh

functions. And then you have other people like you in Trevor Cashashi saying like you have so much more potential. Um but you're scientists like you you because a lot of people say like yeah you have so much potential but like you you guys actually like measure stuff and and and do it. How much like does IQ influence let's say this type of thing? like how do you how much you can change and what skills you can acquire. That's really important. What skills are at your disposal and after that is how do you even like go about acquiring a

skill? Great question. I don't know how much IQ influences it and there there's no way to be able to test that because human beings are so diverse that we would we wouldn't be able to have a control group for like you would need sets of identical twins. one that was raised like without any type of education see how fast they can develop skills versus one that was raised with the application of skills so that way we can see how much IQ actually identifi so the utility behind an experiment like that that that's where I actually spend a lot of my time is like what is the utility for these questions cuz people ask questions

the questions themselves are very very intelligent but where are we going to actually apply any of this knowledge how is it going to help us get any better and so unless I can answer that immediately I don't usually worry about it well then those are just nice what if questions Now, the next thing then with how can you go ahead and apply the skill and get better at learning? Well, like I said, if you've got the time, I can go ahead and go over my actually like checklist with you step by step and tell you how I tr coach people through getting better at learning.

Yes, for sure. I think this is awesome. Exactly. That's what I wanted to ask. Can you break up your SOP that you made about how to get better at learning? Absolutely. Yeah. And if you guys want to uh get some more of this, please feel free to uh email me huggy@cashycommand and then you can also sign up for us at uh trevocashy.com. So what what I always look at is like we want to make sure that we are giving ourselves appropriate standards to be able to meet and that's what's going to keep the reinforcement going. So number one, we want to identify what problem we're trying to solve and then that way

we can set an appropriate short-term performance standard. Meaning is this going to be realistic and manageable within the time frame that we've allotted? Because that's the main thing is a lot of people will say something that is completely just like way off track like hey I'm going to be a pro football player by the end of the summer. Okay, no you're not. But so let's let's go ahead and make sure that we are breaking this down into bite-sized pieces that will allow us to continue progression. Then the second thing we want to do is we want to ensure

that you have the time, the space, and the resources to practice until you meet the short-term standard that was determined. Now this is important for most people because this is the shortterm standard, not the ideal performance standard. So, think about this in terms of driving. This doesn't mean that you would be able to pass your driving test. It just means for the time being that you're comfortable driving around the parking lot. So, that way we can take the next steps. Is that all track so far?

Yeah. Just double click because I think this is really important. Uh I heard this before, but the audience doesn't. the importance that you say choosing the right problem because a lot of people have goals and I think Trevor says that goals are stupid because you I may say I want to read read 10 books a week and then someone is like why because I want to make more money and it's like I don't know exactly look at what problem we're trying to solve what is the objective here and then that way we can manufacture a solution

how do you choose the right problem like how do you know if it's the right problem that you're actually trying to solve instead of a goal that masks the problem. I go for lowest hanging fruit because I find that if you can go ahead and take low care of lowest hanging fruit that is currently causing a problem in your life. Number one, it's going to build up your overall efficacy cuz hey, look at me. I'm a guy that takes care of problems. It's going to also start to break inertia. It's going to build up momentum as far as getting things going because hey man, once I took care of that problem and I see how easy it was,

well then I'm probably going to go to the next lowest hanging fruit and eventually I'm going to start working my way up. And so if you just continue this on a daily basis, well, you're always on top of things. Most people have an issue because they end up either not taking any action at all because they're waiting for instructions or they end up in analysis paralysis where hey, I want to do the perfect thing and then therefore they lose a window of opportunity to be able to take any action at all.

Let's say now, okay, you choose the right problem. Okay. Um, and we're going to use weight loss for this example because it's easy and everybody can understand it. Now what like do you have to measure like what are the steps that you need to take? Wait, so let's be let's go ahead and be precise here. You said weight loss. How much weight do we want to lose? Let's say I'm going to use myself as an actual subject here. Okay. Let's say I first of all I have a I want to give you like the whole scope so we can we can use an example. Okay. I don't

know. I've been uh on the gym for four years, five. I don't know how much muscle mass I have left on my let's say genetic potential natural. Uh ideally I'm I'm 88 kilograms. So I would like to weigh 90 and 8% body fat. And let's say I have now 14% body fat. Okay. So what we want to say then is let's go ahead and break this down into manageable standards first. What's going to be more important to you for the short term? Do you want to gain the muscle or do you want to lose the body fat?

let's say lose the body fat. Okay. So, let's focus on getting you cut first so that way we can then build back up. Great. So, short performance standard is we want to go ahead and say in 12 weeks, let's say Nick wants to lose 5 kg in 12 weeks. Great. That's where we're going to go ahead and set the measurement. Now, do you have the time, the space, the resources to be able to do this until the short-term uh standard was met? Meaning, do you have any trips in the next 12 weeks? Do you

have any parties? Do you have any celebrations? Do you have your family coming over and being like, "Nick, we brought you your favorite food and I'm going to have the most hurt feelings if you don't sit here and eat this with me." Or do you have control over your environment for the next 12 weeks where I can be like, "All right, Nick, we're going to go ahead and get you cut and then we're going to go ahead and jump into a rebuild." That's that's actually a really good question and I'll give you the answer. And then an extra question is for for

me, for example, I don't have complete control over my environment. I don't know if in three weeks somebody will come to my house with a with pancakes, you know. Yes. That's not up to me. Sometimes it's just random. Like I just arrive and sometimes there's dessert, sometimes there's no dessert. Like how what do you do there? Because you also live with other human beings. And excellent question. And this is where most people will fall short because what they'll do is they'll have the expectation that hey, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to give myself 12 weeks to get cut. and they think in

their head, well, that means 12 weeks I'm going to do everything perfectly. And they forget to account for the fact that they operate within a continuum of other individuals. And so then they get frustrated because then other individuals aren't sitting there caring about their goals as much. Well, man, I told my wife I was going on a diet. Why is she still making cookies? She should be suffering just as much as I. Well, no. Did you ever express that? Did you set terms on that? Did you give her these types of instructions? Or are you

just getting mad for no reason whatsoever? And so this is where people really set themselves up and shoot themselves into a in the foot as far as problem solving goes because they sit there and they say that they want to solve one problem and then when you bring the other things to their attention, they're like, "Well, I don't want to deal with that." Well, dude, if you want to go ahead and lose weight in the fastest way possible, well, that means that you're probably going to have to have some difficult conversations with the people that you love. You're probably going to have to give them new

ways to love you during this point. Because if your mom loves bringing you pancakes every 3 weeks, Nick, and that's her way of coming in and saying, "I love my son and he's the best." Well, how are you going to give your mom a new way to love you if all of a sudden you're on a diet and you can't have pancakes? Well, you're probably going to have to have a conversation with your mom and be like, "Mom, I'm really doing something to try to improve my life. I love how you make me pancakes. It's something that we used

to connect over. Unfortunately, that doesn't fit who I'm trying to be anymore. So, the next time you come over, instead of bringing me pancakes, could you give give me a hug?" And if you give her something to replace that with, now you can go ahead and start building a system around it. And then you can start changing your environment to then create the Nick who's going to be successful long term. And that's why skills are so important. And that's why identifying the precise problem is so important because it's not really a weight loss problem. It's a hey, Nick's

not happy with who he is or where he currently is at. And that's why you look the way that you do. So in order to change who you are, you need to change everything around you, which means helping all your family get better, too. And this is the the part you say about skills acquisitions, right? Because for someone losing weight, that's when Trevor says 90% right and 100% wrong. Meaning everybody knows that you need to eat less and move more, but it touches so many other uh skills you need to have

in in this case you say communication skills. For example, you need to be able to have hard conversations. Uh you need to modify your environment. And I want to touch uh on that. I want to double click on the environment part. I think I read on atomic habits that uh people that went to war and tried heroin uh when they came back 90% left heroin no rehab and then I think people that do go to a rehab center uh when they come back to their old environment 90% get back into their drug addiction. So what is environment first of all? Why is it so

important for our own behavior and how can we modify an environment when we don't have full control over? Great question. So, environment is your surroundings, including the people in your lives. Okay? So, your house, your job, where you hang out after work, your gym, your grocery store, your car, the people that you hang out with on a daily basis, these are all contributors to your environment. Now, what we need to realize is that we've trained ourselves to react a certain way to all these different things. And so if you develop

an addiction, especially to something that is going to be also have a physical addiction component to it, well then you're going to continue to exhibit these signs anytime you put yourself back in the confines of having to display that training. Which is why changing the environment is so important in being able to break signs of physical addiction because it allows you to manipulate so many different variables. Well, hey, if instead of the people that I used to drink with, well, now I'm hanging out with all brand new people, which means that now I'm not going to the same places anymore, which means now

nobody has preconceived notions of me. Because if all you ever knew me as is the huggy who got drunk and showed up, but now nobody knows me anymore because now I don't go to bars and I instead I go to the gym. Well, now I'm just the guy that starts working out. And so I get to recreate my identity and I get to rebuild who I am. So this is why becoming a master of your own environment and making your environment a product of you is so important. I think that's a a really great point because unfortunately um and then Fran will have an example with alcohol. Uh

but unfortunately I think most people don't like when you change as a person and and yeah and I'll give you the point is that they don't want to lose their relationship with you. And so keep in mind like using the the the addiction example if you have a friend that every single time you got together with that friend you had beers and you guys talked about your problems. So, your friend starts to rely on you as a support system because he knows that if he ever has a problem, he can call you up and you can have a beer and you're going to talk about your problems, but then you decide to stop drinking. Well,

dude, now he's lost his friend. So, it's not that he doesn't like that you changing. He doesn't like that all of a sudden he's losing something that he had in his life before. I used to have a friend that I could sit there and talk to my problems about, but now my friend doesn't drink anymore. So, am I still allowed to talk to my problems? And so that's why the communication becomes so important because if you're the one that's changing and you want to maintain that relationship, you need to set terms and put in the work. You need to go up to him and hey man, I know that we used

to always get together for beers and talk about our problems. I'm not drinking anymore because all those extra calories are making me fat, but man, I would still love to get together and talk to you if you ever got a problem. And that way he still knows there's that connection. That way you don't lose a friend. You actually made that friendship stronger. And then they're going to probably find that your friend is supporting you then. Dude, hey Nick quit drinking, man. That's awesome. Good for you for getting healthy, man. Good for you for getting jacked. We're still

friends. He still said you'd show up for me. But I think in that case, you're you're uh putting a really supportive friend. And at least my my empirical experience, I may be wrong, but it's like uh it's not always the case. Maybe you provide value sometimes because you uh are someone that someone can go in the to the club with, you know, and that's the the whole sometimes um sometimes your I I've seen it before and I heard and I think it's true. Sometimes your your own willingness to change makes the other person like gives them like a little like like a negative reinforcement

because it's creating like a discrepancy between like your your habits and like there's a lot of other stuff going uh it's not just like take beers and and and and talk about problems. Sometimes it's a status thing. Sometimes there's like a lot of uh components to this problem on on social dynamics. But then what you find is if you have a person like that then then they're really not your friend because a friend is somebody who is sitting there supporting you and you want to continue

to grow that affiliation. So if you find that somebody is not adding value to your life and they're only sitting there talking to you, interacting with you when you're able to do something with them, well that gives you data to be able to be like, well this relationship is not beneficial for me. And so that's not losing a friend. That's actually you getting enough data to be able to enforce better boundaries for yourself, which means that, hey, now I'm becoming a stronger human being. My autonomy is

getting better because I'm not letting somebody take advantage of me anymore. I want to go deep into alcohol and um I'll give you the context about Mexico so you can give the example to our audience. It um the culture in Mexico with alcohol is [ __ ] up. it like everything resolves around alcohol and every weekend is everything is around alcohol. So you can imagine so I had to quit drinking for a year and because of health pro problems I couldn't drink for a year and then I started drinking little by little or

there were some times in that year that I drank I drank maybe in that year four or five times and right now it's been so difficult to stop drinking or to change my habits because of the environment that I am Like I feel like an outsider if I'm not drinking. And people are like they even they even pressure you to drink. Like everything revolves around drinking. So how would you change that behavior and what recommendation or tip would you give to someone in Mexico that wants to

stop drinking? Great question, man. Very first question I'd ask a follow-up is, do you want to change the behavior? A lot of people get this idea that, hey, drinking is bad, so I want to stop drink. Do you want to stop drinking? Do you want to start participating in this? Yes, I would love to. Okay, that's that's the hardest part right there because most people can't actually make a decision because it'll be like in their head, yeah, hey, I'm going to quit drinking until my friend offers me beer. So, they always have one foot out the door. So, if you can sit there and say,

"Yes, I want to be able to do this." Then all we need to do is say, "Okay, well then how do we make this happen for you?" Well, great. It probably means that, bro, you're going to have to have a lot of conversations with your friends and tell them, "Drinking is not good for my health. It doesn't make me a happy human being. I still want to hang out with you guys. I'm just not going to drink. Here's what we're going to go ahead and do instead." And again, give them substitutions. Make sure that you can continue to reinforce those relationships and understand that everything is going to change over time

because you're changing. And that way, you can continue to collect data to see what relationships are worth nurturing. It's going to be very very difficult because as you said, you are going to be an outsider. That's not a bad thing. I I think that a lot of people look at changing as like, hey, I'm getting better now. I'm starting to, you know, have distance from the people I love. That's what happens when you improve. If everyone was on the same path, well, then we wouldn't have these issues and we would have zero friction in our lives. You're going to have to make some tough

choices. Same as using Nixon's example, Alex Warmosi. Dude, how many parties did that guy miss out on because he was going to bed early so he could be up at 4:00 a.m.? If you're going to stop drinking, that means that you're going to lose out on that social connection. So, it's going to be up to you to find another one to continue to maintain these types of friendships. What are you going to be able to do to continue to create those connections when you go to a party? Are you going to be the type of

human being that only drank because it created a social interaction for him? That's why I used to drink. I'm very awkward, you know, socially. I'm deaf and so put me in a party. I didn't know what to do. So drinking gave me some courage, you know, gave me something to talk about. So if I stop drinking, what am I going to be able to do to carry on a conversation? Cuz I don't want to just sit in the in the corner awkward and have people stare at me. So then we just have to look at what problem you're trying to solve at that point in time. So is it going to be solved in a

oneanddone situation? [ __ ] no, dude. This is going to be a long-term problem. This is going to like need constant reinforcement, but it's absolutely doable as long as you're committed to it. two guys learning about life. Capital Valentia, you touched two parts about why it's so hard. Uh first of all uh what recommendation would you give someone that goes to that party and everything revolves around drinking and your friends come up and come on man have a shot don't be boring come on uh have a

beer you used to be fun like uh what are you doing here and how would you replace in a culture that everything resolves around that that if you stop drinking you're really an outsider you you stop you you might stop seeing your friends because they hang out in nightclubs or whatever. Girls more most important girls like where do you go and find girls like it's so difficult all the things that you have to sacrifice. So this is where a lot of people will sit there and paint themselves into a corner because the problem you're not trying to solve is stopping drinking.

The problem you're trying to resign yourself to is, "Hey man, I want a better life than what my current environment allows for. If I stay here and I keep doing the same [ __ ] that I'm doing and I keep hanging out with the same people, I'm going to be exactly the same person in 5 years." And that's uncomfortable because you don't want that. You already want better for yourself and it bothers you that all your friends are like, "Hey, let's just get drunk every single weekend." And so

a part of you is like, "Dude, I really miss my friends." And the other part of you is like, "I don't [ __ ] want to be drunk every single weekend. I've got big plans for my life. And so that's a choice for you then, Mom, is what problem do you want to solve at this point? Do you want to stay the same or do you want to make the sacrifices needed to make to get better? And the really cool thing about this is there's no right or wrong answer. And it's all done on your timeline. So it's not like you need to decide this right now. But

you have to realize that if you're going to get better, you're going to have to start creating some space because nobody that's successful, I don't know any billionaires out there that are getting drunk every single weekend. I don't know any really highquality marriages that were built off of girls in nightclubs going out and having indiscriminate sex every single weekend after getting drunk. Doesn't mean it's not fun at certain points of your life. It doesn't mean that we all don't do it. But can

you continue to build a successful life doing those types of things? I don't know. I think you you're touching an important point that is that is trade-offs, right? uh a lot of people including myself want a lot of stuff but when when you see the price uh in order to get what you want then do you really want it and I think there's um talking about this subject a quote that I have in my head I don't remember exactly but it's like either release yourself from the desire if you're not willing to pay the price or um or pay the price like my point is if

I want to be the fastest runner in Mexico I probably have to train three hours a day. Am I willing to do that? For me, [ __ ] no. I I don't care about going fast with my legs. It's something I don't care at all. If you gave it for 10 minutes of of work, maybe just for fun. But then if I know I'm not willing to pay the pay the price, then I I I just release myself from the desire, right? Is that the kind of the line? I have a really thing too is to consider is a lot of people will sit there and they look at these types of things as all or nothing situations. like, "Hey, I either need to

stop drinking or I need to sit here and do this." Well, maybe what you could do is start small. Hey, maybe all I'm going to do is I'm going to go out drinking once a month with my friends. And then you just limit yourself to that. And that way you have three more weekends every month to practice doing something different. And then over time it'll become easier because you'll be sitting there diversifying your interests. But start wherever you're at and build your efficacy by building those successes.

Like it doesn't have to be. I'm just going to go from going out every single weekend to never going out ever again. Well, no. Hey, how about instead of every weekend, we just go out every other weekend. And on the weekends where I don't go out, maybe I go to the library. I commit to reading a book that weekend. I do something different. I build my skills in a new area. And then that way I can continue to improve. Kogi, but don't you think uh I know the all or nothing comes from according if I'm mistaken from like CBT and all of

that, but don't you think um that in this case or and all of these behaviors, it's really different and powerful to change from I'm trying to stop drinking because you are giving um something to negotiate with versus I don't drink. Like if you drink once a month and you say, "No, next next weekend is my um is my people probably will be like, "Hey man, come on. Just next weekend don't drink do this uh this weekend." But if you change it to like I don't drink period like at all. Don't you think it's

easier to just like set the line there? I I think that's a really useful tactic. I prefer to I don't like giving instructions to a negative. So instead of saying I'm not going to do something, I will just tell myself to do something instead. So rather than saying I don't drink, if somebody's like, "Hey, you want to go out drinking this weekend?" I would just be like, "I'm going to the gym. I already have plan. I'm doing this instead." I don't have to tell them I don't drink because like whatever my

action is going to show them that I don't drink. Like I'm getting up at 5:00 a.m. that day so I can go run 10 miles. They're going to be like, "Oh well, I guess you're not going to come out drinking with me then because that would make it really hard." So, I think it's much easier to just tell yourself instructions for something that you will do versus saying you're not going to do something. Because even if you say you're not going to do something, the last thing that's in your head is still that thing. I'm not going to drink. I

don't drink. What's the last thing you hear? Drink. And someone said, "I go to the gym. I go running." Hi, don't you think um and how would you solve the problem that the price of change has some loneliness right because you are constantly changing friend groups and and changing your environment and the likelihood that the people that you went uh to school with when you were 12 years old 14 the likelihood that they're align on your goals nothing wrong with that good or bad taking out of the equation just but the price of that is a lot of

loneliness because you have to constantly If you want to change, you have to change your environments and that includes the people in your life. How do you solve that problem? I think that's a great question and we want want to differentiate between loneliness and being alone by choice. Loneliness is when you're isolated and you don't have the choice. So, you know, it's it's an affliction. If you're alone by choice, well, hey, I'm separating myself from things don't don't serve me. I'm fully committed to getting better. And that means if I'm going to be the

fastest runner, people are going to have a hard time catching up with me. If I'm the strongest person in the gym, there's not going to be anybody that's trying to work in with me because nobody can handle my weights. If I'm trying to get better, I'm going to be spending a lot of time either by myself or trying to catch up with the people that are ahead of me. So, am I going to be lonely? No. I'm going to be alone by choice because I'm in the pursuit of a goal. And when people are actually around me, they're

probably going to be on my level versus me having to pander down to them because they were also trying to improve. So tactical advice, but what what if what if the price of that like there's a temporary moment where where you don't have like that next friend group that on your case, let's say, or or your environment. You don't have anyone that is like stronger than you in the gym or like someone you're trying to catch up and it's like um like just you're all alone. Yes. Exactly. you get out of the box and

you're alone. Dude, I think we've all been there before. Like there's there was plenty of years that you spend by yourself, that you're single, that you don't have very many friends, that you're not going out. And that's when you actually build your tolerance. That's when you get better as a human being because at that point in time, you're making the decision every single day. Because if you're by yourself with any distractions, it has to be 100% intentional. Because I could

easily distract myself by going out to the bar. I could easily distract myself by lowering my standards to go ahead and date somebody who isn't in 100% alignment with my goals or the lifestyle I'm trying to lead because I don't like being lonely. Or I can delay gratification and understand that hey, in order to pursue excellence, the only thing I'm going to be able to tolerate in my life is excellence. And it doesn't have to be one and done all the time. There's been plenty of times where it's been like, "Dude, all I want to do for the time being is I'm

really tired and I would just like to hang out with my friends. I'm going to act like an entitled spoiled brat for a few months." And then there will be other times where it's like, "No, I am in very, very heavy pursuit of my goals right now. I don't have time for anybody else. Life is like enjoy the experience, but focus on what means something to you and that way you can always be working towards something. Make sure that you're making choices versus having reactions. That's really interesting and I want to double click on those two parts. But

first, let's say delay gratification. Basically, everything that we're talking about comes down to that is like doing actions today that has have a payout tomorrow and then the things that hurt you have a benefit today that have a downside tomorrow. And you have like things like the marshmallow test, you know, that it's like I don't know if it's biological, like kids have different tolerances for how long they can wait for that reinforcement. Um, but I guess my question is if you were in an environment when you were younger where you never learned delay gratification,

you never had a positive reinforcement from delaying u an action, it's going to probably be a super hard for you for for that like let's say first uh delay gratification reinforcement to happen. What do you recommend to that people that they have literally never delayed gratification in their life or like long term? Well, you would meet them where they're at. So if they've never delayed gratification, well then we want to make sure that number one, we show them that it's possible. So let's just say, let's

use the marshmallow example. You give somebody a marshmallow and this person's every single time they've ever gotten a marshmallow, they've immediately popped it in their mouth. So all we're going to do is say, "Hey, look, I'm going to put this marshmallow right here and you're going to wait 10 seconds." And you show them that they are capable of waiting 10 seconds and then they eat the marshmallow. Well, look, I just proved to you that you're capable of delaying gratification. you have that skill. Now,

all we need to do is strengthen that skill so that way we can mess with frequency and intensity. But number one, you need to prove to people they're capable of it. And then you sit there and develop the training program necessary to strengthen it up. Okay, great. Now, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to give you a marshmallow and you have the choice of waiting 10 seconds to eat it or if you wait a full minute, I'll give you two marshmallows. Well, now they've learned that if I delay gratification, I get a bigger reward. And so now we start training in

that and we develop their efficacy in that manner. And then over a period of time then you can begin to expand that out into other domains. But this this is the best thing that I love about what we do at Trevor Cash and Nutrition is literally what we do is we teach the definition of hope because if you've learned one way of behaving, if you've learned way one way of doing something in your life, that means that you are 100% capable of learning a brand new and a totally different way of doing it.

Because think about it, most of the things that you do, you never thought, "Hey, I'm going to learn how to put on my pants this way. This is going to be the way that Nicholas puts on his pants. This is going to be my signature pant putting on move." No, you just kind of do it. So, think about it though. Now, you know how to put on your pants every single day. If I sat there and said, "Hey, Nick, now I want you to learn how to put on your pants left leg first." And you intentionally did that, you would probably learn how to do that in

two days because there would be intention, there would be awareness behind it. And so you learned most everything that you've done in your life with zero awareness and zero intention. It just happened to you. You were a product of your environment. So what we do is we give you the power to sit here and assess, audit your environment effectively using facts and data. And now you can begin to influence it with intention. And now you can do things on purpose, which means you have the ability to get better every [ __ ] day by choice. And that's just awesome to me.

So what what I'm understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is the definition for you of improvement is being on purpose. What do you mean by that is being able to assess with skills, data, information, etc. what you want to accomplish? And most of the things, if not all of the things we learn, it was like on like an NPC mode, autopilot, and it was like I just like send it randomly and put my pants and this is how I do it for the rest of my life. And you learn all the behaviors. I have two questions here. Um

the first one that is um Oh, I I I actually missed the first one. Let's go to the to the to the data one like what do you mean by by data and behavior? And for someone that is listening that has never had exposure to this world measurement like all of these how like what what does it mean? Oh, great question, man. data is just metrics or uh me units of measure that are going to be important to you. And so for most people when they're looking at fat loss, we're going to go ahead and look at pounds on the scale. We're going to look at inches on the waist. We're going to look at body fat by calibers. It's

whatever measurement you choose. Now you have businessmen that will go ahead and they they measure their success in the realm of profit in the realm of hey how much money did I make versus the amount of time I worked per week. So the measurements are really going to be entirely individual and that's where we focus on what the utility behind it is because man we can show success in a lot of measurements but who [ __ ] cares for a lot of it right? So that's that's really interesting the utility one. Um I'm going to give you two questions. I'm sorry I give them

like a little bit randomly because if not I forget the questions but I remember the other one it's local versus global skills. So you have something really interesting where you say I'm I'm going to give hope to someone on the marshmallow test. let's say they they can see that they can influence their behavior and they're going to give How much does that generalize versus the person just being like, "Okay, I understand that I can um delay gratification at marshmallow, but I don't know if I can delay it on my relationship or on other alcohol." Yeah. Or alcohol. How do you

generalize first of all if it if it it's possible to generalize these skills? And second, if so, how? Okay, great. Yes, it is possible to go ahead and diversify the skills on a global scale like that. And that's actually what we focus on. What you look for is the roadblocks and the barrier for entry that allow that to happen. And for most human beings, that's going to be an emotional reaction and response because we all delay gratification. We all know, hey, I get this much in a paycheck and I need to put this much aside for my rent and I need to put this

much aside for my food, etc. And we know that we don't overspend. But what do we do? And we know, hey, if I eat more than this, I get fat. But for some reason, if I have a great day at work, well then that allows me to go ahead and say, you know what, I deserve to go ahead and get fat today. But because I can't sit there and give myself permission to get fat, well, I'm going go ahead and say, I deserve to go ahead and eat something nice. Well, that something nice is basically going to overdraft my bank account and make me fat. So, if I put that in money terms, I'd be like, "Fuck

no, dude. Like, I have rent to pay." If I came in here and said, "Nick, you had a great day at work. Go ahead. We're going to overdraft your bank account and you're not going to be able to pay rent on Monday." you'd be like, "No, I I'm not going to do that." But you can have a great day at work and be like, "Nick, we're going to go ahead and buy a pizza tonight and get a six-pack to treat yourself for that great amazing week of work that you did." Then you be like, "Yeah, that's awesome." And then now you start to reward yourself and now you've created conflated behaviors that are

really not going to serve you at all. And so for most people, it comes down to precision with their language. What problem are you trying to solve? And are you willing to go ahead and accept responsibility for your own emotions? Meaning, can I validate? Can I understand that my emotions are important to me, but nobody else cares? Nobody else cares if I'm having a bad day. Nobody else cares if I'm having a good day. I'm responsible for that. Okay. So, at the end of the day, what you're building is confidence on yourself that you can do that task

little by little. Okay. I have a differentiate. I'm building efficacy. Confidence. I think you can just people I've seen way too many people that are confident with no right to be confident. You've seen a lot of stupid confidence. Efficacy means that I have done this thing enough times that I have a belief in my ability to replicate it. And so I want you to have done this thing successfully so many times that you're like, "Yeah, I could do that. I could do that in the dark. I could do that on a bad day. I could do that on a good day. I could always do that."

That's the difference between confidence and efficacy. And that comes from evidence, right? That's right. Because evidence of not in your delusional because if you tell me right now what how confident are you in winning if I put you on this uh Olympic soccer games on scoring a goal I will say zero maybe I can like maybe it's one in a million but my point is I I have zero evidence that I'm good at soccer therefore I have like it's and that's the part you say about data and I want to double click on that because if you don't measure how can you have the

evidence that you are effective. Yes. And that's why get so frustrated with so many people that try to avoid taking measurements and they will take measurements in so many other areas of their life, but they won't track their food. Here, I'll be meticulous with tracking my checkbook. I'll be meticulous with going ahead and tracking my points and my attendance at the gym and doing all these other things, but oh man, if I track my food, that's going to go ahead and give me an eating disorder. It's just another unit

of measurement that allows you to be more precise and make faster progress. Let's talk about precision of of language. And I think this this topic is is really profound. Um because I want to touch of course precision of language to uh with all the conversation we had, how do you change your own behavior? But most importantly, I would like to touch on what Trevor says that most of human misery comes from. And that is um what Albert Ellis said kind of the masturbation all or nothing. Um I want to like double click on on on the

whole language part of of of humans basically. Where would you like to get started with that? My favorite thing is Trevor says language language isn't important. It's everything. Let's go from chill to hardcore. So what what I mean by that is chill let's say from the things we were talking about uh changing your your own behavior your goals etc. What is how is important your the language and then let's go to the hardcore about uh human suffering depression and and okay all the other subjects

language is going to be incredibly important across the board because it's our ability to express ourselves. It's our ability to identify what's going on in our life. If you can't properly identify why you're unhappy, well, you're never going to be able to solve the problem of being unhappy. Just like, hey, if you can tell a doctor that something hurts, but you can't tell them where or why it hurts, they're just going to be looking at you like, wow, man, that really sucks. And so, if you

have a problem in your life that you can't properly or precisely identify and express, well, then you're not going to be able to solve that problem. And then that gets to be very frustrating over a period of time because then you just start to think that this is the way life is and that's why people start to feel hopeless. And so this is why I really encourage everyone to develop the most immense vocabulary that you can think about it like look at terms of uh children, look at autistic people, things like that. Like people that lack a vocabulary, what do they usually do

when they get frustrated? They have a physical response. They will lash out, punch walls, break things because the level of emotion actually exceeds what they are currently able to verbally express. And because now I don't have common ground because I can't relate to that outburst and I don't know what they're trying to express. Well, now I've created distance both physically and emotionally between that person and myself and I can't help them solve their problem, which now makes that person

feel more isolated, which is going to sit there and continue to produce more problems over an extended period of time. And so if we give people the patience and the precision in words, then we're going to be able to enhance problem solving, which is going to increase the probability of a happier life. How how do you learn to communicate then? Let's say I'm someone that uh okay, I buy the the idea, I need precision language um in order to get better. How do I even go about learning how to communicate better in order to solve my problems better?

Great question, Bob. So very first thing we would have to do is we would be treating this on an individual basis. So if you and I were sitting down to solve a problem, what we would do is we would set terms. We'd identify what problem we're trying to solve and then we would start looking at what words we would have to use to make sure that we're using language in the same way. Because what you're going to find is that language is very dependent upon environment. How many times have you seen somebody from one region of the

country use a specific word and it means something completely different in another region? You know, like I that happens in the United States all the time. Like if you say wicked in Boston, it means really cool. If you say wicked in California, it means that you're talking about a Republican. Now, if I have somebody from Massachusetts and I have somebody from California talking and they're using wicked as a point of conversation, that can create a lot of conflict in the future. So, what we want

to do is we want to make sure that we're using words in the same way and they mean the same thing to each other. And once we've done that, then we can start to open up that conversation to then begin to expound. Now, what you're going to find though is that's a very frustrating thing because that takes a lot of time. So then you start to have to differentiate between is there utility to having and setting terms with everybody in my life or do I only need to do this with the important people

because dude, do I really need to set terms with the cashier at the grocery store to make sure that she's using have a nice day in the same way that I do or can I just be like, yeah, this is I'm never going to see this person again. I can just nod and smile and go about my day. Yeah, that's that's really interesting because if you take this to a natural extreme, you would be such a weirdo by every conversation being like, first of all, define your terms. Write it down. Explain to me what do you mean by these

words and then we can have a conversation. Yes. But on the other side, if not, you're just having face noise. Meaning, there's a book I I think called I saw it on the back of the bookshelf of Trevor that the map is not the territory. Um, and it's it says that basically I I have a a couple of problems with a premise and I want to double click on that with you in a bit. But how do you distinguish between when to spend the energy to use this skill versus when not to? And if so, if you need to um, how do you say if

you need to articulate and define each word before you talk so people don't misunderstand you? Then does that mean that you only talk with people who understand what you mean by that word? Because if not, it's so easy to get uh miscommunication, people getting the wrong point out of your mouth. Great question. Okay, so again, these things only become important if you are working with the other person trying to solve a problem. So the only people I really worry about setting terms with on a consistent basis is my wife cuz obviously like we live in the same environment, so I want to make

sure that we're communicating effectively. Set terms with Dr. Cashy on a regular basis. I set terms with Mrs. Cashy on a regular basis. I set terms with my team on a regular basis. Any of my clients that we're currently in problem solving mode, I just make sure that we're using the same words in the same way. Does that mean that every conversation I have to do that? No. Because there's plenty of times where somebody is just conveying information to me. Maybe they're just telling me a story. I don't need to set terms so that

I can listen to you tell a story about your family because what problem are we trying to solve? Well, you wanted to entertain me by telling me a story. Great. I'm I'm entertained. I'm really appreciated that you got to share that with me. Now, if it's something important and I need to ask clarifying questions, then I can go ahead and dive in from there. But again, it really just comes down to intention behind everything. And the reason this also gets frustrating for people is because how many people actually have

conversations without any intention? Most most people don't have conversations. Most people just make noise with their face. How many times What do you mean without intention? What do you mean without intention? Is there a purpose to the conversation or are you just going up to fill the time? Okay. Or is the purpose filling the time or the purpose solving a problem? Like you and I, we got on this call with intention. We wanted to be able to convey uh information to an audience. We had some points of topic to go ahead and discuss to. Now, let's just say like,

"Hey, I ran into you at the grocery store and I'm, "Hey, Nick, what's going on?" There's no intention. There was no purpose. Now, what happens if I start talking to you and I just start telling you and I just You don't really care because there's no So, do you actually need to set terms? No. you're just waiting to get out of that call. And so again, what problem are we trying to solve? Hey man, if somebody's just trying to have a greeting, if somebody's trying to create a connection, trying to

be friendly, great. I can speak to you in the vernacular, I it's nothing important. There's nothing that's going to be life-changing about this that I need to make sure that we have 100% clarity on. Now, me talking to Dr. Cashy when we're getting ready to undertake a big project or something like that, I want to make sure that he and I have our ducks in a row because I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to let that man down. Now, me doing something for my wife, I want to make sure that she's

identified exactly what problem she's trying to solve because I don't want to let her down. I want to make sure I'm showing up for the people that are important to me. So, that's all it comes down to when I say intentional is, hey, what problem am I trying to solve? And that way, I can allocate my resources to it intentionally. I have one question about the map is not a territory not the book itself but the idea that you're talking about and it comes from the um why root fallacy. So

this is a point actually disagree with Trevor Cashy and um and I would like to see your opinion right because my thinking has been influ influenced a lot by a guy called David do that he wrote the beginning of infinity and then you have um Trevor Kashi I don't know if the word is instrumentalism or what I don't know what the word is but is when you just care about the that you just care about the formula you just care that if I do this this happens if I build build a building like this it doesn't fall and Then uh David do plants the argument

that that is a completely wrong frame and that the why that goes against the white root fallacy is so important and I want to give an example and then we can land it on behavior. So my example is is is the following. Um when viruses were invented first of all there was the that if you wash your hands you will not get sick right it was really um local you know uh doctors that wash their hands did not get sick or their patient sick but people didn't know why why why it was working they just knew knew that if you wash your hands that's it right uh you don't get

sick but then when um the bacteria and theory and everything that came with it came out and we we knew Why? Because we have some microorganisms on the hand and they can infect you. The reach of that explanation gave us the possibility to solve so many other problems globally. You know what I mean? It's not just it's not just your hands. It's now antibiotics and it's what happens on another planet if if there's uh life there and what happens if we eat a a animal that has that. Like am I communicating clearly? Like having the why gives you so much reach to solve

problems because you have an underlying theory to attack all the problems. Having the that gives you local. So how does how do you like manage those two ideas? Again I look at what problem we're trying to solve. Now the point that you bring up is only going to be applicable if you have somebody that is trying to solve problems on a global scale. Do you and I really need to know the why behind washing our hands? Is it really going to have any utility or make a difference in our lives? Or is just, "Hey, Nick, wash

your hands after you go to the bathroom a good enough explanation?" And so for 99% of the population, do they really need to worry about why? No. So I don't worry about the N equals one situations because they usually work themselves out in the wash because they're so exceptional on one, you know, swing of the pendulum or the other. Now, speaking to the Gen Cop, so to speak, I don't worry about why. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is my explanation, my opinion on why I don't worry about why. Why is an opinion? If you ask the

interrogatives to a group of people, let's say we have a group of witnesses. I ask them who, what, when, where, how, I'm getting five pretty similar responses from that group. Now, I ask everybody why something happened. I'm going to get five completely different answers. That's because why is an opinion. So, I don't worry about dealing with people's opinions. All I worry about is how can I manufacture the behavior and in the environment to produce the result I want going forward.

And that has nothing to do with why because hey, why did I overeat? May maybe it's cuz my dad didn't hug me enough. Maybe it's cuz my dad hugged me too much. It doesn't matter. All I need to do is say in order to not overeat in the future, I'm going to do these things. Doesn't matter about why. So, if I have the time and I want to use my imagination, then I'll spend the time talking about why. But other than that, I just worry about producing results and not not only the imagination part and correct me if I'm wrong because now I have a clearer picture is that you're

saying why is really important but just not for most people like there's going to be a couple of people scientists and and people that are are moving the knowledge frontier that in my opinion there is the highest good you can do. Uh moving the Y barrier on top but for most people we can grab the consensus um that we know that if you wash your hands this happens. Now I have a question for you as an expert hoggy because you are giving uh clear instructions formulas to people. If you do this then this happens but in order for you to know that this

formula is correct you need to know the why right because if you don't know I'll give you an example in my own case. Um for a lot of time I tried uh getting fit and I didn't understand macronutrients the why behind how you get fat right? I just had a really vague idea that salads equals good and sugar equals bad. But my knowledge and my skills on that subject were really limited. And what it made me to do, it was really hard for me to change my body because I didn't have enough flexibility um on my own

behavior. Now when I understood calories, I understood that I could basically eat anywhere I want in any restaurant I want, any trip I want. All I need to do is just give uh protein a priority. Like it gave me like a a depth and and and a width of different environments where I could influence them. um for you as an expert, do you try to see the why? Because including this reinforcement part you're taking from BF Skinner. It's a it's like kind of a why. This uh whole theory you're building up I just read because what you're saying has nothing to do with the why. Your

success had nothing to do with your understanding of macronutrients or calories. It had to do with your execution of the instructions you were given. Now, here's what I give to an example for all of my clients to tell everybody that no, you don't need to understand a why. Can you explain to me the technology and that's used in being able to facilitate this phone call right now? How am I able to be here in my house in Texas speaking to you on a video screen live and you're able to see me and everything? Can you explain how that works to me?

Some parts like some I have a small and why now? Same thing. You go to swipe your your your ATM card at the gas station. Can you tell me why that works? Nobody understands why you get in your car and you know, hey, if I press on the gas, my car goes forward. Most people don't understand the process of combustion and how that actually takes place. But what they do have is they have trust in the process. So people don't need to understand why. They need to have trust. And that's where most

coaches fail is they don't either have enough evidence or they don't have a relationship to establish that trust. Which is why they try to overexlain the why to make themselves seem smarter. Because hey, if I seem smart, then you'll trust me and you'll do what I say. So instead, I say, I don't understand why, and neither do you, and you don't need to. All you need to worry about is, hey, does it work? Then yes, how do I take advantage of it? I don't care why my ATM card works. But you want to know what? Now that I know it works in all these situations, I'm definitely going to use the [ __ ] out of it.

I think you bring a really important point that I never thought about and reflecting right now, I think I I always uh search for the why because of trust. Because if I understand the why, then I know um it works. So in your case, I I give you the point completely. If you trust the coach and you trust it with evidence, not with like uh something else, not even I think a relationship, I think evidence. Hey, I grabbed a 100 people like you and this is the average result and they take four hours every week. Do you think you're going to be different? I totally agree with that.

But let's say on my case on the macronutrients, I I had to create my own instructions. I don't know if if that makes sense. Like I didn't have anybody that told me eat this way. So I had to understand the why of macronutrients in order to create my own instructions for the for for the different environments. So when I understood why I knew that my instructions were when I go to a restaurant I try to eat protein first uh before dessert. If I have dessert I don't have dinner like this subconscious things that I I haven't like written down but rule of thumbs if you want to

see it like that. But the only way I could create those rule of thumbs for me personally to change my own behavior it was knowing the why behind uh changing your body. But that doesn't have a why in changing your body. That has to do with a why on energy distribution. That's all you did was say, "Hey, I finally educated myself on calories in versus calories out." It didn't have anything to do with why you wanted to change your body. Like it like because you learned about calories in versus calories out, did it make you less

insecure in yourself? Did it make you like, "Dude, I now know about this, so guess what? I'm fully confident in taking my shirt off at any point." Did it solve the emotional problems of why you started lifting? No, because the why doesn't matter. But what you did was you gained the skill of learning how to manage your energy distribution. You learned how to keep a budget for your body. Same as you did with your checking account. That's completely different than an emotional why.

Okay. So maybe I have the uh wrong we have wrong terminology speaking about the convers the conversion earlier and this is yeah you're always going to have to learn skills to be able to get better at something but that doesn't mean why like yes I have to learn about like calories in so that way I can get leaner more muscular faster stronger now why do I need to learn about those things why did I decide to change my body well that's individual to me okay so you're saying that correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that why you

have a mot a motivation. Why do you act the way you act? Like on the whole spectrum of human behavior, let's say that that's what like Freud and those other guys that were like full of [ __ ] in my opinion tried to do. It was just write pages and pages of wise. Um, and you're saying that doesn't matter on human behavior, but on the specific subject itself, I'm saying to me and my clients, it doesn't matter because I've worked with people from all walks of life. I've walked with worked with very very rich people. I've worked with very very poor people. I've worked with people that

have been in prison. I've worked with people that have never had a hardship in their life. And all you need to do is structure their environment and make sure you reinforce the behaviors that they want to see versus worrying about why they're doing what they're doing. Correct. But just in terms of we have I think a different definition of terms for your own. Yeah, you I I agree with you like environment and change. But let's say the why in terms of the subject does give you a breath of skill.

So understanding what are macronutrients and micronutrients does give you better skills in order to modify your own health. Right? And again I I don't look at that as a why for the subject. I just look at that as I'm expanding my knowledge on the subject to make sure that I have utility for what problem I'm trying to solve. Because if I'm trying to solve the problem of losing weight, then I need to learn this much about macronutrient distribution. If I'm trying to solve the problem of getting somebody contest shredded, I'm going to need to learn this much more.

If I'm going to solve the problem of making sure that I keep somebody healthy and well nutri uh wellfed during chemotherapy, I'm probably going to have to learn this much more. So, it's really expanding my knowledge base versus learning why. And I think that the core point of this is expanding your knowledge to where it has utility, right? Uh because we could say that macronutrients are a why or if you ask the question why do humans get fat you can answer it with calories right that's a a why a small why but

what you're saying is just uh consume or try to understand information that has a utility and in the case of human behavior understanding if you eat a lot because your mother didn't hug you or hug you too much first of all you can't know it and second of all you don't know how much genetic and third of all it doesn't even matter because you can change it without knowing that Correct. Correct. Yeah. I just I worry about the things I can measure and manage and those other things are really interesting, but I'm not that smart and I don't have that much time to really worry about them.

Trevor Hogy, sorry. I want to go in a question to stay in the same loop that is how hard is change really? because um a lot of people sell it easy and I want to know from you that you're a coach in this that what what what would you think is the honest failure rate and what separates the guys that make the change from the ones that don't make the change? That is a great question and I don't have any measurable data on that. What I can say is based off my personal observations, the people that have

the biggest reason to change, meaning some type of pain point is usually what I've seen that in institutes a change either I have such a desire to be better. I have such a gift like you know you want to make a change in some way and then the decision to actually follow through on it. Now, the reason that I think that most people don't follow through on the change is because most people haven't trained themselves to be uncomfortable for an extended period of time. And we're all really entitled that we think that we should be comfortable. Like, hey man, I had a bad day at work,

but nobody ever talks about the great day at work they had. But like, you can tell everybody about the worst day at work that you had, but like very few people come home and talk about the best day at work they had. And nobody just talks about just the average day at work they had. And what we should be doing is we should only be talking about the great days at work that we have. Those should be the entitled things. Those should be the things that we get excited about because they shouldn't be very frequent. And if we look at things of

making ourselves, one of our other coaches always says uh inoculate yourself against these things or vaccinate yourself against vaccinate yourself against being comfortable. Get used to being uncomfortable and then guess what? you'll be able to continue persevering during difficult times because it's just expected. But I'm a spoiled brat. And that's that was my issue with things. It's like, man, I worked hard. I should deserve these results. And if I'm not getting the results, then guess what? I'm going to go ahead and give them to myself. And that creates a negative feedback loop over time.

Well, you brought me to another terminology that I wanted to touch to. I I don't remember it was at the beginning if you said it or Nico said it. Um masturbation. Could we go deep into that please? Okay. And give the context to our audience that for me personally it's the first time that I hear that word. Okay. You've got words like should, have to, must. Musterbation is a great terminology. It's these expectations that are completely unrealistic. Like nobody said that these things are necessities, but we have this in our head that I I must do this. And

then we get so caught up on the idea of perfection that we would rather just not start because it couldn't be done exactly the way that it went in our head. And that masturbation is what prevents progress because it must be done this way otherwise I'm not going to do it. And that just doesn't make sense in other any other area of your life. Like do any of us sit there and say, "Well, you know what? I'm only making minimum wage right now and I'm only going to start saving when I start making X

amount of money." No, we start saving whatever we can to start making ourselves go for. So none of us are going to be like, "Well, you know what? the first day of the diet didn't go exactly the way I had planned, so I'm just going to start over next. That just doesn't make sense. But because we're emotional creatures, well, now we've gone ahead and reconciled that idea and it creates some cognitive dissonance because we know it's not true, but we're treating it like such and that starts to erode your integrity over a long enough period of time.

Thank you. What is like the So many people have shoots including myself and sometimes I catch myself. I think Trevor said and on the same subject he got a clicker um for every time he said the word should. I don't know if he said it or thought about it. Um but if if we want to release our ourselves from the masturbation from the should need to have to or else and all of these uh thought patterns that create so much misery and also they're false factually false like I shouldn't get nothing. I

can do the actions that increase the probability that I get it. But that's that. Um, how can we change our own internal monologue? Great question. You do that first by bringing awareness to it. So, just a second ago, you mentioned Trevor being able to track how many times he said should, shouldn't using a clicker. So, I actually recommend that everybody get yourself, you know, one of those uh door counters that that a doorman use to keep track of how many people go in. And if you have something that you're trying to change throughout the day, such as, hey, how

many times do I say should or how many times do I snag the jelly beans off the receptionist desk or well then you keep that counter with you and every time you go to create that action and participate in it, you click it. That way it creates a baseline of that behavior. Well, man, 10 times every single day I sit here and I go to reach for the candy on the receptionist desk. Okay, that's 10 chances every single day that I have the opportunity to create a change to be less fat. Great. Well, now once I've gotten ahead in those 10, now I can

start saying, when do those 10 happen? Okay, they happen before lunch, they happen after lunch, they happen, you know, midafter afternoon, and then once I've got a time, well, now I can start to implement behaviors around those times. Well, dude, I noticed that I always grab the most candy from the receptionist desk in the 3 hours after lunch. Great. Well, then in the 3 hours after lunch, I'm going to make sure that I never go to the receptionist desk. I'm going to go and I'm going to work outside of the office from 1 to 4 every single day. And that way I can eliminate

that problem. And then you start to look at other ways that you can implement changes in your behavior. So it starts with tracking. Then it starts with once you've had the awareness, then you bring intention around that awareness. And then you start to sit there and implement that on a global scale. I think there's three really interesting subjects I want to talk. Um, we could go on and on, but I promise this won't be too long, but I'm just a huge fan fan of you guys. Um, how girls are a fan with Taylor Swift. I'm a fan of Taylor.

Real. So, um, the first one is you you said replacing um the behavior. And if you read Don't Shoot the Dog that we were talking about it a couple minutes ago. I'll show it to the camera if someone wants to buy it. Great great book. Um it says that punishment basically does not change behavior. So I want to to kind of expand on that. It it shows um example I I have on mind is someone walks on the lawn. I'm a I'm a parent and I shout when they walk on the lawn. The negative reinforcement of my existence makes them so they slow down, right? Uh because if they run they get punished by my simple

like eyes. Um but then if I'm not there, they're going to still run. And then they probably run because the uh wet the grass is wet and their feet are cold and they want to move faster to their side. punish if punishment doesn't work what are the implications for that for raising a child and not just a child your your relationships human relationships question you yourself I'm a believer that punishment creates better criminals because what you're going to find is if somebody is punished

enough times they don't stop doing the thing they start creating behaviors that allow them to avoid the punishment. It's not that somebody's going to stop stealing. What they're going to do is they're going to get better at looking around for cameras. They're going to get better at watching. They're going to get better at sneaking around. Using your example, hey, if the kid wants to take that shortcut across the grass every single day, well, they're going to start to get really good at learning when that person sits on their porch and when

they're not. And then because they know that they only have a limited window. Well, now I'm probably going to be tearing across that grass at twice the speed, which is going to do more damage than before. So over a period of time, you're just creating a better criminal. And so rather than punish somebody, again, what we want to make sure is identify what problem we're trying to solve and then give specific instructions to do that. So it's not that you don't want your kid to be

noisy. It's that, hey, I want to make sure that I'm creating some space for myself at night. So then, how do I make sure that I can do that in a realm that allows my kid to be able to express themselves? And so if you're just yelling at your kid cuz they're being noisy all the time. Well then your kid is going to just learn how to make noise when he's at school because dude my teacher can't hit me but dad [ __ ] takes out the belt so I'm going to be super noisy at school. And so you've created a problem child then but he's going to be super quiet at home and now

you're never going to be get a chance to observe those types of behaviors because you've created avoidant behaviors. So instead if every single time the kid gets noisy well hey maybe we can go ahead and create some space. Let's go and stop that behavior right now. Boom. Using whatever tactic you want to, whether that's going to be a physical cue, whether that's going to just be, you know, something to be able to change the environment. That's why you have teachers turn off the lights when kids start getting moved. Change the environment first thing. Then you can

then create and set terms with that child. Hey, we don't sit here and do this at this time because this is inappropriate behavior. This is what you do instead. And you tell them what to do. You obviously have a lot of energy right now, but it's not good to be shouting at 9:00 at night. So, what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to teach you how to jump rope or do push-ups. And then you go ahead and reward them for doing that behavior because the next time they come in

shouting, you're going to turn off the light. That's going to create that. They're going to be like, "Oh, that's right. We don't shout. We do push-ups." And then you drop down, they start doing push-ups. And then it's like, "Dude, great job doing push-ups, son." You give them a quarter. And then over a period of time, well then you don't need to give them the quarter anymore because they are going to have be rewarded by not being yelled at and they're going to start looking great for doing all these push-ups. So correct me if I'm wrong. Basically

instead of punishment, if you want to change a behavior, you have two ways. One is reinforce a new behavior on top of the other one. In the case that you said jumping rope, so the kid has a lot of energy. He can shout. He can do exercise. If he does a rope, you have to as a as someone who is instructing, not just a parent, you have to say, "Hey, don't shout, but I I'm offering you an alternative. I'm giving you the correct behavior that will get you a reinforcement. Not just don't do this, but don't do this. Do this instead. So,

don't do this. Go jump the rope." And not only that, if you jump the rope, then I'll give you money, appraisal, affection, approval, and attention, whatever other uh reinforcement um you want to do. But the other part is also modifying the environment. So you say, let's say uh the the because I'm saying this so I can so you can attack my idea so I can get them better. Um so if let's say it's a neighbor's kid and you don't have full control over changing their own behavior and you don't want to spend that resources on changing someone else's kid behavior but

it's still affecting you because he runs on your lawn. Um maybe you can change the environment, right? So maybe you put a a automatic thing for water that if it detects something on the grass, it shoots water and then the environment itself makes it so the child learns to not go through the uh grass. Correct? Okay. So I'm going to stop you right here cuz this is where people will start to conflate things and this is why they start thinking that why is important. If what problem we're trying to solve is just keeping the kid off the grass, then

do I really need to worry about going to all of these extremes and putting No. What's going to be the easiest, most effective way? I'm probably just going to go talk to that kid's [ __ ] parents. Hey, dude. Every single morning your kid is on my lawn. Could you keep your kid off my lawn? I'm going to go for the lowest hanging fruit to solve that problem. That's going to be the easiest possible thing and that's probably going to produce the greatest possibility of success. But what do

people do? Well, I'm going to make things as as complicated as possible. And if it's as complicated as possible, that's actually going to decrease the probability of me being consistent with that behavior every single day. Because if every single day I have to set up some type of electric eye and sprinkler on my lawn to keep a kid, dude, it's probably going to last for 3 days before that kid's back on the lawn. If I go over on day one and I talk to the kid's dad and be like, "Dude, your kid tearing

up my lawn and it's really making me upset." And that kid [ __ ] dad whoops his ass one day. problem solved in the very first day. So look at what problem you're trying to solve and then look for the easiest way that you can do that. That's it. I guess my my example was uh a little bit wrong. I was just trying to double click on the environment. So let's use the child that is uh really energetic. Well, maybe if I don't give them sugar at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. or I don't use any other type of stimulants that will make

them uh hyperactive. Maybe if I change the environment, he he wakes up at 6 am and goes to the gym. Maybe he'll be tired by 8:00 PM. That's what I mean. Like you have also that tool, right? That uh lever to to to pull. Correct. Change the environment. Absolutely, man. There's so many things that you can do to reinforce the behavior that you want. Train yourself the exact same way that you would train your dog. And I have I guess one more question on on this subject and then Fran has one more. I'm sorry. This is really

interesting. I don't know if we're taking a lot of your time. You can tell us anytime. Oh, brother. I love talking to you. Thanks. Um, but I want to talk about the observer effect. And I think it has a such a huge impact in my life and I think it's one of the biggest ideas uh for changing your own behavior. What is the observer effect? How does it work? And why is it important? Uh, I think that's called the Hawthorne effect. Basically, when you start observing your behavior, it's going to change your behavior because you're observing it, right? And so I think it's fantastic. I

I don't understand what question you're trying to get to from that. I am a big believer in bringing awareness to a situation if you want to get better at it because unless you understand the full scope of things, how are you going to improve? Unless you understand where the boundaries are, how are we going to push them to continue to get better? So and but that's the point that that observing itself changes your behavior. That's what I wanted to get get to like uh measuring as a way of intervention. That's what I I wanted to touch on. But there's

my question back is my question is who cares? Because if you're trying to change your behavior to institute something new and you observing your behavior then starts changing it, who cares? Because it's still not the behavior that you want. So, all we need to do is get a starting point and then get instructions to where we're trying to go. So, it doesn't matter if our starting point is exactly here or if it's one street over because now I start observing myself right here. It's still all I need is a starting point and now I

can actually start to put a target into the GPS to get myself going. So, I guess I'm miscommunicating. I what I'm trying to say is that if you follow the advice you hear in your postcard from you Hogi and you start measuring uh your own behavior that I think people don't know and I I would like to expand maybe I'm wrong but you will start to change your own behavior just by observing your own behavior meaning if I start counting my calories I will probably eat less calories than I ate before changing nothing about what we talk about implementing nothing but just the fact

itself of bringing awareness to the problem itself is a way of fixing the problem. And why is that a bad thing? This is where this is where I that's a great thing. So I did not then that's why I don't understand what the question is. If the point of you starting to observe your behavior is because you want to change your behavior. I don't. So let's just use your example. I look in the mirror. I hate being fat. Okay. Well then I'm going to start counting calories so I can be less fat. By counting calories, I end up eating less, which then

contributes towards me being less fat. Where's the problem? No, no problem at all. I think just what I'm trying to double click and for you to explain to people is that uh it's a self itself. It's a way of getting better, just measuring without any other intervention. It's and it's a great way to get better. like there's not at all like a problem or a or a bad thing or like the opposite side that is such a powerful tool that just measuring yourself will lead to better results. It's what I was saying before about

doing things on purpose because as you said, how many of us go through our lives every single day just doing things as an NPC? Like, hey man, I got dressed this morning. Do you could you tell me every detail about you getting No, because I just went through it. Now, let's imagine that you just had a near-death experience and you are now going through and enjoying every part. You're going to be able to tell me, "Dude, it took me three tries to button up my shirt this morning." Doing things intentionally changes how you interact with your environment. Measuring things

is going to change that. Observing things is going to change that. So, doing anything on purpose is going to change your results. Period. Thank you, Trevor. to start closing this out. Huggy again. Sorry, I get confused. I've been talking so much about Trevor that I get confused. Second time today Hogy to start closing this out. Um, I want to talk about the seal in you and how Goggginings turned suffering into a brand. And after that, I would love to know that where's the line that we can draw between discipline and

self-destruction? has he crossed it or That's great. Um I don't really know what the question is like as far as turning it into a brand. I personally I don't see the utility and suffering just for suffering's sake. Now suffering in pursuit of a greater goal, I'm absolutely all for. But if it's just like, hey, I'm suffering just to tell everybody I'm suffering. How does that make me better? How does that make you better? How does that make the world a better place? And so I always look at things as I said often, what problem am I trying to solve? Well, the problem I'm trying to solve daily is

I'm trying to make the world a better place. I'm trying to add some value. So if me suffering is going to add value to the world, then I will gladly suffer. If me suffering isn't going to make the world a better place, well then what's the point of me doing it? So if he's suffering to make things better and his suffering is allowing other people to get comfortable with their own suffering, which then is allowing them to do great things, I think that's awesome. But you'd have to ask him what

his intention behind art because I don't know. Huggy, and if you if you could say what was the biggest lesson you took out of being a SEAL, what would it have been? That's a great question. the value of teamwork. Honestly, there was nothing I could have done that I could have done by myself. I did everything because of the value other people were able to add to me, because of the belief other people put in me, and because of the behaviors they modeled for me. Like, I was literally just standing on the shoulders of giants. So, that's why I'm a big

believer. I think the putting that in current terms, the biggest thing I took away from that experience was learning how to be a more of a producer versus a consumer. How can I look at creating an experience that is going to add to people's lives and give value versus what am I taking away from things? I love that because uh I think we base our lives and our measurement is being creators, not consumers. It's it's a much better life if you know that you're adding value to everyone else. If you're making their lives better, like, hey, you're going to have a better sleep at night, right?

Yeah. That's why we try what what what we try to do every day and what we're striving for. That's a good place to be, brother. Yes. So, Huggy, so thank you so much. And before we close out, uh I have one more question around behavior and then we closing. Exactly. And this is a little bit some a lot of these questions for you are selfish because I'm trying to understand it better. So that's why we're going like because I was like I need to get all my questions out of the way. Um

So I have a question around motivation and I know it's hard to define and it's the opposite of deprivation but at least in my life um maybe sometimes logically the payoff makes sense but it's just on some short spree of motivation where I'm willing to as you said suffer in order to get the outcome. So I'm going to use weight loss as an example. It's not my problem but I have that problem in other areas of life. Um let's say someone looks itself in the mirror and they see they're fat. On that moment they're really motivated to or the other example

you put uh they can't have sex with their wife on that Thursday night like they will be really motivated to change but the problem is that on Sunday or Saturday of the same week that uh like punishment or or drive whatever you want to call it changes. So I guess my question is how can you stay uh motivated through the whole process without losing the the thread or do you even need to get motivated? Great question Bob. So I am not a believer in motivation. I think motivation is one of those buzz like willpower. If we sat there and we went

into a morg, we take out a cadaavver and we cut open that cadaavver. Show me where the motivation is located. Show me where the willpower is loc. like you can show me everything else that the body sits there and produces but for some reason you have these nebulous things that all of a sudden are ruling our life. So motivation is important. What we need to do is we need to look at reinforcing specific behaviors creating efficacy. And so this is where I usually speak to people about the idea of mental toughness. You get this idea of like oh hey guys are just like mentally tough.

No all mental toughness is is integrity. It's hey I did what I said I would do when I said I would do it. And how do you do that? by practicing doing what you said you would do when you would do it. And so what do we do to be able to improve that skill? Well, you start small and then you be able to build your way up. So if I say that I'm going to be the guy that gets up to run 10 miles every single morning at 6:00 a.m., but I every single day of my life, I've slept till 8:00, but like I said before, what I'm going to start doing is I'm going to train myself first to prove that it's possible that I can actually get up

every day at 6:00 a.m. And then once I get up every day at 6:00 a.m., then I'm gonna train myself to actually start moving. And then I'm gonna train myself to start going. So that's not motivation and I don't feel like doing those things. So number one, I need to identify how I'm going to do it. And then number two, I need to identify how I'm going to reinforce the behavior. So I keep doing it even on the days where my body hurts or it's pouring down rain outside or my dog got sick in the middle

of the night and tore everything up. That's what keeps you going. It's not motivation. It's making sure that I understand that that delayed gratification is going to produce a reward at the end. And that's just training. For example, for example, on the and thank you for that. For example, for the let's I'm going to use a simple example to illustrate the point because I want to like understand it better. I I I'm more motivated. I know you hit the word, but more deprived of food the hungrier I I am, right? And maybe right now I'm not

that hungry, so I wouldn't be able to walk five miles, but if you leave me on this office for 3 days, I'll bet you that I will go and walk 10 miles for to get a the worst meal ever. just because I I'm starving. And I think it's that deprivation part does give you some u let's say if the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change that part like if the pain of me being hungry is greater than the pain of me walking then I will walk. Don't you see if that is true and maybe it's not and

correct me if I'm wrong but if that assessment is true don't you see as an intervention maybe using the thing that creates the deprival itself because on the on the physiological side yes you can be hungry and the more hungry I am the more I'll walk but on the psychological side maybe if I see a picture of me fat every day that will give me some deprivation to get thin or I check this saying or a note of my wife saying uh I want you to leave to seven years old to see your children and right

Now, because of your weight, you can't. Don't you think some type of that intervention can create that deprivation? I think you'd have to test it to find out. Like, I think way too many people try to look for a oneanddone solution that they're going to be able to use from the general population. And there's no need for that. Like, why do we have to make everything a nail? I've got more tools than just a hammer. So, there's no need to sit here and try to make everything a problem that is only solvable by a hammer. Can I go ahead and

use something like that? Yeah, if the problem calls for it. But I'm going to use the most effective tool for the job. Now, using your example, if I sit here and put up a picture of myself fat on the fridge every single day, is that going to motivate me or is that going to make me ashamed and create avoidant behaviors and I'm going to start avoiding that picture? And is that going to sit here and then create a harder? So, again, that's why I don't like to worry about those types of things,

deprivation, punishment. Instead, just focus on reward and reinforcement. And I think it's just so much easier, less stuff to keep track of. So if I can give a TLDDR before going to closing and and books, it's define your problem well. Um make actionable steps uh that you can actually do and and I think this is really important what they wouldn't touch too, correct if I'm wrong, but inputbased uh actions, not output based. So instead of saying my goal is to run this uh well you you go ahead and and

say that part. That was excellent man. I love the way that you phrase that like focus on something that is going to be processoriented versus resultsoriented. It's not that I want to run a marathon. It's hey man I would love to get up and get to the point where I enjoy going for a morning run every single day. And if I go for a run every single day then maybe in like 2 years I'll be able to run a marathon no problem. Maybe it's going to take me five years. But I want you to do

something that you enjoy because then you'll keep doing it. Because if I just tell you to do something you hate it, you'll do it so you can cross the finish line and then you'll never [ __ ] do it again. And the other part is the outcome you don't have control over, right? So if I say I want to run a marathon over three hours, well, I can guess that if I run every day 10 miles, the probability that I get there on two or three years is high. But it will be stupid to have the goal um like instead I can just focus on

the input that's run 10 hours 10 miles every day reinforce myself from running maybe join a run club to have the social aspect maybe give myself a dollar as you said at at the end of the day and then over three years that probably that I hit that outcome is inevitable right because you just did the math right focus on what you can control like you can't control your time who knows if you're going to break your ankle who knows if it's going to be pouring rain on the day of the marathon But you can

control your training, you can control your output. Awesome. And for closing. Yeah. So at the end we always like to close with uh book recommendations but I think it will be more appropriate this time no to give um people you can follow in this space. I I think people books like all the podcast. Yeah. If someone wants to doubleclick on everything you say, give all the data you have so they can study it on their own. Like what would you recommend? We can go step step by step. Like we can go make it easy and we're just going to send everybody to trevorasheutrition.com.

That's going to be the baseline for pretty much everything that we talked about today because what we dive into today is behavior training, cognitive behavioral therapy, nutrition, making sure that you can structure your environment, utilizing your affiliations, all of those. you're going to get the baseline for at trevorcashion nutrition.com and then we can discern what it is that you want to do a deeper dive into and send you out from there. Thank you. Well, Hog, thank thanks so much. And for

me, a a I guess selfish question is I've consumed everything that Kashi has and everything your website has and I'm still thirsty for more knowledge. So, what else do you recommend I can go in that rabbit hole? Okay, man. I'm going to tell you the same thing that Dr. K said to me. what problem are you trying to solve? Because unless you are reading a book with a specific intention of solving your problem, essentially what you're doing is just mentally masturbating. And what you're going to find is too many people read books just to acquire knowledge with no intention of actually applying or executing on anything. And that's

just a waste of time. So if you're reading something, it should so that you can immediately go out, take action on and start making a better place. So my question to you is, what do you want to take action on and what are you going to go make the world a better place? and then find a book that is interesting to you in that in that domain. But I I I I want to double click on this before we close. I'm sorry for so many side quests. But I think there's a lot of books in my life that maybe that

immediate uh action I could take was not obvious but by exploring the idea just from a let's say philosophical side uh from a a what are your values like that this idea that you say of contributing positively. Maybe if you read a book like um Stephen Pinker, Enlightenment Now or something like that, you maybe change the idea that capitalism is not wrong and maybe from there you start a business, right? Because maybe you thought before prior that it was something evil. So do you think there's some value on the like exploration of

the ideas with the hope that maybe now or in the future it changes some idea that changes your behavior? Dude, that is a great question. And what you're going to find is the people that are diving into that are in the N equals 1 territory of why things are important. Because the only reason they're concerned about those things is because they're trying to make the current system better. They're trying to change things. Because why do you care about capitalism if you're just an NPC that's going through an everyday life? Do you

need to read about it? No. It doesn't make any [ __ ] difference to you. Now, if you're Warren Buffett and you're sitting here trying to turn everything on its ear, well, then you're going to probably try to learn everything you can. You're going to try to advance your knowledge. And so again, what are you trying to make a difference in the world on? And why do you need to learn more about that subject? And if you don't, then you know, you're just jerking yourself off mentally to make yourself feel good about reading. And there's

nothing wrong with doing that. I've done it plenty of times for myself, but just understand that that's what you're doing. In which case, it doesn't matter what my recommendation is. Just read what you want. Yeah. It's entertainment. Exactly. And dude, I always think you should be reading because it's going to improve your vocabulary and it's going to sit up there and just light up different neural pathways. So reading is a fantastic thing but always just look at dude are we reading for our own pleasure we like what are we trying to

do by reading sometimes it's just fun to read but maybe reading itself give you as you said more precision in your language as a side quest because you and so dude for me I love to read because I hate sitting still and so this was a good way for me to increase my frustration tolerance to increase my vocabulary to get me comfortable sitting still and so I started rewarding myself that hey huggy every night you're going to do a minimum of 5 minutes of reading and a maximum of 30 minutes. If you do that, then you get this thing instead.

So, but dude, does that mean everything I read was absolutely val? No, man. You know how many comic books I read? Kis, thank you so so much for your time. I know your time is really valuable and you basically gave us like a coaching for free. if someone would like to work with you um someone from our right audience that I I almost never do recommendations but I think this is I have full conviction on your process on Trevor Cashy on all of you guys. So I think if someone is struggling with weight loss you are the highest shot they have into fixing the problem. So

how can people work with you? Uh just go to trevorashnutrition.com and that will give you all the information necessary and we'll make sure that you are getting the support that you need. Really looking forward to seeing people over there. Thank you, Ky. Thank you so much for the time. So much for the time. It was really great. Really enjoyed myself today. Thank you. Thank you. Hope we meet someday on on real life. I will hold you to that.