Addiction is not a choice, but recovery is. In this episode, Chris Howard, founder of Ethos Recovery, opens up about his journey from growing up in a world of drugs and poverty to becoming a life-saving figure in the recovery community—including saving Jeffrey Saad’s son during a critical moment. With personal experience and a unique approach, Chris shares how nonverbal communication and subtle cues play a crucial role in helping clients reclaim their lives. From lifesaving interventions at 3 a.m. to guiding families through tough-love parenting, Chris’s insights reveal the power of genuine connection and resilience in the recovery process. Tune in as we dive deep into the challenges, triumphs, and unconventional wisdom that define his work at Ethos.
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The Amazing Chris Howard, He Saved Our Son’s Life
I am super excited to have you here, Chris. This is Chris Howard. He is the Founder of Ethos, which is a sober living and recovery coaching house. I’m super excited to have you here because, number one, you’re an awesome human. Number two, you don’t just have all the credentials, which you do, and a Bachelor in Psychology. You’re a well-versed, educated, trained guy in what you do.
You can decide how much you want to talk about it, but what I really love is that you walk the walk. You have lived what your clients have been through. In theory, it should be like this. You’re like, “I’ve been there. I’ve been at the bottom.” That makes you so amazing. We’ll talk a little bit more about it later, but he saved our son’s life. You saved our family. That is forever. I believe there are angels that walk amongst us, and you’re one of them.
I appreciate that.
Ethos
Tell us a little bit more about Ethos, what you do with that, and what that’s all about.
I don’t even know if you know this, but how Ethos came about was I was scholarshiped in the previous program that I went through. Did you know that?
I did.
Did I tell you that?
Yeah. I remember that but say it again because they don’t know.
I grew up in the valley. I grew up in Burbank. We were poor. My brother saw a post that I did and was like, “What are you talking about? We weren’t poor.” I was like, “Philip, so you understand, we had a weekend where there was a rat in our house eating our stuff.” Our weekend thing was hunting this rat down. I was like, “We lived off food stamps.” Up until I got sober in 2009, I lived in an apartment that if you took that painting off the wall, it would be roaches, 100,000 of them or something. We were super poor.
I had my house raided the second time. I started selling drugs at a relatively young age, 14 years old or 15 years old. The neighborhood I lived in was a bunch of guys who were from broken homes and families. It was single-parent families. 1 or 2 moms would hold up shop for us on the weekends so we could all crash there. There were multiple families like that. The group of guys became family. I had a dysfunctional family system. My mom was schizophrenic. My grandmother raised me. My dad ended up going to prison at one point for trafficking weed for the cartels. It was a whole thing. In that sense, my resume of having a crazy, effed-up past or destroying my life was all there.
Nobody could say, “You don’t get it.” You’re like, “I get it.”
Whatever ends up happening with that from a young age. I was selling drugs because I wanted money at the end of the day. There was the bravado of I’m a weed, pill, and drug dealer. I wasn’t hard on anything. At that time, everything I emulated was, “I’m hard.” I ran around gang members. I don’t have a fear of people who are gang members. On the streets, I’ll see gang members and I’m like, “What’s up?”
That’s because you understand it.
They trip out on me because they’re like, “What’s wrong with the White boy here? This is insane.” I’m like, “You’re like a human. As long as I respect you, usually, we’re going to be good.” Once in a while, someone like that is out there.
Isn’t that amazing? This is what I love about what you said. You are so symbolic of that. You can choose the glasses you look through. You’ll find what you’re looking for. You’re choosing to look at it that way and they’re seeing you that way.
We were talking about travel when I walked in. Especially when you travel, your currency is communication. The truth is communication in an environment, a lot of times, you can’t verbally communicate. It’s like, “What is my nonverbal thing? How can I use my fingers to get through this situation to breed a connection with some person?” They’ll help me figure it out even though we can’t even speak the same language. I digress.
When you travel, your currency is communication. Share on XThat’s a good digression though. I love that. Communication is 93% nonverbal. The words are 7%. I can’t even imagine how that resonates with your world. I’m guessing that most of the communication is nonverbal with you, understanding the clients, what they need, and all that.
In my opinion, if you’re not cued into that, I don’t know how you’re a successful clinician. I’m not saying psychiatrist, therapist, or even ground staff. There are often times when we will be in a dynamic with a guy. We’re asking him some sort of question, and then right when the question gets answered, they veer off and start looking at the floor. Their body language shifts. You’re like, “Right now is the time to become curious.”
It’s not even about grinding down. When I was coming up in 2009 through probably 2014 or something like that, I would grind on that. I would be in your face until you told me why you did that. I know there was a reason. I’m like, “I saw this thing happen. Is there something going on?” I realized that at that point, I had been trained or indoctrinated in a manner to be a hammer. I would get a lot of crap done with a hammer, but then over time I was like, “I was breeding fear in people.”
You’re like, “My tool belt needs to be a little fuller.”
I need to open up the tool belt. I learned, “If I have a little bit of finesse and be accommodating and welcoming to people, they’re going to be less like, “I hate this guy.” They’re going to be like, “You’re trying to help me.” At the time, my mindset was still the same. It was, “I’m really trying to help you, but the way to help you is to beat this in your head and press on you until you’re going to tell me what I need to hear or whatever’s going on in your head.”
Saving Our Son
The ultimate example of you being the ultimate Buddha master is what happened with our son. I will never forget this. You want to talk about nonverbal power. It’s 3:00 in the morning and we get a call from the cops that Sebastian, our son, was at rock bottom. We come at 3:00 in the morning. We throw on some clothes and drive there. The cops have him in the car. We’re desperate. We’re scared. We had talked to you the week before. We barely knew you.
It was the same day. It wasn’t the week before. It was that day. I had to go to the treatment center because they were throwing him out of the other sober living. I sat down and had the meeting, and in the meeting with him and Mimi, he bolted out of the office and said, “I hate this.” He took his things from the sober living and went out. He ate Xanax or something like that. He lost everything that same night. It wasn’t the week before. It was the same night.
Is this what tragedy does to your memory? I was like, “You’re exactly right.” We didn’t know each other that well. I’ll never forget this. I was acting like I was interviewing you. I was like, “What’s your percentage of success?” You gave me this ridiculously low number and you’re like, “That’s what it is. That’s good in this industry.”
Here we are at 3:00 in the morning and we’re desperate and scared. I text this guy at 3:00 in the morning. All of a sudden, this pickup truck rolls up in the middle of darkness in the middle of the deep valley. Chris steps out of the car. My wife and I are in shock that he even answered or saw the text. I’ll never forget this. Sebastian went from hostile, torn up, and out of his mind, but when he saw Chris, he looked at you, you looked at him, and you saw him eased up.
I can’t remember exactly what you said, but you said something like, “Are you coming with me?” Sebastian gets in the car and that’s it. He wakes up at Ethos. You saved his life. I really mean that. You also saved our family. Any of you who are reading that have been through this, it tears your whole family apart. You saved us. When you said the nonverbal, I thought that was your mastery. You were Zenning it, and he picked up on it.
I always feel weird because you’re not the first person who tells me this. The only reason Ethos exists is because of another parent who’s like, “This is your gift.” I don’t think I’m the one who saved him. It’s always a weird thing. I’m willing to push the envelope in a direction probably most clinicians aren’t willing to push in order to get the person to exercise agency.
I'm willing to push the envelope in a direction probably most clinicians aren't willing to push in order to get the person to exercise agency. Share on XYou and I both know he tried to bounce out at least three times that I remember. One quick story that is a little bit comical was when he left the first time. I will never forget that. I remember that whole day while I was driving over here. I was remembering him. It might’ve been this 1st or 2nd week COVID got called off. At that point, if you understand drug addicts, alcoholics, and people who have substance abuse or mental health problems, they’re very smart and calculated in terms of when they choose to exercise agency.
You always knew that.
There’s always this element of like, “I can’t do this because of my depression,” or, “I do this because of my addiction.” They have the rationalization or justification for why something can’t be done, but all of a sudden, when they need to get to the end of the earth to get some stuff done, they have the agency.
All of a sudden, it’s there.
All of a sudden, we can figure it out. They’re having to do some crap. He bailed out. He took the bus over here. I remember when he took off, I called you and you were like, “We’re pretty sure he is going to be there.” I said, “It’s all right. I’m going to drive over there.” I remember I went to the Mendocino Farms down off Ventura. By the time I ordered my salad, you were like, “He’s here.” I remember I was like, “I’ll eat my salad and come there.” You’re like, “No worries. We’ll be there.”
I’ll never forget walking in here and your wife’s reaction. He went off and he turned on the waterworks. He was like, “I can’t do this.” She threw him out and was like, “I’m tired of this.” I remember what she said. I always tell him this. He and I laugh about it. Our relationship shifted. I was like, “I’ll never forget your mom saying to you something along the lines of, “It’s going to be hard for you to get into a shelter because they’re all shut down now because of COVID.” It was something gangster. In my entire career up until that time I was 10, 11, or 12 years doing this, I remember being like, “I’ve coached parents. I didn’t coach her on that.” I’ve coached parents and they can’t do that, but she was like, “I’m done with this.”
That’s why you’re going to be so psyched to have my wife in this interview. I love hearing this too. We’re so lost in the trauma. I don’t even remember the details as well as you do.
I do remember that because there are certain things that transpire with people who I work with and then I’m like, “These are pivotal moments.” That was a huge pivotal moment. He turned on the waterworks and she was like, “You’re not coming back. Get in the car.”
You did coach us. I’ll never forget. When we locked him out of the house, it was your coaching. You’re like, “Until you lay down the line or whatever, it’s not going to happen.” I remember even at the program, certain people were saying, “We would’ve been better two years sooner if our parents stopped giving in to us.” You did give us strength.
I don’t know if you remember this too, but the other tipping point moment, and this speaks to your amazingness, was way later. We’re thinking, “He’s got this. He’s in the program. He’s going to graduate.” All of a sudden, he’s like, “I’m done.” You, for one minute, were like, “Let them go. It is what it is.”
It was at twelve months. Fourteen was when he was supposed to graduate.
It was so close. In your amazing integrity, you still said, “Let’s meet in the park.”
I remember that.
We met in the park and I was like, “This guy cares so much about what he does and about Sebastian that he’s not letting go.” That meeting in the park, I remember we were all sitting in the grass. Once again, you turned him, and you didn’t do it with a hammer. You did it with, “What do you want your life to look like?” You got him there on his own and then he ended up graduating.
I remember what that conversation was about. What I told him was, “I’ve done this for a long time.” Back in the day, we used to throw people out. It was old-school. You’d get thrown out on a Wednesday night at 10:00. They’d call your parents then and be like, “We threw him out. Don’t let him in.” It was crazy stuff. I was like, “I’ve seen so many people do what you’ve done and it never plays out well because you’ve already gone through so much crap in this house. It’s going to plague you.”
I’ve watched people relapse over and over again because they made it to the last leg of the race and then what bothered them was that they quit. I was like, “To be frank, I’ll tell you right now that you can leave and I support you with love and kindness. You’re going to be kicking yourself for so long. It almost perpetuates more downfall. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Circle Of Control
The fact that you know all that so deeply is what makes you so magical. Here’s my question for you. My whole show is called The Circle. It’s about what I feel like has made my life great, the circle of control. If you only focus on what you can affect and forget everything else. I feel like people letting go of what they can’t affect is like an addiction. Most of them know it’s bad for them. They know it’s not helping. I listen to all these people with politics, wars, and all this stuff they cannot make an effect on. It’s consuming them. I’m really curious to hear from you if you feel like there’s an analogy there in your world with addiction and everything else on how you relate to that circle of control, focusing on what you can control versus what’s outside the circle, and how that ties into how you help people.
The whole philosophy of Ethos is it almost goes against the predominant narrative about how you are your mental illness. I don’t think that practitioners are intentionally imbuing this philosophy. I think the medical model has shifted in a major direction where diagnoses are over-identifying with this. They become their depression. They become their substance abuse. They become their anxieties. You’ll meet people sometimes and they’ll identify with, “I have autism. I’m autistic.”
They’re like, “It’s my identity. It’s not what I’m going through. It’s who I am.”
That’s highly problematic because once it becomes part of your identity in that manner, the way people communicate about it is, “I can’t control it. It’s who I am.”
They’re putting that outside the circle instead of inside.
They’re like, “I cannot control my emotional state.” I don’t believe in that stuff, which is a very taboo philosophy.
I’m with you.
When you look at the probably most researched evidence-based form of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, there are branches of that, which are DBT and ERP, which is exposure response prevention. If you hate the snake, I’m like, I’m going to go to the other side of the room and I’m going to walk towards you. Tell me when you feel an internal seven. I’m going to chill here with the snake and hang out.” You got to sit through that stuff. That is the gold standard. The irony is that OCD people won’t even do it. The whole philosophy of that, back to the circle, is you’re learning to control this thing.
Tell the story of what you did with Sebastian when he jumped off that cliff and almost died. That’s the snake.
He was like, “I’m not doing this.” It was a really bad situation.
I will not forget hearing your voice. They went on this retreat. Chris called me and you had that tone in your voice. You thought he was going to hit that rock and die.
I looked over and then I heard the water splash. I was like, “That’s bad.”
Talk about what you did with him. It’s the snake thing.
That wasn’t the one I was telling him to jump off of. It was another smaller one where I was like, “I’ll walk you.” It happened the same with our manager, Tuck. He was like, “I’m not going to do this.” This cliff is probably 30 feet high, but it’s an easy jump-in. I’m like, “I only want you to jump off the cliff not to impose my will on you, but because I know what it’ll do for you internally. If you’re this afraid of it, it’s going to be a good thing for you, especially because it’ll be fun. You go jump in the water. Everyone in the community’s there rallying behind you.”
You made him do it a second time after he almost died. He even tells me, “I was scared to death, but now, I’m over it.” If you hadn’t made him do the second jump and get close to the snake, he would still be fearing heights in general.
That’s what I was talking about. He was like, “Oh.” You could see it on him. That was real. This is the thing where I say, “Either I’m truly crazy or I’m an evil genius.”
I’m going with evil genius.
Ironically, back to the circle, it is love of fate. Have you ever seen Terminator?
Yeah.
The second one is with Sarah Connor. In the movie, there’s a part where she’s in the desert and she carves into a table No Fate.
I don’t remember that scene.
John sees it. He’s the Terminator’s homie in this one. He’s like, “No fate but what you make.” In the movie, she knew that Miles Dyson was the reason for the ship. She was creating her fate. She was like, “I’m going to change this.” The whole philosophy of this existential thing is regardless of what happens, stuff is going to happen. I can go down the street and someone hits my car.
Whatever it is, this is a byproduct of existence. All of it is a necessary thing for me to go through in order to grow as a human being. The only thing I can control to a certain extent is my emotional state. I can self-regulate it. I can’t control the way emotions feel when they hit me, but I can control my response to them. It almost feels like it’s like a novel idea. You can’t say that to people. It’s crazy.
You can't control the way emotions feel when they hit you, but you can control your response to them. Share on XIt is a superpower.
I agree.
We don’t control anything that happens to us. We control 100% how we react and how we choose to think about it. This one girl said to me one time, “My philosophy is to clot quickly.” I love that. Things are going to happen and you’ll react, but you can choose to clot quickly. Don’t let this linger on more than the time it took to happen. If somebody cuts you off, that’s over in 30 seconds. Let it go in 30 seconds.
How do you teach that? What are examples you see of that? One thing I really want people to walk away from this episode with is not, “That all makes a lot of sense, but now what? I’m still struggling.” What are some things you, of all people, know that they can start doing to get themselves in the circle and not put all their weight on what they can’t control?
Power Of Exposure
Exposure. I have a perfect example. I remember when I first got sober, I was super insecure. I didn’t want to go on dates. I downloaded dating apps, not to hook up with chicks. I would go on dates with chicks who I wasn’t attracted to.
It was training.
Also, how I deal with a potential conflict situation. How do I deal with a situation where I know I’m going to be slightly uncomfortable? How do I manage that? I’m not saying everyone should go out and download a dating app.
That took courage though.
Here’s the irony. A weird situation plays out. I went out on this date in Downtown LA to meet this girl. It was abundant off the rip. We were like, “We are not compatible.” She’s super cool. She had an artist loft downtown. She said, “Come to my loft though. Meet my dog.” She’s super cool. It was one date and I never saw her again. Years later, I ended up dating this girl. It was one of the suicide girls. Do you know what I’m talking about?
No.
They’re alternative models. They’re tattooed models. It was a huge thing in the early 2000s. She was a suicide girl, the first girl was. The girl who I ended up dating was a suicide girl. I was like, “I dated this one girl.” She texts her and she goes, “That was the coolest date where there was zero sexual chemistry, a great human.”
Apparently, I ended up dating that girl for a year or so. It was this cool thing where I was like, “Wow. You don’t even know how this situation pays forward. I’m not a piece of shit.” I walked through the situation. I had a pretty cool date with her. I remember her all the time. It wasn’t a negative thing whereas before going into it, I was like, “This is going to be socially awkward.”
It’s changing the lenses.
The lens was changed by walking through an immense amount of discomfort. That’s the thing. It’s interesting. There’s a thing I tell the guys in the house. Amongst twelve-step culture and therapeutic culture in general, there’s this idea of getting into the solution. You need to get into the solution. I tell people, “There’s no solution. There are only trade-offs.” Everyone can go, “You guys have this house.” You’re like, “Do you know how many times I thought everything was going to burn down? Meanwhile, there were kids at home, this, and that, and I had this show up.”
I use this a lot with moms because a lot of parents are falling captive to the whole medical model. They’re like, “He can’t do this because of his depression and anxiety.” I said, “Are you the birth parent of this kid?” That’s because some people adopt the kid. Either way, it is what it is. I go, “You are right. Do you remember when that kid was an infant and all of you were sick? You were potentially crapping yourself or vomiting on yourself at some point. You still had to make the kid’s food. Your mental health was completely in the gutter and somehow, you had to muster the skills to persevere another day.” We need to be imbuing that same philosophy.
There are days I don’t want to get up and go do work. There are days when my girlfriend does something that irritates me and I have to self-regulate and walk through it. I’m like, “She’s got me pissed off. Let me handle the obligations.” For me, my coping strategy is how I am a service to other people. For me, it is an insulator. Even when I was a drug dealer, there would be people who would be sick and I’d be like, “Here. Come by.” I was still trying to be in service. In my mind, mind, you’re wired that way or not.
This is a weird part of the story. No one really knows this. I don’t feel weird sharing it. This was my old drug dealer. I was such a bad drug addict that when I got sober, he paid my cell phone bill for the first two years of my sobriety. He was like, “You’re going to die.” He and I are friends. He doesn’t sell drugs anymore. I was making him a substantial $10,000 or $15,000 a month.
Back then?
Yeah. At that point, he was like, “You’re going to die. It doesn’t matter anyway.” I was eating 100 Norcos a day or 25 Valiums. Even when I went into treatment, the woman in treatment was like, “You’re a liar.”
She thinks you should’ve been dead.
This pissing contest that happens amongst drug addicts is a huge thing I talk about in families.
The story needs to be bigger to justify their failure.
That’s the problem with treatment a lot of times. You send young people into an environment who have nothing to relate to other than the fact that they’re there for mental health or substance abuse. When they get in, it becomes a pissing contest for who’s more problematic.
That’s their identity. They’re doubling down on their identity at the time.
It’s their identity. I also think that, especially among men, we have to endure hardship. If you’re a gnarly drug addict, you’ve had to endure some stuff. Even business people who have never had substance abuse problems, they’ll talk back about, “I remember walking through these things.” There are elements of our egos that need to be challenged.
The problem with treatment a lot of times is you send young people into an environment they have nothing to relate to other than the fact that they are for mental health substance abuse problems. Share on XIt could be productive stuff like building a business or it could be not productive stuff like almost killing yourself with drugs.
I was watching this. They were saying there’s a high propensity of higher-level executives and entrepreneurs who, when you look at their upbringing, were raised in extremely dysfunctional backgrounds. The guy’s breaking it down. He’s a social scientist. He goes, “You got to think about it.” You know this as an entrepreneur. There are times when everything is dysfunctional. The market shifted. This has changed. You’re having to onboard new people. There’s stuff going on all the time. If you’re raised in it, you’re like, “This is hard.”
My upbringing was pretty ugly too with my mom, father, and stuff. You’ve heard this in the past episodes. I’ll never forget. I was 25. I opened my second restaurant. It was 1:00 in the morning when it closed. I’m varnishing the bar because it needed that and getting ready for the next day. My manager looks at me and goes, “What drives you?” Your saying that makes me think success in working hard can be a coping mechanism for what you’ve been through.
I believe that 100%. It’s interesting because I didn’t know about financial literacy. I had money in the ban. My aunt was like, “This should be sitting in the money market. You lost.” I’m like, “I don’t even know that.” My relationship is continuing to shift around money because I had such a poverty mindset like, “Save.” The truth is I probably could have made more money had I been like, “If I hire this person. If I did this.”
Luckily, I’m 39 and I’m entering that phase of entrepreneurship. I managed to generate a decent amount of money but with the mindset that I had of, “I never want to be poor.” Here’s the deal. I always hear this. My brother and I talk about this pretty frequently. The idea of money can’t buy you happiness, I agree that it can’t buy you happiness, but it will buy you peace of mind.
I was joking. I say, “If you’re going to be unhappy, I’d rather be poolside.”
100%.
Let’s not kid ourselves.
I’m a huge believer that people who say that stuff have never truly been poor. You’ve never been poor. To me, it’s not going to buy me happiness. I don’t care about money for the purpose of, “I need more money.” The truth is if I made more money, I would probably help more people, 100%. I care about it in the sense of security. That’s it. I never want to, number one, put my kids through that type of stuff or have to endure living in a roach motel. My brother and I have TikToks. They have videos of people cleaning houses and there are all these German cockroaches.
You’re like, “That was our childhood.”
It trips me up.
Nadia is the same way. I adore my wife. You guys have heard me talk a million times about her. We’ve been together for 30 years. It wasn’t until a few years ago that we finally figured it out. She kept being in a place of scarcity. I come from abundance. Even though I had a terrible childhood, we did have plenty of money, at least until we didn’t. I always had the mindset of, “We’ll figure it out. I’ll make it happen.” I was never worried. She comes from the opposite. She had to help pay the rent working at Burger King. They had no furniture and slept on the floor in Brentwood until they got enough money to buy furniture when they came from Italy via Iran. That’s what it was.
This person said to me, which I finally needed to hear, they go, “Would you stop showing her spreadsheets? It’s not about the facts. It’s emotional for her. It’s scarcity. She’s in fear.” To her credit, talk about getting back in the circle, she let it go. I said to her, “It’s been 30 years and we keep having a better life every year. At what point are you going to be comfortable?” Something snapped for her. I’m so impressed because we’ll have a bunch of deals fall apart in real estate and she’s like, “We’ll figure it out.” It has been rewarding. You’re right. That’s a deep ingrained feeling to comes from scarcity. It’s better to have it under the mattress and make zero interest than to take a chance it could be gone, right?
Yeah. The truth is I don’t like not being educated, especially because I ended up going back to school. I went to UCLA. I’m like, “I need to do way more work on this stuff.” I’m like, “This is stupid. I missed out on a major life hack. I’m probably five years behind,” but I’m not. I think about all the time I spent selling drugs and all this stuff. I deal with a lot of people who come in like, “I destroyed my whole life.” I’m like, “The truth is you might have gone through grad school. You don’t even fully understand right now.”
That’s what I’m saying about Sebastian. He’s 24 but he has the emotional maturity and understanding of people in the world of somebody way older. It wasn’t as much of a setback as it was a reset and deeper learning.
I’m still grinding down on them. I’m like, “You’re in your mid-twenties. Make all the mistakes right now. You’re good.”
Fail fast.
I’m like, “If you want to go do this, go do it. When you recognize it isn’t working anymore, figure it out right now.” We’d be on the thing when he was out in Atlanta. He’s like, “I need a grind.” I’m like, “Not really. You should save money. Go on dates. Meet as many people out here.” I always told them, “One thing I wish someone would’ve told me is, “Expand your network.” I understood it in selling drugs. That was what I was good at. I was good with people. To network is like, “Show me your network. I’ll show you your net worth.” I always say, “Show me your friends. I’ll show you your future.”
The truth is the more I’ve surrounded myself with people who are growing in a similar direction, I’m like, “This makes sense.” Putting yourself out there in exposure feels uncomfortable. One skill I could teach all the guys in the house, and they have to learn it in the house a little bit, is rejection. You have to learn how to take losses.
Not to use the drug analogy, forgive me, but no has to be your crack. Selling real estate, all the things I’ve done, and raising money, no is going to pump you up. You got to get to where no lights the wick, not make you all sad because it’s inevitable. You’ve alluded to this too, which I love. I always said nothing great in life happens until you’re sick to your stomach. If you are comfortable, you’re screwed. You’ve got to be uncomfortable to get to that next place, right?
100%. Especially for women, it’s a whole thing where they get leaky bones. There’s something that happens that has to do with menopause and stuff like that. They have to lift heavy weights. We all do, in general. Welcoming comfort isn’t really good for us. You want to be low-level uncomfortable 90% of the time. There’s a sauna right by my house. It’s 200 degrees. I never go above 30 minutes, but even at 15 minutes, a lot of times, I’m like, “This is horrible. Why am I doing this?” 30 minutes later or 1 hour later, I get out and I’m like, “No one can do anything to bother me.”
That’s why I always say. Why do I cold plunge in the morning? That’s because if you can wake up and do the thing you want to do the least, the rest of the day is easy.
I started doing CrossFit for that. It’s horrible.
That stuff’s painful.
I don’t push the weight, especially with the clean and jerks.
Those kettlebells scare the heck out of me.
I love the kettlebells.
Those things scare me.
They’re so good.
Navigating Today’s Environment
Give me 1 or 2, if you can think of it, ways that people can help themselves stay in this circle of control. One that you said was to get closer to the snake or to get closer to your fear. How about these things like, “The Ukraine war. There’s a crime in the city. There’s the politicians.” How does somebody say, “I know I don’t want to focus on that but I keep feeling the weight of it.” Is there anything you could suggest that helps people get to that better place?
Not to go down because it veers on conspiracy theory land, but you can read up on Operation Paperclip and stuff like that. Being on your phone, you’re a drug addict. We all are at the end of the day. On my phone here, I don’t have any social media on there. I have a separate phone because of work stuff.
That’s interesting. There’s one idea right there.
I do not have any social media on my day-to-day work phone. You have to understand that the truth of the matter is we’re all being manipulated on that stuff. That’s not my opinion.
It’s true. We know it.
They have the Netflix documentary. It’s abundantly clear. Even with everyone knowing that, even with looking at the election stuff, Biden, Trump, Ukraine, and all this stuff, everyone knows but everyone is a willing participant in it.
Bravo. You solved it. It’s like if you want to stop doing drugs, don’t have them in your pocket. You’re saying the same thing. The first step is to have social media maybe only on your iPad at home so you don’t have it on the phone when you’re out and about during the day or something.
My girlfriend has two kids. We’re talking about potentially having a kid. I don’t own a TV myself for the same reason.
You don’t have a TV at home?
I don’t. Here’s the deal. If I want to watch something on Netflix, I can grab my iPad or whatever. I don’t want that stuff a part of my kid’s life because you can’t control how they’re being influenced by that. The data is abundantly clear, especially for little girls. She has two girls. There’s no way I would allow my daughter to get on those things. She goes, “We’ll see what happens if you have a daughter because you don’t know what it is.” I said, “We’ll see what happens.”
I’m sure she’s amazing in 100 different ways, but she’s already defining that it can’t be changed.
She’s like, “I’d love for you to help me with that.” She’s like, “We’ll see. I would love for you to do that.”
I have a friend that does it. I should hook you guys up because you’re in the same mold. They have three kids. He’s a wildly successful entrepreneur. He’s super successful. He’s constantly surrounding them with arts and crafts. We sold him this house and they took the pool and emptied it because they were going to tear it out. They had all their friends come over and have a painting party. They got to paint the entire inside of the pool. They’re always doing projects. They have no TVs. You’re right. It can be done. These kids are wildly creative and peaceful because of it.
Back to the circle analogy, the time is to build the circle of your community. You might be building some community with this. We’re able to connect with people. There’s value and merit to all of this stuff. When you sent me a text, I was like, “I want to come here to hang out with you. I’ll come to hang out with you.” At the end of the day, people need to get off this stuff as much as possible.
You brought up the most obvious, great point too. The solution is connection. If you’re connecting with people more and doing this more, you’re going to be in a happier place and you’re not going to be doing that other stuff more. You don’t have time to think about next door if you’re out having a coffee or in one of these apps. You’re connecting. You’re feeling good about people and things.
I have a lot of friends who are hardcore progressively liberal. Living through COVID has made me slightly more conservative. I’m not a conservative person. I’ve lived off food stamps my whole life. I believe in social welfare programs.
You’re an open-minded person.
100%. I’ve found this quite often with my friends who are hardcore progressive liberals. Their antipathy towards conservatives and stuff like that but their lack of emotional awareness around their response to it, I’m like, “This is it. These are byproducts. These are triggers that set you off, but your real problem is that you can’t emotionally self-regulate.” People say dumb things to me all the time. I go, “I can take that and put that in me. It either rests in me or I go, “We don’t agree on this thing. That’s fine. We don’t agree on this one topic but that doesn’t make me like a piece of crap and it doesn’t make you a crap.”
Thank you for saying that. I’ve been talking about that like crazy. If everyone’s default could be not, “I got to be right and convince you,” but, “Why does Chris think what he thinks?” If we could all stay curious. I’m so glad to have had you on this. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Amazing human. Such a great person. Thank you.
Thank you.
Amor fati. That’s what it’s all about. Love you.
Love you too. Thank you for having me.