The Road Of Trials: How To Transform During Hard Times

The Road of Trials is a stage in the Hero's Journey where the hero powers up between "Meeting the Mentor" and "Apotheosis" (god mode). In real life, it's periods where there seems to be no progress, so it's easy to sink into apathy or frustration...

But this is actually one of the greatest opportunities to recreate yourself and recreate your life.

Transcript

This road of trials period is a slower period of life where it can be frustrating,

It can feel like all is lost.

What defines this is that you enter it feeling powerless,

But if you engage with it properly,

You can end up as a totally different person.

The guys that I've met who seem to be stuck in the same phase for years,

They're in a road of trials moment,

But they're dragging it out because they're not engaging with it in the most ideal way,

As opposed to people who have a problem,

Transform and overcome it.

You have a huge desire and you don't have it yet,

Or maybe life comes to you with a crisis and you need to overcome it.

That's the only way to grow as a person and to over time change your life.

The reason why you shouldn't have attachments outcome is that constantly spending your time thinking about this outcome,

This outcome,

This outcome can raise your resistance level.

Spiritual schools of thought like in Buddhism,

They say craving is the root of suffering.

I would say this is why.

The Ruando podcast is an exploration of the unconscious in the game of life.

Be sure to visit ruando.

Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book,

Infinite Play,

And free access to my content library.

Enjoy the show.

All right,

We are live.

It is Monday here in Thailand.

The birds are chirping,

The mosquitoes are biting.

I'm here in Koh Phangan today for maybe a month or six weeks.

I live in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand where I love everything,

But they have burning season which is basically a period of pollution that is not fun.

All the farmers burn their crops at the same time.

It's not cool.

So my friends and I,

Girlfriend and some close friends,

We got a villa here in Koh Phangan on the beach.

It's very delightful,

Which actually relates to today's topic.

Today's episode is On the Road of Trials,

Which is a period within the hero's journey story structure.

It's something you see in the movies a lot,

In books.

It's a part of the monomyth as described by Joseph Campbell.

It's also representative of a type of period in one's life.

It's a period that I was looking,

Obviously,

To prepare for this episode.

I was looking at stories from my life and I was like,

Man,

I've been in this exact spot,

This exact phase of life almost on a schedule.

Every 18 months,

Especially through my 20s,

It seems like I enter this kind of period of slow,

Frustrated.

It wasn't always frustrating,

But it's kind of like slow period of potential growth.

Sometimes I've done it really well unconsciously or unintentionally and sometimes I've made mistakes and I want to share all of those because I think this phase in one's life is something that anybody who is really engaging in life or intending to engage with life,

Whether seeking your goals,

The desire is simply trying to have adventures,

Trying to experience what life has to offer.

Eventually,

You're going to hit roadblocks,

You're going to hit challenges,

And you're going to hit these slow periods where you actually have to engage with some internal elements as shown in the movies in order to transform and move to the next level.

I'll speak a little bit about The Hero's Journey in case you're not familiar just what the hell I'm talking about and why the movies touch these unconscious parts of us so deeply in a second.

Real quick announcements though.

Episode 100 of my podcast came out last week.

It's with my girlfriend,

Alia Chikana.

We speak about our relationship,

We speak about creating polarity in relationships.

It's a very fun episode.

There's a lot of laughter that's out on the Rona podcast.

Coming up,

We have Dr.

Kam Sapha of Maximus,

Which is a telehealth startup for men.

Very excited to speak with him because he's tackling many of the issues that we speak about here on the Rona podcast.

It's interesting to hear a physician's perspective on things.

Those are coming up.

Alia Chikana is already up.

So I'm here in Copenhagen and one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode today is I've been thinking about montages a lot.

Like if you look at the movies,

There's the Rocky montage where he.

.

.

I mean,

Every Rocky movie,

There's a training montage where he's with his trainer,

I mean,

With Mickey in the beginning in Rocky I.

I think it's in Rocky II or Rocky III where he realizes he needs to learn how to flow better so he goes into the hood in Philly and trains at the black gym to learn how to actually move well.

I don't know if.

.

.

Anyway,

But actually this came up a few weeks ago.

I was thinking about the idea of montages in movies,

The training montage because I was watching Team America with my boys.

I actually had never seen it until recently.

And man,

If you've ever seen Team America,

It is not a movie that could come out nowadays with all the racial humor.

It's unfortunate.

But anyway,

They make.

.

.

Obviously,

It's a comedy.

It's a satire.

They make fun of all the action movies where at some point in the movie,

The hero has to take on the final battle but he doesn't have the skills yet so they go through a training montage and they have that song,

We need a montage and like they're showing how the hero,

I forget his name,

Learns how to shoot.

He learns how to do all these different things.

The reason why this element resonates with us when we see in the movies or any element.

.

.

Actually,

Let's dial it back a second.

The reason why so many films and fiction and cultural myths follow the hero's journey story structure is that this story structure represents the psychological journey that we go through anytime we're taking on a problem in life.

Whether it's seeking an external goal or we're battling something with ourselves that's trying to individuate or trying to transform the hero's journey story structure,

Now it's kind of been co-opted by Hollywood to make films that resonate with people.

I kind of make fun of Marvel movies all the time because they follow exactly minute by minute exactly what happens every time.

There's a reason for that.

Joseph Campbell coined this term,

The monomyth,

Noting that all mythology kind of follows a similar structure and the hero's journey essentially is one aspect,

Is one take on it where the person starts from this mediocre typical life.

A problem comes to him.

Luke Skywalker's step-parents are killed,

Spider-Man's uncle is killed,

Sends him seeking a goal whether it's to take on a villain or win the girl or make money or whatever it is,

Meets a mentor which is representative of the fact that in order to grow we need to seek people for guidance,

Seek others who know things.

And then there's this road of trials moment which is what we really want to focus on in this episode where in the movies it's often shown,

In action movies it's often shown as a montage,

Like a training sequence where the hero is learning to do this and that and you can see his incremental improvement.

When I was refreshing my mind on this I remember the movie The Mask of Zorro with Tony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas.

The old Zorro is training a new Zorro,

The new Zorro is young and brash and he's full of energy but he doesn't even know how to sword fight.

So there's this cutscene training sequence where you see him learning how to do acrobatics and stuff.

In the films and movies it's almost always sped up,

It's usually shown as a montage because no one wants to spend 30 minutes watching this guy learning how to do all these things.

In real life this can also be,

It's not particularly exciting and I think this is where a lot of people,

I don't want to say mess up because I've done this incorrectly or sub-optimally a lot of my life where because I didn't have the right mindset or I wasn't following certain basic principles and I actually boiled it down to two,

I didn't get the most out of my montage period or I didn't get the most out of my road of trials period as opposed to times where one can't because this period of life is so uplifting when we watch it in films because it's a slow period of life especially when you're starting to engage with a new problem or seek a new goal or seek transformation in yourself that if done well,

If engaged with properly does lead to transformation.

So in the movies and the hero's journey films which most movies are,

The guy goes to the road of trials,

He meets Yoda,

Learns how to do all these crazy things and then he has these new skills and he can take on some challenge in the midpoint of the movie typically.

I just want to make a quick side note like the hero's journey is not the only story structure and actually it's just one aspect of the monomyth.

Throughout history about half the myths have been tragedies,

Not necessarily positive happy endings.

In the West,

Particularly in America,

We like our happy endings,

It's just like an American thing but also in personal development if you're watching this,

I assume that you want your problems to have a happy ending.

You don't want your life to be a tragedy of course.

But I do want to note that in real life obviously the movie doesn't end,

Your life doesn't end the moment you solve the problem.

Your life continues and actually if you look at history,

There's a lot of hero's journeys in history like one example would be Julius Caesar's rise to power.

He was kind of a regular aristocrat and then he became emperor of Rome.

If someone wanted to make a film on just his rise to power,

It could follow almost exactly the hero's journey story structure.

But of course in reality,

It didn't stop there because once he was in power,

He followed essentially the anti-hero's journey or the villain's journey where he started in power,

He did some bad things,

People turned on him and then he was killed.

That's also something you see very often in history.

But anyway,

The road to trials moment,

What matters to you or to someone living their life and engaging with life is that this road of trials period is a slower period of life where it can be frustrating,

It can feel like all is lost,

It can feel like a futile thing.

What defines this is that you enter it kind of feeling powerless but if you engage with it properly,

You can end up as a totally different person.

Actually,

I'll see you as I speak with a lot of men about their lives,

I meet a lot of guys of various ages,

Of various life situations.

Sometimes I speak to people just because I love seeing people's hero's journey narratives and the guys that I've met who seem to be stuck in the same phase for years,

They don't seem to progress,

It's like they're in a road of trials moment but they're dragging it out because they're not engaging with it in the most ideal way as opposed to people who have a problem,

Transform and overcome it,

Have a problem,

Transform and overcome it.

Actually,

The only way to change your life and to grow is to engage with some sort of conflict whether it's a conflict of like you have a huge desire and you don't have it yet or maybe life comes to you with a crisis and you need to overcome it.

That's the only way to grow as a person and to over time change your life is essentially the crux of the magician archetype which we're going to speak about in a week or two.

So I kind of gave it away already but like the way that I feel is the most effective to view your road of trials periods of life is essentially the power of montage,

Right?

In action movies as we mentioned,

It's kind of a bunch of cut scenes because it's boring for the audience to watch that but in your real life obviously you can't just speed up life.

What I would define as a road of trials period is a period of life where it might seem like you're making no progress but you are doubling down on a certain key activities and by the end of it,

Maybe it's over a month,

Maybe it's even over years,

You become a totally different person and your life changes and then everything starts to speed up again.

I think this inability to push through these slower periods of life or properly engage with the slower periods of life is what has a guy be stuck in mediocrity for a long time as opposed to finding newer and bigger problems.

I mean I've spoken about this in other episodes but I essentially feel like success in life or fulfillment in life comes from choosing bigger and bigger problems as opposed to having the same problems go just through that cycle.

We're hitting the same problem over and over again which is essentially what samsara in Buddhism is.

And the last thing on the hero's journey before we jump in to engaging with the road of trials is like if you are living on your edge,

If you're trying to get the most out of life and live adventurously and seek the things that you feel you want that come from within you,

You're going to have to go through this cycle.

There's no way outside of it unless you just don't engage with life.

Like if you live in a monastery or if you spend your entire life praying in a cave,

Then fine that's one way to escape samsara where you just don't have to deal with the ups and downs of life.

But if you don't want to do that,

If you actually want to enjoy the emotional storylines,

The narrative that is the movie of your life,

You have to go through this period.

The road of trials is a critical piece.

I want to speak about it specifically because I think it's something that doesn't get spoken about a lot.

Like we speak about meeting the final battle.

It's like those fast times where you have to really engage but if you haven't done your road to trials moment,

You won't have the skills or the internal fortitude to handle the new task and you'll probably fall back into your old ways.

Essentially the solution if I were to boil it down to one thing of how to get the most out of your road to trials is to look at this period of your life as a montage.

One of the reasons why I really want to do this episode today is that as I mentioned,

As I showed,

I'm here in Kopa Young.

I'm in a different environment for the next four to six weeks.

Not in my own home.

I have to come up with a new schedule.

If I'm trying to just go back to the way I was doing things back at my home home,

It can be frustrating.

But if I look at this four weeks while I'm here,

It's kind of a training camp to accomplish something new.

I'm kind of already in a phase of recreating myself personally.

The best way to look at this is to see this as a road to trials period as opposed to having myself be forced into it in depression.

Actually if I look at myself,

I've spoken about depression more specifically in other episodes but if I look at my 20s and this kind of 18 month cycle I've gone through where like it's essentially a hero's journey cycle,

I used to think of it as like,

Man,

I have cyclical depression,

I seem to get depressed every 18 months.

If I look at it with hindsight obviously,

It's almost like I got,

Eventually I got depressed or what I perceived to be depression because I thought I could always be in fast mode.

And once I hit slow mode,

Which is necessary in life,

I fought against it and that spiraled into depression as opposed to engaging with it in a way that I will suggest today.

So I basically boiled down looking at my own life and whatever I could draw from it in other people's lives perhaps.

I boiled down how to get the most out of your road of trials periods like the hard times,

The slow times into two principles.

One keep it simple,

Right?

There's stuff to say about the principles but I want to keep it in something that you can remember,

Right?

The first thing is to find a singular intention.

It can be an external goal as in most movies or if you're into the more productive side of the self-help world like you want to make money,

You want to meet women,

You want to whatever travel the world,

Whatever your external goal is or something maybe internal,

You want to be confident and you're almost always attached.

This is the first principle to pick an intention,

Set an intention that gives you feelings to feel that feeling and then kind of forget about it,

Right?

I mean in the manifestation world,

A lot of times you hear this like set your intention and then forget it.

We're going to explain why this is important.

The second piece is to take that intention,

Take that feeling and boil it down into a singular process goal,

A simple program that you can follow or a practice that you can follow,

A thing that you can do over and over again that you've determined will lead you in the direction of your intention so that you don't have to spend your decision making ability on what you should do every day.

This is one place I think a lot of guys,

A lot of people get kind of messed up or they kind of get lost in their attempts to grow,

To transform or they really get kind of stuck and frustrated is that every day they're trying to come up with like a new thing.

They're spending so much of their attention,

Their creative ability just deciding what to do with their time.

If you look at the montages in the movies,

There's a program.

Usually the guide,

The mentor is like,

All right,

We're going to do lightsaber now,

You're going to carry me on your back now,

We're going to run up hills,

You're going to study this,

You're going to learn languages.

It's kind of set in stone.

It's implied that they're following a program and this is critical because if you don't have a program,

You end up spending a lot of energy deciding what to do every day.

I spoke about this even in strength training stuff.

You need to follow a program.

If you don't have a program,

It's very easy to just spend too much time staring at the weights in the gym like what do I do today.

So I do want to share this first time I went through my life and the first time I can see a really active road of trials period was kind of my entry into personal development and spirituality and I would say the beginning of my adult brain.

Around when I was 15,

I was super depressed.

I've spoken about that in other episodes and I was very fortunate to meet this guy,

This kid I knew in high school who's also kind of depressed.

For reasons unknown,

This blessing,

He invited me to go lift weights with him and his dad and then for that summer,

All I did all summer because I was so depressed.

I was like,

Man,

I can't live like this anymore.

I kind of fell into the road of trials out of desperation which is not always necessary but this is,

You know,

If you – anyway,

I'll speak about that in a second.

So I spent the entire summer where all I did every day,

I would bike to his house,

We'd lift weights,

Then we'd get high and listen to Eckhart Tolle and philosophize.

I did that every day.

Like if this was a movie about my life,

We wouldn't show every day because it would be super boring but I was in a process and I was in a flow and I was super engaged with it because I didn't know what else to do,

Right?

I just knew I wanted my life to change and this was what was in front of me.

If you referenced last episode,

It gave me aliveness for whatever reason so I kept doing it and so as far as my two principles,

I did the second principle unconsciously well.

Like I had a process,

I had a program,

I followed it,

It felt good.

It was in the direction of what I wanted which was transformation.

I just wanted to be confident.

That was essentially my goal.

I wanted to stop being a little bitch essentially.

Not to shame my past self but I was not a strong person.

That's all I wanted.

My intention because he and I actually – this was my introduction to like spirituality and also the idea of manifesting your goals and stuff.

This was maybe 2004 or 2005 so I don't know if the secret had come out yet but actually from his mom.

His mom and dad actually influenced me a lot.

His dad kind of showed us how to lift weights.

His mom kind of introduced us to Eckhart Tolle and like kind of this manifestation stuff.

So he and I would get high,

We'd listen to Eckhart Tolle,

We'd set this goal and say,

Okay,

All we have to do is be in our bodies always and then when we start junior year in a couple of months,

We're going to be like the most popular,

Confident,

Amazing people.

Everything is going to be great.

And we did this very focused with this belief that we were transformed and by September or late August or whenever school started,

We were going to be these incredible transformed people.

This is where I messed up.

I didn't follow the first principle in that I had an intention,

I had a goal,

It was great but I became attached to a specific outcome.

This is where we messed up,

Both of us actually because we thought everything was going to be different because in our minds,

We just decided this arbitrary date that when school starts we're going to be different people.

That's not how life works,

Right?

Maybe it works in the movies sometimes but like and it's actually an important thing and I want to credit Alexander Pine,

Modern Health Monk.

He's been on my show a long time ago.

He's one of my first guests and he shared about this.

The reason why,

There's a lot of people disagree on whether you should put time on your goals.

Some people talk about smart goals.

You have to have a date that you're going to accomplish this.

But I'm with Pine on this like where it's not,

When it comes to like creative goals like these internal meaningful goals,

It's often not effective to put a date on especially with something abstract like I want to be confident.

It's open to interpretation but like to put a date on it is actually limiting because one,

You don't really know how long it's going to take for your unconscious to evolve.

It might take a little bit longer and if you put a date like oh by September 1st,

I'm going to be the most confident guy in the world and September 1st rolls around.

This is exactly what happened to me in this first road of trials period of my life.

School started and like everything was the same.

I was a little bit more muscular,

Same thing with my buddy who I had been working out with all summer and we're like shit,

Nothing has changed.

We're still kind of losers.

I mean that was our mindset,

Right?

We're still kind of losers,

Nothing has changed.

This sucks and we both got pretty upset that we had kind of believed in this false idol which is not true.

We actually did some great things.

Looking back,

That was like the beginning of my internal transformation but I put pressure on it by being attached to a specific outcome in a specific date that I became upset.

He actually went deep into depression maybe because of this,

I don't know.

So he kind of went back into the journey unfortunately.

I also became very frustrated but this is where we messed up.

The other thing I just want to say what Hein said is that also sometimes your goals especially when it comes to internal transformation can happen way faster than you expect.

Even external goals can sometimes happen way faster than you would expect if you're just looking at oh,

By this date this should happen and if this is going to happen on the 30th then this should happen on the 15th.

You don't know and specifically with internal transformation it's not effective to put a date on it because who knows.

He was actually,

Because he speaks about fitness a lot,

He's a modern health monk,

Very often people don't chart their fitness goals very well because your body is not going to follow a schedule.

If you're trying to lose 20 pounds you might not lose much weight for the first weeks and then all of a sudden weight falls off.

The body follows certain things that are not within our control so to put a date like oh,

By this date I'm going to lose 20 pounds it can be limiting because you might actually lose the weight faster.

You might need a few more weeks.

You have to give yourself space.

The unconscious and the body can't be forced into a schedule necessarily.

The other thing,

This is kind of touching on the magician archetype stuff which I'll speak about in a week or two.

This is something from Peter Carroll who's written a bunch of books on magic in quotes like playing with your unconscious to have external results which is essentially what self-development is from a slightly spiritual lens.

He was saying that the reason why you should not actively think about your goal every single day but kind of set your intention,

Reduce it to a feeling so you can feel that feeling but don't think about the specifics is that many times when it comes to really big desires,

Internally we have this kind of balance.

Even if you look at story structures,

It always has to be hero and villain.

You can't just have a hero.

That doesn't really work for our brain because that's not how nature is.

There is lightness and there's dark.

Even though our conscious mind especially if you grew up in the West,

You might have a penchant for happy endings and stuff.

Deep in our unconscious,

We're drawn to violent films and dark stuff because deep in our unconscious,

We are seeking that balance.

And according to Peter Carroll,

If you're only focusing on the light,

Fluffy,

Happy stuff like how you're going to succeed at everything and everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows,

There's going to be a part of you that we often call resistance if you're talking about creativity that comes up to balance it out.

If you constantly are thinking about,

Oh,

I want this,

I want this,

I want this,

Your resistance will also come up and like,

Oh,

You can't have it,

You can't have it,

You can't have it.

And in his views,

The reason why you should set your intention and forget it is that if you set your intention and hold on to the feelings of it,

You'll send yourself in that direction.

But by not thinking about it too actively,

You're not going to have attachment to outcome and then you kind of don't stimulate the resistance to come up.

It's like you keep throwing up that,

I mean,

I hope you get the idea.

And so I'm actually going to share maybe a more positive side where things happen a little faster for me.

But I just want to say on this,

Other things that were useful using these two principles,

Right?

Focusing on having a solid,

Big intention,

A big goal and reducing it to the feeling is the first principle.

The second is picking a singular process.

Another part of this and I think this is critical if you're trying to recreate yourself,

Especially if you're in an environment that has conditioned you to be a certain way and you want to be a different way,

Is cutting out everything else.

The whole idea behind having a singular process is that one,

You're not spending a lot of decision making ability,

You're not spending a lot of brain power trying to decide what to do every day.

That's a recipe for frustration,

But also cutting out all the things that are sending you in the other direction.

If your intention is left and your actions and your environment condition to go right,

You have to kind of cut things off.

And one thing I did unconsciously well during this first montage period of my life is I did stop hanging out with my old friends.

I did stop doing the old things I was doing.

Kind of,

I wouldn't have to go into that deeply.

It's like you just have to cut off.

You only have so many fucks to give,

Right?

This is true of all of us.

We have only so many fucks in a day,

In an hour.

If you think of a fuck as a unit of attention,

You want to get all your fucks in the same row.

And we'll talk about this a little bit in the magician archetype.

If you want to spur your creative ability,

It's very hard to be creative with a big project if you're thinking about 20 different things.

You send all of your attention,

Your free attention,

Your daydreaming attention,

The attention that you use while you're sitting on the toilet and you have nothing else to do,

You send it in the same direction,

Seemingly magical things will happen in the sense of you'll come up with new ideas.

You'll make connections that you didn't see before.

You will inspire yourself to find new and more effective ways to do that thing,

To do that process,

But that's not going to happen if you're spread out over a lot of things,

Which is why it's so critical to have a process,

Whether you're trying to change your body and lose weight or you're trying to tackle some huge creative project,

You're trying to create some internal transformation,

Like becoming more confident or heroic or whatever.

This is what the road of trials is about in the movies where the person,

Usually he goes up into the mountains or he goes to a different gym or Rocky works with the guys in inner Philly or Luke Skywalker spends the time in the swamp with Yoda where he's just doing stuff over and over and over again.

It's sped up in the movies,

But in your life you kind of have to take it day by day.

Anyway,

And I was saying the reason why you shouldn't have attachments outcome is that it,

Or even think about the goal after you've said it,

Is that constantly spending your time thinking about this outcome can raise your resistance level.

As the desire is increased,

The fear is increased.

I think this is why a lot of spiritual schools of thought,

Like in Buddhism,

They say craving is the root of suffering.

I would say this is why.

You keep focusing on your attachment,

This thing has to happen.

You basically inspire fear within yourself of like,

Oh,

What if it doesn't happen?

And then you find ways to sabotage yourself.

So I went through some other montages after this.

I'm nice about you,

I'll just share the happy ending and then the fall from grace because the monomyth tends to go in cycles.

My junior year I was super depressed.

I kind of said fuck it and I'm just like I'm just going to do whatever.

And my senior year I had kind of this apotheosis period where all the things that I wanted in my junior year from like the summer working out,

A lot of them kind of happened.

I did end up becoming fairly popular.

I ended up dating the girl that caused my depression when I was 15.

I became very successful in sports.

This is just to say there was a happy ending within this cycle.

It just wasn't on the schedule that I thought.

But then I had another fall from grace.

I had another Julius Caesar descent because I stopped doing the things that got me there.

I stopped following my process and actually I spoke about this in the last episode on the ambition acceptance dilemma.

I actually spread myself too thin because I was trying to accomplish a million things and I kind of disconnected from my mojo.

I'll skip ahead a few years.

I mean I went through other depressions.

They're not super interesting but almost exactly four years later when I was a sophomore in college I kind of entered this new headspace where I went to this really big school because my whole life,

Social anxiety up until this point had been like the biggest demon.

I wasn't worried about my future in terms of career.

I wasn't worried about anything other than social anxiety is like crippling my life.

When I was in college,

I chose to go to this really big school because I thought,

Oh,

If I go to a school with 40,

000 people,

There'll be so many opportunities to socialize.

It'll inspire me to be a more social outgoing person.

Kind of the opposite is true.

I kind of wish I went to a small school where I could make more intimate relations because I'm still an introvert.

Anyway,

I ended up getting really depressed again in college because I felt like I just became overwhelmed by life.

This is when I became most apathetic in my life.

I was very shut down.

People that knew me would call me a robot kind of teasingly,

But it really hurt because I was trying not to be a robot,

But I was always frozen.

As opposed to in high school where I would show my fear in college,

I kind of put a mask on and I would always look like this and had a kind of a resting asshole face,

Which was not what I wanted either,

But this is just how I dealt with my anxiety.

Anyway,

In college,

I was like,

I have to do something to break out of this.

I joined this student organization,

It was a business fraternity.

It was actually my first cult where I really learned social dynamics in this thing,

But that's another episode.

I ran for an officer position,

Like a low,

They had a hierarchy.

There was the president,

Vice presidents,

And some other officers.

I ran for one.

It was actually called the Master of Rituals who was in charge of hazing.

I actually got that position because even though everyone thought I was a robot,

That's the kind of position where maybe you want a robot in charge.

It's kind of a victory in that I ran for something,

I exposed myself to this huge group,

But then I was thinking,

Okay,

What is the next thing?

I was really into goal settings,

What is the next thing?

What is something that is so far beyond my conception of what's possible that it would be like,

Man,

This is something awesome.

I was like,

Well,

If next year I become president of this organization,

That'd be crazy.

Now I realize becoming president of a student organization maybe sounds kind of nerdy and maybe it sounds kind of meaningless,

But at this point in my life,

It was representative of something that was so far beyond my reality because I was so unlike,

I was so bad at connecting with people.

I was so low status.

The idea of being president of this huge organization seemed so crazy.

I couldn't speak in front of people.

If I got in front of five people,

I would stutter and my legs would shake anytime I gave a presentation.

So the idea of being president for an organization that was over a hundred people,

A hundred people who were like,

You know,

They were confident,

Social,

It was a fraternity.

It just seems so crazy.

But I thought I set like,

I'm going to set this goal.

That's like,

I'm here in my own,

I'm here alone in my dorm room.

Who's going to know,

Right?

There's no,

There's no risk.

I'm just going to set this goal.

I actually thought it was kind of impossible,

But I just imagined it.

I imagined what it would be like.

For some reason I imagined a scene,

A specific image.

I think this is kind of an upgrade on my intention setting that I did by accident.

I imagined an image of winning the election that day.

Like we,

The way the elections work is we gave speeches,

The,

The,

The body,

The,

The brotherhood would vote and then someone would get elected.

And I just imagined myself giving a speech and smiling and being comfortable in like being super grounded,

Even though I didn't think of that word back then.

I just imagined that seems like,

Man,

If I,

If I got elected for that,

That would,

That would be proof that I've changed,

Right?

It was my external goal is my external movie goal that I attached to my internal transformation.

But it seems so far away and it seemed kind of crazy.

And like,

You know,

If I was really like obsessive,

I was really left brained about it.

What I probably would have done would be like,

Okay,

I'm gonna spend the next year schmoozing everybody because that's how you get elected,

Right?

Like you schmooze with people,

You get everybody to like you.

I'm so glad I didn't do that because one,

I would have sucked at it and two,

It would have been really inauthentic.

Like I'm just not that kind of guy.

So whatever reason,

You know,

I thought about this scene and I didn't know what else I could do.

I mean,

I tried to do my,

I had like a low ranking position in this,

In this organization.

I want to do a good job,

But for some reason I was kind of drawn by this aliveness to like write my presidential election speech,

You know,

The speech I would give in order to get people to vote for me like a year in advance,

Right?

The yearly elections.

And I don't know why I did this other than,

I mean,

I guess I just didn't have a lot of friends and I had a lot of time,

So I just was like,

I'm going to write my speech.

It was,

Um,

I don't know,

I just did it for fun.

And every night,

And this is how much of a loser I was.

I did have friends,

But I didn't hang out with people a lot.

Almost every night I would go home,

Usually after the gym or after classes or something,

I'm going to write this speech and I'll practice this speech,

Right?

It was a five minute speech that I wrote a year in advance because I just,

I don't know,

I just felt right.

It's like it seemed like such a far off goal that I wanted to start right away to do anything I could do to give myself even a chance,

Right?

Like if someone said,

If I told someone back then I'm going to run for president,

Anybody in this organization would have laughed at me because I was such a,

People just didn't like me.

I was so closed off.

Anyway,

So I did this for,

I did this like almost every day.

I just imagining this scene,

Imagining this scene where I'm like comfortable and speaking and I write my speech,

Which is the only process I could think of,

Right?

Like if I look at this,

This is one of these moments where I do really feel like I tapped into the magician archetype by accident because like there wasn't an A to B or there wasn't an A to Z causality that one could draw.

It's like if you want to be elected for this thing,

Writing your speech a year in advance,

Like that's not,

Or practicing your speech a year in advance,

Like that's not like,

That doesn't seem like there's a connection or practical.

But I did it for whatever reason.

And the more I practiced,

The more I practiced both the speech but also practicing the feeling of it.

Like I wasn't attached to,

I wasn't like,

I'm going to be president.

Like I was just like,

Just imagining this scene where I was getting elected and practicing the feeling and practicing the words that I wrote down.

It just felt good.

I just did it over and over.

It's like I almost look at it now,

Like I was practicing the emotion of confidence.

The speech that I wrote was just like the words I had to say,

Right?

Because you need to script.

If you're an actor,

You need a script.

The actor doesn't come up with the words.

Usually they come up with the feeling that goes with the words and essentially this is what I was doing in my room to myself because I'm such a loser.

I'm being a little extra self-deprecating,

But I wasn't,

You know,

Whatever.

And I did this every day and it was kind of this bizarre thing where the more I did it,

The more that reality started to seem possible.

Whereas in the beginning it seemed like a totally ridiculous impossible future given who I was and what my life situation was.

That the more I practiced it,

The more possible it became.

And after a few months,

For months,

A year in advance for months,

I was practicing this five minute speech that I was going to give a year later.

Over time it started to feel more real.

And then the craziest thing happened where the current president at the time,

Who was a super popular,

Amazing guy,

He ended up going to Harvard.

I don't know what he's doing with his life now,

But you know,

That kind of guy.

Out of the blue,

Because we had a yearly election,

He was like,

You know what?

I think we should do the election six months early.

And I remember he did this in like a small,

It was called the executive board,

All the officers of this organization.

It was maybe eight of us,

I think.

I was one of the,

I was like the lower ranking officer here.

And he brought this up in a meeting.

He's like,

I don't know why I feel like we should do elections six months early.

And he had this idea that we're going to shift the election term.

It doesn't matter what it was,

But it was really random because for this organization had been around for years and years and they always had their elections at the end of the school year.

And for some reason he wanted it to happen sooner.

And I was like,

I remember feeling this feeling of like,

Oh shit,

I think I manifested this.

I think by practicing this outcome,

I made this thing that was already kind of scheduled.

I made it happen sooner.

And then obviously this is a bit of magical thinking,

Right?

Like did I really do that?

It was a coincidence.

And we'll talk about this in the magician archetype,

But that was the meaning I made from it,

Right?

It just seemed kind of strange and coincidental that I practiced this thing and I put all of this energy into this future outcome,

Practicing the emotions,

Practicing this outcome.

And I made it happen.

I didn't,

I mean,

In my perception,

My narrative perception,

I made it happen six months earlier.

And then anyway,

Essentially I won the election.

I was very nervous,

But we won that happened where he decided to move the election six months earlier.

I was like,

Man,

I have to do this,

Right?

It'd be crazy.

It'd be insulting to the universe.

If I had practiced all this,

I'd put my intention out there and it came to me faster than it should have happened.

It would have happened.

And if I didn't engage with this,

I was like,

I have to run.

And I practiced anyway,

To skip the montage,

I practiced a lot.

I practiced the feeling a lot.

I put all of my spare attention on it because it seemed like a crazy thing.

I was running against two way more popular people than me and ended up winning.

And I know again,

Student government sounds nerdy.

It's not that important,

But for me,

It was the moment in my life that I went from being in a sidekick archetype,

Which I'd been my entire life.

My entire life I'd always identified with Robin over Batman or with Scottie Pippen over Michael Jordan.

I was always friends with a popular person or a leader.

I was never the person.

This was the period of my life where I actually activated my leadership archetype.

Ever since then,

This happened when I was 20 or 19.

Ever since then,

I've identified as a leader.

This was a clear road of trials moment where I transformed myself by following these two simple principles by accident,

Where I set an intention,

But I didn't get attached to the outcome.

I had a scene to give myself the feeling and I practiced that feeling and I had a process,

Which was essentially practicing my speech.

And I look back at that now.

I'll tell another couple of quick stories where this semi by accident where sometimes the process is not clear.

If you're lifting weights,

It's clear.

You want to make your chest bigger,

You do a bench press program.

But with some things like how to become confident or how to create something or how to tap into these more formless elements of yourself,

Sometimes the process isn't clear.

And actually,

I genuinely believe that you just have to pick a process.

Sometimes you just have to pick a process that gives you the feeling that you want and do it because it might not be A to Z,

But somehow,

This is a bit of a magical thinking,

But somehow putting your energy into this process with enthusiasm somehow moves the chains forward anyway.

And then actually,

Just to finish the happy ending part of this montage,

There's also a sad ending too.

This has been my cycle throughout my 20s.

I ended up becoming president and then I had one of the greatest apotheosis periods of my life.

So in Hero's Journey,

The apotheosis period is usually after the Roto Trials.

The hero goes to the Roto Trials usually with his mentor.

There's a midpoint battle.

It's either a false victory or a false defeat.

This is like when Luke Skywalker first realizes he has the force or Rocky realizes he has flow in Rocky III or Rocky II,

I don't remember.

Zoro realizes that he can kick ass.

And there's the apotheosis moment where he feels like a shit.

He's like apotheosis meaning like godlike mode where he's just like,

I'm super powerful.

Of course,

He's not quite,

You know,

More bad things happen to the hero,

But he thinks he's the shit.

And it's essentially what I went through after this period where I became president of this big organization.

I became super confident.

I became well known in this giant campus.

I ended up meeting the first woman I was really,

Girl when we were young,

The first female that I was really in love with in my life.

Anyway,

I'm not going to talk about that relationship,

But there was like beautiful,

Really,

You know,

Everything seemed to be open.

This is also when I earned my commission from the Marine Corps.

So I just felt like I was the top of the world.

I followed the same error that I did in high school where I kind of spread myself thin.

I didn't take,

I took for granted certain things and ended up going to the deepest depression of my life maybe a year later.

My girlfriend broke up with me because even though I had this,

I took this godlike thing a little too far and there's a lot of built up resentment.

That's kind of a different subject.

Ended up not pursuing the Marines because I realized I was doing it for the wrong reasons and became super depressed.

I became so depressed about a year later that my hair turned white.

Like you can see I have a little,

If you're watching the video,

I have some white hair up here,

But the whole side of my head turned like paper white.

It was very bizarre.

My body was shutting down because I became so depressed and I was broke because I was supposed to go into the Marines and then I didn't.

So like the income that I was expecting I didn't have and I was super broke.

I was an adult for the first time.

I wasn't in college anymore.

And like life just sucked.

It just sucked.

And I found myself,

I ended up doing these sales jobs.

I ended up selling cable subscriptions door to door in Buffalo in the snow.

So I would try to shoot the snow and try to sell people cable subscriptions and I ended up also selling life insurance for a period of time.

This is another like really not fun time in my life.

But actually I look back at it now with a lot of nostalgia because even though I was super depressed and life sucked and everything I tried seemed futile,

I look back at it now it's like,

Oh,

Here's another road of trials moment.

It was a really unpleasant road of trials moment compared to other times because I just didn't have the best mindset.

I also had made some bad decisions that put me in that position.

But it was another period of time that I'm kind of nostalgic for because I could see from my hindsight now how much growth I experienced.

And actually most of my suffering came from the fact that I really believed everything was futile.

I look back at it now,

I was like,

Man,

If I could have done this over,

I would probably have done the same exact things but with the recognition that life is changing.

This is one thing I want to say is like if you're in a position right now where you resonate with this idea of road of trials,

You're just like,

Man,

I've been kind of not making a lot of progress in life and I've kind of been stuck in this like day to day thing or maybe like you want to have your own business but you're working a day job and the day job kind of sucks because you're pushing papers or you're doing the same service stuff or you're doing some sort of manual labor which isn't very fulfilling and it feels like suffering.

I want to say to you now,

Because I could say a lot of positive flowery things where you're just kind of,

It's not going to land if you're feeling this feeling.

I want to say to you instead,

Just think that you can suffer in a direction.

Suffer in a direction.

Looking back at this period of my life,

Like,

Man,

I was honestly,

I was really suffering and like no amount of positive affirmation would have convinced me that life wasn't suffering but the one like the slight virtue that I had by accident was that I at least suffered in a direction.

So I didn't do it very consciously but I did follow the two principles in some way.

Like at this point,

I wasn't even concerned about being confident.

I kind of wanted my girlfriend back which didn't happen.

Lots of other things happened emotionally that weren't that important but I was also broke.

This is the first time in my life I was really broke.

We're like rent wasn't a guarantee to get paid and I was like,

I had to like,

Anyway,

The first time I was being broke and I was knocking doors to sell cable subscriptions is kind of humiliating to have a year prior to have felt like on top of the world.

I'm a lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

I am president of this,

You know,

Organization,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

All these cool ego things and here I am walking through the snow,

Knocking doors to make a couple hundred bucks a week so I can make rent.

And all I wanted at this point,

My only external goal was to make a bunch of cash so I could stop working for a couple weeks and think about what I wanted to do with my life.

This is all I wanted.

This is my goal.

This is my grandiose goal at this period of my life because I'm so depressed.

And well,

There's two things.

I sold life insurance for a few months and I was hired to sell life insurance.

I never actually sold a policy because I hated it so much but for a few months I would wake up at the crack of dawn,

I put on a suit and then I would drive out like an hour and a half into the farm towns outside of Buffalo,

New York and try to sell life insurance to farmers walking in like a foot of snow in my suit.

You got to wear a suit as a life insurance salesman.

So I was ruining my suit,

I was ruining my leather shoes,

Walking through snow is terrible.

I hated it.

It kind of went against my morals like just the way we were selling.

It just didn't feel good.

This was the job I had.

It ended up making almost no money but something I did kind of out of frustration is that I would drive out into the farm country and instead of working or maybe I would try to talk to one person,

Didn't go well obviously,

And then I would park.

I remember this and I kind of have nostalgia for this period of suffering because I think it's kind of beautiful now.

I would drive out into the forest in all of this snow.

I would turn off my car because I had to be very economical with gas.

So I would retain whatever heat was in the car,

Get into the passenger seat,

Whip out my laptop and I would work on writing a book.

I was writing a book on public speaking because in college I had this transformation where I went from being so socially awkward to being pretty comfortable with public speaking.

So I was like,

I'm going to write an e-book.

I've heard online that if you write e-books you make a lot of money.

So I'm going to write an e-book.

And for like two months,

It's kind of ridiculous that I would put myself into this overly dramatic scene,

But every day I would drive out into the cow towns,

Talk to one person and then park up in the mountains in the snow and I would work on this e-book.

For hours I would type in the cold because sometimes if I got too cold I would turn the heat back on,

But I'd be in the cold shivering.

I'm hunched over in my laptop typing this e-book,

Which is just a ridiculous scene,

Overly dramatic,

Where are the violins.

But for some reason I put myself in this position and I look back and it was such fondness now because I was clearly suffering in direction.

It was the first time I really completed anything big.

It ended up being like a hundred page e-book,

Exactly zero people purchased it on Amazon.

So it didn't yield the result,

But it was the first large written piece that I had completed and it was kind of like a moral victory.

And it was so funny because after I completed this e-book,

After maybe two and a half months of selling zero life insurance policies,

I just felt good.

And I was like,

This is what I'm supposed to be doing,

Not this insurance bullshit crap.

And I walked into the insurance office in my jeans and I told them to go fuck themselves.

Not in those words,

But essentially,

And I just felt like a champ.

It was a moral victory.

Anyway,

I went back to knocking doors to sell cable subscriptions,

Which was my previous humiliating job.

And there was an opportunity that popped up.

An opportunity was if you were one of the top two reps in this office,

There was like maybe 20 of us,

If you were in the top two,

You got to go to Albany where they're laying down new fiber optic cable and you're almost guaranteed to make 10 grand because the way this industry worked is like when Fios would enter a new town,

People just signed up.

So like,

Whereas we would normally make like a hundred bucks a day,

If you went out there,

You were almost guaranteed to make 300 bucks a day.

Huge thing.

It's like,

Oh wow,

That's the $10,

000.

Like I had it in my head,

I need to make $10,

000 so I can take,

Actually in my head back then I thought $10,

000 would last me months because I was 23 and an idiot.

Anyway,

I was like,

Okay,

If I can make this $10,

000,

That will change everything in my life.

I could take months off,

I could take a year off and figure out my life.

I didn't think it would be a year.

I thought I could take a long time off and figure out my life and become a writer and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

So anyway,

I picked a process.

I had this goal,

$10,

000.

I picked a process.

It's like,

You know,

On average a sales rep would sell one or two subscriptions a day.

I was like,

I'm going to make sure every day,

No matter what,

Rain or shine,

I'm going to sell two subscriptions a day.

If I sell two subscriptions a day,

That was a little bit higher than,

Two subscriptions a day for a month would have put me in the top two,

Almost guaranteed.

So I did,

You may have heard this if you follow self-help stuff,

It's called the Jerry Seinfeld technique by some people.

I put up a calendar and every day if I sold two subscriptions,

I would put an X.

If I only sold one subscription,

I put like a single line,

Like a spare.

My goal was to fill the calendar with Xs.

Almost because I just set that intention,

Up in this point I was selling zero or one or two a day.

I did have two days,

So it was possible.

But after I set that intention,

It's like,

I'm going to stay out.

Even if it's like,

Sometimes I would be knocking doors till 10 PM,

Which seems crazy now.

I would knock on people's doors in winter in Buffalo in the snow,

Sometimes like at 930 and sell them subscriptions.

But I was like,

I will not let myself go home until I sell two subscriptions.

And you know,

If you knock doors long enough,

Even if you're not a good salesman,

Eventually you'll meet someone,

Right?

It's a numbers game in a sense.

Because I had this clear,

No matter what,

This is my process every day,

Two subscriptions.

My close rate increased a lot.

I was just like,

I was really pissed off at life at this point.

I was just like,

How is this my life?

Everything seemed so amazing a year and a half ago.

I was kind of angry,

But not like,

Anyway,

Something switched in my mind when I really engaged with this road of trials where I kind of had this martyr-ish attitude,

But it was like,

Here I am knocking doors in the snow.

I maybe made some bad life decisions.

This is why I'm here,

But I'm not taking no for an answer.

And I had this kind of like,

It activated this new kind of assertiveness in me where like I'd be knocking on the door and the snow would be coming on my face.

And I was like,

You got to let me in so I could tell you about Verizon Fios.

And I had this assertiveness that had almost everyone let me in and my close rate increased crazily.

And the happy ending here is that I ended up being number one in the office.

They sent me to Albany and I'm making a lot more actually than $10,

000 that month.

It didn't actually last me more than two months.

I did quit my job.

I told fuck you to my boss.

He was actually a nice guy,

But I've never been good at other people controlling my schedule.

Anyway,

We had a slight argument.

I told him,

You know,

I was peacing out and I left.

Ended up going to New York City,

Which was a big important shift.

That money did not last me very long in New York.

It maybe lasted me a month and a half so I had to get another job,

Which is another cyclical depression thing,

But I'm not even going to go into that.

It's not the most interesting road of trials.

But if I look at that,

The extra thing I would add to these two principles,

Right?

I had a clear intention.

In this case,

It was a very material intention.

I just want to make $10,

000.

I had a clear process,

Kind of out of futility.

Like I don't know how else.

Back then I was like,

I can't,

The only chance I have at making $10,

000 is to do this two sales a day thing.

And that's just what I picked and that was my process and I went for it and it worked.

But I also,

I just,

I got into the other thing is that the thing I want to add is like,

This was like one of the darker times in my life where I was really depressed.

Actually,

My mate,

It's funny,

After I succeeded,

My hair turned black again.

It's very odd,

Psychosomatic stuff.

I was so focused on the feeling and I was choosing to suffer in a direction.

I wasn't that attached to the $10,

000.

At least I wasn't like mentally thinking $10,

000,

$10,

000,

$10,

000.

I honestly think if I had put so much focus on that,

Because back then $10,

000 seemed like the biggest amount of money in the world.

Had I thought,

I had to like focus on the words or focus so much mentally on $10,

000,

I probably would have had fear rise up and I probably would have sabotaged myself because it just seemed like too big to grasp.

Instead,

I just got into the process and I focused on the feeling of like,

I'm not taking no for an answer.

Like I kind of had this like,

I'm suffering in a direction feeling.

I'm going to push myself through the snow.

And I would say that was the feeling that fueled the action that led to the goal results.

The very last,

My last take on these two principles and the last month,

I have many rules.

I had other montages which were not that exciting.

Later on,

Just to skip you through in case you're wondering,

Moved to New York.

I had another kind of depressive thing where I ended up working for this marketing firm.

It sucked.

I ended up getting fired from that one.

Actually,

Also writing has always been the enemy of my daytime employment because I was like,

I started having success and I decided I really wanted to write blogs.

So I started my blog.

It was a short-lived blog.

I was like,

Man,

I fucking love writing,

Man.

And anyway,

I ended up getting fired because I was spending more time writing than actually doing my job.

I ended another depression,

Broke again.

That kind of led to,

I went through a cocaine period and then I joined the cult.

I told about the cult story and like cult episodes.

So I want to retell those.

There's many rules and trials within that.

But after the cult,

Hard crashed back to reality,

Entered another depression.

Once again,

I was broke.

Again,

Once again,

I was like,

I have no idea what to do with myself.

I was coaching back then because I was coaching the cult,

But it just felt not good the way I was doing it.

So I had to stop and I ended up doing service jobs again.

There's another road to trials.

Actually,

This is another depressed period of my life,

Which I look back on with so much nostalgia because it was kind of a beautiful period of my life where I stopped forcing myself.

And it was very critical that I,

I think it was super critical that I took,

I took like a year off from coaching or writing or anything like that because I had to reset my mind.

That's kind of what these road to trials periods are about.

Like the hero starts a certain way and that way just has not been working for him or it's not working for the intention that he has.

So he has to go through this road to trials,

Slow montage type of period to recreate himself in the movies and action movies is like learning new skills,

But it's also like learning how to engage with life differently.

Like if I look at some of the more positive times in my life,

Switching from sidekick archetype to leader archetype or switching from kind of passive sales person to like assertive,

Like,

No,

You're going to listen to me now.

Like this is the internal result that happens if you,

If you pass through your roads or trials effectively.

I've of course didn't always do things effectively,

But in this period of time I ended up working catering jobs,

Bartending and other stuff like that and kind of reconnecting with my earthy roots.

Like when I was in the cult,

Like I went very,

I went very into air qualities,

Like very into idealism.

My ego got inflated and then it crashed.

Like the painful thing was like ego crashed back to reality.

And there's during this period I became very humble.

I,

I also drove Uber for a while and just did these blue collar jobs and I reconnected the humility.

I also drank a lot,

Which wasn't a very good thing,

But not,

Not like,

Well anyway,

I,

It wasn't great,

But I kind of had this brooding,

Not woe is me,

But kind of like this martyr fear feeling again of like,

Like slight anger at the world,

But kind of like an active,

Like I was like shaking my fist at the world and like every,

I worked,

I lived in Astoria in New York.

It was the first time,

Actually the only time in my life that I was part of a neighborhood bar where everyone knew my name.

So every day I would work my blue collar job doing catering things in the city.

I would take the train home.

The bar was right there.

I walk into the bar.

That's actually where I met one of my good friends,

Colin Stanley,

Who's been on the podcast.

He's,

He's blowing up on Spotify right now.

Look up Colin Stanley.

You could check out his,

His music.

But back then we were,

We were young,

New to New York or,

You know,

You're young people.

I ended up going to the bar drinking too much.

I would write,

But I would kind of write in this kind of like shaking my fist way at the world.

Like nothing I wrote during that period became anything worth publishing.

It was a recreating period.

If I look,

If I was,

If I were to make a montage in the movie of my life for that period,

It was like work blue collar jobs,

Get drunk at night and write in this kind of angry way.

And even though that doesn't sound very positive,

I look back at that as like,

That is really what I got in touch with,

Like earthy,

Grounded roots where like I started to realize a lot of the bullshit that I had consumed in terms of self-help and like,

You know,

Things that I don't like about personal development and like cut off a lot of shit.

Like I kind of reduced into like this like demonic,

Demonic,

Not in like an evil sense,

But like not angelic,

Like kind of dark and like earthy and like kind of mad.

And I kind of got in touch with certain elements of like my dark masculine kind of just like kind of brooding and like kind of feeling.

And the one adjust and it was,

I look back at it,

It's kind of a beautiful period.

I was definitely not happy.

And the one adjustment I would make if I could go back and like relive that period,

What I would also like thought I realized I was suffering in direction,

Right?

Because I had felt part of my anger was like,

Man,

I've tried all these things and like,

Here I am broken,

Confused.

I didn't really appreciate that.

I had,

I had still transformed a lot,

Right?

Like the one thing that was going on in my life that was good was that I had no anxieties with women and I was actually connecting with women very easily,

Which had been an issue my much of my life.

But I was like just upset.

I kind of tapped into a different kind of,

I could call it power,

But like in a different archetype where I was now very in touch with my darkness,

But not very in touch with productivity.

Anyway,

The one thing I would change and this might seem,

I hope this is a useful idea if you were in a period of life where like you're just frustrated and like you're pushing and just feels like pushing a boulder up the hill,

I would have,

I would tell myself back then to enjoy the brooding,

To enjoy,

And this might seem,

I hope this lands,

But to enjoy the poverty,

To enjoy the loneliness,

To enjoy the existential crisis.

And I don't mean this facetiously because if you actually move through your road of trials moment,

If you actually engage in the,

With using the two principles that I believe to be true for my limited life experience to set an intention,

But reduce it down to the feeling and two,

To pick a singular process and put all of your fucks into it.

If you do that one day,

You might be rich,

You might be loved,

You might have,

And you might not have the luxury of wallowing in your shit.

I kind of miss it.

Like now I kind of have too much responsibility and I have no reason,

Like it would be,

Yeah,

I'm never going to be in a period of my life again where I get to get drunk with low life's in the bar.

I'll never have a period of my life again where I can complain about being lonely.

Oh,

I don't mean this facetiously,

But like I kind of cherish that time because it was such a singular point in my life where like I really got in touch with my darkness and I,

Unless something terrible happens,

I don't think that it will ever happen in my life again.

I'm living the exact opposite life now,

Which I of course prefer.

I'm not complaining about happiness at all.

I'm very happy with my life partly,

And I'm particularly happy with my life because of that period of that road of trials period where like everything was the opposite.

And this might,

Well I'll just say like if you are a creative person and this might,

I mean some people disagree with me on this,

But I do think a certain amount of suffering is necessary for one for you to appreciate the good times,

But also like to really be in touch with the reality of life that,

And if you're a writer or a creative person,

You kind of need these dark,

Grounded,

Heavy moments to connect you to reality.

Like I kind of ranted,

And I ranted in the last two podcasts about this influx of young life coaches who want to share their productivity tips or want to share their great spiritual awakening with the world.

And like a lot of times it falls flat or like it makes you cringe listening to it,

Maybe for a few reasons,

But one is like if a person really hasn't experienced darkness,

If they haven't really experienced like heaviness and like the opposite,

They don't fucking know.

And this is not to say that you need to be a certain age to share.

I said this in the last podcast on being a leader of men,

Like you could be at any stage of life if you feel like you have something useful to share,

Share it,

But don't come from this angelic place like you have everything figured out because even if you do somehow,

Even if you can think of the perfect things,

Whether it's a spiritual bypass or whatever,

If you're not connected to like the suffering part of life,

It's not going to land.

Usually this is not important for anyone who's not in a creative work.

I mean,

I think to be an artist,

You have to know suffering.

I think this is my personal opinion.

Other people have disagreed with me and said like,

Oh,

That's just like limiting belief or whatever,

But I don't know.

I'm a creature of the darkness.

I believe this is to be true.

And actually anything creative,

Whether it's a fictional story or whatever,

If it doesn't have a little darkness,

I personally get bored.

Maybe other people don't.

Some people like the flowery stuff.

I don't.

I don't know.

I don't know if it's a cyclical thing,

Chicken and egg thing because I've gone through periods of suffering.

I really only like stuff that includes suffering.

I don't know.

That's my opinion.

So I'll just share just as a recap.

We're at the hour mark.

The road of trials moment,

The road of trials period is a stage in the hero's journey,

In the model myth.

In the movies,

It's often shown as a montage where the teacher is training the student.

This is so meaningful to us and we recognize this.

We recognize the entire hero's journey.

It resonates with something deep in our unconscious,

Makes us feel good,

Makes us feel seen,

Makes us feel like we can do life better because it is a process that occurs in our unconscious anytime that we're trying to transform ourselves.

People who do not engage with their roads of trials period usually end up being stuck in the same problems and their life remains the same for years and years and years as opposed to really engaging with your roads of trials period.

And maybe it gives you the result,

An external result that you want,

But the thing that I'm more interested in is that it puts you in a position where you transform.

It doesn't happen overnight.

In the movies,

They make a cut scene montage because seeing you do the same thing every day can be boring.

But if you go into this mindset like I'm in this montage period,

I'm going through a road of trials,

I'm putting my nose to the grindstone,

I'm pushing the weight or I'm typing even through the frustration of writer's block or whatever,

Eventually that period will end.

If you keep going into it,

The two principles being having a singular process and putting all of your fucks into the process and second,

Having a big intention that stimulates a lot of desire but then forgetting about it and just holding onto the feeling,

Holding onto that desire.

And I told stories here,

This might be a little bit of magical thinking,

But in the times that I did this by accident well,

It seems like the thing that I wanted that seemed so far away happened faster.

Whereas in times where I became too attached to the timely goal,

It's almost like I pushed it away and I also increased frustration.

So the two principles have a singular process goal,

Put all yourself into it and set an intention and then reduce it down to the feeling and forget about the intention.

And then you can look back in your journal a month later or months later and see,

Oh shit,

This thing happened.

So that is all.

Thanks for watching.

I hope you're listening.

All of my contents on the Rwanda podcast on Apple and all that stuff,

You know my spiel.

The 21 day archetype challenge is available at Rwanda.

Com slash archetype.

It's a great program that leads you through exercises to stimulate your unconscious and gather your internal fortitude and specifically tap into the testosterone driven aspect of your psyche that we call the masculine archetype.

It's a great program.

It's at Rwanda.

Com slash archetype.

We have an interview with Dr.

Kam Sapha coming up.

He is the founder of Maximus,

Which is a telehealth company for men.

And we also have as voted on like a month ago,

The magician archetype episode.

It's either going to be next week or in two weeks.

I want to really make sure I tackle this idea.

So it might be next week.

Stream live in the masculine underground Facebook group.

Forum.

Masculineunderground.

Com if you want to join the group or search for masculine underground on Facebook.

Thanks for listening.

Go for a walk.

We'll see you next time.