Empowerment through being a good person

# Empowerment through being a good person

**Channel:** Indi Rajpal - Empowered Together Podcast
**Published:** 2025-09-08
**Source:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=FJ_J-abjHeQ

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, guys, wherever you're listening to. Welcome to episode seven of the Empower Together podcast. Today, I've got Luke Lehman, Muscle Nerds. If you know, you know, joining me as a guest. Luke, give us an intro. That's pretty good, considering you haven't done this in a while. Yeah, I know, because I've been a lazy fucker. Yes, guys, I know I actually mentioned in the last episode that I'd been lazy and I need to do this. So, thank you, Luke, for calling me out. That was great. Like I said, one take too. You didn't even have to stop. That's it. Job done. Good podcast, guys. See you for episode eight in probably about another year's time. So catch me then here. I find that's the hardest. Like starting things is always the hardest. So like podcast videos, when I get on stage and I'm lecturing, the first thing is how do I even start this? Well, it's one of those things for me. The whole reason I started this podcast was for people to hear stories, to be vulnerable. and I've got no shame in telling people that I have my limiting beliefs and things that stop me from doing this because of just my limiting beliefs. Yeah. So I've actually had no excuses the last six months to do this. So sorry, guys. And I know how much you love guys seeing me. So hopefully this is a start of me actually continuing to do this and be accountable, especially when I've got a guest like Luke on. I know I don't want to chime his horn too much, but if anyone in the industry from the good old days knows, they know how much Luke is such an awesome coach very successful in the industry and has done some amazing things definitely contributed to my development as a coach and this is an absolute honor for me and I've had some fantastic guests so far but Luke's probably my most famous and one of the most acclaimed we have low standards on this podcast you're scraping the bottom right now we have low standards guys it's going to get better from here so let's stop here what's nice is it can't get worse you can only get better from here that's the challenge let's make it worse but yes no so I'm very grateful to Luke for coming on and it was very much a last minute thing because he had been traveling for the last month a hell of a lot of seminars and Luke is a wealth of knowledge but today we don't want to go down the fitness stuff because Luke's got many podcasts where he talks about where he began why he began this and what he does I want to make this a bit more raw a bit more fun be ready for a lot of f-words and c-words because you know this podcast is absolutely raw there's no editing it's straight to the point so I want to start with one simple question to you luke oh no is this the one it's the one okay this is the one let's go what do you think where okay where do you think right now as men do we struggle oh my god oh that's a big one man oh so you want to you want some controversy that's what you're looking for man where do you unpack that where do you start i think there's yeah i think there's a lot of shit wrong. I actually did a talk like this many years ago before the proverbial shit hit the fan, and I made a bunch of predictions about what was going to happen, and all of it came true. The craziness has happened over the last decade. What did you predict? I predicted that... I'm not going to go real deep because you get canceled on this, but I I predicted a lot of the woke stuff and that people were going to be against men and men were going to become the whipping boys. And I won't go into the cis white men thing. And that's the thing. We become the whipping boys. And everybody lumps us all into the same category, but that's not the case. I just like to add in today that I'm not in that because I'm diversity and brown. Yeah. You're one of my brown guys. Yeah, that's it. Right. But I get it. Yeah. I do feel like right now, and it has been for a very long time now, men are very much demonized. 100%. Not to say that they aren't men who are a bunch of assholes. Yeah. But not all of them. But everyone are assholes. Yeah. It's not a biological sex thing. It's not a gender identity thing. It's not a cultural thing or religious thing. Like, you got some people who are good, but the majority are just cunts. Yeah. and that's just the way it is but you know so yeah but you know we just keep trucking along keep trucking along just try to be the best you can and what does that mean to be the best you can i think you know look i think you and i had to talk about this over coffees and i i think i even though jordan peterson's kind of gone off the farm he's kind of gone off the way of like clickbaity stuff and moving into stuff he shouldn't be talking about but i do like his concept that men should be capable of violence, but then never need to use it unless they need to use it. And I think we've lost a lot of that because toxic masculinity, and I fucking hate that. I hate that phrase I understand it but things that men do aren inherently toxic There are toxic men There are toxic women There are toxic people there are toxic cunts and there are good cunts So we need to stop trying to generalize everything and be more contextual about it and constructive about it and just say, yeah, a human, my underlying belief is that humans are scavengers and we're opportunistic animals. So if you look at it from a survival perspective, if someone's desperate, They do desperate people things in order to survive. And then you have the other side where people get money and power and success, and that turns them into a monster on the other side, you know, that you just want more and more and more. I told you, like, you were asking me the state of Australia, and we had to talk about that. And it's the same as everywhere else. You've got the good stuff. You've got the bad stuff. And, like, if I keep running out of places to go to, I'm just going to get in with some friends. I'm going to buy an island, and we're just going to try to make sure it doesn't turn into a Lord of the Flies situation. But, you know, we're humans, so that kind of thing almost always happens anyways. It's just a natural thing. And if you look at Dr. Sapolsky's work when he was with baboons and he was looking at baboon hierarchy, there was always the guy at the top, and the top guy baboon was like the biggest, baddest dude, but he started getting age-related diseases. his lifespan would shrink, and then everyone underneath him was always trying to become the top dog. But that's just the way we are. We're inherently designed to be like that. It's one of those things where I kind of look at people who are in positions of power. I'll always say that weak men seek power, and true leaders' power is bestowed upon them, basically. So what I've noticed is that a lot of men that a lot of men look up to are not necessarily what I would call real men. No. They're just people there who are profiting off men's misery to get a quick buck, given this life of like, you need to have X supercar, X amount of girls, X amount of money, this and that, and then you're a successful man, whatever that means. See, I think of this as, is that inherently true to just men's nature or some men, or is that just a human trait? Because you see that on both sides of the coin. so it's like I think we're just designed to be that way or maybe it's just a genetic coding thing where some people get a little bit of a little bit of something and they can't they want more and they can't, it becomes an addiction well this is it though, we're never satisfied are we? I genuinely believe we're not conditioned to be happy and once we have this moment okay it's like very short lived because we have this perception of like once I acquire this, let's say we're going to get this Lamborghini we get this Lamborghini, it's amazing then after a day or so it's like It's just another car. Now you have buyer's remorse. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, this car no longer satisfies me. I want a Ferrari now. Yeah. So it's that constant chase. And I think that's the problem is people need to find peace within themselves. Yes. And they need to find happiness and experiences. And, dude, you're going to die. Like, we're all dying. Right? You had cancer. You got hit by a bus. You could have died. You're going to die anyways, but you could have died before it should have been your time. We're all living on borrowed time. Yeah. We all have to remember that. And, like, is more stuff going to make you happy? Because as much success as I've had with my companies and what I do, it's not like we're wealthy. Like, because we don't really focus that much. You make money to act as a vehicle to then do cool shit and help people. Or you have some people that get money in order to elevate their status or stroke their ego. And they don't do things for the right reason. But it comes down to what does wealthy mean? Yeah. Yeah. Is there like an actual number that defines that we are wealthy? If I'm correct in saying many years ago, psychology today would say that once you're earning more than 70K, your happiness doesn't change. But I know that metric has changed now to like 200,000, 300,000. Yeah. But what's changed over the years to change that metric? It's our outlook on – I guess it's kind of like wanting more and more and more and never being satisfied. Yeah, but that's the thing. And you have commercialism feeds into that. So they always tell you you're not pretty enough. you're not smart enough you're not tall enough you're not muscular enough you're not lean enough you don't have enough money you don't have the right partner your kids aren't good enough like they feed into this to get us to buy more shit and it becomes an addiction just like cocaine and hookers yeah yeah but but people are in denial you know they don't think about that and they don't go maybe i've got a problem may i have a money addiction because i i was i heard from a friend of mine the other day uh he's in our industry as well and he and i could not have completely like distant separate polar opposites of the opinion so he's in the clothes he's in the cars i'm in the cars too but i'm in the cars because i've always been a car guy but he doesn't really know a lot about cars and he's just throwing stuff out there and he wants to collect all these cars i'm like why do you want to collect all those cars like what are you going to do they're just going to sit there they going to sit in your garage you never going to drive them like if i buy a car i going to drive it and i only need one car so i going to buy one I going to beat the brakes off of it and then fix it up or get rid of it and buy another car And let me get to the point because I'm digressing. You know how I go on tangents. But eventually it came to a money talk, right? And always talking about money, which I don't like talking about money. I mean, it's not a big thing to me. And my goal with what I do is to help other coaches so they can help thousands of people that they're going to touch in their career. And this is a statement of, fuck the success. I just want the money. And I went, oh, that is a big red flag to me. Like money should be a side effect of doing good things. It shouldn't be the focus. And so I'm going to do these things out of need for money or desire for money. It should be, hey, I'm going to do these things and do really well. and I will be rewarded by being able to survive and have money and have some cool things, but I don't need to make everything in my life about having things. I think one of my favorite quotes that I've always lived by for our business is, it's Zig Ziglar, help enough people get what they want out of life, you'll eventually get what you want out of life. And I'm happy where I am. Like, I get to do cool shit. I travel all over the world, and I get to talk to coaches, and I get to help them. I get to get on stage. People pay me to stand up there and tell dick jokes and say cunt. And I'm like, I'm totally happy with this. Now, I'd like to be able to pay my bills a little more, so maybe I should have a little bit more money focus. But that's a dark road to go down when you start focusing too much on that. I also feel like when it comes to the conversation on money, there's so many limiting beliefs around money and people's accretion of getting more money. that it's this constant chase, but there's so much emphasis put on money as this kind of predictor of success or status that the kind of cost of trying to chase it comes out health, family, relationships, all these things. And ultimately, once you've received that money, it's like, was it worth it all? One thing you didn't mention is your soul. Yeah, 100%. If you look at a lot of the guys that are at the very top of our industry, how many people have they fucked getting up there without even giving them the respect of giving them some fucking lube. Because that's it. All the guys I know that are the most successful in the industry have usually fucked a bunch of people to get there. And I said I would never do that. No fucking way. It's true. Like, yeah, who are you going to trample to get to where you want to be? And what's the cost of that? I want to be able to sleep well at night. And I want to be rewarded not from fucking other people over, but from doing good shit. And ultimately, when you have that big pile of cash, who are you celebrating it with? Yeah. When you're sitting alone in your mansion thinking about, okay, who am I going to share this money with? No one cares. You're either going to share it with fair weather friends who are only with you when you have money, or you're going to share it with other people who fucked a lot of people to get where they are. And then you can't trust those people at all? No. Because you're looking them in the eye because they're going to fuck you over as well at the same time? Look, it's just like I'm always transparent with everything I do. So I probably shouldn't say this on video. There's only one viewer to this podcast anyway. It's fine. Thank you, man. So it's like everybody knows that I like to do recreational drugs, and I'm very responsible with them, and I do them in places where I can do them and not get in trouble. And they're a once-in-a-while type of thing. But when I was in my 20s, I did a lot all the time. And it was funny that when you decided to get out of that, all those people who were your friends were only friends because you were all going out and doing the stuff together. So it's the same thing about money. what happens when you lose all your money those people aren't going to be around the people that will be around are the people that you helped and respected you but the people that you fucked won't be around and other people with money won't be around yeah i mean i learned that the hard way in my 20s because i was i grew up in my 20s i had my very much my self-esteem issues my insecurities and i'm grateful i've done well you know i've had some good money and money was my outlet to have to buy friends yeah take people out treat them to gifts and do certain things for them if they needed money here you go it was always there but then when i got hit when i had the cancer and i had to have a year out the industry and i was two thousand pounds overdrawn my bank account those people disappeared yeah you know and when i look back at that period i'm like that's one of the lessons from that experience of like how many people actually give a shit about you when you're a rock bottom yeah and you know uh i'm sure at that time you helped a lot of them out too like treated them to things helped them out with things but the minute you needed help nobody's listening and that's no sob thing of people need to be there and I deserved it, no it's a case of it goes back to being human for me I'm very much and I'm never going to change, I'm always going to be the one that wants to nurture others, to lift them up because I want people to succeed, there's no part of me that thinks I can help this individual and they're going to go and be a better coach than I am or they're going to earn more money that's awesome because no one's going to be me and have my story and take that away from me So for me life is about lifting others up but that come at very hard lessons of if I was a typical good Indian boy I could have had a lot of money now and had my multiple properties and nice cars and everything but I was too naive thinking that everyone would be as nice as I would. And the moment I needed something, they'd run back, but no. You're left alone sitting in an A&E with your IV drips there. You're going to possibly react into the chemo like I was, and no one's by your side. and that's not to say that those people are bad, it's just I believe people inherently come from what you say is about self-preservation and if they see something that kind of facilitates that they will take and they will continue to take and the moment it doesn't serve them you're just gone and that's the harsh reality of life that people don't understand is very, some, life has become very transactional and it goes back to what I asked you earlier about what's happening with men is because that's the way I see men right now, being a man is very transactional what can a man do for women or what can man do for society yeah what if what happens is just being a man that's it yeah and doing the right thing and not doing it we're thinking about what he can offer and it's just like this is who i am but we're in this this situation we're told we can't be men anymore it's bad to be a man we need all men to be effeminate and boys can't be boys anymore and i know that statement is that people go boys boys will be boys and they use that as an excuse to do nefarious shit but realistically boys and girls are completely different well you get down the education system the education system is very much in my opinion geared up for feminine energy you know whereas men need to be out there playing they don't want to sit down in a classroom having a lecture in front of them they need to be out there playing that's how they learn i think kids should be playing and fighting that's it yeah and then learning how to make up yeah and learning how to like take your black eye and shake shake hands and then be friends again. But you get that with men. Like you could, you can, you can have your best friend and the next minute you're having a fist cup and you're like banging your shirt up the next minute, your best friends again. That's it. That's just, that's how you learn. That's it. I mean, that's, that's how you learn when to run your mouth and when to shut your mouth and how far you can push somebody before they're going to strike you back. Yeah. And I think there's, if kids need, I think kids need to learn that at an early age because then they get to an adulthood and they don't know the boundaries and the limits of another man. and then they get punched in the fucking face. Or they get put in hospital or they get stabbed or they get hurt really bad. Or they're terrified to protect somebody when they see somebody getting hurt in public. You see videos all the time. In New York, like people crazy, somebody crazy, maybe they got psychosis, maybe they're on drugs and they're running around the subway and they're screaming and yelling and they're grabbing people and hitting women and not a single man steps in. Instead, they pull their phones out and they record it when what they should be doing is taking action. But then a guy did take action and put a gun on the ground, and the guy died. And the next thing is he's in court trying to justify why he needed to protect everybody. He's trying not to go to jail. It's fucking insanity. That's what I was going to say. And I see that here in this country when often it's the one that steps in that gets in trouble, not the one that committed the crime. And people will go, well, that's what the cops are for. There weren't any cops on that subway train. Like, what, is he supposed to just stand there and let it happen? Even the cops don't care anymore, do they? Yeah. Really, truly, if you see it here now in the state of the UK, police force, they don't really care. That's fucking crazy. You know, how many mobile phone desks are there daily? How many shop robberies? But the police can't do anything because they themselves are helpless. Yeah. You see, like you and I have this advantage. We're big dudes. So if I'm walking down the street with my phone in my hand, I'm not a good target. You're not a good target. Like, I'm not saying we're not going to get mugged. I mean, knife's the knife, right? and a crowd is a crowd and you can only fight off so many dudes but if somebody's walking down the street and they're looking for uh for uh what's the target yeah they're gonna look at us and go that's not worth the trouble because i might be able to do that but i'm probably going to get hurt they're going to find somebody weaker and that's just the way it is and so if the cops aren't going to be around the cops aren't going to help it goes to us i can't remember the exact study it was but it's just years back i listened to it and talked about how in this context when you're out and about people who get mugged and so forth the ones that do go it's their how they hold themselves their posture the ones that are often timid and looking down and rolled forward but the ones that have the power pose that stand tall and some people don't and the people not paying attention they're on they're walking down the street they'll get at the phone and i mean that when my wife and i met i was that's the one thing i would tell her i was like you need to pay you need to pay more attention like because if i'm in a place where i feel like it's a bit dodgy I'm paying attention and I'm making sure I'm not looking at my phone I'm I'm turning my head I'm scanning I'm just making sure nothing happens because things can happen really fast and and out of nowhere but uh yeah I mean there's my wife seen me uh seen me choke people out not something I wanted her to see but we were in Canada we were at a an Irish pub in Canada in the middle of nowhere and I had gone to get some treatments on my shoulder my ribs because I messed myself

up and then all over the world nobody could fix me and my buddy had just finished some manual therapy some new stuff like cranial sacral things and like really hard like it was painfulish I was crying in the treatment but it fixed me so one day after the after he worked on me I was hungry and I said let's go this Irish pub and he's like this is not really a great neighborhood I'm like yeah but I'm hungry and I don't think anything's gonna happen so we sit down and we're eating and she looks up and she points and she's got food in her mouth so she's trying to tell me something and what she swallows because there's a fight and i'm like oh a fight great so bug fight excellent so i turn and this guy punches another guy the guy hits the ground the guy who had punched him stepped back and fucking punted the dude in the head and i'm like whoa and no one's doing anything so i ran up and i grabbed the guy and pulled him to the ground i choked him out and uh i was like i can't i'm like i can't believe like no one did that he could have killed that dude And if he had just gotten on him, like mounted him and popped him a few times, I would have just watched. Maybe I'd pull my phone out. They're like, oh, this is going to look great on Instagram. You could hit some social media, yeah. But, like, when you're seeing somebody doing something that could possibly kill another human being, like, you have to do something. If you're the only dude or only dude willing or capable, you've got to step in. And I remember, this is the fucking weirdest thing ever. So I choked a guy, and he's thrashing around. I'm like, bro, just stop fighting, and I'll let you go. So he just goes completely flaccid. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to let you up. I'm going to go back and eat my dinner. You're going to go back to what you're doing, but you can't kick people in the head. So I go back. A few minutes later, he walks up to me, and he goes, hey. And he puts his hand out, and he shakes my hand. And he goes, that was a good choke. It was in there really deep. And I went, yeah, that's kind of the point of a joke. And he goes, man, I just want to explain what happened. And I'm like, I don't give a shit, dude. I just let me eat my schnitzel, man. I don't give a fuck. And apparently the guy ran up a big bar tab and ran out. And the guy punched him. He knew the owners. And I went, dude, look, I don't need a story. I'm not here. I'm not here for dinner and a show. I got it anyways. I got drawn into being part of the show. I just want to eat my food and go home. I said but bro like you punch somebody fine but don't kick somebody in the fucking head when they're on the ground like that like that is not acceptable but it just blows my mind that people won't step in these days well it's an interesting one like so firstly I want to add to the point where you said like if we're yes we maybe have like bigger statues compared to other people but even if I'm by myself and I walk and I run I see a bunch of guys I am still a bit afraid. I'm hesitant because again, going back to this perception of what men should be, this automatic assumption is that we're the protectors as we are. We're not all warriors. No, we're not, but you look around at all the dudes that are standing there, there's some warriors there. Now we have to have this theological discussion of are you afraid to step in or are you afraid you're going to get in trouble for stepping in? Because that's the reality nowadays. We're supposed to let the police handle it. And like you said, the police don't do anything. Because when you talk about being afraid to step in, I was in that exact situation four weeks ago. I was on the train coming back from work. So I'm on the carriage. There's probably four girls sitting to my left and then another four to the right, me and then another guy on. And this individual comes on the train, deftly drunk, carrying a bottle of wine with him. And he's just kind of going up to everyone's face, trying to intimidate them. I'm not giving him attention. I'm just keeping my head down. then he goes up to the girls and starts to intimidate them and then me i'm like i need to step in there but what stops me is the fear of if i was to do something to him will i get in trouble yeah and i left that night and luckily he came off the train it was fine but i left that night thinking shit i failed as a man yeah no no no because we've all been in that like the reality is he was just blowing noise like there's nothing now the only what could you do the only thing you could do is try to de-escalate it and then if he escalated then you were going to do something but you weren't in a position where you actually had to do anything because he was just he was just trying to get in their face and talk he was just being a twat but even that you got that decision to make like okay let's run some scenarios I go up to him and I say hey why don't we all calm down or why don't we do whatever and then he goes aggro and you end up having to get in a fight anyway so sometimes it's good to be an observer until you have to so it's like the old saying Like it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. So you're in the garden right there. You don't actually need to do anything. But the minute you see something happen, I'm sure you would have stepped in and done something without doubt. I think it goes back to that nature of being a man. Yeah. Even if you may not be the best skilled fighter or know what you're doing, you step in. Yeah. But we see that diminishing now with men It a sad thing Yeah And men don have the Yes I do believe we need to be warriors but we need to have controlled aggression That's right. There's nothing wrong with aggression. There's nothing wrong with violence if it's kept under wraps and it's only there when you need it because the world does need violent men because there are violent bad men, so it needs violent good men. But it needs violent good men who know how to be peaceful until it's time for the shit to go down. I grew up as a very, very angry child, and I still have a lot of anger in me. But I learned through martial arts and weightlifting to channel that anger into something better. And now it's controlled aggression, which only comes out when I lift. But when I'm around people, I'm very timid and soft in my voice. But if they see me angry, they're like, that's not you. You don't know me, innit? Yeah, because they don't need to see that unless it's time to see that. My father was the same way. He was a very quiet guy. he never hardly ever saw him get violent not violent, my dad was not violent I saw him actually get violent with another dude who grabbed me once and that was fucking scary but yeah he never let us see that unless he, there's a good reason he'd get angry but when he got angry he would go like nuclear boom but he would get a hold of it really quickly but it's like that's what you want right? You want it to be Jekyll and Hyde and you want to be Dr. Jekyll most of the time. You don't want to turn into Mr. Hyde. I think that's the right way around. I haven't read the book yet. If it's not, just reverse it. You want to be the good guy 99.9% of the time, but that 0.1% of the time when it matters, you need to be that ability to transition to that and then turn it back off. I was an angry kid too because I was one of the first ADD kids. Not this new ADD that they have. That's basically – Everyone's got ADD now. No, it's basically fucked up dopamine response from being on their phones all the time and getting instant gratification. But this – mine was a genetic thing. And nobody understood it. We're talking about the 80s. Like, we didn't understand this shit. And so I was a very angry kid because I didn't have a proper outlet for it. And I lived in the country, and I was bullied a bit. And we're in the country. Like, we fight. Like, kids – you know, fights every day, every fucking day. It's just a normal thing. we fight and we shake hands and we're friends again and a couple months later we're in another fight and we're friends again it's just the cycle of boys being boys but nowadays you can do that if two kids get in a fight, kid gets expelled from school the kid goes to juvenile hall or the kid gets in massive amounts of trouble and ruins his life for being a fucking kid well they haven't learned to tame that anger have they? No but how do you learn how to do that? you have to do something and then be told that that's not correct but it also comes from having a healthy masculine role model in your life yeah whether that's a good father brother cousin uncle whatever it may be or crying church or something but we don't have that anymore bingo the make the good men are slowly diminishing yeah it's uh it's we've got this point where you have broken families there's no father figure and boys need to be raised by their mothers part of the time and they need to be raised by father or father figure part of the time and be taught how to be a man a woman can only teach a man how to be a man from the perspective of how he should treat a woman but she can't treat him how to be a man in response to other men especially men of varying degrees of aggression and uh and uh egotism and cuntism yeah i think i just made that word that's a word put that shit in the webster dictionary that's it cuntism guys remember that yeah but like you need both sides it's it's the yen and the yang you need both sides of that But this is why we have families. Yeah. This is why, like, I am a very much firm believer on the nuclear family. Like, we need good women and we need good men. Yeah. Because they create a good future. But the narrative push now is you don't need anyone. You're independent. You're strong alone. It's fine. You can do everything yourself, you know. But no, it doesn't work like that. No. But we also don't need nuclear families where the dad's an asshole. 100%. teaches the son the wrong way to understand violence and bullies the kid and then the kid goes and bullies other kids i'm a i i love kids and i will be the best father if i get the opportunity to have kids i'll make mistakes but i know i'll be a good father but at the same time i don't believe everyone should have kids because that little person comes into the world very like a blank canvas innocent free if you don't have your shit together as a man or as a woman you're destroying that kid's life correct and we repeat this buzzword generational trauma you know we continue the cycle we do the very thing that our parents did which we wish to break onto our children yeah so as much as i love the idea of yeah we need family we need kids in the world not everyone should have kids you're single aren't you yeah he's single ladies he's smart as fuck too get on it well there only one view at his podcast yeah but not not not mom that be That be fucking weird That be fucking weird That be weird yeah But it Yes I with you on that Like kids are very much important but not everyone should be having kids Absolutely And it doesn mean that okay I now a perfect man and this is my perfect partner we can have a child. We're going to fuck up. Yeah. Because there's no text. You can read as many books as you want and we're out to raise a kid. But until you're in this scenario, that knowledge isn't, it's bullshit. Yeah. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier about me possibly second on stage for Men's Classic. sorry a master's classic to be a better prep coach i need to go there i'm not going to coach people into that because i've not gone there same thing as a father i can read all the textbooks have all that stuff but until i'm in the actual scenario i have fucking no idea no experience yeah experience like i i've always said that if you're gonna if you're going to coach bodybuilding i don't think it's you have to get on stage but you have to get stage ready because you have absolutely no idea the difference between fat loss and getting to like a normal or or even we'll say above average like below 15 above average level of body fat and once you get a single digit body fat it is a whole completely different fucking ball game and it's the worst when i see people that have never been there but they're like trying to understand what's going on with their client when they're five six percent body fat it's the fucking worst yeah it's true i never want to be there again no no i've i've never been single digit closest i've been is 12 that's it you know and i want to do it this year around just because it's my own as a better coach to go there to understand it from the point of empathy and when i do take people there i can understand how to relate to these things not from a point of view that i want to see how amazing i look it's just that as well it will give you a amazing amount of empathy because you have been there you know my joints hurt all the time sitting in a chair my tailbone hurts and there's nothing i can do about I had no energy getting off the couch to go take a poop, and the bathroom's three meters away, and you'd just rather just hold it in until the turtle head's coming out. Well, the worst one is the lack of fat pads in the feet. Oh, yeah. You know, when I was super lean, it's just that. And you don't realize how much they matter, like being able to walk comfortably without pain in your feet. I did a cadaver course with Thomas Myers where we went. I think it was Boulder, Colorado, and we had untreated bodies, and no formaldehyde, eight of them. You just basically take your body out of a freezer and you and like four or five other people just start cutting them up. And I wanted to look at like the ankle and the foot. And so I'm at the foot and it was amazing to me when you pull everything, you pull the skin out and you cut through everything. How much fat is actually on the bottom of your foot? It blew my mind. I never thought about it. You know, again, it's just another, it's a fat pad. It protects you, it helps you be walking, but you don't realize these things until it's gone. Yeah. you know which and let's lead into that now about the bodybuilding you know we've talked a bit about men but how does that transfer to bodybuilding like so much trouble for this yeah but this but we look at bodybuilding now why did people bodybuilding back in the days you know it was yeah there's obviously some whether it's like never getting daddy's approval or whatever it may be but there was a love for the sport now when i look at it now it's a love for instagram and social media. It's an ego thing. Or this pro card that's going to suddenly go in their bio and make them a better coach. Yeah, and we know that's not the case. We know that's not the case. You know, it's just an ego thing. It's not instant gratification, but it's a gratification thing. I'm just convinced. And look, before anybody throws me some shade, I was a competitive physique athlete. I never did bodybuilding because I actually told one of my friends, I'm like, I don't want to. I don't want to, he goes, why don't you bodybuild? You'd be suited for bodybuilding. I'm like, bro, my dick's too small to get in a banana hammock up there. And it was a black dude, so, you know, he probably had a mendingo penis. And he goes, listen, brother, ain't nobody got a big dick, one or three percent body fat. And I went, you got a fucking point there. You got a point. But, you know, I did men's physique when it first came out. And something I noticed about myself and also about all the other competitors, everybody had a mommy or daddy issue. All of us. like maybe we didn't get told I love you enough maybe we didn't get enough hugs but every fucking person I've ever met except for like a very small outlier who just loved the fuck out of bodybuilding most of them had some type of issue like early childhood trauma that they were using bodybuilding to self-medicate most of the girls that I've met in the WBFF and IPB they come from anorexic bulimic eating disorder background or I've even met people with binge eating disorders you know and they go, okay, I'm going to take this negative thing that I can't, that's allowing me to have some type of feeling of control over myself. And I'm going to turn that into a positive thing to go into bodybuilding. I'm like, that's not really a positive replacement for this because you traded one disorder for another And I not to say that bodybuilding in and of itself is a disorder thing but a lot of them use it as self addiction and then that becomes their whole identity So then when they can't bodybuild anymore, they're a bit fucked because that issue is still there and they haven't done anything about it. They just have to try to find something to replace it with, and there's nothing that's going to replace transforming your body and the psychological and mental fortitude you have to do to get on stage. And, well, anybody can get on stage. There's no prerequisite. You just pay your entry fee. But to be able to get on stage in an attempt to win, like, you get lost. Like, you get lost. And I had a huge identity shift where, at one point, I mean, when I was a powerlifting, I was 124 kilos. Almost every time I walked into somebody, I was almost always the biggest guy there. And that kind of became my gorilla suit. It became my suit of armor. So, like, when I was bullied as a kid, like, I thought if I get really fucking big, nobody's going to bother me. And then I realized the bigger you are, if you walk into a bar, the smallest drunk guy in there is the one that's going to fuck with you the most. And I was like, okay, nobody's intimidated by this, you know. So then in my mid-30s, I went, you know what, this is dumb. Like, what am I doing? And then I decided I don't need to be the biggest guy in the fucking room. I need to be the most well-balanced. and I'd rather be the smartest dude in the room, and sometimes I am, and most of the time I'm not because I go into some fucking rooms where I'm dealing with some guys that would melt my brain with information. Some of the conferences I go to, and I tell my students all the time, you know when I start getting real, like I start rain manning, and I start going deep into biochemistry, and that look you give me, just keep in mind, there are a lot of times I'm in a room, and I got that same look on my face, and I'm like, I have no fucking idea what this guy's talking about, but I want to know. So that's my addiction now is knowledge and acquiring information and knowledge. But that's just another addiction just like anything else. I've just traded one thing for another. But that's what I see. That's what we're just doing. We're thinking we're doing something like bodybuilding because it's going to make us better, but you're just basically using bodybuilding as a plaster for a wound that's not healing. Yeah. And I didn't realize that until I went through counseling. And I went through counseling, went to a trauma counselor, and I hate this phrase, but, you know, it does make sense, first world problems type of things, you know, something my mom said to me when I was like 19, and then that got linked up to a bunch of other stuff that then made me have this feeling of I'm not good enough, and you get that little voice in the back of your head. And so I tried to use the pursuit of success in bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman, business. I tried to use that as a crutch. And it works for a while, but it doesn't work forever. And I finally had to face the fact that I needed to go see somebody to help me unpack that shit. And I'm glad I did because that gave me, I can have a level of empathy and understanding with people going through the same thing. And I can, with conviction, go, hey, I'm seeing some red flags. Maybe you should go talk to somebody about that. Here's an ACE score sheet. Let's just see how many things you click. oh, you clicked seven out of ten, let's refer you to somebody and find you some help. And it makes it such an easier path to getting them there because if you haven't done it, you can't speak from a level of understanding. And then people go, well, I don't want to go see a counselor. I'm not crazy. If you can be relatable and say, yeah, I wasn't either, but I did have some shit in my brain that wasn't able to be processed, I think you would benefit by going and seeing somebody. well I mean many of you who follow me on Instagram know that I obviously put out a daily good morning message with thoughts and people always ask me where I get these things from I'm like it's my observations on my own life because I feel like the more you can understand yourself as a person and understand these things we want to shun away from the more you can then relate to other people because you see patterns I can now see when someone's got low self-esteem or doesn't have that belief in themselves because that was me in a nutshell and to some degree it still is and then i think as a coach it makes you better because you're like hey i can see this coming up but then you also know how to talk to them in the right way about it because some people don't want to have these conversations no it's very easy to just bury things away because it's we'll do it tomorrow or that's not important or why do i need to bring up stuff that happened 20 30 years ago yeah but that makes you who you are today yeah but like we're told as men we're told not to do this we're told we have we you have to be men stop crying i'll give you something to cry about and there's part of it that's like okay we don't want to coddle young men but we also don't want to suppress young men to where they feel like they can't speak for themselves well this all goes back to what i saw people of like you need to be able to yeah so be in a position where you

and talk about these things, but don't let them become your whole identity. I don't want to use the word, but I'll say out there, but we've got a space where we have very kind of like hyper-masculine men, and then you've got these soy boys on one end. But we need a balanced, we need a balance of both. It's the pendulum swing. And a couple of points, like you're a prime example of this because you had cancer. It would have killed you. You got hit by a bus. It could have killed you, and you've used that experience and you've used it as fuel to move forward and help other people. And that's what you should be doing. Like, you don't want to wallow in self-despair and go, oh, whoa, it's me. I got cancer. You got cancer, but you fucking survived. Great. What can you learn and what can you teach others? I got hit by a bus. I'm like, yeah, but you survived. Now you take that and you fuel it to help others. It's exactly what you do. People need to learn from that and say, okay, yeah, we all have problems. We've all had near-death experiences. We've all been in – a lot of us have been in places where we've slept in our car because we couldn't afford rent. or we had to eat tuna and crackers because we couldn't afford food. You have people fucking out on the street homeless. And it's like you can look at that as woe is me or you can use that as an opportunity and try to learn from it and figure out how do I get better. But I look back at the 80s when I was a kid, and you can't really blame people because they didn't know any better. It's true. You think about people in the 70s, men in the 70s. You go back and look at pictures. They got these great mustaches and beards that ride motorcycles. Like it was a whole different world. And you had like a kind of manly men thing. And these guys became fathers. And they didn't really understand how to balance out that whole, you know, 1970s man with like now being a father. And so we kind of went one way too far and created entitlement, kids that were aggressive, violent. And that's when we started swinging that way. But then we hyperreacted and now we're going the complete opposite way. It's like, guys, we need to move back that way, but we need to stop at a certain point and not push it all the way over there and then not let it go all the way to the other side. But it's the same thing in the fitness industry where you see the pendulum swings one way, it goes the other way, and it never stops in the middle. And we have to start getting better at dragging things into having more balance. Yeah. well this is i mean i'll always coin the term like not necessarily balance but harmony in life you know because balance itself means equal distribution to all aspects but we're never going to get that that's good i like that you know it says harmony so if i look at um i'm never going to be a successful bodybuilder i'm never going to well i wouldn't say i'm not going to say i'm never going to win but i'll give it my best shot if i was to step on stage but that then it's that going down the route's going to come at a cost of dieting and potentially affecting relationships or whatever because I'm consumed by that. So the harmony is understanding that certain things will have to be put in the backburn for this to go ahead. So that's not balance, is it? Yeah, but now I'm going to raise another thing because this is something I said in a seminar that I just had about hypertrophy. This is a weird transition from bodybuilding to hypertrophy. And I put up a slide that says maintenance is a lie. There's no such thing as maintenance. It's like you've seen Talladega Nights. It's Ricky Bobby. You ain't first, you last. Like there is no, there's no maze. Your body, its desire is to grow to a point and then start to die. So there's not really any homeostasis because in order to maintain homeostasis, you have to actually, you have to try to drive super compensation. And so if you just go through the motions and do the same shit all the time, you are slowly getting worse. you have to have constant pursuit of getting better even to maintain a facade of maintenance now we were talking about that with fat loss and like you not going to put on muscle without drugs and that type of thing but you get the idea right so the the ability to maintain balance comes from doing imbalanced things because life is by nature imbalanced and so if you want to go let's say if we're if this is if this is where we have harmony and we're going to call it harmony or balance or whatever. The desire is to go this direction, so you have to constantly try to push this direction. So you're using imbalance to maintain balance or using imbalance to create super compensation to get better. But that begins a different level of balance depending on what you're trying to get out of it. And I'm just waffling on. No, no, but it's a great point. It's true. I'll start going like, I don't think I took my ADD medication today. No, but it comes down to the point of understanding whatever it is in life you're pursuing, where is the harmony or balance within that life has no cruise control no cruise control we're all in traffic yeah we're always moving when it comes to the state of moving we're never completely still at one point and if we are life just flies by and you're like fuck yeah what happened just now yeah but i think a lot of people they want to try to live life on cruise control and that's not good it's not good for the person that's not good for society that's not good for the progression of the human race. We have to get more people interested in moving forward, which, like you said, is one reason why I think we need children. Like, I'm not having kids. Like, by the time I met my wife, I was already getting older, and we had medical issues where we might not be able to have kids on both sides. So we just decided we'll have dogs. And our retirement plan, and the only reason we need to make money is because we want to start an animal sanctuary with, like, all dogs and I need two alpacas. That was a non-negotiable. That was actually in my wedding vows and I get my alpacas. But it's like you have to, you got to find a reason to contribute because what's your reason to live? But this is, so actually I had this conversation with a client yesterday. Too many people nowadays don't think about the bigger picture. Yeah. It's very hedonistic and it's about me, not us as a greater whole. It's like he just said, we need to contribute. People don't care about that. No. They just care about how can things serve me. Yeah, how can things contribute to me. But that's such an ass-backwards thing. Like, even if I'm not going to have kids, fine. I can help people in other ways. I can find a way to contribute. If you're not contributing, what is your reason for even getting up in the morning and doing anything? So, like, I don't think I'll ever retire. Even if I won the lottery, I told people if I won the lottery, I would do what I do for free. I mean I would take a lesser role but I'd pay other people to carry on the message and keep building the business regardless of if I needed the money or not so yeah like I think people that aren't willing to contribute and aren't willing to raise kids to contribute shouldn't have fucking kids and we have too many dumb people having lots of kids and it's a I find it sometimes a cosmic joke about how the people who I see should have kids never have kids yeah the people who should be with people who often struggle to be in relationships, but the ones always giving the advice to be with those who are in relationships. It's some weird cosmic joke. So weird. And I'm not to say I'm this perfect man and whatever, but I'm that individual who's always there giving the guidance to the people in the relationships. But then it's like, when it comes to me, I'm like, what am I doing wrong? A guy like you who is in this pursuit of harmony, is in this pursuit of balance related to yourself, and And the guy that's as smart as you should have kids, right? Because there's a genetic potential there if you find the right partner. You've got to pass that on because people are getting dumber. They're getting dumber. Well I think for health reasons I probably won be able to have kids because of the cancer Yeah But I made peace with that a long time ago And for me contributing is what I do every day How old are you I'm 39. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I always wake up every morning thinking, how can I make someone smile today? That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's that simple. That's the contribution to the world. How can I make somebody better? How can I drive forward? Because ultimately, what we do in life should be for others. I don't believe there's such thing as a selfless act. Because there's always a return. Even if it makes you feel good, there's a return. There is an equal exchange of something there or an equal loss, depending on how you raise your kid or the situation, right? And I think people hear you should be a father. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to have kids. Because there are programs like Big Brother, Big Sister, stuff like that. You can be a great uncle if you have, you know, I'm a terrible uncle. This is one thing I'm grateful for. I believe, kids, if you're listening to this, I am a great uncle, yeah? Yeah. Like I'm a terrible son. I'm a terrible brother. I'm a terrible uncle. But I have a reason to be, and it's not an excuse because I don't like excuses. But because of my ADD, if something's not in front of me, it doesn't exist. Like I lose stuff all the time even knowing where I put it. If my wife puts something in front of something, it doesn't exist to me anymore. And I tried my best to work on it, but it's so difficult. And that's fine. But I'm at peace with that. I have terrible relationships with people because of that. but at least I know I'm willing to admit I'm not going to be in denial and be like it's everybody else no it's me even my goal in life, my pursuit to make someone smile every day has become it was born out of the pain I went through and the kind of pain I had growing up my parents are phenomenal people, I love them to bits but they only had a limited skill set on how to raise me and they could give me everything that the conventional kids wanted whether it was money or opportunities but they didn't give me what I actually needed but I learned from a young age that that just wasn't their language. So I developed that within me and then I'm driven by that pain to make people smile and make people not feel alone because I know what it feels like to be lonely and to be nothing in a world that's crying out to you every day. So that's the contribution. And you're right, it doesn't have to be my own kids. No. Look, I totally get that. I look at my employees as my kids because other than one of them, I'm quite significantly older than most of them. I look at my students as my kids. Like, how can I help them? These people be better because I'm not going to have kids. And I come from a similar background as you. My background is, like, lower middle class. Dad was working overtime all the time, so he was never around. You know, they did their best to give me whatever they could, like the opportunities. But we weren't like a huggy, huggy, kissy, I love you family. I think I didn't hear my dad say I love you until I was, like, 23 or something. You know, and that's a long time. And my mom said it, but it was like on Christmas and Thanksgiving, holidays. I used to see my other kids, their parents would say it to them every day. Like we just weren't that type of family. So I had a lot of relationship issues and the ability to express love in what should be a normal, acceptable way. It's always been difficult for me. I mean, I'll stand firm with this statement that I believe that the vast majority of men's love language is words of affirmation. Mine, 100%. saying I love them because my dad hasn't said to me yeah if my wife listens to this hopefully she's probably sick of hearing me talk she has to edit all my videos but this is why I go out there try to make others smile and happy because I know what it likes to not have that for my father yeah and I made peace with that because I know he's never going to say it but I'd also be lying if I said I actually made genuine peace because it's still a part of me that wishes but I don't let it consume me basically yeah like that's words of affirmation that's mine like I just want to be told him doing a good job. Man you know I bring up another topic something that really scaring the shit out of me Like I like all the AI stuff I think it cool It actually now that I learning how to use it it making me work faster with the stuff that I not very good at But what's going to happen when AI gets to the point where we have robots doing all the menial jobs? And I suppose they're going to put people on, like, a universal income. what's going to happen with people who the only thing they had in their life was their job, even if it was just a menial job. You worked at McDonald's at the front counter, and now it's all robots and shit. Like, what are you going to do? Because you have nothing. Like, you have no hobbies. You have no passions. I'm hoping people develop the ability to find something that they're passionate about to actually fill their time. But this is another thing now, because that's not instilled in them from a young age, because they're told that you need to go out there and get a job and be successful. That's all it means to live? No. So people don't have that purpose. And again, it comes from having a good role model to say, what is your purpose? Yeah, and that's the thing. Like where I'm from, the pathway to adulthood is you make good grades, you go to college, make good grades, you meet your wife, you marry your college wife, you have a lot of babies, and that's what you do. And it's like you've basically made everybody on the same path, and you haven't reinforced like learning to play the piano or learning how to draw or getting into the arts or singing or playing sports and you know you've gotten out of this giving them a pathway of what they need to be doing when they're not actually working but I guess that's part of too like like I am pro-capitalist I'm just not pro-capitalistic greed I like free trade I like the ability to trade goods and services for money and make a living that way. But again, when that gets out of balance and it only becomes that, like you've got nothing left. It's true. Well, we're going to wrap this up soon. So I want to end with one point for you then. What's your closing statement to the people listening to this? After everything we've said today, what's your closing statement? My closing statement? Yeah. It's been an hour and we could waffle on forever. I think people's attention span will probably die after this. yeah I think like man just don't be a fucking cunt just be a good fucking person don't be if you're gonna be a man don't be a toxic man if you're gonna be a woman don't be a toxic woman like just be nice to fucking people just wrap that up for me in a nice little thing what does it mean to be a good man and a good woman I think to I hate altruism and I hate selflessness to the degree where you set yourself on fire for people and people take advantage of you I think there should always be you should always give things never expecting anything back but you should always take things in an effort to now give something back and if we all just balance that out and didn't just take and give but had equal exchange or even if it's slightly unbalanced make it fair like make it fair alright perfect conclusion well guys thank you so much for tuning in to episode 7 yes I'm right that's it I will promise to do more of these and thank you for all you who do listen because it does mean a lot for me and I'm still doing my own sort of beliefs and limited beliefs and hold me back from doing this but I'm really grateful to have Luke on definitely someone who's contributed to my career as a coach a mentor and an absolutely awesome person so thank you so much for coming on and I'm going to give a closing statement you should do this because I've been on a lot of podcasts a lot of good ones and a lot of really fucking train wreck ones and you got a gift for this so you should keep doing it Thanks. I paid him for that, by the way, guys. So on that note, goodbye. Thanks for listening. Good. Cheers, mate.