Terry Crews Interview | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast) | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

optimal minimal this altitude i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can i also replace my question? now what a scene i brought back time what if i did the algorithm? i'm a cybernetic organism living to show a metal anthoscillate me too ferris show this episode is brought to you by 99 designs i've used 99 designs for ages since even before podcasting was the thing and i've used them for all sorts of graphic design needs they are fast and they are convenience whether you need a logo website book cover or anything else i've done competitions for instance for book covers related to the four-hour body 99 designs makes great design accessible to everyone and it makes the process so much easier and i use them recently for artwork and illustrations inside of my tau of Seneca a set of books so this is a collection of stoic writing and modern interviews and so on so for the tau of Seneca i decided to use their one-to-one project service in this case you invite a specific designer to your project agree on a price and then work together until you're satisfied and the artwork just blew my mind you have to check it out i kid you not so you can check out some of the artwork from tau of Seneca as well as some artwork and logos and so on that your fellow listeners have had made at 99designs.com/tim that's 99designs.com/tim i really suggest you check it out and right now you guys can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first project this gets you i think 130% more submissions so people who want to work with you and give you first drafts of what you're looking for to access your free design please visit 99designs.com/tim and click the link on the landing page that's 99designs.com/tim this episode is brought to you by fresh books man oh man do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love fresh books to the extent that i ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago why are they so popular well they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals that's many of you and used by more than 10 million people you can send invoices track your time and get paid very very quickly which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers a lot of entrepreneururs and beyond you can take pictures or receipts you can link your credit card and debit cards so all the things you buy automatically appear in your fresh books in the right category so on and so forth makes taxes easy makes invoices easy makes your life easier and also in fact i would recommend a pdf they didn't ask me to read this part by the way they put together pdf a while back uh called breaking the time barrier subtitle how to unlock your true earning potential so you can search for breaking the time barrier a lot of people ask me how can i get a four-hour work week with a service business and the story in that ebook it's pdf is the short answer it's really really good so i think you should also check that out so breaking the time barrier check it out but also why not test out fresh books claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim Ferriss two hours and two s's in the how did you hear about us section that sounds like we're gonna get very little tracking that's a lot of work but just go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and try it out because it is a very good product and i think you will find it simplifies your life enjoy. Hello boys and girls ladies and germs this is Tim Ferriss and thank you for joining me once again as always it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits routines and so on that you can use this episode is a very special one it was such a treat and you will realize why once we get into it but it was recorded live at the Aratani theater in Los Angeles in front of a sold-out crowd so thank you to everyone who came this was for live talks la and the guest was from within the pages of tribamentals Terry Cruz you may have heard of Terry Cruz before twitter instagram at terry crews facebook real terry crews terry crews.com Terry Cruz is an actor and former NFL player Los Angeles Rams San Diego Chargers Washington Red skins and Philadelphia Eagles his wide-ranging credits include the original viral old spice commercials television series such as the newsroom arrested development and everybody hates Chris and films including white chicks very underrated film i think it's fantastic the expendables franchise bridesmaids and the longest yard he now stars on the golden globe award-winning fox sitcom Brooklyn nine nine in 2014 Terry released his auto bio manhood subtitle how to be a better man or just live with one and we start in some really unusual places in this conversation and it takes us a little bit of time to warm up as it very very often does but stick around because this conversation really really delivered and with terry you just have to give him the ball and let him run with it and that applies metaphorically in so many different capacities but i really hope you enjoyed this conversation if you enjoy it even half as much as i did you will love it it was that much fun and i remember for hours afterwards i went out to have wine and dinner with a few friends and i just said god man terry really really hit a home run with this evening i mean he just killed it and i think you get a feeling for why that's the case a lot of these stories you have never heard before a lot of the tips the tools favorite books and so on the elaborations you have never heard before terry is a true original and here we go without further ado please enjoy my conversation with terry cruz yo what's up man it's so good how y'all doing oh this is awesome i love Jim Farris this has been so surreal for me first greeting you this is the first time we've met in person and clapping him on the trap and feeling like i was trying to move a steer i realized you are in fact as big as you look on television and first and foremost i really just wanted to thank you for and i mentioned this backstage but being so deliberate and thoughtful in your responses because i do know

Terry Crews: Art, Confidence, And Overcoming Setbacks

Terry Cruises Early Life (07:01)

how busy you are and we're going to talk about that schedule and you really took the time to put intention into your answers and people have just gone berserk i mean it's been a very powerful impact so thank you for that thank you thank you and i thought we'd start somewhere that perhaps people wouldn't associate you with if that's even english but you guys get my drift and that is art so i went on to your instagram profile not too long ago and i saw a number of different profiles and then i started digging and i didn't want to tease out too much because i want to talk about it can you tell us a little bit about your background with art wow first of all i grew up in flint michigan um very popular place right now i drank the water i did i'm a little crazy uh but the deal was is that i've always been left-handed right-brained and very visual about everything in my life and i remember it was uh i have a older brother and a younger sister and when my mom was uh when my brother was off to school i was about four you know five years old i hadn't gone to kindergarten yet i used to just sit and draw all day long and it was something where i remember being inside of a painting or a picture or a drawing and time would stop i would be there for almost i i remember starting a drawing or whatever and it would turn into night it would be eight hours to have gone by and it felt like literally 20 minutes and uh i got better and better and and but but this is a deal too is that i was always always disappointed as an artist because it never looked the way i wanted it

Terry Finds His Focus/Terries Love for Art (08:41)

to look so every drawing every painting became this effort to make what was in my head match what was on the paper and i'm still doing that i mean in regards to performances in regards to drawing in regards to my furniture in regards to all the things that i've ever tried to do it's still not as good as it is in my head and that's crazy it is it's weird but i think my whole life has been trying to match up with this thing and this vision that i have in my head and i don't think i'll ever get there but it's fun to try so i want to dig into a few details of this because you're a very uh understated guy so you used to paint portraits of football players as a means of making money not only that but you had an art scholarship before you had a football scholarship that's right that's right so this isn't just me as a professional courtesy trying to paint a holistic picture of somebody bigger than what you see on screen like this guy's real artist and that's speaking to someone that i wanted to be a comic book penciler for about 15 years so throughout college and everything i was an illustrator trying to pay some of the bills i was a very very bad bouncer not built for it and and i suppose a mediocre illustrator but i really really appreciate that and how did art serve you through these 17 to 20 lives that you seem to have led man um you got to know i mean growing up in Flint there were a number of obstacles i mean crazy crazy obstacles because i grew up in the i mean at the height of the crack epidemic and also the demise of the auto industry so there were two things happening at once and they were both horribly bad i mean i my it was like the 80s probably late 70s all the way through the 80s into the 90s was literally the walking dead and it was real i mean you had people who were cracked out i had friends family who one day you know whatever good people the next day they were stealing everything you had uh all the way to everyone you knew were losing their jobs and it was a panic and i remember there was two ways out and one was through music and performing another way was athletics but art never you couldn't get paid doing art you know what i mean it was kind everybody like that's a wonderful picture but it's you're a starving artist that's the whole term you know and i remember just saying okay i'm gonna do this art thing but i had to do the football thing too and these were my ways out now i didn't believe that i was actually going to get any kind of light as an artist but i had one teacher one man mr. Eicholberg i'll never forget this and he was like i believe he's

The Power of Confidence (12:08)

a terry you are an amazing artist he was like i'm an art teacher you're better than me and he said you can go somewhere with this and i was like okay but you know nobody's gonna pay you know nobody's gonna pay me to do this nobody it's it's good but i i got to use football well he filled out all the applications for me and i didn't even know wow this is crazy and he took my pictures and my paintings and everything that i did he took and got him photographed did all this stuff sent him to interlocking arts academy now interlocking is just world famous big deal big big deal arts camp up in northern michigan near traverse city and you studied with people from all over the world and he he literally came to me and told me he already filled out everything and he said terry you have a scholarship from christmas bull ride to go to interlocking arts academy and i was like what are you talking about like you know first of all i didn't think it was possible this is the deal there's a lot of things you know it's weird because you got to let people believe in you but i didn't believe in myself and when i got a chance to go to interlocking and study with people from europe and from Brazil and from and these was mainly music students and then they had art students and it was justice like and coming from flint i mean coming from the hood and then once i did this changed my life once i i remember we had an and it was really big on competition very very big on competition it was like if you were a violinist you had to be the first chair and second chair and i remember all these kids were disappointed because they kept moving down and they would just feel like they were crushed and the same thing with art they gave us two pain we had to do two drawings and we had the whole class doing all these drawings and they said put your drawings on the wall and don't put your name on them we have the uh this this guy coming from the from the cleveland institute of art he's going to judge each painting and we want to see who's the best and i was like oh man you know and so i did my deal and i put all it was a wall full of art and the the the art guy pointed at mine and he said that one's the best one then he went all the way across the room and he said that one and they were both mine and i was like now life is a confidence game because then you could tell me nothing i was like damn it i'm good you know i got two arrogant and i got arrogant you know i'm the best one here you know and then you have to be humbled some other way even up um but that would let me know i was like well i can i can do it i can do it like i'm really as good as these people this is all over the world and then i got a scholarship to western michigan university in art but it was small it wasn't full right but it was a small deal so i got an art scholarship and walked on to the football team and my mom passed away about almost three years ago and she always would tell me she was like whatever you do i know you're doing all this football stuff you're doing all this other thing but never forget you're an artist babe you're an artist i'm telling you when i see what i'm doing right now and i get to i get to do so many things that so many people never got to see i get to go so many places and do so many things that none of the people who wanted to were able to um i feel like there is a responsibility but also if if if i don't do it everything they've gone through it's nothing you know so the way i approach things is really it's kind of for everyone else you know i have to try it i have to go for it and i knew even as i was doing football and i was doing all this stuff i remember once because football was hard football was a very very again another competitive deal you know you would get in the team get on the team and i would get cut i was like i have to depend on this art thing because this is what got me here and so i would go back in the locker room and this is how i was married i

The Importance of Feedback (16:52)

had two kids at the time i would go back in the locker room and go to the players and i would ask them if they wanted their portraits painted and i and the weird thing is they were like oh man come on man you can't do it and i was showing my portfolio and they were like damn dude all right and i was like look man i want to paint you over this big you know it's i'm gonna put you and you're gonna be a giant over the city and i can have wind you can have wings and you can do it and let me tell you you know football players the most egotistical people in the world they were like oh damn yeah man i want the wings dog how much for them wings man you know i was like oh yeah and i would do these masterpieces but you know i have to tell you this too i did have a scam i had a scam this is a scam in college in college i would because what happened is i was playing football but when you play football you don't get money for for uh for uh supplies you only get book loans see scholarship is a chip all you got i'm telling you the NCAA is a chip dude the whole deal you are not a student athlete you are semi-pro that's all it is there's no student in it i'm just putting it right now and what was crazy is that i was like hey but i want to study art they were like uh why don't you just study business or something so you so it's easier to get by because the whole thing is just getting by take a class or you can go to football class football practice so but i was like i'm an artist they were like okay whatever so i would go to these labs and i would make this is what i had a plan in the summer i would make like probably 10 paintings and then i would make four of them really suck like they would be really really bad and i would bring those in in the beginning and these these labs and i would go to the teachers i was like man you know what's wrong with this like help me out here you know he was an old terry oh my god look okay we're gonna work on your perspective and we're gonna do this and i was like yeah i know help me and then i go home and then i go to practice but like a month and never do anything else because i had the paintings done then i i bring another one in that was a little bit better and let me say i did this the whole semester and then i would bring out the masterpieces and i was here now later i said look how much you helped me you took me from here to there sir and they were like you get an a you were awesome and i that's how and i again the whole thing was a scam but i had to survive i had to find a way to stay in school because this is the thing a lot of people don't know is that they could take your scholarship it was crazy it was one of those things where you are there as a body and if you don't perform don't find a way to get rid of you so obviously i'm not that's a whole another subject see you you mentioned surviving you you strike me as a really well adapted

Next Steps for You (19:56)

survivor i mean you've been through a lot you've experienced a lot in your life and you mentioned very briefly backstage and i said uh no i want to talk about this yeah in front of everybody a vow that you and your uh was it your brother or your friend made very very uh the vow that you made oh yeah could you explain that give the the story of that from your childhood well first of all i what this is the oh i'd love to demystify it okay when i was a kid no one would tell us anything anything like and you got to stand growing up in flint michigan it's a factory town and it's literally crabs in a bucket like if you told people they like i said this before but people will say you know you can do anything you want to do terry cruz you can do it you tell them what you want to do and then like what the hell make you think you want you can do that and you're like wait a minute man you just say what you do you do you want to do you just said that and i will call him on it but what was wild is because again in the factory town everybody drove the same car you had the same house you had every everything was the same you went to the same stores there was this one place called Meyer thrifty acres everybody would go you would find all the same food it was the same clothing everything was the same and i didn't want any of it and i remember just asking people how do you get from here to there like what's the secret to this what's the day one day you go find out you just got to tough it out and you know come on man you know i'm nine all right you know i didn't want all that right and so what i did me and my best friend made a vow we made a vow that whatever you learn something that i don't know you are going to have to tell me and if i learn something you don't know i'll promise to tell you and this is how i got through my whole teenage years because no one let me tell you my father was he was a drunk he was abusive he beat my earliest memory is him hitting my mother in the face as hard as he could and heard him get knocked out and i knew for a long time that i had to do something to get out like you know what that does to a five year old child is that you realize okay first of all he says he loves her and he just knocked her out so what are you going to do to me so i remember trying to be very very strong as a young kid i remember i would lift up couches lift up you know make muscles and whole thing

Continued (22:59)

was like i was obsessed with becoming strong and what was wild is that right along with that you had to be smart because this is this is another thing that's crazy is that you know in masculinity we always say hey man you know we never negotiate with a terrorist never but if you talk to a real negotiator you always negotiate with a terrorist now stop like first of all i had to negotiate with my father when he got mad it was like hey man you want to have a beer what you need and now turn on the tv okay what are you okay everybody be quiet everybody be quiet because he's here and those are i spent all my young days negotiating with that then you go outside and you got the drug dealer you got the bully you got the gang member you're like hey man so i walk on the side of the street or the side of the street are we cool okay are we good oh you know when we go over there all right cool yeah all right oh i didn't talk to your girl i didn't talk to your sister i didn't i didn't dude so you're negotiating that i go to football and that world and you're negotiating with coaches i let me tell you i had a coach who was like hey man i like Tyrone i'm like this is why god he's like i'm gonna call you Tyrone i said my name is Terry coach he said i like Tyrone your name is Tyrone he called me freaking Tyrone do you know how abusive that is yeah how demeaning that is but i had to negotiate with this guy because he had my dream in his hand and i was like what am i gonna do okay this is my way to make money this is my way out of flint this is my way out of doing whatever i gotta do you're Tyrone okay i'll be Tyrone right now that's what i have to do and it's so wild because you realize this negotiation thing keeps playing and it plays out in different ways you know what i mean and i'm going to have to bring it up because i want to bring up what's happening in hollywood right now because you have a lot of people who are negotiating with terrorists you're negotiating with people who are holding your dreams in their hands and it's kind of wild because you know i get i've been through all this i mean all the way from my dad all the way up to hollywood you spent 20 years building this career and i'm freaking out to negotiate with a terrorist for my own dream and i'm sitting here like wait a minute man i don't have to put up with that i don't have to do this i don't have to put up with it and it's kind of wild because you have to get to a point in every every job and everything when you just had enough like there was times in the hood when i said i had enough and i fought back there was a time with my dad i said i had enough and i beat his ass there was a time now when i've had enough with this shit and i said no more no more this i'm not going for and it's wild because you give people a shot you give people a shot you give people a chance to make things right to say hey man you know you're not doing me right okay and you're just a deal i've learned too hey i'm sorry i know it's probably some questions but i'm i'm going off i'm tired of hearing myself talk i know my my wife says he damn near interviews himself that's the deal that's why she's not here tonight that's the lazy man's interview i know the monologue that lazy man's interview i hate i got so much damn to say i'm sorry no it's just trying to get it off my chest man it's just i'm getting off my chest because first of all it's so wild because um you know once you reach certain spots and you and you

Reaching my goals (26:45)

have to negotiate with these guys long enough to get what you need to get what you have to have and then you can move on and um when i look at what art has done for me and when i look at you know because right now i have a furniture collection a furniture it burn heart gave me a a collection of furniture and i kind of you know segwayed into that and i still do art and i still paint and i still draw i plan on literally having art shows and i mean later in my life just really becoming full-fledged you know with painting and drawing and the whole thing but one thing is that it's really been something that no one can take from me like it's something i can do all on my own and i don't care there's no i don't have to you don't have to like it if i like it it's okay and it's become one of the things that in my life that's what art is it's literally subjective it's what you want to see and again it's all about can i get this vision that's in my head on this piece of paper but now it's almost like i want to my life has turned into art i want the vision of who i am and who i want to be to be out in real life i like to call myself a motivational doer i hate talking so much like i'm a big talker as you can tell but the big thing is i want to back everything up with action i want to be an action figure like always always back it up with movement don't talk about working out you can do it all day but do it

Art is everything (28:16)

and that was the big big distinction i've seen especially growing up in the hood so many people man i'm finna do this i'm finna i'm finna and man i said man well why haven't you why aren't you and so everything you see me doing i just said i'm going i'm trying i'm going for it i don't care and we'll see what happens okay questions all right thank you i don't know i think the time is up i think that's all me here all week all right all right so i have two two questions related to everything you just said and it's going

How Terry got the attitude and talkative (28:59)

to take ten minutes for me to get them out no the the first one is related to how you responded to all of those challenges you're an abusive father you have an abusive coach you've all these various challenges and there are a lot of people who i suspect and i i know some of them who respond to those environmental factors by becoming bitter and not doing so where do you develop your optimism or that ability to be proactive because a lot of people just opt out they feel like the deck is stacked against them and they they choose not to even attempt you know um and this is real man i learned it from my wife um you know for me you listen i've been a part of this super masculine you know the toxic masculine world for so long and i had a come to Jesus meeting so to speak it like literally everything was ending like i was a narcissist totally still i'm a little bit definitely uh but i'm working on that every day just to oh this uh i i would say it's a it's an ongoing process i would say over the last 17 years you know what i mean literally from 17 from from me 17 years ago to now it's it was like whoa like especially after football like once football ended and the entertainment thing kind of happened i started i had to learn like you can't bite your way out of things you have to think your way out of things and i noticed how my wife behaved and i noticed how actually how women behave because women have to think their way out of all kinds of situations whereas guys can we can muscle our way through and do all this stuff and and whatever but i realized that that was not getting me anywhere and my wife really taught me that vulnerability is not weakness that i had to be vulnerable but i had to be authentic at the same time and she would always always talk to me and tell me that terry you have to you and she would always tell me the truth like there's nothing more valuable than somebody who's going to speak the truth into your life and and she would constantly tell me this is wrong the way you're acting right now is awful and i'm just like what what i'm i'm like all these other guys because that's what guys do you compare yourself to all the other guys and you say but compared to them i'm good right and you know she's like i'm done you're gonna be i'll never forget the first time i had a big job i remember i got a big movie and whatever and i was i remember i was walking around at this party and i had a cigar and i was walking around and i was i was man i had to swag i had the whole thing she was like okay you can stay over there i'm gonna be over here and i was like what are you talking about well i'm winning i'm winning and she was like no baby uh uh uh nope nope and and i was like whoa and i realized just in those little ways i was losing her and so i had to put this guard down and i would come back over there and she said not ask my tikri i was like oh wow and then i had to be the same way with my kids now i have i have two grown kids um actually three now molds started 30 now another one is 27 and they were the football kids who went through the whole mask toxic masculinity phase and i tell you i tell the kids all the time those two i'm like look you want cash credit whatever you get it because i messed y'all up really bad i did i i messed you up bad i was like i'm so sorry i constantly apologize constantly try to make amends because i was too tough i was too hard i was waiting now they they look at the other ones and they look at you treat them so good i'm like i know i'm so sorry what can i say um but again my wife has been the example for me and i remember when i had i you know one of the biggest fights that i ever had in my life was an addiction to pornography and you know i put it in my book but the whole thing was i had to once i realized that i terry cruis thought that i was more valuable than my wife and kids simply because i was a man and that allowed the pornography to exist in my life because they were objects and let me tell you man mom i'll never forget my wife was like i'm done i'm out i've had enough and then at first i was like okay go bye you know i was just fine another girl it'd be all good but and all of a sudden there was a little voice and it said maybe it's me i was like no it couldn't be me couldn't be i mean come on you know she's out standing she's out there and everything was looking out like this everything was blaming everybody else for what i was going through and man that voice came back again it's like a cracked egg man once that egg cracks you can't close it up you can't seal it again and i was like man it is me it is me and man let me tell you it was like one day thinking that you know the the sun revolves around the earth and then somebody going no no no no no no we go around the sun dude and i was like oh shit like it's a whole nother deal and i went to rehab i went you know because this is another thing in black culture you don't get therapy it's viewed as very very weak your viewed as you know you're not your your your punk you're sorry and man i broke through all of that and i'm gonna tell you man i'm i'm i can't that's when it all started for me and then the next goal was to start talking because even now right now this right here is therapy for me it's therapy talking about things sharing my heart it helps me to to line up what's right in my life and and i have to give this man props to because remember when i told you about looking for the answers and looking for the question you know getting questions and trying to find answers i would go to these books because it was all about finding answers asking questions questions questions i still have a thing on my social media called the hard questions where i just ask questions man if we can't ask questions we're doomed we're doomed okay i'm done i can't stop talking so when i was looking at your history in your book in your backstory one thing that i i paid attention to as a pattern was an uncommon degree of of self-reflection and that's i want to rewind the clock a little bit back to high school and uh the the story one of

A Failure That Set Terry Up for Success in Life (36:52)

the stories that you put in tribamentals is related to my question related to favorite failures or a failure that set you up for later success could you tell us a little bit about that please oh man yes 1986 that was my senior year in high school and we were i was we i went to flinn academy and it was a classy school but we were highly ranked in the state and i was used to be a basketball player i mean i was you know hard to believe now but uh basketball it was a a big sport for me but i

The turning point in Terry Crews life and what he learned from it (36:59)

was the starting center on this team and what was wild is we were picked to go all the way in the state we had a superstar on our team and we had a really really good team but we had we played against a school who decided not to play it was the district championship it was right in the beginning of the playoffs and these guys would take the ball down the court and pass the ball to each other at top of the court and wouldn't play and are we at a coach who was like well you know what i'm gonna beat you at your own game so we stayed in his own so we sitting there the whole time and i'm telling it was the most boring game of all time we just sat there with our hands up and they passed the ball and if anything happened somebody went and got it and it was you scored two and it was just a mess so the score was really really low and they were up 47 to 45 and it was literally under a minute and i'm freaking out because now we're going to it's evident we're going to lose because i'm going man this is a dumb like defensive strategy anyway we should have been going after it but what happened is a guy threw the ball their guy threw the ball cross-court i intercepted it and that with literally five seconds left to go and i take the ball all the way down the court you got to understand i'm thinking i had visions of oh my god this is the thing i'm the hero you know the heart is it's like pounding you just you i'm already at the party you know what i mean and i go with this layup and i'm big it up there and it's totally it gets around the rim and it rolls and let me tell you that place goes nuts because it was the upset of the year and i collapse in a heap and i know my life is over and you got to understand and and this is another thing shame among men it's like you oh how could you do that man other yep other players were yelling at me the coach at the i was in the locker room he was like you had no business taking that shot and i stole the ball it wasn't like it like we didn't have a shot anyway but he was like you have no business taking that shot you should have passed it man it's your fault and the people and everybody in the room was like yep and i was like they didn't let me off one and i remember just going oh my god and i went in the paper and the paper the next day was like Terry Crews had a shot and he missed you know and let me say it was the most dark i mean when you when you're you know 16 years old i was i mean beyond crass i it one guy was taunting me i got in a fight after the school and the whole thing and i was just like this is awesome it's horrible and so it was a couple days went by and i was in the deepest bump i'm sitting on my bed and i shared my room with my brother but for some reason he wasn't there because i always remember being there it was kind of great i don't ever remember being alone except that time and i remember being alone and just thinking about man what i should have passed it i should have passed it maybe i messed up and you know what else could i have done and then another little voice it said i took the shot i took the shot and i was like i did i did and it was kept and i kept thinking it was like man look when you had the chance when everything was on the line you took your shot man you did that you did that and all of a sudden i was like that's right that's right i took it and i learned from then on i said man wait a minute if i if i win or if i fail it's going to

A lesson from a failed shot in high school (100 millionaires) (41:28)

be on my terms it's going to be up to me i if i have the opportunity i have to go for it and then i felt really good about losing the game it was red it was totally now this you can call it reframing a lot of people have scientific ways or psychological ways to you know to do thing but i learned always to kind of reframe things so that it's to your advantage you know what i mean and you look at these things like wait a minute you took the shot man and i and this is the another thing because what's so crazy is that no one ever remembers that game it's one of the least important things in my life but the lesson i learned is it's still guiding me today the fact that go for it take your shot take your time when you get that thing you have that opportunity don't mess it up because this is another thing and i want to tell you Tim the scariest thought ever is one thing that blew me away is that you really do get what you want and let me tell you what i mean there have been times when you can be self-destructive and you think it's something else or you think like i discovered for a long time like if i show up late or something twice i don't want it and you get what you desire your everything about you you get what you want now the way your life is truthfully you want it and that's now that's hard that's hard to say because i people like no wait there's so many other options it's this and this and this and this but the truth is is that if you wanted something different you change it and that hit me like it's scary because if i failed or if i didn't if i showed up wrong or messed up on something i was like i didn't really do what it took to get it and that and that again that comes from taking that shot way back in high school but now i realize okay get rid of any what i call self-sabotage and you can achieve whatever you need you know this is this is such a pattern that i've seen across interviews that i've done we were talking about Jamie Foxx backstage and eat but it goes all the way across spectrum say Debbie Millman who's a well-known graphic designer and she realized at one point and then made her mantra you know busy is a decision like you can't yeah you're disallowed from complaining or responding to someone when they say how are you with a complaint that you are busy because that's a consequence of your decision yeah when did for you books enter the picture as a force that began to mold your guide you do you remember because there were for instance i mean there's a book that you mentioned when i asked in the book about those books you've gifted most to other people the master key system master key system okay so that's one example i we but i'd love to hear you talk about that certainly so maybe we can start with that when did that show up for you wow um i again i am a self-help book nut i therapies all the time i have audiobooks going non-stop um and that's been doing that i've been doing that for almost 25 years literally i've probably read everything this is why i'm a big fan of yours uh but you're like there are only these ten fairs books left they're avoiding this guy for months oh man um but you know when i got this book called the master key system and what was wild to me it broke down some things in the in ways that i can understand because you hear certain things but you have to hear things in a different way so that you can grasp it and one of the the concepts in the book is that in order to have you have to do and in order to do you have to be and i sat and i you know i would contemplate this thing like a lot and i was like what does this mean like what does this mean and it you know because it sounded like gibberish it sounded a little bit like what is is what was will be you know that kind of stuff but will be was but will be again you know like okay uh but but once you really examined it is that and i'll i'll bring fitness into this yes please with fitness you know you are fit before your body ever gets in shape you have to be fitness like you know every person who lost 200 pounds can tell you the moment

Advice And Creativity From Terry Crews

What Terry Learned from The Master Key System (Infinite Possibilities, Breakthrough, Dare (46:27)

way back then when they knew they were going to be their ideal way that's the moment they it was be it was my ideal way i i'm going to be that and and then your body just goes right into it i heard a great quote the other day is like follow your heart and your body will catch up and i think that that's the way it is with everything it's in that master key system book broke it down where you i had to say like i always had dreams like man one day i'm gonna have money one day and i said wait a minute i'm rich i'm rich now and this is thing didn't have a penny but when you do things and you say okay now that i'm rich what would a rich man do that's this is really important you see what would a rich man do and i started doing things that rich people did and once i did it i had it how do be and i was like oh my god it's works so i started i bought like 20 copies okay i handed it out to air family members and they were like come on what is it i had people that oh thank you mary christmas all right y'all i want some money but but it was so funny because i was like guys you got to understand this you are what you are now there is only now this is all you have it's like um if someone and i had to try to break it down where if you were trying to get to l.a. and you didn't know you were already here you just keep walking you keep going you'd be all over the place until finally you realize wait a minute i'm here but that's kind of the way fitness um success any goal any aspiration you must be it now that book the thing you want to write you that thing you want to accomplish you have to be it now you are an author so now what do authors do authors write and when authors write they have a book and i'm telling you it sounds really really really simple but once you get it forever you will never think of anything the same way again so this this is uh something i want to underscore and i give a close cousin example that's really helped me so for instance historically i've

Bad advice: success isnt alienating; navigating competition; doubt is Sincerity isnt Necessary (49:21)

been really impatient and for a while that aggression and impatience wasn't aid and help in certain places but it very quickly in excess became a huge handicap and a big problem and so i would surround myself with people who were more patient more tempered calmer like a one friend of my name matt maulinwigs i mean you might know who that is he's a technologist incredible guy and uh so i started asking myself when i was going into situations that i thought might trigger me what would matt maulinwig do wow yes yes how would matt respond to this email before i freak out and start throwing haymakers and have to do cleanup for a week but that's an example of like if i were matt right now this is even though i haven't magically turned into matt but if i were and i acted like him what would i do and i started making better decisions and then lo and behold over time started to then develop those characteristics so i think it's a really important point that you're making and uh there's another question i would die and ask you it relates to a juxtaposition that i hope you can explain the subtleties up a little bit so you are and have been called the hardest working man in hollywood and that sounds like a cliche but you have so many different projects and have lived so many different lives you're incredibly productive and going along with that when i asked you and this was one of my favorite parts of what you wrote bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise and the quote was work hard to beat the competition and this is what you said which actually is very close to what people like peter teal and other people say it's very very similar the truth is that competition is the opposite of creativity if i'm working hard to beat the competition it actually prevents me from thinking creatively to make all concepts of competition obsolete right and i'd love you to expand on that or give any examples of how that has helped you in your career in entertainment because a lot of people for instance like out of the nfl they don't make the transition to other things right well at all so could you could you expand on that wow everything that i decided i wanted to do in life was very competitive and i mean sports entertainment you know it's always been about you know it's funny because the whole thing is like i mean it's a doggy dog world you know but dogs don't eat other dogs they don't have you ever seen a dog eat another dog i've never seen it that happened and i was like wait a minute you gotta start questioning stuff like you know what i mean because we take that like yeah man you know we got a fight to do that and and what happened was see i bought in i bought in this is how i know it doesn't work i bought in i was hook line and sinker about being competitive i was all to beat everybody i would look at people i would look at you and smile and want to destroy you that was my whole mo and i became a very fake person very duplicitous very sly very cunning very clever but there were no real substance because it was all about beating the other person the nfl teaches you it was a while is that you have players that were on the same team and they would play one against the other and they would they would plant things in your head and say you're a little old or you're too young you don't know what's going on and i'll never forget one guy is an older player he was like i said what are we doing cover two he was like go left go left and i went left and they were like dare what the hell you do it and i looked over at him and he was like and i knew he set me up and i said wow this competitive shit it's hard and so nanny was about it's literally it's it's scorched earth what happens is when you compete you're just trying to beat you this guy next to me this guy we're at top we're talking i'm trying to be the best and all of a sudden it's like you focus all your attention on beating that guy but when you're running you you really can't look at the other guy and really run an effective race and then because they say you know life is a race and the whole thing so you say okay i'm going to just look straight ahead but life is not a race it's not even a race it's a marathon and then you realize it's not even a marathon it's a trail run and what's crazy is that there are people who are out here running on this track to beat each other when all the gold and everything you're supposed to get is way over here on this mountain and you just walk over and get it and that is creativity creativity there's no running you just do you the idea you have and i'm gonna give you a great example when i was approached to do a furniture line for burn heart i didn't know what i was doing i had no clue but i did i but i did know this do not compete don't try to beat whatever's out there already so i created this whole thing and i was sitting in my room i have an office and i was sitting in this office and i was thinking like man what would happen if modern fern if egypt was a culture that you know existed today what would furniture look like in egypt and then i just started drawing and i just started creating and i started making and let me tell you it went for days and days i came up with so much stuff because i wasn't thinking about anything i i threw away the book i was like just what would i do and let me tell you when i got done i created this thing called the lily pad and it was funny the the chairman of the company said terry no one has ever created anything like this before i was like yo come on like i really thought he was joking with me and then i had all these other other designers come and they said this lily pad thing it's a chair on a table combined no one has ever done that you kidding me right and that and let me tell you something i literally did balance just the other day and i was we were doing interviews on jimmy valent in my lily pad chairs and he was like no one did this and it's winning a war just doing all this stuff and i'm sitting here flipping out because the creativity is where it's at if i'd even trying to do a better chair than you it would look like a chair it would have been something that everybody had done but maybe a little tweak over here a little tweak over there but when you are creative it takes you to a whole nother place i mean there are musicians artists businessmen who decided wait a minute because i mean you look at what steve jobs is done if you tried to make better records you would have never come up with mp3 and never come up with ipad you know it's like you have to be so far in your own cell that and this is the greatest thing is that there's no one else like you there will never ever be the world will never ever see another you ever ever no one will ever even have the timber of your voice that's what's so crazy and no one can ever do anything like you

Own your innate creativity (57:07)

so everything you really want to do is original that's just the truth and i want to start to see that and and know and also it's a confidence game because you have to know that your viewpoint is just as viable because for one i have to say you know as a sometimes as a woman or sometimes as a person of color or where you're from or where you got you feel like i don't measure up you feel like uh you know they're not going to seem it but i had to fight that i had to fight all that i am creative i'm not competing with you and another comparison i like to say is fifth avenue you go to fifth avenue if gucci was every store on fifth avenue and gucci won gucci won fifth avenue no one would go well you need the success of gucci prada buttega vinetta uh you leave a time for your thing to be successful you need other successful restaurants because some night they're not going to feel like that they want yours but if everybody ate the same thing we would all we all hate it and so this is why now and as an actor i used to get very very jealous you know you see a billboard or something you audition for you like man i hate that dude man he ain't that good you know but now wait now let me tell you i once i got it i look at the billboard and i say man his success is my success because the bigger he gets the more opportunities for me and that's the truth that's not even mumble jumbo it's not a joke everyone if everyone here is successful it makes you more successful and once i knew that and realized it it was no

One piece of advice for your (59:10)

going back terry cruises category of one right it's easier to create a new category than to compete i love it so one ask one or two more questions and then we'll go to audience q&a but what i'd love to know is as as a father you have five kids seven also a grandfather with better skin than tim ferris and he learned your secrets of moisturizing but didn't have time to get to the gym i'll be hitting you up later for those questions as well but what advice would you give to a new parent or someone planning on having their first child father mother of us of first of all uh it's not that big a deal you know and this is because you overdo it you're gonna overdo it everything it's got to be the right school and then and then let me tell you something my oldest daughter had a whole another life i didn't know about i'm just i'm like kitty you're like oh yeah i did it right and they're like wait what what was that you had a whole another what and then you go okay all your preparation all you have to do is never shame them ever never shame them and and literally love them till they can't till they can't stand it anymore and i'm telling you this because i've made those mistakes i remember shaming my kids when you know this thing is shame it's horrible because it tells you you are bad guilt is good because it said you did something wrong but shame oh and this is when i say when i messed up my first two you know it feels good to shame you feel like hey i'm doing a good thing you know what shame on you and you know you should you know how could you do something like that you say something like that to your kids it's bad because then they're internalizing and what i also realized is that it's not every they're going to be fine but you spend so much extraneous energy and time trying to do things and figure it all out for them when you have to let their consequences teach them the perfect example this is a perfect example i love this example we have to have a tv at home and what happened is i would be gone and i would come home and i would find the kids had watched tv

Stay out of the way (01:01:44)

for like eight hours i'm like what are you doing this is crazy like i left you watch the tv and i come back you still watch tv this is not so when i turn it off they were like oh you you you you know and i and it was wild and i was like man i turned out and so what i did i got this thing called a bop and bop is a little box you're attached to your tv and it plugs in through the tv and every kid gets a cold and you could set it for half hour hour two hours whatever so i was like okay you kids are only going to watch tv for an hour so i set it for an hour and the whole thing and they come in with their code and i would leave there watching tv and i'd come back they're sitting there like and i'm like what what happened i'm like bop but see this is the deal i'm like did you watch your tv they go yeah and i was okay well you did good they go okay but they weren't mad at me you understand what i mean it wasn't that did it it it was their consequences they did what they were supposed to do they played it all out and now they are feeling the effects of their consequences they are feeling their own discipline as opposed to me always behind them pick up your stuff no no no why aren't you doing this why aren't you doing that and all of a sudden kids just were like you's gonna do it he's gonna and now now i'm this is the great thing about being a grandparent you're like hey they're gonna be fine dude send them home bye-bye but just don't be that into it and let them feel their own consequences it's a beautiful thing man and it's hard it's i promise you your first child is gonna be hard so one of the things i really appreciate about you and that led me to want to reach out to you is how forthcoming you've been about your difficulties and some of the challenges you faced because i think a lot of folks we see on magazine covers and so on unfortunately give people the impression that they're flawless they've it all figured out and then people feel uniquely flawed in some way that they're damaged because they're not that person that's unachievable could you share with us a story of any dark period in your life and how you found your way out of it things that helped you to navigate your way out of it there's a lot of dark dark time you know what i'm up to share this story which was which changed my life um i was first i was literally just got my first job in entertainment i was on a tv show called battle dome where they they literally put me in a cage and i fought my way out you know um it was so entertaining but you know it was pre-mma you know i mean so people hadn't seen blood on tv yet you know we were like the first it was really nuts people were bleeding going to the hospital it was called real warriors real pain and i played this character called tea money and that's actually my wife's pet name for me now she's like hey tea money um and we call this the Christmas from hell because here i wanted to come home i went home to flint michigan with my family now you got to understand my kids at the time i had three

Fighting for the Respect of Every Family Member (On the Real) (01:04:53)

i five total now but i had three kids at the time and my under girls were they were all girls they were very small they had never grown up with violence in the house okay they never seen it and so i told my father before i came i said hey man don't act up do not act up and he said i ain't gonna do nothing you know and i'm like okay so i'm bringing the family i know it's Christmas time so just relax man and we're gonna be there to be fine so we get there we're having a good time my wife and i are going out we actually are driving to Detroit to hang with friends and i get this call and it was panicked my aunt called me he said Terry your daddy hit your mother in front of the kids he got mad he knocked her tooth sideways and i'm going i told him i told him now we literally um i stopped the car we're turning around i told my wife okay we're gonna go over my ass how you take the kids go to our ass house the whole thing i'm done i'm dealing with this first of all i went in this house he was had to nerve to still be there and i said dude what are you doing he was like shut up leave me alone i could do what the hell i boom let me tell you something i beat this guy for about an hour he was pleading for his life i was like i'm not a child anymore i am a grown-ass man and how does it feel you are about to get what my mother has felt and i laid it on him he was hurt bleeding laid out i'm surprised i didn't kill him and i felt

Dealing With Fears And Promoting Self-Love

Bleeding Dread (01:06:38)

now one ounce better i remember falling on the ground crying in tears it didn't make me feel one bit better not one like now i was just down there with him i said this this this is this is the revenge i've dreamed about my whole life and now nothing now i'm just like you and i remember just feeling empty cold just i don't know it was the dark it's probably the darkest place i've ever been because this here's the man it was the reason i'm here and i put him in his place so to speak and i'll never forget it was just the most hollow hollow feeling i've ever had we got out of there it took me years to overcome that like we got out of there i got the kids out we never came back i mean we were like forget the holidays we're not doing this but after years of therapy and this is this was literally about six my six or seven years ago and this when i'm what what i'm talking about happened like 99 okay so i go back and i said i go back to my father and i've been been listening to things and and trying to do this thing correctly and i remember i just said i have to find one thing that i can tell him that that he did good and i said and we called him big terry because his name is terry too so it's a big terry man i want to thank you because if it wasn't it wasn't for you i wouldn't be here and if i had to choose my parents i choose you because the truth is he's the reason i'm here if it was another person i'd be another person so i said if i had to choose my parents i choose you let me tell you something he he just broke down he said terry i'm sorry i'm sorry i've beaten your mom i'm sorry for everything i did listen man i've never what those words broke him down he cried in my arms for about the same time as i was beating him years earlier and i was like this is not hollow this feels good this is healing and i said man i have to use my strength for good because everybody can knock somebody out but to give a hug with muscles there's a whole nother matter and i

Another Beating (01:09:50)

said that is how that's that's the vulnerability that's the authenticity that's where real healing takes place because shame wants punishment it just wants to get back boom boom and it's temporary but guilt develops discipline when you admit i was wrong because shame is one secrets and you don't say anything but guilt says i did it i'm sorry and then you develop discipline to change man that again it was one of the darkest periods in my life but totally reversed and i decided that's going to be my life this is who i am now some some people got they asked what i'm trying to tell you in between now because i'm trying to tell you one thing is some people try to take that and you be like ah i can place you and i'm like hey yeah get out of it but but what i want to say is that the big thing was is that i knew i can that would never be the only way i would ever use that is to protect it's to protect not to get back not for revenge there's a time but i'm telling you man that was a period that i learned forever now again my father i wish i could say he changed he kind of went back through his old ways but i'm healed and i did the things i needed to do and um that's it thank you and looking forward to this interview for a long time thank you for that as well and so i'm gonna ask one more question then we'll go to audience q&a and it's related to a question that i posed to you in the book because whether it's looking at some of your early decisions as a child or the the toughness that you showed in athletics or doing what other people might consider

Courage and Attacking Your Fears Cant Villa (01:12:15)

risk risky by trying to create your own category in many different worlds or having that second conversation with your dad i think there's a quote that really exemplifies you and it's actually a quote that you gave me in the book and it was in answering the question if you could have a giant billboard anywhere with anything on it what would it say and why and it begins with god will not could you give us that quote please and explain its importance oh man god will not have his work made manifest by cowards Ralph Waldo Emerson it's my favorite quote i literally have it on my dressing room put on the wall in giant letters because you know fear begets more fear but courage just begets more courage and like you don't even get to be born unless your mother has the courage to have you any great thing any just literally creating a business to to making art it takes this courage it takes this willingness to be looked at to be judged to be you have to face down your fears and you have to step outside and go and it helped me to just lay out what i was afraid of because that's the big thing you know you have to ask yourself what are you scared of and then you have to attack you have to literally have to lay out i remember now you you tell about your swimming experience i was always you know you when you grew up in the ghetto they kick you into the pool and these are not good experiences okay um and so you know we didn't grow up on a nice pool in the beach and the whole thing it was like the hood and it's like oh man it's not good so my first experience was horrifying i almost drowned and so that one of my fears was swimming and i remember when i had a house with a pool and i remember going in the backyard and just diving into the deep end over and over again to get rid of the fear and it's weird because you get near the edge and you go oh man here i am i have to beat it so i was just jumping and just keep jumping in and keep jumping in until you're not afraid anymore because remember it's a confidence game and that quote just when you think about anything that's made and anything that's created anything that you see that you admire takes so much courage because people are going to judge it and people are going as ah that sucks you know especially in the age of the internet whoo we you know everybody's coming in and chipping in with whatever they have to say and you have to be willing and you have to be vulnerable in order this is this is why vulnerability is actually strength because the vulnerability is part of courage you have to be willing to let people judge your stuff willing to let people hear your song willing to let people hear you sing and it's so wild because i i'll never forget i only got a story for that is that the first time i ever got a movie it was a big movie it was with Arnold Schwarzenegger it was called the sixth day and i'll never forget i'm like i thought i thought it was gonna be like a quick roll it turned out to be a big job that worked six months in Vancouver and i'm like oh my god and the first day i was on set i was what i had to say this line Adam Gibson come with us you know please come with them and i remember they said action and i walked up on Arnold and i was like Adam Gibson we need you to come with us and he turned and looked at me and i was like oh damn it that's Arnold Schwarzenegger and wait and i mean and i mean lightning fast all these everything went through my head like you don't deserve to be here you're just a dumb football player you are a first these people are gonna figure you out you are fake you're a phony you fooled everybody it's a wrap they're gonna find out and they're gonna kick you out of here that's lightning fast and then something was wrong with the camera they were like oh you know what we we got a problem with the lights and we got to give us five minutes and this was all split second and i remember because i froze and i know i froze and i remember i just went to the side and i was like Terry okay you survived the NFL do you want to and after i left the NFL i was sweeping floors i was doing security and then i went this acting and i said do you want to go back to sweeping floors do you want to go back to security that man go in there and say these lines man and i literally was cussing myself out and was like yo get some guts dude and i walked back in there and they were like actually i was like Adam Gibson you know and Arnold was like this guy i like his energy he's got a lot of it's amazing i like him it's really let me tell you after that i learned go in rush in rush in there's never been a time i've been acting for freaking almost 20 years and there's never been a time those both those and this and that's why i want to demystify this thing i never been a time that i don't have those bubbles right before action never ever it's always there don't let anybody trick you and act like oh man i'm good now if if you if you like if they that good they don't care i'm trying to tell you if you if you care you're gonna always be nervous you're

Tis One of the Most Powerful Things We Can Do! (01:18:25)

gonna always have to face it but when you walk in and turn into a mirage and it just starts to disappear i remember on a set of white chicks it disappeared i remember i was rolling and i remember keet and i rewinds i was like you got any notes keet and he was like man do what you do man and i remember just blowing and let me tell you know people who know and i had a lot of people here who understand it if you ever been in the flow it's amazing like there's a time when all the light the the writing just comes the the lines just come the job is smooth you're like man i could do this all day that's by practicing facing that fear fear fear just going in going in going into you hit that zone man it's a high like you will never ever ever experience i encourage everyone and i'm not here i'm here to be demystify it you will be nervous always but go anywhere it's beautiful tarry kris all right i talked too much i could listen for hours my wife has had enough of this she'd be here like oh my god can we get out of here so we have uh we have a number of audience questions i think we'll just jump right into it and then if they're directed at one or both of us we'll just uh place some improv jazz here so this one is from anonymous my favorite person especially on the internet but this is a good question and and i'll post this one to you imagine your 95 year old self time traveling came to you right now what advice would he give you oh my 95 year old son self sorry my life self self okay yeah yeah i was like yeah okay that's a deep one there that's tricky back to the future question movie right now okay um what would he tell me yeah if you're if you're a very old self came back to this moment and we're to give you advice what would it be hmm i would like to think he would tell me you you're doing the right thing because actually and then beyond it's more so now than ever you start to wonder you know i'm doing it i'm going through this whole you know i'm part of this whole sexual harassment thing that's going on in hollywood and you have to you start to doubt like should i have come forward should i have said anything i don't know because i don't even know to me and i'll be straight honest i don't know if i'm going to have a career that's just real um the people i'm talking about are very very powerful um they run everything i'm just me and they're very angry so retaliation is one thing that happens and this but this is the truth this has been happening to women for centuries centuries they've been trying to do that thing just trying to go to work they rebuff some guy and he's gonna fire him and get his revenge and they end up getting their dreams messed up but i want my 95 year old self to say you did the right thing everything worked out and i'd say it's kind of dark because you just don't know but also at the same time i like it here i like the adventure i like not having everything planned i told you even coming out here i don't want to know the questions i just want to go off the head because this is where the excitement

Lifestyle Changes (01:22:12)

is you know i mean i've never wanted to be safe and comfortable i mean it's it's it's exciting here and the another thing is is that with every person that comes out after and says you're you adding to the story helped me courage be gets courage and that's the way it's supposed to be i'm with it what was that thank you thank you so this is this is a question about changes and this one's directed at me but i'm going to also ask you since you've turned 40 years old recently what lifestyle changes have you made if any mostly depends and ensure that's not true i decided to turn my head upside down put my hair in my face i can't go out on top uh life honestly uh the the lifestyle changes are not changing what's worked does that make sense i've i've heard at every what people would consider milestones whether it's 25 34 they're like oh it's all downhill from here it's all downhill from here i'm like yeah you're saying like you stopped doing everything you're supposed to be doing it's like i'm just going to keep doing the very simple approach that i have that's regimented it's certainly i mean your warm-up would kill me it sent me to the ER probably but i have my my simple approach that seems to work and it's really not using excuses to stop doing those things because they seem to keep me strong so not many lifestyle changes the only major change that has become very important to me at least in the last six to twelve months in particular is paying tremendous attention to uh trying to fix a lifelong habit of berating and brutally attacking myself with my inner voice i've been extremely unkind to myself most of

Self-love (01:24:20)

my life and there's been enough time to unpack that right now but yeah it's a bad thing's happened to me really early and that made me very angry and i used that anger as a tool but as it's been said you know the anger is sort of the acid in the vessel it damages the vessel more than anything it's poured on and i really realized that in the last six to twelve months that if you want this is my conclusion at least like if you want to love people fully if you want to share your gifts with the world you cannot do it if you just tolerate yourself you cannot do it if you don't love yourself sounds like an indulgent it did to me for a long time it's not it's not a nice to have it to must have so that's psychologically emotionally the the biggest change that i'm trying to make now you are even though you look 23 are about to turn the big five oh i'll be 50 so what lifestyle changes have you made or what are the most important habits that keep you looking 23 well i've been doing intermittent fasting for about five and a half years and man that was the most valuable lifestyle change for me you know i found that now again i i see people who are much younger than me you know i wouldn't i wouldn't recommend it for 20 year olds just because you know you can eat like four pizzas and be fine you know i mean but as you get older and you know i grew up in the bro science era where it's like seven meals a day and get your old meal you know a lot of that and so it blew me away i read this book called a man 2.0 and engineering the alpha and it i was like this is crazy like you know it was unthinkable that my god you only eat eight hours in a in a day in a 16 hour fast and i do it every day now some people have seen the benefits one day a week the whole thing but for me i do it every day so what is your schedule look like it's uh i eat from two to ten um and what's wild is that you know i have amino acid drink tea water when i'm fasting and then my first meal is that two and sometimes it goes beyond it because sometimes i'm not even hungry until like three thirty and like even today i had just one meal um and i don't feel bad at all i mean i learned to get by with less food i feel more energetic um and to be honest with you i think more so than physically it's a spiritual thing i think for me everything that is within your grasp is not meant to be in your hand learning and teaching yourself to say no and you tell your body what to do you say no because what happens is if your body

Daily Lifestyle And Entrepreneurial Wisdom

First meal of the day (01:27:33)

will always lead you wrong you know if you listen to it you're going to have a problem and i and i you know there were years where i listened to it and it got me in all kind of trouble uh and so now i'm like no you're going to do what i tell you to do and you're going to eat when i tell you to eat and it really really it's an amazing thing and there are lots of scientific ways that it it proved that it does well but for me it's a spiritual thing what is your i can't help myself but ask a couple of follow questions here what is do you have a default or go to first meal a go to meal that is your first meal of the day oh yeah i'm i'm letting salad what is in the omelet it's uh usually bacon a little cheese we got a lot of bacon supporters yeah oh yeah bacon is a gift god man god will not have his work made manifest without bacon that's terry crew okay uh no man bacon you know the healthy fats and the whole thing but a little cheese bacon in an omelet along with a great salad or some vegetables right there and that's my go to meal i can eat that any like that's the first thing i usually have anytime when i break my fast that's it and it's light enough it doesn't feel heavy i've i've tried like grabbing a big brady sandwich before and it's just oh my god you're gonna you go to sleep immediately it's so nuts but that's the kind of meal that i love all right almost for me tomorrow see if i make it to three o'clock uh all right this question is this very hyper specific i'll take a stab at this seems to be addressed to me uh this is from tia carera uh are you here amazing thanks for coming all right so this is very this thank you for coming this is a really specific question what are your thoughts on cryptocurrency and could you maybe interview mike novegrats on your podcast uh so mike novegrats well-known investor has recently made the statement that he has i think five or ten percent of his net worth in cryptocurrency and blockchain uh fascinating guy i actually know mike uh i've gotten into some uh scuffles not in a bad way of with mike because we both have wrestling backgrounds he's a much better wrestler and he supported the usa wrestling program and uh we met actually in well in several places but in aio when i first met dan gable who's a hero of mine legendary coach ended up in this book up so yes i'd like to have mike on and he's actually the brother which i didn't put together until jacklin was already going to be in the book but jacklin novegrats is also just an incredible incredible woman so they have an amazing family so yes i'd like to have them on the podcast and i'm sure he'll bust my balls half the time uh it's a very tough dude which i invite that's perfect my thoughts on crypto my thoughts on cryptocurrency are uh there be dragons on the map uh i would say be very very careful i'm not a cryptocurrency expert i do know a lot of experts and i even though i own a little bit of cryptocurrency i'm very very cautious to not take the diy approach because there are a lot of bear traps and i will say that i

Blockchain Crypto (01:30:57)

think most icos are going to end up giving people nothing i think many of them will be regulated out of existence and the technology is is very sophisticated and they're also very sophisticated technologists who can trick most people into giving up their money for something that will end up poof just being vaporware uh so i think that cryptocurrency and blockchain have the potential to be as important as what we consider the internet and i'm really borrowing from some of my smarter friends in saying that uh having spent the 17 years before moving to tahas before moving there 17 years in silicon valley i really know some very very smart people and actually like vitalik the creator of ethereum and zuko the creator of zcash and many of those folks uh because i'm so interested in it are all in tribe of mentors i wanted to kind of get them all in one place to see what patterns came out of it did that with poker players too right till you shouldn't take all of my investing advice um but but i i would say much like picking stocks you're up against professionals so you wouldn't bet on yourself if you were playing golf against tiger woods i would hope not unless like someone in the audience could happen here is actually that caliber uh similarly if you're playing on wall street or playing in the world of crypto you're dealing with people who do this all day every day and know all of the nuances so i just say be very cautious if you have an informational advantage and you're playing with chips you can afford to lose then i think it's it's something that's that's very interesting to explore just as a way of learning about the technology and the implications it might have uh so it's endlessly fascinating and endlessly terrifying i suppose in short uh it's not a cough or an incredible laugh i couldn't tell all right so here's here's a question from john and i'd love to hear your thoughts on this when do you decide to mentor someone what attributes do they manifest to become mentorable and then there's a bonus old Buddhist proverb when the student is ready the teacher appears how do you decide who to not necessarily mentor to implies sort of like full-time unpaid extra job but to help someone to invest in really helping someone you've had as i as i understand some

How do you choose to mentor? (01:33:33)

some people have really helped you along the way whether the art teacher you mentioned so let's just learn i believe that is another so when it's when you have the opportunity how do you choose you've limited time limited energy how do you choose who to invest in well i to me it's um it's a little bit about a little bit it's a lot about desire um you know i've come it's it's wild because i've come across i've had people who were in my circle who said they wanted things and then once they realized what it took they were out right you know and so now i would anyone that i'll be willing to mentor or whatever would have to i would send them on like little tests i mean really it's like you really have to really want what you're going for and um my wife was because i made the mistake before of is making it too accessible you know and and um it's again it's kind of like you know people have to it's you have to desire you get what you want but there's a lot of people who just trying it out and you hear people who say they want it and there's so many so many things like me as a kid when i wanted something i always would would go out of my way to you know show that person who i wanted as a mentor that i'm willing to i show up early i'm there but i've had guys who man you're like okay be here at this time and you know it's funny i'm waiting on them and immediately it's like it's over i get and everybody gets a shot for me everybody gets a shot because you don't know until you get that time but you know you show up late a couple times um i had one assistant who like just forgot a whole bunch of stuff that i desperately needed and you're like this is just not important enough for you you know and then you have to let them go and what's a while is that you know every time i let somebody go though we have this we have a conversation because i want to make sure that it wasn't me so i'll say okay you tell me you're fired so don't you have to worry you can tell me you want right right i was like you're it's no hope of you getting your job back so tell me what i did wrong and tell me what offended you and i get really honest answers that way you know and uh and it has helped me become a better a better employer or a better mentor but also you know there's been other times when they were just like dude i messed up i messed up and i realized that i had an opportunity and i i pissed it away and i was like wow well you you won't do that again on your next job because i usually don't go back i that's another thing i always have to do i even wrote that in the book about letting people go and it's part of the process you know so you mentioned letting people go not just in terms of employees but people in your circle yes people you grew up with yeah how do you break up with a friend or how do you how do you have that conversation can you give us an example i mean you have to name names of course but this

Letting go of negative people. (01:37:18)

is something a lot of people and myself included struggle with like you realize this this is it this is someone who was a great apple and they've turned into a bad apple and they're starting to poison this the entire group effectively or have some negative impact but you've known them for so long yeah how do you navigate that could you give us an example well you know i first of all we have a lot of talks as we go to say that hey man we have to do this we have to be held to this standard like i have an example there was a one person i told him you know he's a single man but i also said hey man you have to understand that i'm a married man and if i hear any drama about women in this your circle that's going to be a no-go for me because you know you have to treat every woman with respect i don't want any of that coming to me and i said you got to understand because if it is and if it happens once i'm gone and he was like oh man that would never do good i understand i know man you i got your thing man i understand what you're talking about until it happened and i went do what did i remember what i told you you know what i have to do right and he just said yeah i get you right and i said okay sir hey man love you i love you like a brother i wish it could have worked out and it's a very close friend and i mean super close and i said man but i gotta go on without you and you know it's weird because Hollywood is one of those things that's built on this kind of camaraderie entourage whatever i don't have that because for one i found that the entourage has you they know all your things and they start telling you what you're gonna do and it's like what you know um and i said never me i'd rather go alone and um i'd rather walk alone so but it's it's hard because sometimes you do feel lonely you do feel like with the higher up you go the more is at stake man i mean it's good you can be everybody can be down there and you can be hanging and

Lonely at the Top. (01:39:31)

everybody's good but let me tell you as soon as you get something and as soon as it becomes bigger than you and it's more important than you you gotta let some of these people have to go they have to and it's not personal and i tell them i love you but we just can't hang anymore and i'll be brutally honest but not me it's that you don't have to be mean because i'm people feel like you gotta uh but i i always i love you man but it just we just can't we can't hang so what do you do if you've made that decision and then they reach out to you or you feel the impulse to reach out to them because you've just known them they've been a part of your pattern for so long but i i do you're so how do you respond in either of those cases you know i've i've blocked people i mean you put a phone block on i've changed my number i do that a lot i mean they're talking family members family members who are like man i have people who call me up and angry because they felt like i should you know i should be paying for this and i should be doing that and all of a sudden i just disappear and you know it's amazing when the phone rings you don't have to answer it you know that that's the trick you know it's a trick because you think oh no it's there i was like blocked and all of a sudden it was quiet i was like wow this is peaceful and it got kind of scary because i was like is anybody calling i don't know i block so many people and i was like man this phone ain't working but but they get it after a while but but now i'll tell you every every relationship in my life must be voluntary it must be voluntary if if i had my wife tied up in the basement is it love no you know i make all my relationships in my life love-based meaning you want to be here if you're here you want to be with me if you're my even my managers people in my circle you can are free to go at any time even my wife if my wife was like i'm done i would be like oh no don't leave please and she was like i got to go i'd be like dang i would be hurt but i couldn't hold her because it has to be voluntary but that works the same way for me too if i want to go you got let me go if i say i got to go you got to say oh okay i respect that i understand and this way all your relationships are really good ones because everybody wants to be there and um it's a beautiful thing thank you uh take a few more i know we're running over time everybody cool i'm having fun you guys have fun all right i didn't ask terry terry you okay no i'm coming i'm having fun uh i felt those traps i don't want those inflicted on me all right uh few more questions uh what advice do you have for an introvert who wants to be an entrepreneur but does not like socializing this is from rosa i'd love to hear your take on this i'll give a quick my quick piece because i definitely view you as an entrepreneur first and foremost i mean i should say first and foremost but see entrepreneur

The Entrepreneurial Path (01:43:15)

let me just not not rant but i'm gonna get my words out for a second entrepreneur if you look at the root of the word is is from and i'll just use the Spanish because it's easier and but in there to undertake right it's someone who is effectively creating something from nothing so an artist is doing that there are many different forms of being an entrepreneur and you do not have to be extroverted and you all you have to do to realize that is to watch for example early interviews with any people you view as tech luminaries now it's the most awkward footage you will ever see in your life and then they get media train and they'll sit there like and you're like oh my god it's the clown from it that's really creepy that is what you think normal humans do okay uh so you don't have to pretend to be something you're not you can be shy you can be introverted i do think that it it is very valuable perhaps as an experiment to do what say warm buffet did who was very introverted at one point and he trained himself in public speaking by going to Toastmasters and so on i do think that's useful as an experiment to not just assume that you are in some way cursed by being introverted you may in fact have the capacity to do other things but to be a successful entrepreneur on almost every level you do not have to be an expert at networking you do not have to be an expert at socializing you just don't need it so you can definitely do you and still succeed i don't know if you've you know i i mean that is really amazing advice i think that um people have confused boldness with being an extrovert yes but i've seen very amazingly bold introverts who are just they just know who they are and what they want and that doesn't that you don't have to be loud you don't have to be brash and um it's really really a cool thing when you see it's funny when you see a little old lady who runs this gigantic business and she's got her thing together she's in be she's just walking in there with a quiet voice and everybody shakes because they don't she's she means business and that's that kind of boldness that it doesn't take a lot of she just knows who she is and she knows what she wants and that's a man that's all you need i'm with you yeah i mean if you're good at what you do and i mean so good and i'm i'm totally stealing this from other people but so being if you are so good that people cannot ignore you like you will not be denied that's right you can i mean look at some of the people out there in the world they are weird as fucking all hell and yet if they're good it's just like what are we gonna do i know i know the best person out there i know so be the embrace your weird self this is my friend chris sato would say all right so we're gonna do uh last question from the audience and then i have one closing question for you what are your recommendations for coping i'm abbreviating a little here recommendations for coping with self-induced anxiety so i'll just give a few thoughts real quickly because you know in some families you have baseball families everyone's good at baseball all their families everyone's really good at basketball i feel like my family not everybody but like 80 90 percent professional warriors like this is this is just their speciality so i've i've developed a whole repertoire of different ways to induce anxiety in myself has proven not to be very fruitful i will say in retrospect but a few quick recommendations of number one is there's a book and there are a lot of books like this that have terrible titles and actual good content some that sound like infomercials maybe that's come to mind but the one i'm thinking of is how to stop worrying and start living by dale karni and this book is surprisingly sophisticated it offers an entire toolkit for exactly this it's it's very very powerful and uh then i'd say last just for my piece is some form of the exercise that i call fear setting which is completely borrowed from 2000 plus year old philosophy called stoicism and so i'm cribbing from Seneca and others who have done this practice but if you guys simply search the word fear setting that is something i do probably every month certainly every quarter for diffusing the anxiety and those are my two pieces of advice actually the new one which is in the last year is uh something i added to what i normally do in the morning which is journaling and that is if i'm feeling extremely anxious or overwhelmed and they're very closely related i will ask myself what might this look like if it were easy and this could be a project could be a decision it could be a contract it could be a relationship it could be breaking up asking someone out doesn't matter and simply asking that question then writing longhand does a lot to take the nebulous monsters in my head and to trap them on paper and to see that they're actually just shadows i'm terrified by nothing in effect so those are few thoughts but anxiety do you have recommendations for people for coping with anxiety um i believe i'm not i can't be certain on this but um there's a quote in that del karnay book about living life and day type compartments man you do know yourself help but oh i'll tell you i'll let me tell you man wow that right there i say i take those nuggets and i go that is a fine book it is a good wall it's again we have the same issues it's all one again those bubbles that anxiety the whole thing and when you're just living they're like just get today done today don't worry about tomorrow don't worry about yesterday just today and man it feels like all the shackles all the it just you start to feel peaceful and it's a beautiful thing but that's such a great book man it really is so right yeah that's one of the books that i have in my living room on the bookshelf cover out which isn't a great way to put books on a bookshelf but because i want to see the covers of certain books so that i'm reminded of them and if i'm feeling like i'm going into a tailspin or beginning to get lost in some way i know that i can pull that off and go through the highlights it's a fantastic fantastic book all right last question which i think i said 75 questions ago terry terry what would you like to say or ask as just parting words it could be an ask of everybody who's here who might be listening on the podcast could be a suggestion anything at all that you want to ask of people or simply say i guess um the big ask

Miscellaneous

Ask (01:50:42)

that i have for everyone um is that and this is one quote that really really gave me a big big perspective is that people are not objects to be used they are people to be loved and my big ask is that you see everyone as people to be loved because you know and one thing i see now in america especially with the partisan everybody's democratic or republican or this or that or black or white and then but were people to be loved and that sounds very cliche or whatever but when you get down to the heart of it when you look at another person see them as a child we're all like kids and that all of a sudden you can see it much more differently because you can instantly love a child you can feel the love for a child a child doesn't know a child is figuring it all out and the truth is we don't know and we're all figuring it out just please please please before you cause somebody an asshole on internet you know or before you you you push send on that tweet that's going to tell everybody off just know know that this is

Cure peterson (01:52:40)

a person that needs to be loved and there are a lot of people who are getting off on what you don't know and they want to treat you like an object and treat you like property and treat you like people who things are bought and sold whatever and whatever but man i just ask that if you ever get into that stop and think of them as people to be loved ladies and gentlemen tare crews that's good oh my god so good thank you all for coming thank you very much love you guys speaking to which thank you for coming hey guys this is tim

Common (01:53:20)

again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet friday do you want to get a short email from me would you enjoy getting a short email for me every friday that provides a little more soul of fun before the weekend and five bullet fridays a very short email where i share the coolest things i've found or that i've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that i've discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that i've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as i do it could include favorite articles that i've read and that i've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short it's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend so if you want to receive that check it out just go to four hour workweek.com that's four hour workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one and if you sign up i hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by fresh books man oh man do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love fresh books to the extent that i ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago why are they so popular well they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals that's many of you and used by more than 10 million people you can send invoices track your time and get paid very very quickly which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers a lot of bantavantas and beyond you can't take pictures or receipts you can link your credit card and debit cards so all the things you buy automatically appear in your fresh books in the right category so on and so forth makes taxes easy makes invoices easy makes your life easier and also in fact i recommend a pdf they didn't ask me to read this part by the way they put another pdf a while back called breaking the time barrier subtitle how to unlock your true earning potential so you can search for breaking the time barrier a lot of people ask me how can i get a four-hour work week with the service business and the story in that e-book it's pdf is the short answer it's really really good so i think you should also check that out so breaking the time barrier check it out but also why not test out fresh books claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/tim and enter Tim ferris two hours and two s's in the how did you hear about us section that sounds like we're gonna get very little tracking that's a lot of work but just go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and try it out because it is a very good product and i think you will

Graphic Design

99Designs (01:56:00)

find it simplifies your life enjoy this episode is brought to you by 99 designs i've used 99 designs for ages since even before podcasting was a thing and i've used them for all sorts of graphic design leads they are fast and they are convenience whether you need a logo website book cover or anything else i've done competitions for instance for book covers related to the four-hour body 99 designs makes great design accessible to everyone and it makes the process so much easier and i use them recently for artwork and illustrations inside of my tau of Seneca set of books so this is a collection of stoic writing and modern interviews and so on so for the tau of Seneca i decided to use their one-to-one project service in this case you invite a specific designer to your project agree on a price and then work together until you're satisfied and the artwork just blew my mind you have to check it out i kid you not so you can check out some of the artwork from tau of Seneca as well as some artwork and logos and so on that your fellow listeners have had made at 99designs.com/timp that's 99designs.com/timp i really suggest you check it out and right now you guys can receive a free $99 upgrade on your first project this gets you i think 130% more submissions so people who want to work with you and give you first drafts of what you're looking for to access your free design please visit 99designs.com/timp and click the link on the landing page that's 99designs.com/timp you