From Jail to Navy SEAL: The Rituals That Forge Men Who Won’t Break | Taylor Cavanaugh

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Peace comes from being able to be present in the current moment.

You can't be present unless you're proud of your presence because you're insecurity.

The guy who's walking into a restaurant, right, with his wife or whatever, and he's picking his shirt out of his fat rolls is not present because he's thinking about how other people are perceiving him.

A confident man who feels powerful, knows he looks good, or is proud of how he looks, is present.

When he's communicating with people, he's not thinking about how he's being perceived.

It's a different energy.

And we're really what we're talking about is frequency, the clarity of confidence.

You say you need to unlearn years of incorrect programming.

Absolutely.

I would love for you to start with.

How do you become aware that you have incorrect programming?

Yeah,

results.

Poor results.

I'd say,

here's the best way to look at it.

Look around at your life.

If it's not the way you want it,

what you think you know is fucking not right.

Definitely how you're executing it.

It's results.

Is your life the way you want it to be?

If it's not, then you got to unlearn some shit and learn some new shit

because

it's not there.

Dude, so I love that you said that.

My next question is, because this is something I struggle with, right?

So when I'm coaching entrepreneurs or whatever, which is a lot of what I do,

I call like my

system

reality OS, right?

Reality operating system.

Like operate with the fucking game that's in front of you, not

what you think should happen or what you hope happens if the moon is in the sign of the Aquarius.

Like it's laid out in front of you, right?

Like you have to play this game.

And I really like that you said that results are how you become aware.

Why do you think so many people are able to or

like they're not getting the results they want, right?

It's smacking them clear in the face.

They're either overweight or they got a shitty relationship with their spouse or their kids or they're not in a career they want, whatever.

Yet they'll continue plowing down the same road over and over and over again.

Why do we allow that to happen?

Why doesn't it hit everybody where they go, shit, this isn't what I want?

I need to try something different.

Honesty hurts.

Honesty hurts.

Nobody wants to admit that their life is fucked up and what they're doing is wrong.

Nobody wants to be wrong in their heart, especially in how they think they understand the world.

It's about as deep a cut as you could possibly get.

And so it's the authenticity.

It's that it's that

first of all, self-awareness takes a level of intelligence that is required right i always i always relate intelligence to awareness self-awareness environmental awareness i don't consider somebody very intelligent if they don't have either one of those right you might be able to read a book and remember some shit but i don't really count that as intelligent right so that self-awareness piece it to be self-aware you have to be honest

and

that takes a level of internal work and some pain and some

usually external frictions that you're aware of to really kind of force yourself internal to ask yourself these questions and you you you bring up a good point of why people keep plowing down the same road also change is difficult because you have to actually start rewiring your brain and your muscle patterns and your pathways your thought pathways

and your action pathways it's a lot of things to unravel It's quite often when you're getting up, how you're eating, how you communicate,

how you interpret the world and move through it self-talk so many things are involved in making major change and so it'll just keep going because we're biologically wired to stay with what we know it's beyond the horizon beyond the mountains who knows what's over there right sabertooth tigers and whatever else it's at least safe in this cave we might not have any food and water but what this might be better than the unknown and the fear of uncertainty, right?

Which is, I don't know what's over there.

And so that's why I think people just stay rooted in their bad habits.

There's two other aspects that I want to put past you and see where you land on these as well.

Cause I agree with everything you said.

I think there's two additional pieces.

One is ego.

Like the idea that I'm smart, I went to college, you know, whatever, and that I could possibly be making the wrong decisions.

I think that holds a lot of people back.

And then the last one, I think, is a lot of what we're seeing with like some of this postmodern liberal ideology that people like, you know, that a man can be a woman, that a woman, like,

we, we, we, reality, you know, if you spend a minute in reality, you know that some of these statements aren't true, right?

And that's more of a political one, but this goes for everything.

Yeah, and I agree.

Yeah, we, we, we convince ourselves that maybe it's, we feel the need to be good or that we don't want to stand out or we're worried about being different.

And that kind of holds us back as well in these patterns, right?

Like if everybody else had got a dad bod, then it's okay for me to have a dad bod because everybody's got a dad bod.

Yeah, that makes it all right, right?

Like, yeah,

where do you fall on those two?

Dude, the idea of somebody thinks that they're right because they're being good

is a very slippery slope.

It's where socialism and communism ends up.

It's the root of it, really.

It's in this guise of

righteousness, which is fucking dangerous because it clouds people's judgment massively.

Well, I'm right because what I want is is

good.

Fucking yeah, dude, but can we pay for that?

It's like, it's very, it's like in the in the in the pragmatic view, right?

I think pragmatism

is massively important because pragmatism, once again, requires a

stripping away of ego and biasness.

and a biased view.

You have to see things for what they are.

I saw a great quote today.

There's a Phil Stitz, I think is his name.

He wrote a book called Lessons for Living.

And I was kind of reading through this book today for Peace Man.

And he says, he's talking about being judgmental and having being wrapped in ego.

He goes, a realist isn't judgmental.

And

I thought about this term and how he was saying it was that, because if you're judgmental, it's that you're judging how you think reality should be.

Right?

You're not accepting reality on reality's terms.

So you're judging it by how you think it should be versus just how it is.

Bro, and I love that.

I go, you can just sit back and see things as they are, not as they should be.

It gives you a level of clarity that you can't have any other way.

So it really takes from how, that's exactly right, Ryan, wrapped up in ego.

How, how I think the world should be.

Fucking, that's pretty fucking egotistical.

Yeah.

I, I, I really like that idea around judgment.

It's funny.

The other day I was walking into or going to a meeting

with a colleague and he said, hey,

don't be a dick in the meeting.

And I was like, I was like, first of all, I didn't know that that's how we were classifying me.

I go, second of all,

what exactly do you mean?

And he's like, well, Not everybody likes to hear things exactly as they are.

And I kind of tilted my head at him for a second and I understood what he meant.

You know, I wasn't, and it wasn't appropriate to push it at that time.

You know, I got what he meant.

You know what I mean?

Like,

dial it down a little where necessary.

Okay, got it.

But I, I, I kind of went at, went, went to him afterwards and, and we were, I said, you know, man, the meeting went fine or whatever.

And I'm like, hey, I, I, I want you to talk to me a little bit about what you said before we went in.

And he goes, well, you know, it's not that I don't think you're a dick or whatever.

He's like, but he's like, you tend to kind of just call things on their, you know, as they are.

And not everybody likes that.

And I, and I, he goes, a lot of people, he goes, some people can feel judged by that.

Yeah.

And it was a really interesting comment because like I've, I have found myself like saying to people, like, here's what I see.

I'm not judging that this is what you decided to do, but this is what's happening because of what you did.

Right.

Yeah.

And it hit me that.

Like a lot of people don't view the world that way.

Like, it's judge, judge, judge, judge here, judge there.

And their comments come out of judgments where if you try to live just with what it is, it's like, he's got a backwards hat on.

He's got tattoos.

He's got a plant next.

Like, I'm not judging that you chose to wear the hat or have a plant behind you.

It's just fucking what's happening.

You know what I mean?

Like

that piece of our society, I feel like is something that

the last 20 years or so has, we've lost so much of that.

I feel like when I was growing up, my dad could just be like, that swing you just took sucked.

And I'd be like,

yeah, it did.

Yeah, well, that wasn't my best.

Yeah,

that sucked.

Yeah, I didn't do my best on that one.

Now you say that to a kid, he's going to have a full emotional breakdown and his mom's going to jump the fence and shove a Xanax in his face because he can't handle hearing that what he did was wrong.

And that to me feels like so many of the problems.

Like I look at the work you do and researching everything that you're into, like,

like

it's almost as if if everyone just kind of lived in reality they wouldn't even need guys like us like we wouldn't we wouldn't have jobs because people would just but there's like needs to be someone out there who can see it and tell it so when you when you have people coming to you and they're struggling to connect how do you how do you get them back to to getting these two levels of of awareness that you brought up which i really love yeah self-awareness and environmental awareness.

How do you begin teaching that to people?

So

I'm going to add a little

layer of texture to what you said because I think it was important is in that understanding of reality, we also have to understand how other people interpret our information.

And so I always say, right,

we can say it because it's true, but is it the most artistic and diplomatic way?

Because really, what's the point of communication?

To get done.

what we're trying to get done, to convey the message.

If it's clouded by how they feel some type of way, whether it be wrong or right, right?

And you and I both lie on the same point of that as people need to get thicker skin, which I'm going to hit on in a minute, is

now they're shutting down and they're not listening to the actual message, right?

So there's like that, there's that nice balance, there's that artistry in the communication, which I think is important.

And that's part of this environmental awareness, right?

Being self-aware enough to know we can come across crass and be environmentally aware enough to know how these people might interpret the information.

So it's like, there's this even balance.

Now, going into what you were speaking about specifically,

there's really two roots of psychosis, what things are dealing with now, the anxiety, the depressions, and all.

It's pain avoidance and comfort seeking.

Pain avoidance, right?

People don't want to hear honesty.

They don't want to hear truth.

They also in their daily lives seek.

seek to find pleasure and immediate gratification and all these things.

And all these things turn us into fucking cupcakes.

They turn kids into cupcakes.

Dude, when we're, I'm not sure, I'm probably a little bit older than you, but we probably come from a similar, dude, we're outside.

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Riding bikes, building ramps, crashing, right?

Like, it's what they were doing.

Have you looked around a lot of neighborhoods?

Have you been driving around?

You don't see any kids outside, man.

You don't see kids outside.

They're not playing outside.

I don't see kids building ramps and shit.

They're inside watching screens.

And I know this is hit on a lot, but also how the parents are communicating I'm not saying you got to beat your kids but you can be harsh on your kids I think it's needed right and they're not outside hurting themselves crashing all these things and so they grow up now

you you spoke to them too aggressively right now they can't hear these the message and just the very clear so now there's all this this padding corporately which we see HR departments how many people are getting called in because they said a bad joke

it's inefficient in massive capacities.

Inefficiencies everywhere.

And it really boils down to people are

not striving to do the hard thing.

Not getting up early.

Not working out.

Not eating correctly.

Whether it doesn't, they don't like it because of how it tastes.

It's like small things like that, which really, over a lifetime, turn somebody into a

Michelin man cupcake or somebody, you know, some somebody of substantial constitution.

To me, this is something I've really struggled with.

So I'm probably older than you think.

I'm 44.

Sam, you look good, great, Bram.

What you're doing is working.

At least I figured a couple things out.

No, and it's probably all the same shit that you do.

The difference is I didn't go through war.

That's one part.

So

that's a big part of it.

I almost did.

I got recruited by the Navy and decided to play baseball instead of joining the Navy, which that decision we could toss up.

But

all that being said,

one of the things that I really struggle with is like,

so, so

I came from tiny little town, 900 people in the middle of nowhere at 12 years old.

I vividly remember like walking around my town going like, I have to get the fuck out of here.

Like this can't be my life, right?

Like every male role model in my life is either an alcoholic or, you know, into drugs or

life's going nowhere.

And I'm looking around going, you know, for whatever reason, blessed by God, whatever you want to call it, um, I had this thought, I got to get out of here.

So, that was like my life goal to get out.

But in getting out, they did do a lot of like hard shit.

I had to eat shit in different scenarios.

I had to, you know, get my fucking dick knocked in the dirt multiple times, whether it was sports or, you know, trying to, you know, coming from a tiny town and going to a big school, all these different things.

Okay.

No, no like family backing.

I didn't come from money.

My parents weren't getting me a job.

You know, everything.

Okay.

So now you come up against people and and, and now I'm, I'm in a corporate environment, uh, say 15, 20 years ago,

and I'm like this head down grind.

What do you need to do?

And you're coming up against these other people that are like, and they look at me and I get labeled as intense.

I get labeled as all these different things.

Okay.

And

I have never been able to calibrate.

Why do you not want to be intense?

Like, I get that, I get that there's a certain level of intensity that isn't always appropriate.

I'm not saying like, you know, but I'm saying like that driven

desire to get better.

How do you, how does someone, because a lot of the people that listen to this show are like me and you, dude, like they don't, people don't continue listening to this show if they're just kind of like limping by or they don't want to get better.

Yeah.

How does someone who has that mentality,

how do they integrate into our world when we are surrounded by so many people who just simply don't understand the desire to constantly get better?

This is a question I get a lot and I'm very interested in your take on it.

Yeah.

How do I be me,

not me specifically, but this individual who's ambitious, intense, driven, committed, maybe a little crass, maybe a little swinging conservative in my views, probably believe in some form of religion, God, Christian, whatever.

How do I integrate with this like secular kind of like door dash society and naturally integrate and do well and not piss every fucking person around us off?

Yeah, I would say accurately navigate, don't integrate.

Because integration, integration is, is, is

becoming, it becoming part of.

I have zero interest in becoming part of this

and like

people that just don't think like we do.

It's because there's a nature and a nurture piece, right?

You have the nature paired with the nurture as far as environmental.

right what you know you you were put in a situation you had to become you also potentially had a God seed of ambition planted in you.

So don't ever, don't let anybody dull your shine.

Right.

And I get the kind of the chills because society is meant, hey, man, fit in.

Just don't, don't, don't, don't burn too bright.

Right?

Don't, don't, don't make somebody else feel some type of way because you're willing to do, get there earlier and work harder and be more intense.

Now, bring it down a little bit.

Bring it down to their level so everybody can play at the same level.

Nah, man, it's a gift.

It's an absolute gift from God.

And so it's, it's, but we have to accurately navigate, right?

We can't ruffle too many feathers, right?

There's, there's a there's a strategy to it.

And so it's like, be smart enough to accurately do it and say, but don't ever seek to integrate.

I'm sure there's parts of times in my life where I thought that that was probably the thing to do.

And then I realized that that's not what set me apart, though.

Quite the opposite, right?

It's the fact that I

different that made that allowed, gave me the edge, gives us the edge and people listening the edge is the intensity you can't they say this in the SEAL teams bro you can't teach aggression can't teach it you're born with it or you don't have it and but you can train it you need somebody aggressive and then hone it you don't want to have to mush somebody that can't be taught and so i'd rather be that aggressive and they have that intensity and then rein it in and hone it so it's a like a laser beam rather than you know oh well I guess I'll just kind of dull it a little bit and and work like Fred next to me that you know what Leighton does design to five and punches out and you know splits his pitcher

not doing that

I I one of the biggest awakenings for me was uh the first time I ever had an executive position maybe 12 13 years ago and I had some team members who were ambitious, aggressive, hard charging.

Then I had team members who would just show up.

They hit their number.

They did their job.

but once their job once their job was done light switch went off they were you know kind of in coast mode and it was a it was it i was talking to a mentor about it and you know i'm like i don't understand i want to raise these people up

and he goes dude not everybody wants that like there's there's a lot of people out there that they punch the clock so they can live after right and that's what they want or yeah or they just simply don't ever want to experience hard like i I always thought like maybe people didn't understand that they were capable or, you know,

and, and he was really clear to me that, like, he's like, there are some people, and I, unfortunately, I think our society is telling more and more people this mentality is okay.

That I think there are some people that just simply do not desire hard.

They look at us being fit.

They look at us talking about ambition, growing companies, you know, making real change.

And they're just like, yeah, I don't want any of that.

Yeah.

I just want to,

and, and that was like a really hard thing for me to wrap my head around.

And I think it is for a lot of people where they're like, I don't understand.

Like, I'm trying to pull you along.

Why don't you want to come?

Like, I don't, I don't get it.

And it's a really hard thing for leaders, I think.

And to your point, I think, especially from a leadership perspective, there's this idea of like, you know, you want.

you know, everybody needs to be treated equal in an organization, right?

And when I'm coaching a leader or a founder or whatever,

I think that's completely wrong.

I think there should be dedicated bands inside your company, A, B, C players, right?

And they don't all get the same

benefits, schmoogies.

They don't all get the same treatment, you know?

Like a high performer, if you try to, if you try to manage a high performer like you manage your B or C players, that high performer is going to leave.

Like they don't want any part of that.

They're a little special treatment.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

So, okay.

Um, I actually now want to pivot back and go into your story a little bit because you have a fucking awesome, just crazy story.

So, maybe, you know, obviously, uh,

uh, uh, I'm not a very good podcast host because usually you start at the beginning, but I don't like doing that.

I like this way better.

Yeah, I'd like to

go back now and give people a little bit of the bones of where you developed your mentality.

Dude, by the way, this quote: accurately navigate, don't integrate is fucking brilliant.

Like,

I want to give people the bedrock of where you came out of this mentality and what kind of sculpt you into this person who lives the life that you live today.

Yeah, man.

I appreciate that.

That's, well, I appreciate you for kind of painting the scene for that because I hadn't really thought about that, you know, quite the difference.

There is absolutely a difference of integration and actually, but us being able to

move through this place in a professional way and successfully, more importantly.

So, yeah, man, the 30,000-foot overview.

Yeah, decent childhood sports.

Had some trouble in my youth.

It was difficult to get into the military just from legal perspective and some tattoos and things, but had to go to jail after college to kind of clean up some stuff.

But I got into the Navy, went through SEAL training, was at SEAL Team 7, sniper.

J-TAC, Advent Laden Specialist, which is like low-profile, low-visibility operations,

deployed to Iraq, Yemen, had some legal troubles in the SEAL teams that ended up kind of culminating after about seven years.

I was there.

Had to go back to jail, do some time.

I got kicked out for performance-enhancing drugs, technically, right?

That's what I got kicked out for, zero tolerance from the Navy perspective.

The SEAL teams tried to protect me, but once big Navy Jag wants your ass, you're toast, man.

Got out into the civilian world, free and clear, right?

I took a general discharge and started in residential real estate development.

We had a lot of successful years, 19 million in gross sales and was learning, drinking from a fire hose.

Had an opportunity when cannabis became legal.

We started a cannabis distribution company.

So doing all those pieces.

But during that time, I really built a lot of bad habits.

I had no governor on now, and I really hadn't addressed the self-worth issue.

And that's really, I was doing these things, band-aids, CEO, fucking Navy SEAL, like all these things put a band-aid on me, but I was taking Adderall every day, Xanax, alcohol, weed, still performing.

That's how I could lie to myself, right?

I got the house by the beach and the girlfriend, I'm like, nobody could tell me shit, right?

Ego, a thousand percent.

And I lacked self-awareness on a massive scale.

I wasn't seeing it from

the perspective of speed wobbles, right?

You know, the relationship starts to get choppy.

You know, you're missing meetings now that you weren't missing.

It's like, and I snacked on an OP8 and a fentanyl habit at the end of here, right?

So I'm doing doing all these things daily,

but still performing, raising capital, pitching decks for millions of dollars, doing all these things, working in a high-rise for a venture capitalist.

But it all came crashing down

as it does when you try to juggle this many balls of fire.

And I find myself

in Hawaii, homeless, in my truck, waiting for that call, you know,

the next opportunity that always kind of came and it didn't come.

And so I'm there, look at my bank account, got six bucks have a sawed-off shotgun next to me this was about two years and some change till the time I had gotten out of the Navy to this point so a lot happened pretty quickly and I realized I was just purposeless I had no no money now no title no nothing I was completely isolated like native just like in the jungle thinking about you know killing myself and and luckily God spoke to me had a moment of clarity which was like hey is that the legacy you're gonna leave I thought about my mom my sister all these decisions, all this reality is your fault.

That finally could, I finally got honest and I go, oh, all this, it's not anybody else.

It's all these decisions were mine that brought me to this reality.

And that was actually very freeing.

So I was like, all right, well, I'm not going to do that by my own hand.

But if I'm going to, you know, if I'm going to die anyway, then I'm going to at least do it in an honorable way with my boots on.

And I had known about the Foreign Legion for, some years now.

And I decided I was going to pick my pen back up and write an amazing story.

I'd never heard of a Navy SEAL going in the French Foreign Legion.

And so eight days later, pretty much, or a week and some change, I was in France, knocking on the door and spent about a half decade in the French Foreign Legion, deploying to South America,

doing stuff with NATO on the Russian border and internal domestic missions of France.

And

yeah, and then got out.

And that was about, I've only been home for about 18 months.

I got back to the United States about 18 months ago.

But that was really the path of about 11 and a half, 12 years through that process in the military and

of the path of a lot of lessons learned the hard way.

It's really, it was in the Foreign Legion that I really started to develop the importance

of ownership, frequency management, right?

That I really started to understand the power of daily habits.

and

clear morality and choices and decisions, I should say.

And that's really what I walk with today.

You said something.

You said, when it's all your fault, it's freeing.

Can you break that down a little more for us?

Yeah.

I felt this weight lift off me when I realized that

everything that had happened was because of all these small decisions I made.

All these small decisions, the money I spent, this, the that, whether I had been wronged in business or right, it didn't matter.

I went into business with the person.

It's my fault.

So I was like, look, and you know, if somebody steals from you in your business, you hired them.

Right?

And so it, and, and so by that point, we re-empowered because anything external of us, we're giving power away to.

Whether it be, oh, my ex-wife did this and so on.

Now, that's why I'm in this situation.

You married her, man.

Right?

And so it's like, so pick better next time.

It's, it's small things that we just go, oh, if it's all my fault, then I have all the power to fix it.

That was really, that was really, because it's what's more important is how we fix it.

How do we correct the shift?

So when I went, oh, I'm going to grab control of my life.

It's nobody else's fault.

So therefore, it's all my fault.

It's all my responsibility to fix it.

Then I just moved forward with that and a lot of things started to clear up.

It also simplifies everything.

And if it's all, you're not worried about what anybody, what other inputs are.

And it also just makes you a lot more aware of who you engage with.

Because if it's your fault, then be careful.

I think that that is some of the best advice that we can can give anybody at any age.

Dude, it's funny.

You're talking and remove the military part and a lot, and I haven't been to jail yet.

You know,

there's a lot of similarities in the struggle to the all your fault.

Mine was looked more like

my inability to prop, to accurately navigate.

through

corporate scenarios got me fired from three consecutive jobs.

Yeah.

You like to shake the tree, man.

Yeah.

Executive position fired, executive position fired, executive position fired three times in a row.

And I'm going, what the fuck?

Egotistical, you know, CEOs and it's this, and they don't understand me.

And I had a similar clarity moment that I can only say came to me through God or divine inspiration because similar thing.

I was like, I chose to take that job.

I've chose to work for three insecure CEOs.

I chose, you know, to be in these positions.

And

it's amazing.

And I'm just, I'm, I'm just doubling into your point.

It's 100% accurate that when you, it sucks because now you're looking in the mirror going, I'm the one that did this to me.

I'm the one that put me in this position.

But to your point, man, when you can embrace that, all of a sudden you're like, yeah, but I also now can do whatever I want.

Like I get to choose what I want to do.

Who do I want to be?

Do I want to be, you know, what kind of dad do I want to be?

What kind of partner/slash spouse do I want to be?

What, you know, who, what kind of leader do I want to be?

What, you know, what kind of change do I want?

And you can actually control those.

It's hard as shit.

It's way harder than just blaming people, right?

That's the easy path.

That's the easy path.

Yeah.

But you also, this is the other thing that I find really interesting.

And I'm interested in how you, how you, how you deal with this.

So I had somebody one time tell me, actually, it was my ex-wife specifically.

She said, you, she's like, why don't you just level out a little bit?

Is what she said, right?

She's like, you ride every high and every low and you ride them.

And I was like, yeah, I do.

And she said, well, yeah, wouldn't your life be easier if you just played more in the middle?

And I was like, I think she's right.

It would be easier.

Except

you don't get to experience the high highs.

Yeah.

If you're not also willing to experience the low lows.

If you play it even, it's not like you get to play it even and you just get the highs.

That's not the way that it works.

It's like the amplitude of your high,

you have to understand, you know, you got to be willing to accept that that's an equal amplitude to go low.

Yeah.

You know, how do you ride those waves?

So when you're, now you're in a great place, right?

You have a much better framework.

You're teaching other people how to live a good, you know, successful life.

You're training people through your programs and stuff that you have.

How do you manage now as a healthier individual emotionally and mentally?

Um, when you have that great day and then comes the bad day, how do you keep yourself?

Here's the question: How do you keep yourself from falling back into the old patterns that got you in trouble today?

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question.

So now the stakes are raised, right?

I'm engaged, I have a baby, we got, you know, purchased a beautiful house, you know, and it's uh

so now the stakes are raised, right?

We have the

you know

great business day, and we have the bad one, and now I'm starting to find, but nothing changed.

I still keep the exact same morning process as I did in the French Foreign Legion barracks room, making $1,500 a month in the cold-ass, you know, barracks in France, as I do now in my house on the golf course, the Gated Community, in the master bath at 3:30 in the morning.

It's right, four in the morning, every day.

Don't miss a day.

It doesn't matter if it's a day off, it's a day on.

It's a bad day, it's a good day every fucking day i do it because it's like my root it's a little prayer a little gratitude a little movement a little centering yourself a little visualization 20 minutes right nothing crazy not some two-hour biohacking bullshit just something simple that's what keeps me grounded as far as keeping the momentum and the framework right of i don't care i'm not changing what i do if it's a bad day or a good day also in business If I have a really bomb ass day or a really shot bet, nothing changes in my day.

I do nothing different.

It's all the same.

I don't, I don't adjust.

I don't change.

I've been doing that for almost two years now and it's worked great because I don't adjust for the market.

I don't check.

No, I'm just, I know what works and I know what I think in my heart is clear.

So that helps me.

And

habits too, biases, right?

Letting myself feel the low.

That was something that I fucked up before and I really fumbled is I did not let, that's that pain avoidance, right?

I get the chills when I think about it I was in emotionally in a bad place before and so I started taking opiates it wasn't like because I got in a car accident I liked how they made me feel and so they kind of numbed it and they and it was kind of like an antidepressant so I was taking them and I and I felt better it's because I didn't want to feel the pain the emotional pain of having lost the steel teams or lost the girlfriend or whatever it was now I just I don't reach for the drink I don't reach for this my daily habits are good and clear and I'm like look if it's a bad day I'm gonna feel it I'm not gonna die, I'll be all right, but at least what it's the pain that teaches you something.

The good days, you don't learn shit.

We all know we don't learn shit from the wins, that's the truth.

Maybe what to do a little bit, but really, we learn from the losses.

So, we gotta, if we don't feel those losses, all those lessons go away.

Yeah, all the lessons go away.

And so, and also, here's the other piece that I that I, and I'll kind of turn over to you on this one: is the celebration, the celebratory

self-sabotage is what I would, when I was feeling good, oh, let's ride it out and do this or that.

And kind of, and I would self-sabotage on the highs.

So now I'm not feeling the lows, I'm sabotaging on the highs.

So

I'm fucking myself from both angles.

And so I was like, look, I'm not going to celebrate massively on the highs, and I'm not going to try to drown myself in the lows.

I'm just going to feel both.

What do they feel like?

And just try not and maintain my battle rhythm.

Nice in the middle.

Dude, we click on so many levels on these things.

Um, so

I get a lot of guys that reach out to me, um, uh, that are, that are going through divorce because I got divorced three years ago.

Yeah, um, and you know, I had a lot of people go, geez, you, you seemingly navigated that really well.

Yeah, okay.

And, and, and blessed in so much as my ex-wife and I weren't necessarily meant to be together.

We're very different people, but we also don't hate each other.

Yeah, reasonable.

Thank God for that, right?

Because there are situations that are far worse.

That being said, this idea of experiencing the low, of allowing yourself to go down that path and feel that pain, I think is so foreign to so many people and also not talked about enough.

Like, I absolutely love that you brought that up.

Like, I got chilled when you said that because I was like, one of my biggest pieces of advice that I give to people who contact me for whatever reason about some shitty thing is always like,

let it,

if you, if you don't let it pass through you, it doesn't go away.

You're just, you're just, you're like putting it on pause.

It's like you're saving pain.

And that pain does.

I got the chills when you said that.

That's a good thing.

Yeah.

Well, right.

And then all of a sudden, you're not just getting divorce pain.

You're getting lost my job pain, divorce pain,

you know, out of shape pain, whatever pains you have, they all just come crashing in.

If you don't, but if you let them go through you and you experience it in the moment and forever and ever, you know, one,

you get past it so much quicker, right?

You go from it being months or years of your life to maybe days or even hours.

And two, it doesn't stack.

You don't have this like ticking time bomb of pain waiting to dump on you, which, you know, is when you go down the path, you start picking up the drugs or whatever your, whatever your vice of choice is.

And

man, nobody talks about that.

Like I never hear anybody talk about that topic.

And I'm so glad you brought that up.

And for those, for you guys listening like this can even be little things like like uh a key employee leaves or yeah uh a customer that you've had for years decides they're going to go with somebody else and that hurt even those things that aren't necessarily like life-changing yeah like if you just block it it again stacks and stacks and then you you go home and you spout off at your kids for no reason and you don't even understand why you're yelling at them and it's because you didn't allow yourself that pain it yeah you're going to experience it eventually And man, I love that you brought that up, dude.

Nobody, nobody talks about that.

Nobody.

Dude, the man's getting paid.

The man's getting paid.

Dude, if you delay pain, consider it a loan deferred, and you're going to pay for it with interest.

Yeah.

It's coming back, man.

So you better start paying that interest down, that paying that principal down.

Just pay it off and let it feel it.

Let it sit with it.

It's okay to sit with something.

Quite literally, sit with it.

I agree.

I, I, uh,

so my uh, my morning routine involves like, I like to, um, I like to ingest ideas and write.

So, those are my two big things.

I like that.

I tend to be an afternoon exerciser for whatever reason.

That's the way my bio works.

I'm similar.

Yeah.

And in the mornings, I tend to be more like, I do like to cold plunge.

I do like to do that, like, as a biohack thing.

You're a better man.

You're a better man than I.

I do it because I hate it so much.

Like,

people are like, I can't believe you cold plunge.

It's right there.

I'm like, I do it because I hate it, because every morning I stare at that tank and I'm, and I don't want to get in.

Every morning, I've been doing it for years.

Every morning, I still don't want to get in.

Okay.

Past that.

So

a lot of guys listen to the show, and I know a lot of them get stuck on where to start this journey.

They want to get better.

Maybe they're doing a few things good.

But

they know they have more inside them, but they're not sure where to start.

I get that question.

Where do I start?

So someone comes comes to you,

they honestly, honestly want to get better, but they don't know where to start.

How do you, you know, again, this is generalized.

So to take

off, but how do you get them going?

How do you get them started down the path?

First thing I do is I ask them their schedule.

What's your schedule?

And immediately, almost 99% of people, I go, get up earlier.

A lot earlier.

Not like, you know, I'm getting up at six or five.

No, get up at 3.30.

Set it early.

Why?

Because it sucks.

It sucks and there's no magic there but there is the samurai called 3 30 in the morning hour of the tiger right a man is most aligned with his purpose at 3 30 in the morning it's a very powerful time also they call it god's hours in the morning there's less friction in the air three to four five six in the morning there's very powerful there's an energy in the air at that time and also i think you can receive very clear downloads also for the simple fact that most of the time most people in your house aren't up yet Men need time to sit and think.

You're not strategizing when you're driving in the car and there's something that's honking and you're in the end of the day.

It's just too much shit going on.

Sitting with your thoughts.

I always tell them no phone, no email, no news.

Be deliberate about not being reactive in the morning.

A deliberate morning process.

Not watching the news, drinking your coffee, but sitting with thought, some gratitude, some prayer, whatever, stove philosophy, something to bump the frequency up, a little movement, a little visualization.

I always say start there because then that gets you momentum.

Say they're already already doing something like that, right?

say they already doing something like that then I immediately move into the body the fitness because these are the easy buttons how are you eating almost always somebody's diet can be tightened up I have them start tracking their macronutrients right whether why they go I hate tracking macros good that's then you should fucking do it

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Right?

Because it sucks and it's easy once you start doing it.

We get them a little bit tighter, slight caloric deficit, up earlier.

Now they're starting to grab hold and being very deliberate about their day.

And the momentum just picks up from there to the goal setting to the, to the other pieces, the more, the more important ones, the relationships and all those pieces.

How you, so in, and not in a vain way,

but I've found that

how you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror plays such a,

such a, physically, how you look.

Yeah.

Plays such.

a huge role in not just men, women as well, but I think particularly for how men engage with the world, right?

because when you like wake up and you can see like a little cut on your arm yeah maybe maybe you got a little v cut maybe a little abs an abs popping through and you're like oh like

like yeah i'm in my 40s and i i look you know i look all right like i'm doing like you want more right and now you're like oh if i can look good wait now my wife you know now she wants to have sex with me i don't know how to hunt her down and hope i get 15 minutes on a random thursday you know what i mean like she's actually kind of and people respond to me differently they want to they want to be around me more right like it's but we

why why do you think so many people avoid the physical side like they everybody wants to go to to to some meditation thing or the secret book that gives you all the answers to and it's like if you're if you feel like a slob and that could be relative to however you look if you feel like a slob it doesn't matter how many meditative retreats you go on yeah you're still gonna going to look at yourself in the mirror and feel bad.

So why do you think it is we struggle to focus on our physicality?

And beyond like macros and stuff, how do you get guys motivated into like, what are some easy wins guys can do to start to sculpt their body, maybe if they're not a big gym guy?

Yeah.

Man, that's a really important point.

So what do they teach you at all these meditation retreats, right?

Being present.

Being present.

And I do think a lot of peace comes from being able to be present in the current moment.

You can't be present unless you're proud of your presence

because

your insecurity.

The guy who's walking into a restaurant, right, with his wife or whatever, and he's picking his shirt out of his fat rolls is not present because he's thinking about how other people are perceiving him.

A confident man who

feels powerful, knows he looks good or is proud of how he looks.

is present.

He's looking at, when he's communicating with people, he's not thinking about how he's being being perceived It's a different energy and we're really what we're talking about is frequency the clarity of confidence The clarity of feeling good in your skin man

also

in a in a religious way people will dive into religion, but completely in gluttony How does that make sense show up at the pearly gates with a bag of trash hanging from your front dude?

You're like, hey, I'm here Nah, man, you missed the mark, right?

You're missing a major piece to tap into a God frequency.

Why do you think they talk about fasting so much in all these religions?

Caloric deficit is massively important, right?

So you're not in this caloric surplus all the time.

So I digress as far as that.

It's massively important.

And why people don't do it is fucking uncomfortable.

Hard.

And it also, it's ego.

Ego wants results fast.

It needs results fast so it's fed.

Real change takes a long time.

For someone to totally recomposition their body if they're way out of shape could take years.

So you have to be okay with the incremental micro win.

And that's a lot of what I teach people is staying in the game and being in understanding what a micro win is, right?

And

understanding that it's the path, it's the journey and not the destination.

Quite that old adage.

It's so very true.

It's like feeling good about, I do these things because it makes me feel good, not because of the results it gets me.

And then if you fall in love with the result of the path, next thing you know, you got abs.

What do you know?

Right?

And that guy's going to win every time.

So how do I get people to kind of get change?

It's a massage thing.

First, I figure out what they're eating.

And

I don't like telling them what to eat, which is why macronutrients are very helpful.

Because if you,

I could tell anybody, eat this broccoli and this chicken and fucking do this for the rest of your life.

Yeah, but who's going to do that?

It's no, understanding what the answers to the test so you know how to bend them.

That's why macros are important.

When you understand, oh man, no wonder you're not getting gains.

This has a ton of fat in it, right?

It's just, are you always going to measure your food and shit?

Fuck no.

But you can do a lot in a few months or six months or a year and know how to intuitively eat for the rest of your life.

And so that's a massively important part.

And you don't need to go to the gym.

A lot of guys I work with don't go to the gym.

I get them walking, move it, I go movement-minded is it.

I have, I work with guys who hate the gym.

I go, good, don't go to the gym.

You do some light calisthenics in your house.

You do some light calisthenics and move 10,000 steps a day or get your walks in with your family or incorporate your family and doing stuff outside and you eat well, you're going to be in good shape.

You do that for long enough.

You don't need to be a bodybuilder.

Most of the guys who I work with don't have a desire for that.

They just want to look better and feel better.

And so I go, all right, well, let's start doing that.

Let's start moving more and eating less.

For the most part, that's the start.

Guys, if you're in a place, pause right now.

I want you to go back to this idea that Taylor just shared which i think it just encapsulates so much of everything you've said and so much we've talked about today you can't be present if you're not happy with your presence yeah think about like that that that is such an idea i mean that is so freaking powerful yeah

because i i we are this idea of being present is a superpower i think a lot of people a lot of people don't focus on it but those who do oftentimes struggle to be present right that that's the next thing you hear like i know i need to be present but i struggle with it it's like because exactly what you just said, dude, there's, you're not, you might be trying to be present, but at the same time, you're going, can she tell that I got a role down here?

Does he, you know, my hairline's receding and I'm, you know, I'm, I haven't dealt with that yet, or whatever, you know, I'm, you know, whatever your issue is, right?

If you're unhappy or, or, geez, you got some, some skeletons in your closet, you're cheating on your spouse or some shit.

Well said, that shit fucking eats on you.

And you, yep, I, dude, that is such a powerful quote.

It is unbelievable.

Like, I love that so much.

That is, it, it really defines why we can't get into the present moment, why we can't be there, why your wife is trying to, your partner, whoever, your kid is, is trying to share their day with you and you're thinking about 17 other things instead of just being in that moment for 15 minutes to let them barf their day on you because all they want you to do is understand what's going on in their world because that's connection and relationship and you can't be there.

And it's like,

that's a, that's a you issue not your schedule it's not it's you aren't happy with you man dude that's some powerful shit that is you hit a point on moral clarity Ryan I really want to touch on because we were talking about the physical body but the presence in moral clarity man I'm getting a lot of chills on our conversation because that's really it's it's man

were you looking at weird porn all night and so you're standing there and now your energies your frequency is off and now you're not a little present or you've been you know cheating and so you got got the text going and now you're thinking oh where's my phone it's right it's the mind all those are all those is your your misalignments the it's the authentic voice of god telling you hey man these are the things that that are are they don't need to be stressed about just address them and fix them that's it when you listen to that authentic voice of god and you click these things in you simplify and you streamline which is a lot of what i what i beat the drum about is simplify and streamline what you do how you move what you eat how you think those things things, when you click those into place, the level of clarity and inner peace and being present in the moment, that's when it hits, when you're alive.

Dude, do you ever have this day understanding where you've been?

And I've been similar places, different but similar, where you're like,

I'm smoking pot to land the ship.

I'm, you know, taking Adderall in the morning to get myself going.

I'm, you know, whatever, you know, maybe watching porn to feel better for a few minutes or whatever you're, whatever.

You're like,

instead of optimizing my life to feel good all the time with good things,

I'm optimizing these shitty things to fill the gaps in the places that I'm not optimized, right?

And you're like, damn, that's what, that's a good point.

Dude, that fucking clicked for me one day where I was like, because I got into this bad habit for a while when I was going through some things where, dude, I was on the same, it was Adderall in the morning to get me going.

And it was pot at the end of the night to

land the ship.

That's how I justified it, to land the ship.

Yeah, you fly out of it.

Right.

And I'm like, and one day I was like sitting there.

And this is crazy.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm high on the, as a kite, sitting on the couch by myself, you know, sitting there going,

what the fuck am I doing?

Like, instead of just going to bed, getting up and working out, I'll feel amazing in the morning.

I'm going to.

be up watching some stupid TV high and then take Adderall in the morning to try to get myself to the place where I can function at my high.

Like, what the fuck am I doing?

Like, it literally hit me one day where I was like,

you are optimizing the wrong things.

Like, if you just optimize for the good things, you would feel good all the time.

Yeah.

That, and it was like, it hit me and it made so much sense.

And I was like, oh my God, like, why did it take me 42 years to figure this out?

Yeah.

It's crazy like that we,

if you just did the things you, you know, these simple things, and they don't have to be hard right like the first thing i did when i was when i was pulling my i kind of in 2017 i had a health scare and that's what really started me on my uh uh my personal improvement journey right i was an athlete got to about 25 was as fit as can be playing some baseball after college good job and then from 25 to say however old i was in 2017 36 37 yeah

i just kind of let myself go and i had kids and i was married and i made all the excuses right Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was, and then I had this health scare because I had let myself go physically to the point where like I literally passed out at a conference I was supposed to be speaking at.

Damn.

Yes.

So,

so I was like, that will never happen again.

And I went on this journey.

It was great.

Got myself fit, dropped 20 pounds,

felt like an absolute stud, performing at my highest level.

Then I had those couple bad situations where I got fired a few times, right?

Now all of a sudden I go back into woe is me.

What's why is God doing this to me?

Why is

all this stuff?

And I went back down into the cycle.

And the first thing I did to pull myself out was I bought a weighted vest and I just started going for walks.

Bro, genius.

That's all I did.

I just started going for walks with a weighted vest.

And like, it's a simple.

It could be something else for someone else, but just.

picking that one singular thing and saying every morning, regardless of how I feel, I'm going for an hour-long weighted vest walk and I'm just going to go do this.

And then then that turned into, oh, I can come home and do a few push-ups.

Yeah.

And then, oh, I can do a few push-ups and do some other

stuff.

Oh, wait, I can read before I go for my walk, then go for my walk.

And like, but what I didn't do, and I think this is the problem, and you've, you've mentioned this a few times, and it's a big part of your work is this.

What I didn't do that I did the first time was I didn't put a timetable on it.

I didn't say like, by this date, I have to be here.

So then when you miss, you feel that pressure of, oh, shit, I missed.

I'm fucked.

I'm off my thing.

It was just that incremental improvement.

So, um, like, you know, I kind of asked this a little bit, but I'm, but maybe more as advice to those listening, like

when you step off that path for a second, right?

How do you advise your people getting back on?

Is it like a don't miss twice kind of thing?

Is it a, is it a grace?

Like, what is your, you're really good at

framing these thoughts.

So like, how do you frame getting back on the path when you step off before you start going back to your old habits?

Yeah, I say, dude,

don't let predictable things surprise you.

My buddy at Team Six is a team lead on Team Six.

He says that to his guys before they go on ops that are going to suck.

He's like, it's going to be cold.

We're going to the mountains.

It's going to suck.

I don't want to hear complaining.

So don't let predictable things surprise you.

And I really like that.

And he says,

How I frame it for guys who are working with, I go, guess what?

You're going to fail.

Just plug it in here.

You're going to fail.

You're going to fail once.

You'll probably fail twice.

Probably fail more than that.

I don't give a shit.

It's understanding that you are going to fail.

None of this is perfect.

I'm not perfect.

It's not going to be perfect.

The situation's not.

You're going to fail days.

So just go, well, you know, yep, I fucked that one up.

All right, let me get right back on it.

Let me, let me fix this.

Yeah, that was a bad meal.

Don't make it a bad weekend.

Yeah, it was a bad weekend.

Don't make it a bad Monday.

Right?

And then every time you just get back on the horse, it's not about never falling off.

Get back on the horse.

Reset yourself.

Keep doing it again and again and again.

And then next thing you know, right, we're not going to stay 100% consistent.

We're not robots, man.

It's like, and I think setting, don't set the framework for perfect.

I actually just got off a Zoom with a client.

He has the problem with the all or nothing.

I'm either doing it 100% or

I'm on the couch doing it.

And so there's like this

understanding of our own psychology.

Dude, this isn't a program.

This is what you do now for the rest of your life.

You're a mindful motherfucker who gets back on the horse.

That's it.

That's all you are.

You're just more mindful about the way you eat and the way you move forever now.

Welcome to the club.

So don't don't expect there's no pro, what is there, no program for the rest of your life.

It's just what you do.

And when you start to be make these things into who you are and not just the little tasks you're doing, it becomes a lot easier because you recognize, yeah, you might have had a bad meal.

All right, yeah, listen to and become self-aware enough to understand if you're feeling a little guilt or, okay, we'll fix it.

Then listen to that internal dialogue where it's guiding you.

Your conscience is your guideline.

Listen to your conscience.

If it's saying, hey, dude, we should probably tighten up the food a little bit, you're getting a little loose, tighten it up then.

Doesn't need to be perfect.

Just start moving in the direction.

Like you said, it's the way to invest in this because

where you end up walking to and where you end up traveling to is going to be so much more honed in and perfect when you just kind of start getting some momentum it's the momentum and it don't let yourself stop that's the one piece that they say in seal training don't quit just don't quit it if it's a you can't get the full workout in i don't care good dude go walk dude do 10 push-ups Stutch, that's at least you check you're like, yeah, I didn't do it perfect, but at least that keeps you in the game.

Don't ever go on the sideline and opt out and hang your cleats up.

Nah, dude.

What is that?

That's no way to live.

And that's also where all the anxiety is going to come from.

So just do yourself a favor.

Just stay in the game.

Bro, I love your mentality.

I could talk to you for another three hours.

I think it's.

Yeah, dude, we got a lot of good synergy, man.

We should get some synergy on something in the future, bro.

I'd love to have you on.

We got a podcast we launched out down in Florida, dude, with me and my former teammate and stuff.

So, dude, I'd love to have you on and talk about some of these things, man.

Dude, I'm down.

I'm down.

So, so I know there are people listening who want to get deeper into your world.

Where do they go to do that?

How do they connect deeper with you?

So, anybody get me on my website, TaylorKavanaugh.com.

That contact form goes right to me.

I don't outsource anything, AI, right?

That goes right to my personal email.

I do that by design because I like to see who's coming in and their stories.

And then also my Instagram, TCAVOfficial, where I do, you know, workout videos and you can see my daily flow.

I record my morning process every day.

And so they know I'm up with roll call.

and my YouTube, Taylor Kavanaugh, where I dive into some deeper principles, keynotes, gym sessions with different characters around the United States and

just some of the deeper principles from, and it's my story from you'll see my first video in the Foreign Legion barracks room all the way up till now recording on the balcony in the house, you know, with the baby.

So it's been quite the journey and I look forward to.

Communicating with people, listening to their story, and figuring out how we get some

men or women momentum, dude.

I appreciate the hell out of you.

I'm so glad you're out there and uh love this conversation.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, likewise, man.

I appreciate everybody listening.

And Ryan, dude, you're the man, bro.

Look forward to speaking again.

Appreciate you, bud.

Let's go.

Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy.

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