Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores

Speaker 1 We do not have enough suffering in our lives. That's according to today's guest, Christian Ray Flores, international pop sensation, and I mean that quite legitimately.

Speaker 1 Minister, entrepreneur, coach, author, incredible human being, someone who spent a large portion of his life dealing with adversity and trauma, growing up in Russia, living through the Chilean Revolution, having his father in a concentration camp, made it to America and absolutely has dominated.

Speaker 1 Just tremendous human being, the range, the depth, the philosophy, coupled with tactical guidelines that he's going to share with you. Guys, I hit 15% of what I wanted to talk to Christian about.

Speaker 1 We're going to have him back on the show again because we simply ran out of time. This is one of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite conversations I've had in a long time.

Speaker 1 And you're just absolutely going to adore Christian.

Speaker 1 I highly recommend that you dig into his work, that you follow along, connect with him on socials, subscribe to his newsletter, all those things, because this is someone who I am going to be connecting deeper with because we just matched philosophies in a way that I, I just, it's why I do the podcast.

Speaker 1 Episodes like this are why I do this show because I get to meet incredible people and share them with you. With that said, my friends, this audience is growing rapidly and I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 I love you for that.

Speaker 1 If you're listening, please like, subscribe, watch, leave a review, comment.

Speaker 2 I read every review.

Speaker 1 I read every comment on this show.

Speaker 1 If you agree with Christian, if you disagree, right, come over to the YouTube video, watch us have this conversation, leave a comment, and Christian will come in and answer it.

Speaker 1 I'll come in and answer it. My friends, I love you for being part of this community.

Speaker 1 And if you want to go deeper, if you want to get insights beyond just what comes through the podcast or through the YouTube channel, head over to my website, RyanHanley.com.

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Speaker 1 Oftentimes, it is diving on topics that we didn't get to fully address in the show. We'll dive deeper there.
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Speaker 1 I love you for being here. I love you for listening to this show.
Let's get on to Christian Ray Flores.

Speaker 2 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 1 So, dude, when I was researching you and getting ready for this, I got to say,

Speaker 1 I had a moment where I felt very emasculated by what you've done. You had, during your pop career,

Speaker 1 some of the most epic hair I have ever seen in my entire life. Like, I was like looking at it going, I could never pull that off.

Speaker 2 Look how freaking awesome that is. That was the hair that did it, huh? Yeah, it was the hair.
You know, you've done all these amazing things in business, but that hair really got me.

Speaker 1 No, well, I,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 1 born in Russia, you immigrate to Latin America, you have this wild story, and you can go into that as much as you want, but and maybe starting there,

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 1 I'm really interested in, and maybe dive into your backstory just a little bit. We don't have to do every detail, but maybe some of the highlights, because I think what I was most intrigued by was

Speaker 1 you did not have, in any regard, a standard,

Speaker 1 you know, upbringing. You had, there was tons of turmoil, stuff that like literally your father's put in jail for a period of time.

Speaker 1 Yet you have found a way to not just persevere, but to excel in life in many different areas.

Speaker 2 And I was,

Speaker 1 I really want to dive into, especially early on in this podcast, what those early experiences did for you and how you have taken them and not use them in a victimhood way,

Speaker 1 but used them as a way to build strength and

Speaker 1 write books, become a pop star, an international pop pop star. I mean, literally, I'm reading about how Boris Yeltsin's using your songs in his campaigns.

Speaker 1 I mean, just this incredible life where so many people that would come up the way you did and have the early portion of your life the way it was,

Speaker 1 they would turtle in,

Speaker 1 they would compress, they would become depressed. And you have done the opposite.
So I'm sure every moment of your life hasn't been

Speaker 1 completely joyous and amazing, but like, you know, you have persevered so well and driven through it. I'm interested in starting there.

Speaker 2 Okay, so so thank you for asking. And I think that is the question, right?

Speaker 2 And, you know, so to give your audience a little bit of a background in a very, very fast-forward way, what you're referring to is that, you know, I basically changed four countries by age seven.

Speaker 2 My dad was in a concentration camp in Chile. We were refugees in a refugee facility.
Then we went traveling to Germany, then back to Russia, then to Africa. There was a civil war in Africa.

Speaker 2 We were there. There were bombings literally across the street from my house.
They blew up a building.

Speaker 2 And then we sort of, I ended up coming back as a teenager to like the worst Soviet Union restrictive environment. And then after the fall of the wall, I, you know, just sort of,

Speaker 2 it's almost like took flight, right? There was like escape velocity that happened. And the question, I guess, is about that.
How does that happen, right? And I became one of the pop stars.

Speaker 2 And then we moved to the States. We started several businesses, non-profits, and did a bunch of other things.

Speaker 2 And none of it is really over-the-top grandiose, but it is sort of if you think about it, wow, that's a lot, right?

Speaker 2 And I would say

Speaker 2 the question that I get most is what you're saying: how do you not contract?

Speaker 2 How do you expand in the midst of massive, massive disadvantages and like life-threatening circumstances and things like that?

Speaker 2 And I think, honestly, for me, the answer is that there's actually a tremendous potential opportunity for growth in the midst of suffering if you process it correctly, right?

Speaker 2 And actually, I don't think we have enough suffering in our lives that makes us weaker, right? And I mean, it's biologically, that's even true, right? You don't go to the gym, you become weaker.

Speaker 2 You go to the gym, you create suffering, you become stronger. But it's extraordinarily true across all dimensions of life.

Speaker 2 So, learning, ambition, romance, friendship, money, all those things, it actually works universally.

Speaker 2 And it's not that I wish, I mean, and it's actually impossible to replicate my kind of suffering that is completely out of control, but you can actually replicate suffering on purpose that is constructive suffering that makes you grow.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the answer, is that you interpret suffering as a win of some sort. And that's a mindset shift, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I love the idea that we don't have enough suffering in our lives. I completely agree with you.

Speaker 1 How does someone who say is coming up in a standard American middle-class family in a neighborhood that's safe, that's never had to worry about gun violence or poverty or drugs, that it all feels kind of, it feels outside of them.

Speaker 1 They may see it on the news or hear someone talk about it, but they've never experienced it. They've never run into it.
Their school is relatively relative, relatively safe.

Speaker 1 How does that person who's listening to this and going, you know, I can, I hear what he's saying. How do they cultivate that in their own life?

Speaker 1 What are, what are some of the constructive ways that someone could find suffering, bring suffering into their lives and start to grow again?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Basically, what you need to do is seek out not too much suffering, because too much suffering will break you, but enough suffering to grow you.

Speaker 2 And that is actually, there's a term called coined by Nassim Taleb called anti-fragile, right?

Speaker 2 And that's anti-fragility. Antifragility is the ability to get better, stronger, smarter, more agile because of actually

Speaker 2 not in spite of suffering, but because of suffering. So I would say the formula there is

Speaker 2 keep 80% sort of safe, predictable, and create 20% across all dimensions every single day in the unsafe, painful suffering. And you will be unstoppable, I believe.

Speaker 1 So I love Annie Fragile. It's one of my favorite books.
It's on the wall behind me. It's one of my most recommended books.
I think

Speaker 1 it's an incredible work. You know, so you've seen the outside world, right? Like outside of America.
Like I, I, I, I have so many friends, and I know we don't know each other that well.

Speaker 1 You know, my backstory, I grew up in a very small, very depressed town in the middle of the woods in upstate New York.

Speaker 1 We used to say that you could keep your doors open at night because the criminals lived in our town. They didn't steal in our town.

Speaker 1 And, you know, so not that I've had, you know, I haven't lived in a war-torn area.

Speaker 1 I haven't lived in another country where there's just completely different challenges that you face on a day-to-day basis, but I didn't necessarily have it easy.

Speaker 1 We were certainly lower class, you know, all that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Like you'd have three shirts and one pair of jeans for school for the year, and you'd just wear them over and over again until they fell off you, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, that was just what it was. That's pretty third world, man.
Even if it was in America, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It's so now I have, and this is why I'm just so, I'm so excited to chat with you today, is now I'm raised, you know, I've risen up out of that.

Speaker 1 Like my sole goal in life, even at the age of 10, and I was telling my kids this the other day, like at 10, I had this idea of like, I need to get the out of here.

Speaker 2 Like I need to get out of here and never come back.

Speaker 1 Like this is not where I want to be as I grow up. And I've achieved that to a certain extent.
My kids live in a, in that bubble, right?

Speaker 1 They've grown up in that bubble community where it's safe, it's nice. The people are, you know, good people for the most part of them treats them well.
There's sports leagues and community. Okay.

Speaker 1 I struggle every day with how do I

Speaker 1 show them? How do I introduce them to experiences where they start to feel that pain, right?

Speaker 1 Obviously, I don't want to put them in mortal danger, but I want them to experience some pain and some because man, I'll tell you, even at my age, I'm 43 years old, right?

Speaker 1 I have so many friends who grew up. say in the community I live in now, they grew up here.

Speaker 1 I look at them and they're so many of them are either either miserable, like just straight miserable, even though by the outside they have a good life, or they're like, what's the right word?

Speaker 1 Like, like, they're like dead inside, right? There's just no like,

Speaker 1 they're just kind of like go through the motions. You know, they, they bitch about their kids, they bitch about their wife, they bitch about their job, they bitch about their taxes.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, dude, those are, those are not real problems.

Speaker 1 Like, your wife is actually okay. Your kids are fine.
Like, you know, I don't know. They pick up the garbage.
Your taxes are going somewhere.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't love tax like anybody, but like, you you know, your garbage gets picked up. Your roads are clean.

Speaker 2 The fire department shows up, you know, like, I don't want them to grow up to be those people.

Speaker 1 Like, I want, you know, so like,

Speaker 1 in how do we start to cultivate now? You've seen the outside world, you're in America, you've written this love story to America, which I want to get to. Like,

Speaker 1 if I'm coming up to you and asking for advice, like, how do you start to, how does someone like that, how does a parent do that?

Speaker 1 How do we start to indoctrinate them to this idea of suffering being a good thing?

Speaker 2 Thank you. First of all, thank you for asking that question because I am very, very passionate about parenting.
I come from three generations of broken homes, you know, and

Speaker 2 I had to really, really recalibrate my life, my character, my everything to learn how to be a good husband and a good parent, right?

Speaker 2 So this is quite literally the top of my priorities. Like it's not business, it's not money, it's not career, it's not even impact.
It's my wife is radiant with joy. My kids are functional in winning.

Speaker 2 You know, that's basically it right so so I really do care about this tremendously

Speaker 2 you know and the thing is it's fascinating and I would love to get to even the the skip 40 years and that kid is a high performer CEO and how the same principle applies to that kid and to that CEO right

Speaker 2 let's make that gap right later but but it's the same thing right so my kids they two were born in Moscow one was born in Ukraine but they moved pretty early so the you know my oldest one is a little bit older she was 12 but the youngest ones were you know zero or like one and three basically right so they're a hundred percent american like they're very americanized yeah now here's how you how you still replicate the healthy patterns no participation prizes ever okay that's those like the basic things right teach them disciplines not

Speaker 2 grades right the school system is designed designed as a factory it's it's a conveyor belt and it's designed to teach kids to perform to give them a certain mark right i mean they're literally creating cogs yeah that is that's the way it's done what we taught our kids and our oldest went to a charter school then a private school our youngest were actually homeschooled throughout We taught them disciplines.

Speaker 2 This is history. This is literature.
How did literature relate to history? How does this thing relate to each other? This is economics, right? This is geography. And the system,

Speaker 2 the mindset of the normal education sort of bubble is you're at the center of it, then it's your parents, then it's a state, then you're a country.

Speaker 2 What we taught them is there's the world, there's continents, countries, states, systems, then it's your family, then it's you.

Speaker 2 You know, you are not at the center of the universe, you know, basically.

Speaker 2 There's a world and you fit into it a certain way. So these are like macro things, right?

Speaker 2 But I would say a relationship, you teach them relationship by not being a a parent only in the morning when you drop them off and in the evening when you tuck them in and maybe play around in the backyard for a little bit well integrate your life with them because they need it when they grow up they need to understand what deep relationships are right so we literally we planned our

Speaker 2 even limited our business opportunities to where our lives with our kids were integrated.

Speaker 2 They're weaved together. And if you do that early on, they won't resent you when they're teenagers.
When they resent you in the teenagers,

Speaker 2 it's too late. So now we have, I mean, they're all out of the house, 20, 22, 29, but they come back.

Speaker 2 The relationship is intact.

Speaker 2 The dynamics change because they're grown-ups. We treat them differently.
But they are absolutely,

Speaker 2 we love each other so much. We have such a warm relationship.
You know, you can't buy this kind of influence. You can't succeed your way into this kind of influence.

Speaker 2 You have to just do the work with them, right?

Speaker 2 When it comes to sort of comfort and what you referred to earlier, what we did is that we invested a ton of time and money, literally from age zero, to travel.

Speaker 2 And it would be Paris, you know, we could be an all-inclusive resort, and it would be the slums of Rio de Janeiro or the barrios of Mexico and Tijuana.

Speaker 2 or the just under $2 a day slums in Mapuche and Mozambique. And they would be with us the whole time, right?

Speaker 2 They know the third world since they were born, you know, even though they grew up in America, they were exposed to the contrast.

Speaker 2 And we spoke about the things and we told them the stories, you know, so I think that's, that's the way it's exposure, right?

Speaker 1 I love that. You know, I was thinking the other day, I was reading an article and

Speaker 1 for some reason, I'm always, I'm very interested in the turn of the, of the 19th century, you know, up through like World War II, just not just the wars part. I'm interested in the lifestyle.

Speaker 1 It was a very, it was a very dynamic time because it was also a time when we, when documentation and imagery started to expand.

Speaker 1 So not only could we read the stories about what was happening, but we could see it as well.

Speaker 1 And, and I was reading this story about how one of the things that we've lost, particularly in this country, is the apprenticeship of our children, which is what I just heard you describe.

Speaker 2 That's exactly it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Where the shoe, you know, the shoe cobbler, his son would be in the store with him.

Speaker 2 That's a good pitch.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 if the mother had work, you know, her daughter would be with her. And the,

Speaker 1 you know, we apprenticed our children into our trade. It doesn't mean they necessarily would do that trade, although many did at that time.

Speaker 1 It showed them from a very early age, work ethic, grinding, the failure, the success, the conversations, right?

Speaker 1 Like you see, you know, even into the 50s, you see many leaders, executives would have their child with them standing behind them back here as they're doing deals or having meetings or whatever.

Speaker 1 And the child would sit there. And now we're like, well, my kid can't sit still for 10 seconds without a, without a piece of technology.
And it's like, well, what the heck was happening back then?

Speaker 1 They didn't have that. What was the kid doing? The kid was listening to your conversations.
They were learning how to communicate with people, how to handle themselves in society.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I said to myself, like, we wonder why we launch these kids into the world and they lose their friggin minds in college and go crazy.

Speaker 2 It's because they were, they lived in a bubble and then all of a sudden they were launched out in the world and they were like, wait a minute, the world is crazy and hard.

Speaker 2 You know, and

Speaker 1 so that, what you just described, I'm just, I absolutely am fascinated with it. And I'm starting to do with my own children, maybe a little later, mine are nine and 11.

Speaker 2 That's crazy.

Speaker 1 But I'm starting to bring them into my life, into my work life, because I want them to see like, this is effort. Like you, you don't just get to show up.

Speaker 1 Like you got to do this and you have to do it well.

Speaker 2 This idea that you show up and participate as you said and somehow that's success is there's no truth to that it's a it's a complete fabrication and they won't if you do that they will never be sort of those classic cliche people where they go oh they don't know how they're so entitled no they won't be yeah so when people say it's a generational thing it's not a generational thing it's a parenting thing

Speaker 2 you know my kids are the exact same generation that they accuse of oh give me this that much money i'm not going to show up and i'm going to make sure no my kids work hard. Why? It's not because they

Speaker 2 belong to a generation because they were brought up in an environment, right?

Speaker 2 So, but yeah, you're absolutely. I mean, apprenticeship is so beautiful of a concept.

Speaker 2 That's actually a concept that is widely needed for grown-ups, right? Apprenticeship.

Speaker 2 You mentioned sort of bringing them to the workspace. I was thinking, I was like, they've seen me on stage when I was doing music.
They were sitting.

Speaker 2 I have pictures of them sitting in a set when I'm shooting a $160,000 music video in a production company when we did that in LA.

Speaker 2 And they're hanging out with like extras and camera people and grips, and they're just hanging out there and seeing the whole thing.

Speaker 2 And, you know, they've seen me produce videos, they've seen me do this, right? So my youngest one,

Speaker 2 her name is Bella, Bella Flores. You can look her up on Instagram.
is just crushing it as an influencer, right?

Speaker 2 She edits, she shoots, she knows, she has this aesthetic about her. She understands how to frame something.

Speaker 2 And she's honestly, I don't think she's ever going to send a job application ever. She's not even out of college, right?

Speaker 2 She's getting brand deals right now in college and partnering and designing clothing lines and stuff like that. It's ridiculous, right? Yeah.
Well, why?

Speaker 2 Well, because she grew up watching us do stuff.

Speaker 2 you know so so and all three of them are very different very very different but they they all three have a work ethic yeah and they all three have almost like an internal freedom of i'm gonna pursue this and i'm gonna pursue that i'm gonna puzzle for a bit and we're like totally fine with that right

Speaker 1 yeah it's it's like we've forgotten everything that joseph campbell taught us about the hero's journey that's right they we've completely forgotten that you know we they you know we start in the in the safe village or the safe-ish village surrounded by our family and we have a routine and things are fine And then we get, we, if we never launch out into the world and we never face the dragon, right?

Speaker 1 If the, if we, if we never stand in front of the dragon and test our strength and our ability, then there's no way of coming back in and actually becoming the hero.

Speaker 1 Yet what what we're what we all want to do is press a magic button and all of a sudden we're the hero. And it's like, it just simply doesn't.

Speaker 2 It does not work that way. It does not work.

Speaker 1 And to me, you know, I come back to this idea of apprenticeship because

Speaker 1 I was talking to, before what I do now, I owned a commercial insurance agency, a national digital commercial insurance agency. And,

Speaker 1 you know, we hired a lot of people and from all different places. And

Speaker 1 what's interesting is, you know, when we started to really dial in and figure out how to find the workers, they were rarely the most educated, rarely the most polished.

Speaker 1 They were oftentimes the ones who had some funky story in their background that they, that it was always an overcome story right this terrible thing happened i got fired from this job i made this decision that didn't work i tried this business that didn't work but now i'm here and i'm pushing forward the ones that just took this straight path of you know go to the good you know come out of the good community go to the good college get that corporate job idea like it just They it never clicked for them.

Speaker 1 They always wanted something from us, right? It was like this idea of instead of what can I bring here? How do I succeed? How do I get forward? It was a different conversation.

Speaker 1 It was all how much time off do I get? What's my benefits? And I'm like, we're thinking about this all wrong.

Speaker 2 We're forgetting.

Speaker 2 They're entitled.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 it's an idea. And here's where I want to position this question.
Faith is a huge part of your life. It's a huge part of my family's life.
They go to Catholic school.

Speaker 1 I'm a devout Christian. I was raised that way.
And, you know, Faith is a big part of the conversations we have.

Speaker 1 And I'm very interested in how you built that into your own life and how you've brought your kids along through faith and what that was like for you and where you see faith and ultimately getting to a place of meaning and purpose and contentment.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's a big question. That's a huge question, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, so I, you know, the peculiarity about me is that I literally grew up and you'll probably find almost zero people in the United States who can say the same thing, unless they're an immigrant from like a communist country, is that until I was probably 20

Speaker 2 in my early 20s i knew zero people who believed in god and and you have to just really let that sink in to even understand

Speaker 2 okay what are the what are the what are the ripple effects of a culture like that where everybody is godless essentially right it doesn't even matter which faith but just in general it's an atheistic cultural baseline.

Speaker 2 Now, there's, of course, it's not zero people, but I knew zero people, you know?

Speaker 2 And what happened with me is that, you know, I became very successful as an artist and I was literally entertaining millions of people, selling millions of albums and playing sports arenas.

Speaker 2 And there are these foundational dimensions of

Speaker 2 your humanity that were basically underdeveloped in me because there was no faith. Right? There was no moral framework.

Speaker 2 There was not these almost like meta structures of what is, is there anything bigger than me? Does that anything care about me? How do I fit into the picture? Why am I here?

Speaker 2 What does that mean for my relationships? What does that mean about power and talent and money and love and sex? You know,

Speaker 2 all of those things were almost like devoid of

Speaker 2 faith that is thousands of years old and have sort of perpetuated and breathed and lived within humanity.

Speaker 2 And you go, oh, this is just abstract, sort of lofty sort of ideas, but it has a very real consequence, right?

Speaker 2 Because here I am, a pop star. I'm doing all this stuff.
My ego is super inflated. There's nothing bigger than me in my mind, you know? I don't know what to do with

Speaker 2 marriage because I come from three generations of broken homes. No one taught me anything about this.
Right?

Speaker 2 I don't understand submission to authority.

Speaker 2 My dad wasn't there since I was 14. And the whole faith, like obedience out of faith, out of adoration, out of love, non-existent.

Speaker 2 And the effect is I don't know my way around X, Y, and Z, right? I am in the top 0.1% of performers and attainers, like just crushing it.

Speaker 2 And I'm completely inadequate in the most basic things like marriage, for example, right? So I'm dating all these girls. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 I basically sabotage every relationship I'm in and I'm fearful of commitment. And also just like any human being, I want love.
I want family.

Speaker 2 I want that warmth, you know, that belonging that comes with it. And I don't know how to get there.
So I want it. I date.
It gets too close to intimacy.

Speaker 2 I'm afraid that it's going to end up in divorce. I sabotage it.
Rinse and repeat. Okay.

Speaker 2 I meet a girl. She gets pregnant.
I treat her like crap. She leaves me, cuts me off from my oldest oldest daughter, Deanna.

Speaker 2 I'm now a pop star, entertaining millions, clinically depressed, don't know how to breathe, forget creativity,

Speaker 2 forget high performers, performance, forget genius, forget thriving. You see how even a high performer can go into a deep hole if they don't fix some other areas of life, right?

Speaker 2 I meet this Canadian missionary, his name's Andy, and I look at his family and I'm like, just teach me how to do this. I was like, well, I open to, you know, listening to the Bible.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, well, it's sort of an old book. I don't really believe in it.
It's sort of, but if I get what you have, sure. And basically, how that's how I came into the faith.

Speaker 2 You know, so now, you know, now, obviously, I've been in, I've been a Christian for almost 30 years, right? And I've preached the gospel all over the world in four different languages.

Speaker 2 I've started churches. I've been a bivocational pastor all over the place, right? And so it is really the most important part of my life.

Speaker 2 But I do think that, you know, even when I coach, you know, in my coaching program, when I coach people, if you're not a Christian, you can be, I can coach you as long as you don't mind me quoting the Bible, because these are eternal truths.

Speaker 2 Like, I will be doing you a disservice if I don't quote you at least a scripture where I say, look, this has been true 2,000 years ago. It's still true about you right now.
You need to pay attention.

Speaker 2 And I'm not going to push you to become a Christian at all. If you want to know how,

Speaker 2 obviously, I will share my faith with you. But it is that important.
I do think that the Bible contains the secrets to life and success and health and wealth and joy and love and all of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was very taken by the way. I spent some time reading about and thinking about, I believe that we've lost in our culture the idea of generational thinking.

Speaker 1 Again, talking about the fact that I spend time researching turn of the century stuff. And,

Speaker 1 you know, so much of what you read about everyday life, particularly about Americans at the time, was

Speaker 2 you worked to

Speaker 1 put your children in a better place than you were. And then they worked to put their children in a a better place.

Speaker 1 And that's how we took the bloodline and the family and the, and, and we, we moved them forward in life was to just, my role here is not to be a celebrity, is to be these things.

Speaker 1 If that happens, that's amazing, right? But my role is to take my family, my name, my bloodline, and move it from this place and progress us forward.

Speaker 1 And today, when you bring up the concept of generational thinking to most people,

Speaker 1 I watch them like crank in their head. They're like, it's almost like they've never even considered the idea.

Speaker 2 They're like, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 I'm, I'm going for the vice president of sales position. That's all that, you know, that's what matters is me making more money or getting this position.

Speaker 1 It's like, but what, what does that, what does that opportunity mean to move you forward? And it doesn't mean you shouldn't have that opportunity. I think that's where people get lost.

Speaker 1 Like when I talk about this concept, they, they,

Speaker 1 I see a lot of people go, well, well, what about me? Right.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if you can hold, and this is what I've, a big lesson that I've taken from the Bible and I try to share with people, is that you can, you can fulfill your own meaning and purpose.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 While also, right, guiding your, the next generation to through the, maybe some of the obstacles that you face, right? Like ego has been a problem in my life in different scenarios before.

Speaker 1 And I work very hard to talk to my kids about how to be driven, but humble at the same time, right?

Speaker 1 That's me trying to fix a lesson that wasn't taught to me, a blind spot that I i had in my life and a hole i had to fall into and pull myself out of and now you try to move them forward and and to your point like jordan peterson says it best like you don't have to believe in god but there is no better roadmap for success than the bible act as if you know that's how he came to faith yeah i thought that was a wonder what wonderful way of looking at it he came to faith and which now he says he you know he he he's a believer right he came to faith by simply just acting as if like he's like i don't believe yeah but i do think this book is really important.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to act as if.

Speaker 1 And then through the activity of researching and practicing and talking and communicating and trying to live out the lessons,

Speaker 1 he came to believe. And I feel like atheism has surfaced again in our country.
And so much of the lack of birth rate and

Speaker 1 these different ideas where people aren't getting married and

Speaker 1 relationships are very, you know, Tinder based or whatever. Like so much of that is a loss of responsibility to the generation that we're trying to move forward.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 Does that land for you?

Speaker 2 It does. And

Speaker 2 you brought us something very interesting. The Tinder generation, right? Tinder generation is basically the concept is you experiment until you get it right, right?

Speaker 2 The problem with that is that the wear and tear of failed experiments really, really wrecks you.

Speaker 2 You're just one atom floating in the universe, and then you find another atom and see if

Speaker 2 there's a little little match, right? And Tinder itself, actually, all those the apps are actually not they claim to be very scientific and date. I would say they claim to be data-driven, right?

Speaker 2 So, so you're looking for a maid, and you know, you like walking on the beach, she likes walking on the beach, you like reading books, she likes reading books, oh, we're a match.

Speaker 2 Well, that's not how marriage works at all. You actually, you,

Speaker 2 like if you really want to be scientific, you want somebody who compliments you and you complement them. It's very, very hard to do that

Speaker 2 through just filling it on application and then putting it out there. And you won't be objective in the first place.
So the mismatches are actually probably increased by the claim of

Speaker 2 the sort of we belong together because we're the same. We actually belong together because we're different.
And then the other layer of that is experimentation is everything, right?

Speaker 2 You tinder your way through life. Well,

Speaker 2 look at the outcome, let's say, whatever, seven years or 10 years later. People are literally more lonely and getting married later, not really understanding what that means in the first place.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I did that, right? I did the whole experiment until you're way into it. Then I realized, you know what? I am so

Speaker 2 destroyed internally. You know, like the damage is so vast that can you please give me

Speaker 2 another model, right? And the model was, you know, which was so, like, it was, bro, it was, it was impossible for me to even wrap my mind around, but I was so desperate, right?

Speaker 2 So I was like, okay, so how do I do this? Like, my main pain point is how to find a mate, get married, and stay married, right? That's basically the thing and be happy.

Speaker 2 And they're like, well, you know, first of all, what's your system of values? If you're a Christian, you need to, who do you marry? A Christian. Yeah, that narrows it down quite a bit.
Really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, really. Okay, that's a macro that you can,

Speaker 2 that's, that's an algorithm you can add, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, that narrows your focus why well because you have the same values and you're both submitted to the same authority that helps people fight people change if you don't have any authority above you that is objective you will get divorced more likely than not and when we fight and you have authority and I can open the Bible or somebody can open the Bible me and my wife and go you guys are a mess man Here's what the Bible says about that.

Speaker 2 You repent. We're like, yes, sir.
You know, that helps.

Speaker 2 You know, so you have authority.

Speaker 2 The other thing is when you talk about generational wisdom, right, about dating, like I'm applying what you said in just one, this one scenario because I want to be very practical.

Speaker 2 Is, you know, I basically adopted a completely new approach to sex, right?

Speaker 2 I'm like, I never, ever in my life considered that sex is for marriage only, ever. Like, that wasn't even a concept.
I was sexually active since I was, what, 15.

Speaker 2 By the time I became a Christian, I was 26. I've been sexually active for a decade.
And then, and on top of that, I'm a pop star.

Speaker 2 So, a big portion of the population of 15 countries think I'm hot, you know, and have posters on their walls of me. That presents a whole different layer of availability, you know, of women.

Speaker 2 It's just not normal. It's not healthy or normal.
Okay. So, then I like imagine me in that state, 26, right? Testosterone is pretty high.

Speaker 2 And the guy goes, yeah, you know what? Sex is just for marriage. Like, I don't understand what the words coming out of your mouth.
He's like, well, you asked me to teach teach you how to do this.

Speaker 2 You know, this is what it says. And I'm like, okay, I don't even know how that's physically.
Like, I literally made the

Speaker 2 case that it's unhealthy physically, didn't fly. I made the case that there's got to be some sort of get out of jail card because of professional, my sort of occupation, that didn't fly.

Speaker 2 And I finally had the choice of whether I believe in this and will follow this approach or not. And I'm like, well, I'm in so much pain, I'll probably just do it, right?

Speaker 2 And basically, act as if, right? Yeah. So I do.
So I am like, I'm sexually active for 10 years. I'm completely abstinent for four until I get, I meet my wife, I court her, I propose to her, I

Speaker 2 marry her. And the first time I had sex, I made love to my wife was on the wedding night.
No one I knew even understood the concept, right? But I was trying to break a generational curse.

Speaker 2 I was just determined, I'm going to figure this out.

Speaker 2 25 years later, I'm happily married, like so happily married okay never ever did we have any infidelity of any kind and even not even a hint not even a thought our kids love us our kids are so jealous of us they're like you guys ruined it for us we're never gonna find a marriage this good you know but that gives them a higher bar to aspire to right yeah and then the other layer i'll add another layer to that so i can talk about this for hours as you can see i can get real passionate about this right generational wisdom right

Speaker 2 okay you're you you met a girl you she's cute there's chemistry there's no it's it's a it's a solo it's a solo activity in the west in an atomized individualized west it's just you and her you get serious you just inform your friends that you got serious you get engaged you just inform your parents you got engaged you don't get their input about anything that's the culture correct like that's the middle of the road situation when it comes to ancient wisdom and i mean thousands of years and not even just christianity everywhere that's just learned stuff right You get the community involved.

Speaker 2 So when I was courting now and dating girls as a Christian, it was like, okay, there's chemistry, I like her, there's alignment. I want to get to know her friends.
What do they think about her?

Speaker 2 She will get to know my friends. What do they think about me and her? And it's like this incredibly free-flowing, beautiful, holistic wisdom.

Speaker 2 that is beyond just chemistry and that, you know, an attraction. And then you, do you have a mentor? Okay, does she have a mentor? Let's talk to her mentor and she'll talk to my mentor.

Speaker 2 And she would literally grill the guy who mentored me and coached me about all of my worst qualities. And I think it's a beautiful thing to do.
And then we're fully informed. Wisdom is flowing.

Speaker 2 And we go, yes, I want you. I want you forever for the rest of my life.
And that's what happened.

Speaker 1 One, I love that. There's an idea in there.
There's a couple of ideas that you brought up. One was breaking a generational curse.
And

Speaker 1 I was reading, now I'm not even going to remember where it's from, but there was research done. This book was talking about where trauma that we experience resonates three generations down.

Speaker 1 And we are experiencing the accumulated trauma of three generations in front of us. And the argument that this, whatever I was reading, was making was

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 it is, it is not only important, but it is our responsibility and

Speaker 1 an obligation, right, to do whatever we can

Speaker 1 to fix the traumas inside of us. I'm not talking necessarily about physical trauma, like I get, you know, an injury or something like that.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about the emotional trauma that we carry inside of us, that that is passed to our children. And then it is paramount.

Speaker 1 It is, it is an obligation for us to work through those traumas to reduce the impact that it will have because it's not just us.

Speaker 1 Like, like you said, we're so atomized in Western culture that, you know, this is me and my lived experience, which is a term that I hate. And, like,

Speaker 1 no, it's not just you, right? And the Bible talks about this too, but like, it's not, you are passing that thing on.

Speaker 1 If you hold it, if you don't fix it, if you stew on it, if you let it fester inside of you and

Speaker 1 create tension and cancer, you, you, you are passing that down to the next generation and to the generations that follow.

Speaker 1 And that therefore breaking generational curses, you know, in large part is why we're here, right?

Speaker 1 It is to solve these problems. Yes.
And

Speaker 1 I guess through your teachings and coaching, both, you know, business professionally, as well as the work that you do with the faith, like, I guess when I start to bring these topics up to people in casual conversations off of formats like this, It's an idea that is, again, incredibly foreign to people, right?

Speaker 1 And oftentimes they're not even aware.

Speaker 1 They feel tension, they feel anxiety, they feel stress, frustration, but they have no way of naming it, touching it, even realizing that it is real, that they're walking around every day with something inside of it.

Speaker 1 How do you guide them to awareness, right? Like if awareness is step one, if starting to understand that you are carrying something and maybe the reason that you're struggling to

Speaker 1 keep a job more than a few years or that you struggle with relationships is because of this thing that you're carrying inside. How do we start to just become aware of that?

Speaker 1 Is it conversations? Is it counseling, mentorship? Like, you know,

Speaker 1 what is your recommendation for someone to start to

Speaker 1 understand what they're carrying? Because we can't address it until we understand that it's even there.

Speaker 2 That's a fantastic question. And I do think that all of us carry trauma.
It's just the nature of the human experience, right?

Speaker 2 Just beneath the skin, there's stories of pain, right? Every single person walking on this earth. And I would say on a macro level, I would say the approach varies on a macro level.

Speaker 2 And I can just sort of narrow it down to something very specific and then give you what I think works real well. But on a macro level, the way I see it is that

Speaker 2 there's healing your past or building a future, right?

Speaker 2 That's one way of looking at things. And I would say, and then we'll talk about which state you're in right now.
But healing the past is therapy. Building a future is coaching, right?

Speaker 2 And they overlap, definitely, right? So you overlap into the past and you overlap into the future.

Speaker 2 But I would say that the big buckets are, absolutely, if your past is just crushing you, I mean, you just can't escape it, get therapy, right?

Speaker 2 If you're pretty much figured it out, you know, and you want to build a completely different future, get coaching, right? Or a mentor.

Speaker 2 The state you're in in is another way I like thinking about it.

Speaker 2 Is that, you know, if you are, if you had an accident, you're biking, right, and you're just bruised and you have a broken arm, whatever, right?

Speaker 2 And you have maybe some internal bleeding, let's say, like, let's say it's really bad. You know, you don't go to the gym.
You go to the hospital.

Speaker 2 Then you go from the hospital, you go to physical, you know, therapy. Then from therapy, you go to the...
to the gym. That's basically the continuum.

Speaker 2 And you can sort of apply where you are to where you need to be.

Speaker 2 but to your question about awareness,

Speaker 2 the word that I love to use because I think it's just it's it's so deep and so empowering is metacognition, right?

Speaker 2 Metacognition is your ability to think beyond your

Speaker 2 think outside of yourself. It's almost like you're outside of yourself thinking about what you're thinking.

Speaker 2 You know, and that's a skill that can be developed, right?

Speaker 2 And so I teach that like hands-on in my coaching.

Speaker 2 and basically on the you know i can i mean i don't keep secrets at all like everything i i teach i post and share on podcasts and everything when i coach people what they're paying me is implementation like okay work with me right but here's here's the deal that works real well and you can expand it or you know contract it a little bit but sort of that works very very powerfully first of all you need a you need a practice that is every single day that allows you to think beyond the autopilot, so to say.

Speaker 2 What you refer to, right? We're just existing. We have this, you know, we're sort of on auto, auto, you know, on cruise control, right?

Speaker 2 It's a horrible state of being, actually, you know, and we, I don't think you were designed for that. You were designed to build and evolve and face obstacles and overcome obstacles.

Speaker 2 That's what makes you, that's what makes life worth living.

Speaker 2 And 90% of the population on any given, you know, decade even, in any given country, lives on autopilot mostly, you know, because it's painful to think, to think beyond the uncertainty, you know, start thinking,

Speaker 2 making choices that feel dangerous, right?

Speaker 2 And we'll talk about uncertainty a little bit later, maybe. But so a metacognition, a metacognitive skill set

Speaker 2 is the ability to every single day have the space.

Speaker 2 and the ability to get to a place where you know exactly how you feel, why you feel it, where you want to go, what's in the way, what feelings are constructive, what feelings are destructive, and every single day.

Speaker 2 And I mean every single day. And you're totally capable of doing it.
The way we do it, the way I teach you to do it is when you wake up in the morning, your mental and emotional tank is the fullest.

Speaker 2 Like it's the, you can do it another time of the day, but that's where you're the fullest, right? You have the most potential. You have more to work with.
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2 The autopilot hasn't even kicked in yet fully, right?

Speaker 2 So what we do, we spend an hour, 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes. One is contemplation.
So it could be journaling, meditation, prayer, all of the above.

Speaker 2 There's like a variety of combinations that you can do that. That allows you to think outside of yourself, right?

Speaker 2 And you start becoming way more self-aware, way more positive, way more happy, we're more objective, you know. The second is physical activity.
Why?

Speaker 2 Because your brain spies on your body and your body spies on your brain. So if your body is not engaged in the thing,

Speaker 2 you're only half aware. Your body is aware, actually.

Speaker 2 And when you are exercising your body, you're contracting muscles, you're overcoming obstacles, you're doing hard things, your mind is beautifully designed to give you antidepressants, to give you all kinds of cognition spikes and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 It makes you, you're smarter when you work out, basically, you know. And then the third piece is learning.
There's always something that we lack, right?

Speaker 2 In whatever endeavor, and especially if you're trying to build a new future, are built, you're literally leaning into a future where you're missing pieces, or you would have that future today now, right?

Speaker 2 So, to get those pieces, you're probably not exactly fully equipped to get those pieces in place yet.

Speaker 2 But if every day you pick anything, you know, let's say I'm talking back to marriage, or it could be business, right? I'm like, all right, I have no idea how to even pick a mate.

Speaker 2 I don't have the, you know, like,

Speaker 2 what do I look into in a woman, you know, or I'm divorced, I don't even know how to start over, you Or I want to switch this career to this career.

Speaker 2 Or I want to, for example, have a business that has hit a plateau and I want to scale. Obviously, I'm missing some pieces there.
What is the most painful? What's the lowest hanging fruit?

Speaker 2 Something that I can solve quicker, maybe, or maybe something that it presents presents that scares me the most.

Speaker 2 That's where you fill those 20 minutes with and obsess about it until you get a more or less functional understanding of the thing that you're missing.

Speaker 2 And what that gives you is this sense of accomplishment. Oh, I can do this.
This doesn't scare me anymore. Or even, I've mastered this.

Speaker 2 In any phase of that continuum of obsessing over one thing. And I obsess over stuff that I don't know every day.
It's literally, there's a place for it.

Speaker 2 Every single day, I learn something I don't know. And I can pick and choose when to start, when to upgrade, when to switch lanes, when to pick another topic, or whatever, right?

Speaker 2 But every single day, I contemplate, I move, I exercise, and I learn. Those things bundle together, you're, I promise you, you're operating on rocket fuel.
It will change your life forever.

Speaker 2 I absolutely love it.

Speaker 1 And I, I, I think you're 100% right. I, I wake up at like 5 a.m.

Speaker 1 And what I found is it that, and I've done all three of those things at different times, but When you only do one of those, what you find is you, you, you lack in the others, right?

Speaker 1 If you, yeah, if you only read, yeah then you're kind of shoving information into a brain that's already full yeah if you only exercise then your brain doesn't necessarily catch up and stay with you and and you know it's like I don't do them all in the morning

Speaker 1 I tend to I like to journal or just sit and and and kind of meditate over a cup of coffee meditate's the wrong word ruminate maybe even a positive way but I literally what you just described is the battle plan.

Speaker 1 I mean, that, that is,

Speaker 1 it's 100% the battle plan. And like more,

Speaker 2 people are like, well, I don't like to journal.

Speaker 1 Just do morning pages. Just barf on the page, right? Today sucks a thousand times if that's what it takes, right?

Speaker 2 Like whatever you to get it out.

Speaker 1 Have you ever read the book, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer?

Speaker 2 No, but I've heard, I know the title, yes.

Speaker 1 Highly recommend it. Like, like Annie Fragile, it's one of my most recommended books.
And what he describes in that book, I...

Speaker 1 is something that I've always I'd always kind of felt, but had absolutely no ability to put words to, which was this idea that you are not your mind and you are not your body. You are your soul.

Speaker 1 And that you're, and that where we get confused is when we forget that we are not our mind. Your brain's job, your mind, the voice in your head that is not you and it is not God.

Speaker 1 That voice is strictly meant to keep the physical being alive

Speaker 1 on a second-to-second basis, right? So it is going to give you every bad piece of advice because all it cares about is alive for another second, alive for another second, alive for the other.

Speaker 1 Same thing with your body, right?

Speaker 1 You feel a sense of

Speaker 1 like you earward suffering when you're when you're going for a long run and your body's like, this sucks.

Speaker 2 You know, we got cortisol running through our body. You know, get out.

Speaker 1 But what you're saying is I'm making you stronger. Yes, your body's screaming at you to stop because it is.

Speaker 1 Your muscles are tense. They're tearing.

Speaker 1 There's stress chemicals flooding your muscles.

Speaker 1 But you know what you're doing.

Speaker 1 Your soul knows what it's doing, which is making you stronger, making you more fit, giving you more ability to outrun a tiger or whatever, you know, whatever our ancestors were doing.

Speaker 1 So this, but when you can, when you can conceptualize or that's not the right word, internalize this idea that that voice in your head is not your friend, it doesn't mean it's not a data point you shouldn't consider, but it's not who, it's not you, right?

Speaker 1 Because that voice is going to tell you, don't take on this big project.

Speaker 2 Don't fall in love with her.

Speaker 1 right? Don't, you know, send a random note out to this person because he might think you're weak or whatever, right?

Speaker 1 Like there's all these crazy messages that you get that keep you from doing the things that move you forward.

Speaker 1 And so much of it is because we think that voice is us or some people confuse it to be God, but it's not, right? We are this separate thing, this soul that's whole, that's been fit into a shell.

Speaker 1 And the shell talks to us, but we cannot take it as truth because it's not truth. And so much of what you just said is clearing that mechanism, right?

Speaker 1 It's getting the garbage out, getting the blood flowing, the body moving and engaged in the day, and then refilling it with positive things, you know, whatever the learning part is that you want to do, right?

Speaker 1 Then refilling it with positivity, right? And it's like taking out the trash every day.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You dump the trash, you know, you clean up the dishes, you put, you know, you know, you fill it up with good stuff. And it's just a wonderful way.
I could talk to you for three more hours, man.

Speaker 1 I want to have you back on the show, you know, as soon as I possibly can because I have like a million more things I could talk to you about. This has been absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 1 Let people know there's, there's so much that you have going on.

Speaker 1 The book, your work with your academy and coaching that you do Where should people go if they want to go deeper into your world and any of the resources guys that Christian mentions I'll have linked up in the show notes whether you're listening on the podcast watching on YouTube etc So just scroll down and you'll be able to find them all but where should they go to connect with you and go deeper into your world?

Speaker 2 So yeah, if you're generally if the deeper into the world if that's the the desire probably the best place would be my newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter It's at ChristianRayFlores.com.

Speaker 2 So it's just my name. And basically, what you get there is one free Sunday newsletter and one only for subscribers.

Speaker 2 It's just 11 bucks a month of the best of the best stuff that I can just share, find, you know, collect, curate.

Speaker 2 That's all living in that place. So I think that's probably the best place if you, generally speaking, want to

Speaker 2 sort of just benefit from some of the stuff that I share here. And if you're one of those probably one or 2% who go, I need to work with this guy.

Speaker 2 We have a wait list, but you can definitely join the wait list. Be happy to discuss it.
You go to exponential.life, and exponential is spelled without the E. It starts with an X.
Gotcha.

Speaker 2 And that's basically my high-performance coaching stuff.

Speaker 1 Dude, enormous fan. Appreciate the hell out of you.
Like I said, I want to have you back on the show when you have some time because I want to get into the book.

Speaker 1 I want to get into some of your more coaching philosophies. There's so much I want to talk to you about, but I appreciate your time, and this has been wonderful.

Speaker 1 Thanks for taking a few moments to speak to us today, Ryan.

Speaker 2 Thank you. And I find you to be extraordinarily not only curious but definitely full of wisdom yourself because you can tell that you're overflowing with these ideas yourself.

Speaker 2 Because you don't just ask questions, you go in your own little you know side sidebars, which basically tells me you know what you're talking about, you're passionate about it, and it resonates with you.

Speaker 2 So, thank you for that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home

Speaker 2 is 3 a.m. when the confinement is labeled.