The ONE thing men avoid at all costs w/Pete Taylor

So the paper man is the guy that builds all the success on paper. So on paper he looks good, he looks great. He's got the car, he's got the family, he's got the the business, he's got maybe some flash things. On paper he's got status, but internally he's chaos. the US guys, we're in prison and we're in mind prisons. We're in prisons of the mind and we're trapped in these prisons and for the most part we're not aware of it and we can't change

what we can't see. This is most men that I know, myself included, is avoiding the truth. It's an avoidance of radical honesty. It's I don't want to be honest and I don't want to face the truth because I don't want the discomfort of being honest. Status. It was my #1 driver. So status was the. That is, and it is and it is for a lot of guys. It's like if I get status, then I will get respect. And the more respect I get, the more validation I feel, the better I feel.

And that's that that that external validation makes me feel good. Today on the Limitless CEO podcast, we're sitting down with a man who's rebuilt himself not once, but twice. Pete Taylor went from a bullied kid to a pro athlete, From award-winning 7 figure founder to the creator of Heroic Man, A brotherhood helping leaders trade burnout for calm, unshakeable presence. He's coached hundreds of high performing entrepreneurs to spot the hidden mind presence that keep them stuck at a level 4

when level 10 is on the radar. If you're running a company but fighting your own inner chaos, this conversation is your road. Map out. Buckle in. Pete's about to show us why real power starts from the inside. Pete, I'm so excited to have you here today. How are you doing? Thank you man. I'm good. It's hot in Dubai, but we're here and we're in a nice air conditioned room. Pete, I'm excited to have you here, man. So what I want to start with today is you're a man who's had

all the vanity metrics. You've had the cars, the businesses, you've had your dream home, you've even had the Rolexes. It takes a certain man to be able to build that to begin with before we start to talk about what happened after that. But who was that guy? I talk about guys being paper men. Well tell. Me a bit more about the paper men. So the so the paper man is the guy that builds all the success on paper. So on paper he look good, he looks great.

He's got the car, he's got the family, he's got the the business, he's got maybe some flash things. On paper he's got status, but internally it's chaos. And that's what I did originally. Build everything externally, internal, complete chaos. So he was in corporate for 15 years and what you're saying is he was just building that paper, man? I didn't know I was building the paper man in hindsight, yeah, it's just like in hindsight, you look back, I didn't know I was

building a paper man. I was building what I thought society wanted me to build. I was building essentially the version of me that I wanted everyone else to like.

So tell me a bit more about the positive traits, because everything is kind of like polarity, negative and positive. Tell me about some of the positive traits that the paper man, if where that's what we're calling him, had that allowed him to build that. And the only reason I asked this question because people at home are listening and going, I'll happily take a paper man if you give me the, the boats and the the the watches and, and everything else.

So what positive traits did you have that allowed you to build that paper man? Discipline, you know, you can build a lot with discipline a little. You can build so much with discipline and consistency and a bit of grind and some hassle and get yourself down. So discipline is an incredibly powerful trait and, and over the years I looked at three different types of discipline. So #1 is your structural discipline. This is the easiest for any man to get.

It's your routines, it's your protocols, it's your habits. Morning routine, evening routine, daytime routine, gym routine, dark routine, that sort of thing. It's structural discipline. Makes sense? What's your second discipline? Second one. 2nd discipline is reactive discipline. This is so the reactive discipline is how you react in a moment. So let's just say, for example, your wife walks into the room and she says something and it triggers you in that moment, you

have a choice. You can, your discipline can ensure that you take a breath, you step back and you respond in a, in a, in an affirmative, positive way, or you could react, get pissed off, get triggered, have an argument, have conflict, right? So, so it's your reactive discipline. It's how you react or respond moment to moment. And the third type of discipline. Expansive discipline. This is the this is the hardest discipline to get.

This is the as a man, you should be on a mission and your mission should be much bigger than you. And the expansive discipline is that moment to moment to moment, you're consistently taking choices that are moving you further towards your mission, not taking you further back. Makes sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So now the reason I ask that question is because technically looking back at in hindsight, that was all kind of like a mask for the real traits.

So what were the negative traits of the paper man that discipline was masking? Oh, fuck it. There was, it's, it's countless. There's there's reactivity, there's there's anger, there's like over the course of probably 10 years, 15 years, I built the ability to completely suppress emotions and be very emotionless. Even in like intimate relationships, I could just disconnect and that's unhealthy. It's not healthy in an intimate relationship to be able to do that.

But as AI think, as a guy I wasn't taught the emotions were

safe in the right environment. So I'll just suppress all that and just channel it into business. To suppress the emotions and basically just, it's not alcoholic drunk, but just, you know, get yourself to just put your head down and laser focus on places that are meeting your significance business. For a long time status it was my #1 driver. So status was the. Say it and it is and it is for a lot of guys, it's like, it's like if I get status then I will get respect.

And the more respect I get, the more validation I feel, the better I feel. And that's that that that external validation makes me feel good. But it's the wrong way to think about it, because as soon as the external validation is punctured or punched or falls down, you essentially lose your own self esteem and you lose your own worth and you lose yourself. And it's crazy how much men will do for status, for validation, for respect. They'll lie, cheat, steal, do anything just to get that.

So then what was the moment? And I, I know that everybody has a moment. I have a moment where it wasn't that I woke up in that moment and everything made sense of what I was going to do. But there was a moment which we could call like the, the needle in the haystack or the, the cherry on the on the cake that may was the trigger for you to transition because that, you know, you had a 7 figure business and you, you basically shut all of that and you decided

to start the heroic man. So what was that moment, the trigger, that got you to wake up and say there has to be more to life than what I'm doing right now? Yeah, another moment, another exact moment. And it was it was in October in in autumn and I was walking my dog in the woods. So I'll take you back to that

time. So at that time I was two years into owning up like a home in the country, a house that my garden was big enough I had to sit on lawn mower and I had my nice cars and my wife was at home or soon to be wife actually was at home. And a team of 20 people that we used to work for me in my office, which is in Ascot High Street. So I had all these great things. And so I, so I thought anyway, and I was completely running to

the ground. I was doing sixty 7080 hour weeks consistently that I was completely neglecting my relationship because my significance was purely put in the growth of the business. And I was spinning in 127 planes and I was micromanaging everything that was underneath me. I had this addiction to control. I had to control everything in the business. I had to have a have an influence on everything outside of the business. I needed control, but you can't

control life. And I learned that the hard way. So that October, which is 4 years ago now, I was walking the

dog through the woods. I had my dream dog out of one of those blue Staffy the dream, the perfect dog I always wanted. And I'd walk that walk 100 times. And on that particular dog, it was completely lost. Not lost physically, just lost in my mind. And I'm like, this isn't working. Like I've built all these things. I built what I thought was success. Yet inside it's chaos. And I feel horrendous and I'm about to break. Something's got to change.

And it was, it was in that moment and it was in that I was like, this is it, I'm out. I've got to get out of that business. So what was it that flipped the switch? A tiny thing, one of my guys that worked. So it's a Saturday morning. One of my guys had messaged me and I'd seen it on my WhatsApp. So I'm Pete, I'm pissed off at the software. The software's broke. I'm working on my weekend for you and the software's not fucking working. And I was like this one more. Why am I?

Going to be more to life. Yeah, like this is a tiny thing, but it was like the straw that brought the camel's back. And then what was the first thing you did when the switch flipped? I decided to have the conversation with my business partner that I'm going to leave and then that was that. I'm going to come back to tough,

tough conversation in a second. So then I find really that's very interesting because I've got a quote by you here that says until you make the subconscious conscious, it will dictate your life and you will call it fate. People question sabotaging and ask themselves why am I where I am? And in that moment, you didn't know it yet, but your subconscious was not conscious. Is that safe to say in that moment? I would love to take credit for that quote.

That quote is by Carl Young. Carl Young? Oh nice. One of the most. You could have taken credit. I would have never known psychologists. So, yeah, and we can, we can credit Carl Young for for so much about understanding its psyche now, particularly like the shadow and archetypes. The way that I talk about this is that us guys, we're in

prisons and we're in prisons. We're in prisons of the mind and we're trapped in these prisons and for the most part, we're not aware of it and we can't change what we can't see. So to begin to dismantle and dissolve the prisons of the mind, we have to bring super awareness to them. We have to dig deep and excavate internally to figure out what the is going on, right? So for me, at that time, I was

stuck in a prison of control. I was stuck in a prison of mistrust and I was absolutely stuck in the prison of projection. So I had an addiction to all these things, but I didn't know it. I was unconscious of it. I was just doing it over and over and over. But doing it over and over and over was my form of self sabotage, because every time that I would try and control a situation that I couldn't, I would find a way to sabotage it. And then I would lose my mind

because I couldn't control it. And all that's doing is reinforcing my addiction to control. So give us an example. I know because someone's listening at home. I actually understand how you how you feel because I almost felt exactly the same. It's really scary. So if someone listening at home, you know, a leader who's in a mind prison, what does the day-to-day for ACEO who's stuck at a level 4?

Because you also talk about people operating at level 4 out of 10, what does their day-to-day look like right now that potentially they might even be celebrating going, you know, I'm, I'm like smashing it. But really they're in a mind prison and their subconscious doesn't know it yet. And they're yet to bring the subconscious to become conscious. Yeah, so a lot of here's actually here's one that a lot of guys that are doing really well are sitting in. It's a prisoner scarcity and the

and and. I like this. The, the program is I will lose everything. So it's fear based. So particularly guys that do really well in business and, and they've built success maybe from nothing. And then then there's this like core emotion of pain. The I could lose everything, right? And if I lose, so I've built

this amazing business. So for me, I built this 77 figure business and I did, I started to have this like fear that I could lose it. And if I lose that business, I lose my identity because I've tied my identity to that business. So if I lose the business, I die because my identity is tied to it. It makes sense. Not only does it make sense, I cannot tell you how accurate this is. I've spoken to clients at the highest level. I've spoken to friends. It's so accurate.

It's unbelievable. Because when you don't have nothing, you've got nothing to lose. So like, you're all full of risk. Like, you know, like, how low can you go? You're already low, but then they make something of themselves, 6 figures, 7 figures. Some people are 8, some people are even at 9 figures. And as far as I've seen, anyone from that 6 figure mark upwards, doesn't matter if it's 678. They have this scarcity of oh, now I'm like, I call it like floating in the wind.

They almost feel like they're walking on a rope. They don't want to like tip the boat too much. Well, if they lose everything and if they lose everything, how can they go back to living that life that, you know, once was? And you know, it's the same level of thinking that they're afraid of that actually becomes a self actualization. And then before you know it, boom, they, they lose things.

And when you ask them, there's someone who's very intimate to me, I won't mention his name just in case he's listening to this. He used to be really, really rich. And I used to say to him, Hey, you know, like things are, well, things are happening. And he'd always repeat the same thing to me. He would say take the money now before it goes and I used to reply to him. I said what are you talking about? Why would the money go like

things are well cars, houses. And he'd say take the money now before it goes and 10 years later it went.

I'm talking someone has gone from like 1,000,000 to 0. And. Now I look back here and go, holy SH, go moly. Like that's how powerful your, you know, your words, your beliefs, what you focus on can become it's, it's, it becomes your reality. Absolutely. This, this, this prison puts you in over attachment, see. So you you attach everything to that identity, to that to that thing.

So in this case, a business, you're over attached to it and then and over attached to it become it becomes an obsession. Can you see or can you share one pattern, maybe one or more patterns that you see that sabotage big decisions or relationships as a result of this? Yeah, this is most men that I know, myself included, is avoiding the truth. It's an avoidance of radical honesty. It's, it's I don't want to be honest and I don't want to face the truth because I don't want

the discomfort of being honest. So particularly in relationships, it's your personal problems are your professional problems in disguise? It's that it's, it's all the same thing. It's very much the same thing. We put them in disguise. So the avoidance of truth typically stems from, it lives in the prison of rejection. So let's just say you and your partner, you and your wife, you don't want to be radically honest with her in case she rejects you.

And that temporary discomfort is too painful to sit in. So men avoid being honest. So what do they end up doing? It manifests. So that begins that they begin to have little white lies and then they, and then those little white lies turn into little stories and then those. And then those stories grow. The narrative grows and then they they begin to live a lie and then they stop trusting themselves because they can't even be honest with themselves.

Eventually it's so painful that they can't even be honest with themselves. What started as not being honest with others, now they kind of like living in their own lives. Is that what you're saying? I also saw one of your, you know, one of the trainings you did, you said men should never cheat. So I think on this thread you said don't cheat on your partner. A lot of men cheat because they don't have the courage to have

that conversation. And I have obviously added to it, whether it be in relationship or business. So how do they build that man up? Because I personally know people personally and, you know, oppressionally that are in this position, you know, potentially they're cheating on their relationship because they don't have the difficult conversation. So they think they're doing the other person a favour. But simultaneously, it might not even be an intimate relationship.

It might be funnelling money out of a company because they don't want to talk to their business partners and tell them the harsh truth. Or it might be, you know, in your case, you wanted to leave that business, so it took a

switch for you to go, you know what, I'm going to call my partner and say I'm leaving this company. So how do they build that man up? You have to get clear on the fear. Like I said earlier, it's you. You can't change something until you become aware of it. Once you're aware, you can change it. And so you have to get clear on the fears. Like what's what's the deeper fear of telling the truth? Is it, is it the the relationship ends? OK, so then what's the fear

behind that? Is it that Well, OK, well, then I might not find someone else again. No one will love me. I'll be rejected. I'll be abandoned. So get clear on the cause of where this fear is coming. From you have to get clear on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than focusing on the symptoms. Yeah, because it's the the the symptoms of just like you're lying and just that's just putting a plaster over a wound.

You got to get into the wound as to why you're lying in the 1st place and what and and the lie is always based around a fear. There is a fear that it's always, so you have to get to the root cause of what the fear is. When you when you figure out what the root cause is, you can dismantle it and dissolve it and get rid of it, right? What men need to do is get clear on their values. So what's fucking important to them intrinsically?

And I'm not talking about values like I like freedom and I want to travel and I like money. And no, this is, this is like deep internal core values like respect or honesty or loyalty or acknowledgement or order, like values that are meaningful to you as a man because once you are clear on them, you live by them. I know this sounds really silly, but how do we do that? Like imagine someone's listening to this, a founder or CEO, a high level of executive.

What is something that they can do tonight, even now as they listen to this, as long as they're not driving, that is going to begin to allow them to get clear on their values and, you know, start to spot their own mind prisons. The value, I mean, I have exercises, I work, I work guys through exercises to take clear on their values because what, and this is the reason that so that there's there are sequences to this. So number one is you get clear

on your values. Once you get clear on your values, you can correct your standards. Now your standards, this is the way that you live your life. Your standards aren't things that you want. They're not like all my so my, they're not. My standard is I'm going to live in a big house and I'm going to have lots of money and I'm going to have a beautiful, thriving relationship and I'm going to have deep intimacy.

That's not your stand. The standard of the things that you say no to, they're the things that you don't tolerate. It's like, well, my, it's my, my, one of my values is loyalty. So the standard would be, well, if someone is disloyal to me, if someone is passive aggressive behind the scenes and they and

they affect the the trust that I have in them, I don't tolerate and I'm removing them from my life. How do you differentiate between values and standards? Because like I, I personally would put loyalty as part of my values. I'm very loyal. That's it, yeah. Yeah. But then you create. So off the back of your values, you create the things that you say no to. So if someone disrespects you, someone lies to you, someone's dishonest to you, they're like, well, that's actually, I'm not

going to tolerate that. And this is what this is where men up is they tolerate too much. They let things slide. They let their their back that most guys aren't clear on what their standards or boundaries are. So people will consistently overstep the mark and they'll let them get away with that. You talk about the pressure cooker.

Tell me a bit more like, because technically we could segue from why did they allow people to get away with stuff and obviously they become a like a pressure cooker until they explode. Why do they do that? Many reasons, but the big reason for guys is to be liked. They want to be liked, significant status, everything else that you was mentioning earlier, basically status, validation, respect, they.

Want to be like many, many, many men, particularly guys 30s, forties, 50s and like now they were raised by their mothers. No, I'm so many guys raised by their mothers and then and then. Are we talking single mothers? Just just to clarify. Yeah, it could be a could be a single mother or, or could be the dads out working and then dads may be, may be distant, maybe emotionally distant, maybe physically distant. So then the so then the core responsibility of raising the

child. Not this isn't in every circumstance, but this is quite a large population, large part of the population, particularly in our era. I've been raised by mothers. This is and the, the, the issue with this and I've experienced this in my own life is that men, myself included, did this for many, many years, would put women on a pedestal because it's like my, my mums fucking, She's amazing. She raised me. She did everything for me. She's an amazing woman.

And so we can put women on on pedestals. And when we put people on pedestals, we begin to in a way idolize them. Look up to them. You don't want to cross them, so you want to be not. And most guys, there's a, we call them Nice guys, Nice Guy syndrome. Nice Guy syndrome is the man that says yes. At the time he doesn't, but he doesn't even know the word no. So this is actually really good. I think it starts to segue a little bit into like healthy masculinity, masculine leadership.

You, you said somewhere be open minded, not close minded. My question is how do you differentiate between knowing yourself worth? So you're not Mr. Nice Guy being open minded at the same time, because the the world is definitely trying to test us. So how do you kind of like mitigate? I don't know if mitigate is the right word, but how do you balance being someone who's open minded and at the same time someone who's not willing to just kind of be a doormat or a nice guy?

So how do you balance those two? Open minded to learn more to to grow, to be more at the same time not accept and just be a Mr. Nice Guy. How do you balance that? Go it goes back again to your values. That's that. It is step number one. It is stage one. It's foundational because you you figure out what's important to you, what's intrinsic to you, and then you live by them. You set a set of standards by them, not the back of your standards.

You have your boundaries and the boundaries are the things that essentially if someone crosses them as a consequence to them and and and in doing that you gain respect because you have respect for yourself and in respect for yourself. This isn't you being an asshole, it's just you having respect for yourself and and the more respect you have for yourself, the more that you enforce your own standards and values.

Your self esteem increases and in your self esteem increasing or increases yourself worth yourself belief who you are. But whilst that's happening, you're always staying open to a discussion and to go actually in any moment I have my mind changed at any moment. Like if someone brings a great debate and actually they they raise a valid point. I could absolutely change my mind and being OK with that and not and not being so egotistic the it's like, no, I'm fucking

right and I'm always right. Something that be OK with like having your mind changed. I like that and obviously if values are such a powerful thing, sounds like they're the foundation to everything. Here's the five values that you say you say men should live by. You say self restraint, anti fragile discipline, emotional regulation and courage. My question is, why not confidence in there?

Because confidence is a byproduct. Confidence is something that you get. It's not something like we can't just go right. I'm confident. Just don't decide to be confident now. You don't wake up tomorrow and be confident like it's a by product of of you taking action. But before action, what comes before action. Belief. Courage. Ah, got you. Yeah, yeah. Right. So for so for, for, for us to go on a podcast right now, There was some, there was, there was a

miniscule bit of courage. It's easy for me and you 'cause we've done lots of podcasts. It's quite easy. Yeah, right. But the but Once Upon a time there would have been. Fuck. I haven't done a podcast before. And I showed you my video downstairs. There you go. Right. And there was courage to take the action. And once you take the action from you having that little doses of courage, it's like, hmm, OK, now, now you've done it, you've seen you do it.

It's self evidence that you've done it. Confidence. It's a by product.

So then let's talk about the second to last emotional regulation. I think a lot of men find that difficult because they're not even aware of it as a concept. They just think that they, I speak to a lot of men, they're like, I can regulate my emotions. Meanwhile they're an emotional mess.

How do you a, become aware of that as a man, if you're listening to this and you think you're really good at emotional regulation, where really everyone around you thinks it stinks, you don't have any, and then how do you build emotional regulation? Yeah, yeah, This is, this is emotional regulation is a master skill for men. It's a master skill for anyone but but particularly guys. And guys have never been taught this.

Guys aren't trained this it's like, you know, I take guys through training to enhance emotional and increase emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. But it's like, it's like Navy Seals. It's like the Army. What do they do day in, day out, day in, day out? They train, practice, they practice, they practice, they practice, they practice until the circumstance comes up when they need it. So emotional regulation is that a great example is you and your

partner, right? You come home from work and she brings you chaos. She's she's she's to have whatever she's had that day and she's decided that she's going to blame you and throw the shit at you, right. And she throws it at you. Why didn't you get the milk on the way home? I asked you to get the milk on the way home. You didn't get it.

You always say you're going to do something and then you don't actually do it. I can't trust your word, by the way, you didn't you didn't take the bins out on the way out for work. You said you're going to do it. You're going to do it. I can't trust your word. I've stopped trusting you except froze it at you. It's chaos you're and then in that moment, you've had a, you've had a crazy day at work, you've had a savage day at work. What are you going to do? Most guys react.

Fuck you, get off my back. I've just got on the door and it and then it's a, then it's a, then it's conflict. Then it's heated conflict. Yeah, whereas. Emotional regulation is in that moment where you can see your beautiful woman that's your partner that you love. And you know that in that moment, she's probably had a crazy day and she's looking for love. She's looking for safety. She's looking for you as a rock, as a pillar, as the lighthouse. You got to respond in that

moment, your breathe. And this is where this is where emotional regulation comes in. It's a rather than going from zero to 100 and reacting and having to Blair an argument, you're able to regulate and and calm your emotions. And even though it takes a lot of practice, it takes a shit load of practice. There's, there's, there's times when me and my Mrs. and where you know, she'll, she's beautiful feminine and the beautiful feminine will bring

chaos. Yeah, because of the physical brains, if anyone's listening to this and they don't have access to some of this information, the the way the brains are wired is a bit different. Men are all about logic, mission focused. They're very practical, whereas the feminine. Is more. About energy, more about communal loving, but it's all about emotion yeah, anytime, any place, you know, through the female brain, there's a lot going on.

It's all happening for emotion and in that moment for any man.

I call this the rock at the palm tree, you know, very, very important for you to, you know, be at the rock at the palm tree. If you ever sat down, you're sunbathing, the sun's out. You know, you're, you're chilling out. And then the cloud comes by and then all the palm trees start going left and right. That's like the feminine storm. And, you know, the goal is to be like a rock steadfast, you know, whatever you have, I can take it.

Because really what she's doing is she's testing if you love her or not and being present. That's the goal. You know, a lot of people fail. A lot of men fail because in that moment, they'll either leave, go down the pub, or they'll just be like, you know, I've had a long day, you've had a long day. Your long day isn't better than mine. So I'm going to go and do whatever it is to distract myself. And it really harms the trust because then now she doesn't

trust you. And then all of a sudden you're pissed off because she doesn't trust you anymore. And it's like a, a whole cycle that doesn't end. So then again, I we know we need to be present, but we struggle with it as men because we have 61 things on our mind. So what's, what advice are you giving to men that are like, I know Pete, you're saying be present. I know you're saying have emotional regulation. It's easier said than done. Where do I start?

If I've got 0 emotional regulation, just imagine I've got 0. Where do I start? How? How a man gets present is not by being in his head. You have to get into your body. We aren't taught this. No man's taught this. We are taught to build things and we build things. We build the strategy. We're we're logical beings. We build the strategy, the operations, the systems, whatever in our head. So we're always in the logic,

the logical mind, right. To be present with a woman, you have to get into your body and the, the, the best way to get into your body is with your breath is breathing. It's been and, and it's a it's a fantastic way. It's like go back to Navy Seals before the Navy Seals go into one of their, one of their doing a training session or whether they're going into a war zone, they'll practice box breathing or the 4444 seconds in hold 4 seconds, 4 seconds out hold 4

seconds. It's a form of regulating your breathing, which regulates your nervous system and it calms it down and it puts you from your mind, begins to put you from your mind into your body and you change and you change your brain. When you pray, you change the state that you're being in, right?

That's where you start. So some of my advice to guys is that, and it's a really, really easy practice, it's actually where it's when you're sitting with your woman is just to slow your breathing down. Like witness your own breath and slow it down. Try and go for like 6 to 8 seconds on that out. It's really. Relax, basically. Yeah, you relax your own body, you're able to get in You you begin to get out of your own mind. And I guarantee you woman will notice it. Hang on, I'll.

Try that today. Try it. Yeah, Particularly when you when you're hugging your woman, when you're giving her a cuddle in bed, slow your breathing down and, and, and feel her. She'll drop in, she'll drop, she'll get softer, she'll get sweeter. She'll drop in because she'll feel much more safer. Whereas if you're like right or you're breathe, you're breathing heavy, you're breathing fast. It's that's, that's, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a heightened state.

It's, that's not safe. That's, that's an energetic state. It's not safe. Slow, grounded, steady breath safe.

Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of the times it comes from a lack of what's called transition time. Actually, the top three ways, I don't know if they like the top universally, but free, free ways to reclaim your masculine, which is a lot of the times where arguments even start because #1 the man isn't clear on his mission, where is he going? So he's just all over the place and now his women starts to.

I've seen this a lot where someone just sold their company or they've just been fired and they're just doing absolutely nothing. They're not clear on their mission. All of a sudden, they compete and fight with their partner. So Reclaim Your Mission is #1 #2 is, like you said, breath, but it's also about using your physicality daily. Doesn't matter if it's a walk, if it's a run, if it's sports, you do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And obviously I could tell you began to the gym unlike myself.

And the third one is actually the most important is a lot of the time we're just go, go, go, go, go. We're going to go from work, home, home to the friendship circle, from the friendship circle back to like networking to do in this podcast. And what we never do is take that 5-10 minutes that it might take. If you think about the olden days, you had the war, the warrior coming home from war. He'd have blood all over him.

He'd have his armor on. And he might take that five, 1015 minutes to transition out of the warrior and the king mentality back into the magician and the lover mentality. And that might be 15 minutes where he can just take his armor off. And so he can go back in and interface with his family, with his queen, with his kids. Whereas in today's today's world, it's just rush, rush, rush that we never actually get that transition time.

And as a result, you know, we do have that heightened breath and we're heightened in terms of our awareness. And then, you know, the partner comes or your wife comes and says whatever she says, something happened today and then boom, you snap. So it is really important to actually create that transition time. OK, so now with that said, let's explain the hero's code. What are the core pillars of the hero's code? So, so the, the company that runs called the Heroic man,

right? And within the heroic man, we take guys through essentially a system. This this, the system is built up of three levels, which is activate, ascend and awaken just three different levels that a man goes through. And this is essentially that the, the activate part is waking the guy up. It's, it's, it's, it's bringing awareness to the things he's not aware of, right? This we begin to those prisons that I talked about earlier. It's about breaking down those

prisons. It's about seeing what prison he's stuck in, the one that's playing the predominant role and figuring out why he's in it and breaking it down, right? So the first thing we do is we break the patterns because every man is in a pattern. And that's activate. Right. So, so with so within the three levels, we have essentially 4 pillars that we go through. So pillar number one is break the pattern. So this is where the the guy will self sabotage.

We'll look for the patterns and we'll break them. Second part of it is build the structure. This is your routines, your rhythms, your systems, your protocols, your disciplines, your habits. This is like guys need structure in place. And this is building solid structure in his life, right? Third is set the code. Now setting the code is the values. This is vision. It's his identity, it's his mission, it's his purpose.

It's getting clear on that. It's, it's, it's getting a sense of direction for his vision personally and professionally. Because once you've got that, you stop wasting time on the things that don't matter, right? It's about spending more time on the things that do matter. Make sense? Yeah, 100%. So then which pillar from the heroic code moved you the most post divorce, post 7 figure exit? The first because I was unactivated. Yeah, because I was unconscious,

right? I was, I wasn't aware that I wasn't aware of all the things. I was just going through life, just going going through life trying to be a husband, trying to be a business leader, trying to be, trying to be a friend, right. Not trying to figure out what the is going on with my own mind. Why do the things I do? I was interested in it, but I didn't know. I was very, very unconscious to my patterns that were sabotaging like high forms of success in me. I was very much in my ego.

But when I turned, when I turned in 30, I was a boy in a man's body is immature. Which is what most people are right now. Yeah, I work with guys in their 40s and their 50s, and for the for the most part, that is immature, masculine. They're boys and like, it's a big thing in society. There's there's no such things anymore as rites of passage. There's no such thing as like you're here you go from boy to man. Guys aren't taught that. No ritual or anything?

No, there's no milestone hit like. Nah, there's not. There's, there's none of that. And so where, where what? What tends to happen now is guys will seek rites of passage via relationships. And they feel like if they got in a relationship now, they're a man. No, they don't. It's, it's this is, it's, it's an innate thing. It's like they're not, they're not like going, oh, I'm going to go and get in a relationship and then I'm going to become a man.

It's like they will find the relationships that are going to trigger the ship that's inside of them that will bring out, that will challenge and that will bring out their patterns, right. And if the woman's conscious enough, and if she's challenging enough, like she'll hold you to a high standard and it will pull out your shit. You'll make your face your demons. Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying you.

Know slay the Dragons and and that and and those and that's when a lot of men now are are like are finding their essentially is like initiation is in relationships. It's basically forcing them to work on things that they didn't even know they needed to work on. Yeah, and they either fail or succeed, and rarely do they succeed you. Have to think if if they don't learn the lesson in that relationship, they're learning the next one. Start kicking the can down the

road. Keep bumping into it. Keep coming up until until they face it. You have to face it and it's not facing your shit is very uncomfortable and most guys don't want to sit in the discomfort. They'd rather be avoidant to it, ignore it. I understand that. That was me for very long time. For very, very long time, I did this, listened to the podcasts, read all the books, did all the courses. Intellectually, I'll tell you all about psychology. I'll tell you all about how the

mind works. Intellectually, yes, but the embodiment of it, no. And that and a lot of guys are librarians of the mind. Read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, but do not embody the actually changing cause. Change is hard. Real change is fucking difficult. It's inevitable, but it's very, very difficult. So that's exactly what I don't want for people listening to this podcast. I don't want you to be listening to this podcast just going, oh, this sounds good, peace and

genius. The goal is for you to do something. So for for someone who is listening to this, who's not just going to listen to this podcast is actually going to do something about it. If they're drowning in tasks right now and technically they're successful, you know, they might even be a 7 figure man. You know, whatever it is, what should they start by activating or eliminating first so that they can start to release that pressure and enter the calm?

To release pressure. Most men and I fall into this trap fucking still. I've caught myself the other day doing this is we like to add more to our plate. So we feel pressured, we feel overwhelmed. There's fucking loads of things going on and we think about, OK, what's the next hire or what's the next strategy? What's the next thing I need? Maybe it's a bigger house. Maybe it's maybe it's, maybe it's a new assistant, maybe it's

a new sales person, whatever. We'll look to add something to our life to relieve the pressure. But to relieve pressure, you have to take things away. Yeah, right. And this is this is. The let the pressure out the cooker. You, you do got, you have to release it right? And I like elimination. I used to like reduction. So I'll take a little bit a little bit off that, a little bit off that. But elimination is what is way more powerful. It's a 10X more powerful.

So you have you have to look at your life and go, let's be fucking honest, what's not serving me? Like what? What person isn't serving me may well be a relationship. It all may well be your business partner. It may well be that there's a group of mates you've been hanging around in years and they're just lowlifes. That's, that's, that's still acting like 17 year olds, yet you're in your 30s or your 40s. That's actually, that's just not serving me anymore.

And I got to let it. You have to let it go. You got to eliminate it. So you look at the things you eliminate to eliminate. And when you start eliminating things, you free up space, you take the pressure away. What's something that you've eliminated recently? Oh, loads. Very very recently actually removed a lot of clients from my my world. Oh, and removed. Tell me more what what happened? It, it was just, it was just coming.

It was coming to an end. And, and like, and, and I was, I was actually hanging on because there was quite a few of them. And I'm like, it's not rightly hanging on to these clients because it's, it's, it's, it's stunting their growth and it's stunting the growth of the company. And I had, and I had to go, yeah, I'm going to make that decision to let go a bunch of clients that I love and they love me. But it wasn't. It just wasn't serving us both. So they got them legacy clients.

That was a difficult decision. Really difficult. And then since then, have you attracted more of like the ideal? Yeah, it's starting to come in and it's what? This isn't to say that they weren't ideal clients then some of those clients were with me for four years, right? These are long standing clients. However, I'd given them everything I could give them and that was hard for me to swallow to go. Do you know what? I've taken them as far as I can and I can't take them any further.

So did you refer them somewhere? No. That's that's for them to. Yeah. It's that, it's that initiation, you know, the rite of passage. Hey, here you go. It is. It's, you know, I'll, I'll put my arm around guys, but I won't hold their hands. You can get a man's got to do. He's got to. Have that initiative that. Got to find his own way. It's like, I'm like, I run a men's group. Like I have a community of guys.

I'm a big, big advocate of men not being lone wolves and then being part of a community where you get your standards held high. Equally, you still got to be able to offend your own shit. 100% So now last couple of questions. You talk about route A and Route B. Your route A was like the vanity metrics, the seven figure business, the wife, the house, the watches and everything else. And then you took your big Route B decision. What's been a favorite Route B

decision in the last 12 months? In person events in person

events like so we've had a Workman for four years and I did a couple of in person during that time. They always make a powerful and a year ago I made the decision to do them as frequently as I can. But prior to me doing that, I'd always done the events with other people. I'd always had guest speakers in, I was experts in, I had like fellow coaches in.

So it wasn't I I'd like essentially I was leaning on other people, but I decided a year ago to do it on my own and do more events, in person events. And what did you notice differently? It's a 10, it's a, it's a 10X on what we do on, on what we do online is incredible, but to do it in person is a 10X. What's the most underrated trait that you see in great leaders? Yeah, their ability to regulate their nervous system, that's the

most underrated. You'd like whatever level you're at. Let's just say you're doing 500,000 UK pounds. It's a good number. It's a great good number to get to that's, but if you're thinking around that number for a fucking long time, that's that's your capacity of your nervous system, right? To get to the next level, to get to to the million. There's a whole different host of problems and challenges and other forms of chaos that are going to come with that.

And to get to that and to be able to hold that, could you get it and then go fucking all the way back down again to be able to hold that, that is to do your nervous system capacity.

Yeah, I read somewhere online that you wrote one characteristic needed to excel is to keep going through the chaos. So I'm linking that to being able to regulate your nervous system. Even though the chaos is happening on the outside, you got to be peace, calm on the inside. Yeah, you have to let go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to let go. That you cannot control what's happening on the outside world. I can't control what's going on in this podcast. I can't control what's going to

go on outside. I can't control the weather. I can't control what my missus emotions are going to be later. I don't know. Hopefully they'll be great. You can't you, you can't control that. And so the the opposite to control is to surrender is to let go and then and then and letting go. You accept the this chaos and there always will be. And that's why, again, something else you wrote is emotions don't serve you when you're making business decisions.

You need to detach from them. And that's why your clients pay you because you're not as emotionally attached as they are. So you're like the external nervous system if you call it that. Yeah, absolutely. When you get emotional with business, it gets very difficult because it gets extremely difficult when you get emotional in business. So for the most part, you do have to detach and you have to

make logical decisions. The reason I ask that question is because if someone's listening to this right now, they're in business and they are emotionally attached, what's their next move? The next move is to is to ask

yourself what's the real cost of you staying emotionally attached for the next month, the next year and the next 10 years. But you know, what if I stay emotionally attached to this outcome, to this client, to this customer. So whatever the situation is, and I hold that, what's the real cost if I keep doing that over the course of the next 10 years? Because there's 2 routes you can take.

You could take the route A, stay emotionally attached to it and keep manifesting that on all the other parts of your business. Or take the route B and you detach where's where's each route take you. And after they've done that, at what point did they say, is it time now to hire a coach? When it's painful enough. When they're ready, you know that whenever someone's ready, like they find the coach, the coach, the coach will just appear because you'd be, you go.

Well, actually I'm I'm ready for a coach and they all appear. So until the coach appears, what's one book or practice for any man that's feeling stuck that you would recommend like immediately? Yeah, for man.

Read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel. Your opinions on the way of the superior man? It's great. It's a great book. Yeah. I recommend it. David Davis. It's a it's a phenomenal book. That that it was written quite some time ago and times have changed. However, many, many of the principles in that book are fantastic, particularly for men in relationships. It's a fucking fantastic book. I'd highly recommend it. Me too, I highly recommend it as

well. So my last question is, you know the heroic man, You're on your second mountain now in your vision, what's the vision for when the heroic man is at 100,000 men? The vision is most of the ripple effect is like men need men and men need strong men. And when they're around strong men, they become stronger and then they become a better husband about a father, about a leader. And it's the ripple effects of that now that women feel better, their children feel better.

And it's like then that that spreads across the world. Well, it's definitely been outstanding having you. I've also learnt a lot and this is actually some of the stuff that I preach myself. And honestly, you've taught me so many things, especially about the three types of discipline. If and when you feel aligned with Pete's message, do follow him on Pete under score. Taylor, is that your Instagram? Yeah. And he's got an amazing free training. It's free.

You can just click the button either for his bio on Instagram, or you can find it at heroicman.com/heroes code. It's a free training. It's about 16 minutes long. Yeah, sure. And it's honestly an amazing training. Thank you very much again for listening on the Limitless CEO podcast. Discipline or Regret. You get to choose. It's your move. Thank you again for listening and take care and have fun.