Diving Deep into the World of Stunts with Brian Hite

Music. Welcome, everyone in the United States, Canada, and around the world to another episode of It's a Wrap with Wrap, the podcast of overcomers and useful information to better our daily life and mental spirit.

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My guest today is Brian Height. Brian Height, PhD, is an author, keynote speaker, performance and leadership consultant, stuntman, and stunt coordinator. Brian masterfully blends high-octane stunt work with intellectual rigor and the transformative power of sport performance psychology. Boasting over 100 film and TV credits, including a prestigious Screen Actor Guild Award, Brian brings a rich tapestry of experiences to every new endeavor.

Holding a master's in sports psychology, a PhD in organizational psychology, and certified as a mental performance consultant. Brian is a recognized authority on human potential. His expertise is highly sought after by a wide variety of people ranging from the U.S. Military to his doctoral students at Grand Canyon University.

As the founder of Brian Height Global Begin Again Performance Psychology and co-host of the podcast Poking Holes in Blinders, Brian captivates audiences with electrifying storytelling and actionable insights. His keynote addresses Transcend Industries, offering fresh perspectives on resilience, performing under pressure, risk-taking, and developing and maintaining motivation even under the most challenging times.

His infectious passion inspires others to embrace the unknown and push beyond limits. A published author, his book, Begin Again, utilized the wisdom of Eastern and Western ideologies to achieve your full potential, blends ancient wisdom with modern practicality, while his book, The Change, Volume 21, details Brian's approach to resilience and the importance of awareness, acceptance, and action.

In a world requiring physical and mental resilience, Brian Haidt stands as a beacon of inspiration, reminding us that our overall well-being emerges from embracing life's journey with courage and curiosity. Welcome, Brian, to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Well, it's a pleasure.

Tell us how early in your life you were involved in the athletic and performance arena, and currently, are you still involved in it? Well, that's an interesting question. That's probably a better question for my parents, because I think I've been physically active in many, many ways, unofficially as much as officially. I played my first sport at seven. That was soccer. That's when I actually got involved in official organized athletics and then moved from soccer.

Well, I didn't move from, I added baseball to the list. So I was playing soccer and baseball. Took a little turn with wrestling for a little bit. That didn't take basketball. I tried for a season. That didn't take either, but soccer and baseball did. And I played both through all the way through high school and really enjoyed that. I wanted to play football, but my mom would not let me play football. She was afraid I was going to get hurt.

Yeah. So a lot of mothers are late to that. Well, I'll tell you, you know, and at the time I was pretty upset about it. And, but now with all the research coming out with CTE and the head injuries and just the damage that can happen from that repetitive head trauma, it's, I have to, I have to thank her. I have to say, all right, mom, you were right. I was wrong on this one. Yeah. No football, but being a stunt man, no problem.

Well, there it is. You know, it's got to get the hits somewhere, you know? But yeah, so I've been involved in athletics since I was seven in terms of official college. I didn't play anything, but I did. I did drive around every weekend during football season to just look for football games that I could just get in. I would, if I saw a football game, I would stop and like, Hey, can I, You guys got an odd number? Can I play?

So I would do that. Always loved sports. And then got into stunts when I was in college. It was, I was 20 when I started doing that. That was at a live show at Six Flags in New Jersey. Yep. We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. Yeah. And I've been going ever since. I'm still doing stunts.

I'm not really playing any sports anymore. But, you know, other than with the kids, I do have a dirt bike that I ride. Okay. That's true. You know, during that season. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah, so that's it. Now, you worked first as a stuntman touring with a live show. How did you get interested in First of all, and being a stuntman, and please tell us about the types of stunts you perform currently and in what venues are you performing them?

Okay. Yeah. Well, I got started. It wasn't a touring show that I did right off the bat. The Batman show was at Six Flags in New Jersey. And I just, I was going to college at Rutgers, which was also in New Jersey and, or is, it's still there. It's still there. And then I had a company manager of the Batman show. He was a friend of mine from earlier on, different things in Nashville. And he got me some tickets to the park and I went in and I saw the show and was just floored.

I was just, I can't even describe the feeling that I had when, when I was watching the show, it just, it started with this big, huge explosion. And then motorcycles came jumping out of this thing and I just was captivated. And, and that was it. I just, I was able to go backstage and talk to the people. And I asked them first question, what, how do you get to do this job? What, what do you have to do? Well, how do I get it?

Did you say to yourself as a kid, when you saw that did you say to yourself in your mind i can do that yeah yeah yeah yeah it was it looked like so much fun to me what they were doing i didn't know how obviously when when i was watching the show right i had no experience on a motorcycle and and then the other things that they told me i needed to learn how to do were fights and high falls and i hadn't done anything with those either but one of the guys

from the show trained me in fights and high falls and And I bought a dirt bike and just started practicing. Went to the audition, got the job, and did that the next summer. And then the summer after that, and then moved to LA. But I didn't graduate from college. You didn't graduate from Rutgers. I did graduate from Rutgers, but not then. I had to go back later. I was so enamored with stunts that that was all that took my mind.

And I just didn't want to... I just couldn't focus and I was failing everything. And somehow or another, I made it through the first semester of the senior year without failing everything. But second semester, I'm telling you, it was F's all the way. So I had to, I just had to withdraw. I had to withdraw. So I left Rutgers with one semester to go, no degree to move to LA to be a stuntman. The pride of every parent, right? Yeah. Drop out of college to move to country to do stunts.

I know some people that's happened to where they go and they got like maybe six months left and then they just leave. Yeah. Well, that's what I did. I don't think it was a great idea. It's not it's not advice that I would give to anybody. Right. But for me, it was just so hard to focus. I'd finally because the thing is, I went to college trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was trying to find where I fit and what I wanted to do.

And I couldn't I hadn't found that yet until I saw that show. And when I found that, I said, yes, that's that's it. That's what I want. And it required nothing to do with college. Exactly. I was like, all right, well, the only reason I'm here is to find what I would do when I grow up, and I found it, and it doesn't need this school, then whatever. I don't want to go to class. Really? But I did end up obviously going back and getting the bachelor's and then,

like you said, more with the master's and the PhD, but that was all later. Yeah. Now, what was your favorite craziest stunt or experience you encountered? I'm just curious. Well, two things come to mind with that one, but for different reasons, for completely different reasons. One was on a movie called Drive Angry, and it's a Nicolas Cage movie. And at the end, I guess it's at the end of it. I don't really remember where in the movie. But this car driven by Nicolas Cage, which it wasn't.

It was a stuntman, but whatever, jumps over the wall, crashes through Burning Cross. And now the car lands in this compound with a bunch of crazy people, of which I was one. And the car now on fire just drives around hitting people. And the people are crazy, so they're trying to tackle the car. So the stunt that I did was the car's on fire, and I went running toward the car, dove to tackle the car, slid through the fire.

Now I'm on fire, hit the windshield, went up and over the car, and then landed on the other side and got put out. So that was one. So it was a combination of a car hit, which is already its own big thing, and a burn, which is also its own big. So it was a combination of two pretty big stunts together. So that was a lot of fun. The other doesn't sound like much, and it certainly didn't look like much on the screen. But the way that it happened, I'll never forget.

It was on a TV show called Numbers, and I was doubling a guy, and I was running across a roof, and I had to jump up on this ledge. It was maybe, I don't know, it wasn't high. It was maybe two and a half feet. And it was, the ledge was probably, I don't know, maybe a foot wide. So not a hard jump and not a, not that small an area to land on. But it was 50 feet above the concrete. And if I missed it or caught a toe or leaned the wrong direction or something, I was going down.

There was nothing to catch me. I wasn't attached to a wire. There was nothing. So that one, again, and I could have been attached to a wire. That's something the stunt coordinator could have done was to make it a little bit safer. But that's not what happened. So on that one, and I did it, I don't know, two, three times. Run across the roof, jump up on this thing, and then stand there with my arms out like a cross while they were shooting it from down below.

Just amazing i mean you had no net nothing no there was there was nothing if if screwed that one up it would have been a big mess at the bottom so for sure any injuries have you suffered any injuries from doing any of these stunts no nothing nothing was not gonna would you know yeah it was i mean i guess i was doing a this was a touring show it was a spider-man live touring show with different broadway theaters and and i ended up spraining

my ankle very very badly on that one And I had to take a couple months off for that to heal. But other than that, just bumps, bruises, scrapes, things like that. Nothing really serious to speak of.

How did you develop to thrive and flourish in spite of the obvious high risk of doing dangerous stunts before, during, and after performing? Like, for example, you just mentioned you were on that ledge 50 feet from the concrete. Obviously, if something would have happened bad, you weren't going to make it. I mean, 50 feet on the concrete is not going to, you know, you're not coming out of that. But, but how do you, how do you, how do you get your mind to just.

Do what you got to do, knowing that there is that big risk? Yeah, that is an interesting question. And for most of my career, I didn't really have a systematic way of doing that. I do now, and it's something that I train athletes to do, and I train business people to do. It's a four-phase approach to performance. But that was kind of developed and figured out over time. I guess the easiest way to describe it is the stuff requires such intense focus and attention that, and it was just fun.

And I think that really helped the fact that I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the challenge. I enjoyed all of it and still do. I still do. I still enjoy all of it. And that joy helped bring me into the moment and allowed me to stay in the moment. And in other words, stay focused on the things I needed to do in order to succeed rather than what you're talking about, which is, wow, if I screw this up, I'm going to end up a, you know, a grease mark on the concrete down below.

So I, it, you're focusing on that. Now you got all kinds of nervousness, anxiety, stress, your attention's not at all where it needs to be. And that's bad. But for me, I, I, I believed I could do the stunts. I believed I could do them well. And I looked forward to that challenge. I looked forward to the opportunity every single time I got it.

And, and I think that that approach, that attitude that I was able to take, I think that that's what, that's what kept me going in the early parts of my career. Now, as I progressed five, 10, 15 years in, I started to think through what am I doing? You know what I mean? How is this, how is this process working?

And especially, and, and, and then it really came to fruition when I started working with the military as a sport performance psychology consultant, because we were thinking about, okay, so how do we train this to them? Like, here's what I did. Let me just talk through my experience with you guys. It was some colleagues and I sitting around and we talked through it and we came up with this four phased approach and it got published in a sports psychology journal back in, I don't know, 2010, 2011.

But that approach emerged from the musings and just the analysis of how I approach those stunts throughout the years. And really it did. It's about maintaining the right energy activation level, being aware of where your attention is and where it needs to be, being able to recover from distractions, being able to regulate, manage emotions, all of those things. Right. And, and so again, it early on, I don't know.

I was just kind of, I think early on, early on, it sounds like you were kind of just winging it. Yeah. Well, and again, I think that it was that joy, that, that pleasure that, that, you know, I mean, when we're in the zone, if, did you get an adrenaline rush out of that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's an adrenaline rush and, but it's, but you, but you have to manage it. There's, there's, for example, there's a right amount of energy activation for any given performance that we're doing.

And if we're talking about a stunt, if it's a fight scene, maybe it's a little bit lower energy activation level because there are a lot of movements, a lot of, you know, like higher muscle movements that are required. Whereas falling down the stairs, for example, maybe that's higher level of energy activation because you're I mean, you're just going to hit and you need to pump up and or at least I do. And that's the thing is that that energy activation level is unique to each

of us. So if you and I are about to do the exact same thing, you may have one level of energy activation at which you perform very well, and I have a different one. And that's okay. Whatever's right for us is right, but we have to know what that right energy activation level is, and we have to know how to get to it and stay there. And that's really where the trick is because as you do, you're in this situation. The stakes are high.

Not even just the physical stakes, although that can be the case sometimes. But there's a lot of money at stake. If you're working on a film set, I mean, there are things blowing up and cars wrecking and motorcycles smashing. All this stuff costs a bunch of money and you get to do it once, usually, because everything's blown up and smashed. So you screw it up. And I've done that, by the way. I was on Hawaii Five-0 and we were doing a final

rehearsal for this motorcycle stunt where I was on action. I was crashing through some doors of this building. I started inside the building, crashed through the doors, rode down some steps, came across the sidewalk. And then out in the street. And then they shot a gun and some pyro went off on the back of the motorcycle and I slid and wrecked. Well, while we were rehearsing that, the final rehearsal, I wrecked, but I did not wreck the way I was supposed to wreck.

And I wasn't supposed to wreck at all because it was rehearsal. And I broke the motorcycle to the point where they couldn't do the shot. This was on a Friday. They had to bring everybody back the next day. They had to buy a new motorcycle, paint it to look like the first motorcycle and bring the entire crew back for me, for my screw up that I had. So I cost that production a bunch of money. They were not happy with me.

So it, so it happens, you know, mistakes occur. Right. Even then, you know, I mean, so I'm back on this. That was one of the most challenging moments that I had because I did screw up the first time. Everybody knew it. I had to get back on the motorcycle. I was the only, I was it. I was the thing happening in that shot. Everybody was looking at me and I had to figure out a way to stay centered. But at that point, I had gone through some of the training. I'd gone through my graduate programs.

I'd applied these things more systematically. I'd had the discussions with the army. So I had some tools that I could lean on in those moments, in that moment in particular, to keep my attention where it needed to be. And the gag, it went great. The stunt went exactly the way it was supposed to. The producer who was ready to throw me off a roof the day before was very happy, came over, shook my hand. So it turned out okay.

But yeah, That right amount of energy activation is important because that adrenaline rush can take over and it can skew our attention and it can screw up our physiology. If we need to be able to move our bodies, you can't do it.

How did you become or develop a passion for performance or sports psychology? And who exactly do you mentor? As I have read, you have worked with the military. Tell us about that. Well, my beginning with sports psychology came when I was coaching gymnastics. So when I first started doing stunts, one of the things that I did to make a little bit extra money and to have a free place to train was coach kids in a gymnastics gym.

And, and, and I'd never done gymnastics as a kid. So I was learning from the other coaches. I started just coaching the rec kids. And then I'd learned from other coaches. I went to conferences and I, you know, little by little built up the skills of what I could coach. And as I learned new things to coach, I learned how to do them myself. So, so I got to the point where I could do some pretty good gymnastics. And, and while at one point during that, I was coaching a team, I was coaching girls.

They were level five, six girls. And I was coaching primarily bars and vault. And I'd go to meets with them. And I'd watch these girls at practice and they'd be able to do the things. They were physically capable of doing the skills. But then when I would get to the meet, some of them would go over and above. Some of them would just, I mean, they would just lock in and they would hit the routines in a way that I'd never seen at practice.

And others who hit the routines regularly in practice would fall. They'd be all over the place. And there was no other reason for it. No other thing that I could think of other than just their minds. So I started reading about sports psychology and, and just became fascinated with that subject. And I just thought, all right, well, this is really cool. I need, I want to learn more.

And so that's why I started the master's program and then continued on with a doctoral program in organizational psychology, which is essentially performance psychology for businesses. It's same thing. just how do you get people to be at their best consistently. And, and, but I never expected to work in those fields. I was a stuntman. That's what I did. That's what I expected to do for the rest of my life.

But you know, life does what it does. And I got married and that came with a stepdaughter and stunts is it's volatile. It's uncertain. You never know when you're going to work or how much money you're going to make. And that made me nervous. So that's when I started looking for a full-time job. And that's when I started working for the army up at Fort Lewis in Washington. And it was, it was a great job. It was at the time, traditional sports psychology. It was performance-based.

We focused on helping soldiers shoot better or clear buildings better or find IEDs better, whatever it might be. It was, okay, this is our performance. We want to get better, faster, and be more consistent. So how can you help us? And that's what I did. I did that for two years. I got a divorce, went back to LA, did stunts again for, you know, full time for another four or five years or so. Rinse and repeat, got married. That came with a stepdaughter again and my daughter at that point.

Yeah. So same reason, went back to the army again. This time at Fort Campbell outside Nashville, where I'm originally from and am now. So it was a circuitous route to get back, but I came back home. So I was at Fort Campbell. And at that time though, this is really, this is a thing that's, I don't know. I'm really thankful that it happened. The program had changed. It still had the performance focus, but it had added a resilience component.

And the difference was the same theory, same basic techniques, but the intent was different. The resilience piece was, what can we teach these soldiers? What tools or skills or techniques can we give them that will allow them to handle adversity better when it inevitably comes up? I mean, whoever you are, wherever you are, something bad's going to happen. It's just, that's part of life. So how do we come back from that? How do we build that resilience?

How do we allow ourselves to go through those moments and not only not get knocked down that far, not only recover quicker, but most importantly, and this is one of the things that the program emphasized that I really got on board with huge. How do we grow and thrive as a result of that adversity going through the bad thing? How do I come out of it on the other side better than I went into it? And that to me is so important.

So I really, I went headfirst into that side of the program and did a lot of those trainings around the world really, and really got a lot out of that. And so that was a great experience that I had with the soldiers.

And and then i left there about two two and a half two and a half years ago to start my own business and start doing the same thing with a broader audience with athletes performers business people really anybody who is at a place in their life where they they they they know there's more and they just want to learn they want to grow they want to strengthen themselves or parents who want to provide that for their kids right and it's been really rewarding i i really enjoy it.

And we're glad to have you on this podcast because that's pretty much what this podcast is all about, is just helping people out there listening, how they can get through these struggles, these life challenges and adversities. Now, you create your own business, Brian Height Global, Begin Again Performance Psychology. That, I believe, is the name of the business, correct?

Yeah, there are two. I have Begin Again Performance Psychology is what I created when I first left the army and it's still there. And there's a focus on sport performance psychology, not necessarily traditionally, but it's really toward that population. Brian Height Global is, is a larger effort that I've just started putting together this year that, that's does more speaking engagements.

I still have some programs that, that I offer for organizations, for athletes, for coaches, for whomever books that I'm trying to create. There will be some courses that I'm developing in 2025 should be out probably either the middle to the end of 2025. The podcast guest and author, Marsha Moran, has written an incredible read titled Stroke Forward, How to Become Your Own Healthcare Advocate, One Step at a Time.

On March 30th, 2014, Marcia's whole world changed as she suffered a stroke at age 53. If you are someone who is a patient with a serious brain injury looking for hope and insights into ways to keep moving forward, or a family member or friend who has been thrust into the role of guarding over someone with a brain injury, you will discover that you are not alone in your quest to be the best caregiver you can be.

The book is stroke-specific, but the author's advice has many applications with added perspectives included in the text of the book from health care providers, Marcia herself, Marcia's husband, and friends. The book is more than just a book about stroke or victims of it. It is a story of bravery, love, and resilience. Holding a master's in business administration.

Marcia has written over 50 business plans and created value by strategizing how companies could remain relevant as the world changed around them. When her stroke turned her world upside down, she applied her planning and strategy skills to become whole. Her journey of learning to become her own health care advocate one step at a time is shared in the book and will benefit everyone reading the book trying to navigate the health care complex.

This book is a rare combination of intimate personal experience, medical education, and practical advice. The book is available from Amazon in paperback and e-book formats. Information on the book will be listed in the podcast notes. I've had some courses on motivation, on pressure, on the four-phased approach to performance I was telling you about.

So that's kind of the difference. So I've kind of – I've moved –. Out of the specific sport and performance realm into just a larger place of, okay, just anybody, everybody experiences pressure. I don't care if you're a stay at home mom and you've got three kids and you got to deal with homework and you got to deal with dinner and you got to deal with soccer. How do you do that? That's a lot of pressure that a lot of people experience.

How do we handle that? How do we, how do we, how do we look at our situation in a way that we can be at our best and accomplish all that we can throughout those high stakes, high stress situations. And I really enjoy that. I enjoy talking about it and I enjoy coaching it.

And I really enjoy just seeing the change that people can make when they implement these skills. So you're coaching your clients. What do you focus on coaching them to achieve their goals or outcomes? In other words, can you kind of tell us a little bit about the process that needs to take place. Yeah. Well, it starts with self-awareness and that's what it comes down to. We have to be aware of how are we thinking? What types of thoughts are going on in our minds? What's going on physically

with us? Are we taking care of ourselves? Are we getting enough sleep? Are we eating healthily? Are we exercising, stretching emotionally? What are we feeling and how strongly are we feeling it? And when we feel it, do we know that we're feeling it and can Can we regulate it? Can we manage it? And then socially, do we have friends? How often do we connect with people? What's our support system look like? And that's where we start. It's a holistic approach, physical, mental, emotional, social,

that we start with self-awareness. Let's talk about what those things are. And then let's talk about where you want them to be, because then we can start looking at an acceptance of, okay, here's reality. This is where I currently am. Physically, I'm not where I want to be. Mentally, I have a tough time regulating, managing my thoughts. I tend to go very pessimistic. I tend to perceive things as problematic all the time. Emotionally, I'm just, I'm very volatile. I'm all over the place.

Socially, I just, I'm isolated. I don't have a support system. Great. Okay. So that's, that's fine. That's where you are. It's not good. You want to be somewhere else and that's great, but this is where you are. And this is what I mean by acceptance. It's not acceptance as in, all right, this is it. I accept it. This is my life. So this is just, I don't know. I just gotta be okay with it. That's, it's not acceptance like that.

It's acceptance of, let me just not gloss over it. Let me not make stuff up.

Let me not pretend like, you know the the camel is a unicorn it's not it's things are what they are so let's just accept that reality as a place of beginning and move from there and that's when we can get into the self regulation part what are the tools what are some changes that we can make physically what are some some different ways that we can manage and and and control and and really perceive situations differently and think differently

and and how might we achieve an emotional state that we that's really helpful for us in situations and do that on demand and recognize very quickly when we start to move out of that emotional state so that we don't go down the rabbit hole. We don't let it go so far that it's just almost impossible to come back. We're able to catch it very quickly and have some tools and techniques to bring us back to where we want to be. So that's the process. Is there a spiritual component to this?

There can be if people look into that. Now, when I talk about spiritual aspects with people, what I talk about is, it's not necessarily, it doesn't have to be religion, and I don't really start it as religion. It's more of a sense that we're part of something larger than ourselves, that there's a bigger thing out there of which we interact with, that we're a part of. And I think that that sense of connectedness to something larger, something bigger, can be very helpful for people.

Now, some people push back on that because they've got whatever baggage it is that they're carrying with whatever they've come up with in their lives, but some people really benefit from it. So if I'm working with somebody and it seems like that kind of perspective, that kind of appreciation for. I guess, I think of it as the smallness of us in the universe, but the importance of us in the sense that the universe would not be what it was or is.

Without us, it would be different. It would be something else. So, so it's that connectedness to something larger. So that's when I talk about spirituality, that's, that's where I go with it. Okay. Now you mentioned five categories and I guess the goal of all this is to improve confidence. Would you say? Well, confidence can be a big part of it. I would say that, that it's just, it's about consistency of.

Doing things on a consistent basis. It's developing the ability to be aware and to be accurate in our assessment of what it is that's happening. Because if we're not capable of doing that, if our perceptions of the situation are being colored by inaccurate beliefs or, for example, maybe I'm very self-conscious. I'll go out in a group and I think everybody's thinking badly about me. I'm self-conscious about my clothes. They're thinking about my clothes. They're going to talk about my hair.

They're going to, whatever it is. And so my, that's my belief. I'm thinking everybody's paying attention to me. Well, you and I have been on this earth long enough to know, and nobody paying any attention to us. They're too busy thinking about themselves. Exactly. So, but people get very, very caught up in that. And if that's, if that's something that's happening, well, let's be aware of it.

Let's be aware that that's our tendency to, to really put a lot of weight and really believe strongly that there's judgment coming from everybody we meet. If that's our tendency, we need to know that so that we can then challenge that belief. All right, well, you think that's true? Well, what's the evidence for that? How do you know? I mean, truly, how do you know? And might there be another, another way to explain somebody's behavior or somebody's look?

You know, if somebody says something to you, you take it as they're attacking you. Well, is there another way to take that? You know, there are myriad ways to perceive any given situation. We can look at it however we want. And it's critical that we understand that, that we acknowledge the fact that the way that we experience the world, the meaning that we assign to what happens, it's us assigning that meaning.

Somebody else standing right next to us experiencing the exact same thing could be telling a completely different story. And that's just fact. And so the quicker people are able to become aware of what it is that they're thinking and how they're perceiving their situations and really becoming skilled at, and it is a skill, to transition that perspective to, okay, I recognize I'm looking at things this way. Might I be able to change my perspective and look at it this other way?

And what other way might that be? And that is a critical, critical skill to develop. Well, let me ask you, we talked about five categories, physical, mental, emotional, social, and then we threw in spiritual. Which of those areas seems to be the most difficult for most people? That's a hard question to answer simply because they're all connected. And this is the holistic piece that I was talking about. We can talk about things physically and then we can talk about mentally.

But the truth of it is, is that when I'm sleeping well and when I've eaten well, my whole attitude, the way I think about the world, the way I perceive, what's around me, my patience level, everything is different than it is when I'm tired and I'm hungry. I mean, my daughter will attest to that. She knows. She knows when dad's hungry.

She's like, go eat something because everything changes. So there's no way to really isolate any one of those five areas because if you're moving the needle on one, you're moving the needle on all the other ones. So it's really important to recognize that holistic synergistic connection among those five areas if we're really going to try to move forward and be at our best.

Now, Brian, you wrote the book Begin Again, Utilize the Wisdom of Eastern and Western Ideologies to Achieve Your Full Potential. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and how it is to be utilized and will there be a sequel to it? Well, that's interesting because it really does fit in with what your podcast is about. That book was written, most of it, at a really, really tough time in my life. It was after my second divorce.

I was dealing with some alcohol problems. It was a tough time at work. I thought that I should move, but I was scared to move because I had my daughter and so financial things. It was a really, really rough time for me. And one of the strategies that pulled me out of that, I think it played a huge role, was every morning I would get up and I would read.

And I had a stack of probably five or six books. And they were books that were wisdom books. So I had, for example, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. And I had a full collection of Seneca. And I had The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. He's still alive today. Hey, he's not 2000 years old like the other two, I was just saying. I had the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. It was just all these different books that gave me some wisdom, that gave me a different perspective.

And I would just read a little bit from each, each day. And as I was reading, I had some sticky notes. I had a pad of sticky notes next to me. And if something stuck out at me, if it really hit home, if it really connected with something happening in my life, I wrote it down on the sticky note and what that was and just a couple of little bullets with it. Well, after a while, I had a bunch of these sticky notes and I sat down to write.

And each of those essays in that book came from one of those sticky notes, every single one of them. There are 183 essays. They're very short. They're only about a two-minute read. Each of those essays, it started as a sticky note that I wrote while reading this stuff during this tough time in my life. And the essays are structured as. You know, just here's a problem that many of us tend to encounter. Here's some information about it that that's probably pretty good to know.

And here's some actions that you can take some things you can do out in your world today that will probably you'll probably benefit from. And that's the structure of each of the each of the essays. There are 183 because there are 366, at least on leap year days in the year. So the design is for people to read one of the essays, go try it out for not one, but two days because they take practice. These skills, these things to implement in our lives, they take practice.

And there are neurological reasons for that, neuroplasticity and how the brain is wired and how habits are formed and all of that.

And we can get into that if you want to. But the bottom line is that we've developed a, just like behavioral habits, we develop thinking habits and we develop perceptual habits for example if you know you're not happy with your job you can drive into the parking lot or even when you get close to your job and you start noticing this change inside your body or inside your emotional state or where your mind tends to go in terms of pessimism and and and so forth and the opposite's true when

you're going somewhere that you really like and that you really enjoy you'll see that too and there's a habit that forms. Those habits are very hard to break. Well, I don't want to say that. They just take time to break. They're simple to break in that we just need to be consistent in how we approach things and the awareness that we have and the changes we adopt, but it takes time. So the idea, read the essay, try it out for a couple of days.

And then do the next one. And they're on several different subjects. So they're not like, if anybody's familiar with Ryan Holiday's book, The Daily Stoic, each month has a theme. Like there's a, everything is about this one thing. And then the next month it's about that. I've mixed them up. And there's a reason for that too. There's a thing called block learning. And then there's interleaving. Block learning is the way that Ryan Holiday does it. Okay. We're going to do

the drill over and over and over and over and over. And then we'll shift to this other thing over and over and over and over. Interleaving is where we do a little bit of this. And then we do a little bit of that and we do a little bit of that and we come back to this. And the research on learning shows that the interleaving tends to be more effective. So there's a method to the madness, but at the end of the day, there are 183 essays.

If you read the title and it seems like something you might like, read it and read five or six of them if you want to, whatever, however it is. But just like that book, that's where it came from. And so it does mean a lot to me. And there may be a sequel. I'm probably about, I mean, I still write it because again, it's more personal work than it is I'm trying to put something out to the world. If the world benefits from it, I am certainly happy about that.

But I just, the process of the reading and the writing is, is, it's still helped. It's, it's a never ending process. There's no, there's no end, there's no destination that I'm trying to get to. It's all a process. And every single day, it's, it's just, it's a journey. And that's part of my journey is, is writing to process the things that I deal with.

I take it the book can be obtained on Amazon? Yeah, yeah, you can get it on Amazon in Kindle form or paperback form or hardback form, whatever your pleasure is. So you alluded to the fact that you had your share of personal challenges, two divorces, being a single parent, problem with alcohol, several moves and career changes.

What do you attribute your ability to come back from those challenges? Well, Jennifer Lee, a podcast supporter of ours, has just had her book, Why I Survived, released. The book is a story and memoir of dealing with dating abuse, armed robbery, and abduction and other forms of trauma. The book is dedicated to what is inside all of us, resilience, strength, courage, hope, perseverance, and love.

Jennifer pulls us into her hair-raising traumatic stories and helps us understand the physical, emotional, and mental toll trauma takes on us. The book recalls four personal experiences of suspense, suspicion, and survival that ultimately leads to Jennifer's purpose of helping other survivors. Her book reminds us that we are not alone and encourages us to listen to our intuition to help us avoid pain and stay on the correct path.

You will be on the edge of your seat once you read how Jennifer triumphs over her adversities and finds the gift of helping empower others to begin their healing journey by speaking her stories. You will simply not be able to put this book down after starting to read it. The reader will find words of support and knowledge you can use through Jennifer's experiences and resources throughout the book so you know that you are never alone.

The book is available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook formats through Amazon. Information on the book will be listed in the podcast notes. I'm going to couch it in theoretical terms first, and then I'll talk about my specific part of that. Resilience is very much related to resources. And when I say resources, there are many, many, and we've talked about five, physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual.

There are others. Financial resources is another one. I mean, there are different types of resources, but the more resources we have available and the more proficient we are at using them, the more resilient we're going to be. It's really just a math equation. More resources, more resilient. So I had resources. I had, during each of those times, I had great friends.

I had money coming in. There were some times when money was challenging, but during those particular times, I didn't really have too many money problems with that. Physically, I was a stuntman. That's how I made money. So I had to work out even though I was having these other problems. So I stayed physically fit. I had to pay attention to eating. Again, there were ups and downs with that too, depending on where my mental state was, but I never let it get too far out of control.

Where I really went haywire was the mental and emotional side of the resources. I had a very difficult time reining in my mind and really regulating emotions. So I didn't have all the resources. It was tough, but I did at least have enough resources where I was able to continue to come back. And part of it too was just a simple, it was what do I want? I mean, the first time I didn't have a daughter and it was, what do I want in my life? What do I want to achieve?

And how do I want to move forward? And after that first divorce, I'd spent two years working with the army. I really missed being a stuntman. I mean, I never stopped doing stunts during those two years, but I wasn't doing it full time. I wasn't doing it very often. And I missed my friends. I missed my crew. I miss my people, my, my, my tribe, you know, I, those, those are the people I grew up with. And so to get back to that was a huge help for me.

It was a place where I was, where I belonged, where I was accepted and, and, and where I thrived because I was able to do what I'd love doing and what I was good at doing. And the second time I was still with the army, I didn't go back to stunts full time. And that took a longer time for me to deal with because I didn't have my tribe right there next to me. I had to develop other things and work in other ways.

And that's really, I mean, honestly, looking back on it, that's, that's, it may not have been that bad a thing because one of the things that came out of it was exactly what I just said was the habit of getting up in the morning and reading and journaling and, and writing. And that has been, again, it's been a, it's been a lifeline for me for sure.

Now you have a, I want to give you a little plug. You have a podcast of your own poking holes and blinders. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. Poking holes and blinders was something that just came out. There's a friend of mine. His name's Colin fallen wider. He's he's another stunt guy. We've been friends for years. If you've ever watched any superhero movies, you've probably seen him. He's been in just about every costume of, of that that there is.

But anyway, Colin and I, we just started having these conversations and, and they would go on forever. And I was like, you know what? We should do a podcast on this because we're seeing things eye to eye and we're trying to put out some of this information and we think that it would be good. So we started the podcast, Poking Holes and Blinders, with the intent of really talking about things a little bit differently, about challenging some assumptions and trying to – the blinders being our rigid

beliefs that we tend to walk around the world with. This is how things are. This is how I see it. This is how it is. and we want to, to, we can't get rid of those cause that's part of just being human, but we can poke holes in them. Give us a little bit of, give us a little bit of view of what else is outside of those. And that was where the name came from. And, and so Colin and I've done, I don't know, we haven't done that many episodes of it.

And we're, we're talking about, I think we're in the process of changing the name to fall hard, think deep, two stunt guys discussing the meaning of life. So we'll see where that goes. But for the moment, you can look it up as, as poking holes in blinders. Yeah, I'm going to check it out. Definitely.

How can people contact you if they want to contact you? What's the best way? Through the website's probably the easiest way. I mean, you can do that or you can just send me an email directly. And if you do, definitely mention this podcast because if you tell me that you heard me on here, I will absolutely send you a coupon code for 35% off, whatever you want to get, whenever you want to get it.

That's for sure. But if you go to the website, Brian Height, B-R-I-A-N-H-I-T-E global, G-L-O-B-A-L.com, That's where you can, there's a contact sheet in there. You can put your email in, you can get the newsletter and you can just send me an email, brian at brianheightglobal.com. So it's brianheightglobal.com.

Okay. Lastly, what advice or words of wisdom can you give to those listening to this, struggling through their own issues, whatever they may be, to move in a better direction? Well, I'll tell you, I'm a firm believer that opportunity is not rare. It doesn't come every day necessarily, but it does come frequently. And I think we often miss it. And I think we miss it for one of three reasons. I think three things need to happen for us to really recognize and take advantage of opportunity.

One is just openness, being open to the world, open to our environments, open to the possibility that things may be different and that whatever's coming into your world that day might be helpful. That openness is huge. The second is flexibility because once we recognize this thing is possibly helpful, that means we have to be willing to change from the direction that we're going. So we're all heading somewhere.

If we recognize that we need to deviate a little bit and head a different direction, we need to be flexible enough to do that, to be able to recognize the change and be able to flex. And the third thing, and this is where a lot of people hit a wall, and it is a hard thing, is the courage to make that change. Because by definition, you're going to be heading into the unknown. You're going to be heading into a situation that you may not know that much about.

And it's entirely possible that it may not work out the way you want it to, but we have to have the courage to take that chance and the willingness to take the chance of failure, knowing, not believing, not thinking, knowing that we can come out of the situation better than we went into it. Meaning if it works out the way we want it to, great, we're better off. But if it doesn't, the process and the journey itself,

gives you wisdom that you didn't have before. And that allows us to be better too. So that's it. Opportunities do come, but it requires openness to recognize them, flexibility to make the change and courage to actually take that first step. That's awesome advice. It really is. I've just never heard it said that way. That was great. I want to thank you, Brian, for being on the podcast. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

I admire your work and what you're doing, and I look forward to maybe having you back on the podcast, and I wish you all the best going forward. Well, thank you so much. I've had a great time, and I'm happy to come back whenever you'd like. Just reach out, give me a shout, and I will for sure come back. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you, Brian.

Comments and suggestions for the podcast if you want to hear any topic that maybe we haven't covered so far, you can email me at itsarapwithwrap at gmail.com. Our website is itsarapwithwrap.com. Our Facebook group is It's A Rap With Wrap. We have about 2,000 people in there. It's a private group. If you want to join, just go on Facebook and get a hold of me and I'll invite you in.

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