Hello, ladies and gents Robert Sykes keto Savage.com. And today, I've got a special guest, Chris rodent on the line, and I thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I've got no doubt that you will take something from it. We dived into stoicism. We delved into mindset without into training nutrition. He has a type 1 diabetic. He also was born with basically a shortened arm and only one finger.
So he's had to overcome and adapt through all those hardships, but that hasn't stopped him from being, you know, an elite power. Lifter body. Builder just all-around badass. So thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. He is a wealth of knowledge and he's incredibly inspirational and Incredibly disciplined. And I've got no doubt, they will take something from this episode. So without further delay, a sit back, relax and do a podcast with Chris Rutten. And we are live. Chris, how are you man?
I'm good man. Thank you for having me. Hey man, I'm excited to have you and I'm a little bit frustrated though, man. Because we weigh the same. Wait, I just watched your powerlifting record-breaking from 2016. We have the same weight and you're pulling 100 pounds more than me. And you only got one hand. The how the hell is that happened? Yeah man. Yeah, so it's been a it's been a long journey to find different
ways to Adapt and stuff. But I feel like the commitment over time has definitely paid off know for sure. Man. I was I was looking at a few videos. I don't really watch much content from people. I'm bringing those. I just kind of like to go into it. Totally blind and just see what the conversation goes. But you got a pretty inspiring resume, man. Like, you're like, on that particular video. The title of it was powerlifting, diabetic, seven
fingers, something like that. Like all these different things you rattled off. So you're breaking all kinds of records for more reason than one. Yeah. I mean for me it was never about breaking records, you know it's just those barriers. I felt like I had growing up as a kid with a disability and eventually getting type 1 diabetes.
Like man there has to be more to life than just like, you know, being this disabled diabetic kid and I fell in love with the gym and just kind of like failing over and over and over and understanding the concept and that resulted in some crazy strength, inevitably pulling, you know, 675 which is my top deadlift. And I just I loved the art of like Progressive overload and lifting weights and persimmon, it's therapeutic for sure. Now you weren't born as a type 1
diabetic, right? No, I was born with a congenital birth defect, two fingers on my left hand and shorter left arm and I got diagnosed with type 1. Diabetes at 19 years old which one was the bigger obstacle for you? I would imagine by 19 you've already kind of built up some some mental resilience so that you kind of already had some momentum. Going that point. I wish I could agree. Yeah, it to different obstacles. Was I think just different kind of different obstacle races if
you will. I hid my disability for 17 years up until four years ago. How do you I had it been like then like how does that? Yeah you do then. Yeah I spent at least eight to ten years with my left hand in my pocket and I never took it out. And then ironically I found a way to play drums which I'm just observing that competitive person that, you know, if you're walking next to an old person they don't know you're racing but you're winning that. Has me like, all the time.
I'm always just like zoom in. And I'm like, how can I prove to myself that, you know, I'm good enough and that came out in the form of like competitiveness. So when I found a way to play drums, I got a fingerless gloves and I shoved the drumstick through one of the finger holes of the globe. And I was able to play drums for six years, Marching Band, drum line, eventually set. And I became this person who wore the glove and I were that glove from high school all the
way through college. Until 45 years ago and people like they didn't like they knew they just didn't say anything. Like you weren't talking about her. They like legitimately didn't even know they for the majority of people who knew me closely like new. But I had such a kind of a fake confident Persona, that people wouldn't dare ask you, they just accepted that.
I accepted where they thought I accepted, but really I was in denial and avoiding like massively and they just never brought it up. I just became that guy. And I think, And I even developed this Charisma and confidence about me that I would walk into a room, people would see the glove, but immediately they could tell that was a, that was a taboo subject that you don't talk about. It's interesting because like when when you going through like high school man, middle school, high school.
I was a brutal years. I. Nobody has any. Medical was the worst know. School was definitely the worst. Yeah. Like at that point like nobody that nobody's done any like they don't even know who they are yet. So like you don't really have this true confidence. You've got this Aura of like superficial confidence, but you know, What confident people look like. So you try to emulate then and that's exactly a perfect way of putting it. That's exactly what I was doing.
Is emulating what I thought confidence was. Yeah, yeah. So like what I mean, like, was that like how did you cope with it? Like what did you do that? What was the aha moment where you're like? Okay what I'm doing right now is obviously not sustainable. This is no way to live long term. I got it fixed Direction. They got to change course and like in still true conference, I what was the Catalyst for that? Man.
So I was made fun of you know, because of my hand, my disability for the majority of my childhood and in Middle School specifically. There was this girl named Crystal and I was in seventh grade and this girl she was the prettiest girl in my school, you know, to be fair there was like four or five girls in my class in total, you know. So the teacher was one of them and Crystal is not a teacher.
So I worked up discourage, the top, like China says, girl out, you know, as I Oh, I'm gonna get my first girlfriend, you know, and I walked up to her desk, I'll never forget and I turn around my friends are laughing. I turned back around to see the girl and she's making fun of my hand with a stapler, call me Club boy. And she like, humiliated me in front of the entire class, you know, that was one of the moments and I think there's a compound effect of moments.
It's not this disneyfication of like one moment, everything changes. That was one of the moments where I was like, oh, I'm Different. I need to hide, you know? Yeah. And I took that out on my mom, you know, I I remember going home and just like my mom was a nurse and I always told her, my days were great, but I was getting made fun of him. Bullied, I just never said anything. You know, I lied to my mom because I was embarrassed for
her kid being broken. You know, I was embarrassed for my parents and I remember one day, I just couldn't take it. I was like, Mom, like why did you do this to me? Why would you do this to your own kid? You help all these patients, you know, these people. But you can't even help your own kid, you know, like why would you even have me? And seeing my mom kind of breakdown about that and cry. And she'd even, she just apologized and I'm like, damn, man.
Like that was one of those moments where I was like, something has to change. You know what, what was their parenting strategy like for you when you were growing up, like, where they did, they draw much awareness to it attention to it. Did they say? Hey, look, everybody is like this. They say, look, nobody's like this or they just totally not bring any way. Earnest to it and just kind of let you go through life.
Without it being seen as a disability in the younger years, there were big on like, they know you were made special and I wanted to believe that but then we grew up in a super poor area, you know, and my parents did the most that they could. Yeah, you know, but lots of having to work and get go to different resources, like churches to get food. So it was, it was hard to hear that. I'm special about that I'm being made. You know? So yeah, I was like man I can't
tell my parents. That they're wrong. That would that would break their heart. You know, they think I'm special and I see what I'm going through. I'm like, I gotta I gotta lie. You know, I gotta hide this from them because I need to protect them and I went into that mode and I think that played a huge role and kind of how I am now. I love the leadership role because I can't, I feel like I can try and do my best to protect people in my community, you know?
Yeah, for sure, man. So when when you were getting made fun of them, Then and you went to your mom and had that conversation with her. How old were you? Then you said that was about fourteen 14. Then you said you and you've been kind of keeping this under wraps until just four years ago. You said right? Yeah. So what was the other War some other? Like aha moments of like okay this this is we gotta switch gears here. Yeah so College probably ended up either.
I wouldn't think college was definitely a long sleeve moment, you know and I It was fortunate that I built this Persona is confidence that still I did everything everyone else. Did I just I was struggling with stuff. People couldn't see ya. You know, it's those battles that people aren't aware of, you know, that can really weigh down on people. So I started building like a
Fitness business. I built this massive like Fitness business as I was in school for exercise science, and I started getting all these clients and doing online clients at a certain point. I work, It up. So like over 100 clients worldwide and it was incredible but I was still battling this thing.
You know, I started speaking on overcoming adversity and I found that my true passion and that, you know, and even as I was powerlifting, I started getting in powerlifting because I wanted to lift heavy weights, but I was still had in my hand. I always wore gloves, you know, and you'll see some of my older videos. I'm still wearing the glove breaking records, you know, hmm. And I didn't need the glove, I just needed the hook, but it kind of became Thing, because
that's what I hidden. I'll never forget though, as I was speaking. I started building my career fairly fast and found my passion and speaking and storytelling. I was speaking at this event at his Disney Resort. And there's like, 2,000 people there to here, like my keynote and all this. And I'd spent the day with this girl named Maddie. She was like eight years old, should just got diagnosed with diabetes.
And we're walking down this long hallway and my entire life, I hid my hand, you know I would walk on certain side so people didn't see it or talk about it. It just, I avoided it, you know, and I created every every step in my life was based on hiding my hand. If I was going to the door, how is that going to grab the doorknob and turn so that you
couldn't see? You know, I that was my life, strategically planned to the step and I remember walking down this hallway with this girl, and we're just walking down. She's on my left side, which is already weird and she grabs my hand over my glove. And she's just swinging it super happy and smiling. I'm tense. Like if you stepped on Ice, that kind of tense. Yeah. And she looked at me and she's like, it's okay, you don't have to hide around me. And just kept on smiling and Swinging my hand.
And that moment I was like, damn thousands of people are there to hear me speak, but she's the only person who actually saw me, you know, that's pretty cool man. Like, the, I was one of those moments. The brutal honesty of children is hard to put. It's hard to quantify, man. It's just powerful. It's, I think it's the most powerful than you could experience, you know. Yeah. If you ever make some food, you want to see if there's really good your to a kid. That's for sure.
It's very true, man. Well, my, my wife's Brother Chad, he lost his. He lost like pretty much his whole right hand. He was a woodworker, he says woodworker. And he cut it all off, like, with a at a sawmill or something, but like, he does all this shit. Now, without a hand without his right hand, he was right hand dominant but it's like he still does all this really ornate wood working. Like he does all this stuff so like seeing him work.
It's like man, I've got like anybody can do anything. Like it's crazy. Like I You know, stub, my toe on something and I realize how much I use my hair like yeah, finger and I mean, I can't do anything. But like, if you've gone through this, like, your whole life specially cuz you were born with it, it's like you just adapt and overcome and then what you're able to adapt and overcome is just inspiring to people that have all the appendages and they're coming up with all kinds
of excuses. As to why they can't do X Y or Z. But the reality is you can do anything. You set your mind to, it's really about the narrative. You give yourself and you know again disability, does it exist? You know, disease States exist? I can't. Not positive think my way out of my diabetes you know, but what I can do is I can not make it
worse, you know. And that's it took me a long time to learn that man, the narratives that we live with really, set up our lives and provider, can't be that easy. I'm like, unfortunately, it is that simple, it's not easy because it takes work, but it is simple in the fact that the narrative you have inside your head, if you're losing that narrative, that's on you, you know, and I don't, that's not a victim blaming thing that's more.
So our responsibility and we To understand that responsibility is also responsive ability. We have the ability to respond. And sometimes we practice these negative responses that ruin our quality of life, but it's coming from us, you know. So how do you start to switch that? How do you start to change that? So that you're kind of winning the story in your head, which is where you live all day everyday for your entire life. Yeah. Like your perception is your reality, for sure.
And I feel like, I don't know. I got really big into stoic mentalities. Auntie. Same here. I'm so glad you said that I that changed my life - oh for sure, man, like I started reading, I think my first introduction to it was Ryan holidays, the book, The obstacle after obstacle is the way you same here. Oh my God, I think they're from Tim Ferriss and like he's doing a lot of recommendations but obstacles away is definitely that was the start of everything for me.
Yeah. 100% man. So we're two Kindred Spirits here. I think I probably learned of Ryan through Tim Ferriss or something like that. Isn't a whole bunch of Tim Ferriss podcast back in like 2004 In 2015. And then I some of the pain Run Holiday read. His book obstacles the way. And man, I literally listen to that on. Repeat, whenever I'm going through hardship now we are the same person and definitely the same person from Ryan holiday, all his books, but definitely obstacles away.
And ego is enemy and then gotten to Marcus Aurelius meditations, some of Seneca stuff. I actually have Seneca is staying on my wall. We often suffer an imagination more than we do reality. Nice man. I liked it. So, once you get me before you found, philosophy 40 pounds, stoic mentality. Like like I feel like stoicism is like a road map, like you, no matter how bad the shit is in your surrounding. Like if you adopt a stoic, you know, framework to it.
It's like okay, people have gone through much worse. Let's be realistic here. Let's let's let's optimize what we can control and the things that we can't then it's not worth the mental bandwidth, you know. Like like yeah simply have Direction. Whereas before that it's really easy to point. The finger have this woe is me. Victim mentality.
Oh yeah. And I feel like, you know, before I found that I don't know, like my parents don't think my parents even know what socialism is, but they raised me in a very stoic manner. So I was able to kind of have a lot of that. Just, you know, bread into me.
But I can't imagine going through life with a disability or with something and not having some sense of recourse, if I, okay, this is So within my control, I, when you adopt this extreme ownership mentality towards at all, even though it's very hard, there's a lot of Hope because you feel like there's a solution to it. I'll wear as opposed to if you don't have that, hope if you don't feel like you have the power, then then it's like easy to let the world swallow you up
and spit you out. Oh, for sure. And I mean the, the hard part is growing up as a kid. No middle schoolers. But is going to say, I need to develop a system philosophically, so I can get through it. Just me looking back. I wish but I feel like people go one of two ways they go into blaming and trying to figure out the whys of everything. Like, if I sit here, if I sat here and literally try to see why was I born with a disability?
Why do I have type 1 diabetes? Yyyyy, what is that gonna do for me at this point? You know, other than curiosity what it will serve. No purpose own better, my current life, it won't change my disability or my diabetes. It'll do nothing for me, the other way that If when you don't have a system, is the way I went which is neither good nor bad and arguably almost worse. I numbed everything out, I became a pathetic and I tried to run away from everything with
anything that I could wrong. People wrong things. I tried to hide from the emotion that I refuse to face and a lot of us do that. We tend to go through stuff and we say it's not a big deal. When we know we feel it's a big deal and we don't address it. We avoid it, we hide it under the rug and it becomes a mess. A lump under the rug and you everyone sees it, but no one says anything, you know, and that's what I did for a long time before I understood the art
of stoicism and more. So, domesticating emotion, not avoiding. It, not pretending like, it doesn't exist, but learning to control it. So it doesn't control you. That was a huge shift in how I live my life. And that is like the the quintessential antidote for You know, moving past that superficial level of confidence like true conference.
Like if you have true in your toolkit then like, literally the world can throw anything at you and you're not really unsettled by it. Yeah, because you understand that, like, I can only control what's in my wheelhouse which is my thoughts and my reactions. You know, I can't I can't use stoicism to get rid of my disability or my disease. But what I can use it for is to make sure that the quality of life I have with those conditions. I never asked for doesn't get affected.
By what happens in life, you know, and people like, oh well, if you start thinking like preparing for the worst, stoicism talks about that, you know, preparing for bad things or, you know, o controlled pessimism. So to speak, I always prepare for good things and bad things and be like, oh, that's a negative way of life. I'm like, let me ask you this question. Do you have a spare tire on your car? Because if so, you're doing the same thing is I'm what I'm
doing, you know? Yeah, for sure and it's like, like when you have this the obstacles, the way kind of using that title. Again, I mean like, Do you become so like what you see the hardship and things as simply a stepping stone for the greater good, like you love public speaking'? Be my motivational speaker. You could probably do a great job doing that. If it weren't for your hand, like, if you were born without that then you probably still be doing it.
But that's like the Catalyst that made that trajectory of your life will become more pronounced, you know. Yeah, and that's what I like about. Just kind of my I thought process now is my disability is either viewed, especially in the public eye because like I built a large social, following, all this stuff people Ivo. See, your disability is a stepping stone to success.
It's a good thing or people with disabilities are bad thing and I'm like, all of these descriptors aren't even real because my disability is just the disability. That's all it is. Yeah, anything more to, that story is what we decide to add to it. And it's our, it's our narrative, our storytelling, you know, there's what In stores in the story, We Tell ourselves about what happens to us. And often we like food, we over season and we wonder why it tastes bad.
That's what I did for the majority of my life. I told myself disability is synonymous with broken weak, useless, helpless, and how many of us end up doing these kind of
things. We tell ourselves a story about what we're going through and we make it worse almost to the point of where like a movie produced and we're making this incredible movie about this terrible character which is us and we're telling ourselves this depressing story and it's like Wow, why are we still good at making this awful narrative and what happens if we use that narrative building skills for something that would improve the quality of life and not detract
from it 100% man hundred percent. I'm assuming you probably hadn't stumbled upon stoicism about time. You were 19 and we're diagnosed type 1. Diabetes are right? Yeah. Around that. It was really around like, 2012-2013 I was just about to graduate college but I had always had this like kind of Drive factor. I was in school. For exercise science but I was still getting specialization. That was working as a trainer way before any of these kids in my class because I wanted to get out there.
You know, like taking tests was cool and all but like I wanted to make money, you know. I wanted to, I grew up poor. I was like, I got to be different. I gotta, I can't be a broke disabled, diabetic kid, you know, that has to be more. So I really push the envelope and I loved the building of businesses to solve other
people's problems for sure. Man, the would you get in like a lot of pushback like When you were doing like the online coaching were you, I'd to people that will work with you around the world that they know that you have a disability or where they do. Yeah, I think that's what attracted them to me because they knew I had the ability to problem-solve, you know, and they saw that I was building my physique even with, you know, something that most people would
consider a hardship. So they're like, well, if he can do it, I can do it. And I don't really like that philosophy because it's kind of like saying people with disabilities are less than, you know. Yeah. So it's like if you're If a broken person can do it, then I can definitely do it. It's, it's not like that, you know, it's like if this person has found ways to do it, then other people can find ways to do it. And that's what it comes down to
is reducing it to humanity. At a sense of we all possess, the ability to adapt to our shortcomings, to our behaviors habits abilities. There's always something we can do. And if you can't do something, it was never your problem to solve in the first place. Yeah, I like that. When it comes to the fitness goals, like your personal fitness goals, like, Building muscle getting stronger, getting all that down then, which of the two was harder for that was it. Was it?
The man, the hand, or the diabetes when it comes to just simply building your physique, the definitely it mixture of both. But I wanted to be a bodybuilder originally because I love the magazines and I saw that and there was the competitiveness to because people told me I couldn't, you know, how can you be a bodybuilder when it's a cemetry based competition and I'm asymmetrical, you know, no amount of positive thinking is going to change my Cemetery, but
I also didn't accept that. So I was like, there has to be something and I noticed, you know, at the gym, no one really knew how to train people with disabilities, so I found ways, I built a hook. I did whatever I could to train a little bit extra on one side and it used the principles. I was learning Progressive overload, you know, volume, but applying that to specific Force angles with my left side. And I don't this physique and in the process of wanting to be a
bodybuilder, I got strong. So then I started competing in powerlifting. One, my first competition and I did seven or eight competitions after that one. Almost every single one of them and got to the point where, you know, I squatted 615, identidad, 675 and bench, 385 where I just balance the bar on my residual, limb on my left hand and people were freaked out, but I was able to compete.
You know, and the disability definitely presented a lot of cases where I had to learn biomechanics to understand how to lift. Yeah, diabetes though is random. You know, my disability is very predictable. I'm about to do a pull-up, I know I need to get my hook. I know I need to adjust for the height difference in my arms. Then I'm good to go diabetes, though, you have perfect days, then you can have not perfect days.
You're about to do have a PR, you know, you're about to lift really heavy and your blood sugar is tanking. You know, you continuous glucose monitor. If you have one is letting, you know, hey, in the next 10 minutes, you're going to be an emergency scenario. And then the data shows us that, you know, for 48 hours.
Severe hypoglycemic event, Your maximal Capacity to produce force is reduced so I'm like wait my program is calling for 90% you know, but now the glucose situation my blood glucose is affected that was the Nightmare and lucky. I had Tech to help me but like it it was definitely difficult. Yeah, that that is like a, that is a chess set all at once there, when it comes to like management diabetes with you, lifting like that. Like what are you Like
nutritionally speaking. Yeah so I've done a lot of different tactics and it depends on where I'm at in my training cycle. So right now I've really took it a step back. This is one of those weird things you never expect to say but I accomplished a lot of my goals man. You know I hit these crazy numbers with powerlifting and I accomplished that 675 deadlift which is my main goal and then I always want to do a bodybuilding competition. So I spent another year training
for that. I did my first bodybuilding competition and I won I'm like, damn, what do you do? After you accomplish all those goals that you thought you'd never get to, you know, and for for like a year or so, since then I I want to think last year, I've just been kind of hanging out, you know, and enjoying the process of just enjoying the gym. Again without having is looming goal, you know, but I just, I love being able to be in this
position of balancing my diet. So, when I'm in pre-competition, definitely lower carb. And a little higher protein and I like to balance it that way, I'll do a few no carb days to help offset the calories throughout the week. On my moderate like, maintenance phase, I'll do pretty moderate
carbs. I never usually go over 200 carbs, just because I found that's the sweet spot for my bulking like gaining size face, but anything past that my blood sugar's a little hard to deal with, but that's me. Personally, I know people that go up to 600 and O people that stay keto the entire I'm, you know, so it's more. So like what works for me at the time and if I want to have super easy to manage blood sugars, I usually go pretty low carb.
Well, I watch your salt clip of you at the bodybuilding competition like Peak Week man, like you were freaking dialed in. Oh yeah, I was out super shredded down. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, that that is like I'm doing a prep I'm starting my prep next week actually and there's like, like people that have never done a bodybuilding show, there's a lot of adverse that goes in with that, it Because it's like a lot. It's like when you when you break it apart it's all really,
you know, simple stuff. It's not easy, but it's simple like, it's not like, yeah, you know, anybody can have a rockstar day at the gym and you making have a rockstar daily nutrition. But to do so consistently without deviation for four, five, six, seven months, at a time. That's where it gets challenging +1, having a rock star six months.
Is that that that part that you know, those moments where you're kind of on autopilot and you're like you know I got to do my My 30 45, 60 minutes of cardio and today's a lower carb day, and I'm not feeling it. I don't want to, but you got to, anyways, it's those conversations that you just, you don't. That's my biggest thing. People always ask me, it drives me nuts. They're like, how do you stay so motivated? I'm like, I don't like, what do you mean?
Like I literally want to watch Netflix and lay on my back all day. I don't want to do this stuff. I don't want to do cardio for 6090 minutes and want to do any of this. I want to eat chicken. You know, I want a fat steak, it's not about motivation, it's about discipline, you know, like how do you develop the discipline to do stuff? You need to do even when you don't feel like doing it. It's not a matter of motivation,
it's a matter of commitment. So on that note, it since funny man and you'll get this reference since you read learn holiday, but my Manifesto, I do it Manifesto every year. So this year is Manifesto is discipline as Destiny after his latest book and I feel like for people like you and I People that listen to this podcast that are of the same breed. Like the issue is not really. How do you stay motivated or stay disciplined to do it? But that's just kind of like the
default. That's just kind of what we do. We weren't born like that, but we've become built like that. I just what we do, the hard part becomes, how do you know when to, you know, turn it off or push the pause button, like return to some degree of normalcy for everybody else's sake and your own sake but then not let that become not that it would. Become you wouldn't linger in
that realm for too long. But how do you know when it's the point of okay, I should push the pause, but I should actually kick my feet up and relax for like an afternoon and not feel guilty about it. Thing is like how do you relax and not feel guilty? That's what I struggle with man, and this is something that like, I feel. So out of place in my my world among like entrepreneurship and stuff, I've built like a really successful career in terms of
public speaking. That guy's a keynote speaker. I've gotten my my dream car on my dream. A place like I'm doing some big gigs that are like crazy and people value my time and I feel like I've really made it, you know? And from financially to business goals to like, we're just what I've done.
But I am not like a lot of these people because maybe it's because I went to therapy, you know, maybe it's because I trusted their best to work on some of these issues, but I have such good work-life balance and most people in my position will not say that. Yeah, I don't feel guilty when I take time off anymore, you know, I used to but I've come to understand like what I was chased out. Chasing money. I was chasing business. I was chasing physiques all of that.
The the main goal was quality of life. Hmm. You know, so in the pursuit of all these topical things, these superficial things, I was, I wanted those things to have quality of life, but in the pursuit of them, I was reducing my quality of life to trying to get the things that I thought would give me quality of life and it didn't make sense. You know, I heard someone say, the desire for happiness is a negative experience.
And that really had that weight on me heavily, the desire for happiness is a negative experience. The wanting of something you don't have is - and I was like, damn how crazy is that? We're constantly carrot on the stick mentality as entrepreneurs or as people who are driven, you want something you want to, you want you want, you want the disease, you want the business, you want the money, you want the listeners? You want. All of these things, you want. All these things, you don't
have. So you're left in a state. Eight of wanting, which is always a lack of fulfillment. Mmm, it's exhausting. So of course, you feel guilty for not doing something that you're already, not fulfilled with. But imagine if we'll take this, imagine if you're on this podcast right now, you and I were talking in, this is everything we need.
We have full contentment and we are just in the moment and we enjoy everything about it. Not think about all the other things we need to do. We have demonized the word contentment to mean Dad or lazy. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think us. What man is this crazy? I don't think it's him is bad. Think like I like Place via content. I don't like the idea of being complacent and I don't like the idea of being satisfied,
satisfied. You can kind of give and take depend on how you frame that but I think contentment is not a bad thing at all. I feel like a lot of people especially like entrepreneurs business people athletes like they have a hard time understanding. What is enough like for you? What is the, what is the word enough mean? And yet for me enough I got I reached enough at the beginning of last year.
Yeah. I hit some financial goals and some personal goals that I've always wanted and I was like, wow, this is great and I have a few friends who are in the entrepreneurial space so I but man if you tripled your output right now, you could, you could do so much. I'm like, you're right, I could, but I don't need to. Yeah, I was like, I stopped waving the carrot on the stick and I just grabbed her care. And I was like, damn, I like this. This is nice right now.
Can I push it at any time? Absolutely. Um, I'm still working on stuff. Absolutely. We but I really value my time with my girlfriend. You know, I really value my time in the gym. I really value being able to take in what I'm doing and be on this podcast and just enjoy this process without trying to rush to do the next thing I've really valued being present and that's helped my diabetes. It's helped my mental States helped my business, you know, and my relationship.
So, the three factors in life for everyone, I feel like in my personal opinion are Health wealth and happiness. You know, happiness is like crossing the finish line, so you're not going to constantly cross Finish Lines. So I like to talk about contentment, if you're not content, a majority of the time like content and what you're doing, even if you're pursuing the goal, you're relaxing. Are you do you experience contentment? And if you don't, when is that ever going to happen?
Is it conditional like do you have to get get 2x to experience? Why? I just don't want my life to be conditional anymore? You know, I lived 20 years of my life. That way. So prior to this past year where you kind of reach that point of enough like was your what you able to kind of like find pockets of contentment you know in that Journey or was it pretty much just like your head down and grinding up until reaching that point.
It was head down grinding and anytime I'll be super honest and I don't think I've ever said this before, I did a TV show at the Rock, You Know, Titan games and that was incredible, but even being on the show, all I could think about is what else I had to do. Oh yeah, you know and I was like looking back. I'm like man, I loved that experience. But like I was still in the head space of nothing isn't no. Satisfaction is the death of Desire that used to be my favorite saying and I don't
think that's true anymore. Man. I don't think satisfaction is the death of Desire, the lack of effort to death. You know of desired doing something like, you can still put effort, you can be satisfied and still put effort into what you want to do. No, why do we have this black? And white Narrative of, you know, if I'm satisfied, then nothing will ever be good. I love being satisfied with where I'm at in the process of pursuing more. I love that.
Yeah, I like that a lot. I feel like effort is the great equalizer in life. Like there's, you know, pros and cons everything. There's different degrees of output but just simply putting forth. Effort is like the thing that you have the most tangible impact on. Yeah. And I mean you're in control of the intensity of effort to because hundred percent effort is not the same effort every day
if you're sick. 100% effort is very different than 100 percent effort on your best bet, but the hundred percent part is relative to each moment. Are you giving the effort that you can or that you should towards what, you know, you need to do that? No one can take away from you. No one can affect that. That is no one else's responsibility. You can't blame her finger point effort to anyone else. I like them and so I totally agree. You mentioned like the three
keys to happiness. I said, this last week on a podcast, like people, you look at people and they have like, a relationships used happiest, hate relationships, and then health, and wealth. Like those three things. You look at a lot of the Uber successful people. They have all the money in the world, but their health is in disarray and the relationships are on the Rocks. Like, oh, yeah. It seems very scarce to see some of the has all three of those primary things in a pretty good
standing. But I'm I'm so content with all three of those things and it's wild in, I have a friend who I talked to all the time and he's constantly gathering at how do I get there? How do I get there? I'm like, man, you are there, you're just not accepting that you're there. You know, you are there like you have if you have the relationship that you're building whether it's with your friends, your family, or a significant other or even your dog, you know?
Like yeah you have everything you need to be content right now. Now and if the first thing you say to me saying that is but you are looking for excuses to validate your misery or validate your lack of happiness, you know, and you don't need me for that. You don't need me for that conversation because I'm not trying to take that away from you.
It's not protecting me. What do you think of when people like when people have this rags-to-riches story, so to speak and they the thought and the the perception and the memory of misery is what drives them to be more than that. But then you reach that point that is more than that. But it's almost like that desire for Breaking Free of that world is what drove them in the first place.
Like the like, you know, in like the That I think Seneca was the one to bet he would once a month or something like that. He would live on the streets, you know, not having him as blah blah, I live for yeah. Poor said he can maintain that hunger. Like how do you juggle that?
I think it's important to recognize what your drivers are, because if your driver is solely pain of the past, which for me awhile, it was eventually you're gonna outgrow that and then if you no longer have pain, do you lose all your effort?
Do you lose all your drive? It's like anything it takes reassessment, you know, you have to reassess what your drivers are and understand if you're doing the work to get to your goals, you should probably have some sort of plan that once you get to that goal, what are you going to do next?
What's your driver going to be? Then, you know, if it's flexible, you're great, but if it's rigid in the sense of you're trying to escape something that's not working towards a great quality of life that's running away from a fear. Yeah, you know, if you're if you're solely based in fear, I think fear. Be an amazing motivator.
When contained, if you do not again, what we talked about in stoicism, if you don't domesticate your emotion to your being one of them, you're going to be run by it. And a lot of, I see a lot of entrepreneurs and people run by the fear of past, the fear of money, the fear of being broker the fear of something. And while that can be a good tool, if you get overrun by the tool, you're not using the tool
the tool has using you. So I like to maintain control of my life in the best way possible, which is Understanding my reasons assessing you know my awareness of what I'm currently going through and how I'm reacting to see if that's relevant to the life. I want to live like them. 100% man. What's got you excited now? Like what when you reach this point of like contentment and contentment and what you've accomplished? What what drives is there? Like something on the horizon or
is it more? So a matter of you just want to soak up every little moment of your present being There's a few, a few drivers. I think there's long-term and like short-term present drivers like I'm in the process of moving right now. So I'm taking this podcast for my brother's house and got to see my dog that I haven't seen in a little while like that was so I enjoyed that so much being
able to see my dog, you know? And I feel like that level of Simplicity and contentment and happiness scares entrepreneurs because they're afraid of being satisfied. They're afraid of being too, calm. Being too like simple, but it has to be big. If it doesn't have thickened zeros behind, it doesn't matter. You know, we we kind of invalidate all the other little
happy moment. So that short-term drivers for me or just like regular life stuff, man, having a great gym day, you know, eating on plan and accomplishing a task seeing my girlfriend, you know, happy can be the simplest stuff, you know, long-term drivers, I still have my business goals, you know, I'm in the process of developing. Speaker coach program to help people, become more effective
speakers. But at the same time, build a speaking business to get to some of the level of success that I've been fortunate enough to experience. And I kind of had to pave the way for myself. So that's a huge driver for me, because I'd love to be the person that helps other speakers, especially in marginalized communities become a voice for their community and to get paid from it. So that's a, that's a big motivator for me, looking forward.
I think I eventually want to go back into To somebody real and stuff might want to go pro but overall man, I'm just super happy with how everything's turned out and I'll own up to my responsibilities which is I'm really happy with the decisions I made around everything that's happened and the decisions I've made that got me to this point right now. Yeah, now let that men when it comes to speaking. Like what when did you start speaking like as a profession?
I started speaking probably five years ago and I knew I wanted to speak. Like I've always been in good good in front of people, you know, kind of socially awkward sometimes and more of an introvert. But when I'm on stage, I feel like I performed best because in crowds, I felt weird. But on stage, I felt like it was just me. And I could, I can control that, you know, So I got invited to speak at a buddies nonprofit and I'd never spoke before, but I just wanted to help out.
I did it and people loved it. But I knew I could do better, you know. I was like that was great, but imagine if I took this seriously, you know, so I took it seriously and I went to courses and classes like Toastmasters and studied communication and wanted to understand what made a good story and how to deliver a message. You know? I didn't want to be that speaker. That just says, woe is me story and people Lap.
Yeah, you know I realized that my story is a vessel for the message, not the other way around. So I spent years man, build in this out. I did 30 plus talks for free to the point where I got my first offer to get a paid gig. I don't even know what an honorarium was had to Google it while I was on the phone with her event planner and I just said, you know, do whatever the last guy did and they gave me like a thousand bucks.
I was like, that's crazy. Yeah, you know, my mom, my mom, one probably still doesn't know what I do for a living but to She would joke she'd like you used to get in trouble for speaking and how you get paid to do it, you know. And I've been fortunate to build this career of being a highly sought-after keynote speaker in my space.
Do you select this course at your building at that's best going to be what all those Toastmaster and classes were for you but it's me for somebody else through your medium. It's going to be much more detailed in this sense of like the psychology behind a good speaker plus the business side of things. So like how to get Get your first paid speaking gig, how to be a paid speaker, and it's the No Nonsense, no marketing type stuff.
I genuinely want to work with people, to make sure that that when they go on stage, I believe everyone has a story to share but not everyone knows the message. So getting people to understand the difference between a story and a message to allow for True impact. That's what I want to help people and help people cross that bridge. It's exciting, man. When is that supposedly going to come out today? I'm hoping by the end of this year, man.
I know I'm going to take like a few private clients. Have a cue to cue people message me on LinkedIn. Just to like try and work with me. I'm not accepting my clients right now but I hope by the end of this year I'll have something up.
I'm more focused on the quality than just like getting a bunch of people in. Yeah so as as we go throughout this year I'll definitely develop something out a little bit more but I'm so highly ecstatic about Doing this and like getting to the point where I can give back because when I started as a speaker, I don't have anyone to really look at, you know, I wasn't sure. I just saw a bunch of like old people and I was, like, man, is that what speaking is, like, do
I have to be that? And I didn't, I made my own version and it turned out pretty okay. The end public speaking is something that I'm passionate about, but I haven't really sink my teeth into as much as I know. I need to like I speak at a bunch of nutrition conferences and I enjoy that but I haven't like, honed. Like, I haven't made it a point to hone those skills, you know, specific like I feel pretty confident talking to people. I've like, podcasting has helped make me a better speaker for
sure, but I have absolutely. Yeah. Like that's probably the single best thing I've ever done from a speaking standpoint, but it's not like, you know, what can I do with the intention of becoming a better keynote speaker and that's something that I would like to get into because I just want to feel more confident, deliver a better message to people. Because I think that mean that's like, how you Communicate is powerful man.
Like people and especially nowadays like people, crave that genuine connection that they're not getting on Tik-Tok or Instagram DMG, you know. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And that that's I actually, I wrote a book called the upper hand and IT addresses that whole like, communication is key thing. But I just I never agreed with that being the first step, you know, I believe self communication is key.
Because if you can't communicate with yourself, how do you expect other people to communicate with you? You know. So, my whole book talks about communication internally and that's where most people have to start. Once you learn how to communicate internally and you know what, you're trying to say with Clarity and confidence. It's much easier to convey to one person. Let alone a room full of people, whether it's 20 or 2000, you know?
And a lot of communication is past being able to say a sentence without like, or um, it comes down to, is your message clear? And is it written or said, in a way that helps other people? People no one cares about your story, they care about what your story does for them. And that took a long time for me to understand and once I got that, it's not about you talking. It's about what the audience can take away. That was a game-changer for me. Yeah.
How did you cross the chasm between doing a bunch of free speaking gigs to getting paid? I know you said that they reached out and offered to pay you. But like for you personally, you know like I feel like a lot of people have this with coaching, you see a lot of time like people like people will ask for free coaching because I know you should just feel like you should coach nutrition them. Healthier the community is the better.
But like if you have a profession, if you have a skill set that people would find benefit in like you have to make a living too. So like for you personally how did you go from wanting and being willing to speak free to know that you were valued at such a rate that required or, you know, incentivised there to be a compensation there. This is gonna sound so dumb, but I just started asking for money.
You know, that was the big difference before, I never asked for money and once I started asking, I started getting it. And people are, there's no way it said he know, it really is you, your worth, is what you said it at. So if you're free, people come to know you as freak. If you charge 100 bucks, people come to know you charge 100 bucks. And how do we know this is true? Will we have these limiting beliefs? About what we're worth. Perfect example is, would you
buy the All right. Now, probably not. You know, but does that mean? No one is interested in helicopters, know there's a whole group of people who buy helicopters, don't take your limiting belief and establish it as a fact feelings are not fast in the beginning, I felt like I was only worth nothing, you know, I felt like I should speak for free because I'm doing good, but then, I realized there are speakers, getting paid 20,000 50,000 100,000 dollars for a
keynote. And I'm like, Wait, why are they better than me? If so why don't I get better? Yeah. Why don't I learn and I started running and then I start asking like okay what is a what is a $5000 speaker look like, do I look like a $5000 speaker? So I looked at 5,000. Our speakers on like speaker Bureau web sites and I was like, wow, their website through a nice like. Okay, I could I could do better with mine. Wow, they're speaker, real is really nice. I could do better with mine.
Wow, they have their message very concise. I could either. So I became this 5,000, our speaker and I was like, what is a, what is the $7500 speaker? Look like what is a ten thousand dollar speaker? What is a fifteen thousand dollar speaker look like for 30 minutes and I started emulating what they look like and getting better and better and better and it's, it's crazy. What happens when you start accepting that?
There is a lot of Simplicity and just doing things getting things done and not psyching yourself out, you know, if you say no one would ever pay? That I promise you people would pay that and people would pay ten times that the right group of people, the wrong group of people will never pay that.
There's a reason why we have public transportation and we have through Gatti's. Yeah, you know, who God is much more expensive than a dollar bus trip ride but there is spaces for both and there's opportunities in both, you know, so don't cancel out one thinking, oh, that would never happen. It's not that, that would never happen. That might not happen with your current mindset or with your current clientele. But what could happen instead of just pushing stuff off?
Ask what can I do with? Where I'm at right now. That's the real question. Yeah, 100% agreement. I feel like a lot of people you see this all the time in business PC then everything really but like people are so familiar with certain like a certain lifestyle, a certain mentality. They associate themselves with certain people and that just becomes what they what they comprehend that that's just what their Active of X Y or Z is and then you just assume that to cross over into the next tier.
It's like this massive, you know, 10 X Factor in quality, performance, X, Y, or Z but more often than not. It's not that at all. It's just simply a total shift in mindset and allowing you to think differently. So like when people are at that lower level, they're trying to tear up. Like how do you, how does one at a lower level start to interact with people at a higher? Level in order to Simply gain that perspective that they
wouldn't otherwise gain. I think like I said, start internal, you know, like do you look like what you want to charge for whether that's a business coach or any sort of coaching or business in general? Even if it's speaking, what do people in your space? Because you're probably not the only one? What do people in your space charge and if they charge more, how do they look? How does their online Persona or their overall business?
Look, And does yours look comparable to because if it if yours looks really comparable, then you're doing yourself a disservice. You know, you can the hardest part is believing that you can charge more believing that you can charge some you know that initial step. So a lot of people are in the lower tiers simply because they don't ask for more. Yeah, so true man. So true. What are you reading right now?
So I have been overeating. Let me, let me preface this by saying, Ryan holiday was my absolute favorite author, but there is a tie right now between Ryan holiday and Brianna Weiss. I love her so much. I love her writing style. Even did like a coaching call with her. I think her stuff is incredible. So 101 essays that will change the way you think is like the equivalent of the obstacles. The way for me I can read those. I can put to any And page and
get something. Those two books are constant. It's called 101 essays. That will change the way you think. It's my man understood. What was her name? Brianna waste Briana once? Okay, I'll check that out. Oh man is so good. But the audiobook I'm listening to right now is radical Candor that one. Is that one gets me fired up because it's about management styles and it's about being honest, but not brutally honest, but direct so there's no it the Datian. And that book is so vital.
So if you are a manager, if you want better communication at home or in business, if you want to just learn how to communicate, more directly man, that book has really given me so many tools and tactics to like really progress in terms of negotiation proposals and just communication in general. I feel like a lot of people lose the stuff they want in life because they're afraid to ask for it. So it's kind of relevant of how we're talking about money and
cost. Yeah, but it could be anything from Getting an idea across to money to just you know, really communicating better without feeling weird about communicating your needs. Yeah, what's so interesting? Like, people are fearful to put themselves out there and have a candid conversation even if it's a if especially if it's a challenging conversation or their attention is going to be a little high but to not have that conversation.
Even if it is a hard conversation, like the remorse and regret that follows that in my opinion, far outweighs any, tensity that could. Be in the moment of the
conversation, exactly. But it's kind site that we see that, you know, in the moment we think this is the worst thing ever, but in hindsight would like, I really wish we would have said this, I really wish I would have asked for this, you know, or acknowledge this that can't be a hindsight thing because for everything to move forward and maintain quality, you have to be directing the moment.
So those are just some of the stuff I'm reading, but I really believe in improving myself so I can improve the people and situations around me persimmon have Listen to David Gang whose new book? Yeah. Is that can't can't? What is the? Inter means is first one. Everest was the second one. No, I didn't hear the second one. Yeah, I'm happy to get that. He has pretty good man.
I'd be curious to get your thoughts on it because you don't know, just like people that are people like you people like me people that want to go to the nth degree but then like you're saying also be able to find that contentment in life like I don't know just like picking people's brains about that kind of stuff. Absolutely. And everyone has different opinions. You know, some people love the super hardcore like That motivates them and that's
nothing is wrong. You just have to see what you identify with and helps you maintain the quality of life that you want. You know, there is no Finish Line and I think a lot of people think that there's a Finish Line to like success or there's a Finish Line to mental health or there's no Finish Line. You, if you don't enjoy the race itself, you're going to be miserable because you're pretending like there's a stopping point, you know?
And that doesn't exist. 100% man when I did my first bodybuilding competition, it was definitely like a Finish Line. Tality. And then after the show was over, like I lost 80 pounds in. 12 weeks, minute is not healthy, it's insane. I don't have the bunch of diminish orders, like and those plagued me for years afterwards, but like, now, like with this prep time doing this, this year, starting the week, like, my goal is to have like this, no Finish
Line mentality. And then the real goal is to do it in such a way that my wife wouldn't even know that I'm in a prep, that's the challenge, right? Yeah, yeah. See, I love that, though. That's, that's what it should be. I was, I've fallen victim to that kind of stuff all the time. Where you think? If I get this, then things will be amazing that conditional philosophy. If I had X then I would be happy, you know? And it's like the bodybuilding, you know, if I got on stage, you
get off stage now. You're depressed. You don't look as good, you're sad, you gain the weight, back your self sabotage. It's like, wow, for a minute of Finish Line. I created two years of pain, you know, and it's like, Something's Gotta Give. So the way you're doing it now. Absolutely love. And you're setting up real goals aside from the competition, which is just maintaining quality of life at home in the
process of doing something. That is so incredibly hard for anyone who's never gone through that a prep, I've power lifted for years, I've dedicated 675 pounds with blood is coming out of the fingertips of my residual, limb, you know, that dulls in comparison to the difficulty of a bodybuilding prep, because food nutrition mindset, you know, mentality relationships all Of these things are on the line.
So, hats off to you for being able to pull that off, and I'd love to follow up with you and see how that goes. Yeah, for sure, man, I appreciate that. Well, think I was think about this the other day and I was actually recording the podcast with my wife on this.
It's like when people do things that they know are really, really challenging things, like things that are really difficult that few people do. It's like you give yourself the permission to be an asshole to everybody else when you're doing that. It really hard thing. Whereas if you just simply never give yourself that permission to Is place, you'll likely not be an asshole. Well, I mean, that's a bad thing about being an asshole,
especially around prep. No one else is doing this prep and no one is forcing you to do this prep. You have no right to be an asshole to other people who aren't choosing a lifestyle that you're choosing, you know, and it's tough. Because when you're in it, it's like damn, it's so all-consuming. You're so stressed and I see your hormones are crazy out of whack, but you gotta understand. This is your choice. No one is forcing you to is no one feels bad for you.
No one, it's not a sob story, like you're doing. This. So Own, It own up that you're choosing this and own up that it's your responsibility to not only manage your prep, but to manage your lack of beat, like, you can't be an asshole, you have to be a normal person because it's not fair to anyone else in your life.
And if I was in their life and some was being an asshole to me because of the choice they made, I would be less likely to see that person because I'm like why are you taking it out on me? That's your lack of management skills. Not anything do with me 100% man. He said you're moving where you headed to what state?
I'm so I'm still in Florida but I went to downtown Fort Lauderdale so I've always wanted to live in Like a downtown area for at least like a year or so. So I'm doing that experiencing my girlfriend and from there were probably just going to bounce around the country and live a different space, every year and a half, two years and explore. Explore, what we have to offer. You know it's not something like
exploring. I think just simply getting out of your like we're talking earlier about how getting out of your own tier is often just a shift in mindset. But one of the most tangible things that you can do. Do to break free of that. It just simply see new sites. Interact with new people travel and just see different cultures, different different monuments. Different Landscapes different climates. Just expose yourself to different things. Yeah, and that's a choice, man.
It's a hard choice to make because we get so comfortable. And I talk about that in my book to a lot of times we get comfortable with paying to, you know, like, in one of the last concepts of six Concepts in my book. I talk about your hand on the stove, you know, and we're comfortable with the pain. We Ino. Yeah, we would rather be hurt by the things we know, then the unknown, that could have so much better potential, but it's, it's why people stay in bad relationships.
Why people stay at bad jobs? We are comfortable knowing the amount of pain even though it's a lot versus the risk of it being worse. Even though their likelihood of it being better, We're interesting species, man. Yeah, that's to say the least. Yeah. For sure. How would you Chris? I'm 32 32 nice, man. Very cool. You are absolutely killing it, brother. I'm excited to follow. I'm gonna get your book. What's the name of it? Again?
It's called the upper hand partially because I like making dad jokes about my disability, but realistically, it's because I just want people to learn how to get the upper hand over themselves because for so long, I didn't have that and I really consider my life starting about five years ago when I started. Stop hiding who I was awesome. And I love it brother. Why would definitely read you book? I can't thank you enough for taking time to jump on his
podcast with me, man. There's everything I could do by all means. Let me know where people go to find out more about you and dive deeper into your world. Yes. So everything is just that my name Chris Rudin whether it's my website. Chris word.com or my socials feel free to drop me. A message to go on a chat. Start a conversation, anyone feel free? You know, I'm around and always available. So I really appreciate you
having me man for sure. And the, when you come up with that That speaking course that's going to be through the website as well. It'll probably be on my website. Yeah, but I'll definitely be talking about it on my social. So even if you're a speaker now, are you interested in speaking? Feel free to throw some questions my way because if anything that would help me develop something that's going to help a lot of people. So don't hesitate to ask
questions, sounds good, man. I might just take you up on it. I might be asking. Yeah, please do. Awesome. Chris, will you have a wonderful day, man? Keep kicking ass. And keep in touch, man. Appreciate you, man. Thank you, man.