How To Embrace Change Without Losing Your Mind

0:05 You Hello and welcome to the Fitmas podcast. In whatever form it's about to take, we have been struggling to put together consistent shows for a long time. And this is not me bellyaching, this is me just trying to be transparent about what's been going on with us because one of the things that Zach and I have talked about so much is making changes. And when things don't work, you gotta change them. You gotta try something different. You gotta ask for help. And things have not been working for us the way we've been doing this show for many, many, many years now. And I'm gonna turn that music down, doing this live for the first time. And so yeah, we're doing that. We're mixing things up, easy for me to say, and we're bringing in some new co-hosts and really changing the entire approach to how we're gonna be doing this show.

0:47 We've been talking a lot about men's mental health for a long time. I think the focus of our content will still help that in one way or another. But with the mess that the world is and the mess that many of our lives are, it's so much bigger than that. And so that requires more hands on deck to deal with the issues that we want to talk about. So I want to welcome in two faces you've seen or at least heard on this show before, one more recently than others. But my new co-hosts, Joe Villegas and Jason Hayworth are going to be joining us. Zach is off today for reasons we'll get into on another show. And it'll be a big surprise later. We'll talk about that another time. I've already talked too much. Joe, Jason, welcome to the show and I'm excited to work with you guys and see what this turns into.

1:29 Yeah, man, pumped to be here. And, I know I've, I've co-hosted a couple of times with you before. It's always a blast. We've had a few of our own little episodes other elsewhere. It's been a good time. but super honored to be part of this and be here with Jason and everybody and. I get to share, you know, our insights and BS and whatnot. It's gonna be fun. Yes. Mostly whatnot. Yeah, and Jason here, thanks for the kind words in the intro. Joe, excited to work with you and see where this goes. And Jeremy, you and I have known each other forever. And I think you bring up a really salient point. The world is a shit show and a storm of chaos right now. So, you know, how do we get together and talk about these things and hopefully help with our mental health, but also some of the physical challenges and then some of the actual other real world things that are happening right now.

2:18 you know, which all contribute to that mental state. Yeah. that I'm excited about for this is because you two guys have played big parts in my life. Jason, you and I have known each other for decades. We've been friends for long time and talked about, you know, the real shit, the hard shit and all that and how very old we are. And Joe, you've been instrumental in a lot of massive changes in my life for the better because of your training and your wisdom. So we'll talk a little bit about sort of your guys' backgrounds so the audience knows who you guys are coming into this. But it's just, you know, this show started because Zach and I were having very open and vulnerable conversations about our struggles and the things we were trying to do to get better. And, you know, many times, Jason, those conversations spilled over into your living room.

2:59 And so I'm excited to bring your perspective and perspective into this. And Joe, you've been coaching people through a lot of this stuff, including me, for a long time. So you guys both bring incredible insight that has influenced my life in a lot of great ways. And so it just it makes a ton of sense to bring the people that have played that role for me. into this show. again, I'm just gushing here because I'm excited about what this is going to become. Yeah, for sure. Jason, don't you take it away? Give us your background, brother. yeah, so, Jason Hayworth, Sagittarius, born during the Nixon administration. yeah, no. So, my background history is in tech from a business level perspective, but I've been married for coming up on 28 years. Jeremy's one of the grooms in my wedding.

3:39 I've got two lovely daughters. They're 23 and 19. that tells you how old I am. I live. Just north of seattle in a little town called everett and I watch fairies pass by out my window While sitting in my home office, which is great. Um, but my background is in a variety of different technical disciplines But primarily networking and security. Um, I got started doing that in 1987. I was an ethical hacker for a short period of time Which is just a way of you know getting to break shit without people getting mad at you. Um, and then move that into other careers. I've got a few patents. Um, i've done been published in Forbes and some other places. Um, and then recently, uh, I guess not that recently, but about four years ago, I had bit of a health scare where I ripped out my distal bicep tendon and, uh, decided that I was going to use, um, one of the applications that I created to actually try to improve my health.

4:32 Uh, and that really set me kind of on this fitness journey where I kind of went from being out of shape, 285 pounds into relatively better shape, 205 pounds in four months. through a strict vegan diet and exercise regime and then put protein back in and packed on about 35 pounds of muscle. so that, that part's been pretty good. since then I've been, you know, in this tech industry, wandering around things and playing with AI, in new and interesting ways and looking at how that affects, not just, the overall ecosystem of technology, but also how it affects healthcare, mental health, and the way that people are interoperating with it on a day-to-day basis, is having a A definite impact on the way that people are interacting with the world and kind of trying to see around corners and predict where these things are going to go.

5:20 Is part of what I'm hoping to bring into the topics on this podcast. So we can actually start talking about things in the proper context and providing information to the listening audience, but also getting each other's perspectives in these areas so that we can figure out, you know, how it is we as individuals in this world where maybe, you know, the Terminator is coming. Maybe not. How it is we're all going to survive and what Bunker to go live in. There you go. we touched on some of that a few episodes ago. So if you want to sort of a quick snapshot of the perspective Jason will be bringing, we'll post the link to that episode in the show description for this episode. We talked a lot about, your wearable trackers and the information that you're giving up for free with your, you know, $6 a month membership to whatever device you're wearing and what that's really giving away.

6:04 So the link to that is in the show description for this episode. But Joe, you have, like I said, you've coached me through a lot of hard times. You've coached a lot of people through a lot of hard times. Tell the audience again for those who are new to you, what do you bring to the show here? Yeah, for sure. So, um, you know, fitness was a huge part of my life, but wasn't always. So I got out of college after packing on a freshman 15 and a sophomore 20 and a junior, but it was, it was a lot. And, uh, you know, I started working out, basically joined a CrossFit gym, kind of similar to Jason lost a whole bunch of weight about six months. Uh, this is back in 2011 and got approached by the owner and he was like, Hey, you're here all the time. People like you a lot.

6:44 Would you want to coach? I was like, sure. No background in sports or fitness. was a band kid with a math degree. I like, you know, super cool. Yeah, fucking nerd. But anyways, so got into coaching and just fell in love with it. Like fell in love with like learning, getting to share my learnings people, helping them see them succeed. It was really, really special. Started coaching folks online and really kind of dive into the rabbit hole of like, I can tell them what to do. Like I know what they need to do, but they're not doing it. So was, how do I learn how to help them between the years? And so kind of fast forward, started working more with companies, doing wellness programs and so forth. And then I got more into the personal development space.

7:24 So I quite a bit with there. So I'm a senior leader for Tony Robbins and a master trainer for a program called the Elite Mentorship Forum that one of my mentors puts on that changed my life, quite literally. So I facilitate cohorts for that group and really just love working with people, helping them see they have resources within themselves. They didn't even know we're there to break through and just get to that next level. you know, hoping I can bring some useful insights to the show. But really I'm excited to kind of like just hear your guys perspectives on things and like bounce these ideas around because there's so much going on and like all of us bring a different take on so many different topics together. I think it's gonna be very interesting even just for ourselves, let alone the listeners of what's possible.

8:05 So I'm excited to be here. Yeah. And I'm excited to have you guys here. And just, know, for, anyone who may be brand new to this, that you don't know me, I'll just give you the quick snapshot of me. I'm a guy who hurt his knee a long time ago and in his recovery, found himself on a bike a lot where in the process of riding that bike to work every day, fell in love with being present in the moment, because if you don't on a bike in the city, then you're going to die. And, that just opened me up to a lot of different things about, different ways to think about my life and opened up, my mind to. meditation and really just exploring how to live a happier, healthier life. And it's just been sort of one thing after another. You you kick down one door and you find three on the other side and you pick one and you go through and just keep adding these things to your life that just improve it exponentially over and over again.

8:47 You know, I mentioned Zach and I were sort of talking about these things, which led to the start of this show and... We've shared them here for the last few years. So I invite you to go back to episode one. I think we're at like 289 or something now. So a lot of our history to explore there and Zach will be joining us. And I think that's the other thing too is the format of this I'm excited about because it's not always going to be the three of us or the four of us. Sometimes it'll be one of us. Sometimes it'll be any pairing of us. We all live very busy, full lives. We have kids, we have things going on. And so that's again, part of the change here is being able to present. what we're going through and what we're finding that works in new ways that hopefully are helpful and more consistent for you so that this is an ongoing and consistent benefit for you.

9:30 But I do want to kind get into a topic a little bit. think we've sort of laid the groundwork of who we are and what we're trying to do. I do want to talk about change because that's what we're doing here. We're doing something different. And I've been sort of ignoring the signs from the universe saying, hey, when something's not working, stop doing it or stop doing it the way you're doing it. And so here we are. I finally, this isn't the big teaser trailer about, wait a month and we're gonna eventually make a change that might be a thing. We're just ripping off the band-aid. We're just doing things different now. so talk to me about, Joe, let's start with you. I know you've coached a lot of people through this sort of decision process of things aren't working. What are some of the steps you take to make that change when whatever you're doing isn't serving you? Yeah, for sure. So think first things first is recognizing that, know, uncertainty is uncomfortable.

10:16 Like human beings crave order. And so wherever you're at in the process, like if you're feeling uncomfortable, like it's, it's a good thing. It's actually a good thing because you're recognizing that things probably do need to change. And what I would suggest if you're listening to this and you are getting that itch, like something's up. is don't wait, don't wait until you hit this like threshold of I can't stand where I'm at anymore, so I have to do something different. Like don't fall in that rabbit hole. And so to your point, Jeremy, and you kind of subtly talk about this a lot is like being open to experimenting and just like trying new stuff and seeing what works and what doesn't. I think above all else is like being open to the fact like this is a new exploratory stage in your life is what gonna help make the process a bit easier to wrap your brain around for sure.

11:03 Jason, you've had to make changes from time to time. I make changes all the time. So you can go on LinkedIn and look at my profile and see how often I switch jobs, how many different careers I've had, different industries. I've been C levels. I've been board members. I've published a book. My problem might actually be that I have too much neuroplasticity. You I keep getting interested in things and getting sucked into topics. And that probably has something to do with the fact that as a kid growing up, I had to learn to be adaptive because I moved around a lot. I was an Air Force brat. And that forced me to actually be open to new experiences and try different things. And Joe, like you said, human beings, typically speaking, their comfort zone is...

11:46 Like the general law of physics, bodies in motion tend to want to stay in motion, bodies at rest, tend to want to stay at rest. And there's a certain entropy period that we go through as we get older, where things just kind of start slowing down and our brains stop being able to adjust and make those adaptations. And it's not just that it's an age related thing. It can be a pressure related thing. It can be a biochemical related thing. All those things come into play. But the important part of all this is to make sure that you're keeping yourself open to new experiences and new perspectives. And That doesn't mean that you're always gonna like it. There's gonna be things that you try. You're gonna be like, that sucks, what was I thinking? And there's gonna be different relationships that you're gonna have throughout your life that you're gonna try new things with them.

12:28 Sometimes they're gonna work and sometimes they're not. And that can be scary. And that can lead you to not want to do things and not want to make those changes. But ultimately speaking, you need to be open to new experiences. And part of this podcast, I think, is going to be talking about some of those new experiences that people are going to be seeking out, but also a lot of them are going to be ones that are thrust upon us. And there are a lot of new experiences that will be thrusted upon you as an individual over the next 10 to 15 years, because the landscape of the world is changing dramatically. I'm sure I'm attributing this quote to somebody completely wrong, but I think it was George Clooney who said, I've learned nothing from success. I've learned everything from my failures, right?

13:09 And it's just from going out there and trying different things and getting to where you need to go. Because it is, it is much harder to figure out what worked when it worked than it is when something didn't work and your role that you played in making it not work. But to the point of change, Joe, I know you and I have talked about this. can't remember if it was on a microphone or not. But there have been studies recently about our experience with aging and how for many of us, life tends to pass much more quickly as we get older, not because of the measurement of time as a smaller ratio of your overall existence, like one year out of 70 is a much smaller ratio than one out of five. But the idea that because we get so...

13:50 locked in our habits, locked in our routines, that our experience never changes. The perception of time has been measured by scientists as passing faster when you don't have new experiences. That's why when you're a kid and everything is new, every experience you have is brand new, it feels like it takes forever. Those first 15 years of your life are like, so many of your memories come from that because it felt like such a massive chunk of your life. As you get older, you have less of that. And so they've they've discovered that by sort of getting stuck in our routines, we don't have the same sort of experience with time and it seems to go much, much faster. So there's a lot of reasons to do it because you can grow, you can be happier, you can experience new things, but also just makes your time on this planet feel a little bit longer, which I think is a really interesting thing to consider if you are like trying to wrestle with what change do I need to make in my life.

14:42 Yeah. And if you're not like trying to, and it sounds weird, like if you want to have spontaneity in your life, but if you're not like planning some variety, life will tee it up for you. You know, that's what Jason's saying is like, yeah. And you're going to call it a problem, right? But in reality, like, like you said, if you are out there, just try new things. I like, I like, um, like Jesse Isler's. model, the big ass calendar, right? It's like you plan one big thing a year, six little mini adventures, and like just get out there and try stuff. And it makes the year, you could do everything the same, everything else the same, but it makes the year that much more exciting because you have some planned variety that's in there. It's like such a super simple, like basic way to do it.

15:23 But like I did it for all 2024 and like, can't go back. It was, it was cool. You know, like my big ass calendar is right here on my wall. I can't see it, but it's like a windshield. six feet? It's like a windshield. It's probably like a, like maybe five by four or four and a half by three, something like that. It's big. It's pretty big. Yeah. Relative to my other calendars, it is the largest one. Are there things that you guys are, mean, aside from starting this new podcast with me, what other challenges are you guys taking on? What changes are you trying to implement in your labs? I'm working with a public speaking coach to write a keynote. So, it's like a cohort that I'm in.

16:04 So it's a lot of, you know, just getting in front of strangers and talking and learn and learning how to perform like an actual speech, not just get up and blab away for an hour. like you've been sort of public speaking for a while, you're sort of sharpening that blade, right? This is something you've been doing for a while. Yeah, but I'm definitely the small fish in the pond for sure this time. You know what mean? Like it is like I'm working with real professionals. don't know if I ever told you, so I went to their, they had like a two day workshop I went to initially and I sat down the one guy next to me. He founded and sold the art of shaving, you know, that company. So I was like, okay, that's cool. And the other guy next to me was a seven time kickboxing world champion.

16:46 And I was like, well. I live 15 minutes away. from Jersey. you know, I sent an email once, you know, like I'm like, what the fuck? Like these dudes like, and, and that was just the three of like, the whole room was like polished, accomplished people. was like, Holy shit. Like how did I end up here? so it's a lot of those folks, but it's cool. Like it's, it's, I am being challenged in ways I didn't think would come up. So that's a, it's been fun so far. Jason, how about you? I'm actively engaged on two startups right now, one's in stealth mode. The other one is our wearable technology tracker uproar. I continue to kind of work through some of those problems. And then I'm also looking for a regular job too. So I got a lot going on.

17:29 And it's interesting. The market space is different right now. a lot of this AI coming out there is making people in the tech sector, making their jobs. It's hard to come by those jobs because they're actually reducing headcount. You've got AWS. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, everybody cutting bodies and they're calling them underperformers, they're probably not underperforming. They just don't match the spreadsheet requirements and it makes it easy to have them egress so they can figure out a way to show some margin growth. And they also think that they can take a lot of those jobs and apply that money to their AI strategies and their off-shoring strategies.

18:10 So we've got a... an interesting problem and dilemma here in the US, where we have a lot of people that whose jobs are going to start being taken over by automation in the white collar sector, similar to what happened in the blue collar sector. And there's going to be a lot of people with free time, who will probably start lots of different podcasts and lots of regimes and everything else out there. So according to the internet is the fastest easiest way to become rich and famous. So get in line buddy get in line. we're set. if you use the AI Research Lab functions built by Google and you type in podcasting, I will encourage all of you to play with that and see what it says, put in a variety of questions and statements to the left and the right of it and see what it spits back.

18:55 And you will start to see why AI is maybe not the intelligence you think it is. Yes. of a writer if you give it the assignment though, right? It is so I mean it's it's crazy. So I used it to I've got a couple of blog posts that I put together and I didn't use it to write the blog post I use it to edit the content and what I basically did was it took everything that I did and rewrote it and Put things into the right proper bullet points put all the orders in place and then I read it and I'm like this is like 85 % accurate compared to what it was before that's actually not bad I can play with that 15 % margin and go and clean those things up and then I've watch people in my little high tech space write their own blog entries and post those pieces up on big corporate websites, you know, and I'm like, yeah, this was demonstrably edited by AI in a way that makes it horribly inaccurate.

19:46 And people don't look at it anymore. And we're just kind of going, okay, we're going to trust you big computer. Skynet had never stored this wrong. I mean, it's like... how much are they paying for that blog that was written in three seconds versus the one they would have paid someone the hourly wage or whatever to create that content? Well, oddly enough, it was probably the same person that would have created that content four years ago. It's probably the same person in the same role doing the same thing. They just went from three of them to one of them. And the one that's there is overworked and inundated because everyone thinks that your job is easy now. You can just do this. Well, I guess if I skip all the proofreading, I can do that. OK. And if I can forget all the content, sure. Why not? Well, let's just make garbage because everyone likes to consume garbage. And then the funny thing is, They use AI crawlers that go and scrape this AI created content to build itself in, so it's its own self-replicating problem of misinformation.

20:34 They've experimented with this and shown this a thousand times. I mean, they're really easy to find these things out there. Kind of my point though, it's just remember artificial intelligence can be just as dumb shit stupid as regular human intelligence. interesting. Neil deGrasse Tyson said one time that he thinks that AI will actually bring the end of the internet because it will fill the internet with so much unreliable content that people will stop going to it as a resource and start looking elsewhere, right? Maybe looking to big media or something a little more trusted than whatever AI told AI and then produced a third version of that same incorrect piece of content. Yeah. And if you look at, if you look at the internet, the internet is not really the internet anymore. The internet is just a series of walled gardens.

21:16 And by that, mean domains of control that are wrapped around you. They're just somewhat, you just really can't see the walled edges because they put pretty flowers up. So if you, if you use Google, you're really in the Google ecosystem and you're using that search engine, it's going through it. It's building that content for you. And it's sorting that information and indexing it in such a way that it is beneficial to Google. So that's why you have SEOs out there, search engine ordering functions that let you go through and understand these pieces in context to stack rank things to give you better sets of information over time. And as the amount of information becomes larger and larger, you're going to see Google probably start promoting things that are more friendly to Google AI.

21:57 You're already seeing Facebook do this. Facebook actually, there's a thing you can put on your website that's called a robots.txt file and the robot.txt dot text file can literally say, please do not index or scan me. And as a good participant on the internet, it's supposed to go, okay. And Facebook told everybody they're not going to honor it. we don't care. Okay. So, I mean, that just tells you where this is going. Yeah, and that's a taste of the kinds of things that we'll be able to talk about on the show with your perspective, because it's not just tech news, right? Like that's not something that doesn't affect everybody. That affects everybody. That affects everything you're doing online. So like I said, this is more than just your mental health. This is more than your physical health. This is like managing and navigating this whatever world we're stepping into for the next decade and a half and beyond.

22:42 So a lot of interesting perspective to come. Thank you guys for being here. We want to wrap things up. as we wrap up this final episode, how about first episode together? Any closing thoughts you guys want to leave us with? Nothing particular, I'm just pumped to do this with you guys. We're gonna have some fun and looking forward to future episodes. I just like that you landed this as the final episode already. the plane... It's like a Delta Airlines flight flying into Toronto. It land this episode is landing just as delicately here at the at the end. All right, well, thank you all for listening. Next time, hopefully, Zach will be back. Who knows what's going to happen next time? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just Zach. Maybe it's all four of us.

23:23 Maybe it's some combination you never know. But make sure you subscribe at the fit mess dot com so you don't miss it. Also now by underwhelming demand on YouTube. So make sure you check out the video. The link is also in the show description here for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back in about a week, maybe sooner. Who knows? I don't even know we're doing anymore. It's all a whole new world. Talk to you soon.