What Ancient Warriors Knew About Being a Man (That We Forgot) with Lawrence Dunning

[00:00:00] Hector: Fellas, what's going on? I hope this episode finds you well. And as always, my intention is to leave you better than when it found you. And I have a good feeling that today's conversation is going to do just that. And it's with a good friend of mine, Lawrence Dunning, and I'm honored and grateful, humbled that I get to call him a good friend and someone who I've met through this show and who I've hung out with.

[00:00:55] Hector: In person and continued to just develop a connection with because there are certain people that you run into where you're like,if there's someone that I want in my boat, if there's someone that I want in my foxhole, if there's someone that I want In my camp, in my team, in my corner, it's Lawrence Dunning and Lawrence is, he is probably the closest thing that I could think of to like a modern day renaissance man in the sense that he is a jiu jitsu athlete, a former MMA fighter.

[00:01:31] Hector: He is a father, a husband, a real estate investor, a podcaster, a philosopher. I mean, the list goes on in terms of this guy's accolades and skill set, but more than anything, what I really appreciate is just that he is a, a real and raw and authentic person. And, this conversation goes all over the map.

[00:01:50] Hector: It's just a, you know, ignorance is a, is a guy's guy. And I think that you'll see that today. So anyways, enough of me. Enjoy this conversation with Mr. Lawrence Dunning.

[00:02:02] Hector: Lawrence, my good friend, welcome back to the Modern Masculinity podcast. It's great to have you here, my man.

[00:02:06] Lawrence: Hector, it's a true honor and a pleasure, and always great when we get to catch up.

[00:02:10] Hector: So catch us up, take us back. You were here, a while ago and, life never ceases to stop. So take us into your world, and I'd love for you to share with the guys what you feel you're carrying as a man, the weight that you feel your shoulder and currently in your roles as a man, father, husband, provider, business owner, all those sorts of things.

[00:02:28] Lawrence: I remember when we spoke before, I think you'd asked me that question, I kind of started talking about, I had a business partnership that went wrong, and that was causing a lot of stress, and now in my third lawsuit. This thing is, when you get in the American legal system, and you can be innocent, but when you get dragged in lawsuits and you have a partner who did shady things, then the other people he was dealing with trying to drag you in their other lawsuits, because they think you might have money, and they can get money out of it.

[00:02:53] Lawrence: So I've been getting a crash course in the US legal system, which has been really rough. Because if you get sued for something, the onus is on you to get an attorney and defend yourself. And if you don't have the money, I don't really know what you're supposed to do. I didn't actually get sued. I was actually trying to get my money that was stolen from me back, and then I got dragged into some other lawsuits. And syst it's very murky and I don't even know the state of it because my attorney hasn't got back to me. Although he's taking a couple of grand out of my bank every month, and I don't really know what's going on. So that's the never ending nightmare of partnerships that go wrong.

[00:03:21] Lawrence: So the lesson there is be very careful who you go into business with, and when you're young, we've all had roommates who are great guys, but they were horrible roommates, they're messy, they're loud, they're like, you know, that's a different kind of relationship, right? Who you're sharing the kitchen with and bathroom with, versus who you're hanging out with at a bar. They're very, very different relationships. So, the lesson there, which I'm going to teach my son is, a business relationship is very much like a marriage. It's very involved and you can't just get in and out quickly. Once you're in it can be for years. So that's what I was dealing with before, and then recently, we were just talking a bit before we start recording, but just man, one of my favorite sayings in life facts is, a healthy y man wants a thousand things and a sick man just one.

[00:03:57] Lawrence: And I think about that all the time, if I'm in the bed with, I don't get sick really often, occasionally when I am really sick and I'm in bed, I just feel awful, my body aches and I can't even think clearly, I always think, man, when I'm healthy, I'm never going to take my health for granted, and then of course you do, and then as soon as you're healthy, you're worried about 20 things and you have all these hopes and dreams.

[00:04:14] Lawrence: But I'm just dealing with the last couple of days, my wife's dad got really sick and we thought he was dying and now he's okay. And I just got a text a few hours ago. My mom had a bad fall, she's in the hospital, she had to get surgery because she broke her ankle so bad and she broke her shoulder. Just like, oh man these are the realities of just being middle aged, you know, parents that are going through things and I just come down to the fact that If you wanna have a great life, you should think what's important to you.

[00:04:35] Lawrence: So for me, I don't care about status and prestige. I care about inner peace, I care about spending time being my own man, having time with my family, time with my wife. I love to travel. So there's certain things we have to decide what's more important to us, what are we gonna put our energy towards? And I have a million goals and dreams and hopes for the future, but without health being there, they're all irrelevant. You're a bit younger than me, Hector, so I'm not sure if you ever thought about this before, but recently I've been thinking, man, my son is turning four in a couple of weeks, what happens if something happens to me and I'm not there to grow up to see him be a man.

[00:05:04] Lawrence: So that's actually my next project is I'm writing a book for him almost like his insurance in case something happens to me, but I want to give it to him on his 30th birthday. But that thing about health, I think you have to do, I'm a huge fan of Dr. Peter Attia and he talks a lot about the centenarian Olympics.

[00:05:18] Lawrence: And it's like, if you want to do these things as you get older, you have to be doing things now. You have to be doing strength training at 45 so that when you're 70, you can pick up heavy things and live a functional life. So I think I'm really trying to focus on, no one who's driven is ever going to be happy with where they're at.

[00:05:32] Lawrence: We're always gonna be looking at the future and have our goals and things in the future, but I really just want to enjoy the journey and have confidence that i'm going to get to where I want to get to. That really every day focus on my health and my biggest thing is, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I stay up too late because I work and then I want to have some time to myself when my kids asleep, and I have to get up in the morning to do things and your responsibilities, and just trying to be better with my sleep, better with my diet. I'm very good, consistent with training, but even I want to step up my training too, I just really want to focus on just being my best self, I guess.

[00:06:01] Hector: Well, yeah, you talked about having your health be the thing that really allows all of this other stuff.

[00:06:08] Lawrence: Yes.

[00:06:08] Hector: And I remember for me, I was fortunate enough to not really have a whole lot of health scares growing up, like broke a collarbone or like whatever, sports injuries and stuff.

[00:06:17] Hector: But for me, it was when my kid's mom was in the hospital. I remember we had our first son and she was maybe six, seven months pregnant with our daughter and there was, I would say many a night where I went to sleep just praying that she would be alive the next morning. And there was actually one I think I've shared this on the show before, but there was one moment where I took a nap and my phone was on silent and she had coded while I was taking a nap, she had basically died over that time period and me and my son, we were taking a nap and we were exhausted. And I wake up to 6, 7, 8 phone calls from all these people and text messages. And she had kind of came back, thankfully, they had revived her and the whole sorts of thing, but like there was many nights where me and my little guy were just like, I had to contemplate what if, what would life be like if their mom didn't make it, or what would life be like, you know, all those things.

[00:07:06] Hector: And what I think is the interesting, I don't know where this is going, but what was interesting is that the only thing that would put him to sleep at night was Christian music. So me and him would just, we would just rock ourselves to sleep listening to Christian music over and over and over again, and thankfully the message there is salvation, we will make it through and all that sort of stuff. And thankfully, that was what I was hearing during that time, because you're like, man, what else matters? And in those moments where I sort of had to wrestle with what does matter? And if things go down, am I going to be able to live with myself given where I decided to put my time or put my efforts or intentions. So, yeah, it's hard while juggling everything else you have going on with life as well.

[00:07:45] Lawrence: I'll share a couple of things , I'm sorry you went through that. I don't know if I talked about this, my close friends know, but my wife nearly died about six months ago too. And it's just, you just don't expect, I think at the time she was 39 and healthy as you like, and we were in Mexico and she got some type of infection and she got back when we thought it was just the Mexican flu or something. We were partying, it was friend's 40th birthday. So we were partying, having a good time, like, ah, she's just a bit run down. So she was in bed and she's kind of too tough for her own good, so she didn't tell me how bad it was. And then, she had some type of infection that led to sepsis.

[00:08:13] Lawrence: She had a crazy temperature, so finally, one of our friends calls me, Lawrence, you have to take her to the emergency room. So I go there and they're like, what the hell were you doing? She was like close to death, this is really serious. But you're okay, you know, she's with us now, we're going to be okay.

[00:08:24] Lawrence: So they put her on some IVs and they kept giving her different antibiotics and it just kept getting worse because they couldn't find the right antibiotics. They didn't know what it was from. And so for a couple of days, it was really bad and I remember just driving back and forth with the hospital, my son just didn't know what was going on. It was just a crazy time and she pulled through and I remember thinking, man, you just don't ever think something like that, a healthy person gets some kind of infection, they can't get their antibiotic, and they're that close to death, but, man, it just gives you an appreciation, life is precious, and one of my Jiu-jitsu friends, he'd always joke around on social media, he was a jokester, but I just saw a post, I thought he was joking.

[00:08:57] Lawrence: His wife, again, same age, like late thirties, around 40, something like that. She's very fit, she ran a marathon, she worked out, she looked healthy, she just collapsed, had a stroke and died. And he has a young kid and he's just like, it happens, you know?

[00:09:08] Lawrence: And I don't want to focus on it in my life because I'm a positive person, I want to be optimistic. I just want to be aware of it because all the stuff that we take for granted. They say that when people have life threatening cancers and they say, hey, you've only got a year or two to live, they say about being so much happier in that final year because they have that timeline.

[00:09:24] Lawrence: But if you think about Greek mythology, one of the reasons the gods were very jealous of humans is because they live forever so things lost their meaning because, you know, I can start Jiu-jitsu next century, Hector, because I'm going to live for tens of thousands of years. But for humans, everything is more precious precisely because we don't have much time, time is precious. And I think about that a lot. I think it's easy to say if you have a disease and you know for sure when you're going to die. But I hope I'm gonna live a long life and I'm gonna do everything I can to, but you don't know the future, so I do want to be a bit appreciative, more than usual, of every day.

[00:09:54] Lawrence: And I'm really trying to just be grateful for the little things because while most people engineer a life with big goals, I want to make a lot of money, I want to be financially free, I want to build a company, I want to get my Jiu-jitsu black belt, they have these big goals, if you analyze what is your perfect Tuesday? For me, it's the little things, you know.

[00:10:09] Lawrence: I think you and I love being with our kids, those little moments with your kids, or maybe, a really good Jiu-jitsu session, just a nice chat with a buddy on the mat after and then a good dinner with a friend. It's not the big things for me that make a really rich life, it's those more mundane moments that are very precious, with good people and doing things you love to do.

[00:10:25] Hector: Yeah. I think the challenge and that perhaps that's just the game of life, is remembering that amidst all of the pools that we have. And when I say pools I mean being pulled towards these things, right? I felt myself this past week, we're recording this a few days after the election. I remember the day of the election, this weird drive to just refresh my X, my twitter feed, I gave us a strange day. Yeah, like stepping outside myself and kind of observing it, but just these things. And then I would sort of realize what would happen to my energy, or my mindset, or my perspective afterwards, and it's like, well, was that helpful? Was that pool? Like, did that actually pull you towards where you wanted to go?

[00:11:02] Hector: And so for me, a big practice for me is just coming back to center, wherever that is. I used to get upset about falling off center or getting distracted or , losing, dropping a habit or whatever it is, but I learned this kind of from meditation that the game is just to come back to center. And it's not that you're never going to fall off that center, but it's how quickly, how intentionally can you come back to that middle and then move forward from there.

[00:11:23] Lawrence: That's so true. I heard that exact same thing. A lot of people think the aim of meditation is just to sit there and have this peaceful, quiet mind, but it's not, it's exactly what you said. You're getting distracted and then you're just letting the distractions go and you're bringing it back to the center.

[00:11:36] Lawrence: And it's exactly the same when you fall off in life. I'm a very disciplined, routine kind of person, I try and fill up my day not be too rigid, it's not like nine to five, but there's certain things I try and get, my Jiu-jitsu, my workout every day, and I try and have family time every day, and I try and do my cold plunge every morning, and my sauna every night.

[00:11:50] Lawrence: I have certain things that I try to do, but there's times where you just fall off and you can't beat yourself up with human, you know? The goal is at the end of the day, live your life. They say the definition of hell is when you meet the person you could have been and it's very different, and if you live an amazing life, when all said and done, you've kind of fulfilled your potential so that the person you meet at the end, like your ideal self, is close to who you are, but that's kind of unrealistic, we're all human.

[00:12:13] Lawrence: I don't want to go through life like a robot doing everything perfectly morning to night, we're human, we have emotions and one of the things I've learned as I've got older, if there's any kind of wisdom to it, is to let yourself feel things. Like when you have a real disappointment, don't be like, yeah, I'm going to watch Gorgon's videos and do a thousand pull ups and go run 10 miles. It's, hey, I'm just going to feel it, I'm going to feel that disappointment and that pain.

[00:12:31] Lawrence: And, dads with young kids might resonate, people that don't have kids probably won't, but I have this lovely relationship with my son, he's wonderful, but I actually lost my shit with him at the barbershop because he's four and he's very smart and he needed a haircut, we talked about it, and he's like, yeah, I'm ready, I'm gonna get a haircut. Okay. And then he had this complete meltdown about my barbershop and embarrassed me and I remember just losing my shit with him, and I got home and I was like, I don't wanna support that behavior, so I just took out my clippers and I shaved his head . I wish I kept my cool a bit with him because he's still only four years old, but at the same time, I did it from a position of love, but I wish I had a bit more patience. And I remember when it was over,  my wife was mad at me, cause she thought I was a bit extreme and she doesn't like a shaved head. But I remember thinking, yeah, I'm disappointed because you have this illusion you have this amazing relationship, he's my top, he's my future champion. He brings me so much happiness. But there's still days where he drives me crazy and then I'm disappointed in myself as well, but I just sat with him like it's okay, I'm human and I'm working on myself, and then that night we kind of made up and everything's fine, but I'm not going to wallow in my misery.

[00:13:26] Lawrence: I think that's the biggest problem with people is they fall off the wagon of the person they're trying to be and then they're like, I've got a good buddy who's working out for a while, then he kind of fell off the wagon and then he just like, well, enough now, so I'm going to sort of just drink every day and stop training. Well, that's not really the point, the point is you get back, you fall off and then you get back on and you try and get back to center. So I think that was a really good analogy you said for life, not just for meditation.

[00:13:46] Hector: Yeah. It seems it's an incomplete picture, cause for so long we say we are committed, we're dedicated, we're in shape, we're healthy, we exercise. And then all of a sudden we fall off, we miss a day, we feel lazy or whatever it is. And I think at least for me, I discount and I say, well, maybe I'm not disciplined, and focused, and healthy and all this stuff, maybe I am lazy. And what I'm realizing, and sort of kind of opening up to this idea of shadow work and those sorts of things is like, why can't we be both? Why can't we be both healthy, dedicated, focused and also at times lazy, right?

[00:14:20] Hector: Why can't we expand the umbrella? And it's only when we say that we have to be black or white, this or that one or the other, that the contrast happens, or the exception happens, well, then all of a sudden we're not allowed to be the rule anymore, essentially.

[00:14:32] Hector: That's been a new perspective for me, be in allowance of those times, and then at least for me, that allows myself to give myself some grace, as opposed to saying you were supposed to be this. And I think I don't know who demanded perfection of me in some sort of way, and then the moment there was any bit of imperfection, well, it was like we just threw our hands up and sort of gave up. And I think that's sort of a defeatist mentality that I'm sure other guys have out there.

[00:14:55] Lawrence: I think that's why it's so nice when people are open and honest about things. So for instance, George St. Pierre, when he was king of the UFC multiple defenses, some say he was not only the greatest welterweight of all time, he was one of the pound for pound greats of all time. And he was just walking out for one of his title defenses, he was joking with his coaches and he said, I wish there was a power outage in the arena, all the lights went off and they canceled the fight because I don't want to fight. And I think that's, I read something today that he was talking about how he never enjoyed fighting. He just enjoyed the challenge and the preparation, but he always hated fighting.

[00:15:22] Lawrence: And it's so refreshing to hear that one of the all time greats talk about how he's struggling with his own fears, insecurities, and most people, if they're honest with you, will say the same thing. A great man, a courageous man, is one that has to battle his own demons, and he has to face his fears.

[00:15:36] Lawrence: If you're fighting and you don't feel fear, then you're probably like, as Rickson Gracie said in that wonderful documentary, Choke, and for anyone who does Jiu-jitsu that hasn't seen Choke, check it out on YouTube, the whole hour and a half documentaries on there. But he says that for me, when people say I don't feel fear, they're silly to me. They're either too dumb to even know what fear is, or they're lying. Because you feel fear in everything. You feel fear when you have to give a presentation . Not only feel fear when you have a fight, but when I was fighting, I felt fear twice a day in my training sessions because we went so hard, there was fear and that's really character building is when you overcome that.

[00:16:05] Lawrence: So I think trying to remember that we're all imperfect, we're all doing the best with what we have and give ourselves a bit of grace. And the best thing that I ever heard with this is , if you called me Hector, and you were telling me, I fell off the wagon, I did this and I did that and I'm just depressing myself, I promise you I'm going to be a lot more supportive and thoughtful and positive with you than I would if it was my own internal self talk.

[00:16:26] Lawrence: And that's the case with everybody. We're much harder with our own self talk than we are when we try and support a friend. And I think that's a good thing to remember and give yourself a bit of grace. And I love David Goggins talks in one of his videos about procrastination and sometimes he wants to run and he just leaves it hours.

[00:16:40] Lawrence: And sometimes he sits by the door, put it on his shoes for 40 minutes because he's just delaying the inevitable. He knows it's going to be miserable and painful, but he still goes and does it. And I love hearing that because I've done that so many times, I'm delayed running to 11, 12 at night because I'm just like, Oh, I'm tired, I'm lazy, but I want to get it done and I get it done. But I get it done at a stupid time because I'm procrastinating because I'm human.

[00:16:58] Hector: I think that the procrastination thing is, oh, maybe we can come back to that, I've got interesting thoughts on that, on procrastination. But I've recently heard this theory from Robert Gilbert is his name, Dr. Robert Gilbert. And he's probably like one of the most woo woo sort of guys out there, but also one of the most brilliant, and sort of a scientific perspective, and he studies the Rosicrucian esoteric perspectives, and one of the things that they believe in their tradition is in incarnation or reincarnation and that we take our soul with us, that are our souls skills, is sort of what we take from lifetime to lifetime, and that he goes back to talking about that thing that you said that at the end of our life, we'll look back at our life and see what we could have been or what we could have done. And that there is a real, he used the word sort of pain or feeling for that soul, like there is a real price for not achieving what we could have in this life. And also that in the next one, we get another chance to build the skills in which we didn't get a chance to build in this one.

[00:17:57] Hector: It is a constant and perhaps never ending gauntlet of challenges that is the perfect recipe or soil for which us to create our souls skills. The ability to hold love, patience, compassion, you know, all of these things, these values through which we strive to be.

[00:18:15] Hector: I think that one of the things that's given me credence is we're not here to be perfect, we are here to learn these things and in any learning endeavor, imperfection is a necessary require, failure is a requirement in that learning process. And so to expect us to be perfect or in the instance where we are imperfect, to just throw up our hands and say, it's not worthwhile, it's like you're missing out on the game completely.

[00:18:37] Lawrence: Well, I'll use the analogy of a combat sports. So between Jiu-jitsu, boxing and professional MMA, I have many wonderful victories and many depressing defeats. And I wasn't mad about any of the losses because, I always did my best except one and I was 24 years old, and it was my first amateur boxing fight, and the night before there was a girl from my New York office in town and we'd been flirting a bit and we were both there and we hung out. We had a late night and that's what I probably shouldn't have been doing the night before a boxing fight. And I ended up, I thought I got robbed, I thought I won two rounds to one and he got the decision, it didn't matter.

[00:19:07] Lawrence: It wasn't even an official USA amateur boxing fight, it was a worthless, meaningless fight. But I vowed the next, that night, I said, I'm never, ever not going to prepare my best for anything I competed in combat sports. And I was true to my word the whole of my career for 20 years, and I'm so proud of that because that's a lesson that we can give our kids, is that we can't control the outcome of anything, but we can control our effort and our integrity, and everything on our end.

[00:19:30] Lawrence: But what makes combat sports exciting is that the better man can lose because there's so much luck involved, and that's why combat sports is so exciting. It's the same with other sports, you can be the star player on your team and you can have a deadweight team that lets you down.

[00:19:42] Lawrence: It's the same in business, you can do everything right and the market can be against you, or you can have a shady unscrupulous partner. It's the same with so many different things. It's the same with just how much luck you have in life. Some people come out and they're blessed by the gods with everything physically and mentally, and opportunities left and right, and other people have to struggle from day one life isn't fair. So all we can control is our effort. And I think that's just such a good thing to remember.

[00:20:03] Hector: Yeah. I'm curious about. You have such a diverse array of sort of life experiences from real estate to mixed martial arts, to parenting, and also like myself, you seem to enjoy the philosophy of things, right? The principle of things or understanding ideas.

[00:20:21] Hector: I think what I enjoy about being around you is that you use these things to inform how you live, that it's not just intellectualizing for the sake of intellectualizing, but it's how do we turn this information into wisdom. And so I'm curious on a sort of day to day, week to week basis.

[00:20:37] Hector: What does that look like for you? And how do you manage and juggle all of these ideas that are perhaps idealistic in their nature, along with having to deal with rising inflation, prices and the home market where it is, and a four year old that doesn't want to get his haircut, and it seems like, at least for me, I could find myself sometimes getting caught in one or the other too much because, sometimes they can seem so polar in their nature.

[00:21:02] Lawrence: Well, that's funny you say that because I remember taking an edible and going out about one in the morning. And I let my dogs out real late and everyone in the family has been asleep for a while, and I'm looking up at the stars and I'm just having those existential thoughts, I'm like, man, I just remember having this really clear thought.

[00:21:16] Lawrence: I feel like my life is juggling so many different balls and I'm like, somehow they just kind of keep juggling, it's a miracle. If you want an exceptional life, I do think you have to be organized and you have to do a lot of different things in a lot of different areas of your life.

[00:21:28] Lawrence: And I'll give you an example, when my wife and I, went to Antarctica and I ran a marathon there, the amount of logistics just to get to the starting line was insane, from the amount of things we had to do to get there. And I remember talking to her and she's very organized, a very organized person.

[00:21:41] Lawrence: And I remember thinking, man, if we weren't organized, we wouldn't have even got here, it was just so difficult. And there's so many cool things in life that you do need to put some time and effort in it, they might be very expensive as well. So I do think the worthy goal is there's certain things that you have to do to have a flourishing life.

[00:21:56] Lawrence: So we talked about health being this kind of bedrock thing. I also think that money is very important and I don't think money will buy you happiness, I think a miserable person who's broke is going to be a miserable, wealthy person, but a person who knows how to use money can enable you to buy back your time and not do things you don't like doing for your work outsource certain things, gives you back your freedom, gives you time to pursue things that really ignite your soul.

[00:22:16] Lawrence: So I think having a good relationship with money and being fiscally responsible. I've been very wealthy and I've been very poor several times in my life. I've had a very unconventional net worth graph of my life, but I think that's something that's very important, that's a habit I think everyone should have a course when they're young and just money management, being smart with money.

[00:22:32] Lawrence: And being disciplined, there's that cheesy video with the professor where he has the jar and the different sized rocks, and he puts the big ones in first, and then the medium ones, and then the small ones, then the sand kind of fits in around them. And I think that's the best analogy for how you structure your days and your weeks, is you have certain time, you have things that are most important to you that you just block off.

[00:22:52] Lawrence: So every day, I mentioned, I try and do a cold plunge in the morning and I try and do a sauna at night. I'm cold plunge every day, sauna five times a week. But I also every day want to do either Jiu-jitsu or some type of physical, whether it's a run or a workout.

[00:23:04] Lawrence: That's the most important thing of the day. There's got to be an hour or two, whether it's at a park with the dogs and my son, whether it's something with my son, just me and him, that's really important to me. And then, most people work a few hours a day, so the work is kind of fitting in around there.

[00:23:16] Lawrence: We both, like you said, we enjoy things that enrich our minds and Naval Ravikant said, the real test of intelligence is building a wonderful life. And I love that. It really is true. It's the three most important things in life. A calm mind, a fit body, and a loving family, they can't be bought.

[00:23:32] Lawrence: You can make millions or be a billionaire and you can't buy those things, you have to earn them. And how do you earn wonderful things? You have to nurture them and prioritize them in your day. So I think, everyone is where they're at today and if you want to have your ideal life, some people already have, which is amazing.

[00:23:45] Lawrence: But if you want to have your ideal life in the future, at some point, you have to do those little things so that every day you're moving a bit closer towards those goals. And I think that just takes a lot of discipline in structuring your days like that. And of course, it's easier for entrepreneurs than it is for people with nine to fives.

[00:23:59] Lawrence: But with people in nine to fives, they still have mornings and nights. They still have weekends, they can still craft the life they want to. But I think a lot of people don't even know what is a great life. I mean, I'm at that age where a lot of my friends who are career people, who have been in the same job for a long time, they're now getting seniority, they're getting the perks of that, which is a lot of money, but the demands are great too, and they have to travel a lot for work, but they're working all the time.

[00:24:21] Lawrence: And so there's a huge cost to that. And I think it's so beneficial to be analytical with yourself and, our mutual friend Rocco said to me many years ago, he said, Lawrence, I think you need more space in your life. And he's 100 percent right. I have so many demands on me from my work and then my other stuff that's outside my work, that it's constant things coming at me and how am I ever going to have time to rethink is this the right direction in these different areas of my life that I'm trying to, I'm striving towards. Is this the right direction to live a flourishing life? If I don't have time and space to really think about it and sit with it, then I'm going to keep going the same direction and maybe, 10 years, I'll have a lot of regrets.

[00:24:56] Lawrence: So I think just being disciplined enough to spend time for yourself and really analyze what is most important to you? I heard this beautiful saying, Hector, let me see if this resonates with you. It said: do things that will make your eight year old self and your 80 year old self proud.

[00:25:09] Lawrence: And I thought that's such a beautiful sentence, because when you're eight years old, you're still a boy, but you're starting to have dreams and you're realizing what's important and what you love, and you have that youthful exuberance. And when you're 80, you have the wisdom if we're lucky enough to get there, you have the wisdom of a long life. And, you have the wisdom to know what was time well spent and what was wasted time. And so that's two different lenses to look, most people listening to this are going to be somewhere in the middle, right?

[00:25:32] Lawrence: So it's just two really good lenses and I think most things, if you look at them with a longer time horizon, that's going to be your answer. If you're ever at a crossroads in life, should I take this promotion? Should I end this relationship? Should I do this, whatever it's going to be this strive for this dream that's going to take a huge amount of commitment.

[00:25:48] Lawrence: If you really don't know today and you look at one of those lenses, look back and say in 10 years or 20 years, which one of these two paths would be the most likely to my future happiness, for me that always gives my answer.

[00:26:00] Hector: Yeah, the concept of talking to either your previous self or your older self. I think Alex Hormozi recently was one who kind of popularized the concept of talking to your 80 year old self. And I had sort of done that in a fashion, but he sort of crystallized it, but also, what I've been doing a lot recently is, I guess what they call inner child work, but going back to your younger self and helping to essentially give that older perspective to a younger experience, right?

[00:26:24] Hector: There's a lot of times are traumatic experiences, but these experiences where we only have a six year old lens or an eight year old lens, or, we only have this lens of a younger child and through that lens, the experience takes on this much often bigger, much more significant meaning, right?

[00:26:38] Hector: It's often very damning or judging or it creates some, it's almost a sentence , and then coming at back at it with a different lens and saying in a more broader perspective, oftentimes give us this ability to sort of process that emotion, in a different way.

[00:26:54] Lawrence: Hector, can you give an example of something you did with your inner child that was really beneficial?

[00:26:58] Hector: The one that seems to be most coming up right now, is going back and talking to my, I guess he would have been 13 year old self and now I guess he was 12, 12 or 13. And it was when I was going through a middle school breakup. And I remember waking up and just puking my brains out, and just having these huge knots in my stomach where I just would just throw up, my body couldn't take that, at the time it was hurt or whatever, right.

[00:27:22] Hector: And so I look back on that and the sort of judgment I gave myself based on that saying, I'm not good enough, I'm less than, right? So a lot of comparison, a lot of judgment of myself. And so going back to that time, kind of re-experiencing those emotions and then helping myself to see a greater picture and greater perspective and step outside of that.

[00:27:44] Hector: And, a lot of times that was adding context, like, hey, that's not the whole truth, although this experience felt like that, and it was very visceral in this regard, if you add in this part of context, or if you add in this bit of information, all of a sudden it changes, it changes it.

[00:27:59] Hector: All of a sudden, if you step outside and go, well, well, no, it doesn't mean that you'll never find love again, it doesn't mean that no one will ever love you, it doesn't mean all of those things because, you're able to have the luxury of future experiences. You can point to and say, well, look at this time when you were 18, and look at this time when you were X, and you can point to those and say that wasn't the truth.

[00:28:19] Hector: Although that was what you thought was true, and that was the truth you were living in at that moment, that is not objective or universal truth. And that was one of them. I think, going back like another one was, I had a neighbor who sexually assaulted me and it wasn't a sexual assault, it was like he did some fucking weird shit to me, right? Which was like very strange in itself. But going back and reprocessing what does all that mean? I was like, I thought I was gay and I was like, I had all these where am I, like all these kinds of things that, how is a eight year old boy supposed to process not correctly, but how was is he supposed to process authentically or an experience like that when no one's ever talked to him about sexual assault, no one's ever talked to him about this stuff, no one's ever, I grew up Catholic, so everything is shaded and not having the information, or the perspective, or the love or any of those things to then re-help yourself through that sort of experience.

[00:29:09] Hector: It's been helpful in the times where now those sort of re-triggering situations come up, trigger is a lot less visceral because you can point and then you can sort of see where things are flaring up and then you can come back to the new truth, and you can remind yourself of this expanded truth and go, okay, well, this is actually what's real, that's just what was perceived in that moment.

[00:29:29] Lawrence: Yeah. Well, and I'm so sorry I interrupted you. You're talking about the lens of your 80 year old self as well.

[00:29:35] Hector: Well, yeah, so I mean, all of that, right? I think part of the challenge of being human is that we think that what we think is true and correct. And we kind of live with that sort of lens unless we come back and like intentionally re-crack into that sort of experience or re-crack into that mindset or perspective and go in and intentionally re-shift, well this, this is actually a different way to look at it.

[00:29:58] Hector: If I turn the die this way, if I shift the prism this way, and you look at it like this, this is actually what it is. I think a lot of it stemmed from my sort of interest in in hermetic principles, which is this, there's no good or bad, everything's on a pole, everything's polarity.

[00:30:13] Hector: And if we take that sort of worldview and there is no sort of good or evil, things are just where they lie on sort of the spectrum. It's like, well, how can we reshift the goalposts to make that experience more productive? Or how we shift that experience to give it some sort of truth that isn't damning or judging or preventative and sort of need in its nature.

[00:30:35] Lawrence: One thing I think it's really healthy when people change their mind on a lot of things, so, not to go too much down the political rabbit hole, but I remember talking to a friend of mine and I said, if you change your mind on anything the last four years politically, and he's like, no, and I was like, you haven't seen, you can hate Trump as much as you want, but the whole system behind trying to attack him and trying to put him in court for things like his the appraisal value of his place and just the ludicrous stuff, the assassination attempts, all the people that used to love him and now come up and call him Hitler and the devil. It's like, there seems to be a real concerted effort. And then on top of that you have all these celebrities, the Diddy party play a guest list, they're all saying, no, no, no, no, you know, we hate Trump. It seems like, for me, the election wasn't Trump versus Farris, it was about an outsider versus the system. And so I was just, he's a very smart guy. I was disappointed because I'm not saying change, you know, if you're very political, I'm not, I'm more independent, libertarian.

[00:31:26] Lawrence: But if you're very political, don't say like, 20 years ago, I was a Democrat and I'm still a Democrat today, when the Democrat party is fundamentally different. The Republican party is also fundamentally, the Bush party was pro-war and now they're anti-war. It seems like the parties are kind of flipped, before one was free speech and now they're all about censorship.

[00:31:42] Lawrence: So it seems like things are changing. And I think one thing that I've noticed in myself, there's many things that I'm very proud of myself that I've really changed my mind on. And one of them is, back to your point about the things that happen in your youth. I'm much more tolerant of mistakes people make in their youth.

[00:31:56] Lawrence: And when I was younger, I was much more fuck them, they're a menace to society, they should be in jail. And now, I mean, there's obviously, there's psychopaths in every society that probably, they can't really live, in society, they're psychopaths, they're always going to be criminals, and they're a danger to citizens, and they probably should be incarcerated.

[00:32:11] Lawrence: But I think a lot of people, they make silly mistakes when they're young and they don't know any better. And there was a wonderful, I recorded a podcast a couple of months ago with a guy who's doing incredible work in inner city Chicago with the youth there. And he got so lucky that he didn't go to jail, he got involved in armed robbery when he was 17 and he was like, I was 17, I was a stupid kid who made a mistake and I was so lucky that the judge took lenience on me and saw that I was a troubled kid who hadn't figured life out, who made a bad mistake. I wasn't a menace to society that needs to be locked up for the rest of his life. And when I think about that story, what happened to you as a father now, I just have so much more sympathy for things that happened to people when they were young.

[00:32:49] Lawrence: Brains aren't formed until two or 25. I think women may be a bit earlier, but for men. So, all the things that happen when we're young, and they have all these really strong things imprinted in them, it can ruin your life if you let it. And one of the things my wife's a therapist, so she really focuses on that.

[00:33:03] Lawrence: She focuses on helping people see where they got their views. And so much of it is attributed to these formative years in our youth. And then as a parent, it becomes terrifying because you want to shield your kids from it as long as you can. So I'm in the stage where I think that it's a mistake to go through life not knowing there's people like that show Narcos on Netflix.

[00:33:23] Lawrence: There's people that they're savages. There's some savage psychopaths in the world, and I think that we have to know they exist, but as a parent, I want my son to stay in this little cocoon of wondrous things where there's no evil, and there's no danger for as long as I can. And I just think it's such an interesting thing, but I guess I'm rambling, but the point is, if you haven't changed your mind on anything the last few years, and I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking about anything in life.

[00:33:45] Lawrence: I really would urge you to kind of spend some time with yourself and kind of really analyze where your views come from. And there's a wonderful book, I'm forgetting the author's name, but it's called "Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", and it talks about that, where we get our views from, and are they the kind of views you want to go through life with.

[00:34:01] Hector: Yeah. I mean, I think that's why I enjoy doing this show because so much of what I thought was true is fucking bullshit, from everything. Right? Everything, from the politics to the matrix of the celebrities. I am realizing now that the things that I thought were true in the first 32 years of my life, if in fact were untrue, then for me to think that the things that I hold true now are absolutely true would be fucking, would be silly.

[00:34:26] Hector: You were talking about it earlier, but there's this delicate balance between, and I think Gary, we talked about, like the clouds and the dirt, right? About discipline and rigidity, and vision and sort of creativity, right?

[00:34:37] Hector: And it's this, it's not one or the other. It is about this, this sort of middle path, this middle way. And that's also another big sort of rosicrucian amongst other spiritual philosophies is that Catholicism, and there are plenty of great things about it, but it's not to make this a Catholic bashing show, which it kind of has been, but in that worldview, it's black and white, it's left or right, it's good and evil where it's actually no, it's about there's a things are on a pole and it's not one or the other, it's not left or right, it is about finding this middle way. And I think that continually waking up and being willing to sort of re-acclimate yourself to that every day, I think is, perhaps a necessary thing for sort of the evolution that I think you and I are after.

[00:35:17] Lawrence: I love what you said about all the things you've changed your mind about. So for you today to say, I'm so fixed in all these, you have the awareness to know that in 10 years you're going to see things very differently. And I'll give you an example, I remember I was doing some boxing training in Cuba, I trained for about a month when I was trying to win, I had this dream for a while where I was, after I won the Chicago Golden Gloves, I wanted to represent the UK in boxing in the Olympics. And so I went to Cuba for a month, I was training there because they have some of the best amateurs, the best boxing program in the world.

[00:35:44] Lawrence: And I've got these photos of me walking around with Che Guevara t shirts, and I thought it was so cool, and then I read a biography on Che Guevara, and I was like, man, this guy would have been willing to start World War III to push communism, for example, he's a fucking nutcase, and I look back at the photos, and I'm cringing, I'm like, oh, can I photoshop the t shirt out?

[00:35:59] Lawrence: But for me, when I was wearing it, I wasn't like, hey, I'm a socialist. I didn't even think about those things. I was like, Hey, I'm trying to be a better boxer. I didn't even have them. So when you see these videos of these idiot kids who are just protesting something and they don't know what they're talking about, and people put videos of them and kind of making fun of them, have a bit of sympathy for them because they're fucking kids and just give them a bit of grace.

[00:36:18] Lawrence: Yeah. They don't know what they're doing, they're idiots, they're saying silly things. But they just don't know any better, they're just trying to fit in, they're insecure kids who are trying to fit in with the other kids, and that's what the kids are pushing. And I think that's one of the things that's so dangerous is when you have activists instead of teachers, because kids brains are so malleable.

[00:36:34] Lawrence: You can teach them to be a terrorist, you can teach them to blow people up and think they're going to have certain burdens because their brains are malleable. So I think it's so important to watch our kids influences as parents, but I think for ourselves as well, just be a bit more open to different things.

[00:36:47] Lawrence: Like you said, because there's so many things I've changed my mind on, look at what's probably the most important issue in this latest election was the abortion debate. And I think in Texas, they say you can't have an abortion after six weeks. Well, I had an ex-girlfriend who got pregnant and she was on the pill and she had an abortion.

[00:37:00] Lawrence: And I remember at the time thinking , this is 20 years ago, 18 years ago, whatever it was a long time ago. But I remember thinking, I've never talked about this before, bring back a lot of memories, but I remember thinking, well, it doesn't have any consciousness yet and this was a very early term abortion, but I remember it didn't really bother me until it happened.

[00:37:14] Lawrence: And then I remember it I felt really uncomfortable with it. And she was actually quite religious and she was the one, she just said, I'm not ready to be a parent. We're not married, we're not going to have an abortion. And I said, okay. But I remember initially I was so relieved because I was like, Oh my God, what am I going to do if she said, I want to keep this baby. And I didn't think it was a great relationship.

[00:37:29] Lawrence: We broke up after.. I remember right after it happened, I did not feel good about it, and I remember for weeks after, every time we watched a TV show or a movie, there was something about a kid dying, or just something, she'd always be crying, it was awful, it was a very dark period of my life.

[00:37:41] Lawrence: And then we broke up, and now, I'm a parent, and I think about late term abortion, I'm like, man, it's crazy, my son came a month early, in some States, they're fine with you having an abortion a month before your due date, it's insane.

[00:37:52] Lawrence: But can I tell you what the day should be? No, I don't know and at the same time I also don't believe that men have a right to tell women what to do with their bodies. I'm a libertarian, I believe the government should stay the hell out of people's affairs, so that's an example where even now, 45, I don't have the answer to it, I think it's an incredibly nuanced, difficult situation.

[00:38:10] Lawrence: And there is no clear answer, so it's just one of many things that you don't have all the answers and that's okay. We don't have to have all the answers. It makes me laugh when you have these events like the Israel Palestine thing.

[00:38:21] Lawrence: That has centuries of history behind it, but people want you to come out on one side or another. Well, listen, I feel terrible for the poor kids that are getting bombed every day. And I have Israeli friends who have been killed, they're the ones that are alive are still living in a war zone, they're just trying to go about their day and they're getting attacked.

[00:38:35] Lawrence: So I see both sides of it. There's no right or wrong. All these issues, the Ukraine- Russia war, that's not black and white. I'm against war, I think we shouldn't support Ukraine.

[00:38:43] Lawrence: But at the same time, my sister in law is half Russian, half Ukrainian. She says she cries every night because it breaks her heart that they're fighting, like all these young kids are dying.

[00:38:50] Lawrence: I guess the point is that life is messy and you don't have to have all the answers, and you will never have all the answers you can choose to be a specialist of certain things, but I've been doing Jiu-jitsu for 25 years, I've been a black belt for nine years. I learn every day.

[00:39:02] Lawrence: When I was a blue belt, I thought when you get your black belt, you figured it out. And it's endlessly frustrating, but it's endlessly exciting and beautiful too that the journey never ends. They say you start learning when you get your black b elt.

[00:39:12] Lawrence: And I think that's a great analogy for life, you're learning from the moment you're born till the moment you die, and it's okay not to have all the answers.

[00:39:20] Hector: Fantastic stuff. Lawrence, the guys want to follow up with you or get deeper in your world, where's the best place to go?

[00:39:25] Lawrence: Oh, thanks, Hector. Enter the Lionheart on iTunes is my podcast. So then Lawrence Dunning on Instagram, I'm easy to find. And, it's always a pleasure, Hector. Even just talking to you, it's bringing back some of these old subjects. I'm actually emotional thinking about it. But life is beautiful, and I think the goal should not be to have all the answers.

[00:39:41] Lawrence: The goal should be to have endless curiosity, and I think that's one of the reasons that you and I love doing this. We love having these conversations and having podcasts.

[00:39:47] Lawrence: You get to talk to people that have completely different mindsets, you grew up in California, I grew up in London, completely different upbringings, different perspective, the way you see the world, but we're both trying to be our best self and there's a lot of overlap there.

[00:39:58] Lawrence: So I think another last thing I'll end with is try to be in as many different groups as you can. So for instance, I have my real estate group, I have my finance group, I have my podcast group, I have my Jiu-jitsu group, I have my running group, I have my wife's friends, husband's group, I have all these different groups.

[00:40:13] Lawrence: And I think just trying to be in as many groups as you can, it just gives you different perspectives that will just enrich your life a lot.