On today’s episode, Daniele is sharing his views on Daoism, enlightenment, and radical kindness that bring greater understanding. Listen in as Daniele and I explore what happens when we romanticize the concept of religion and philosophy, how Daoism teaches you to get back up, and how creating his own understanding of actions and philosophy led to less anxiety and greater peace.
Daniele Bolelli is a writer, martial artist, and university professor. He was born in Italy and currently lives in Los Angeles.
His first solo book, “La Tenera Arte del Guerriero,” was published when Bolelli was 22 years old. This work, which is a philosophical exploration of martial arts, went on to become a cult classic in Italy even outside the confines of martial arts circles.
His second book entitled “iGod: Istruzioni per l’Uso di una Religione Fai da Te” was published in Italy in 2011. This wild ride through comparative religion will be released in the United States in early 2013. Bolelli’s third book, “50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know: Religion,” was published in the United States in December 2011. Some of the most influential thinkers to have affected his world view include Tom Robbins, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ikkyu Sojun, Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Lao Tzu, and Heraclitus.
After graduating from UCLA with a B.A. in Anthropology, and earning graduate degrees at UCLA (in American Indian Studies) and CSULB (History), Bolelli began teaching at several colleges in Southern California.
Bolelli was featured in “I Am Bruce Lee” which broke Spike TV’s rating record for documentaries. He has appeared as a guest on popular podcasts such as Duncan Trussell’s, Adam Carolla’s, and Joe Rogan’s.
You can learn more about Daniele at danielebolelli.com
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you wanna know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Fuck pain, fuck heartbreak, I’m still in love with life.
01:01
These are the first words that I heard from Daniele Boleli, an author, lifelong martial artist. And he has two podcasts you may have heard of history on fire and the drunken Taoist. In fact, his two part history on fire episode of Bruce Lee is probably the most thorough and enlightening works on Bruce that I’ve ever heard. And I studied Bruce Lee’s life philosophy and martial arts for most of my adult life. So after this conversation, check out history on fire and the drunken Taoist and follow Daniele Boleli on Twitter, D Boleli.
01:30
Daniele, it’s been a long time coming for this. Thank you so much for being on. And I should have hit record from the beginning, but I think that we will be able to get back into a lot of that so easily. First though, a lot of times the philosophy that we absorb in our life, it’s sort of a nature and nurture type thing. Can you tell us about something philosophical or something impactful that you learned from your father that perhaps put you on this path? Yeah, with my dad, it was interesting because I would pick up.
01:56
Kind of the same way that I raised my daughter. There was never a sense that I was a kid. Like if you could talk to me about kid stuff and then there’s the adults that have conversation. You’re somebody who just happened to have less experience and probably a smaller vocabulary than well-read adults. But other than that, you feel the same stuff. You have the same emotional things going on inside of you. So you get treated like you are a person, which is a radical concept in the way most people raise their kids.
02:26
So my dad, you know, would always have conversations, both with guests, would show up as well as just with me about any topic you can think of in life. So to me, it was natural. To me, it was just never like, oh, we’re talking philosophy now. It was just like, it was an extension of life. It was just how we live life. But I think there are many, many, many things. One thing that definitely hit me in a big way was that
02:52
without being a contrarian, because my dad wasn’t a fan of people who make their identity of just being against the status quo. But at the same time, he did always have this idea of not disrespecting authority, but definitely questioning authority in the sense of like, and even questioning your own thought process, your own conclusion. If you feel something that’s at odds with the way people feel or what they say or what they do, let’s look at one.
03:19
Why do you feel that way? Why is there a point to what you are feeling or are they right or is there somewhere? But more of just this constant process of even taking pride in your own weirdness sometime, taking pride in the fact that, man, you may be different. You may have a different way of feeling about life than other people do, which I think is a huge thing for a kid. As long as it doesn’t become a trap because it becomes its own identity, like everybody, look at how different I am, which is a terrible trap.
03:47
But if you don’t do it that way, if you just do it with the tone, look, this is me. You eat no love, it is just syncresis and weirdness and everything. And I don’t need to be ashamed of the fact that I don’t always fit in perfectly. Let’s look at it. Sometimes I may learn from the status quo. Sometimes maybe I have something that may be better than the status quo. And that’s so powerful because what does that do that protects us from cognitive bias that keeps us from being insulated in this silo where
04:17
I just agree with this thing and now I go out and corroborate it with my own. And if anything new is introduced, now I have this immediate dissonance and I just say no, which like you said is indicative of something else where we’re not comfortable with what’s going on, whether it be because we’re not sure who we are or why we believe what we do with, whether it be dogmatic, philosophical or even religious. Yeah. He never really hammered on Taoism, for sure. I mean, he read stuff, but it’s not something that he hammered on explicitly. But his way of thinking was extremely Taoist.
04:45
There was always this side of the story that we can strongly agree with. Oh, but there’s also this side of the story and there’s a mix in between. So there was this constant tendency to look at something from multiple viewpoints and find the synthesis of those viewpoints. And that’s so key because not only do we find other answers, but now we have this pragmatic empathy. Now we can feel where this person’s coming from as opposed to being blindsided. And now we’re just recklessly beating our heads against one another.
05:14
Nobody’s going to give. And I understand that somebody is very concrete bound into a philosophical ideology or something religious. If we question them on that, lots of times they’ve been given this scene since they were a baby, since they were a child. So to question that for them means they have to unpack everything, but at least being aware of that understanding. If somebody comes at you adversarially with a philosophical notion, you understand at the beginning, there’s no way I’m changing this person’s mind. It’s better for me to just that way, stickly roll with this.
05:43
blend with this. If nothing else, just kind of break contact with this so that now there’s nothing I can possibly say that’s going to change their mind and all this is going to do and create even more. It has no other option other than to escalate if we don’t de-escalate it immediately. And I think that’s where the title of your podcast kicks in because at the end of the day, who cares what people believe? Who cares what ideology they support? Unless it translates into action, that’s either…
06:11
The actions have an impact that is either great or terrible or somewhere in between. So I’m more concerned about the outcome action oriented than it is about what beliefs you profess. It’s like you are super Christian or Muslim or whatever. It’s like who cares? Like show me what it means. It’s like does it mean that your Christianity makes you nicer to your neighbors? I like it. I don’t have to share the same beliefs. I like it. It’s great.
06:40
your Christianity make you a judgmental asshole who wants to burn people at the stake, we got a problem. That’s why I don’t care what labels are attached to people’s ideologies, whether they are religious or not, which are religion, which politics, which anything, because at the end of the day, there are 10 million variations on any of those one label. Those things usually don’t mean anything because there are so much internal variations that
07:09
Just the label itself doesn’t tell me much. It doesn’t. And I’ve also noticed that if we attach ourselves to a label, there’s always going to be somebody, like you said, contrarian, that you are not enough of this label. You are not Dallas enough, Zen enough, Christian enough, atheist enough even. And it just doesn’t mean anything. At the end of the day, like you said, philosophy is only as good as the person that’s using it. And then again, it’s a tool. But am I really willing to do that deep work? Am I really able to look at myself and say…
07:38
Why am I so goddamn pissed off that this person questioned me on this? Why? Why am I not willing to look at this? Or why am I so upset that I can’t change this person’s opinion? Like you said at the end of the day, I can’t. Why am I so concerned about that? I’ve got enough on my plate if I’m trying to make the impact on my small area of the world, why would I be worried about other people’s opinions? I think sometimes it’s when those opinions, we see them translating into action. The actions are terrible.
08:03
you would like to make the world a better place. And you see that somebody’s dogma stand in the way of that. And so it’s frustrating. Then you’re like, oh man, how is, you know, and you want to be able to just go, I’ll use my magical power and enlighten you, which of course there’s a bit of arrogance in my ways better than yours kind of stuff, which the thing is everybody believes that. Of course, some people’s ways are better than others. That’s just the way it is.
08:33
So it’s a tricky one to say the least. It is. And I think if you have a person that’s in their mid twenties, that’s getting into philosophy because sometimes that’s kind of forced on our throat in school or whatever, and then we rejected, but a lot of it, you know, people love quotes, he’d love these little soundbites. He’s pieces loud zoo, sun zoo, Marcus, or realize whomever you choose. But then when they start to unpack it, lots of times they like to have their hands sort of held. They’d like to say, these are the steps one, two, three, whether it be
09:02
the noble truths, this path, the middle path, stoicism and virtues and things like that. And I think that is important, but I also believe that there are so many absolutes that cannot be consistently absolute all the time. And I think that’s why I love Taoism so much. I mean, I started martial arts when I was 12. You started when you were very young as well. So whether we’re aware of it or not, that martial art is baked into, that philosophy is baked into it, whether it be the idea that, hey, you’re pushing, I’m pulling, and this guy’s bigger than me, I can’t do this. I need to come at an angle.
09:32
I need to blend with the energy. I need to offset his balance, whatever the case may be. But again, these are all precepts directly from Taoism. They’re very much in that idea. But a lot of people, as you were saying before we hit record, there’s so much flow to it and it seems almost ambiguous. And I’ve even had people tell me where they say that was in those like this, they almost said lazy or like loser mentality, where it’s like you justified the end result from that place as if it doesn’t matter. It’s like, Oh, this is in my favor. Oh, this is in my favor anyway. But that’s not exactly how it is.
10:02
No, it’s not at all, but I mean, of course it’s like anything that’s subject to interpretation and how people apply it and interpret it. You’re going to have interpretations of Daoism that are trapped. That’s just how it goes. Yeah, I think that to me Daoism is fascinating because it really speaks the language of life. It really speaks the language of like you don’t need to study Daoism to understand a lot of Daoist principles.
10:25
and which is very different from pretty much any other ideology where usually it’s like you believe because you’ve studied and you choose to believe this thing. To me it’s like things like concept of maximum result with minimum effort. It’s something that of course it’s a given. It’s like who wants to waste a bunch of energy to get a job done? And that wasn’t just…
10:46
what should you in trying to help you figure out what are the strategies that can lead there what and of course the problem is that the strategies change in every situation because everything is contextual so while you can learn from the past the present is always a little bit different from whatever past situation you may have run into so you can make treasure of that experience but you have to adapt and you have to tweak it and you have to do all that and that’s life that’s what we do in every single.
11:15
days life like the difference is that many philosophies people fall in love with something that work once and they want to apply it as a dogma from there to forever in every situation. Whereas that isn’t as you look just because you work once doesn’t mean much may help you a little but it may not at all it may actually be an obstacle because you’re trying to apply something that was a great answer to that problem to a different situation where that answer doesn’t work at all.
11:43
Yeah, we romanticize it, we become attached to it. We almost fetishize this concept or this religion or this philosophy. And then like you said, now we’re hooked into it. We can’t even see beyond it. I asked Stephen Preston, I interviewed him and I was saying, does it get easier because we were talking about fiction and nonfiction and he says they’re both difficult. And I said, does it get easier to write the book? He’s like, hell no, because every book is different. Just like you said, just because I have this idea of an outline and a precept, does not mean that it was gonna be easier. Lots of times it gets harder.
12:13
just like with Alexander the Great, like every campaign was different. And then you have to look at the morale of the people you’re fighting, the context of the seasons, all of this. So there are so many variables. So again, coming back to this idea of whether it be Lao Tzu or Sun Tzu with the art of war, that very much shows us that you have to not only be surprised when it’s not bad, but understand that this is the norm, whether it be Murphy’s law, no matter how you say it. And Daoism.
12:40
think it was one of the ones I was listening to you with Joe Rogan or maybe Aubrey Marcus, but you were talking about how this is older than God. Like just because gravity wasn’t written down until recently doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So a lot of people, especially philosophically, or if they make it into a religion, it’s very much this idea of, okay, Daoism came before Zen or this came before this. And they like to hold on to that because that gives them some sort of superiority or monopoly on truth somehow, which
13:10
That’s never the case. Can you give us a little bit of context about when Taoism came, what was it influenced by and then how it kind of came to where it is now? Yeah. I mean, historically it’s kind of a mess because the reality is that Taoism with its name came into being somewhere, depending on what you ask between about 2,600 years ago, 2,400 years ago, somewhere in there, roughly 25, give or take a century, but we know so little.
13:39
about, I mean, all that we have about what the founder of Daoism, Laozi, is almost entirely mythological. It is like most of the stories are hilarious, they are funny, and they’re obviously fake as hell, but you know, they let you know that they are myths. So when you have to dig into real history, like clearly Daoism codifies ideas that existed long before.
14:02
They are ideas that are part, if you look at many animistic traditions, many shamanic traditions, they have those kinds of ideas. Taoism, whoever Lao Tzu was, or maybe more than one person, is people who wrote this collection of 81 poems that then went into the Tao Te Ching, which forms kind of the philosophical foundation of Taoism, roughly around 2500 years ago, give or take a few.
14:26
It was a period that was an absolute mess in Chinese history. It was the warring states period, so the traditional order of feudal society of the time was collapsing. And so a bunch of different school of thoughts were coming into being, trying to offer a solution to the problems of the day. Taoism, Confucianism, a bunch of others, they were all born around that time, trying to deal with the fact that their society was crumbling.
14:52
And whereas Confucianism was going in a very understandable, Confucianism is perfect for everybody in that sense, you know, something everybody understand is like, don’t be a dick, don’t do bad things, do good things, stay away. You know, it’s very regulated to a level that anybody can understand, which is useful to some degree. Of course, it’s very limited because it’s kind of dogmatic in that sense. It’s like list of bad things, don’t do, list of good things you should do.
15:21
And now he’s saying, okay, that’s great for elementary school. But once we pass that point, life is a little more complex. And I think that’s why there’s so many blurred lines between that Zen. If we look at many Zen masters, even like Dogen, I mean, he literally was like, sit down and shut up, just go, just be with us, just be aware of this. I mean, so many other ones were so concerned about even his idea of the act of just trying to sit down to meditate was in and of itself enlightened.
15:51
not this place you magically ascend to or whatever it is. And then even if you do sit down and meditate and have this enlightenment, it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not gonna apply it or if you’re not gonna continue to try to consistently reach that level in some capacity. Yeah, that’s why there’s that beautiful Zen line about the miracle of throwing water and chopping firewood, right? Or does this idea of like daily life is where the real thing happens.
16:15
The mystical experience is like, it’s cool, but it lasts two hours. It’s like whatever, you know, it’s like it’s a limited time. It’s what you do with it the entire rest of the time that changes everything. It is. And it’s also neat too, how there was one that I read where it said that if you think you’re enlightened, go spend the weekend with your family, the holiday, it’s like all these things that have been there that you think you’ve worked through. Or again, this idea of having presence, right, even in combat in this martial capacity, anybody can meditate in a garden, but.
16:44
Can you have that presence when that person’s trying to take you down or rip your arm off or swing a blade at you or whatever the case may be? And that’s when we need it the most. Absolutely. And that’s a dynamic state too, because it’s not that you get it once and you have it forever. You can have it several times and you’re like, man, I’m awesome. And then the next time you really screw it up and you’re like, wait, wasn’t this magical state that I achieved? It’s like, yeah, and it gets easier to keep it with you once you have it a few times.
17:14
They are constantly backing the game and sometimes you’re not going to play your cards well. It’s not a guarantee. It’s not a fixed stage. It’s a dynamic stage that’s constantly moving. That’s it. And again, back to that Daoist idea, because I love all these other philosophies, but at the same time, they all say, these are the rules, do this. And then you say, okay, I am trying, like I am trying my best and I still fucking fell down. I’m still broken. Now what? And many times they don’t have an answer.
17:41
But Taoism is just like, okay, then get back up, stop judging yourself, just keep moving forward. Again, the first time you try an armbar, it’s not going to be perfect. But if I’m worried of trying to do the armbar, or I tried it once and now I sucked, or it works in drilling, but it doesn’t work in a live role, it’s like, again, these are all these levels. This is the importance of the journey, the warrior’s path. Yeah, and I think that’s something that has been on my mind a lot, this idea.
18:04
Because I was looking at myself lately realizing that something has fundamentally shifted in me in the past year or so where I feel I’m probably in a healthier mental space than I’ve been in a long, long, long time. I feel better. I feel more serene. I have less anxiety. I have less things. I used to have pretty much my entire adult life. I’ve had ultra-violent dreams. I haven’t had one in a long time. So I’m looking at it. I’m like, huh.
18:34
Who the hell is this person? This is different, you know, this is not who I have been. And it’s funny because when people are transformed for, and by the way, transformed, I don’t even mean to imply tomorrow something happens and I mean a completely different space. I don’t mean like, oh, I’ve made this jump that now I’m, but for the time being where I’m at, when people find ways to shift, to transform themselves.
19:01
They usually come up with stories and they tend to be simple stories. They are like, I was lost and then I went to the jungle and did I, you ask, I saw the light and now everything makes sense. Or I was lost and I started doing we’ve off breathing and everything is great. Or I went to therapy and I saw the light or I found Jesus or whatever, you know, and it’s always a simple thing. Like one thing that turns it all around. And I’m like,
19:30
I don’t know if these people are lying or if just their experience is very different from mine, which is also a strong possibility. My experience is nothing like that. If you tell how did you go from point A to point B, I have no damn idea. Or rather, I kind of do in the sense that I can start listing things of like, oh, that helped me about 0.5%. And that other thing helped me 1%. And another.
19:59
But there is never one method, one path, one thing that turned it all around. I feel that it was 10,000 different things, so tiny, tiny bit moving the needle by one millimeter, throwing the lock into the picture, throwing some factors I can’t even think of, and then I see a shift. But I find that so often people then…
20:27
Again, maybe that’s their experience or maybe they oversimplify what really was going on and they turn it all around this one thing that makes all the difference. Again, possible that that’s just their experience and it’s very different from mine. But yeah, mine is chaotic, messy, and there is no clear cut. They do the 12 steps that take you from point A to point B. It’s like, yeah, that’s not much. I wish it was that way because then I would be the happiest person if I could just.
20:55
somebody else who’s struggling with things and I can say, just do A through Z and your life will change and everything will be great. It would be awesome. It would be fantastic to have that. Not my experience, I don’t know if that’s how life works, but definitely not my life. My life’s the same way and I agree. I think that sometimes, like you said, maybe they are looking for this magical thing or whatever it is that they can latch onto. I believe you made a comment like this in the last History on Fire with Bruce Lee, how that it’s like,
21:25
me the truth, tell me what to believe. I don’t want to have to think anymore. I don’t want this existential crisis because being lost on the path is part of the path. But nobody loves to hear that, especially if you’re in it and you’re like, I don’t even know what direction is north at this point. I don’t even know where the hell I am. And that’s a very scary place. But once you can do that, for me, once I stop waiting for somebody to save me is when I save myself. It’s like, I’ve got to fucking figure this out, whatever it is, and I have to move forward. It may not be ideal. It may not be pretty. It will absolutely be messy.
21:53
And I will fall down and fall backwards many times. But the only time that we don’t continue to evolve is when we don’t try, when we don’t try to grow, when we don’t question, doesn’t mean you have to do it 24 hours a day. I mean, even five minutes of mindfulness or whatever it is to put yourself in that place, that’s still something. That third and zero, I’m a big fan of the idea that the difference between zero and one is greater than the difference between one and 10, even though math, math will not agree with me, but it feels that way because
22:23
Doing a tiny step in a healthy direction compared to zero step, it’s humongous because that means you beat some inertia. You beat that force that keeps you stuck in one place. There’s movement. Now, can you go faster and further? Yes. In an ideal world, that’s great. But even just a tiny bit, like I was using purely on working out, but honestly can be the same thing with anything, right? From healthy eating to meditating to whatever that may be.
22:53
You don’t have time or discipline or dedication to do an hour a day of that thing that you know would be good for you. Don’t. If you can, there’s no way bashing your head against the wall if you can’t do it. Can you do 10 minutes? You can’t. Can you do five? What’s the minimum you can do? And start with that. Start doing one minute. That’s it. And one minute, you know, it’s so tiny.
23:21
we don’t even have the excuse of time or anything is like, I can do 20 pushups a day. You know what I mean? I can do whatever, something. I can cook myself one healthy meal in a week. It’s not the end of the world. But that tiny movement in a healthy direction, healthy mind, body, whatever that may be, it’s huge. And you will see tiny, tiny results out of that tiny energy investment and seeing tiny results that make you go, huh.
23:50
I put one unit of energy and I got a tiny bit back, this kind of inspired me to put a little more energy to it because I like the results. I think that one is tremendously important. And so often we get shamed into the idea that unless you’re doing everything perfect by the book and you are eating like a monk or working out every day or doing this.
24:13
If you don’t meditate an hour, you’re wasting your time. It’s like nice, but I mean, it’s realistically how many people can pull that off or how many people can start that way, you know, because maybe you can pull it off down the road, but not when you start. And I love that because like you said, that’s sustainable. That’s truly scalable from a minute to two minutes. That’s literally double. But like you said, that’s something we can do. Again, we can do that with, okay, I see a bunch of sugar in my diet. Just eliminate that or.
24:42
Something simple in Western society, our notion is to add, add, add, add. But every time that we do that, we understand that we should be subtracting. The answer is usually in subtracting anything in excess eventually becomes its opposite anyway. So how can we continue to do more? Again, that Daoist idea of continuing to sharpen the blade and it goes blunt. All these things that we hear and we understand so much, but yet it’s still abundantly obvious if we’re willing to see it right in front of our face.
25:09
That’s why, and I think that’s why everybody at the end of the day has to figure it out for themselves to some degree. You know, you can borrow ideas from others. You can have guides that say, hey, ABNC work for me or try these or, you know, there’s all this stuff out there where you get to be offered tools and you figure out which tools actually make any kind of a difference from you.
25:33
And again, I don’t have the idea, I don’t buy the idea of the magical tool that turns everything around in just that one thing. But I feel that there are many, many, many things like create your own rituals that help you get back in touch with you that you like better than more reactive, nervous freak out you. Little things that can put you in that space for a few seconds, whether it’s listening to certain type of music or visualizing something.
26:01
few seconds a day, few minutes a day. And then you work on expanding that range and making those minutes longer. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Yeah, it sort of creates its own gravity. It starts to move for us almost in some ways. And again, even this idea of there’s a million different variations on meditation, but for most people, they don’t need more concentration in one area. They just need to fucking let go. They need to just, whatever that is, because if they’re going a million miles an hour from the minute they wake up until their head hits the pillow,
26:30
What happens now when they try to go to sleep, the carnival starts and now here comes the Ferris wheel and now they can’t stop hearing this song from 1985 and they can’t relax and they’re pissed off. It’s like, why can’t I relax? I need to sleep. I’m tired. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. And then that becomes that anxiety loop. Yeah, yeah. 100%. The good old, I must relax. Somehow never work. Fantastic. And you were saying that you were sort of high strong most of your life, but after 40 some odd years of martial arts, it’s kind of.
26:59
tapered for you. Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I mean, it’s weird, honestly. Like I was talking about it the other day with my lady, because I was like, I don’t know what happened, honestly. But you see a difference. It’s like, oh yeah, I see a difference. I’m like, huh. Time wise, we both were connecting it with a terrible time. Because a couple of years ago, my father died and it sucked. It was terrible, you know? But somehow from that point forward, something started shifting in me. In a way that was…
27:29
Yeah, but I started shedding a lot of anxiety and I don’t know why. I have no idea why something that’s objectively terrible would help shift things in me in a way that’s good. I can try to rationalize it, but none of the explanations I’ve given myself make sense, so I’m like, and I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been trying to, and I’ve been moving in a different directions for many years.
27:55
I think 11 years ago, my wife died, that messed me up. Particularly also because there’s the grief aspect of it. There’s the fact that my life is an absolute mess. My daughter at the time was only a year and a half old, so I got to raise her on my own. My career was going to shit, so I was losing my heart. You know, it was a nightmare drama of stress, grief, and everything piled on top of each other.
28:19
But you know, over time, despite the fact that even from the get-go, I found ways to find moments of happiness. There were moments and then crazy anxiety kicks in or nervousness or whatever that is. And in time, slowly but surely, it was like, okay, three steps forward, two and 0.99 back, then three forward and four back.
28:41
Oh shit, I’m worse than when I started. Oh, but now four forward. You know, it’s this constant uneven process of getting out, getting to a better place, not so much. This is kicking my ass and then going back and forth, right? But the trajectory overall, if one looks at it over a period of years, was definitely a more positive one than not. But then, yeah, when my dad died, something shifted and I don’t know why, don’t know how, not all right away, like…
29:08
Maybe a year later, I felt a bigger shift happening in me. And yeah, it’s on. I like it. I like it a lot where I’m at right now because I feel so much more at ease with everything. I don’t know why. Maybe that idea of your own mortality? Yeah, but I mean, that’s something that I’ve dealt with forever in a terrible way. It was always just generating more anxiety rather than relaxing me for whatever reason when it happened with him. I don’t know.
29:38
I don’t know why, but something shifted in a way that relaxes me. You’re in a beautiful place. I’m a terrible guru. I could just come up with like, this is the method you guys should do this and that, and this was the… My answer is, you can write lots of self-help books with my answers. I don’t fuck it up. It just happened. I don’t know if you know my story from my texts and my book, but I was paralyzed from the neck down when I was 40 in the military. So lots of times…
30:07
In my life, we have this knowledge, we have all this wisdom, but we need some sort of adversity to make us fucking put it into play. And it shows us, listen, you don’t have time. Listen, you already knew what to do and you didn’t do it. You hesitated, you compromised, and that’s why you’re here. So from here forward, no matter what your life looks like, start putting this stuff into play. I mean, wisdom that is acquired but not utilized is the equivalent of ignorance. So why are we so concerned about reading the next book or the next podcast or whatever? If we’re not going to even apply it, it’s worthless.
30:37
So that’s what happened to me. And then that gave me urgency in the most positive way that I could. And then continuing, like you said, questioning everything from what is this fear or what is this desire? And then being able to really look at it nose to nose and say, is this what I want? Or is this what other people want? Or is this something that, like you said, I’ve romanticized for the last 25 years, but yet now that I’m here, it may not be what I want. Yeah.
30:59
And big events in that scenario certainly can put things in perspective and make you face your choices, face like how you live your life, 100%. And then yes, something that you’ve known all your life is not like anybody reveals some deep secret to you that you didn’t know, but something just goes click and suddenly it not just makes sense, but you apply it as it was meant to be applied, but you couldn’t quite pull it off before.
31:25
I’ve seen it with writing lately. I’ve wanted to write fiction since I was a kid. And I ended up writing for different books, non-fiction. I never ended up writing fiction. And I’m like, I’m almost 50 or so. It’s like, what the hell? And I started writing this novel shortly after my dad died, but I wrote for maybe a month. And then I stopped and I didn’t touch it for a year because I had so much other stuff going on. And then I did it again.
31:53
and I didn’t touch it for six months. And so after a while, I’m like, at this rate, I love what I wrote, but at this rate, it’s gonna take me forever to get anything done. And I had this idea about, you know, I need to feel a little bit inspired, I need to feel this, I need to… And one thing that happened was like going on vacation. I would go on vacation and I would just be having a blast. She’s like, last thing I wanna do is work. Let’s go to the beach, let’s go do this, let’s go have fun. You know, there would be two hours in between where I’m like…
32:21
You know, we came back from swimming, we were going to dinner in two hours, I got some work done. And so I started writing. And I got more done in those two hours than in 12 hours staring at the screen at home. And I’m like, oh, that’s interesting. And I’ve been somewhat able to replicate it at home where there’s less of all this build up resistance, this and that, and there’s more there’s, okay, I sit down and I start writing.
32:52
Well, yeah, of course, but how the hell? So what happened to all the years before where you didn’t do that? And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m not sure why it was so hard before and it’s so much easier now. And really something is I feel that there’s a process that we go through and some of it, a lot of the time, whatever happens to us, we have stories that we tell ourselves that may or may not be accurate about what’s actually has been happening. Who cares? At the end of the day, whatever else you sleep at night
33:22
makes you more motivated the next day. But there are definitely things that sometimes is like, did I figure out suddenly a magic secret about writing that’s making me do it better now is like, no, I, the exact same thing I’ve always known, but now it clicks and I can do it before I couldn’t. It’s almost like when again, flesh them bones where they talk about, they whack the student on the head or the bell goes off or whatever it is. And like you said, who can say what it is, but the most important thing is one, that it happened and two, that we’re willing to continue to do it.
33:52
Yeah, there’s that Zen con that always piss me off. The last thing you are in trouble, but like there’s that old Zen con about there’s a live duck inside the glass bottle. You want to pull out the duck without killing it and not break the bottle, which of course is physically impossible. There’s no way to do it. And the Zen answer to that when you’re like, how can it possibly happen? They go like, it’s already out. That is like,
34:20
No, it’s not. It’s in the glass bottle. But the reality is that sometime when things click, it’s already out and you don’t know how you went from an impossible situation where you couldn’t get out to suddenly it’s out. They’re like, wait, what just happened here? And I really feel that sometime there are internal processes that are going on that we are not even aware of half of the time that where the work is being done and that there’s luck. There’s also definitely luck.
34:47
which we can favor or not based on our choices. Yeah, I’m not a big believer. Like every other self-motivational book kind of thing is all built on the grind and work hard and this, which is definitely better than sitting on the couch doing nothing. But at the same time, it’s not always such a straightforward process. It’s not always just this wheel power kind of thing. Some of it, for sure. And I think too that comes down.
35:15
to know thyself to our self-knowledge, to our experience. So many people want to put all these building blocks or all these systems or whatever the newest formula is for success. Like you said, hashtag no sleep, all this bullshit, right? But if there’s no foundation of knowing who the hell you are, if you haven’t cracked yourself open, if you haven’t had adversity, knock you on your ass and you really start saying, do I want this? Why am I doing this? Until you have that knowledge, it’s a foundation that’s just like Sam, try to put stuff on it.
35:44
And these people have been successful with it. Like you said, this is sort of their best guess. It just happened to work for them right now. And of course they’re going to try to build a platform around how all these people that it’s held, but they may not talk about the thousands or millions that may have tried it and maybe it didn’t work. Does it mean that it’s not valuable? No, but at the same time, it depends on the user and how they’re applying it. Yeah. And a lot of it, there’s that survivor bias of telling the success story where it’s like, yeah, it’s kind of like.
36:11
My dad once interviewed Michael Jordan and he made him crack up because he had, you know, I don’t remember if you remember there was this Michael Jordan commercial about him missing. I forget how many shots and I failed and I failed and I failed and that’s how I became Michael Jordan. Which on one hand is a great message because he’s saying, yeah, don’t let failure define you. It’s part of a process toward greatness. Love it. On the other hand, that’s where my dad went. It was like…
36:38
Hey, I played a lot. I missed just as many shots, but I never became Michael Jordan. What’s up with that? And you know, Jordan was cracking up. He was like, yeah, okay, that’s true too. And I think that’s where sometimes the stories get a little… One end I like them because they inspire people, right? It’s like, try hard, put all your willpower, do this. That’s great. On the other end, there’s an element of shaming people who can’t get the same results. And I’m like, you know what?
37:06
It’s not always their fault. It’s not always because they didn’t try hard enough or they didn’t have a discipline or willpower or sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes, you know, if you pitch 10,000 projects, nothing went anywhere, but you got better and better and better and you work on yourself and you pitch it at that time, doors open. You pitch it six months later, nothing goes anywhere. Six months before, nothing goes anywhere. So you also have to be
37:35
at the right place at the right time. There is, you know, we don’t like to talk about luck because it feels very disempowering. It’s like, you know, you don’t have control over luck. You have control over everything else, but not on luck. But you know, play cards. Yes, some players will get amazing results with crappy cards. But if you keep getting crappy cards over and over and over, you can only go so far. So it’s not a complete luck thing and it’s not completely skill either.
38:04
Steel is huge and luck plays a role. It absolutely does. And I think that’s so important because again, if we have this plug and play idea of a formulaic, A plus B equals success, and then they’re like, I’m doing all this. And then they think that if I’m not doing it enough, or like you said, they beat themselves up intellectually in the process. And I think that it’s very dangerous because almost like a new year’s resolution, sometimes this is the last time this person is going to give everything that they have to anything. And then if they…
38:32
sacrifice everything for this and then it’s pulled out from underneath them. Now they’re like, that’s it. I’m done. And they just live quiet desperation for the rest of their existence. Yeah. A lot of self-help by oversimplifying stories, sometimes as the effect of like religions that make you feel guilty and ashamed about your inner nature all the time.
38:54
it’s always there’s that whipping yourself over. Is it because I haven’t tried hard enough? Is it because I allow myself to watch Netflix twice a week? I should have grinded harder. And it’s like, no, that’s not it. That’s not always it. Again, to a point, yes, to a point, you need to have discipline and willpower and do all that. But to a point, some of it is out of your hands. Some of it is in your hands, some of it is not. And I think that
39:24
part, while it’s great to motivate people to get off their asses and try to do something with their life that they want, there’s the other side of it, which is that instilling shame for failure. That is not a good idea. And I think in that sense, we should be tried demand from ourselves the maximum possible, and at the same time, be monstrously kind to ourselves when it comes to results and failure and lack of success.
39:50
And that’s why it’s so hard. Like you said, it’s very easy for people to lean into one side of that or the other. And I think that I want to say men do this maybe because I’m older now, but our internal dialogue eventually becomes the external dialogue that we have for the people closest to us. So if I’m constantly kicking myself in the ass and not giving myself any empathy whatsoever, that means to my wife, to my daughter, to whomever, I’m going to be that guy. And it’s like, that’s not what they need. Or at least I need to have the ability to at least sense what’s going on and read the room.
40:20
I’ve always done it a little bit different. I’ve always been ridiculously easy on others and insanely hard on myself, but that’s not good either. It’s like the way as the people you love deserve kindness, you deserve kindness too. You’re right. Most people gravitate either toward being lazy and making excuses for themselves and for not putting in any effort.
40:44
or they are so damn hard and just nothing is ever good enough. And you know, it’s like, well, is the equivalent of the stereotypical parent of what you got an A, it’s not an A plus that sucks. And it’s just like, OK, how about you find a happy medium where you give it your all without being such a dick to yourself? I found this also where I just like you’re saying, I would give to everybody else and I would go above and beyond.
41:12
But if somebody would try to give back to me, I wouldn’t let them. And I realized that was me trying to control. That was me not allowing myself. And what am I doing? I’m taking that opportunity for that person to feel the same joy that I do to give, but yet I’m stealing that from them. And then what happens when I try to give to them again, now they pull back. So we have to have that long vision if we’re willing to really cultivate not only the relationship, but our own self-talk.
41:39
I remember my wife kicked my ass on that because I, at the beginning, it was kind of how I set up the dynamics where I was like, I’ll do anything for you, but don’t try to help me with my problems because they are my deep dark problems. And then she was, she called me on it. She was just like, you think you’re being chivalrous or something, you’re being an asshole because the reality is that you’re protecting yourself because you think that I, nobody is strong enough to deal with your stuff, whereas you can deal with other people’s problems.
42:08
That’s some bullshit ego. And I was like, yeah, kind of is. I see that. Damn, I did not see that before. Yes, that is exactly what’s happening. Then I was like, okay, okay, I get it. Yeah, that’s a good point. I need to try to change that around. It’s powerful and that’s the power of being in that relationship where you can be open and you can be vulnerable. It’s a healthy relationship because it grows. It allows you to talk about the elephant in the room. You can clean the slate every day. With my wife, I’m very much that way where it’s like, listen, we’ve started here.
42:37
We had this radical honesty. Let’s maintain this because if we don’t, it’s just going to fester anyway, and it’s going to come out at the most inopportune times anyway. So why not we get in front of it now? Have a three or five minute conversation that’s a little uncomfortable, but then get it out of the way. Even because at the end of the day, if you do it in a contest or supposedly with people that we love, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what anything that can be an issue that you may be critical of them in some way.
43:05
It’s still within the context of the fact, I think you are the greatest thing on earth and I worship you. So just because I’m saying one thing about one aspect of something you do has nothing to do with my overall perception of you, which is nothing but love and adoration. So same way as I do it with myself, you know, I like myself a lot and I see a lot of things where I’m like, yeah, you could do a lot better in that department.
43:34
And I think it’s especially most people in romantic relationships, or even with their kids, they really don’t spend enough time having it in home. How much love and affection and adoration that is for this one person or whatever many people are, if you are your kids or something. And I think that changes everything. Cause if somebody feel that you have their back, you love them to death, no matter what, then it becomes a lot easier.
44:03
to listen to whatever you have to say. Like last night, my mom was trying to say something. She was totally right, but she did not put it in the most diplomatic terms to my daughter. And my daughter did not respond to her. She was just in a very early teen, fuck you kind of mode. And then like after my mom left, I talked with my daughter and I wasn’t, I mean, I was nice, but I wasn’t.
44:28
I’m sure she didn’t want to hear some stuff I had to say because I was like at the end of the day, I kind of agreed with my mom. I just think that she expressed it very poorly and their tone was horrible. And so I started tweaking it. But you know, I also have this thing where I’m constantly reassuring my daughter of how highly I think of her, how much I love her, how much this, how much that. So this little thing I have to say is not a criticism of who she is.
44:55
is a criticism of a tiny bullshit habits that you can get over in no time and is going to make you even happier and everything. So no biggie. And then I ever do the same thing with me. I have her give me advice on thing where I screw things up, where she think I can improve. So it’s understood that like, none of these things mean anything bad about who you are. It’s a process of let’s help each other. You know, at the end of the day, we’re trying to both be the best we can and improve a little every day.
45:25
And sometimes, you know, putting it in context too is like, I mean, you’re dealing with some shit that I’ve been dealing with my whole life. I’m slightly better than you at it now because I’ve had like I am 35 years over you on in practice, but it’s not like I’m not dealing with it today. It’s not like I’m over it. And I don’t understand it. I get the same dynamics. It is where we can tweak it. And I’m not saying my experience need to, it’s exactly yours because yours is going to be different.
45:53
But there are some commonalities. And sadly, I essentially say the exact same thing to my daughter. And she listened to me and she’s all happy and she’s like, oh, this is great. And I’m like, how weird. It’s interesting too. Like you said, we learn and we learn and we learn, but eventually it’s to the point where we start forgetting things and then it takes life to remind us of, oh, the importance of that communication. Oh, the importance of that love, the importance of all those things. But yet when we take it for granted, they say, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone, but that’s not true.
46:22
We just assume that we will always have it. And that’s where we get caught in this cycle. Sometimes where it’s like, I’m trying to constantly go to this place, but I’m not even aware of what’s going on right here next to me. I’m a huge fan of the idea of taking breaks from the things you love. Nevermind from the things you don’t love, but even from the things you love, you know, it’s like if you train martial arts all the time at some point, and it’s going to happen because of injuries, but at some point, otherwise take a month off.
46:50
And it’s weird how for the time you see people coming back and they are better than when they were practicing for hours a day. And you’re like, how did that happen? Or because there is a different motivation. There’s a different presence. You want to be there in a way that you don’t want to be there when you were there for hours a day. If you eat certain foods all the time, give it a break for a month. See how insanely good it tastes when you get back to it. A relationship, sometimes apart, occasionally is really good.
47:18
You know, having you meet somebody, there’s something good about having a few days where you meet somebody and you’re so excited to see them again. And it’s so going on vacation when you come back to your house, your house look magical. It looked like when you first moved in and you’re like, you see possibilities in everything. You see you’re a hundred percent right. That’s one of the tricks of the human mind where we get used to stuff. And when we get used to it, we take for granted and we stop seeing the magic around us.
47:46
our perception gets squashed to a tiny band of what we could be and stepping away and getting back in, allow you to see it with new eyes, allow you to, it’s like pressing the reset button and refreshing the whole thing. Deprivation breeds appreciation. Always. And you know, a little bit because I want to deprive myself as little as humanly possible to bring the intensity back in whatever it is that you want.
48:14
It’s funny how it works. It’s really interesting how we can have a fantastic effect on things. It’s something that, like you said, if we can at least bring awareness around it, everybody wants to change, everybody wants to do all these things and add this stuff. But like you said, we can’t even recognize when we’re doing something that may not be advantageous and the presence is completely lost. And now, no matter how many times, like you said, we beat ourselves up or try to grind on something, it’s like, if you can’t even see it when it’s happening, it’s kind of a fool’s errand and then you defeat the purpose. The beauty of Taoism…
48:44
In my mind is not so much about balance, but the capacity to adapt because there’s never really balance. If somebody attacks you or your daughter or your loved ones, like, I don’t give a shit about balance, like I’m going for this person and I’m stopping them. I don’t care about anything else because I can adapt a hundred percent. Now Bruce Lee, the one-inch punch, he’s relaxed now he explodes. That’s why he can get there because he does it instantaneously, as opposed to a bunch of wasted energy, a bunch of tension that’s not going to serve him and at the end result.
49:13
wishy-butt a great line when they complemented his balance and they said, no, I’m constantly losing my balance. It’s that I regained it so quickly that you never saw that I lost it in the first place. And that which is true. That’s exactly what walking, that’s what anything is. We’re in a constant state of imbalance. Like when you walk, why do kids fall on their faces when they learn how to walk? Cause they don’t know how yet to where he kept the balance quickly enough.
49:38
But eventually that’s what happens is you’re off balance, you’re fully forward, that left foot is about to hit the ground. And if you don’t adapt, you’re going to hit the floor, but you adapt quickly. And that is smooth and it’s easy. Yeah. Painting does comfort the best teachers. And that’s why nature is so good at it. Not a big fan of that, but yes, they are, I think in fact, it’s in an ideal world, you figure out other ways and hopefully you find more mellow and kinder ways, but eventually, I mean,
50:06
Doesn’t matter what you want or not, because pain and discomfort will find you regardless. So since he’s going to find you regardless, might as well try to make use of it if at all possible. And there are opportunities there. They are not final opportunities, but there’s definitely the potential for stuff to shift. Yeah, we just have to have that just radical acceptance that have some resilience and understand that adversity is going to be here one way or another. So don’t hope that it doesn’t happen. Just be aware that it’s there. Don’t live your life in fear. But
50:35
also don’t have this like idea that everything is rainbow and butterflies. And then that keeps us from being ambushed by it. And now when we expect it, it’s like the punch that knocks us out, someone that we don’t see coming. But if we go in, custom auto, he’s told Tyson, he’s like, listen, you’re going to be hit. Expect to be hit. Expect to learn to be calm when you’re hit. Expect to learn to have that resilience under pressure. That’s when you need it the most. Don’t lose your faculty in the middle of the melee.
51:01
Sometimes when teaching history classes, I would always use this image, usually at the end of the semester. Because sometimes you look at any history you study, you’re going to run into so much ugly depressing stuff that doesn’t make you feel super optimistic about life. So sometimes it’s exactly where I’m going is that weird delicate balance. Because on one end, what happens is that we’re in the face of so much evidence of ugliness in the world.
51:30
there are two main approaches people who pretend not to see, you know, it’s like denial, denial, denial. And so you can play, you know, everything is for the best. Everything is wonderful. Eventually something and you know, that will shield you for a while until eventually something big enough hits you where it makes the whole tussle of cards crumble. The other approach is the letting it depress you, you know, so there’s the fake optimistic, optimistic, true denial.
52:00
There’s the being realistic, but depressed, which of course doesn’t help anybody. And so my challenge there is like, can you be a realistic optimist? Can you look at all the horrible things that is out there without trying to put rainbows and flowers over it? It’s still horrible and terrible. And you look at the monster in the eyes, that’s what it is. And yet fight the way to be optimistic.
52:28
And that’s one line, you know, in this range of things where if you go too much one way, you’re way off for one reason, you go too much the other, you’re way off for one reason. There’s that one spot where to me is that’s life. Because you will run into lots and lots and lots of things that will make you crack and that will probably crumble whatever construct you build around yourself to try to avoid dealing with the fact that life can be harsh.
52:55
And at the same time, it’s like, that’s the challenge. It’s like, how do you do it? How do you stare at the monster in the eyes and find a way to be optimistic? And of course, that’s a whole other, once you acknowledge that that’s the goal, that’s a whole other chapter to open, because of course it’s not an easy process. It’s not a simple answer. But to me, that’s the challenge, because either one is a terrible answer. Realistic and depressed doesn’t help anybody, you list of all. Optimistic in denial.
53:24
You’re just buying time until eventually something will show, bring you back to reality. So that sweet spot is a hard one, but I think it’s the only one worth pursuing that way. Hoping like an optimist, but working like a pessimist is kind of the most practical way to go about it. I agree. Beniole, I could talk to you for hours. There’s a million things that I didn’t even get to that I was wanting to ask you about. We can do that another time. That sounds great. Tell us about your podcast. Where can we find out more about you? And I was, again, I love the work that you did on Bruce Lee.
53:53
two-part series on History on Fire. As a matter of fact, Shannon Lee, who you’re friends with, did the intro. Tell us a little bit about that. Where can we find more about you, support you on Patreon, all the things? Sure. I have four books out. Hopefully, right now, because I finally find my stride, I’m finishing one more. I don’t know when the hell it’s going to be published, but it’s going to be my first fiction. I’m very excited. It’s a historical fiction on Caravaggio, the Italian painter who…
54:21
also happened to be a crazy gangster. I remember when Dan Carlin asked me, Caravaggio, I mean, a painter or whatever, but I’m sure his art is fantastic. But so what? I was like, no, no, no. Think Tupac, had Tupac been a painter in the 1600s, and then that’s what we’re talking about. So I’m doing that. And then as far as podcasts go, yes, I have two of them,
54:48
podcast, each episode on a different topic, whatever, in the mode. History on Fire is a bit more structured because it’s just me doing a deep dive into one topic in history. And whether I wrap up in one episode or two or three or whatever, it’s usually a fairly long episode, hour and a half, two hours each, something like that. And I just study like a madman. Eventually, when I feel that I’ve mastered a topic enough, I put together a narrative,
55:18
to not put people to sleep, which unfortunately what much of history does when conveyed in a way that’s not very entertaining. So that’s kind of what I do with History on Fire. For a while, History on Fire was behind the paywall. Now it’s not anymore. So it’s all free. Even old episodes that used to be behind the paywall are going to come out slowly but surely. So anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can find History on Fire. Old episode, new episode, the whole deal.
55:47
I’ll link all that stuff in the show notes. And for everybody, listen, anything that you’ve read about somebody that’s happened, I mean, that is history. And the way that Danielli does it, he takes the most interesting people that you may or may not have heard in history and then unpacked parts of it that you don’t see, because again, it’s easy for us to retroactively look back and say, Oh, they should have done this or why did they do that? But unless you’re in the heat of battle, it’s very easy to be philosophical. If you’re not the one that’s in the ring, but seeing this, understanding what was going on.
56:16
This is why it’s so important, the human condition, all the what actually happens, listen to it. And again, my audio book is six hours. So what Daniele is creating takes sometimes two or three hours. So imagine the amount of content, imagine that again, how he studies for this. And then he tries to condense it in a way that helps you right now. I mean, you have to go check these things out. I love it. Because I don’t exactly script the episodes, or rather I actually do, but then I depart from the script. So it doesn’t feel like you’re reading to somebody.
56:45
But yeah, I was calculating how much I write every year for that. I was like, Jesus Christ, that’s like three books a year, pretty much. Two and a half, something like that. So I was like, when I still read, I know why. And then with the Patreon, I got a bunch of extra stuff, all these incredible, you have all these Dallas lectures, a bunch of fantastic stuff. So there’s all kinds of ways that you can enjoy his content and learn. And like I said, what you put in your mind is so important. And there’s a bunch of worthless pap out there.
57:14
Daniel Lee stuff is quality. It’s not hard to go out there and enjoy it and support it in some small capacity. Thank you so much. Deeply appreciate it. And we paid for it and I’m enjoying it. Because I don’t want to just say, hey, give me your money for all the people who don’t pay for podcasts. You help keep it going. I mean, yes, that’s sweet, but I also feel I should give something back. So I started doing really short episodes, like half hour episodes, like mini ones.
57:41
It’s so fun. It’s a different way of doing history completely, of course, compared to doing the deep dives. It’s really a lot of fun. Sometimes you take a small story, you get in, you tell the story, you make it fun, you get out without necessarily the monstrous amount of context that I would put into the long episodes. It’s not better or worse. It’s just a different way of doing things. I enjoy it.
58:06
telling stories in these different formats. So discovering the mini episodes has been a lot of fun for me. Absolutely. I look forward to your new book. I look forward to all of your other content. Thank you again for your time. I appreciate everything you’ve done. I look forward to talking to you again at some point. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
