This week on Acta Non Verba, Rafa Conde explains how every man needs a personal code of conduct and what it looks like to live by one. During our discussion we explore ways to find your purpose and light a fire in your gut. We also discuss the problem with languishing in the victim mentality and use Adversity in a way that helps you protect your family.
Rafa Conde is a man who has dedicated his life to the resurgence of the warrior mind. He has four decades of martial arts training, tutelage under Zen masters from around the world, extensive experience as a DEA/Narcotics/SWAT officer and is a former Elite Wall Street Broker. These experiences have led him to initiate a movement known as Man of War; for the purpose of weaponizing men to dominate all facets of their lives.
You can learn more about Rafa and Man of War here: https://www.manofwar.live/
Episode Transcript:
00:26
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know when someone truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions.
00:55
I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Rafa Conde is the founder of Man of War. He started the movement in 2016 after witnessing a drastic decline of warrior minded men in our society. His dynamic story takes him from Wall Street to some of the most violent cities in America. His journey has turned Mr. Conde into a powerful man who embodies the warrior spirit in the modern day.
01:21
With four decades of martial art training, tutelage under Zen masters from around the world, extensive expertise as a DEA narcotics and SWAT officer, along with being a former elite Wall Street broker, Mr. Condy has spent his life pursuing the study of war, the warrior mindset, and the warrior culture. A lifetime of training combined with what Mr. Condy calls his inner calling to revive the code of the warrior has led him to devise proven tactic and stratagem.
01:49
that weaponizes men to dominate all facets of their life. You can find out more about him, the Man of War Movement, podcast, and virtual warrior development academy at manofwar.live. Rafa, thank you so much for being on. I’ve wanted to have this for a long time. I appreciate you, my friend. Marcus, thank you for having me on, man. This is an honor. And I just want your listeners to know this man right here was one of my first podcast guests.
02:16
And it was awesome, man. It was getting started and you can feel it. You can feel it. Marcus said you had that energy and that mindset to be successful. And I’m proud of you, bro. Thank you so much, man. And I’m so proud of you. I mean, look at what you’ve done. You just had the vision. You were just beginning to execute against it. And now you’ve got conclave of warriors. You got the crucible. You’ve got the warrior, all this stuff that’s going on that is creating such a powerful momentum. And you’re not trying to build it fast. You’re trying to do quality over quantity, which.
02:45
I absolutely love because you and I both know that’s the only way to make something that’s sustainable upon to build up more things. 100%. You know, it’s step by step. It’s the quality that counts, not the quantity. So we are in the men of war society, you know, we are growing literally every couple of months, you know, we get anywhere between 10, 15 graduates from the men of war crucible. And of course, when these graduates go into the men of war society, you know, it’s a brotherhood. So that.
03:15
slow steady growth of good solid elite men. That is what we’re all about for sure. I absolutely agree. And could you tell us a little bit about the philosophy, your philosophy and then the philosophy of what you’re continuing to give people in all of your work? Well, Marcus, first and foremost, I believe that any man out there should have a code. They should live by a code. We’ve interviewed literally, we get anywhere between 700 and a thousand applications every quarter.
03:42
Okay, so that means, you know, a couple of hundred applications, 250 every month. Okay. The reality is that we interview hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men every month. And we sit there and we ask them, do they have a code? And the bottom line is that men don’t really have a code. They’ll tell you they live by a code, but they really don’t have one. And one of the most important elements for me that we teach in this, in the Man of War Society and in the crucible, and basically what the Man of War stands for is giving men
04:12
this code of conduct. And we really like to achieve an exemplary code of conduct where it becomes where you have virtues and tenets that we’ve pulled from the samurai, from the Spartans, from the Knights Templar. That’s where we’ve pulled these tenets and these virtues and these basic principles of being a good man, a warrior minded man. And so we call this the warrior matrix where we take these tenets and we implement them and integrate them into our lives and we live by them. So, you know, for us…
04:41
That is our mindset. And I can tell you that I have seen tremendous growth when men have integrated the matrix into their lives and then something else that’s called the seven life elements that we also teach. But the reality is that when everything is said and done, it’s about kaizen, which is a Japanese word that we believe in, right? It’s about constant improvement, right? And hacking away those little on essentials that carry us down.
05:08
That’s our focus, men and the men of war society and creating warrior men. I love that. And you and I are both students and lovers of Bruce Lee and his philosophy. So you’re literally talking about absorbing what is useful, discarding what is useless and adding what is specifically your own. And for those of you that don’t understand what a code is or an ethos are, you don’t understand how important it is because if I don’t have something by which I live my life, especially when I’m in the heat of battle, when I’m facing adversity, I will default to.
05:36
basically nothing, which means I’m going to default to fatigue. I want to let that dictate what I do. I want to default down to this level of, I want to avoid this. I’m not going to stand up either for what I believe in. I’m not going to protect my family. I’m not going to protect my business. And even in business, the reason why you see people that have things written on the wall, they had these codes or these ethos or these principles is because if you have that, that becomes your default setting. So now you don’t have to wonder if you say to yourself, I’m disciplined.
06:04
And you see that piece of cake, you don’t say to yourself, maybe I should have it today because human beings, we think that we could do moderation well, but we fucking cannot, we have to have very hard lines, very straight parameters. And once we have that, once you get used to doing that, that becomes your routine and your discipline all of a sudden, now you have so much more that you can do with that strength. I agree. And you’re right. I mean, basically most
06:29
people when it comes to moderation, that’s a bunch of shit. You know, most people need hard lines. They do need that. I mean, it’s almost like a guiding principle that they have to live by. You know, unfortunately, what I see is that probably if I were to say a good number out there, about 98% of men are walking around like zombies. They walk around aimlessly without purpose, without fire in their gut, and really not much to live for.
06:59
excuse makers that are procrastinators and are not action takers in any way, shape or form. So I love the name of your podcast, you know, because I’m a big action guy. Okay. Which means to me that you have to act in life. Okay. There’s this whole thing about, you know, that you’re watching YouTube videos or you are, you know, embedded in books and it’s great to read. Don’t get me wrong. And your knowledge is great, but action.
07:29
surpasses all of it. You know, as human beings, especially as warrior minded men, we need to act. And without this action in our life, we get weak. And then we fall into the rut of procrastination. We fall into the rut of, you know, excuse making, of lying. All right. And that’s my goal to keep these men away from that and to keep them honing themselves, their spirits.
07:54
you know, into cultivating relationships in their lives and having compassion because warrior minded men serve, right? They serve for a higher purpose, whatever purpose that may be. That’s what we do. So it’s difficult to explain it to people that just don’t have that type of mindset. But boy, when you find those guys like you and I, you know, they’re right on it, man. They bring their game and they’re definitely all in. I agree. There’s only one level of commitment that is total. Anything outside of that, you’re going to get yourself or somebody else hurt.
08:24
And people see the warrior and they see the strength and they see the hard lines. But I love that you and I have a similar philosophy, which is sort of that Zen idea, that samurai idea, that Budo idea, which is it’s not just about being able to swing a sword or draw a weapon. There are so much more to it. Bruce Leach-Protege grew it in in Nosanto. He says the only thing that’s different between like a true warrior and basically a barbarian is the ethos and the belief by which they swing that weapon.
08:55
people have a big misconception about what a warrior is. Tell us what a warrior is. Well, I mean, think about it. I mean, first and foremost, I believe a warrior, especially a modern day warrior, someone that lives in today’s land, okay, needs to have a clear cut balance in life. He needs to have that balance of compassion, of love, of being a father, of being someone that helps and serves the community without asking anything in return. On the flip side,
09:24
this modern day warrior needs to be a protector, a violent man at his core if need be, and not be afraid to take a life, and not be afraid to be in the heat of battle, right? To engage battle. The problem is that our society tends to lean towards that constant compassionate, constant reinforcing of positivity, but the reality is that that’s okay, but there is the other dark side
09:53
every man, every warrior man carries in his soul. And you need to have that balance. And it’s not a bad thing. You know, in my opinion, Marcus, a lot of these top level athletes, a lot of these top fighters, a lot of these men, you know, samurai that have been, you know, through time, you know, we talk about Musashi, we talk about, you know, Sun Choo, and we talk about so many different old time, old school warriors, they had to bring that dark side in.
10:23
And that dark side is so important because that’s what’s going to give you the grit, okay, to carry on and to fight and to get through the stresses of life. All right. Now, in our society now, a man, a warrior minded man needs to live by an exemplary code of conduct, by something that guides him in the right direction. That same man needs to constantly improve, right? A warrior constantly gets better.
10:53
A warrior in my book is a man that doesn’t just know about the world, has experienced the world, right? A worldly man, a man that has gotten his hands dirty in the thick of things, a man that can lead from the front, that can say, I’ve been there and done that, right? A man that can truly look at himself in a mirror and say, you know what, I have done everything I could today to make myself to be my
11:22
the better version of myself. Now, all of this is great, but discipline is the underlying element here. This is the component that warriors need to bring to the table, right? It’s that discipline that’s so important because you can have and say, I have all these things, but the reality here is if you don’t have the discipline to stay the course and to achieve these elements and to live by these virtues and to do
11:52
You know, we talk about Makoto, one of the elements in our warrior matrix is Makoto, right? Which is, you know, sincerity of heart. On our core, we are good people. We want to do good. So what happens many times is that discipline is strong at the beginning. But because we are good people, we tend to realize that discipline is difficult. Okay? But
12:19
We kind of say to ourselves, we’re kind of too good to ourselves. You know, I had a long talk a couple of weeks ago, I went out and I did a quick presentation for a group of men that were building a business. And I said, sometimes we’re too good to ourselves. You know, because we’re good hearted people, we’re too good to ourselves. Sometimes you got to be fucked up to yourself. Sometimes you have to step up, right and get angry. And
12:48
demand more of yourself and say to yourself, you know what? Discipline, no matter how nasty it is at times, because obviously discipline is hard, all right? And to stay with that discipline, we have to have the mindset to do it. But if we can just get a little tougher with ourselves, if we can set ourselves in a course, walking that warrior’s path day in and day out, man, you’re gonna grow like a motherfucker. You’re gonna grow.
13:18
And you’re going to look back six months, a year from now, and you’re going to say, I am a changed man. I am a changed man from the ground up, from the inside out. And that’s the core of all of it. I wrote a post yesterday about discipline and it’s interesting. So many people, I think that triggers them to hear the word discipline. And the people that are the most triggered by that term are the people that are the most undisciplined in my experience, because I had people that would come back and, oh, well, what about this? And what about that? What about this? It’s like,
13:47
All those other things are fine. Motivation is fine. Inspiration is fine, but it’s fleeting at best. But when you have resolute discipline, irrespective of what you feel, what the weather’s like, what the people around you opinions are, and you continue to move forward, that’s what gets you to the next level. And guess what? When motivation and inspiration just happen to show up, fantastic bonus. But if you don’t have these other things that keep you moving forward, you don’t have this ethos, you don’t have this warrior idea that keeps you moving forward.
14:14
It’s easy to get caught up in the semantics of daily life. You interview Steven Prestil, what did he say? We have two lives, the one that we live and the unlived life within us. And so many people right now are defaulting to that first one because they don’t wanna push, they don’t wanna be uncomfortable, they don’t wanna express and understand, you mentioned the darkness in us. There’s a reason why that’s there. There’s a reason. And if you are not willing to at least acknowledge it and channel that for your purpose to protect other people, listen.
14:45
reading Machiavelli, the Prince, reading Sun Tzu’s, the Art of War, anything by Robert Green, right? About the 48 Laws of Power. Sure. I have to have that because if I don’t know those things, even if I don’t want to use that against somebody else, somebody else is going to use that against me. They’re going to blindside me. They’re going to flank me. They’re going to catch me off guard. And the punch that knocks us out is the one that we do not see coming. So we have to be aware of all these things and until we can be very honest with ourselves, get our hands dirty, see that darkness in us and reach into what we really have.
15:13
it’s impossible to know what’s actually there. Absolutely. I agree 100%. You know, when you talk to people about the darkness, you know, they’re like, oh my God, that’s creepy. But no, the reality is that every one of us has that inside. That’s it. As a warrior minded individual, you gotta have that. You gotta have the strength that comes from protecting your family, your loved ones, yourself. That all comes from a dark place because you gotta get violent. And that’s just the bottom line. And that’s why I believe that
15:43
warrior minded man, a modern day warrior needs to be adept in the combat arts. He needs to know how to yield a weapon, whether it be a firearm, whether it be a knife, an edge weapon. He needs to have some type of training with his body, whether it be karate, Kung Fu, Jiu Jitsu, Jikun Do, whatever it is. I’m not big into, hey, this art is bigger than the other. I’m big into who that person is training. In other words, that motherfucker that’s training there, that dude.
16:12
Okay, is going to be the warrior that’s gonna win that fight. It doesn’t matter the art. Okay, it’s the mindset, it’s the ability to win out. How much time do you train? You know, people ask me how often, you know, do you train or you should train or you shouldn’t train? You know, look, that’s all up to you and how good you want to get. I always say to people, look, train at least three, four times a week if you can do it. If you have the ability to do that, that’s typically a great thing. You know, go out there.
16:42
separate your workouts, keep on doing things to improve yourself, your physicality, to improve your mentality, to improve even from your spiritual side, you know, and you asked me earlier, and I don’t think I completely answered this about the warrior that he doesn’t always have to carry a weapon 100% listen, there’s a balance between meditative state a state of no mind, right? We talk about machine, right, which is the state of no mind being right here and right now.
17:12
That’s the presence of everyone. Like right now in this podcast, I am here. I’m not anywhere else. I am here discussing a great subject matter with Marcus. This is where I’m at. Now, a warrior minded man in this society has to be able to, in my opinion, clear his mind. That’s one of the things that we teach in the Man of War society in the Crucible. And I get these guys and I…
17:37
take them to a beautiful area with a waterfall, right? And they do meditation there. And I come from a Sa Zen background. You know, I studied Zen Buddhism for a very long time. I was literally two months away from being an ordained priest, Zen priest. But the reality is that, you know, it interfered with my, you know, my Christianity. It was too deep. So what I did is I backed out, but I took all the essence of the Sa Zen, of the sitting part of it, of the meditative part of it.
18:05
The beautiful thing is that I’m able to teach that. And I was in the search of that Zen mind, that warrior mind that I have been doing for years and years. And I was able to teach these men to just control their breath, as simple as just controlling their breath and just focusing on their breath control. To bring them back to who they are, where they are, and not to lose sight of life because a lot of them do.
18:30
You’ve coached a lot of guys that are, you know, multi, multi-millionaires and whatever. And, you know, that’s half of my coaching is that, you know, guys that are very, you know, running hundred million dollar companies, 200 million. And I’ve gone into the corporate world the last few years and dealing with these guys. And the most important thing is exactly that, right? They lose that essence of who they are. They lose the essence of what they’re doing. And then it’s as simple as bringing them back to their breath.
18:59
You know, being a gardener, you know, samurai, if you go back to any good samurai story, you’ll see that a lot of these samurais, you know, it’s all about gardening. It’s all about just communal duties that are simple, effective, sweeping the ground, growing flowers, clipping flowers or trees. Even tea ceremony is very important. Just that calmness, that state of mind that needs to bring down. I think our society, Marcus.
19:28
I don’t know if you agree with me, but you know, we’re so revved up all the time and we’re constantly on that edge that we never step back and just go into that meditative flow and control our breath and come back to who we are. I absolutely agree. And it’s so important to have that gear, right? Because if we listen to society, then the answer is always going to be more and more and more higher, higher, higher. And again, with these high performers that you and I coach, that’s what got them there, but they don’t understand that that’s not sustainable.
19:57
It is going to burn them out. And frankly, a lot of them, if they have a family, for example, they build this a hundred million dollar company, but if they can’t spend time with their family, they don’t have the capacity to be present with their family. Now it doesn’t do them any good to be off of work and be with their family. But now they’re worried about what about the CMA? What about this going on here? I wonder if we close that deal, yada, yada, yada. But also what does it do if they don’t have that presence at work and they’re like, man, I wish I was with my family. Guess what? Now they’re not going to be nearly as effective.
20:24
Now they have to spend more time at work than necessary. They’re not going to be efficient. They’re not going to run that company the way they have to. And it’s all comes back to this idea, like you said, of being calm, because the way that we dictate ourselves in the face of adversity is an indication of how we will do everything else in our life. And if we don’t touch that, if we don’t have these microadversities, we don’t push ourselves and then have the ability to come back to that presence, to that motion, to that ability to have that Zazen focus in the heat of it.
20:52
then we’re going to be lost. We’re going to hesitate. We’re going to make the wrong move or frankly, somebody else is going to be hurt because we don’t do what we should be doing in that moment. Without a doubt. And you made a great point. You know, a lot of these guys that are there are high performers operate at that level. Look, you know, not to toot my own horn here, but over the last three years I’ve been at that level. I mean, we, you know, we’ve grown dramatically. I mean, we, you know, we have a headquarters now with I have a bunch of people that work here. And, but the reality is that I had to step back.
21:23
And I had to, and I’ll tell you what, just recently I got kicked in the face. And that really, really stopped me. And I said, fuck, you know, like, like, whoa, sometimes life and you get caught in this life where you just go in at a hundred miles an hour and it stopped me. And it helped me reflect. It helped me recharge my batteries, regain my perspective. And to me, you know, I think.
21:51
just like your experience. I mean, it’s been life changing and it’s been so, so recent that I could speak about it. And I’m kind of like at a different level mentally right now, I feel. And can you tell us about what that kick in the face was? Well, I’m a full-time police officer and basically I responded to a call that had some vagrants involved and these guys, all of them were coughing. I get there, you know, it’s just, they were fighting and I get there and they’re coughing
22:20
here, these guys, unfortunately, they’re, you know, heroin addicts, they carry every disease in the book, you know, and these are known in the area. I had my mask on and as you know, I mean, unfortunately, the mask doesn’t really protect you, you know, so, but the second that I reached out to try to pull them apart, you know, two of them literally coughed within a foot of me and it didn’t hit me mentally until later when I started thinking about these guys just coughed on me nasty, like it was like, okay.
22:50
whether they did it on purpose or not, I don’t know. But regardless, this was just a couple of days prior to Christmas when I was on duty, you know, until that time. And then come boy, a few days after Christmas, it just hit me 102, 103 fever. I waited too long. Marcus, I kind of like was one of those guys that, Oh, this is going to pass. You know, this is going to be
23:17
but I waited too long to really go into the emergency room. You know, my brother’s an MD, he gave me some medication, but the thing didn’t work. I just couldn’t breathe. I was losing my breath day in and day out. My breath was like, I could breathe, like maybe expand my lung like an inch at a time. And it was just bad. So anyone that knows me knows that I hate the needles. I hate hospitals. I hate anything that has to do with that.
23:42
So I drove myself to the emergency room. I said, my wife listen, I have to go. If not, I may not make it here. I got to the emergency room. They diagnosed me with COVID immediately. You know, one of the guys said that I had a partial collapsed lung. Then it was pneumonia, you know, big time pneumonia. I was freaking, it was just a pain in the ass, you know, really when they were telling me, people were telling me all different things.
24:10
So I went in the hospital, you know, I was in a concentrator on oxygen. My blood sat was a low, then the disease doctor came in and said to me, had I waited a day or two, you would have been probably gone. You know, and to me that was just like, holy shit, because I was literally to the point where I was not breathing hardly. It was just my skin color was different. I had aches everywhere, couldn’t walk, couldn’t breathe. I had major pain. My
24:36
It was just one of the worst experiences of my entire life. I mean, they stuck me with Proversivir. I remember the name, but it was some medication and through my IV, through my veins. And then they did all these weird things. But more importantly, where I freaked out was they gave me the plasma, which is blood, the white blood cells and blood for some of it. They put it in me and that was just a weird experience, man. It was just a weird experience. And they were monitoring me to make sure that I took it,
25:06
It was going in my body okay. And so I was there for a bunch of days, got out, was feeling better. And then I realized that this is gonna be an uphill battle because just the breathing was still not there. The walking, I mean, I started step by step, you know, walking and just moving little by little. But to go back to the time there, Marcus, when I was in the hospital now, when I was down, what I did is, man, I picked up, literally, I took and I ordered a bunch of books.
25:36
to get them delivered. My wife delivered them downstairs to the hospital. She couldn’t come in. I couldn’t see anybody because I was in a COVID room. So it was just me, myself and I. The good thing is that my brother is an MD. So he came to visit me and, you know, he was, but man, it was fucking nasty, you know, nobody. So I just dove into reading and dove into writing and, you know, trying to finish my book and all of a sudden something hit me and I’m like, wow, you know what?
26:06
I need to slow down. Like right now in my life, I need to slow down. I need to have a clearer vision. I need to have a clearer mission and I need to live that. On my days at times would be just, you know, I work 50 hours on duty and then the other four days that I’m off, I’m here working another 50 hours. So it’s a lot of hours and my body was taking a toll of just this building.
26:35
constant hustle and the constant. So in the hospital I was able to meditate on this. I was able to start getting a clear mission and vision. And almost to the point where I started to give a little bit less of a shit. Like, you know, it was just more like, you know, all these things that are weighing me down, see you later. You know what I’m saying? Like, I’m not even gonna worry about them right now. I’m just going to focus.
27:04
on building myself back up and on building these men. So I went to the Crucible about 10 days ago. I was about 75%. I wasn’t able to be there completely physically, but I thought I did pretty well. And for me to see the Crucible grow and to have the largest Crucible, I had to be there. It was just a great experience for us. So.
27:29
This has been definitely one of these experiences in my life that has changed me going through this, this COVID. But then again, you know what? It’s something like, like, you know, like we’ve talked about a hundred times. You see it, you conquer it, you crush it, you move forward. Hopefully it made you better, which I think it made me better. And I’m moving forward now, you know, nothing to sit back on and talk about and dwell about it’s an experience and I’m better for it. And that’s what happens in life. Sometimes adversity hits us right in the face.
27:58
and makes us, it knocks us on our ass. So we have no choice other than to actually face it. And you did the right thing. I mean, you did what I did in a lot of ways. I couldn’t read anything, but I had to go through all these philosophies, all these ideals, all these notions. And for you, you were applying it. And in that moment, you leveled up. In that moment, the urgency that you already had, you realized it doubled, but you understood more importantly, what you didn’t need to be doing, what was not serving you, what was not part of your mission.
28:28
And it takes something brutal like that to really make us, because we can ask the question, but unless we have some skin in the game, unless there’s something that’s really pushing us and our backs truly against the wall, we have no fucking clue. A lot of people live in this, it’s like a vacuum where they say, oh, I believe this, but until they’re pushed, until they have nothing else to believe in, their belief is all that they have. And that’s why you have to have these moments. So for you, your gift of adversity was that presence, was seeing that clarity, and it’s gonna, I can’t even imagine how that’s gonna change.
28:58
the way you do everything from here on out, I expect to see even more incredible stuff from you, from the Man of War Society, everything. What is it that makes one person hit adversity like that and stay? Like we see these people that run into something when they’re young and they never go above it. And then somebody like you, you’re an extraordinary man though. I mean, you have all this background, but what is it that makes some people elevate from adversity and get stronger while other people just stay stuck there and they spend the rest of their life mediocre?
29:27
We have a saying here that we don’t ever rest on our laurels. So I can take that from the same level as somebody that has gone through adversity and has let that adversity crush them, right? And I could turn the hat and say, the same thing goes for the person that has been there, you know, and I know a lot of high level guys in the military that rest on their laurels, that’s all they talk about. That’s all they know. They don’t know anything else but that.
29:55
and guys that have maybe ran, you know, 100, $200 million companies in the past, but somehow lost it. And, oh, I did this in the past. My point is, you got to stop living in the past. In our crucible, in our society, we have our phrases straight up. We don’t give a fuck what you’ve done in the past. We want to know where you are now. Doesn’t matter what you’ve done. I don’t care. Honestly, we don’t. When you hit the crucible, when you hit boots on ground,
30:25
everybody is the same. So the person that hits adversity and that just sits there and dwells on that and doesn’t move forward from that. It’s a simple state of having a mortar mentality, having a victim mentality, having that mentality that maybe in the past they’ve been rewarded by having that mentality. People, oh, you know, he went through this and people continue to feel sorry for you.
30:55
My brother, let me tell you something. Okay. And this is my belief. Your listeners might not love this, what I’m about to say, but this is it. I respect your past. I respect the fact that you’ve been through things. I’ve respect the fact that you have done very good things. Okay. But I don’t fucking feel sorry for you ever. Okay. It, there is nothing to feel sorry for. I don’t think less of you now, but what I do think of you is,
31:25
don’t get triggered when I ask you these questions. Like, what are you doing now with your life? How are you impacting people? How are you impacting anyone in your life? Are you leading your family? Are you in a strong financial state? Are you, you know, and all these questions are no, no, no, no, no. And guess what? When it’s a no, no, no, no, no. You know, I question you and I say, hey, why?
31:54
Are you in this bad position now? When you’re telling me about everything you’ve done in the past or vice versa, why are you still in this bad position knowing that you overcame something so traumatic in your life? Why did you not use that to catapult you and give you that freedom of mind and strength of mind? Right? Unfortunately, you know, we see most people fall in this rut right there.
32:24
And you don’t have to look far in our society to see this martyr mentality or this rest in our laurels mentality. You just don’t have to go far. Yeah. There’s so many people that they should be carrying around body chalk because they want to play the victim so often. They love being in that place. And the reason why they love being the victim is because there is zero fucking responsibility. If you’re the victim, I can’t do anything about that. Even in combat, there are casualties and there are victims and there’s a big difference.
32:51
The victim is the person who doesn’t want to take responsibility. The casualty is the person who’s done what they’re supposed to do. They’re executing against the mission and maybe they get caught. That happens. But that person, even when they’re injured, does not feel like a victim. 100. And that’s when the mentality is so important because if you allow that to be the default setting, like we were saying before,
33:11
That’s where you’re always going to go. And these are the people that love to one up you with their hardship and their adversity. Oh yeah. Your life’s battle. Listen to my Monday. Oh yeah. Well listen to what I’ve done. And again, all they’re doing is feeding into that and they love that because they get intoxicated by that emotion. Yes. Yes. I can’t agree with you more. That’s perfect. I mean, we just said, I mean, they try to one up you. They, they, they try to make it work. You know, okay, I’ve been there, done that. I mean, so, so much that I get
33:39
from people that, from men that look at the crucible and they’re like, I’ve been there, done that. No, you haven’t been there. No, you haven’t done that because you’ve never gone through this program. It’s not a boot camp. It’s not a men’s retreat. You don’t know anything about it. So I’ve been there, done that. And it triggers so many of these men. They get to the point where like, it’s either I’ve been there, done that, or it’s more about like, hey, my day is worse than yours.
34:04
or, you know, I’ve been through more trouble than pain, you know, than you’ve ever have. I got in a car accident in 2004 and I almost lost my life. So you know, that’s the mentality. And everybody, if you’re listening to us, at first, he doesn’t care about what you want or your opinion. It hits all of us. None of us are unique. And that’s when we get hurt, when we think that somehow we’re above it or somehow we should be the exception to the rule. And that’s the reality. You want the exception to rule with COVID?
34:33
I wasn’t the exception to the rule when I was paralyzed. But in the end, it’s like, listen, I didn’t like what happened, but I’m here now. Again, the here and now. So what am I going to do? Am I going to sit here on my ass and play a victim for the rest of my life? Because there was a big part of me that wanted to do that. But I understood that if I wanted to have any semblance of a life, that I was going to have to take accountability for every fucking thing that I’ve done, every hesitation I had, every compromise, every fear, every day that I said I would do it tomorrow.
35:02
People, we don’t have anything other than this moment right now. And everybody thinks they’re going to have till like they’re 90 years old and they’re going to be on a death bed and they’re going to be surrounded by their family. People, you could die of COVID tomorrow. You can get hit by a car as you’re listening to this podcast. You have to take action now. And by taking action, you take responsibility. That was part one of my interview with Rafa Kandi, founder of Man of War. You can hear part two of our interview on the next episode of Octodon Verba, where we talk about coaching, motivation.
35:32
using fear as a tool to drive you and how pacified our current society has become. We also talk about why it’s so important to invest monetarily in your own personal development.
