The Benefits of Utilizing the Wins & Losses of our Lives for EQUAL Gain with James Heppner

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What is the big picture, the most important takeaway you want people to hear today before we wrap up and say grace? Be gracious with yourself. So many people are about being concerned about taking the right step. Gosh. I think just take a step.

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Take the right step. You might be paralyzed forever. I was for two and a half years. Don't make my mistake. You don't need to.

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Don't do it. Don't buy that narrative. Take a step, the right step. Social media will tell you what the right step is. Ask yourself, what's your right step?

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You know what the right step is, in my opinion. Taking a step. Participate with it. Raw, honest. Go for it.

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Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential and grow into the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers and still take care of ourselves? That's the question in this podcast will help you with those answers. My name is Brent and welcome to the The Fallible Man LLC pod. Welcome to the The Fallible Man LLC.

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You're home for all things man, husband and father. Big shout out to The Fallible Man LLC and an award. Welcome to our first time, listeners. My name is Brent, and today my special guest is podcaster and coach James Heppner. James, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, Brent. It's an honor to be here. Been looking forward to this one for a while. You do some great work. Awesome.

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Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. It's been a long time coming. We set this up a while ago, and our schedules are just getting in alignment, and so I'm glad you can be here today, James, you've listened to the show before. You know I don't do huge intros.

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So who is James Heppner, in your own words? Oh, that's so good. I am a human and just an average, ordinary human, and I fight to stay average. To be honest, some people throw around this expert term, whether it's them, me, or others, and if it works for some, great. It just doesn't work for me.

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I'll be honest. People find me and seek me out when they're looking at maximizing their life. I help successful people stop to self sabotage, raise their standards, and participate with unshakable confidence. That's why they find me who I am as a human. Let's just go back to the very beginning when I said I'm an average, ordinary human.

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I like to think that we all have a message to share, and I think it takes someone who has activated their empathy and someone who is willing to let all things pierce them. Not just bias, lay, selecting specific things that are comfortable. Like I'm going through certain projects in my life right now. If I'd be honest in a former world, say it like this, I would reject some of these things. I would know, and I probably wouldn't want to utilize that.

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I try to run from. But to me, the work isn't allowing what's directly in front of us. We'll make it real quick here, allowing what's here for us to participate with that and utilize it instead of seeking to eliminate that's when suffering comes. But the gift is we get to participate with exactly what's in front of us. And I think that's the good news.

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So anyway, I think I'm somebody who is just in love with life. And people have said that I have an unshakable love of life. I think it's true. And I'm not a positive person. I'm just a real person.

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And I like to get behind why living life the way it is in front of us is the good news. So there you go. All right. Now you're also a fellow podcastler with the weekly Wins and Losses podcast, which is doing very well from what I understand, looking at the charts. Tell us a little bit about your show.

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Yeah, that's a great thought. When you say doing really well, what does that even mean? Right? And I think about weekly wins. So when you say that the week is almost over and I feel like, well, that was a really nice thing to say.

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And the truth is it is doing really well. Like a lot of people were tapping in. And the reason that I coined or actually called forward that term, let me say it like this. I don't necessarily think that life is winning or losing. I think that's how we perceive life to be.

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And I think for us humans, it's really great to take things in and then process them properly. And I chose weekly and that term prior to saying Wins and Losses because I think unless we properly go through our week and let it process and let it marinate and integrate into our life, it's just going to seem like a shit show. Right? And what I mean to say is most people don't have a clue what to do with losses. Like, gosh, if anything, they're looking at converting their losses to the win.

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And I'm like, wait a minute, why are we trying to convert? Is a loss bad? And they're like, well, yeah, like I'm trying to gain from life. The only question is, why do we think we need to gain from life by taking something that is like the reality is we wanted to get a 90% on our exam and we got a 60%. Why is that the horrible news?

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It's reality. We get to participate with reality. That's the good news. That's what speaks weekly. Wins and Losses is a show where we debate and we bring intention and we let tension be the gift that it actually is.

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Because let's be honest, when there's plenty attention, plenty attention, we typically feel some discomfort. And some people would associate that with pain. And I look at pain in one simple way and pain is simply for me. Please accept inner nudgings. If you don't accept your inner nudgings, you're going to have to go through suffering.

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Now, if you do pain well, what ends up happening with tension is it creates pressure. Just think about it for yourself. The more pressure you have, the more present you become. Typically not again, if you do pain well, so you get pressure. You feel more present, the more present you become.

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All of a sudden, a little bit of peace happens because you basically turn up your inner signal and turn down the exterior signal. You begin to hear certain things, right? And the more peaceful you become on the inside, the more purposeful you become, the more passionate. So it actually all begins with pressure. So the good news is people are like, yeah, is this week out where's it a loss, I'm like, well, maybe if I can convert all the losses to wins that I'm gaining, I'm like, hang on a second before we convert.

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Because people, they find me. And I got some pretty successful people, I'll be honest, but they find me when dealing with their losses just no longer works. Because if we convert a loss to a positive, we're walking past 50% of the gain of life. We need to leave it where it is. Death is death.

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Life is life. Not good or bad. It's the cycle of leave it there, become safe with it. Do that work and you're going to feel empowered. It's just going to be a great life.

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All right, guys, this is part of his podcast. This is the kind of stuff he talks about on the podcast. So you know what, dig in with this subject, all right? After you get off this show, go over and check out his podcast, weekly Wins and Losses podcast and dig into this even deeper. But don't leave us yet because we're still going, guys.

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Now, James, we were talking a little bit before the show started rolling, and I was looking into you before the show, right? Obviously, we both research our guests, and I saw you enjoy biohacking and trying to push yourself a little further. Now, every man wants to do a little more, right? We all want to push ourselves a little harder, a little farther. What have you found that really has moved the needle for you in your experimentation?

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That's great. Well, I'll try to make it really simple. Perhaps I'll just begin by saying my health journey I always thought was how would I say this? It was a healthy one until I realized that a lot of what I was doing was actually anxious, striving away from what I feared most. And I'm 46.

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I technically only started working out and biohacking at 40. I was raised on the farm. I had a good muscular tone, but it kind of wilted away. And I thought, you know, mainstream, they say at 40, 45, it's virtually impossible to build and of course, you don't want to buy into this narration, but begins to seep in. And I'll never forget I popped into the world of Keto keto diets.

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And Dave Asprey, of course is Father Biohacking and purchased a lot of gear. Like I got probably, what is it, 3000, $350,000 a gear in my lab. I got ozone therapy, I got full body cryotherapy, I got Biodesity. Some of these machines are like over 75, 80,000. And the first device, and perhaps I'll focus on this, the first device that I purchased was the Biodesity device.

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And I was at a Tony Robbins event, and there's many people that I learned from. But at this event, John Jenkins was in the back in the foyer and he had this machine, this Biodesity. And I remember asking, what is this? And he says, well, it's to build your bone structure. And I thought to myself, well, I don't have osteoporosis or osteopenia, I don't need this.

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And he says, well, actually, James, you've been at these things for you've come around over the years and we keep talking. But I need to tell you that to be totally honest, your strength depends on proper bone structure. And if you don't build proper bone structure, your body won't allow you to put on more power performance muscles. So I argue, he says, doing this once a week, that's all you got to do it for 510 minutes is going to actually allow your body to send signal to your muscles to say, now it's safe and you're able to put a more power performance so that your bones don't snap. And I thought, really?

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This is interesting. And so I'll never forget, my wife is in the seminar and we just gone through some business expenditures that we weren't expecting. And so this device at the time was at 50,000 US. I think it was like 65, 70 bills, Canadian. And I bought a site, basically not site on scene, but without talking to Meg, I purchased the device.

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And I remember, and I've always been this kind of person, I tend to look at what's most needed and then I go for it, even though it's not the sexiest thing, like which body builder will go, like, do a bone density build. Not many people, right? And so I bought this. I would say what I can't track with properly is probably what that device gives me. Because let me put it to you like this, the X Three.

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The X Three bar. You go to X Threebar.com. John Jenkins to become a friend of mine that's been probably arguably the single quickest, if I say quickest and most strategically effective device for the amount of minutes, I spend ten minutes a day, four times a week. This is all I do for working out honestly well. I do a high interval run once a week.

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It takes me all three minutes. I zip as fast as I can for about a minute and a half, and I lay down and I do the same thing, turn, I'll do the same thing just to get my, you know, my old mitochondria to die off. But when it comes to workout, x three is really the only thing I do aside from the biodesity. But the X three my strength and has just been incredible. But what's interesting is the bio.

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Back to this. I think what we can measure is what gives us the confidence that something is happening. So often I think about people in the gym, they're doing reps and they're doing it fast, they're not doing it properly just because they want to brag they did it a couple more reps, right? And so, for me, when I do biodesity, there's an actual measure. So I do the chest press, I do the the core pull, the light press, the deadlift.

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There's four core movements and it tracks the exact power, performance, output. And let me just say it like this. When I first started biodesity, I think I was pushing, like, press. What was it, like, £900? And then I'm at 29 or £3100 in the push.

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And of course, what it does is it loads you at the optimal range of motion. It doesn't do it at the right pullback motion. You begin to load at 120 degrees. And so that's how you build low density. Anyway.

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So that's a long answer to a short question, but I absolutely love the stuff that I do. And just to tidy it all up, I'll say it like this. I've come to a place now where me going towards my biohacking gear, whether it's my light therapy, my vibration therapy, all these things that I stack together certain times I now enjoy. Not because health is a problem for me to solve. I didn't think I was ever trying to solve a problem.

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The only thing is, there was a season in my life when there's nothing that I could do to make something better. And then I remember thinking, what are you actually doing all this for? And I thought, well, I'm solving a problem. I remember thinking, Are you saying health is a problem? I thought that's not helpful.

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So I've churned the tide. And so, to be totally honest, I'm a very committed human being. But that says that what I do now looks very different than before. In the past, I'd be so ordinary about it if I didn't feel well, or if I hadn't slept properly, if my oral rings showed that I shouldn't work out, I'd slam weights. I do the x three anyway and whatever else.

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Now I listen to my body and I genuinely enjoy it more. So I think I'm in charge now instead of what I need to be doing. In charge. Now I'm in charge. And honestly, I'm getting stronger because of it.

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And for me, it's incredible. Oh, yeah. When you start to be smart, enough. I've always been into heavy weights. I like to lift heavy, not because I want to show off.

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I don't want to compete. I just like heavy lifting. That's what I like, right? It's what I enjoy. But I've played with all the ref ranges.

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I've played with all this. But you get into the old lifters, right? Guys that are now coaching people and stuff like that who have these world records, and you look at the way they worked out versus the way some of the other guys who are now competing are working out, and it's like we forget some wisdom every now and then. These guys knew when their body was like no, right? And they also understood what happens when you try and fight that too much.

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Right? There's a big difference between I don't really feel motivated today and no, just no. Right? I've walked into the gym before, and I love squats. I just love to squat.

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But I was doing warm ups, working my way up in my warm up sets, and I hit a warm up weight that I do all the time. No belt knowing, right? And it was so heavy, man. I was just like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to die. Like, what is going on?

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I racked the weight. My wife was with me. She's like, what's going on? I was like, no, don't got it today. No.

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Unloaded the bar, picked up my stuff. We love good job, good job. No, not playing that game. If that weight feels that heavy, going past that is going to be bad. Yeah.

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And I bought myself enough to know better at this point. You know what's interesting, man? We're all on a journey. I love the title, the podcast The Fallible Man LLC, right? So let me just be honest.

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Today's Thursday. On Tuesday, my wife had something up in the morning and I had to drive the kids to school. I didn't know it. And typically I do my workout at a specific time because that's when I have time between my coaching calls or my speaking. So I had it all kind of queued up.

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And I have a specific regime that I follow when it comes to eating and protein ingestion. And I kind of map it out. My supplements happen here, and this is when I stack this and eat a banana this time, whatever. So you know how we do this, right? Anyway, so she says, Would you like to try the kids?

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We run into scheduling promises. Sure, no problem. And in my mind, I'm like, well, of course I can serve the feminine. Why wouldn't I not just serve the feminine? I'm a parent, of course.

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So I'm like, I'll take the kids. It's not a problem. But then in my mind, I'm like, well, how can I have both, Anne? I'll do this and then not work out. And I thought, well, why don't I just work out now?

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Like, typically I get up in the morning at 233 o'clock. I got an early right. I go to bed at 09:00, but I get up at 233 o'clock. So I'm thinking to myself at 730, I've been up for a while and my energy is like, really high, so I'll just go and do my X three right now. And I got a I got a lower back.

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I wouldn't say issue, but I got to be careful. And so I I get into the deadlift position. And to your point, when you said your body said no? My body said no, but you know, something just really humbling to be like, oh, that's where I am. And this is what happened for me.

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My body said nope. And I'm like, yeah, it's probably just because it's morning. I just need to like, power through. So I reefed it. My friend and I felt the strain, but would you know what I did?

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I continued. So I thought, you know what? I just need to muscle through and I'm not that kind of person at all. No pain, no gain. It's garbage.

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Yeah. And so, to be honest, today is a better day. Yesterday, I can barely move. I I have now broken my spine twice. So sorry.

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When my body says no, it's the difference between me being able to walk and me not being able to walk. I actually have to stay in the gym because I have a fracture in my Think L Five that's never healed. I broke it like 1520 years ago. Wow. And it's never healed, but it's in the pixel area that holds your spine together, the little things off the back.

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And so my spine slides easier than it should, and when it spines, it starts to cut off my spinal column, all those filling in my legs. And if I keep pushing, I won't be able to walk. That's incredible. I found out about this because I woke up one day and I couldn't walk. And that's a wake up call, man.

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When you wake up and you can't feel from the waist down, you can't move. Yeah. That's when we found out that I had done this. And so the gym has actually saved me. It's how I walk, but it's lifting smart.

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I keep the erectors along my spinal column, help stabilize my spine so I have to keep them strong without pushing too far, too fast. It's made me pace myself. I'm actually pretty sure I would have had a lot more injuries in the gym over the year if if I didn't have to pay attention to that. Wow. It's like someone put a god put a meter on me.

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It's like, pull back a little bit. Be a little more patient with yourself. I have to move up slowly, carefully, and very calculated or it can become very dangerous. So the minute I don't listen, first my body's going to tell me and then my wife's going to tell me when I'm laying on the couch the next day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Sorry, go ahead. No, go. No, no and no. I was going to say gosh. It's you know, it's fantastic that you allowed that part of your journey to become a gift and you're not, you're not talking about you wish it wasn't there.

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Like it's providing you so many benefits, right? Just to some degree it's like the thorn in the side ends up being the gift. Right. You can respect yourself and listen to your body and cellular intelligence is beautiful. Good job.

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I have this theory that every now and then life throws you this unexpected curveball and how you deal with it. Really? I mean yeah, I can whine. I broke my neck like right before COVID hit like January 2020. I was in the gym and I went down with £600 on my shoulders and my neck snapped over the bar.

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The bar landed on a couple of boxes so it stopped off the floor and my neck snapped over it and I broke my CPI. The doctor said it broke but it didn't move. If it had moved, the best case scenario was a wheelchair. The rest of my life able to breathe on my own with use once on my body. Well, as it was, it didn't move and got spoiled on me.

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And I'm in the gym since then, but my dad asked me and he's like, so when this hills, what happens next? I go back to the gym and he was like, wait, time out. Look man, yeah, it's inconvenient right now, but I can still function, I'm still healthy and I'll be smart and I'll ease through. Yeah, you can let something define you or you can define yourself by how you deal with it, I guess. Yeah, totally.

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Well, I often think, I don't know what you think about this, but I often think when a human being shows up truly obsessed about something, that's when the world changes. Right? So what I'm hearing you say a little bit is you're finding a way of enjoying the edge, but you're getting smarter with the edge. You're knowing exactly where that edge is and that's incredible. Like to figure out that spot instead of just saying no, the horse fucked me off, I'm not getting back on and getting back on.

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That's super cool. So good job. Good job. I mean, I don't want to be on your dad's side, but please don't do something crazy, brother.

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My two big injuries were both just actually they were mechanical failures, they really were. Both times I broke my spine, the barbell flexed more than it should have and that's how I ended up breaking my neck. So Tinsel strength wasn't there. They bought a cheaper barbell than I anticipated and actually I know the tinsel strengths of certain barbells and so gaze that it was a different bar than I thought it was. That's all James, if you could have lunch with one person in history and have a conversation with them, who would it be and why?

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Oh, my goodness. In history? Yeah. That's a fascinating question. I think I mentioned to you I was raised in a I'll say this, I was raised in a very Christian conservative home, and my dad was a pastor of a megachurch.

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And wonderful parents love them dearly. I have four sisters. I was the only boy. There's a version of my current faith that has changed dramatically. And I'll just say it this way.

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My parents taught me what to think, but not how to think right. And so to a large degree, I've deconstructed my faith. And to be honest, I wanted to see how could I love not from a place of expecting. I don't need to go to some heaven place for me to say that God is good. God is good just because God is good.

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He didn't even have to die on the cross for me to say I love Him. I just love him because I want to love him. How could I get to a place like that? So to be totally honest, I am a person of faith. I would call myself a Christian, but I think what I would say is I'm a religionless Christian.

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I don't hold to orthodoxy and all that kind of stuff. So if you ask me who I love to meet, I love to meet James. I would love to meet I could just cry because I would love to meet James. He's just such an amazing and I think I say that from the place of and perhaps someday I'll meet Him, right? So perhaps we all have that coming.

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But I love to meet Him, because if I look at his leadership and how and they wanted to crown him the King, he kept pointing to something other than him, and I think he was sad. I mean, the stories talk about whether it was true or not, whether it's all story or not makes me no difference. Makes me no difference. Stories are incredible. He would keep saying to people, listen, you're pointed to me as the King, but I've been saying to you all along, point to something greater.

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Something greater meaning all things that happen, whether it's an emotion, whether it's a relationship, when something good happens or something happens, it's kind of hard to swallow. I've come so that you can point to something greater than yourself. Take yourself. Yeah, you're part of it. Don't let the ego get so swollen on this stuff.

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Like, just work with it and just enjoy that. You get to co create with this source, with this energy force. And for me, I call it I find my way to God through James. To be honest, I do. But I'll just say it like this.

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Transcendence through inclusion is how I hold my faith. Now, I've tried on the transcendence through exclusion, and that just didn't work for me. So honestly, sorry for the long answer, but I would love to meet, just sit down and have a conversation. And that's just incredible because my goal in life, I'll say it like this, all the work that I do, a lot of people know this, but some of you listeners might not. My goal is, what does it look like to do a faith journey well?

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So I hold myself to that tension pretty tightly every single day. Faith journey, what does it look like to do well? So there you go. You never have to apologize for a long answer on my show. I want honesty and real people, because real people are what move the needles for other people.

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This phony, instagram, shiny moment is not what actually moves the needle when someone is looking at others as, you know, what? What are you guys doing? That works, right? I'm trying to be inspired. I'm trying to be encouraged in what I'm doing.

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Honesty and total, just transparency goes so much farther. So don't apologize for a long answer. What is your favorite ice cream? Cherry ice cream. Cherry ice cream.

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I've never had that. I ask all my guests because most people my last guest I talked to was lactose intolerant, and she still loves ice cream, right? Everybody can get behind ice cream. I've had two guests now who actually don't like ice, and they say it like, it's been like, shame, shame, right? Kind of thing.

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I'm like, no, it's cool if you don't like ice cream. It's just unusual, that's all. Yeah. So when I say cherry, it's black cherry, to be specific. That is a specific flavor profile.

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So you talk to a lot of people, right? And as you're coaching some of the people you work with, there's got to be some common threads that you see. What is one of the number one issues you see with the majority of your clients, and how do you move away from that?

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Well, let's say it like this. I think people find me because they spotted me. And some of the work that I've done, perhaps this is the work that they're about. And let's just say it like this. It's 2022.

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It was over a decade ago when I finally came out of my journey. And when I say my journey, journey just means I checked out a life for me. It means I checked out a life for two and a half years, and I checked out a life because the market changed, and we were in the real estate sector, and the markets kind of dried up, and then we were audited at that exact time. And then I had my second boy was born. He had was born a high functioning autism.

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And what's interesting is I remember sitting around the family table one day. So Meg, who had been married to now for 22 years, has been with. Her for 27. Congratulations, Mike. Thank you.

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It's hard work, you know. It so worth it though. So worth it. And my older son, Roan was there as well. Rowan was two years old and Harrison was just born.

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I guess Roan is three and Harrison is one. Harrison was sitting in a high chair at the time. I remember Meg looking at her family and we were just discussing, harrison just got tested for high functioning autism and he is in the 99 percentile for memorization. So the kid can look at a loose leaf like eight by ten and read it once and he's got it down path once. A kid, you know, the kid is like sharper than a whip.

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He's got the sense of humor of like it's incredible, this kid, right? Anyway, so sitting around the dinner table, meg brought up that some people had commented or reached out to her and said, I'm sorry to hear that Harrison high function. And then people would ask, even my family, they'd say, so how are you going to help them understand this is how life works? And they had a certain way of perceiving. Of course we're going to make him atypical, probably right.

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And Mega just said to them, which I remember I had said to my family too, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. He is Harrison and Ime and Meg is Meg and you or you don't make room for each person. Do we need to create this similar pattern that we were all certain way? And I remember just sitting there while Meg was saying that and then thinking to myself, gosh, that kid is in for a long, hard run. Because, let's be honest, for half of my life up to that point, I didn't feel like I was really understood.

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I'd become quite successful in the business arena, to be honest. I come from nothing and I just never forget the first million I had on my account. There's a couple of million. It was really nice. I kind of proved it to myself, I guess.

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And then, of course, when the market shifted, kind of felt like perhaps I was a fallacy. Perhaps I couldn't do it all over again. And Harrison was born. The audit happened to a company. We owed a couple hundred thousand.

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I had the money, but it didn't want to pay. You know how it is. Then I remember just thinking to myself, oh, gosh, you know what, this kid is going to have a hard life. Because to be honest, I feel like I have constantly been molding myself to the people because they don't understand me. So I've kind of bought what they're saying, suggesting we should do to him, make him like us.

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And what's interesting is I made a foolish decision. I just thought I was processing, but I checked out. I spent time in the bedroom, just laying there and thinking and trying to think it through. And I tried to eliminate all these thoughts.

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Year one, didn't go to family gatherings, didn't go to the door for friends. They come to see us. I didn't go see them. I would overdose of melatonin and gravel. I slept for 18 while I was in bed 18 hours a day.

[00:30:21]

If I say I go to the office, I'd hop in the car just to appease, just to make my wife feel like I was doing something. And I find an abandoned house someplace, and I pull up on the driveway. Our company was in the country. That's where we're building our custom homes. And pull up on our old abandoned farmyard and hop in the back seat and grab a blanket and sleep overdose the melatonin gravel again.

[00:30:44]

And let's just say it like this two and a half years checked out. I'm embarrassed. I can't believe I did what I did, but I did what I did. And honestly, all that I remember thinking is, is that your two remember thinking, James, you've been working at this so long, but it feels like you haven't made any progress. What could you do that be radically different?

[00:31:05]

And then the invitation came to accept my thoughts and finally make use to them. Instead of being like, I feel like a fallacy. Instead of defending it or trying to push it away and resist, it be like, well, of course we're all a bit of a fallacy. I'm like, Can I play with that? I'm like and it was weird.

[00:31:24]

I didn't want to accept it, but what have you got left when you're at the end? Like, I didn't want to be here anymore. That's why I was overdosing. I hadn't contemplated officially suicide, but honestly, what I was doing with my habits, with the pills, I was really not here. I wasn't present for my family.

[00:31:41]

My wife raised the kids for those two and a half years, and I'll never forget. It was at a it was at a Tony Robbins event. There's many people that I enjoy. Tony is one of them. And yeah, some people don't like him.

[00:31:54]

Some people like him. You know, I think he's a human being. It's pretty it's pretty. Okay. Human being.

[00:32:00]

And is at that event, it was a relationship day, and my wife was day four. And anybody goes to those events again, date with Destiny will know that you don't sleep much. So I think I slept about 2 hours a night for four days. And I remember I'm used to sleeping 18 hours at that point in time. I was bush tired.

[00:32:18]

Day four, my wife gets up, and she says, baby, it's relationship Day. This is going to be so cool. We get to go down together. I said, hey, Meg, if you don't mind, I think I'm just going to, like, have a little rest. I'm really tired, but I'll come down maybe a little later, and she goes, all right, baby, whatever you like.

[00:32:32]

I mean the world to you if you came down, though. But you can do what you want. And she's been like this all her life. And so she gets ready and she leaves. And what do I do?

[00:32:40]

I just swallow these pills. And, man, I could just cry thinking about this. But what do I do? You know? You go with the curtain.

[00:32:46]

You close the curtain, you take the coat hanger, and you make it nice and tight. You put the chair up, the office chair, up against the window. You press it so it's nice and black. I hopped under the blanket for about two minutes. I'll never forget.

[00:32:59]

I'm like, what the fuck am I doing here? Pardon the language. What am I doing? My wife has given her life, and I can't go down this to mean the world to her. All I remember is I jumped out of bed and I barely dressed.

[00:33:12]

My hair was a mess. I didn't take the elevator. We're on the 11th or 12th floor just took the stairs. I don't know what the heck I was thinking, but I just tumbled down the stairs, got into the room, and Tony was doing intervention at the very front, and he was talking about depression and how selfish it was. And I remember thinking, gosh, if he'd only know my situation, he'd be a little more sensitive.

[00:33:35]

He talked about depression isn't typically something that we get. It's something that we do. I thought, yeah, but you don't understand my situation. But he just kept coming harder and harder at it, just plowing it in. The pressure right from all sides being pressed.

[00:33:49]

And I walk down the side looking for my group, and he comes walking towards me. And of course, you know what it's like when you're on an event and somebody's saying something that it's piercing you. You think it's designed just for you, it's for everyone. I know this, but I say, Holy smokes. So he's one all over, but walking in my direction, and he's just going hard, and I swear, he's staring straight through me.

[00:34:07]

I find my group. I sit down, and of course the group, like it often does, these events, he jumps to their feet, and they start just chanting something, and all of a sudden, they start crying. And it's just this emotional this flood. It's incredible. And I remember my my group members looked at me.

[00:34:22]

I was I just stayed seated. And they said, James, you want to come join us? And I said, no, that's okay. And in that moment, I realized I was doing depression. I was just staying seated.

[00:34:33]

I could just get up with him.

[00:34:37]

Something snapped. And they say when the shell of the eagle snaps properly once, you never have to do that again. My life changed forever in that moment. I jumped to my feet and I joined my group. My life has never been the same it's never been the same.

[00:34:54]

I cut and I wouldn't recommend this, but the doctor put me in antidepressants or anxiety. I cut those meds just like that. I know it's not recommended, but I just didn't have needed it anymore. And to your point, earlier in fitness, I just grabbed a P 90 X workload video from the store. I wasn't intending to do this stuff forever, but I just started really owning it and just really buying into the fact that there's something I can do about this whole game, that I can participate, that I'm not useless.

[00:35:22]

And I think the point I'm trying to make here, back to what I said earlier, please accept your nudges. Because if not, you will have to go through suffering. Suffering is a choice. Pain is a gift. If you let it be when the light on your dashboard is flashing and saying, Check engine, it isn't calling for you to be deeply anxious and resisting the opportunity to pull your car this side of the road, get out of the car, pop the hood with curiosity, what's going on?

[00:35:54]

What's? Just just observe what's going on. Observe. And honestly speaking, and I hear myself say this to this day, I'm still in the space. I think I will for the rest of my life be I'm such a ferocious judger of myself.

[00:36:12]

And the problem is, when we're dividing, when we're choosing this over that, one option is no option. Two choice is no choice. It's the third. The third stranded rope. The third thing.

[00:36:27]

When the third thing appears, it's not this. Are you left? Are you from the right? Are you this or are you that? Why does the human feel why does the man feel so threatened when the man doesn't make a decision, saying, well, I'm conservative or I'm Democrat or, you know, there's so many more ways of living than finding strength just because we're big.

[00:36:54]

Can we find strength because we're small? Like, sometimes what I love doing I don't know about you, Brett, but what I love doing is when my wife and I go for a walk the other day, this happened. There's this ant hill I must have stepped on. I felt bad. I probably killed a bunch of ants.

[00:37:11]

We came home and the sun was just going down. You can see the moon out there and the stars are starting to peek out. We live close to the Rocky Mountains here. The stars are beautiful. So I said, hey, let's just lay down the grass.

[00:37:23]

So lay down the grass. And for that moment, you know how small I felt? I felt tiny and I felt wonderful. It felt glorious. Gosh.

[00:37:33]

We get to feel big and small, and that's where our strength comes from. Because if we do it differently, life will teach us that eventually it will be completely still. We'll die if we're threatened by that, that'll control our life. If we're afraid of dying, let's be honest, we're never going to get to the ultimate fear, which is the fear of living. And that's really what we are.

[00:38:00]

We're afraid of living. The challenges I'm just going to throw this down. The challenges. We have to get to a place. We have to get to a place.

[00:38:10]

When we experience something that we don't take that perception of what we're experiencing, we don't allow that to control our life and say, this is the way I have to have it. I mean, attachment to outcome comes to mind, all of these things. We got to be open to the gradness of life. What is life? What is life good when it just works out the way we'd like?

[00:38:32]

I don't think so. Who are we really? Our strength is found both in our comforts and our discomforts. Our bigness and our smallness winning and losing achievements. This is where I was kind of taking this whole talk here, so I went on a bit of a rant, but ultimately, I blame my when I came out of my journey, I blame myself that I was such an achiever.

[00:38:56]

Like, you're always wanting to achieve something, James, why do you have to achieve something like this? What is this thing? Perhaps the achiever and use the problem. And I tried living without trying to achieve. You know what I've realized?

[00:39:11]

I am an achiever. I think to some degree, we all are achievers. We're all reaching for something. We all want to be of benefit to the world. We want to be beneficial, human.

[00:39:19]

So we're trying to achieve something. Not so that in my opinion, that people need to remember me for. Like I could give a care about people remembering me for anything. But if we're achieving something, there's a big difference between doing it in style and it's grace, or if we do it with anxiety. In my opinion, most of what we see in today's world, and it's probably been like this from the beginning of time.

[00:39:45]

I wasn't there since the beginning, so I have not a clue. But I can only imagine most of it is anxious achieving striving, striving, striving, striving. And listen, I know we all want greater gains with less straight, but how do we do that? We go into certain parts of our life that most of us walk right past, which I know you're not that kind of person. You do the inner work and in the inner work is where we find the greatest game.

[00:40:10]

It's not out there. The storm is never out there. It's never out there. One guy sees a tsunami, freaks out and he thinks the storm is over there. No, it's what he feels about the storm.

[00:40:20]

You got to bring safety to all the emotion. You want to maximize your life, you got to take all the emotions and you got to find a way to build some kind of musculature and relationship with all emotions where you can actually live them out in a safe way. Gosh. How many people live fully alive? Ask yourself, take out an emotional wheel and challenge all the listeners.

[00:40:44]

Go online, type an emotional wheel, print it off. Circle the emotions that you want to feel. Circle the emotions that you typically feel on a day. Look at all the other emotions and ask yourself, do you feel those? Most of us will say I do, but I convert them really quick until like some coping happiness and it's like, oh, my goodness.

[00:41:04]

Where do we get our strength from doing easy shit. Well, I can hear it in your story. You don't even believe that you we don't we as humans, we don't respect ourselves. We want to know that we can get through and get from challenge ourselves. Like, why do you keep going to the gym even though you snapped your back your neck?

[00:41:22]

Because it's a respect thing. A self respect creates confidence that you got something. How well do you sleep at night? Do you toss and turn and wake up more tired than when you went to bed? Sleep is commonly one of the critical elements people fall short on in their life.

[00:41:38]

The quality of sleep you get directly affects your ability to control your weight, your ability to add muscle, your stress levels and your everyday job in life performance. If you're ready to move to the next level, then sleep has to be part of the plan. Check out our friends@ghostbed.com if you're ready to get your best sleep. I love my GhostBed. I've been sleeping on one for a couple of years and has made a huge difference in how I sleep.

[00:42:00]

Hit Ghostbed.com and use the code the The Fallible Man LLC 30 to get 30% off your order and start getting better. I sleep tomorrow. Now let's go on to the show. James Heppner, why do you think people are so dead set? Because your view on losses is very counterculture.

[00:42:18]

Right. That's just not something that most people embrace. Why do you think people culturally are just so dead set against the idea of losses? It's always win, win, win. Why does it have such a negative connotation?

[00:42:33]

Yeah, that's a fascinating thing, Brad. I love the way you queued that up. I have a little philosophy or is it just a take on let me just say it like this. I think what we humans fear the most is that when we create something, what will the evidence reveal but what we created? And so I think to some degree if I'd want to empathize with what's how society has it structured, society says in order for us to continue, we have to encourage people to keep creating.

[00:43:04]

And so I think to some degree society is trying to benefit humanity by saying we have absolute need to evolve this thing forward. And so if you're going to feel like you're losing, let's just either push that down or ignore it. And let's not really focus on that because that's going to take away from what we actually require, which is progressing, moving forward, people trying, right? Gosh, you know what? It's such an interesting I'm thinking how it works in my brain and how it works in my life, to be honest.

[00:43:41]

I find the most meaningful joy when I keep the facts intact. No hyperbole. And so often I think people have a really interesting relationship with reality and fantasy. We all talk about, for example, I mentioned Tony Robbins, and people are like, wow, he's just kind of like pie in the sky. He's at rock concert, kind of blah, blah, blah, that they talk about.

[00:44:05]

What's interesting is, and I have no idea what they're doing in their life, but I'd say a bit like this, perhaps. Sometimes I think we get resentful when someone reveals that they're so into participating with reality and not needing to alter the story or mold it into something different. That we like to blame those people for being like, yeah, you know what?

[00:44:31]

That's like? Too rock concert for me or too positive thinking. So I don't know if I'm answering your question other than to say, well, perhaps I'll put it like this. And again, I'm trying to find reason why they do it, but not from you stupid people. I'm trying to find the good in it because they're doing it for a good reason.

[00:44:49]

Because the truth is, Brett, Psychology 101, we don't ever choose things because we think it's not a solution. We only ever choose things because it's a solution. Like, my father in law is an alcoholic. If I'd observe him, I'd say that's his problem. But he chooses alcoholism because that's his solution to get away from his strength.

[00:45:09]

So he drinks on the weekend to help wash away all his anxieties. So we have to be careful. I think that when we see something, at least for me, I got to be really careful that I don't appoint a problem over there because then I can't connect with why. First, I think we have to get curious about why it was their solution. Why is it their solution?

[00:45:27]

Why is it and so when I think about this whole losses, why do I think that's the solution to the first point that I made? I think they're trying to encourage that we keep creating. And so it seems to be like such a loss category thing that it's a negative. We're going in the negative numbers, and so let's not golder. So let's encourage.

[00:45:47]

So that's point number one. Point number two, let's be honest. We're survival beings. I know we like to talk about thriving, which is super cool. The only thing is this.

[00:45:56]

If we don't reckon with the fact that there's so many gifts found in survival, some people say, I'm still focusing on that. I'm not enough. Why am I still there? I'm like, because maybe it's a gift. They're like, what are you talking about?

[00:46:09]

I said, Maybe it's a solution for something they said, well, for what I said, I don't know, but something I know and it's been for me and something that it might be for you is if you say that, oh, I am enough, completely enough. Where do you have need of other people? What I'm saying is there's a gift buoyed everywhere. So I think society isn't willing to do tension with it. And I think society also says losses is to survival.

[00:46:33]

We should be about thriving. The only thing is, if the human doesn't feel safe, the human will never take a step forward, ever. So we got it, like, to your point. When you go to the gym, you know exactly the edge. You know what that is.

[00:46:47]

So I think it's just a negative thing. People are like, losses, man. I just like to push them away. I'm a winner. I'm a winner.

[00:46:56]

I think a lot of people are really obsessed with the perception, right? One of the things that we run into in the gym, right, is you get new people coming in who are afraid that everybody else is going to watch them exercise badly, or afraid that people are judging them because they're not at the same level or they're too heavy, or they're not very strong, right? I've met so many people who are afraid of being judged that they're afraid to go to the gym. And I keep telling them, nobody there is actually paying any attention to you. Nobody cares if anyone sees you.

[00:47:31]

They're just going like, it's that head nod guy respect thing. It's like, yeah, you're here working on yourself. Right on. Right? I think we're so obsessed with people's, the idea that people are judging us all the time, that we're afraid of being perceived as losers because we're not perfect, because we put up these great places, like Instagram, where people can worship us in our brilliance, right?

[00:48:05]

We're afraid of everybody else looking at us and going, hey, you're not perfect. Get out. I think we're afraid of judgment even though no one's actually paying any attention. Well, think about the hubris of what you just said. Got.

[00:48:20]

Thinking of this sometimes. And I think, of course, I'm going to take this back to my story. So I remember when I came up through my Tony Robbins, like that whole little journey I mentioned to you. So I'm walking down the side and I'm thinking, oh, crap, everyone's seeing this. I'm just sheepishly coming in.

[00:48:32]

I'm thinking everybody's noticing this. And while I'm thinking this, he's talking about how significant would you have to be to think that he was saying the things that are going on my brain? And I thought to myself and then he says things like, do you think that you're so significant? If you were, wouldn't you be like, front covered newspaper? Wouldn't you be like, yeah, I'm not.

[00:48:53]

So if you think about the humor, that's like, how egotistical would we have to be? Everyone's watching us. But that's what we do, because I think we feel like we're the center of our universe, and we're constantly trying to prop ourselves up and make ourselves better than we are. I think that's a big problem. I joke about social media a lot because I remember when MySpace came into existence, I took one look at MySpace and it's like, look, I can post an entire website to how amazing I am.

[00:49:26]

What kind of arrogance does that take to want it? Like, I didn't have a Facebook account until I went into business. I have one, so I can maintain my business page. But likewise, I looked at MySpace when it first came out, and now I've gone through all these iterations, right, and we have all these different social medias, but I remember looking at thinking, how arrogant do you have to be to build a shrine to yourself that you think anyone gives a crap about? Oh, I'm so amazing.

[00:49:59]

I knew a guy I actually, like, unfriended him. I know him for years. Like, in person. Known him for years. I unfriended him because he posts all the time, eating lunch, chickfila dude, I don't care.

[00:50:12]

Like, seriously, your lunch does not deserve a priority spot on my day in my attention. No. Yeah, right. But we have this I mean, your story walking into the room late. You're at a Tony Robbins event, and Tony Robbins is walking down the aisle going nuts.

[00:50:29]

No one even saw you. No one saw me. I wasn't even there, basically. So help me out with this. How do we make that mindset shift to start to value our losses as much as our wins?

[00:50:51]

Well, there's two ways of doing it. I'd say one way is through willpower, which is typically, I could say, read this book, go to the seminar. That's one way of doing it. And willpower something. It's beneficial.

[00:51:06]

But let me say it this way. Whether we follow through on the willpower or not, eventually life will just have us want to do something different than what we're doing. If we're excluding, life will show us it doesn't work anymore. In everyone's life, something happens. You either break your back, break your neck, have a scenario like mine, have your own scenario.

[00:51:27]

Everybody has their own thing. And typically goes a bit like this first half of life, what are we doing? We're looking to validate ourselves. We're looking to accumulate. Get a house, get a wife, get a kid, get to get a job, get a car, get a dog, get a ticket, get my space, whatever.

[00:51:44]

Talk crap about my chickfila. Look at what I got. We're all about, hey, look what I got. So we come to strength, typically through answer and through certainty versus uncertainty. We typically come through strength through the known versus the unknown.

[00:51:57]

And we just eliminate all these stuff. That doesn't help us. We're like, no, we're on a path. You're on a laser path. One day, something happens.

[00:52:05]

You're like, this is interesting. This is more than I thought I could handle. But you're just begun, because what happens is you get another thing that comes and another thing that comes, and you're like, holy smokes, this is like, too much. And then you realize you've just begun. You got another three things that happen, and these things all coalesce.

[00:52:23]

And it's the most beautiful thing, because what you're going to walk into is the invitation for the second half of life. The second half of life is the invitation and the initiation to gain your strength and find who you are, not just from what you know, but from the unknown, to not just find your place of comfort in being like, well, watch this. I'll just get rid of this. I'll get rid of this, and I'll categorize that and I'll do this. It's like, no, there's a lot going on here.

[00:52:50]

And you know what? My capacity feels like it won't have the ability to hold. And actually, I've never been here before, and it feels really shaky, and no matter how you try to stabilize it, it gets more shaky. So if you realize, maybe I shouldn't rock the boat. And it's almost like you're in a pause season, because that's the transition between the first half of the game and the second half of the game.

[00:53:15]

When you come out of the tunnel, it's your choice how you to show up. And honestly, if you let life be the gift, he'll let it pierce you. You'll let it open you to the magic that it is. Waiting place is hard. What's that?

[00:53:32]

That waiting place in between is hard. It's hard. It's really hard. It's something that we're not really good at addressing sometimes. But that waiting place in between, here and here, waiting for life to line and your world to line and your maturity to line, your perspectives to line gets really uncomfortable sometimes because we just spend some time here going, what do I do now?

[00:54:00]

What do I do now? So that's the next question then, James, is what are the first three steps our listeners can implement right now to start down this journey, to start to validate that losses in their lives, have lessons for them, have bonuses for them, and make their life better? I'll say it like this. If you want to stop the self sabotage, if you want to raise the standards so they're self sabotage, you want to raise the standards and participate with unshakable confidence, you're going to want to take the Maximize Your Life quiz. Just go to www.

[00:54:35]

Dot Jameshepner. comQuiz right now. And honestly, by taking this little quiz, you will discover exactly where you are making your life unnecessarily difficult and exactly where your behaviors are cutting you off from the. Outcomes and goals you create most. To be honest, your quiz results, it's going to pinpoint with precise accuracy, and I'm talking pretty certain here, but it's going to pinpoint with precise accuracy the exact areas to focus on.

[00:55:04]

Gosh. Who wants to work in areas where we don't have time to waste, right? Like, we apparently all fear that we're not progressing fast enough. This will immediately activate your ability to use your time and resources effectively and instantly set you on a path to create higher level gains with less rate. Why not get honestly, I think this through every day.

[00:55:26]

Why not just get down to the base of it all and discover the truth about what's controlling your life right now? I challenge you. Take a few minutes. You owe it to yourself. You're worth it, and your experience of life depends on it.

[00:55:38]

Give yourself the gift by honor yourself and taking just five minutes to invest in yourself and take the Maximize Your Life quiz again, Jameshetner.com quiz. And finally, set yourself with a path that will lead you directly to what you want and need most. Now I think we just have to be about the work. We have to be about the pristine work of lasering down. And honestly, I wish I would have had a guide to lead me through.

[00:56:02]

Like you said, that pause season can seem so long, and I think transitions are really difficult for people because, honestly, your whole world changes. You need somebody to say it's going to be okay, and this isn't a problem to fix. This is an opportunity to align with right. What's next for James Heppner.

[00:56:21]

Dinner.

[00:56:26]

What's next for me? My goodness. Sometimes people ask me questions about what I want most, and I just say to them something like this here's what fears me most. What fears you most? What's next for me is and I know it's coming, and it's been happening a lot recently, but I want to make sure that I'm the kind of human that has the strength not just to hang on when it's time to hang on, but then I let go.

[00:56:58]

And that I trust the free fall. When it's time to do it all over again, I want to know that, and I'm modeling that it's the world. Just say it this way. My life isn't letting me go until I know. And I'm going through a few projects where I'm having to let go.

[00:57:15]

Hence the glorious free fall. And honestly, sometimes you trust that the water beneath won't keep you buoyed. But it's always kept me there. Okay, James Heppner.com, is there anywhere else you want people to find you? Just go straight to the website.

[00:57:33]

Well, they can just call you up and you can direct them my way. No, just kidding. That's fine. I'll do that too. There you go.

[00:57:39]

Honestly, just go straight to my website if you want to listen to some of my podcast and go to that website that Brent has a generously and eloquently placed on the screen. Thanks, Brent, for that. I'd be humbled if you care to listen to a few podcasts and honestly, just shoot me, like an odd comment or so. I'll be honest, I love it when I know that you guys are listening and I want to know how to make the show better. So, honestly, I'm open.

[00:58:04]

I'm really, genuinely open. I want to make this the best that it possibly can be, and I want to be a beneficial human, and I want to just serve the best way that I possibly can and enjoy the ride as I go through it. Right so, and for all our audience, that's www dot. James Heppner.com. It's in the show notes and in the description, depending on what platform you're watching this on.

[00:58:26]

You know, I always get the links for my guests in there. So you guys can go straight from this podcast straight over to his website. But if you're driving, please wait, because I know you listen to the podcast in the car, because I do. So wait at least until you get somewhere before you start punching the links and stuff. James, what is the big picture, the most important takeaway you want people to.

[00:58:49]

Hear today before we wrap up and say, grace? Be gracious with yourself. So many people are about being concerned about taking the right step. Gosh. I think just take a step.

[00:59:05]

Take the right step. You might be paralyzed forever. I was for two and a half years. Don't make my mistake. You don't need to.

[00:59:11]

Don't do it. Don't buy that narrative. Take a step, the right step. Social media will tell you what the right step is. Ask yourself, what's your right step?

[00:59:22]

You know what the right step is, in my opinion, taking a step. Participate with it. Raw, honest. Go for it. Go for it.

[00:59:32]

Let it shine. Let you come to the surface. Because when you finally start enjoying yourself unfold in real time, that's a gift. Not waiting for anybody to give you validation or give you permission to exist. Wait.

[00:59:46]

You give yourself permission to exist. It's an inside job. You don't do it for you. You might be waiting forever. No more waiting needed.

[00:59:54]

Just do it. Guys. Coach and podcaster. James Heppner. And as always, be better tomorrow because of what you do today.

[01:00:03]

And we'll see you on the next one. This has been the The Fallible Man LLC podcast, your home for everything man husband and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www.thefallibleman.com for more content and get your own The Fallible Man LLC gear.