HOW SELF DEVELOPMENT COMPLETELY RUINED MY LIFE

0:00 Welcome to The Unapologetic Man Podcast. The only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What is up, gentlemen? Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Uniform Mike Papa, The Unapologetic Man Podcast. I really do appreciate you. Today, we are going to talk about how self-development completely ruined my life. Now, obviously, that's not true because I am a self-development coach, but until I figured out some of the things that I'm going to share with you guys today, it kind of made me more miserable, to be honest with you.

0:41 It kind of made me more depressed, was thinking that I was behind in certain areas, comparing myself to others, all of which we are going to speak about today. So the first concept I want to talk about is how constantly thinking that fulfillment is in the future is a recipe for suffering. So I want you to really think about that. Constantly thinking that your happiness is in the future, and it's not now, but indeed it's in the future once you get to a certain place of self-development is a recipe for current suffering.

1:09 Belief in a future heaven creates a current hell. That's one of the reasons communism is so unsuccessful, is because they believe that in the future, once everybody is equal, that we will all get to a place where we can achieve happiness. But what has happened with communism? Did you know they've killed hundreds of millions of people, both in China and Russia, because of their socialist ideals? It's again, that belief in a future heaven creates a present hell. So when you're constantly thinking that once I get to X, Y, Z place, I will become happy, you are creating suffering in the present moment.

1:42 This happens all the goddamn time with this niche, which is attracting women. Guys think once I listen to enough podcasts, once I get more ripped, once I'm better looking, grow out my hair, get a certain style, get enough money, they convince themselves that it's only at that time that they can go out and get better with women. So if you're making excuses now as to why you can't do X, Y, Z thing, can't approach women, can't go to the gym, can't get that new job or launch that entrepreneur endeavor because you need to get X, Y, Z first, I'll tell you what, it's probably going to be in the same in three months, six months, a year from now.

2:26 Whatever it is that you're using as an excuse to push something off, the future is usually a replica of the present. So as we go into self-development, we often think like, okay, once I listen to enough podcast episodes, once I take enough courses, once I do X, Y, Z thing, then I'll be happy. And that's the big problem with self-development is that it leads us to believe that. It leads us that the future has the answer. It leads us to believe that once I achieve X, Y, Z thing, then finally peace can be attained.

2:57 But as I'm going to talk about on my 500th episode, I can't even believe I'm coming up on 500 episodes. I'm going to talk about The Power of Now written by Eckhart Tolle, my all-time favorite book. I'm going to do that episode about The Power of Now. But what it basically says is future salvation is an illusion. The only place that happiness and peace can be achieved is in the present moment. Once again, that's a topic for a future episode that I really look forward to dropping on my 500th.

3:24 But take that into consideration. Are you too pushing off things to the future because you think salvation will come once you achieve X, Y, Z thing? Or worse, once you're free of X, Y, Z thing? That's an illusion, and unfortunately, that's one of the illusions that the self-development niche perpetuates. The second one is comparing yourself to others. Oftentimes, we find gurus that we really admire, and we compare ourselves to them or even compare ourselves to their clients who have achieved certain success. Let me tell you something that's paramount to your own success.

3:58 Never, under any circumstance, compare yourself to another person who's trying to get success in that niche that you're trying to get success in. So when clients come into my program, hey, there's some guys that are ahead of others. That's the way things are, okay? We're not all born with the same amount of skill sets, and we're not all born with the same amount of experiences. So when guys come in, they may see other guys kicking complete ass, you know, getting a threesome within three weeks of working with me.

4:24 And here they are in week two, and they're like, man, I'm still having a little bit of approach anxiety. What the fuck is going on? Why can't I have a threesome the way Brian did? Well, the problem is, is you're comparing yourself to that dude rather than comparing yourself to the guy you were when you first started. So the self-development niche has all these success stories. Hell, even if you go onto my website, it's just review after review after fucking review, 200 plus reviews of just success story after success story.

4:51 I had sex within 45 minutes. I had my first threesome. I had my first foursome. I went on this many dates in this many weeks. I can't believe this happening. I'm making more money. I'm way more happy. And you're comparing yourself to that dude. You need to compare yourself to yourself when you first started. And here's another thing. Just because a guru is a guru, it doesn't mean what they say is absolute truth. And this is my third point. Many times we get into this niche and we start following guys who we really admire.

5:19 And hopefully you follow me because you get good content out of what I share. But I know in my own experience, I've followed gurus who some of their points that I used to believe in, I don't believe in anymore. So Jocko, for example, you guys may have heard the Jocko podcast and even David Goggins, okay? So Jocko and David Goggins, they're ex-Navy SEALs. They talk about waking up early, going into pain, fucking persevering, getting after it. And I love that. But at the same time, let's just take Jocko for an example.

5:48 He says, dude, you got to get up early to get shit done. Really? Why is getting up early different than getting up as I do at sometimes 9 or 10 o'clock? I still have 24 hours in my day, don't I? And I guarantee you I still get just as much shit done as he does. And listen, brother, you listening, if you disagree with me, fine. That's the whole point of this episode. Follow your own lead. I was actually going to title it that. But I thought the title, How Self-Development Completely Ruined My Life, would be more clickable.

6:15 But this episode is all about having your own frame, following your own lead. You are the jury and the judge. And what you decide is best for you is what's best for you. So as I followed these dudes, I would change my lifestyle. I would do certain shit that ended in misery, to be honest with you. David Goggins, for example, has a saying that says, in order to reach your potential, you have to suffer. And you know what? I kind of used to buy into that.

6:40 In a lot of ways, I still do. I still believe that when you do what's hard, your life will be easy. When you do what's easy, your life will be hard. And once again, whether or not you agree with me, it doesn't matter. It's your filter. You have to follow your own lead. But I used to really buy into that so much, in fact, that I did shit that made my life pretty miserable. Hence, self-development, ruining my life. And when I think about his saying, you have to suffer, really?

7:06 Is meditation suffering? That's significantly better in my life. Probably more than anything else in the world. No, it hasn't. Is having sex with a woman you really love suffering? No, it's not. And even going on ultra marathons, I guarantee you, he's suffering to a certain level. But at the same time, masculinity likes to persevere through challenges. And it actually gets high as it's working through challenges. So what is suffering? That's what I'd like to ask him. Suffering, in my opinion, means resisting pain. We all go through pain.

7:38 But do you have to suffer? No. You can surrender to the pain and even enjoy it in a certain way, as I believe he does. Grant Cardone, he's another dude who a lot of you guys may know about, who's all about 10x in your results, making more money, working and working and working until you fucking become a billionaire like he is. He's all high energy. He's all about sales. He's going to 10x your life, right? Is that the way you really should live? I don't think so.

8:03 In fact, people who are on their deathbeds are often interviewed. And the first thing they regret, get this brother, the first thing they regret is working too much. So I believe that you have to have a work-life balance. You have to enjoy your days off. For me, before I record a podcast like this one, I take tons of time off. I meditate. I try to be in the present moment. I try to enjoy my life. I eat really well so that when I sit down to do this, brilliance comes out, hopefully.

8:30 And a lot of times, I don't even feel like I'm talking. Like right now, it's just coming from somewhere else. I don't know where it's coming from. And in order for me to be that vessel to be able to let something come through me, I have to open space. And that's what I believe. Again, bro, run it through your filter. If you want to be a Grant Cardone motherfucker and work 16 hours a day in order to become a multi-multi-billionaire, hey, that's your prerogative. Go get them, tiger.

8:55 But let me tell you this. Grant Cardone has actually admitted that during the 2008 financial crisis, he lost his entire net worth. And it was at that moment that he decided that that would never happen to him again. Now, let's break out that motivation and look at it exclusively. What is it when you're trying to make lots of money so that you don't suffer again and so that you feel secure? That's right. It's a scarcity mindset. So listen, I admire Grant Cardone. I follow the dude. I take some of his advice and I leave the rest of it because I don't believe that you need to be a multi-billionaire in order to be secure.

9:31 What I believe is that even if the shit hits the fan, even if the dollar bill collapses and everything goes to shit, I am the mechanism that is going to dictate my success. And this is why I'm so into NLP and self-development, as it were, is because I have built myself to the point where I know I can succeed in any environment. In fact, the way I think is, even if we have a complete global meltdown and we have a great depression all over again, I will find a way to make more money than I am now because I have an abundance mindset.

10:00 A scarcity mindset is get as much money now because you may lose it in the future, which I feel Grant Cardone is suffering from. As he said himself, I'm just going deeper into what he said. Ed Milet. You guys ever heard of this guy? Ed Milet. Everything he says is fucking perfect. Listen to that dude. Fucking champion. I'm just kidding. Of course, you know, there's obviously issues with him. But my point is this. Even when it comes to Ed Milet and Mark Singh, dude, don't believe everything I say.

10:27 Believe what you want to believe. Take what feels good to you, what resonates with you, what your intuition says is right for you because your reality is completely different than mine, is completely different than your best friends, your mom's, your dad's. So to tell somebody what they should be and what they should do is complete bullshit. And you taking advice from others, just accepting it at face value and saying, well, Mark sings really good with girls, so everything he says I should just follow. No, run everything I say through your filter.

10:56 That's what frame is. And what is frame control? It's the most important thing to get a woman attracted to you. If you have a weak frame and you're just a follower and you go with what everybody else says, those guys who you admire, those guys you want to be like, that is fundamentally weak in your own reality. So the entire purpose of this episode, and yes, even this podcast, is to be unapologetic. I don't agree with you, man. I'm going this way. I'm following my own lead.

11:23 And that's what I want this episode to motivate you to do. And some of you might be thinking that's the irony too, because Mark, you're telling me to believe you, yet you're telling me not to believe you. So what do I do? That's it. You choose. Believe me or not believe me. It's up to you. But if you do believe me, and frankly, I think you should, follow your own fucking lead, bro. Which either choosing to believe me or not believe me, you will be doing.

11:45 So no matter what, you're following your own lead. And that's what I respect. The fourth thing I want to talk about is how I, brother, am fundamentally a marketer. My entire purpose here as a coach, as a guy who's in the self-development niche, trying to make you better, my fundamental purpose, at least on paper, is to sell you something. What am I trying to sell you? My three-month coaching program. And here's what a lot of people do, not only in this space, but the money-making space, even the NLP space, the whatever space.

12:16 They give you a small piece of the puzzle and then leave you wanting more so that you buy their programs. Okay? Obviously, I'm going to sit here and tell you that I really try not to do that. And I think if you read my reviews, I think if you listen to any of my episodes, you'll see that I try to give way more than I ask for in return because that's the philosophy that my filter has decided is the best way to live life. But unfortunately, with a lot of marketers, and yes, even self-development gurus are essentially marketers, they want to sell you something.

12:48 So they give you a little piece of the puzzle and actually, and by the way, I've taken lots of marketing courses, part of the point is to leave you worse than when you first got there. That is literally taught to some marketers and some people do follow that. I do not. Whether or not you believe me, again, your filter, brother, you have to decide. But I fucking don't do that because I feel karmically that it's a bad move and I'm going to get economic butt rape if I do that.

13:13 That's what I really believe. So in my work, I try to give you as much as I possibly can without actually working with you one-on-one. And when I say that to you, I'm talking about NLP as well as some of my more advanced concepts. I need to know you. I need to talk to you. I need to understand your archetypes, schemas, traumas, belief systems, and meta programs in order for me to create a custom NLP package for you that's going to improve you. I can't do NLP really on this podcast because my best stuff, the creme de la creme shit needs to be customized.

13:46 So that's why I don't share a lot of my best shit on my podcast. But everything that I can share that could be applicable to the masses such as the strawberry fields gambit I gave you the other day, that's because I'm giving and I'm not just trying to give you a little piece of the puzzle. But that being said, there's a guy I follow who you may have heard of called Dan Locke. Dan Locke's a multimillionaire, genius marketer, and he says something that I chose to believe.

14:11 Now, I want to ask you if you want to choose to believe it. And that is, before you're making at least $200,000 a year, you should invest all your money into yourself. People ask me all the time, Mark, I got like 10 extra grand. Where should I put it? Should I put it in the stock market? Should I get Bitcoin? Should I do XYZ thing? And I always say, no, invest that shit in yourself. So I'm just telling you what I do. And if you want to take that on board, you can.

14:34 But brother, rather than cherry picking podcasts and getting these cheap PDFs and following people on YouTube and trying to improve yourself in these ways that honestly, you're not moving nearly as fast as you want to be moving, fucking invest in yourself. I am going to start investing into car washes and storage spaces. I don't know a lot about it, but I do have some extra cash flow that I want to put into a business that produces some extra income. So what I'm doing is I'm listening to podcasts.

15:02 I'm listening to say two to three podcasts of each person who I'm following, and then I'm going to choose the best person who I resonate with most. I'm going to fucking hire them to teach me directly. That's the way you do it because that's where you get the best secrets. That's where you fast track your success. And that's where real self-development happens, in my opinion. Now, am I trying to convince you to come join me in my program? Yeah, on some level I am, because honestly, I think it's the best fucking dating program that's ever been created.

15:30 And if you look at my reviews, all my clients agree. But more than that, I want you to get the success rather than being in the same place I was for years where I was getting nickel and dimed with little pieces of the puzzle and then never getting real success. So I agree with that statement. Until you're making more than $200,000 a year, invest every single penny that you have to invest in yourself. Choose the guru who you want to learn from and then put your money where your mouth is.

15:57 I've done it time and time again. And I'll tell you what, it's made me uber successful, not only with women, but also monetarily and most importantly, with my inner peace, because that too needs to be invested in. It wasn't until I began to run everything through my own filter that I was able to leverage the benefits that self-development can give you. So I want to tell you, brother, from here forward, it's your filter that matters because you're a completely different guy than I am. You're a different guy than your best friend, your parents.

16:28 And if your parents want you to be something and you don't want to, intuitively it doesn't resonate with you, then don't do it. Follow your own lead. You know intuitively exactly what you want to do. And if you don't yet, well, definitely don't do something that doesn't resonate with you. Don't do something that doesn't make you wake up in the morning with a smile on your face. Fucking do what you want because you have something inside of you that knows what you want. And that goes back to my episode about intuition.

16:56 Follow your intuition, brother. But most importantly, follow your own lead. When you come across a self-development, quote unquote, guru like me, don't believe everything I say because this is through my own scope of experience. This is through my own filter, which is different from yours. The way to get peace and happiness is to trust who you are deep inside yourself. Trust your intuition. Follow your own lead. Blaze a path up that fucking mountain that no man has ever walked before. That's all I got for you today, gentlemen.

17:28 I hope you got something positive out of this episode. Again, brothers, if you want to come work with me, if you think like, yeah, man, Mark's the dude who I want to work with, I trust this guy. I feel like he has my best interest in mind, which I completely do. I would love to meet you, man. Sign up on my website, coachmarksing.com. Fill in the quick application. Send it in. You and I will email back and forth a little bit. If I feel like I can at least 10 extra results with women, and that ain't no pie in the sky fucking bullshit promise.

17:55 I do it time and time and time again for all my clients, then you're going to get on a one hour free NLP consultation with my partner and wingman, Victor Lynch, to see, once again, if we can at least 10 extra results with women by curating all the information that I have about how to attract women, but perhaps more importantly, fixing the bullshit in your head. So if you want to get to that highest level, you know, obviously I think I'm the best coach out there. But also, man, like say you're like me and you want to start investing in XYZ thing.

18:27 Go find people who do that, the best people in the world, and then fucking hire them. Why wouldn't you do that? They have all the secrets. They're going to fast track you to success. I can't wait to hire somebody to teach me how to do these boring business investments so that I can continue to grow my net worth, not out of fear, but because abundance is who I am and it's who you are. Perhaps you agree with that one too. I do appreciate you listening, gentlemen.

18:51 Remember, I draw a podcast on Mondays and Thursdays, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.