Marcus Aurelius Anderson: Turning Adversity Into A Gift

“If you really want to know what you really want to do with your life, ask yourself if you woke tomorrow paralyzed from the neck down what you have wished you accomplished with your time.”
— Marcus Aurelius Anderson

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Marcus Aurelius Anderson is the bestselling author of "The Gift of Adversity," International Keynote Speaker, TEDx Speaker, Host of the #1 New and Noteworthy "Epic Achiever" Podcast, and Mindset Coach to CEO's, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs. 

While preparing to deploy with the U.S. Army, Marcus suffered a severe spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down. In an instant, he went from preparing for war on the battlefield to war within his own body and mind. 

After dying on the operating table twice, the surgeons saved his life but told him he'd never walk again.

Having no other option, Marcus started doing some brutally honest soul searching, looking for the lesson to be learned from his injury. Once he started seeing his Adversity as a gift instead of a curse, something miraculous began to happen...

Marcus now speaks, writes, and coaches others to overcome their own Adversities to actualize their personal definition of success and fulfill their definition of success.

Highlights from this conversation:

  • Being worthy of the name Marcus Aurelius

  • The power of mindset and seeking to execute because motivation is the simple part execution where people fall short.

  • The Power of a Crucible and turning Adversity into a gift

  • Don't cherry-pick your gratitude or love

  • The facets of leadership not talked about

Connect with Marcus Below:

Website: Marcus Anderson

Instagram: @marcusaureliusanderson 

Twitter: @the1realmarcus

Podcast: Conscious Millionaire Epic Achiever with host Marcus Aurelius Anderson

The Gift of Adversity | Marcus Aurelius Andersen | TEDxCoMo

Show Notes:

[00:05:04] Introduction And Marcus' Background

[00:06:14] Ric Elias - Podcast with Peter Attia and TED Talk

[00:07:09] Being Baked into Martial Art, Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, and Stoicism

[00:09:15] The Gravity of Marcus Aurelius and Being Worthy Of It 

[00:11:21] The First Fork - Chiropractor aka The Witch Doctor 

[00:13:50] Limited Capacity To Prioritize

[00:15:14] Why Marcus Choose to Join the Military

[00:24:04] "There is no way out but through." - Robert Frost 

[00:24:57] Being Older and Joining the Military and Coping With The Stress 

[00:26:02] How People Looked At Marcus In Boot Camp 

[00:27:17] Tenth Mountain Division

[00:29:21] Marcus' Philosophy 

[00:30:17] Most People Don't Execute: This is why Gary Vee gives you is secret to success.

[00:31:44] The People Who We Idolize Today All Started With Nothing 

[00:32:15] Be 1% Percent Better Everyday

[00:33:14] Back to Deployment Training Upstate New York

[00:35:53] Waking Up And Realizing He Can't Move

[00:37:00] Getting Prepped For Surgery

[00:39:03] Hearing That He May Not Walk Again

[00:40:10] Waking Up After Surgery 

[00:42:04] Coming to Terms With Being Paralyzed 

[00:42:32] Anger and Lashing Out

[00:44:01] Turning Back to Philosophy and Rejecting It At First

[00:44:48]  Soul Searching Begins

[00:45:05] Memento Mori 

[00:45:52] What Would Hope To Accomplish?

[00:46:37] The Power of Gratitude 

[00:49:02] Finding Something To Be Grateful For

[00:51:07] Getting the First Feeling Back

[00:52:15] Start with What Pisses You Off

[00:53:10] Between Stimulus and Response

"Between stimulus and response, there is a gap. And within that gap, there is everything" - Viktor Frankl 

[00:55:09] What Was The Internal Dialogue Like?

[00:55:40] Don't Over Sharpen The Blade

"If you continually sharpen the blade, it goes dull." - Taoist Proverb

[00:57:00] You Need To Have Multiple Gears As A Leader

[00:58:44] Your Job As A Leader 

[00:59:16] Don't Fall Into The Tips And Tricks Trap

[01:00:30] Continue to Grow

[01:03:01] Cross Pollination of Ideas and Intellectual Enclaves

[01:04:34] Humble Beginnings

[01:05:29] Putting Yourself Out There

[01:07:30] Training the Body Also Trains The Mind

[01:09:16] You Have To Be Before You Become

[01:10:36] Renaissance Man and Samurai

[01:12:00] Favorite Or Most Gifted Books

War of Art by Steven Pressfield 

Thick Face, Black Heart by Chin-Ning Chu

[01:15:54] Advice For A College-Aged Person

[01:18:54] What Are You Searching For

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Full Transcript Episode 78 - Marcus Aurelius Anderson

[00:04:37] Erich: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Feeding Curiosity. My name is Eric Wenzel as always, and today we're actually joined by Marcus Anderson. Hi, Marcus

[00:04:45] Marcus: Hey, how are you? 

[00:04:48] Erich: Good. This is awesome. Friday for me up here in the cold Chicago, Midwest.  This is awesome for just taking the time to sit down and have a conversation with me.

[00:04:57] If you want to just kinda jump into your background or at least professionally and then we can take it from there. 

[00:05:04] Introduction And Marcus' Background

[00:05:04] Marcus:  Absolutely. My full name is Marcus Aurelius Anderson. I'm an international keynote speaker, best selling author of the book The Gift of Adversity. And then I'm also a coach and consultant for high level CEOs , multi-million dollar companies.

[00:05:17] And I also have my own podcast. It's the number one new and noteworthy podcast called, conscious millionaire, Epic achiever. And the commonality. And all the things that I talk about is this idea that it, adversity is a gift. So even with my podcast, yes, I have people on there that have endured tremendous amounts of hardship, but what I have found in my experience, and those of others.

[00:05:39] Is it the people that have reached the pinnacle of their professional or their personal lives are the ones that have been able to endure and actually propel themselves from what that diversity is and use it as a catalyst to make them better. So that's that's what I do. I'm on the road speaking a lot.

[00:05:55] I'm on. you know, on shows a lot or doing shows a lot as well. So, I'm really, really consider myself very, very lucky to have a, an opportunity to do this now. As we know with my background, I, there was a point where, to me this is a second chance, so I feel very much this. Need to sort of give back, and I feel very compelled to do that.

[00:06:14] Erich:  So yeah, that's how I found your, your, your story at least was through initially your TEDx talk, as you'd mentioned. And you know, coming through a story as intense as that. And obviously Ted talk is very condensed for a story of that nature. it reminds me of like. I recently listened to a separate podcast was Ric Eilas, who was on the flight that landed in the Hudson river and he came out with a really short Ted talk along the same lines.

[00:06:40] It was like five things I learned. Well, my plane crashed and basically he said the same words. It's like I got to reevaluate my life as I thought I was going to die. And then he didn't obviously, and it sounds really similar to that and the way at which like these stoicism, like it's like. Sense of calm that you really portray when you say these things, which is really interesting.

[00:07:03] Is that something that's always been with you or is this because of the experience that you had with, for preparing to unpack next?

[00:07:09] Being Baked into Martial Art, Zen, Taoism, Buddhism and Stoicism 

[00:07:09]Marcus: It's a, it's interesting. I've, I've been doing martial arts since I was 11 years old. Okay. So, I'm very much had that, this idea of Zen and Taoism and Buddhism and Stoicism was all real baked into me.

[00:07:22] My, my grandfather named any Marcus, or really because he. I was born on his birthday and when my father called him, he says, you know, dad, it's, you know, we have a child. And he said that he wanted him to name him. And he says, well, I want him to name him something strong. Like Marcus. He says like Marcus Aurelius?

[00:07:40] He says like Marcus Aurelius. He said, well, no, no. That's what we want to do. So having that moniker branded upon you is very. Interesting because as I child you, there's no way for, you're really fathom what that means. But for me, what happened was I had that kind of in my DNA, as it were, and I've been doing martial arts, like I said, my life.

[00:07:59] But as you get older and as you go through high school and you get through college and you started experiencing parts of the real world, some of that stuff becomes clouded and some of it becomes, you know, a little bit more watered down. And so. My experience and my kind of rebirth in the military really was my opportunity to reengage in that.

[00:08:22] That still explained that that warrior spirit that that I always had, but I hadn't been able to cultivate as much as I'd like to. I was in chiropractic school when I was 38 and I was about a year and a half away from finishing my doctorate. But, you know, like I say in the TEDx talk, in this life, there's what we hope will happen.

[00:08:41] There's what we fear will happen. And then there's what actually happens. 

[00:08:46] Erich: Wow. So for, for the choice of going to the military, that's an even, I mean, just having a name like yours does, where I guess maybe when you were born, it wasn't so prevalent as it is today with how kind of resurgence of stoic philosophy, but has to put a weight on your shoulders to some degree, at least as you start to understand what the name means for certain people.

[00:09:09]Did that weigh on you up until you had the chance to reconnect to it? 

[00:09:15] The Gravity of Marcus Aurelius and Being Worthy Of It 

[00:09:15] Marcus: Yeah. The, there's a lot of gravity in the name and. As they would explain it to me when I was younger, they said, you know, he was an emperor. Well, I didn't know what that was at eight years old. So the closest thing that they could get was like semblance of a King, or even a president, which even then I understood that, you know, here I am, this little boy.

[00:09:34] There's no way I'm that. Nor that I think that I ever would be. So as a young age, I just went by the name Marc M A R C for a long time, because even Marcus seemed to have so much. Momentum into the rest of the name. So it was very difficult to really get to that. And I didn't even start using Marcus until I'm in high school and college.

[00:09:57] But then, when I got back and when I got into the military and after I kind of had an expat experience, when I was given a second chance, I figured that I should just embrace it for what it

[00:10:07] is. And again, the timing. things unfold in interesting ways. So the timing was good, but at the same time, it was a, I'm not worthy of the name, but I endeavor, but I do everything in my life to be worthy and endeavor to, to, to have that name means something, and to bring it, you know, what it should.

[00:10:28] Erich: Yeah. 

[00:10:29] It's definitely something that's. Not everyone has to deal with it, right. Most of the time people just have a name and it's just their name, right?

 [00:10:37] It doesn't have an associated meaning to it, and. That is something I, it's hard to contextualize how to, you know, grapple with something like that. And one of the things that is a common theme with this podcast is because I have a lot of friends of mine who are connected to the military.

[00:10:52] And in many ways it is a crucible or a rebirth in some ways. Was it the military of choice for you going right out of high school? Was that, 

[00:11:02] Marcus:  no, I, I deal with a lot of people do. I went to high school and I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that. You know, I'm 47 so my father, his answer was that he had a degree, he worked in petroleum, and his answer was, okay, the more education you have, the more of a chance you have an opportunity professionally.

[00:11:21] The First Fork - Chiropractor aka The Witch Doctor 

[00:11:21] So he was constantly, you know, get a four year degree and then try to find something to specialize in. So I kicked around in different ideas. I initially was thinking about getting a degree in philosophy. Then I thought about getting a degree in criminal justice. I was preparing for a fight. As a matter of fact, an MMA fight and I'd injured my shoulder and I was trying to still work out and lift weights. And when I'm in the gym, there's a guy that I can see kind of watching my, my posture and my lack of range of motion when I'm trying to lift weights. And he comes over to me and he says, how long has that been hurting you?

[00:11:57] And he strikes up a dialogue and he gives me a card and he's, he's a chiropractor. And so I kind of smirk and I was like, Oh, you know, a witch doctor a bunch of smoke and mirrors right? And, and he looks at me and he says, come see me Monday and if I don't fix you, you don't have to pay for it. And I said, I'll see you Monday morning doc.

[00:12:15] So I go in there, he examines me, examines my spine, takes X rays, does the full workup, and. Adjusting my spine and then my shoulder, the humorous, I mean bone there had gone AI, we call anterior and inferior, and it's just from throwing thousands and thousands of punches. So it was not completely dislocated.

[00:12:35] It was sub dislocated. Sublux is what it means in Greek. So he adjusted it. It sounded like a gun going off. 

[00:12:42] Erich: Wow. 

[00:12:42] Marcus: And almost immediately, I had. Pretty much 80% of full range of motion. And so I'm just looking at him flabbergasted. I'm like, okay, how did you know to do that? How'd you know what it was? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:12:56] And he says, you know, I'm going to make a lunch, let's get some lunch. We'll talk about it. And he explained to me like this holistic mentality of chiropractic and philosophical ideals, and they're very much aligned with what the martial arts had always done. And again, let stoicism as well, all these ideas of plenty with nature, not fighting it, trying to understand what it's showing you.

[00:13:15] And. So he said, you know, you would be a great chiropractor. He says, you're physical, you're in great shape, you're, you know, you have the right philosophical ideology. And I said, well, that sounds awesome, doc. So how long does it take? Is it like a weekend seminar or something? He says, no, it's an actual doctorate.

[00:13:32] And he asked me when I was majoring in, so literally everything that I had taken up to that point, I was going to have to just essentially. Let that kind of rot on the vine as it were, and I'll go one eighty and start taking chemistry and anatomy and biology and all these sciences that I really had no interest in.

[00:13:50] Limited Capacity To Prioritize

[00:13:50] But in order to get to this higher level, it was a part of the idea for me. What happened was, and I hope everybody listens to this, we can only prioritize so many things in our lives. I'd been married for a couple of years and when I started going to chiropractic school in Kansas City, I eventually transferred to the school and at life university in Atlanta.

[00:14:15] And again, I lost a lot of my credits because I transferred schools. But again, in my mind is worth it because this is an investment and this is the best school in the world. This is where I should be. But what I had done is. I was taking 25 hours of doctorate level courses.

[00:14:32] In addition to that, I was taking, I was bartending about 40 hours a week. So there was very little sleep for me. There's very little rest and you know, four hours of sleep at night. It's not good for us, obviously. We know. And then what little free time I did have whatever crumbs were left from that main meal I would put into my relationship.

[00:14:53] In my mind it was because, well, if I continue to do the right things for the right reasons, a man, this was for us to, you know, have a family. I only have a year and a half till I'm done. I can just push through this. But what happened was because I prioritize those things and maybe inadvertently deprioritize my relationship.

[00:15:14] Why Marcus Choose to Join the Military

[00:15:14] So I come home one day, you know, She wants a divorce and my marriage falls apart, and I take full responsibility for that because that was my fault. not long after that. My great uncle, who was my biggest male role model outside of my father, he had been in special forces. He had served in Vietnam.

[00:15:31] He was in long range reconnaissance control, you know, drop behind enemy lines. All the stuff that you read about, he had passed away. And this happened. I'm 38 at this time. So that was a very devastating one, two punch from life. And I had always had an excuse not to join the military. And here I am, 38 years old, no family.

[00:15:58], if I'm willing to active as in the military. And I knew that my window was closing. So I go out and during my, my great uncle's funeral, he was, he had all this incredible dollars. So I'm there, I'm a pallbearer and they have a full bird Colonel that eulogizes him, and then they have man after man that goes up.

[00:16:22] And he talks about how he did this and now he's saved this person and how he changed this and basically each person going up to talking about how much power he had. And I was pretty good. I kept it all together until they started playing taps. And then I'm sitting next to my great aunts and they're playing taps and I can like, so my body starts to shake and they start folding the flag up into the triangle.

[00:16:51] And the color guard comes over and they walk, they March around, athletically, slowly, right face, and then they handle the flag to her and they say, thank you for your sacrifice, where you're sorry for your loss. And I just lost it.  so at that point, I wanted to see if I could join. So then that following week I go talk to her recruiter to see what the age limit is, and he says, 35 and so I go to turn on my heels, leave.

[00:17:21] He said, how old are you? And I said 38 and he says, we'll come back and talk to me. And a very gruffly. I planned to him that, listen, I mean, if this isn't going to happen, don't even waste my time. And he's, you know, what's your motivation? I explained to him, kind of what I explained to you. He asked me if I was smart and I said, well, I'm talking to a recruiter at 38 years old.

[00:17:40] You told me if that sounds smart to you. But what he was alluding to was he was asking, how, how do I think I would do on an ASVAB? Do you want to ask that?. So I already had a degree in human biology, and then I was earning that doctorate, so I didn't, I crushed the ASVAB. He asked me how physically, you know, he says, it looks like you're in good shape.

[00:17:59]I said, well, I'm in good shape for a civilian, but I don't know if the military should conditions like. I did the PT test for them and I mapped it out for my age range. So here I am, 38 years old. Natural leader, really intelligent as far as the military is concerned, in great shape as far as the military is concerned.

[00:18:17] When he goes to tell me, he says, well, with the army, the great thing about this is you get to choose your MOS. You get to choose your degree. I mean, you do get to choose what, whatever job you're qualified for, you can actually choose it. And he goes through and he pulls out two or three papers. I mean, you know, it has like all these incredible degrees.

[00:18:34] I mean, all these incredible MOS is that I can choose from. And like the very first page is like all these things where I'll get all this advanced education, you know, I'll be top secret level clearance. I'll be allowed to have this, this experience for four years in the military. When I go into the civilian sector, I'll have the GI bill.

[00:18:53] In addition to that, I'll have four years of experience that I can go directly into this pain. You know. Occupation if I so choose, and I say, yeah, sounds great, but I know what I want to do already. And he says, Oh, what do you want to do? And I said, imagery. And he sort of chuckles and it's like, you don't get it.

[00:19:15] He says, you can do whatever you want. And he goes back and forth and explains to me all these States different things. And I said, you know what, Sergeant, you don't get it. This is what I want. And if I don't get this, then I'm just going to walk out. So again, we go back and forth for awhile. Eventually he just grabs the age waiver.

[00:19:34] And he signs it and he says, Hey man, it's your life. And he slides the age waiver over to me and I sign it. And six months later I'm getting off the bus at Fort Benning, Georgia and infantry school getting yelled at by guys and Brown house. They're younger than me, and competing and competing against guys that are half my age, literally, guys that are young enough to be my son.

[00:19:52] And that was my crucible. That was my gift of adversity, or at least the beginning stages of it. And that was my opportunity to really. You know, see, Hey, did I make a mistake? Is my body gonna hold out? How am I going to do against guys that are half my age? And, but the advantage that I had was my mindset, my mentality.

[00:20:12] And I knew that it was a game. I knew that if my body didn't fail me, we sent the first couple of weeks because this is in 2011. So this is back when infantry school was very, Let's just say demanding. Let's just say that they, they were not watering down anything and they, there was a lot of push there, so they want to weed out as many people as they can as quickly as they can.

[00:20:34] So there were younger guys than me that were breaking their ankles during, you know, ruck marches or getting, getting compression fractures in the pelvis because they weren't conditioned for the. Impact weight that we are carrying, et cetera. You know, people breaking the discipline, their shoulders are breaking their risks when they fall down on it, you know, doing things.

[00:20:52] And so if that can happen to them, then the parallel could absolutely happen to me. But after a couple of weeks, I really started, you know, my body and I train like crazy before I got into it because in my mind I expect it to be very much like, you know, full metal jacket. So that's what I was preparing myself for.

[00:21:08] So physically, once I was there and I saw that my body wasn't going to fail me. My belief just skyrocketed and I exploded through the rest of the training. 

[00:21:18] Erich: Wow. That's, that's a huge jump. And especially just being able to, to have the decisiveness to say, this is what I'm going to do without any sort of, you know.

[00:21:31] Usually around. By the time you hit like 35 or 40 people kind of say, Nope, the body can't really handle this anymore. And to have that amount of decision that, okay, every by all measures I looks like I'm fine and I can kind of do this and then to then be thrown in with, you know, people who are half your age is, it has to be.

[00:21:51] It's such a culture shock, not to mention being yelled at by people, half your agents. 

[00:21:57] Marcus: It's definitely a test and humility and yeah, and that's, and that's what it was. I mean, you have to understand that for anything that we want to do, there was only one degree of commitment, and that is, and that is total.

[00:22:10] So many people now want to do this for a little while and then they don't put enough time into it, and then all of a sudden they don't feel the rewards. So they skipped out and the jumps, the next thing, and they jumped the next thing. Through the martial arts and throughout my life, I was in a generation that grew up without, I was the last generation that grew up without the internet, without a cell phone.

[00:22:30] I didn't get those until I was in my mid twenties so I'm very grateful to have had that work ethic, that that ethos of self control, perseverance. Indomitable spirit, humility, loyalty, conviction of victory. All those things were put into me. And that really is what allowed me to have that advantage when I was facing those, those hardships.

[00:22:51] Because again, when you're there and you're not getting a lot of sleep or food or water, you really start asking yourself, what man? Did I make a mistake? But here's the beauty. But the beauty of it is, is this. Adversity doesn't offer you any other choice. [00:23:07] And when there's no other choice, the choice was simple for me.

[00:23:11] It was about committing. It was not trying to do something half and half measure. And I talked about it with everything that I had. So that way if something did happen, I was like, well, I will never wonder what if I know that I gave everything I could if I didn't make the cut or if I got recycled or if I got broke.

[00:23:25] And that was it. And, At least at that point, you know, that's what I did, I was able to push through, so I consider myself very lucky to have had that. 

[00:23:34] Erich: It reminds me of the idea, you know, there's no way out, but through, and it's what's going to break first. You know?

[00:23:43] Marcus: Exactly and that's what it all is. And for better or for worse, that's what's really served me in my life. 

[00:23:49] Erich: That's completely fascinating. Cause actually around that time to kind of date myself, I graduated high school in 2011 

[00:23:55] Marcus: Oh wow. 

[00:23:56] Erich: Yeah. So I'm 26 currently, and a lot of my friends joined the military, but the Marines specifically in 2012 so they had like four or five of us that kind of all left around.

[00:24:09] You know, we were all 18 and then it was like, all right guys, see you later. I had one summer and now I'm going off to boot camp. And so I got to see how that changed all of them. And so yes, the four years, especially the bootcamp phase of it, where they come back and they are very much different people for a little while until they decompress.

[00:24:27] And so. It's putting a whole different layer of context around, you know, someone with a lot more experience going into a situation like that. Did you, [00:24:37] how did you fare like for yourself? Because I feel like when you're younger it would probably be a lot more, I don't know. I don't know. And now I'm like jumping back and forth, but it just seems like an easier to manage if you have a little bit more years under the belt to kind of deal with the stress or at least partitioned it in a way.

[00:24:57] Being Older and Joining the Military and Coping With The Stress 

[00:24:57] Marcus: It absolutely does. I mean, as we were mentioning before, you take a person in 2011 who's never been away from their phone, more social media. that is a big shock. You take somebody who's 19 years old who has never lived away from home, and you're thrown into a Bay of people that there's three, you know, there's another 200 people in there with you, and there's absolutely no rest.

[00:25:19] There's absolutely no privacy. There's absolutely no. Relief. Again, these are a lot of stresses being thrown at people, but they do. You have to do that because especially back then and the infantry, they wanted to figure out quickly who was going to breakand the more people that they can break into an infantry school, the less they have to worry about that person breaking under combat because and infantry school people will still die.

[00:25:45] People died in my class because people broke or because people didn't do the right thing. However, less men will die in combat if you can get them weeded out now than when they're in the heat of it. Then when they're in Afghanistan, in the mountains without air support. Right? Yeah. So that's why it's so important.

[00:26:02] How People Looked At Marcus In Boot Camp 

[00:26:02] And for me, like I said, I knew it was a game. You know, I had lived some life. I lived on my own quite, you know, I was married. I was, I had gone through quite a bit. So, and in the military it was interesting because people looked at me, either they looked at me with a little bit of like. I don't want to say respect, a little bit of reverence, or they looked at me like I was a person who completely screwed up my life and I ran away to join the military as elastic.

[00:26:26] So there's no in between. There was really no in between. And the beauty of it was both people were right, if you want to look at it that way. So, but, the nice thing was in the infantry. you pretty much get what you earn and it's very much this idea of, okay, you, you beat everybody in combatives yesterday, or you had a perfect, you know, a shooting record yesterday.

[00:26:50] How good are you today? How good are you at this moment? And that's, I've always taken that and brought it into the civilian sector with me after I got out because. That's very much a litmus test. It is not going to forgive you if you're not able to make the cut.

[00:27:07] Erich: So after, after bootcamp, where do you, where do you get either stationed or a set off?

[00:27:13] I don't know if there was really active combat. Too much after that, 

[00:27:17] Tenth Mountain Division

[00:27:17]Marcus: 2011 there was, I was stationed at upstate New York at 10th mountain. So 10th mountain at that time was the most deployed union in the history of the military. they're from, if you've ever heard of the movie or the book called Black Hawk Down.

[00:27:30] Yep. That was the unit that I was with. and no, I was not with them at the time, obviously that was a long time ago. And then, But everybody that was there, every soldier that was there, they were very much they, they had that warrior ethos. They very much wanted to push themselves and even being pushed as hard as I was and feeling like I was, you know, stronger and more resolute after I left infantry school. 

[00:27:54] When I got to my unit and I started to learn from men who would take what you were learning in the ranger handbook, and then saying, okay, this is what it looks like. This is what it really looks like in combat. And then giving you examples of what happened and showing you how these pitfalls and then understanding that if I don't have it the right amount of ammo, or if I'm not squared away, or if I forget a piece of equipment then men die.

[00:28:18] That was a very big reality check, and that's what I needed as well because I knew a lot about combat and a hand to hand component with maybe one or two opponents after me. But war is a whole other thing. And if you go into this idea, Epictetus says, you cannot teach a man something that he feels that he already knows.

[00:28:36] So I went in with a very empty cup, as they would say, and Zen, and they just want to absorb as much of this knowledge as I possibly could. Plus I read as much as I could about this sort of combat. Even before I went in, she said that I would have some sort of contacts as opposed to just going there like a blank slate and then hoping that somebody could tell me exactly what to do because you never know what's going to happen and they hate about

[00:28:58] Erich: It's an interesting mindset you bring to these things. Having this combination of Eastern philosophy that you were able to wrap into a lot of [00:29:07] this very deliberate practice based learning. It sounds like you, you had like a growth mindset, but even before way before the book even ever appeared on shelves 

[00:29:18] Marcus: before Carol Dweck was talking about it

[00:29:21] Marcus' Philosophy 

[00:29:21] To me, truth is truth, irrespective of source or timeframe. So to me, philosophy is about truth, but the truth was the same from a stoic standpoint, from his own standpoint, from a Taoism standpoint, it's just that it was a regional component. So stoicism was in a certain part of the world, or in part of that timeframe.

[00:29:40] Taoism was feeling the same thing at a different timeframe and a different part of the world, Zen, et cetera. And the reality is. Truth will rise to the top regardless. And that's the beauty of it. And that's why we have a lot of cliches and people are like, I've heard that before. Well, the reason why you hear it before is because it's true, and it's said that throughout the centuries, and it will continue being said after we're gone.

[00:30:03] So. If you hear something from somebody and they say, Hey, maybe you should meditate. Hey, maybe you should be intentional, and you're like, yeah, yeah, I've heard that before, but you're not applying it. That's why you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it before because you're not applying. That's why you're like, yeah, I've heard that.

[00:30:17] Most People Don't Execute 

[00:30:17] It's like, no, hearing is not not enough. Bruce Lee says, no is not enough. We must act willingness, not enough. We must do. And that's exactly what we have now, where everybody's consuming content and reading books or listening to audible or listening to podcasts or watching videos or buying courses, but very few people are executing.

[00:30:36] If you've ever heard Gary Vee say this, he says, I don't mind telling you exactly what I do to be successful because I know that 99% of you will not execute. Now, here's the other part that he doesn't say that last 1% that is willing to execute, do not have his experience, his network, or his gross value, or it is gross.

[00:30:53] Like worth. So he's very secure in telling you what's going on because he knows that unless you're literally right next to him and in that area, you're never going to get where he's at. And that's, he doesn't say it to be arrogant. He says it to be very straight forward and say, listen, I know that most of you want to execute.

[00:31:11] So that's what a lot of it is. 

[00:31:13] Erich: I mean, I resonate with that and so many levels as as like. Part of doing this whole podcast, that experiment that is Feeding Curiosity is, is taking my experience or what I'm working on in like the mindfulness is one of those things that I would talk about a lot because as a type a type person, it's really hard to switch off or go to a lower gear and just give yourself, you know, a couple of minutes or even 10 breaths. And at a [00:31:37] young age to kind of have the awareness of like, Oh yeah, maybe it's okay to kind of chill is one of those things that is always there.

[00:31:44] The People Who We Idolize Today All Started With Nothing 

[00:31:44] And it's also like the idea, like you're bringing up, Gary Vee is, you know. The people we idolize today. You know, Elon Musks’ and the Jeff Bezos’ of the world. There was a point in their lives that they were 22 and everything didn't seem as secure as it is today for them. And so part of it is to highlight that part of the story, at least for myself and for those around me who are. You know, in the same cohort, but also learn from, you know, the elders or the people who've lived it before us in a world that we can't even imagine anymore to some degree.

[00:32:15] Be 1% Percent Better Everyday

[00:32:15]I couldn't agree more with about the execution part. And it's kind of like, if a lot of like the coaching or the mindset broadly speaking stuff for me is like, if we can help others be 1% better every day. Then, you know, one year from now, you're a 365% better than you were a year ago. And so, and so you pay dividends forward not only for yourself because you feel better and more fulfilled about who you are, but you also, everyone around you pays off.

[00:32:47] And it doesn't mean like you're doing it just for work, but it's like all of it. Like your life, your family, your friends, your whoever, whatever it is that you want to orienting towards. And so I couldn't agree more with it. 

[00:33:01] Marcus:  Absolutely. 

[00:33:01] Erich: ] And so we kind of get back to your story. So from bootcamp, where does the story of your crucible start to shift?

[00:33:10] Like where the challenging, or at least the reset. 

[00:33:14] Back to Deployment Training Upstate New York

[00:33:14] Marcus:  And the reboot began. So, so I'm upstate New York, and that's 20 miles South of the Canadian border, or right next to Lake. You know, we're close to Lake Ontario and the winters up there. I know that the Chicago winters are brutal, but up there it's even more real because you get the mountain effect.

[00:33:31] You know, you get the winds, you get the the Lake effect, which is a humidity. So there's more precipitation. There are, you know, rains and snows many more days than it is nice and sunny to say the least. So being out there, I, as soon as I hit the ground, as soon as I get to my station, they were like, get ready to pack your trash.

[00:33:50] We're leaving, which is their way of saying we're going to be deploying soon. So here I am trying to just get as much information as I can and prepare myself mentally for this. This is the biggest challenge in my life and what happened was we were just training our guts out, just turning training, training.

[00:34:07] You would go out in the field for two weeks, which meant that you would be out away from civilization. You're out in the middle of nowhere in the boonies, and you're in warlike conditions. So you're, you know, eating MREs, you're drinking, you know, whatever water you can kind of get out there and you're trying to get yourself prepared and invariably, they, they pushed our deployment back.

[00:34:27] But in the military, if you have extra time to train, cause you're not let off the gas, you click it up a notch or two. And so we just kept pushing, kept pushing. Well, they pushed the deployment back one more time. And then, so in 2012 when I'm preparing to deploy, I wake up one morning and I cannot rule out a bed.

[00:34:49] My neck will articulate a little bit, but my body will not move. And leading up to that, I had a lot of numbness in my hands and my feet, but I just attributed that to being out in the negative 20 degree weather. You know, you're, you're doing ruck marches with half of your body weight. They would call them 50% so you would do a 50% ruck March.

[00:35:06] So I was one 80 so I had 90 pounds on my back. I've got all my plate male body armor on. You're in your snow gear, it's negative 20 degrees, or you're on the snow, you're going 25 miles, you have a gas mask on, you're carrying your weapon, and then you're actually jogging. So that sounds extreme for civilian, but honestly, that's what you have to do because if I'm not in condition when we get to Afghanistan, people die period.

[00:35:35] So people that think that they're motivated to train, try to put that in there and see if that helps you get a little bit more out of your workout. But the idea was that's what we were doing. But when I went to roll out of bed that morning. At first, I actually chuckled to myself, I was like, old man sore.

[00:35:53] Waking Up And Realizing He Can't Move

[00:35:53] Cause at that point I'm 39 I'm getting ready to 40 in a few days. And then I realize this is not just a fluke. So the chiropractor in me kicks back and I immediately do a quick email on  myself and I realized that this is either a temporary, you know, hiccup or this is a serious neurological.

[00:36:15] Situation and clearly it was, luckily for me, there was someone who was going to be knocking on my door that morning at 6:00 AM anyway, they knocked on the door. I yell, said the door. And as you can tell, I'm not really the guy that jokes around. So if I'm telling you that I can't move, and they're asking me, am I serious?

[00:36:31] I'm like, yeah, I'm serious. I'm going to reason, some choice language. They get the door down. They grabbed me and we're on our way to the hospital. And It sounds silly. We were talking about mindset, but as a soldier, I just think of my own team, so I was a team leader now, so in my mind, even wherever they had me on the gurney and they are running down the, the, the hospital halls, just like you see in the movies where they're shining lights in your eyes and they're poking and prodding you and they're trying to, they're talking about you like you're not there.

[00:37:00] Getting Prepped For Surgery

[00:37:00] I'm, in my mind, I'm like, I hope this doesn't take long. They can just give me a shot or something because I've got men dependent on me and  we were ready to deploy. But, they get down to the MRI, they roll in to tell me not to move. That was easy and I couldn't move anyway. They, they put me into a holding room and then they come back a few minutes later and, Then it's like, well, we're going to go ahead and prep you. And I said, probably me for what? And she's like, for surgery, silly. And again, at that point I'm just saying, you know, I'm, I'm acting in my mind. I thought that there was a way that I could,

[00:37:39] I was like, do I really have to do this? Or whatever. She's like, listen, see how hard it is for you to breathe right now is because your diaphragm isn't firing because the part of your neck. It actually controls your respiration. It shut down, and that's why you can't move. So if we don't operate on you soon, you're going to die.

[00:37:54] So, yeah, that was sort of a non negotiable. So get down to the hospital operating room, there's about a dozen people outside the room. I literally say, wow, what are you guys doing here? They all kind of chuckle and they say, we're here for you, which doesn't make me feel any better because now that means that if it takes 12 people to make sure that I'm going to make it through this thing, it's a, it's going to be a long road.

[00:38:18] They explained to me that. You know, we have an anesthesiologist, we have a backup anesthesiologist we have a nurse, we have a backup nurse. We have two primary surgeons. We have two. You know, potential surgeons is something happened, yada, yada, yada. Which makes me feel a little bit better. And the neurologist, I asked him what happened with my neck.

[00:38:34] And he's explaining to me in like civilian terms, and I started speaking to him and like sort of chiropractic terms, it's like, so you're going to do a complete discectomy to remove the debris, then you're going to completely ankle O C five and C six, is that correct? With  titanium? And he's like, how do you know that?

[00:38:48] And I was like, that's not really what we should be talking about right now. And, and I said, so what you're telling me is the disc ruptured and exploded and it's pushing into my spinal cord. That's why I can't walk. That makes sense. So as soon as they do all this and they remove everything, I should be able to walk again.

[00:39:03] Hearing That He May Not Walk Again

[00:39:03] Right. And it's quiet and it's crickets, and that's not what you want to hear when you're getting ready to go under the knife. And they said, well, you know, there's a lot of damage to your spine. And so now I'm starting to get scared and angry, and I'm like, what do you mean there's a lot of damage to my spine?

[00:39:21] Well, what does that mean there's going to be, and the drops, it's like, well, you sound like you know what's going on so you know that there's no way that you're going to really get through this without some sort of damage. So now I'm just living and I'm yelling and everything and they're like, listen, just trying to calm down, which, and the history of anybody being mad, calm down does not people down.

[00:39:39] It's actually like putting gasoline on the fire. And finally the nurse is like, listen, just put this over your, your mouth. I mean, we're going to put this gas mask over your mouth and just count from a hundred and I just tried to relax as much as I could. And it was like y'all was on it. It was almost like when you're.

[00:40:00] You're on a roller coaster and you're clicking up and you're at the very top and it's getting ready to come over the edge. That's how it feels, but it's your entire life. 

[00:40:10] Waking Up After Surgery 

[00:40:10] So, go under. It's very cold and very dark for it seems like a second. It seems like an eternity. I'll wake up in the ICU. I'm in a neck brace. So now what movement I do have is completely arrested. I can't even move my neck around and I'm still paralyzed and the nurse sees me wake up and she's like, welcome back to the land of the living Mr. Anderson. Surgeon comes in and sits at the foot of the bed because I still can't move my neck.

[00:40:34] And it says in a very congratulatory tone. Well, you know, we lost you there for a minute. I didn't know what he meant. I'm like, how do you lose me 180 pound guy? And he says, no you flatlined. We lost you a few times. He said, and so I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. And he says, listen, the good news is you get to live to tell the tale.

[00:40:58] The bad news is this is what you're stuck with.  and, you know, again, just because you remembered, like in less than 12 hours, I've gone from going to bed, sore thinking I'm going to wake up the next day and do squats and deadlifts to waking up not able to move, trying to wrap my head around what's going on, and I've just gone through the surgery.

[00:41:20] It felt like a bad dream. And I'm like, well, is there any, any chance? He said, listen, he says, if it was going to happen, it will happen today because as soon as we take the pressure off your spine, it should release all of those that are electrical interference. But he says, but  can you move right now? And I was like, no.

[00:41:40] He said, well, you know, I don't want to give you, it would be irresponsible to give you hope is what he said. So he walks out. So the soldier in me takes over, and I'm like, well, he just said I died, and I got over that. So, you know, I should be able to take it over this, this not being able to walk saying so I was in classic stages of denial and I was in the ICU for a week.

[00:42:04] Coming to Terms With Being Paralyzed 

[00:42:04] And then once they come and get me in, they take me back to my unit. That's whenever it becomes very apparent that this is not just something that I can wish away and hope gets better. So, that was when I started going through and my birthday was that week also. So I turned 40 years old. So, you know, everybody else when they're 40, they're looking, looking at their life and they're looking at their, their family, and they're happy and they've got this incredible career.

[00:42:32] Anger and Lashing Out

[00:42:32] And I'm, I'm 40 years old and I've committed my life to one thing, and that has been completely pulled out from underneath me. And I'm looking at myself thinking, what the hell do I do? You know? And that was the beginning of, I went through of people when they're angry, they're, they're angry at the lash out of people around them, but they're actually angry at themselves for something.

[00:42:57] Right? They're angry because they don't feel like they're actualizing their potential or whatever the case may be. So for me, I was angry at everyone around me, but I was mostly angry at myself because I realized that I had wasted a lot of time. I had wasted a lot of opportunities. I waste a lot of talent.

[00:43:14] They say, you don't know what you have until it's gone. But that's not really true. We know what we have issues that we assume that we will always have it, and that's what I had done. So at 40 years old, I'm broke, divorced, bedridden, paralyzed, trying to figure out where my life went wrong. And that's when I'm starting to become very, very angry and does that, the definition of depression is anger that is directed inwards. So I became incredibly depressed, as you can imagine. I was to a point where I was literally suicidal, but I couldn't even act on it because of my physicality. 

[00:43:54] So that's when I had to do a lot of really, really deep soul searching, and we were talking about philosophy.

[00:44:01] Turning Back to Philosophy and Rejecting It At First

[00:44:01] Right. So yeah. In my mind, I have coming back all these little equips, all these little Zen things, all these sayings, all this Taoism stuff, and frankly, just sound like a bunch of flowery BS because that's what sounds great and it sounds fantastic on a quote or a meme, or when you're reading it in a book, but when you're in it, you don't want to hear that.

[00:44:24] When you're in it, it's easy for you to say, Oh yeah, it's easy for you to say, tell me that you know, adversity is a gift or that you know. Any of this stuff. It's not what you want to hear. Yeah. So I went through a very dark phase of not wanting to talk to anybody, not wanting to do anything. Obviously, it would prop me up in the bed and turn on Netflix, and then they would just leave me and then come, you know, do what they could for me.

[00:44:48]  Soul Searching Begins

[00:44:48] Eventually I could explore and I was like, just see the light off and turn to, I don't want the TV on. because I knew that I had to go inside my mind to figure this out. So what I wanted more than anything was to recover physically. But in order to get to that place, I didn't think that was going to happen.

[00:45:05] So I let go of that expectation and let go of that hope. And instead I thought, well, if this is all I'm left with, what can I do right now in my situation? What choices can I make. What decisions can I have that will allow me to at least not be miserable and depressed for the rest of my life because the Memento Mori, right?

[00:45:32] We always talk about that knowing that we're going to die, but it's easy to say that because when you're dead,  you don't know you're dead and you don't get to feel the pain of it, right? But if you're 40 years old and you think that you have another 40 years of your life bedridden. That's a whole other dimension of wondering what do you do?

[00:45:52] What Would Hope To Accomplish?

[00:45:52] So I say in my book and my TEDx talk, but I tell people, I'm like, cause people are asking, you know, how do I try to get more perspective? Or how do I get inspiration? Well, all that stuff is a bunch of flowery BS. But the reality is if you want to know what you really want to do with your life. Ask yourself, if you woke up tomorrow paralyzed from the neck down, what would you wish we would accomplish with your time?

[00:46:17] And that will give you perspective like nothing else can. And that was a question that changed my life. So for me, lie in there wondering what I was going to do was difficult. And I eventually got to a place where. There was so much anger in me, I had to find something to counteract it. So most people, the opposite of anger is love.

[00:46:37] The Power of Gratitude 

[00:46:37] But frankly, there was not a level of love around me at that time. So I had to find the next best thing. And for me, that was gratitude. And I know what you're thinking. Everybody talks about gratitude. It's a buzz word. Everybody has magical journals and rainbows and butterflies and unicorns. And the reality is most people that are that say that they have gratitude are doing it wrong.

[00:47:01] Period. They go through and they think that they are being grateful, but what they're doing is they're basically, they have almost like a life Christmas list and they're being thankful to whomever about all the good stuff that's happened to them. But gratitude doesn't work like that. Gratitude is like love.

[00:47:23] If you love somebody or you love something unconditionally, you will always love them irrespective of what they do. Say, even if it's something you don't like or you're upset about, you will still love them. Gratitude is the same way. We have to have this unconditional gratitude. We have to be able to be just as happy about winning the lottery as we are for the person that cuts us off in traffic and gives us the finger and for most people, they just go through and cherry pick the things they like for only those things.

[00:47:50] But that's not how real gratitude is. You have to have 360 degrees of gratitude and be able to see the opportunity within the hardship. Yeah, and that's what happens. So if you have 50% of your day, let's say, just for easy math, let's say that half of your day you're grateful for, but let's say the other half of your day, you thought was, it sucked.

[00:48:11] If you spend your entire life like that, that means there's certainly half of your life that you could have been exploring that hardship. You could have been exploring that opportunity to learn. You could have been exploring that thing that was difficult. It could have made you so much stronger that could have exponentially made you better.

[00:48:27] That could have been the catalyst to make you change into the person who could see that as an opportunity, and now all of a sudden your life is that much better. [00:48:37] That's why it's so difficult, and that's why I talk about adversity being a gift, because if you do not have that mentality, if fixed to your mind right now when things are easy, when you actually faced the hardship, it's too late.

[00:48:51] It's like hoping that you're going to learn how to swim. Before you fall in water and all of a sudden it's like, Oh, I wish I had learned not to swerve too late. Now that's the idea. We have to have that up sticks to us.

[00:49:02] Finding Something To Be Grateful For

[00:49:02] So for me, I started being grateful and I had to find something to be grateful for, but what am I going to be grateful for?

[00:49:08] I'm lying in a bed. I can't move. So the Zen notion is this. They say, take yourself out of the equation to see the truth on what's going on. And the reason why that happens is because for every one of us, if we're in something really deep and we're into it, really close emotions, assassinate the truth, so we get stuck in that.

[00:49:32] So for me, what I ask myself, okay, did anybody benefit from me being injured? . And then I realized, okay, in my mind, this injury would have happened irrespective of where I was on that in the world. So whether I was in the mountains of Afghanistan or in the United States, this would have happened. So for every one man who was injured in combat, it takes two men to pull him to safety.

[00:49:58] So if I'd had been overseas deployed, that means I would have compromised my team. That means my squad would have been compromised. That means that I would've had another squad they had to confer down onto battalion, would have had to come through. There would have been a Chinook helicopter. They would've had to fly into a hot zone probably to come get me and all.

[00:50:16] There were probably 30 other people whose lives would have been putting arms away. And when I thought of it like that, it made me realize, wow. No unlucky. Not that unlucky, but I'm just grateful that nobody else got hurt in the process and for the first time in my life, that's when I had genuine unconditional  360 gratitude.

[00:50:39] In 40 years of existence on this mortal coil. And once I had that, I just broke down like I did at my, at my great uncle's funeral. I was truly just grateful. I was crying, I was happy about everything. And then I just literally applied that unconditional gratitude to everything from the bed that I'm in every get out of the room that I'm in a relief and a week after having that genuine 100% commitment to gratitude.

[00:51:07] Getting the First Feeling Back

[00:51:07] [00:51:07] I started getting a little bit of feeling back in my left hand. No, it wasn't much, but it was more than what I had. And that was the beginning of a long road of physical therapy, occupational therapy, lots of starts and stops. But. That's what allowed me to really get some of that physicality back. And eventually I got to a place where, and at first when it happened, I tried to tell the nurse about it.

[00:51:35] And of course, right when she's in there, I can't reproduce the motion. They still live with me for a while, and a lot of times there's like family move, better phantom pain, but eventually they saw, I was like, Oh, okay. And that's when they started giving me just a little bit to see what my body would do and every time, even if it was something small, like even if my, it was my left hand and my right hand, even if it, that's all I got back.

[00:51:59] I was so grateful because I was better off than where I was earlier. So everybody's that talks about gratitude, [00:52:07] they're doing it in a half ass manner at best. 

[00:52:09] So what I, when I worked for clients, when I'm talking to people, they say, Oh, I write down all the stuff I'm grateful for. I was like, tell you what?

[00:52:15] Start with What Pisses You Off

[00:52:15] Write down the stuff that pisses you off. Write down the things that made you mad today, right on the thing that you were not grateful for, and think about it the next day and ask yourself, where was the opportunity? Where was the beauty? Where was the lesson in that.

[00:52:34] And when they can do that and they step away from it and they have a little bit of space, it's easier for them to be very objective about what it is. Again, the emotion no longer assassinates the truth because you're away from that emotion. So again, we talk about stoicism, that that's what it is. You control what is controllable and that is it.

[00:52:51] You have no qualms. You have no delusions of what else controllable. And then I think that we can control this us, our decisions and our mentality about the situation. Viktor Frankl famously says, what between stimulus and response, there was a, there was a gap, right? And within that gap is everything. So for me, that's what it was.

[00:53:10] Between Stimulus and Response

[00:53:10] When I am my last keynote, I talked about this. There was an event. That event we, we assign meaning to that event. That event evokes emotion within us. After we decide that emotion decides, it goes into a cascade of hormones, thoughts and actions lots of times. So if I'm able to reframe my adversity and say, this is  not no longer occurs, this is a gift that literally changed my life.

[00:53:41] So if you're able to reframe whatever's going on and step back from it and say, what does this really mean? Lots of times it's what? Lack of communication. It's ill intense. It's the fact that maybe we didn't understand what that person meant. When somebody sends you a text, you can't always tell the context is, or an email, or even whenever they're short because they're tired or they're sleep deprived.

[00:54:00] So there's so much that can go into that. So from the adversity I have learned that my empathy is increased exponentially. My gratitude is literally off the charts now. And that all that comes down to understanding the human. Animal and what our national tendencies on it. 

[00:54:22] Erich:  Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, you know, I've trained a lot of these different things and you know, being grateful, being one of those things that are optimism.

[00:54:30] Even. And it does get flowery to some degree where it's like, of course it sounds good when everything's going right. You know, there's sunshine and rainbows around, and it's like, I'm being thankful today, but when shit hits the fan, for lack of a better term, it's, that's when you're really tested by these things, or at least what you're really made of, like, can you show up?

[00:54:50]and one of the things that really kind of comes to me is like. You know, did you ever turn that gratitude on yourself? Like give yourself any like gratitude, because I think in those moments it's really easy, or at least in general, a lot of people, you know, say loathsome things to themselves that they'd never say to any other living human being.

[00:55:09] What Was The Internal Dialogue Like?

[00:55:09] Marcus: Oh yeah, there's my internal dialogue. If that person were in front of me, I'll put a spin on it. There's no way I would've put up with that kind of negative bullshit. But that's sort of the nature of the beast and it's, it's a delicate, you know, back and forth again there, there's a point where. If you're not able to exercise that sort of discipline necessary and you just kind of go with what you feel, of course you're just going to eat a bunch of bad foods, sit on your ass and consume a bunch of, you know, content not doing anything with it.

[00:55:40] Don't Over Sharpen The Blade

[00:55:40] At the same time, we have to understand the Taoism I was saying, they say that if you continually sharpen the blade, it goes blunt. Everybody's like talking about being sharp, just like at the gym or just like meditation. I mean, meditation is to, is to the mind what, what fasting is to the body.

[00:55:59] Or the same thing with recovery. If I workout as hard as I possibly can, you know, every single day and I'm running myself into the ground and I know what that's like because I was in the military, that's what, that's what my job was. Your recovery is compromised and therefore, because you're not allowing yourself the chances to get hunker what do you have to do?

[00:56:15] You get weaker, things start breaking on you. And clearly I'm an example of that. I've always found it interesting because so many people talk about push, push, push, and go, go, go. Those people would never push themselves to a point where they actually break. So even though they're preaching this really awesome game, they don't know what it is because they've never done it.

[00:56:33] So when I'm saying it, I can tell you and equivocally from experience, there's absolutely a time to push and I demand a lot from myself and from the people that I work with, from my clients, from the companies, everything. But if all you have is one gear and that gear doesn't work, if I'm talking to somebody, if I'm watching somebody and I'm like, Hey, you need to do this, and all of a sudden that stops working.

[00:57:00] You Need To Have Multiple Gears As A Leader

[00:57:00] What do I do now? Do I just feel a lot more, I yell at him louder. No, that doesn't help. I have to have these other capacities. I have to be multifaceted. I have to see what works on this person as somebody else. If I am talking to a CEO and I'm talking to his company and he has 10 Csuite executives, and half of them really like what I'm saying, the other half is like, man, this guy's pretty extreme and I had to be able to, to not only have another gear, but I also have to be smart enough to sense that.

[00:57:28] Even before it happens. So that instead of creating a divide, I'm creating unity and I'm creating this vision that we're all falling towards. And that's the part of leadership that nobody talks about. People say, Oh, lead by example, and have communication and build trust. Well, what happens when there's no communication?

[00:57:45] What happens when there's no trust? What happens when you can't lead by example or you're frankly not willing to because you don't have the capacity. That's what leadership is. That's what people don't talk about because it's hard because it's messy because leading people. And messy. So it doesn't look good on a book.

[00:58:05] It doesn't look good on a meme, but that's why so many people can get away with having this very gross, overarching generalization about what you should do as a leader. And then all of a sudden they leave and that's good. And now you have these people in this company that is not fresh. Chances are any company that I've gone to talk to, there's all kinds of history between a person who's in a leadership position and the people that are below them.

[00:58:27] Sometimes there are something. Something as complex as the one that was in that position. Now they're no longer are people that have been in relationships and no longer are people that have come from other companies that have been merged, and they now all of a sudden, they're not sure where they stand. So there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of ambiguity.

[00:58:44] Your Job As A Leader

[00:58:44] So as a leader, our job is to go through and bring order to chaos, but do it in a way where everybody feels respected, valued, and heard. And again, that's, and that's why it's so difficult. So. like I say, I didn't mean to go on a tangent there, but that's exactly, but that's where this stuff is applied. I mean, this is where if you can apply philosophy and apply, apply concepts, you can literally change the world.

[00:59:08] But if you're not willing to do it and you're not willing to do the work, then you just sound like everybody else out there on social media that's trying to, you know, be a life coach. 

[00:59:16] Don't Fall Into The Tips And Tricks Trap

[00:59:16] Erich: I add some fluffy quotes and you know. Let me say here, just do these 10 things, right? I always get annoyed about these little hacky things, like do these five things or you know, five things to improve your happiness at just like.

[00:59:30] If it was as simple as adding a list of do these five things and you'll be like perfect or whatever, like then everyone wouldn't be doing them already. Like I think it's all about like having a framework of like, here's how to do these things right? And like you do them. As best you can. It reminds you of a Benjamin Franklin where he had his like, you know, 13 virtues and he would pick one a month to do and then cycle through them.

[00:59:57] Because the idea is that eventually, like if you're focusing on one thing, like you were alluding to in the beginning, you, you let your relationship falter because you're focusing on your studies  and when you focus on one thing too long, other things are going to suffer. So you're gonna have to backpedal and go fix those other things, you know, fix the cracks, so to speak.

[01:00:14] And continually redo that all over like forever. And that's the whole goal is like there's no, there's no such thing as done because you're always going to be building upon what you were doing previously. 

[01:00:26] Marcus:  Well, hopefully you are, and hopefully you're learning and hopefully you're questioning yourself in the process too.

[01:00:30] Continue to Grow

[01:00:30] There are a lot of people that are 25 years old and will live that same existence until they die because they don't want to push because I just want to have like this mindless. You know, consumption ideal, which is okay, but, you and I, you know, are big fans of Tim Ferris has all the  he's written is like literally changed my life as well.

[01:00:49] He is very much with the same opinion. Likewise, we're both talking about this idea of like, listen, you know, he interviewed these people and he goes through and he like deconstructs what they do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he does every single one of them. There's some, Bruce Lee has an amazing philosophy and she can know, I'm an instructor under Bruce's protege his name's Guru Dan Inosanto and Bruce Lee's philosophy about Jeet Kune Do can though is this, he says, absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and then add what is specifically your own. Yeah, and in my mind, that is not only an incredible formula for an entrepreneur or for life in general because each one of us is a unique individually, each one of us is different.

[01:01:31] Each one of us has our own attributes and experiences and therefore our own prejudices, whether there were aware of that or not. So if we go into something with this, this potted idea or this outcome in mind, and we'll probably blind us to what's really going on or tame with the, the actual experience could be if we were able to just go into it again with an empty cup, with an empty vessel, a clean slate, however you want to look at it, to see it for what it is and not for what we hope it will be.

[01:02:01] Erich: Absolutely. I mean, I couldn't agree more. It's like for me the idea of, you know, synthesizing is where I would call that. You know, Bruce Lee puts it way more poetically, but it's always about whatever you take in. And someone on this podcast who was a friend of mine, he, he wound up saying, you know, anything, any information you take in, there's a, you know, like if it's a book you read or listened to, there's a, there's a.

[01:02:24] Chapter of that book that is unwritten and it's what you have to say about that book or what you took away from that book and what would you, and explain to other people if you were recommending it to them. And I, and I really thought that was a really powerful thing because it's not about, you know, there is a message in these books, but a lot of times, like you're saying, you'd become these passive consumption of things, and we just take it for granted. But then if we stop and think about what it is that I'm learning and, or did it actually sink in deeper than, you know, the first two inches and, and can I actually explain this to some degree or another? And I think that's where people kind of get lost. 

[01:03:01] Cross Pollination of Ideas and Intellectual Enclaves

[01:03:01] And I, I hope. That in general, it seems like you're saying, you know, like having these groups like Tim Ferriss and others, there's like this newer paradigm show for people who want to go deeper, who want the nuance or who want to build, not just like following the leader, so to speak, but also like, Hey, here's the things that I'm doing because I've learned all this thing through these other sources.

[01:03:24] It's like this interconnected web of like almost like the idealized version of the internet, or at least in the theory of it when it was being built and. It's fascinating to see this, how it's always this cross pollination of ideas. I think that's what really fascinates me most about like, cause it's so easy to get caught up in the negative spirals of the social media world as we see it today.

[01:03:45] But there's also like these hidden enclaves as I like to think of them almost, and it's, it's really cool to see how this is really shifting. In some ways. 

[01:03:56] Marcus: There absolutely is that, and it's, you know, that, that makes me optimistic in that way. and again, I mean. Yeah, I forgot who said it, but they were saying essentially that basically if, if more information were the answer with the internet now, for example, everybody would have a six pack abs, be a multibillionaire and be completely enlightened.

[01:04:15] We know that is, we know that that's not the case. So the thing that I'm very much about is, to me, here's what happens. Information that you consume that you do not act upon is the same as ignorance. You might as well not even have learned it. If you don't put anything, if you don't put it into play in some way, shape, or form.

[01:04:34] Humble Beginnings

[01:04:34] So that's why I'm always about doing the work, putting it into play so you're not what it is. So if you listen to a podcast, that sounds great. That's fantastic. Write one thing down that really struck you and then try to execute on that. And the execution is always more difficult than just hearing it. And again, it's much more messy than what it sounds like when you hear somebody say, Oh, well I have this idea and I just wanted this.

[01:04:56] And then I did this and I built this team, and now I'm got, you know, $200 million worth of sales this year. Well, that took a while and there's a lot of slowing down. Everybody now they want to see. The person that that goes, they want to see the end result. They don't want to see the person who was on the ground.

[01:05:15] They don't want to see the, again, we'd see Bezos where he's in the garage, you know it's Amazon or Bill Gates or anything. Everybody started with zero followers. Everybody started without anybody who downloaded their podcast. Everybody started, everybody put their put. 

[01:05:29] Putting Yourself Out There

[01:05:29] Like I put my book out there. I already had a tribe kind of built, but at the same time, you don't know what's going to happen, like you send in your file a manuscript and then you just hope that you did the best that you could with the amount of time that you had. And you hope that somebody actually benefits from it because you spent over a year of your life bleeding onto a page, hoping that somebody will actually take this and run with it.

[01:05:53] And if they don't, then you beat yourself up and you wonder, and your question, and Tim's talked about this, you know. Pressfield's talked about this so many times, and it's so true. And that's what really goes on with those things. So if you're listening to us right now and you want to create a blog or a podcast, or write a book or whatever it is, understand that just like meditation.

[01:06:17] It's tough. It's a practice. I've got people that you know, clients or even friends that are saying, Hey, I'm trying to meditate, but every time I try to sit down and it's like, I can't get my mind just shut off. I was like, Hey, I got a little secret for you. Everybody does that. The opposite, everyone, and that monkey mind is going to be there for some people.

[01:06:36] You know, a few minutes, some people the entire session. But the reality is it is a practice. So the intention of breathing for two or three seconds and then losing focus on your breath and then coming back to being present with your breath is the very definition of meditation. So it's a practice. And just like anything that we practice, you're going to get good days.

[01:06:58] You're going to get bad days, but you have to be very, very specific because you have to understand that practice does not make perfect. It makes permanent,so be careful about what you get good at because you may get good at something that may not serve you. Or in the martial arts, if you're practicing something that looks good and beautiful and flowery, but you try to defend yourself with it and you get yourself or somebody else killed, that's when you have to ask yourself, why are you doing what you're doing?

[01:07:23] Why are you practicing it? And then how can I apply this to this part of my life to this facet of what I'm doing? 

[01:07:30] Training the Body Also Trains The Mind

[01:07:30] Erich: Absolutely. I never really got into like physicality, like sports and stuff like that. But you were into it in the beginning and now that I'm older that was one of the things that really drew me initially.

[01:07:43] It was like this combination of like when you train one, like what affects one affects the other kind of idea where, Oh yeah. I was always very intellectual and I would read and I would be very, at least when I was younger, but I always kind of just. Sequestered, this idea of being physical or athletic in any way and said, Nope, that's not a thing that I can ever be.

[01:08:05] And then somehow a seed was planted and my friends were like, you should start working out. You'll enjoy it. And I made excuses until somehow I did it. And I wound up doing that. And that was like five, six years ago at this point. And since then, it's really opened all these doors. And it's why I'm even, I think to some degree why I do what I do today with all of this stuff.

[01:08:25] And it's such a strange thing that when you start training, like inadvertently training the body also sharpen my mind. And in many, many ways, because I've gotten into all of these other aspects of it. And it's kind of funny that I'm thinking about it now, like Tim Ferris. He like some of the first podcasts I would listen to where the, like athletics, like the gymnastics coaches or any of those kinds of ones first, and then all of a sudden it started transitioning into the more health aspects because you can't talk about just like working out routines without talking about the health aspects of it. On top of that with like nutrition, diet, and then psychology starts to get wrapped up into there too because it's like getting out of the mind and into the body and all of that.

[01:09:05] Fascinating. The more I like to look at these ideas, it's how, how much, there's so much interconnection is that when you start, you know, turning, tuning one knob at tunes, so many others and.

[01:09:16] You Have To Be Before You Become

[01:09:16] Just the amount of kind of just having to commit to something first, just like to, you have to be before you can become it. And it's, I know that sounds very Zen like, and, but it's like you have to choose to be a person who works out before you are the person that works out. 

[01:09:36] Marcus: Yeah, that's, that's exactly it.

[01:09:38] And that's what the reality is. There's all these things that there is this trifecta. It's that the physicality is the mentality and that it's like the stuff that we put into our body because they are all connected. And that again, you tune one thing and the other things to improve. 

[01:09:55] If I teach you, if I teach you a punch, I teach you a single punch. If you learn that, but if I teach you a concept, I will teach you a thousand punches. And that's how all these things come together. So there will be some people that may have natural attributes from a physical component. So of course they're going to want to go into that aspect, but then the fit, the mentality is tough for them.

[01:10:17] You have a person, like you were describing, you are very cerebral initially, yet you understood that there was another side of the coin that was not being polished. They could have been. And then you saw that once you had this one area that was very strong, the physicality allowed you to better, not only appreciate that, but the intellect allows you to get better with the physicality as well.

[01:10:36] Renaissance Man and Samurai

[01:10:36] So it is all together. And if we look at anybody through antiquity, every like a Renaissance man, they are literally multifaceted. Yeah. If you look at a samurai, they were the people that could kill you by just drawing their blade in . Yet they could still write poetry. They could do a tea ceremony, they could arrange flowers, and they would literally have a burial ceremony every time they would go on campaign to allow them to have Mushin, no mind, so that whenever they went into combat, there was zero hesitation.

[01:11:09] People don't even, and people don't see it, but yet it's everywhere. If you pay attention, history repeats itself, and there's a reason, like I said, because the truth does not lie. It is always there, and unless we're trying to put our fingers in our ears intellectually and be cowardice about it, we will see it. And once it continues to repeat, it is our peril to ignore it. 

[01:11:32] Erich: And I want to be respectful of your time. We're just over an hour and I think we could go on for many, many hours just to, given the momentum we have in this conversation. So I would like to get into some, like. More targeted questions for, you know, overarching.

[01:11:49] I think we've really done this, wrote the entire thing though. But you know, any, any of you like your favorite books or most gifted books and yes, this is stolen from Tim Ferriss, but I love talking about books. 

[01:12:00] Favorite Or Most Gifted Books

[01:12:00] Marcus: Everything is stolen from Tim Ferris. I was going to write an article that says, this is why I hate Tim Ferris, because every time I would think I was, have something unique or different, he would either have already written about it or the next person on his podcast.

[01:12:17] So that's a good problem to have. And I see that in Jess. We both love Tim and he's helping so many people and very honored to have, get to learn from him the way we have. Having said that, There are many books. I'll just say too, and I mentioned, and again, all of Tim Ferriss, his work is amazing, but the books that I give people is the first one that I give everybody is, especially if they're creative or they're an entrepreneur, is by Steven Pressfield is called the War of Art.

[01:12:47]those are, they're not, read it is essentially him explaining to you. I talk about adversity and I capitalize it with an A, he talks about this force called resistance, and he has a large R with it. He talks about it in that book. He talks about it and going pro and do the work, but it all talks about, just like I was saying with meditation, that every single, like when I sit down to write, it was torturous in many ways.

[01:13:11] It wasn't as if I just turn, you know, open up my computer and all these beautiful ideas just flowed from me. Like, you know, like a, well, it didn't, doesn't happen like that. It is very much about writing something down. Reading it the next day thinking that it's complete and total shit. And then what did you go through and try to do it again?

[01:13:28] And that's part of the process. That's what makes you a better writer, reader, speaker, everything. The second book that I would recommend to people, which a lot of people are not familiar with. It's called Thick Face, Black Heart by Chin-Ning Chu.

[01:13:43] And it was based on the 1911 Chinese book called thick, thick black theory. And that book was immediately banned by the Chinese government when it came out. Well, so that should show you how. Impressive and powerful and you know, just straight forward that that book is, they were talking about the short synopsis is thick face, black heart.

[01:14:09] They met thick faces. If like you had thick skin, like you were resilient, like that was your field and the black heart is your commitment. So you are committed to something so much that there is no longer any color inside that paradigm and it is completely black because you are completely committed to this idea.

[01:14:29] So the thick face was like the shield and the black heart was like the spear. But it's a, it's a beautiful book. It's not heard as often, very much now, but it's about to get, I think, could help 

[01:14:42] Erich: wow. Yeah, I'm definitely have to check that one out. Any book I think that gets banned from anywhere is you gotta read it.

[01:14:50] You know? I mean, that's one of the things I talk about a lot about having the freedom to speak right, like where people were to, you know, private individuals able to have a conversation and then put it out onto the world and basically almost anyone can hear it after this once we put it out. And I think that's like one of the most important things because. throughout history. People got killed over what they said or wrote, and to control opinions or you know, hearts and minds, so to speak. So I think, you know, when anything is supposedly ostracized or controlled, it is worth reading because there's something in there that scared somebody.

[01:15:26] So the last question I like to end with, because it is within my age bracket, but anyone who is, you know, a smart, driven college age person, either entering the real world or, you know, maybe finishing high school, any advice, you know, you had a long winding path. You know, you're. The, the crucible you had for your life didn't happen until your middle thirties and you know, a lot of people pretend like you should have it figured out by the time you're 22 and I was just not even close to finishing my degree at 22 

[01:15:54] Advice For A College-Aged Person

[01:15:54] Marcus: yeah, it took me a 40 some odd years to be an overnight success.

[01:16:00] The thing that I would say is. And I've had this question before because people would say, what advice would you give your 22 year old self? the thing is, even if I give myself that advice, I wouldn't have listened to it. So, but the advice that I would give people now is, and it may sound cliche in some ways, but there is something in you.

[01:16:22] There's a tone or resonance or a truth. You're right now, and as you get older, it will get covered up and layered and buried by other things. And you try to be present to try to be at one with yourself and the things around you through meditation, through physicality, through, you know, cognitive dissonance.

[01:16:44] Just ask yourself why you believe what you believe. Those will be ways for you to hone back into that. But that thing that sound, that resonance never gets louder. Its at one volume. So listen to what that is for you. So there will be a lot of questions. There'll be a lot of experiences in your life. But ultimately you can probably ask yourself, this is like the big, it's like a filter.

[01:17:10] So if you're doing something and it just doesn't feel right, there's probably a reason. And now pulling that thread to figure out why is it not feel right? Because it's going to be a lot of work. Well, maybe that's a you problem and not the actual. You know, subjects problem. If it doesn't feel right because you feel like you're compromising your integrity for it, then don't do it.

[01:17:28] There are so many options. Now, as I was saying, like with my father, his idea was more education or frankly, you can literally be seventeen years old in high school if you have a good idea and you are driven, you can create some sort of business around that. And we're finding now that people are staying at jobs, you know, less than seven years.

[01:17:46] So understand that there are going to be many iterations of who and what you are. And that you have to be very, very resolute with your work ethic to, to see something through. You have to do what we've been talking about this entire time. You have to see adversity as a gift because that will shine a light on the areas that you're blind to.

[01:18:07]And then you also have to be aware of what's really important to you and make those things a priority. Because if everything's a priority in your life, then nothing is a priority in your lives. And those would be the three things I would just tell people. 

[01:18:21] Erich: Awesome. I couldn't, you can't see me, but I was nodding the whole time, couldn't have said it any better, and I think that's a perfect note to end this first conversation, and I really, again, appreciate you making the time to do this on one short notice and with very little understanding of who I am, because I'm just, you know, someone who just does this because they just feel compelled to do it.

[01:18:46] Like you, like you were saying you just, if you feel like you want to do something, then you start doing it. And that's what this has been all about for me. 

[01:18:54] What Are You Searching For?

[01:18:54] Marcus: That's exactly it. That's what it is. I mean, the hard part is that just getting started and everybody wants to know the answer, but the answer that you're you're searching for is found in adversity that you're avoiding right now.

[01:19:08] So if that is, like you said, starting a podcast, well, how do I, you're asking all these questions, start the podcast and you'll figure it out as you go along. If you're trying to build a business and decent business plan, then go with that and guess what? You'll figure it out as you go along. If you, if you own a business but you don't like doing sales and you can't understand why you're not getting customers, well, you don't like doing sales.

[01:19:28] So either hire somebody or bite the bullet and figure out how to get it done. But that's where it is. Everybody wants to have an excuse not to get something done. [01:19:37] But the reality is the answer is found within the process itself. 

[01:19:40] Erich: Absolutely. Thank you. 

[01:19:44] Marcus: Of course.

Business, Mind SetErich WenzelMarcus Aurelius Anderson, The Gift of Adversity, TEDx Speaker, Mindset Training, U.S Army Veteran, Mindset Coach, Podcasts, Ric Elias, Peter Attia, TED Talk, Robert Frost, Gary Ve, Viktor Frankl, Stoic Philosophy, Memento Mori, Marcus Aurelius, Taoism, Building Leadership Skills, Leadership, FitnessComment