Stephen K. Hayes: Martial Arts, Spirituality, and Leadership

Speaker 2: 0:09

All right, steven. Welcome to the show man. I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you.

Speaker 1: 0:14

Oh, it's great to be here, Greg.

Speaker 2: 0:15

Yeah, absolutely. I had a chance to watch a lot about you and your TED Talks I was talking about and read your bio and went back and watched a bunch of videos and you have such an interesting background. Maybe you could just take a second and introduce yourself to our audience.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Well, when I was a little child I discovered that the Asian people had a systematic study called the martial arts. I mean this back in the 1950s and I became obsessed with that. I'd seen kids picking on each other and bullying. I was never really bullied myself, but I saw other kids and that didn't seem right. I wanted to do something about it. But as a tiny kid I didn't know how to fight. I didn't know how to do anything about that.

Speaker 1: 1:07

So that began my lifetime journey into finding those answers. How do you make there be peace when other people would like there to be antagonism or unfair advantage and so forth? So I started karate training when I was a teenager and when I was in my middle 20s I had heard about these ninja in Japan. Ninja and of course that was way back before there were ninja turtles and ninja air fryers and all this kind of stuff. So I just got on a plane and went to Japan and by a series of miracles I actually found this ninja school and they accepted me. So I was in the mid-70s. I began training.

Speaker 1: 2:01

While I was in Japan I met the girl who became my wife, and so we moved back to America in 1980 when my visa ran out to stay in Japan and she and I were both teaching and we began a 40-some-year career of teaching this very unusual martial art, very unusual martial art. In the late 80s well, actually mid-80s, 1985 and 86, a bunch of things happened and I found myself a little out of balance. I was deferring too much to the martial response to conflict and confrontation and I just felt I needed some balance. So I went to Nepal and Tibet to find a Tibetan teacher that seemed to be the answer, and a bunch of crazy stuff. I ended up with the Dalai Lama and traveled with him for about 12 years. When he was in North America I was his security escort and the lessons I got from him were just priceless. So I had this amazing martial art and I had this amazing spiritual teaching and in the early 2000s I kind of combined them to make the program that I have today.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Yeah, that's fascinating and I mean, I hear that. So you grew up in Ohio, right, and you go to university in Ohio and I'm assuming the trip to the Far East was after you finished college and school, right, is that correct?

Speaker 1: 3:55

That's right.

Speaker 2: 3:57

So I love this, because this is pre-internet obviously.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Oh yeah, no email, no internet, no nothing.

Speaker 2: 4:08

So I mean encyclopedias. How do you go about taking a trip over there and being like I want to study this thing, like I mean, how did you research this? How did you know where to go? Like, did you go with a friend? Like, just to me, just taking that journey or that trip is so much courage and I don't know, just willingness to take chances.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Well, that might be an interesting thing for listeners to tune into, because this is my life, this is my story, my trip. I don't know anybody else who's done what I did. It's unique, but the method is not unique. I think what drove me was this insatiable desire to gain access to this knowledge and that in the pre-internet, pre-email, we had to rely on magazines to find out things and write letters and get them translated into Japanese. All that stuff kind of fell in line based on my extreme desire.

Speaker 1: 5:20

This was not something I was going to just play around with or check out. I had already made up my mind. And it's amazing, once you really make up your mind, I'm going to do this, whether it's learning to be a ninja or a spiritual advisor or fly fishing or pie baking or car racing or children raising Once you make up your mind, the other stuff just kind of magically in my case magically falls in line. I think if you do it the other way around, say, well, I'm going to plan this out and I'll get there. There's no driving force. I don't know if this makes sense. There's no driving force behind that. So I'll bump into an obstacle here. Oh, I'll bump into an obstacle here, bump into an obstacle, and then we talk ourselves out of living our dreams that way. So reverse it. Start with that insatiable desire I'm going to do whatever I have to do, and then, in many cases, magic happens.

Speaker 2: 6:35

Yeah, there's a great quote. I'll butcher it but paraphrasing it. It's something the extent of with the right purpose, man can do anything Right. Essentially that's that idea If you have that burning purpose, that burning why inside of you, you're willing to take on any challenge and overcome any risk. But if you just want to do something but it's not really there, it's just going to be so easy to get bumped off your path, right.

Speaker 1: 7:04

I think so, and as a young person and as a teenager, I got advice from people oh, you should do this, or think about that, and oh, ok, well, I could earn a lot of money doing this, or well, this might be interesting or this might match some of my skills. But there was no overwhelming driving purpose behind that. I was just kind of looking around and, of course, I would bump into little obstacles once I had this purpose and I didn't like let me put it this way I was not encouraged. I was not encouraged to follow this insane dream. Ok, you're going to go to Japan and meet the grandmaster of the ninja, a 34-generation-old secret society, and he's going to agree to teach you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the plan. Ok, and then you're going to go to Tibet or India or wherever the Dalai Lama the 14th and he's going to teach you about meditation and mind science.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Yeah, Well, you know, going to Japan to learn martial arts and to train there, that sounded very purposeful. Was the meeting with the Dalai Lama, the opportunity to be part of a security team and the ability to travel with him for 12 plus years, or whatever it was the experience that you had there? Was that purposeful or was that a little bit by happenstance?

Speaker 1: 8:36

No, it was a lot of just strange coincidences, two minutes to even talk about on this brief podcast, and that kind of brings me to another thing, and that is and this is very awkward, you know, very awkward but there is kind of a each of us, like 8 billion on the planet you know 8 billion of us on the planet and each of us has a unique life story. Some of us find our way to a purpose and we grow old and we die fulfilled, and other people are blocked by certain you know things, with their birth or where they're born or whatever, and they never achieve their purpose. And so I think there is some kind of underlying and we don't know how this works. We don't know how this works. So there's some kind of underlying I don't know if you call it a karma or a path that we're supposed to take and if we try something else, it's bumpy. If we try something else, we run into a block and a lot of people, I think, get scared I tried this, I tried that and then they just settle down and settle for a mundane existence. So there is, I guess, what I'm trying to say. There is some underlying life path and I think you know, this is my opinion and it's controversial, but apparently there is some connection, something where I was supposed to spend this time with the Dalai Lama. Other people may have wanted to do that, but that wasn't their life path. A series of coincidental coming together is brought me to where I was traveling with the Dalai Lama as his security escort. He would have a Tibetan security guy on his right and I would be on his left, and yeah, so that makes it a little more complicated. I might have a desire I want to be a movie star, or I want to be a rock star, I want to be an internet influencer, and so a few other people want to do that too. Do you have what it takes? Is that in your karmic makeup? Is that what you're supposed to be doing with your life, or is it a symbol for something else?

Speaker 1: 11:11

When I was young, and even up into my 30s, I thought I was going to be in the movies. I thought I was going to be in the movies and a bunch of stuff happened that seemed to suggest this to me. So when we came back from Japan in the early 80s, we lived in Southern California and I had so many like. Almost my favorite one was I was almost going to live with Robert De Niro for six months and he was going to be the star of a movie called the Ninja, and when I said this stuff was being set up it just seemed like, oh well, of course.

Speaker 1: 11:51

But then we ran into contract timeouts and money was spent and so that project never happened. And anyway, by the mid 90s I decided I'm just not a movie guy, I'm not supposed to be in the movies, so I'm going to teach this martial art and life blossomed once I started that. So I think in my child brain I thought of myself as reaching a lot of people, which a movie person would, expressing myself, which a movie person does. To a certain degree that was like a symbol for the teaching work that I ended up doing and maybe having more of an impact on people than if I had been in the movies.

Speaker 2: 12:42

Yeah, that makes sense. That definitely resonates with me. So I know you had a background in theater when you went to Japan. I mean I'm trying to think of the time I was born in the late 70s, so I kind of grew up in the early 80s so I probably missed the early days of the Bruce Lee and the big karate movies. But the Ninja was so deep in pop culture in my childhood. Like was such a huge part of my childhood and from like, Storm Shadow and the GI Joe cartoons and I mean I think I was a ninja for Halloween like five years in a row or something, Because it's just the absolute coolest character that exists out there.

Speaker 1: 13:27

I totally agree. I totally agree the legends and the stories and yeah, of course there is a real ninja.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Yeah, so where do they differentiate? Because I think the movie ninja, the pop culture ninja is like all in black, never show your face, don't really talk, hide in the shadows kind of an assassin, come in Chinese stars like that type of stuff. And then I've seen you and I've seen the work and it feels much more like a grounded martial arts and the ability to use their momentum against them. There's like a kind of a judo element of the defense aspect of it. So where does reality meet with sort of the myth?

Speaker 1: 14:17

Well, that's an interesting thing to look at, because the myth and the movies and all that kind of stuff would take a fuzzy, ambiguous reality and shrink it down to something like a ninja has a black mask and a black suit and he throws these stars. And well, you know, back in the primitive days, faced with a swordsman who maybe had more skill a ninja could take, he would be disguised. He wouldn't be wearing a black suit, he'd just be wearing common peasant clothing. You may be disguised as a carpenter, and in his pouch, in his bag, he would have these square. They were like peg stoppers, so you'd put a beam up here and a pillar there and you would drive a peg in to secure those, and so this metal stopper would keep the peg from going all the way in and it would be like a washer, you know in modern technology, nobody would question that he had these.

Speaker 1: 15:30

But he could grind the edges to where they had a little sharpness to them and, faced with a swordsman from like 10 feet away, throw these things and the swordsman wouldn't see them, he would just feel himself. He cut this guy's eight feet away and I'm cut. How is this possible? And with the superstitions of the time, that was creepy. I've got my sword, I'm going to get this guy. He's eight, 10 feet away. He cut me. How did that happen? And then Ninja would do some spooky thing and I'm going for backup. So that would be how maybe some of these legends came to be. And then eventually the reality, the boring reality, fades and we only have the legend and Ninja climbing up a castle wall.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Well, if you've ever, ever been to Japan. I mean, those walls are very formidable. You got to get across a moat full of you know, poisonous water. That's where they would dump all the you know the toilet water and everything you know. So you got to go through that and climb up these walls. And they didn't even use mortar in the old days. These blocks were just so perfectly shaped.

Speaker 1: 16:52

And then you have to get up over the wall, and very difficult, but that was a symbol of breaking into the castle of the ninja, maybe having a okay, I know a guy whose sister is part of the team making group inside there. Maybe we could get her to give us a little info. She might be a little miffed, you know, at somebody in the castle. It hasn't given her an opportunity and you know she's kind of got a little grudge. So get her to give us some of the information about the castle so we know what's going on in there. So that would be like the reality, just running spies. But the legend is this ninja crawling up the wall and going into the castle to see what was going on, and you know. So those might be some examples of how the legend ended up, based on a more mundane reality there.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, Don't ever look the truth. Get in the way of a good story, right? Isn't that? That's probably the first thing they teach you in Hollywood. So what years were you part of the Dalai Lama security team? We're talking the 80s here 89 through like 2002.

Speaker 1: 18:20

So in 1999, we finally got the US government to step in and you know they had to deal with Chinese opposition. Oh man, the Chinese hate the Dalai Lama. You know, he's this beautiful, blessing presence. What an enemy to have, the Dalai Lama. But so they're careful that. So he's in exile. He doesn't live in Tibet, he escaped in 1959. The Chinese were closing in on him and he escaped and lives in India, just over the Tibet border.

Speaker 1: 18:58

And so what happened? We finally got the State Department security not Secret Service, because he's not ahead of state, but the State Department and they would show up with 80 agents and three bomb sniffing dogs. And, oh, you know, it was like way overdue, it was way overdue. So I became kind of a liaison between the Federals and the Tibetan people and did that for just a couple of years. And then toward the end you know I was getting up there in age and they've got a lot of young guys that know a lot about, you know, electronic surveillance and things that I was beyond my knowledge back in the 80s. I was actually the emcee at several of these events. Oh, interesting, I got to introduce the Dalai Lama to Muhammad Ali as the emcee.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:59

I mean for a kid from the 50s. This is unthinkable.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Unthinkable.

Speaker 1: 20:03

Yeah, yeah, and that was a great memory.

Speaker 2: 20:08

Yeah, so how were those experiences with Dalai Lama? You know I was talking about that TED Talk. You tell a funny little story about how, you know, the Dalai Lama would be in public and you know, all hunched over and very humble and kind of, you know, like just this, this, this, I don't know, it's like this vision of this, like meek man, and then you would see him in private talking to his people and he had this like stature of a king, you know, oh yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Well, you know, I think one of the beautiful things about the Dalai Lama is that he knows what does the audience expect. What does the audience expect? So, in exile, with these Tibetans? I mean it was tragic. China came in and I mean they did horrific things to the Tibetan culture and religion and political. It was just, you know, as the height of this Maoist insanity in 1949, I do it just where anybody with knowledge was ridiculed and caused the big ditches, and then they would take the lowest of society and put them in charge of everybody. It was just insane.

Speaker 1: 21:20

And so the Tibetans, you know like they're hoping someday to get their country back. I don't know if they ever will. So he's the king, he's the last hope. So he moves with dignity and he speaks with a very deep voice and he asks a lot of pointed questions. And people are a little intimidated. If he came to America and did that routine, you know people are going hey, who are you, buddy? You don't even have a country. You know you left in 59. Why do we listen to you?

Speaker 1: 21:50

So the idea of the holy man, oh, very humble, a very humorous. He speaks a higher voice, higher voice over here, and people love him, people love him, and you know. And then there are other times when I would be with him. You know, like we'd be in a green room waiting for an interview and oh, he'd be hysterically funny. He'd be joking around and it just is this the Dalai Lama, you know making these jokes, and well, he knew that would put me at ease and the other people that were gonna be on the interview, oh, this guy's gonna be fun to interview. Anyway, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. He does not have a monolithic personality. He'll fit wherever he needs to, and I think that was a great lesson for me. That was a great lesson for me to observe that in my 40s.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Yeah, I think that's just a great lesson in general. I mean the ability to communicate with people. To connect with people is you know, people use that term chameleon and I think it can have kind of a negative connotation where it's like oh, you're fake, you're pretending to be different people, but it's not about being a different person, it's just about understanding kind of the persona you need to take on in the moment of who you're speaking with.

Speaker 1: 23:14

That is it. That is it. You're not faking, you're not pretending. You're just allowing that piece of your personality to come forward and I'm keeping the rest of my personality back. It's the real me, I'm being very honest, but these other parts of my personality I'm just keeping back. So I think that's really important not fake, you know, not glad handing people, and that's a good lesson for all of us. You know there's certain things we're doing business. You read the person you're doing business with. Is this somebody who wants to be like schmoozed a little bit? Hey, you know, I just saw the picture of your kid and the soccer team. How's he doing? You know, some people like a little of that, other people no, just give me the numbers and we have to be tuned into that and we have to let that part of our personality come out. You know we're a friendly, engaged person, if that's gonna make this person feel. I keep my technical side a little bit back for a while.

Speaker 1: 24:18

Or the other way around. I keep my personal life. They don't know whether I'm married or whether I live in the area, they're just interested in the numbers. And what is the benefit to me and my company? And you got six minutes to lay that on me. Oh, I'm so glad you asked that. Let's get right down to it. You know so I mean I think we can and how we deal with our children. You know how we deal with our children. We deal with our children in a different way than we would deal with our employees. But not everybody gets that. Some people, you know the boss oh, here's my boys, here I'm my girls. You know he's running like a family and the people at work or you know they can't relate to it. Then he comes home and he's the boss. All right now. Do you have your homework done? Is everything ready? You know, come on, just be the dad at home and be the boss at work. But sure, not everybody gets that. Not everybody gets that.

Speaker 2: 25:18

And yeah, and you know, one of the things I've learned a little bit through my journey and having been the boss in situations before and having been the boss early, kind of younger in my career, I felt like there was a persona I had to be as the boss, right, like well, I'm the boss, I have to be in charge, I have to have all the answers, I have to be in control, I have to dominate the conversations. And then you realize you don't actually have to always fall into that persona as the boss. Like you can be authentic, you can be vulnerable. Like you can admit that you don't know everything, you can rely on your team, you can be human and still be quote unquote the boss, right, and I think that's you know. I'd just say to a lot of young managers, ceos, founders, whatever it is like don't feel like you have to slip into a persona of the boss to be the boss.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Well, no, I totally agree. I think you know people come into that and, okay, now you're the boss. You were a salesperson or you were a tech person, or I went to it. Now you're the boss because you were so good at being a tech person or a salesperson.

Speaker 1: 26:25

I don't know nothing about being the boss, so we assume a boss persona and God, no, no, no, no, no, Tell half as much as you used to Ask questions. You know, the boss asks the people on the tech line hey, you know what doesn't work down here. You know, ask people on the sales thing hey, how are we getting beat in the market? They'll tell you. They'll tell you and you gather all this information. And then, if you're a really good boss, you phrase it in such a way that the person feels honored.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Hey, boss took my advice and gave me credit for it. He's oh man, if it wasn't for Tina, god, we'd be doing this stuff all wrong. You know, tina, do you want to like one minute, one minute? Tell the group how you discovered that. Oh, wow, she feels honored and that's right. But if I'm the boss, no, we've discovered that. Oh, come on. Yeah, give the people a break, give them a chance, but those are skills that I guess they teach in management classes in college. I never took organizational development things in college. I was an actor, you know. Yeah, that's why I did it in college and now I find myself in charge of, you know, massive groups of people and, you know, not prepared for that. I had to discover all of this on my own, but seems to be working.

Speaker 2: 27:58

Well, you know it's funny, I actually did go to business school.

Speaker 2: 28:02

I have an MBA from a really, you know USC, which is a, you know, a top ranked business, and I'll tell you this they don't teach you that in business school. You, you learn no, you don't. I mean, I learned a lot of fundamentals. I learned you know understanding the underlying rules of, you know economics and accounting and finance, and you know I could model anything, and. But what they don't actually teach you is how, necessarily, to really be a good communicator. And, yeah, you take leadership classes, but it's you know.

Speaker 2: 28:36

I have a lot of scars from leadership mistakes I made as a young leader after getting out of business school, because I was so focused on the fundamentals of, well, I know the answers. I'm I. I know what we need to do, but instead of understanding how, that, if I'm talking to you, steven, and I allow you to collaborate with me to come to consensus on what we need to get done, the odds of you believing and buying in on what we need to do and execute on right, having that inner purpose of like I'm going to go ahead and do this because you're part of the solution, is so much higher than me, as a leader, being like this is what we need to do, steven. Go do this right and, and that was one of the things that I think early in my career as a leader I was not very good at and and it took took years to figure that one out.

Speaker 1: 29:30

No kidding, I am amazed. You know I'm my fantasy mind. You know you go to business school and you get an MBA. You know they're going to teach you how you deal with this kind of person and this kind of person and you know how you manage that. You know that sense of consensus where you know, as the boss, I want everyone to believe that they were the originators of the plan. They buy into it, but they didn't teach you any of that stuff.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Not not well enough. Maybe they did. I was absent that day or something.

Speaker 1: 30:05

Yeah, it's like, you know, people who have never been in the military, you know, will say to me wow, you know, you guys could do amazing things with the seals or green berets and you know, I bet, I bet a lot of them want to study with you and I say, no, nobody in the military wants to study with me.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:25

They don't. God, you're the hand-to-hand expert and I said well, how many times do military people get into hand-to-hand choking and punching eyes? You know, no, no, they got rifles, they got mortars. They got tanks they got. You know. That's where the training is. If you get into a ditch with the enemy, you know, and you're scratching each other's eyes out and you know, kicking each other in the groin. That never happens.

Speaker 1: 30:51

So we don't spend any time teaching that People are always amazed, you know. So I think that you know these professors. You know they may have an agenda. We're going to give you these technical skills and, of course, you're going to read books on how to deal with people on your own. No, I'm trusting you. You're going to teach me. You're going to make me a MBA-level manager. I'm going to know what a spreadsheet is. I'm going to understand some marketing. I'm going to understand, you know, the dynamics of HR. Oh God, what a nightmare that is these days. You know all this harassment stuff and you know racial stuff and everything. We're going to give you all of that. And no, when the bottom line, when you get down to the bottom line, we're all human beings. Yeah, and every one of us.

Speaker 1: 31:45

If Aunt Minnie died and left us $24 million, we'd be making sandcastles on the beach with our kids. And you know we're not working because it's. You know what I was born to do. I did that. I never worked a day in my life because I was pursuing my dream. But you know, those eight billion people on the planet you know there got to be a few in there that are just working for the paycheck. My aunt many didn't. My aunt many didn't die and leave me 24 million dollars.

Speaker 1: 32:16

We got a big nut the crack. My wife, she's working like crazy. I'm working like crazy. We stag her home at night at six o'clock. The kids are there, they're running around, they, you know they don't have like wild recesses anymore, so there's so full energy. They're screaming and you know we're just dead.

Speaker 1: 32:34

Oh god, now we're gonna make food. Let's just order out, you know, and so will order out, and, and we do this day after day after day. That's got to be numbing. And then you go to work and she has got, and he has got eight, nine hours of Somebody giving them stuff to do that they even question the validity of and, but I gotta get that paycheck. And so the clever boss is one who, who? Hey, this is a third of your day. I'm gonna make this as meaningful as I can. Let you make as big a contribution as you can so you feel good and you get the rewards. How about we do that? How about we do that? And if anything is rubbing you the wrong way, come talk to me. Maybe we find a even better way of doing things. God, wouldn't that be a great boss to work for, you know?

Speaker 2: 33:33

Yeah, well, you know, I mean you, we could talk a lot about your martial arts career, right, I know, I know that's that's a big part of your background, I mean and and it's like prolific, right, and we're talking like black belt Hall of Fame, and you know, I mean here I've read somewhere that you were one of the top 10 most influential martial artists alive or of all time. I mean it's, it's been phenomenal. But let's talk about kind of what we just talked about right now, because I know, you know You're also a prolific author, writer, you've written a ton of books. I know you have a program right now that you've put together. I know you work with a lot of people and it's not just purely, you know, protecting yourself, hand-to-hand combat. It is about finding purpose and self-actualization and things that I think are probably more important in day-to-day life. Help me, help me understand a little bit about your latest program that you've put together and some of the work you're doing today.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Well, you know, I have gotten the point where the self-defense is Almost a metaphor. We can physically learn how to deal with adversity In very simple ways and it becomes a model for life and a lot of my Students. I'm never gonna get in a fight, I just don't go to places where their fights happening, and. But what you're teaching is very valuable to me In my real daily life. I learned what, what drives people to conflict, what motivates people to confront one another as opposed to Co-operate with each other, and those are the lessons. So I I have a little book it's called how to own the world, and it is really nuts and bolts boiled down to these programs where you can actually study this. Some of them are so direct that people might have to study it like twice or three times to really oh, that's what this guy's saying. And, and you know, it includes a Basic model for taking on anything risky. You know there are three elements that you got to make sure of if you're taking on anything risky, whether it means bungee jumping or wrestling alligators or Trying to get a girlfriend or whatever you know. And then there's an ethics code and there's a personal development code, eight steps and this personal development. There's a how to be a hero code. There's six steps of how you would actually Become a hero in your own life and, anyway, this little book.

Speaker 1: 36:14

If anybody's interested in getting the book, it's not Like commercially published, we just published it ourselves, so we have it For sale you have to go to our website. It's Stephen K Hayes. Like one word SDS, yes, the EP, a GN, gay H a yes, stephen K Hayes, calm, and there's like a little pull-down thing with it says store, you know and you can find this how to own the world. But that might be something interesting for people to look at because it's it's Applies to the martial arts, but it's not about martial arts. It's really about how to Get yourself into a kind of a disciplined lifestyle, and the younger we are no, I'll take that back Any point in life Discipline is going to be the key.

Speaker 1: 37:04

I always say you know, you want total freedom. Yeah, I want total freedom. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it, with whom. I'm going to do it as I want it. Okay, well, how? You gonna do that for a little while. You need to focus your discipline on a tiny little hole like this, that tiny little hole, dainty little hole, and you put the key in the hole and you turn it and the door opens and now you've got freedom. But you can't have the freedom unless you can really narrow it down for that couple of moments where the key goes in and turns.

Speaker 1: 37:39

And that's discipline. You know, discipline is Knowing what we want to get and taking the most direct route to it, not getting diverted or Distracted, or well, I'm gonna do a little of this or I'm gonna do it my way. No, no, you take the most direct manner. So that might mean going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. It might mean, on the commute on the bus or the train, I'm gonna read something that's stimulating and valuable. I remember in Japan, way before the internet, I would read entire books for one line yeah, yeah, that's it. And you know I was on the train for an hour, you know. So that might be discipline.

Speaker 1: 38:26

Discipline might be for going, certain Appearance things. Well, I want to express myself. Well, yeah, but the way you express yourself Offends some people, and and those are the people you want to impress. So, is this smart? You may, for a little while, dress a little differently, a little more professionally, groom yourself a little differently In order to Discipline, get where you want to be and once you're there, oh well, yeah, sure, you can wear a Hawaiian shirt if you want to, or you can shave your head or get a neck tattoo, you know. But going in, you have to fit this code of discipline and, like what we started out with our earliest conversation, knowing what I want, this is it. I'm totally dedicated and whatever it takes to get it, I'm gonna do that. You know. I think that is Crucial, that you know, that's really what's important. And then the discipline, you know, falls in line.

Speaker 2: 39:38

Well, I and that is something that they teach you in business school Really is if, if you want to be successful at executing it, anything right Executing on your dream, execute on your vision, whatever it may be. You need to be really clear on what that vision is, what your north star is, and then okay make sure that you prioritize the things that you need to do in order to reach that.

Speaker 2: 40:02

And, and conceptually, the idea is we're all busy, everybody's busy, we're all doing, we're all doing stuff, but are we doing the right stuff? Is the stuff that we're doing today the stuff that's leading us towards our goal? And do we know what our goal is? And you know, I think the truth of the matter is most people, whether it's an individual or even companies, don't really know what they're trying to do and don't know if the thing that they're doing today is gonna help them get there.

Speaker 1: 40:29

Well, you know, I think that is so true, and that's what I referred to earlier, where, you know, people are just next thing. You know they're living a life in a rut, you know, you know you get a couple weeks. Well, let's go to, you know, mexico, to the beach, and we're gonna pretend that these two weeks make up for 52 weeks of Just mundane living by the book, and the kids are bored to death, and so they're looking for stuff that's stimulating to them and the parents are wondering why they don't listen to them anymore. So well, maybe, maybe the kids don't want to grow up and be like you. Oh god, you know how did it come that way. You know, there's a funny little meme on the internet where something to the effect of you know, your parents weren't always these bored ruling forcers. At one time they were exciting, exotic, sexy, fun people, and you know, maybe we should remember that, you know, and? But people get scared, or they, they bump into a little obstacle and they turn it into a wall. And you know, a billion of us on the planet, each of us with our own story, how many are really crafting that story? How many are Tuning into what that dream is and the dream Carries them.

Speaker 1: 41:54

And I'm sure you know some people listening to this could be offended, could be offended by what I'm saying. Is what? You're lucky, hey, you got me. Yeah, baby, yeah, baby. Well, you can say that, but you know that's justifying. You're not singing your song. Maybe you knew when you were a kid what you were supposed to do. Maybe you knew I talked to some people like that. We really get into it. Now. There there two ways out. One is a person you know. I ask him a pointed question and they go I don't know. Well, if you say you don't know, you're not, you don't play the game, you just looking for some solace, you know. So I might ask him well, if you did know, what would the answer be? And the other time, so many people have these breakthroughs, I tears.

Speaker 1: 42:51

I remember what I wanted to be is a kid and I remember what that symbolize is like. My talking about the movies is a symbol for being a Public person. You know, as a child I thought that was being in the movies, but I needed to go through maturing Experiences to really focus in on that and not People said God, my whole life I've been just making excuses and being pissed off at the Little things that bumped into my way and, you know, denying what I knew to be true. And I said well, that's the past. From right now, forward you got.

Speaker 1: 43:33

However many years you're gonna live, from right now you can change all that you can, you can refocus. That's the wonderful thing. You don't even have to worry about what you did in the past. Well, you know, I was real quiet because my family was noisy, or no, I was real noisy because my family was noisy. I had to do that to be heard, or well, my, I had a creepy uncle that like look at me in a creepy way, or I mean, we all go through stuff and I'm not diminishing the impact it has but ultimately, the Japanese Tibetan View is yeah, that happened. And meanwhile you're are where you are right now and you can only move forward. You can only move forward, and so focus on what you want that forward to look like and, using discipline, do those things that will Take you past the distractions, get you where you need to go.

Speaker 2: 44:34

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So your program, or is it a book program? It's a little bit above.

Speaker 1: 44:41

Yeah, well, it is kind of a program but it's a book and it is like sparse. I take a whole page just to put about eight lines. I put it in big letters, it's just so. In a way it's self evident. But sometimes the basics are shocking to us. We get in a complex world and you know the basics are just. You know so it's called how to own the world and they go to. Stephen K is dot com and get a car.

Speaker 2: 45:16

He's like fifteen bucks yeah, put that link in the show notes okay, that sounds great.

Speaker 1: 45:23

Well, you know so. But this is based on my experience. That's another thing I have to admit. You know, people come to me and they look at my house and my wife and my career and my kids and my grandkids and my cars. Oh god, you got it made here as well. I didn't always have it made, you know, I had to earn this, but I can show you how to do this. I can show you how to do it. I can show you how to live like I live.

Speaker 1: 45:54

If you want something else, I can't show you that. I don't know how to do that. You have to get somebody who's lived that you know. Somebody who's a Billionaire with private jets I don't do that, you know. Or somebody who's just a working staff who's hoping for a raise and I never did that. I can't show you how to do that, you know. That really brings it down to kind of a defining thing. Yes, this, what you see, is what you get.

Speaker 1: 46:27

You know from my martial art, spiritual life style. You know that there are things, all that my wife emphasizes on how to I call it Zenify, how to Zenify your home or your workplace. You know, so many people live in crowded, cluttered. Let go of this, because that works the same way our martial art does. Instead of lots of technical, complex things, you get rid of what you don't need and you're left with just what works. Just what works.

Speaker 1: 47:09

You know where's most people when they come into the martial arts. They think, oh well, if I could become speedier and if I had more power and more complex techniques the other guys don't know, then I'd be a great martial artist. And we let him believe that for a little while. But eventually we tell him the truth. You see, you don't need speed, you need timing and you don't need power or strength. Look at my wife. You know she's small Japanese woman. But you don't need strength or power, you need leverage and you don't need complex techniques. You need to boil it down to just a few basics that you are in total command of. This is shocking to people you know. This is stunning to people you know. So the same thing is reflected in a house, your home. My wife says your home should be like a power spot. Whoa, isn't that cool. How many people come back to their house and go? Oh god, I feel so liberated. What a power spot.

Speaker 2: 48:09

I live.

Speaker 1: 48:11

I don't know.

Speaker 2: 48:15

Well, stephen, I appreciate it. Man, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I feel, I feel like I could, I could wrap out with you for for hours. I mean, there's so much of your background that I could, I could dive into you, but I think we're just scratch the surface. But You've, you've truly lived a a full life, an interesting life. You've, like you said, you've never had to work a day or life, which I think is the dream many people. So I will definitely check out how to own the world. I'm really curious to see what's okay.

Speaker 1: 48:47

Well, it was interesting for me to. I learned a lot. I had this fantasy of what an MBA and you straighten me out on that and maybe we can Revolutionize that world. I won't be the one, I won't be the one to do it. Wonderful time, greg. I so enjoyed myself, so enjoyed myself.