The University of Life
The University of Life podcast has become my personal collection of fascinating learnings from the people I meet and experiences I have as I explore life and journey deeper in to the space of business mentoring & life coaching.
The University of Life
The University of Life & Dylan Werner
Tattoos, grief, and the meaning we make from pain, this one goes deep.
What starts as a chat about ink turns into something much more personal: identity, loss, and the courage to evolve when life asks you to.
Dylan shares the story behind covering old tattoos, and how choosing beauty over biography became a way of honouring both who he was and who he’s becoming. We also talk about grief — the kind that cracks you open — and what it means to find peace, not through explanations, but through presence.
From there, we explore language, growth, and how the words we use shape the lives we live. We talk strength, recovery, and self-worth — how to stretch without breaking, rest without guilt, and love without losing yourself.
It’s raw, thoughtful, and full of those moments that make you pause and rethink how you’re showing up in life.
If this conversation moves you, share it with someone who’d get it too.
Welcome back to The University of Life.
If ever you'd like to connect, please don't hesitate to connect via my website www.jamiewhite.com.
I am always open to feedback, reflections, guest / subject recommendations and anything else that might come up.
Thank you for listening, Jamie x
Dylan dude, welcome to the University of Life. Thank you. I I need to like ask straight away, what's the story with all the tattoos?
SPEAKER_00:You know, I've uh It's a it's it's a good good good way to start. I always get so tongue-tied at the start of these things, you know, because like I I I always want to say something good, you know, something that has value. And I feel like there's so much stuff out there that you just listen to and very little of it has value. Like so many podcasts you just listen to and it's just content for the sake of content. Um so first question, let's go. Tattoos. When I was little, I I I love tattoos, I thought they were the coolest thing in the world. I remember one of my really cl good friends, probably my closest friend at the time there. I was like 18 years old. He we had we both just watched Snatch, and I don't know if you've seen that movie, but Brad Pitt is just like covered in these cool tattoos, kind of like all over. And back then, this is '99, 1999. I I turned 18 18 in '98. Jeez, old. Uh, but yeah, he got a tattoo, like this big Virgin Berry on his ribs, and I thought that was cool. And I was like, I want to get tattoos, and I just started getting a couple, and uh and then uh ended up getting a sleeve, and then just getting more and more, and then the tattoos I got. Tattoos, like I know you don't have any tattoos, do you?
SPEAKER_02:No, no, I'm a blank canvas. You the the reason actually I asked that is because it's very true to the first time I saw you, we were we were in a sauna together. I remember you were sitting in Lotus and I looked over, but you had a sleeve. And I I actually hadn't seen many people what with tattoos, and it was really curious. But as I've kind of followed you and we've been connected, you go for these deep dives where you'll go for like seven days or eight days back to back of being tattooed, and it's it there's huge pain in it as well, and and so it's just quite an interesting journey that you put yourself through that. Obviously, I have no connection with, I've never done it myself before. So it's just curious, like there must be such huge meaning in it because you put yourself through a hell of a lot of pain. One would think, right? This is just funny shits and giggles.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, uh no, like I started getting tattoos. You get when I was young, I got tattoos of things that I liked, that I thought were cool, or I wanted things to have meaning. And I grew up religious, even though I'm which I would I'd love to talk about your new church experiences and stuff, but I grew up religious and later became um non-religious, I guess. Not like I have nothing against religion, but I you know that actually was kind of a big part of my life. And I but I started getting tattoos kind of in that area where I was shifting out of it, but it was still something, and and I still wanted things to have meaning. And so I I got I was really into anime. And if you notice, I don't have any anime on me any anymore, but I I started I got an anime sleeve that was just really dumb. It had like two angels on it, and I don't know. I I I wanted things to have meaning with tattoos, and what I realized about tattoos as I got older is I just wanted them to be pretty. And and like as as you move through life, the things that are important to you change. Even your aesthetics of what you find is beautiful change. But I don't know, now 40, 44. I've kind of I've now covered up every tattoo that I've had except for one. I only have one tattoo now that is from the original that has meaning. And that's there's one on the back of my calf from a trip that I did with a bunch of my friends. So we went up to Canada and and uh there's this Haeda Indian art up there, native, uh Native American, Native Canadian art. And it means brotherhood. It's just like uh it's like a sun made up of hands and faces, and all my friends have it, and my stepdad has it. We all have in like different places, and so that's the only one that I kept. And all the rest of them, I just I wanted something that was more pretty and what I liked. And it's been more of like covering up my old identity. I think the biggest one that I had was like there was this big atomic bomb that I got from uh after maybe 10 years after I got back, or no, less than 10 years, let's see. When I went, I said, like, let's before this, it's like Jamie's like, Does there anything you don't want to talk about? I'm like, let's not talk about it in my past, let's not talk about like my time in the Marines or war or yoga or any of that. Let's just have fun. But I I had this big atomic bomb on my back and the fallen soldier memorial thing, which is like an M16 with a helmet on top for like my friends that I lost when I was in Iraq, and and I carried that on my back for uh 14 years. I got it when I was 30, and I just covered it up um a month ago or so, two months ago. Um how long has it been? Yeah, yeah, three months. Yeah, something like that. But it is something that lost all meaning. And so I just wanted to kind of get rid of it because like who we associate ourselves with or whatever, uh, who we think we we are is generally or oftentimes who we were, yeah, which is rarely ever who we are. And kind of getting rid of all my old tattoos that had some sort of meaning to me that had lost the meaning really allowed me to kind of step into this new chapter of my life, which is one where I just want to feel beautiful in my body and like look at it and feel good rather than having to explain to somebody why I have a big atomic bomb on my back or why I have uh uh an angel on my arm or a mermaid on my fore or whatever, you know, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's holding on to the scars and the weight of the past. It's look, I I I wanted to ask that that question because I kind of think how how we do one thing, it's how we do everything.
SPEAKER_00:Is that true though? I've heard that so many times. But how many but like I I love these sayings. I love these sayings. Let's you know it leaves finish that, but I want to get back into it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, it it leaves clues. Like you were you were somebody that I I met, I think you had like 800,000 followers or something. But what struck me was you never posted on social media. You seldom posted on social media, but when you did, you posted with meaning. You know, you were an influencer that didn't do any brand deals or or seldom did them, um, and you didn't overshare. It was this really interesting thing to observe. Oh, he posts about once a month when he does. Whoa, there's a lot of impact. That's interesting. You know, he actually has care. And like your practice, your practice for anybody watching on, like if you go to Dylan's Instagram page and you look at just some of the stuff that he can do with his body, well, for me as I've been trying to emulate, it's like five years and I'm not even scratching. There's huge, uh there's huge practice, there's huge depth, there's huge meaning. And uh and so when I when I asked that about the that tattoos, yeah, what I didn't realize is oh yeah, Dylan's Dylan's in the studio for six, seven days. Two or three of those days are actually covering up, two or three of those days are clearing up the past and almost creating a bit of a blank canvas for him going forward. He's not like he's not allowing his past to define him, he's updating himself. And it's quite an interesting thing to say, you know, clearing off those anchors and actually just saying, No, do you know what I want to be pretty in my body? And this artwork, you know, what's the depth? What's the meaning? Oh, it's no, it's pretty. I just feel it's complimenting my look. Um, so yeah, that that that's what comes up for for me, and then that's yeah, that's why I kind of find it interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, then now let's get into something. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Yeah, do you think it's true? No, not even a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So this is the real reason why I've asked to uh to chat with with Dylan, because on other podcasts you know that the conversation will flow. I actually once sat down for dinner with Dylan, a guy called Mike Chang and Ian. And for the first 45 minutes, maybe an hour of the conversation, we were fighting over definitions. Somebody asked a question. I was like, Well, what do you mean by that question? What do you mean by that adjective? Let's just make sure we're all going off the same uh the the the same grounding here and understanding. And uh and my relationship with you is one of really interesting challenge. You you were probably one of the first people to introduce me to like the fun that can be had in being like, yeah, it's a good saying, it sounds great and everything like that, but it's bullshit. So why don't you rip it apart first and foremost and I will go from there.
SPEAKER_00:No, I'd rather I'd rather you defend it first. It's more it's more fun that way because because then we could look at where the holes are. Yeah, it's also harder as well.
SPEAKER_02:Harder to defend something than it's a territory? Really, really are well, it's harder to be the first one to speak. But for me, when I say how we do one thing is how we do everything. Of course, it's not how we do absolutely everything, but what happens is there is clues. There is kind of little similarities. So if, for example, say we have challenges when it comes to speaking our truth, being honest, well, that's going to show up not just with regards to perhaps a friendship, but it'll show up in relationship, it'll show up in family, it'll show up in probably communicating, in branding, it'll show up in several other areas. So how we do one thing in that one area reflects itself in all other areas and leaves clues to perhaps a deeper meaning. That's where I'm kind of grasping at.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I get it. There is there is some truth to it. Like if you are a motivated person and you and you pursue things like wholeheartedly, like one thing, you generally do that towards most things because that's your personality. But how you do one thing one day is not how you do something every day, right? In the same thing. So just like in that same regard, like, you know, maybe you brush your teeth the same way, but how you approach work or how you approach a relationship or how you approach a friendship or something changes day to day. Life is dynamic, it's constantly moving through through ebbs and flows, ups and downs, depending on how you feel, how you how you show up for that day. We don't show up our best every day, we don't show up our worst every day. That changes always. There's so many factors that influence how we do something that you know, sometimes you might be really motivated and you go out something really hard for a while and you put everything into it, and then other times, you know, something might change. Like we both just lost uh one of our really close friends, and that changes things. And so you might do things really different for a while because you're honoring whatever that is or however that feels. And so how you you know it it's we show up differently for ourselves every day differently, we show up differently for people every day differently, you know. Uh, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I it so when I when we go back to the start about the tattoos, yeah, okay, back to the it's no, but it's like again, analogy for life. It's you actually went through a lot of pain to relieve yourself of that past imprint, that anchor to the past.
SPEAKER_00:And give yourself so so like there's there's a difference between so yeah, tattoos hurt, they're painful, it's a process, the healing sucks and all that, but it's temporary. It's not like there's there's pain, and then there's like things hurt, right? Going getting all these tattoos, they hurt, they weren't painful. You know what I mean? Again, this goes back to how do we define define words or like English, we're both native English speakers, even though I think most people can't understand you when you talk. Um for and I don't think I have an accent. Yeah, not not at all. For for an Irishman, you're you're you're you're pretty benign. Uh but yeah, so like we we English is a really dynamic language, and so you know, like pain and love have so many different contexts of usage. And so when you start talking about something like, you know, going through pain, um, and like why I just cut you off in the conversation short, there is because you were using one definition of pain to then talk about a different definition of pain, which really should be two different words, right? So you're using physical pain going through that, and you're talking about an emotional process. And getting tattooed is a physical if some people it might be emotional. For me, it's it's not emotional. I go in there, I'm really good at dealing with physical pain. Uh, I, you know, years of breath work and meditation and everything. Being able to disassociate my body from my being is one way to do it. Uh, also to understand presence, you know, like experience something in the moment that is temporary and understanding how it's not lasting and and the uh the finiteness of it and how it's going to be over is really easy to cope with something like getting tattooed. Like, yeah, this hurts now, but it's not gonna hurt forever, you know, and it allows you to move through that process of being one that's purely physical versus what happened at the exact same time, you know, literally the exact same time that I was getting tattooed is we lost our friend Aaron, right? That is another kind of pain that I'm still dealing with that you're still, you know, we're still dealing, like just talking about brings tears to my eyes because you know, miss them so much. Um so to use use this word in um to use this word in two different completely contexts that is like it's the same, uh doesn't do justice to what pain is. And so like um I would say the tattoos hurt at the time, but they weren't painful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, like again, it's just because language is limited and to actually communicate, like how you know, the talk you have, you have to understand the words that we're using to communicate with, and we all define things differently, so differently, that oftentimes we have a conversation and we don't understand what the other person's saying because the foundation of the words that we're using to communicate are not the same.
SPEAKER_02:And if we only probably took a little bit of time to do exactly as you're doing and really inquire into the different definitions, the different what layers at which we're communicating at, it may be a bit uncomfortable, but over time we would find a connection, a greater level of understanding, and probably a whole lot less disease as a result.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And if we didn't shy away from perhaps the physical pain sometimes, or emotional or whatever, and just allowed ourselves to relieve ourselves of our past imprint, we'd probably feel a lot more free freedom in the present.
SPEAKER_00:Well, if you think that most people have a conversation to be heard, yeah, rather than having a conversation to hear, yeah, he being heard, you know, you you you speak and you hope people understand what you're saying, but to hear, you need to understand what they're saying. And if uh unless you have a deep relationship or um a real understanding of where they're coming from and how they define things and all that, it's really hard to hear somebody. You know, and so generally like to have a real conversation and really to hear hear what they're saying is you need to understand the the the meaning behind the words that they're using. And and they're and like every word can be broken down to more simple words that are that are less precise. Yeah, or or or um there are less definitions or or fewer ways, less, fewer, fewer and less. There are fewer ways to hear what those things mean, you know, and then there's these bigger words that have such an emotional tie to them and and require history, your own personal history to define them versus like table, you know. Like if I say, Oh, this, you know, if I use just some nouns or whatever, it's it's really easy to to to talk about that and know that we're talking about the same thing. But as soon as I start talking about emotion or anything in the journey, right, it it requires it requires questions to hear.
SPEAKER_02:For me, what comes up when I when I share that line, how we do one thing is how we do everything. Is there's actually let's say a laziness in that. And your whole philosophy for life, there's there's not a laziness, there's a proactivity. And the proactivity I think allows for the freedom, it allows for the difference. It actually cuts us off from our patterns and it has us living more present. And that's that's really like what I'm sitting in front of you here. It's like quite a strong example of presence. And you know, there's no rush in this. You're like, no, no, let's get this right, let's get this right, let's get this right. And I think there's different, yeah, there's different um, there's definite different definitions for different people, and there's different kinds of um labels for different types. I think if you take a lazy approach to life, you'll pretty f you'll find pretty quickly that how what when one person does one thing is symbolic of a whole load of other things in their life. But if you're pretty damn proactive with yourself, if you don't shy away from doing your work, you'll find that you get quite a lot of freedom in your life, and those patterns play out less and less. And in actual fact, somebody becomes all the more challenging and hard to read.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Pattern patterns is an easy thing to fall into, right? It's it's we we people kind of like thrive on routine and patterns because it takes the effort out, actually. Even if you that's another like to understand effort or or doing one thing or laziness, you know, these like words that you brought up. Again, there's there's so much depth to that. I could go to the gym every day or work out or or try learning or whatever, and put so much effort into those activities, but because it's in a routine, a pattern that I do, there's actually very little effort into it, which is like if you're if you're talking about um wanting growth in life. The easiest way to have growth in whatever that area is to set up patterns, routines, um, so that you can kind of be lazy with it. Like uh momentum, momentum is a really hard thing to get going, but once it's once it's going, it's really easy to continue. And so, like if you're trying to better yourself in something, the hardest part is setting up the momentum to putting in those patterns. It's not the it's not the effort that it takes once you're in that.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting for me, the patterns will only get you so far, and after a certain point they'll start to hold you back. But I kind of hear it's like when I'm chatting with you and I'm hearing your philosophy, it feels like almost an advanced philosophy. Can I can I ask you something a little bit more deeper?
SPEAKER_00:I don't do you think there's such a thing as advanced philosophy?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, definitely think that we all we we look at the world through different lenses. Yeah. And we have our own realities. Now, advanced suggests superiority, let's take that away. But integrating a difference that yeah, I think different people look at the world differently. Different people live in different bubbles. And so much of what you were sharing is like, hey, if you're having a conversation with one person, you might be coming at it from different bubbles, in which case you're oftentimes talking probably about the same thing, but you're just miscommunicating a misunderstanding. And if instead of doing that where we're talking at each other, we try to find the base levels and we try to find a level of understanding, we're gonna have a far better conversation eventually. Might be a little bit slower in the initial sense, but over time it'll progress a hell of a lot more efficiently.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm I'm curious the um the timing.
SPEAKER_00:You said three months ago that you got that tattoo, the atomic bomb and the No uh when I was when I was 29, right before I turned 30, I got the atomic bomb tattoo. Oh, but got it removed about three months ago. I got it covered up, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:At the exact same time that we lost our friend Aaron.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What's the correlation?
SPEAKER_02:With that? Or is there a correlation?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the correlation was Aaron owns a tattoo studio, and I've got and and I'm partly covered up be because of him, because you know, he's the friend hookup, right? Uh so Aaron I don't, you know, Aaron, he was the what listeners. We're talking about a it's actually interesting because Jamie and I met Aaron uh the same day and we became friends with him. I became a really close friend with him, and he used to stay at my house every week just because in Bali, there's different towns. There's like Chung, Changgu, Uluwatu, Uboud, and they're like an hour, two hours away from each other. And I live in Changgu, which is kind of a bit where where we are right now, it's a bit more central. And Aaron was kind of always back and forth between Ubud and Uluwatu, but most of his business and work was in Chongu. So he would come and stay at my house at least once a week. And that actually all stopped when he he met his girlfriend less than a year ago, or I think they're coming right up on like what would have been a year. But because that relationship was really good for him, he stopped staying over so much. And so I there was like a bit of time that I didn't get to hang out with him as much as I was used to hanging out with him every single week. You know, he's really one of my closest friends here. Uh, and then when I started getting the tattoos, I was up in Uboot every single day getting tattooed and hanging out with him or staying at his house or whatever. Um and the day before he died, I was getting tattooed at his studio, and he came in and, you know, said that he was going to Thailand or whatever, which is where he passed away. Um yeah, he's, you know, like that was like my last, my last goodbye. So there's not really any correlation between me getting covered up. I was already doing it. Is the the whole reason why it happened when it happened is because I was waiting for this artist, this uh resilient artist that I've wanted to do my tattoos, and I've been waiting for him for like two years to come. Aaron brought him to his studio, and then uh he was tattooing me there. And that was that was really that was like a two-month process. What do you learn about grief?
SPEAKER_02:Like three months on going through a process like that where you lose a best friend.
SPEAKER_00:I I have probably a uh a better understanding with death and loss than most people, I think. Part of it from my time in the Marine Corps, I lost, you know, 18 years old. I lost, well, if I go back, like a lot of my family members had passed when I was in high school. My uncle died of a of a drug overdose when I was 16 years old. Um my grandmother shortly after that. Uh my grandfather, my my dad's dad, he died when I was like 10. And so, like loss of family members and stuff. My my dad's other uncle died when I was 24. But then in the Marine Corps, when I was in Iraq, I had lost a couple friends, um, some through suicide from results of after the war, and then you know, some from the war. And then I became a firefighter paramedic. Uh I was well, I was a paramedic first for eight years, and so that was like daily living with like people literally dying in your hands. You know, I think there's there's uh a run of like six months where I think on my shift I had somebody die. And from like usually from like a heart attack or something like that, it's pretty common. You're running 20 calls a day or so. There's you know, you're gonna see that a lot. And so there starts to become a disconnection with it a little bit. Um and also more of a connection with life because you start to really understand the fragility of life. And then about four years ago, um, I lost my dad to cancer. And, you know, losing a parent is is something completely different because it's like you when you plan your life and you think about all the things that you're gonna do. And you know, I j I recently got married, we're coming up on our one-year anniversary next month, but you know, my dad never got to meet my wife, you know, he's never gonna be a grandfather and stuff. And so it's like those kinds of experiences you miss out. And so the grief starts to come. Grief is about you, obviously. Death, like the loss of a friend, is always a selfish thing, right? Because after you die, it's you know, Aaron's not well, I I don't believe in an afterlife, which is actually comforting because uh eternity that's a scary thing, that's more scary than anything else. Whether it's you know, golden roads and angels and harps and whatever for eternity. I mean, I'm 44 and I I get bored. Uh you know, I need like three different devices sometimes to keep my attention, right? Could you imagine an eternity of that? That sounds crazy.
SPEAKER_02:It actually used to keep me up at late at night when I was younger. The thought of like, oh my god, I'm gonna be here for infinity. Right. That haunted me so much. I I like I couldn't sleep. I I I found myself just in these very weird states, sitting in that idea of life is endless.
SPEAKER_00:I think one of the reasons why so many rock stars and and uh like celebrities and stuff commit suicide is because they get to a point where they're no longer growing. And life is growth is essential for happiness. It's it's one of the most essential things to to feel content, to feel like your life has purpose or meaning is to be moving towards something. And in eternity, like when are you gonna run out? Did you ever see that? What was it, the the um the good life or good place or something? The good place. I don't know. There's this show with uh I think Kristen Bell or whatever, like uh they basically is like an afterlife show, and and uh not quite spoiled, so I will spoil it, fuck it. But like in the end, like they they're they're in this afterlife, and basically what they choose after after a certain amount of time is to basically walk into the into the nothingness and and and cease to exist. And that's like if I can't think of a better heaven than that, and if you look at so many philosophy, look at like um like Hinduism, Buddhism and stuff, it's it's about escaping karma, it's about escaping rebirth and reincarnation to actually to go back to to lose ego. So whether there's an afterlife or not, like what we want in the afterlife is no longer to have an identity of who we are, so that there's no those no longer a tie to karma, no longer a need to grow, right? We just can simply s cease to exist to get out of the the rat race. So for like Aaron, you know, passing on, like he's either doesn't exist with my father not existing, like he exists only in our memory, only in our hearts, right? And so the it's really about us when we lose somebody, it's not about them, it's always about us. I had a uh teacher, uh philosophical teacher, she told me the the difference between love and attachment is love is wanting happiness for somebody, and attachment is is what the happiness that that person gives you. And when suffering comes from loss of attachment or like a separation, right? So when we have that separation, we know are no longer getting fulfilled by that person, and that's where the suffering comes from. It's only when you let go of that that you're able to love, like wherever Aaron is or isn't right now is where we're all gonna be soon.
SPEAKER_02:I I I had to ask into that space because grief I I have found extraordinarily challenging to process. And the most frustrating thing for me is that there's no fantastic authorities in it. Um it is interesting that what you shared that, like, hey, we we all experience grief, and we're all we're all gonna die at some stage, but it's like this big space that we don't really focus too much in on. And even when it comes to you know, so many people's funerals and stuff, there's quite rushed. You know, there there's it's like someone dies and there's a rush to process that and then move it on. And actually for me, some of the saddest things is just how quickly things move on.
SPEAKER_00:Well, life is for the living, and I actually agree it should move on. It needs to, because life is only for the living. If we spend our time with something like, you know, like grieving over what we lost, it's it's a choice. For as being human, it's a necessary choice. It's it we need to process things. And the better that you I I guess the more intellectual understanding you have as something, the better you could process process it emotionally because you could intellectually see the process happening and you could add reason to it. That it doesn't mean that it, you know, uh when you lose somebody, that there is a reason why that person happened. I I hate the everything happens for a reason kind of thing, or trust in the universe or whatever. Life is nothing but chaos. Like the the the fun the laws of nature is entropy, moving from organization to disorganization. That that is that is what's happening with everything. Things become more and more chaotic as they progress. And the more that you try to find reason in that chaos, the more lost that you're going to become.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, one second, let me rewind that. So everything kind of starts off in an organized fashion. There's plentiful resources and everything, but every as everything progresses, well, there's a there's a day of fatigue, there's a there's a use of resources, there's less resources. So every day it becomes a little bit more challenging to have that same peace that you had the day before, that same abundance that you had the day before. And so as a kind of a trajectory going forward there, there's this impending and almost compounding disorientation and impending chaos.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yes, yes, and no. Okay. Because the the what stops entropy is energy. Because entropy is basically energy dis dispersing, right? As you know, you look at the sun, the sun's not going to last for forever because it's it's expressing its energy out into the universe, and eventually that's going to go away. Uh, but we're able to take that energy and use it to find organization, to move against chaos. So to move against that, it takes effort. Things don't happen without effort. And what I hear, especially like in the spiritual world that I I live in, is that you know, listen to the universe, go with the flow of the universe. Well, if you do that, the universe is going into chaos, it's expanding, it's it, you know, it's not moving towards organization, it's not moving in the direction that you want to live your life. It's going the exact opposite. What you have to do is put your own energy and it into whatever you're doing to move towards what you want. You give your life reason, you give your life meaning, you give your life purpose, you put the energy into what you want. And without that, your life goes into chaos because that is the will of the universe. Okay, so bear with me.
SPEAKER_02:Give me the word that it is the idea of this like uh ever developing and compounding chaos.
SPEAKER_00:Entropy.
SPEAKER_02:Entropy. Okay, so I always had this idea that yes, life is all the time getting more challenging, more stressful.
SPEAKER_00:That's a physics word, by the way. It's not it's not a philosophical word, but I'm choosing to use a physics-based term in a philosophical way.
SPEAKER_02:The choice. What what what anybody listening on could recognize is that when you chat with Dylan, he'll chat with you from a number of different layers and intellects. And so it's it's a really it's a it's actually quite a lovely journey because it's because very few people socially will challenge. You know, we we like to get along, but there's people pleasing on so many layers, and you just don't sit in that space. You will call somebody up in their bullshit, and you will speak into the regular awkward, challenging points, and it's so refreshing.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but thank you. I I uh and you actually nailed the reason why, and it's because it's people pleasing. I um I don't know. Well, I see this as your love. Yeah, I I well if you if you love somebody, you want to be honest with them, you want to be truthful with them, you don't want to please them. For you.
SPEAKER_02:So I my struggle was that for people that I loved, I wanted a champion. I wanted a compliment, I wanted a lift up. And that's nice.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do you think do you think it's for them or do you think it's for you? It's a bit of both. I felt I've had But what what's the root? Are you are you trying to please other people to please them, or are you trying to please other people to please yourself? Okay. And I don't really like that word please so much.
SPEAKER_02:It's so so I really want to put a past tense on this because this is definitely an area that I've really kind of had to zone in on. And one of the lovely things that I found is that helping somebody see a brighter path for themselves or see things from a more positively serving way for themselves, uh, I could see the relief and the joy that it brings to them. And that brought me a lot of joy. But what I recognize now is that that has its merits, but also what you're doing has its huge merits too, of holding up a mirror and sometimes telling something the very somebody something that the very something, sorry, that they don't want to hear. That can actually be oftentimes the greatest gift that you can give somebody because for every like heartwarming positive compliment that you get, it's probably a 10 to 1 ratio or maybe even a hundred to one ratio in terms of somebody will say a challenging reflection or a bit of feedback from a place of love. You get lots of challenge from criticism and shit energy, but there's a very, very select few that will meet you with challenge love. And that's a very I would say unique characteristic in you. And like I I kind of find like when I I don't think there's anything unique about me. Of course you don't. Well, I find like I find certainly for me, when I analyze the friendships in my life and the people in my life, I recognize that all of them have quite an inspiring effect. That's yours. You show up, and generally speaking, every conversation there's something, I go, Oh, that's great. And it's permission for me to do it going forward too.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So thank you. I think I think we we are very lucky in our lives with the I'm I'm getting ready to leave Bali. Like I feel I need to, uh, for a lot of different reasons. Not anytime really soon, uh, or permanent, but one of the things that really keeps me here is is the community of friends that we have. Uh I think that's what keeps anybody anywhere. I think about all the places that I lived before that were just awful places to to be, that like no one would choose that to live there. But you live there for the community.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But like I I I go back, like you, you were you your notes on grief are like are like here, look, life is for the living and like life needs to move on and everything like that. But when the the real anchoring thing to life is the community and the people you surround yourself with most, it's so disorientating when when a key figure and a high like a high impacting, inspiring person in your life goes. Yeah. And to come to terms with that, like I yeah, I'm curious. I like I'd actually love to ask, like, what what what would be your your philosophy or your tool to like, hey, look, this helps in grief.
SPEAKER_00:Um it's it's a really good question and a really hard one to answer because grief is a personal thing, and it and uh grieving has to do with your with with experience you get better, right?
SPEAKER_02:And isn't that such a harsh answer though?
SPEAKER_00:It it it is a harsh answer, and why I'm good with grieving is because I have I've had so much experience with it, and it's not being better at grieving, the the process to be better at it is not one that you want to go through. You know what I mean? Yeah, so sometimes like if you haven't been through a lot of grief, uh it's it's okay to grieve for a while, but then there's the other part of it, like I was lucky enough to deal with it from a very young early age where it didn't trap me. You know, or at least I have the personality that um I think w when I was really little, uh I I struggled a lot with depression and um had suicidal thoughts all the time and I was really unhappy. I remember my my mother told me one time that you know, like you're always gonna have problems, but the problems you have today are not gonna be the problems you have tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02:So the the this my like my idea of life or my recognition of life is that my problems actually get more challenging, my stresses get more. Um the hurt down the line um gets more and more heavier and heavier. And yeah, the challenges that are going to show up in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_02:I I actually the very philosophy that we talked about that life is challenging you. Life like the more grounded you are, the more confident you are, the greater you can lean out of your comfort zone of the.
SPEAKER_00:Can I can I ask you another question though before you finish that? Yeah. Is challenge good or bad?
SPEAKER_02:So I mean it's obviously both, but it's so there's there's two sides to it. And kind of what I feel is that we have a responsibility. Like you talked about harnessing energy. And for me, there's harnessing energy through work and through discipline.
SPEAKER_00:Creating energy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, actually harnessing and creating energy. Well, where do you harness it from? Well, you were giving the example of the sun and nature and flow.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's just because that's from a physics side. All the energy that we have, the sun comes down, feeds the plants, animals eat the plants, we eat the animals, and now we have energy. So that's that's how we harness it. But when we want to put the energy forward, I mean it comes from our food, but emotionally, maybe it comes from our friends and our support groups and stuff. Um so we nurture. But but that that I don't know, energy is such a a big subject, distorted, misunderstood, overused, manipulated garbage of a word now in today's society. I I think like how we how we completely don't understand this word energy, and we use it for everything and we explain stuff with energy and we don't know what it means. Okay, quickly give me your definition. Energy is the ability to do work.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Boom, physics, thank you. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So my belief is that in a world that is ever evolving in terms of stress and challenge and dis-ease, we can choose to do one of two things. Try and hold the line, but unfortunately, at a certain point life is going to engulf us and over overrun. Or uh build ourselves up all the more and perhaps outperform that growth curve, in which case life gets easier.
SPEAKER_00:Outperform the growth curve. Break that down for me.
SPEAKER_02:So there is a growth trajectory of challenge, stress, disease in our life. Okay. Okay. And if we stay put, that grows and grows and grows to the point that it overwhelms and engulfs. Or if we outperform that in terms of building up our strength, our capacity, our energy, then we can deal with this more easily. In which case, we outperform the growth curve, and life doesn't get harder anymore, it gets easier. Can you grow without stress?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I would say stress is a necessary component of growth. Of course. You don't go on vacation, you lay on the lay by the beach and drink my ties all day, and then afterwards you go, fuck, I grew so much as a person.
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_00:And now it's after you go through breakup. You might make physically, but like emotional growth. Um Yeah, there's we grow through stress. There's two types of stress, youth stress, and distress. Yeah. Right? E-stress is is the stress that we're able to handle and better ourselves from. Distress is it's too much for us to handle and it breaks us down. And so to grow as a person and remember, growth is the is necessary for life, for happiness, for fulfillment. And so for that to happen, there has to be a certain amount of stress. Majority of that stress that the majority of that stress that you put into your life, you want to put it into yourself because that's where you have the most control of the amount of stress needed for growth, whether that's you know, physical to working out or emotional through learning and listening and and dealing. It's the the stress that you don't have control over that breaks you down, the loss of friends and family or relationships or jobs, or you know, that's the kind of stuff. But they all regardless of whether you create it or if it's created for you, you have the choice to a certain capacity to grow from it or to break it down. Uh, and and a lot of that is like your history and how you show up for yourself in in those moments, how you choose. I I think, you know, for for you you look at, you know, like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or the these other people that have just been through some of the the most inspirational philosophical people, you know, Mother Teresa, that have done the most, have lived some of the hardest lives ever, and also have spread the most joy and happiness and impact on the world. And so it's not a matter of how hard the stress is, it's it's a matter of how you show up for that stress and how you use that stress to grow.
SPEAKER_02:I had a I had this uh journey with this body worker who was poking and prodding my body in all sorts of different ways and inflicting some serious amounts of pain on me. And he kind of giggled as I was screaming and he was like, Jamie, no pain, no gain. And he said, please sit with this and learn to work through this, because the more stress that you can manage in your life, the more success you can invite in.
SPEAKER_00:I liked it. Yeah, I you could you could definitely again that word pain. Right. You could have a lot of gain without pain. And when it comes to growth through the body, pain is the distress that you don't want to feel. There's discomfort like it's this is where like having an understanding, uh like your own definitions of words of like pain and discomfort. Um the the way that like physical growth I like to look at being being a yoga teacher and stuff is like if you put yourself into discomfort, how you know it's good for you is when you when you move out of that discomfort, that discomfort stops. Right? If if it's still there and it persists, then it's probably too much. And again, going through distress and and you stress.
SPEAKER_02:So sorry, I I like my curiosity is now getting the better of me because you're one of the first people I saw to do like go up into a handstand without any obvious push or anything. It's like you floated up into a handstand, and you floated down into a press-up, but your feet didn't touch the ground, and then you went right back up into a handstand, and then you went down into a press-up where your feet did touch the ground. And like to me, that is the most incredible uh like way of working a body. It should demonstrates enormous strength.
SPEAKER_00:I'm five foot seven, you're six foot five. It's a lot easier for me to do it than for you to do it.
SPEAKER_02:But but uh like that like that that gives a serious amount of prominence for me to be like, wait, what is actually the secret to the train to the training that you're doing? And what I'm hearing there is that like Jamie, know what you're know your stress, know your stress capacity, work with it, do not inflict over uh unnecessary pain on your body. Don't take on unnecessary stress in your life. Recognize that most of the stress you have in your life is self-induced. You only have a certain capacity of it. If you overdo it, you will set yourself up on a on a disadvantage. Manage yourself accordingly. And so I'm kind of figuring like, do you work through that? Like to get to that initially, was that years of work of work? Or is there kind of a secret?
SPEAKER_00:And the kind of secret that I'm pulling from that is it's don't go beyond if if you do too much of anything, it sets you back instead of pushing you forward. And so like if you're looking to grow like physically, you you don't want to work through pain so much, right?
SPEAKER_02:Like if which is so counterintuitive a counter-narrative to like the masculine training of like work through the pain, bash through the pain.
SPEAKER_00:So you have um you have uh what's I'm trying to think of the the word. So like you're you're basically your remodeling model. So how the body repairs itself and builds itself. You could also say this works emotionally as well, but for for strength is different than flexibility.
SPEAKER_02:You know, when you said you could also say this emotionally, I was just about to say, well, how we do one thing is how we do everything.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, well, how I approach strength training is not how I approach flexibility. Because they're different models. And how I approach things mo emotionally is also not how I'd approach it physically. But there are places that you could say there's a different model for that. There's a remodeling model, right? Let me bring you back. Yes. Okay, so if you work out, you move into degradation, where you degrade the body, you break it down, and then the body needs to recover. So you have a net or you have a net degradation and net synthesis, or sorry, you have a net synthesis. The moment that you apply stress to the body, it breaks down, and then it's gonna start healing itself. At the same moment that you that you're like do a workout or whatever, the body starts healing. Well, in the first part of that, degradation is more than synthesis, and so you're at a negative loss. But after for for creating um hypertrophy for building muscle, it's gonna be two to three days, you know, roughly about 48 to 72 hours. Then you're gonna move into your net synthesis, meaning that you got the most growth that you're gonna get from the stress that you put on your body. At that point, you want to do it again. And so you're building small increments. But if I go and I uh and I there's a little fly just um if if I let's say if I do Jesus, uh if I do chest day, right, and I do a really hard chest day, and then the next day I do chest day, that's gonna keep me in the in in degradation, and I'm just gonna continue to break myself down until I break myself and I can't and I need to rest because I don't have a choice.
SPEAKER_02:I I learned this from our friend Ian. So myself and we're really lucky to kind of go through this period of a gym where there's just this really tight community of these incredible athletes all kind of training, and you you you'd go in, you'd do your training, you'd learn from somebody else's, and and God, the conversations that flowed from there were amazing. But I remember I hit a real plateau in training, and Ian was like, You're you're over training. Uh and he he he kind of was like, Why don't we train together for a couple of months? And what we're gonna do is Jamie, instead of training every day, we're gonna train every other day. And it was incredible because I I plateaued, but after two or three weeks of training every other day, taking breaks in between, my results went through through the roof, my form went through the roof. But in actual fact, the other interesting thing was my business went through the roof, and socializing became much more calm because with the extra time and the extra energy that I had, I had had that to put into my relationships and put into my work. I thought it was so interesting. It was like, Jamie, train together with me, it'll cost X amount, but it'll pay itself back several fold. And it did. And I I find that probably like an unfortunate thing is we get so much endorphins from working out that some of us get a bit addicted to it, and we don't recognize that we think we're relieving stress when in actual fact we're doubly loading our bodies up or we're unnecessarily loading our bodies up, and it's it's funny, it takes discipline to train, but it also takes a lot of discipline to know when not to train.
SPEAKER_00:If if you remember, like you grow in rest. That's your your body needs time to recover. I mean, that that's with everything, and and that's I guess we go back to the grieving process. Like uh to get through it, it's like you need to like rest. Take time, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's actually an interesting one because on one side there's the idea that life is for the living and so things move fast. Life is for the living, it's not for the dead, obviously.
SPEAKER_00:No, it but like I I would love to make you to make that argument that life is not for the living in any capacity.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, no, but I don't even want to go there. I see the one the most challenging thing, generally speaking, when you're interviewing somebody, you have like six or seven subjects all that you're done, you know, you're playing at, and it's such a funny tactic. So Dylan obviously gets off on in disrupting conversations and my disruptor highlighting his intellect. So yes, it's so disorientating.
SPEAKER_00:I just I just always want to break it down to the truth. I think if something is to is true, that it's obvious, that there's not an argument against it. Like when you get down to like bare bones truth, you have to go like, yeah, that's I mean, that's what it is. And if it's not that, then you just continue working through the conversation. And every time when you're going through that conversation with somebody, you get to the point where there's an argument, like you need to stop there because we're trying to get to truth. We're not trying to explore what's not true. We're trying to get to bare bones where you and I are both like, yes, yeah, exactly. It's uncomfortable though, so we resist it. Are you on I'm not uncomfortable? No, and and partly because you're just such a cuddly guy.
SPEAKER_02:But that's your no norm. I I do find initially speaking, it took me a little while to understand you, your uniqueness, also your love. And I'm abrasive. But do you know if if we go back to that idea of grieving, like it's so much of the grieving process is get on with it, but actually, I think what you shared there is really true that, like, you know, if you do want to recover, you do need to rest. And so, as much as the world may be moving on, you do need to take your time to yourself. And oftentimes, probably what prolongs the grieving process for a lot of people is that life moves on and it sweeps them up and doesn't allow time and necessary space to really sit with what's coming up.
SPEAKER_00:I I think what helps me a lot is focusing whenever you lose somebody, um focusing on the love that was there and all all the good things and stuff rather than focusing on what's not there anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know what I mean? Uh I wish all you guys could have known our friend Aaron. He was just a one-of-a-kind human and really good at connecting. He just yeah, he connected people. Uh I mean, our group pretty much is the group that it is because of him. Um I mean, except for you and I, because you and I were friends before that. Like uh, but so many of the other people, I don't know if I would have these strong connections with them be without him. And so I I'm eternally grateful. And I by nature am a more reclusive person. Like I love being around people. I I love hanging out and stuff, but I'm the kind of person that you need to invite me or come to me or something. Like I'll just stay at home by myself or with with my wife, you know, and and just be content. Um but you know, Aaron was the kind of person that was always making things happen and and bringing the community together and planning events and planning outings, and which is an important thing when you as you as you get older and you know, farther away from like university and stuff and your friends groups get smaller, is to maintain uh a community outside of gym or church or whatever whatever your community is, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It is fascinating the way different different people so show up socially. There are some that have, let's say, the comfort in isolation, and then there's the others that have the c comfort in community, and to have like a blend, a mix of everything is so important in a social circle, and to get the benefit of having somebody who is like a hyper social community and playful uh type is is something that, yeah, you kind of pinch yourself and you say you're you're very lucky.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But that that's actually what happened for me when I heard that he passed. Immediately speaking, I was like, I'm so lucky I got to have time with him. Yeah, I'm so lucky I got to experience him. I immediately speaking, actually went to your wedding where he told he had a sense of humor that was so beautifully um edgy and uncomfortable. And so, you know, those types that they they almost they say a speech, and you're like, and kind of you're listening on, you're like, is he actually saying that? And like, no, he can't be saying that. Is he serious? He's not serious, and he brings you just to the point that you've gone, oh my god, he's actually serious. And he goes, just fucking with you guys, and it's so good.
SPEAKER_00:So Aaron's the kind of guy that will come up behind you and stick his finger in your butt just to watch you squirm, you know? Like uh, yeah. Um what I what I do love, like you know, we've had a few hangouts since since he's passed and stuff, uh, but you know, like bringing up his memory. You know, that's that I think dealing with grief is a lot of it is not to shy away. Again, it's like to focus in on that that love part. And the more that you can do that, the more it's it helps to process. Yeah. You know, rather than trying to ignore it or pretend like it's not there, but to like celebrate all the the qualities.
SPEAKER_02:Uh it's a funny, funny thing. Like, look, my my my experience of grief really isn't as in much as much in death. It's more so in breakups.
SPEAKER_00:But like I think it's it's that's worse almost. Because like it and breakups are still like a possibility. Like, wait, why did this happen? You know, like there you could argue it. You could you could try to be like, well, you know, maybe, or whatever. Like the Yeah. It depends on what side of the breakup you are on, too.
SPEAKER_02:But like that that idea of like people just let's say, let's just delete the past. Let's just delete the memories. And you know, you you see it like you well, actually, I my kind of idea of it is in movies and stuff where you know somebody's like, don't mention your father that's passed away, or don't mention the friend that's passed away.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like, well, also like don't like yeah, but it's more true, like don't mention the ex.
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, no, but yeah, it plays up all the more in that regard. But it's like, is that really allowing for the co-processing of something?
SPEAKER_00:And and who cares? Everybody has a like as far as like ex and stuff. Magda today or yesterday, she brought up her ex, or actually maybe today and yesterday, she mentioned her ex's name. Uh which is fine, you know, if like everybody has an ex, everybody has a past.
SPEAKER_02:I think I don't know. I one thing that I notice is generally speaking, the less access somebody has to their past, and the less open people are to go into their past, the more challenged, the more dis-ease I kind of feel. Whereas the ease at which someone will go to the past, the ease at which somebody will remember somebody, and immediately speaking, let's say go to the fond points, the more I kind of feel at peace, the more I kind of feel healed, the more I feel kind of positive and niceness in that energy.
SPEAKER_00:When I think back to majority of my exes, I have like really almost nothing but positive memories with all of them. Like there's obviously reasons why they're exes, but there's more reasons why we were together in in that period of time.
SPEAKER_02:And so Yeah, the funny thing that's coming up for me as you share that is that like there's an accumulation of all the reasons why perhaps you should break up at that point of breakup. And that's kind of like the last memory or moment. But exactly as you shared, well, there's all the other reasons why you guys got together and why you guys had your time together. And I feel it's a very, very important thing for, let's say, a grieving process to come to the point where you can't actually even remember those those negative points. Or perhaps you can, but they're overshadowed by all the all the good because like what they say, there's no greater uh teacher than relationship, and whether that's with somebody in your life that's passed or with somebody in in your life that you've moved on from. The fact of the matter is if that if they spent any time in your life, and whether it was positive or there was negatives, they're going to have taught you a hell of a lot, and it will stand to you forevermore going forward from there. So it's it's a sad thing if you can't see that, appreciate that, and find gratitude. I would feel this is the point where I sit and I'm like, okay, where's the question coming in and where's the side point? But that seems like that was the first point that you're like, Yeah, actually, I agree with that. I do agree with that. That feels really nice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Again, see, we get to bedrock, you get to truth. And uh the the hard part with like a podcast like this is once you get to the truth, then you're like, Okay, well, now what? Now we got to talk about something else because we got there.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I actually think that whole process in itself is actually really, really cool. That like there's a lot of bullshit that I entertained in my life for so long. And I recognize that a lot of that bullshit came from, let's say, that people pleasing. It came from misunderstanding, actually, a lot of the time. And and and not even not even addressing those misunderstandings. And what I kind of feel that there's a peace, like you talked about, like, oh yeah, Jamie, I just sit at home with my wife. I'm happy, play video games, watch TV. Play with my dog. You actually have a lot of peace in your life. And I I feel a lot of the peace is because you don't you don't harbour uh any issues, or you don't harbor it bite your tongue. If you s if you feel something, you say it, you express it. If somebody's like saying something that you don't agree in in the moment, you say it. My gut instinct tells me that when you go at home but go at home and lie on the couch, you lie on the couch, you do not think about all the things that you should have said or should have done. You have that peace. Yeah, that's 100% correct. And that's unique. I I I think there's very, very few people that can say, hey, yeah, when I go home at the end of the day, I've said all I needed to say, I've expressed myself so now I can sit in peace. I like for years would journal in the evenings, journal in the mornings, and like analyze my days and be like, didn't I wish I did that a little bit better, wish I did this a little bit better. I am now starting to experience some of the peace at which you're talking about, but I never would have thought, Jamie, you know that peace that you're looking for? It's under on the other side of the conflicts that you're avoiding. It's on the other side of those awkward conversations that you're not having. But it actually makes so much sense when it's illustrated, and it's interesting to see a practical example play out over the course of the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks. Yeah. Uh it's interesting. Like my my wife and I are so completely different in how we go about things. Like I I feel like I am more of an abrasive person, not just in because I want I I want to sand it down until it's polished, right? Like that that's what I like. And where where my wife, she is I'm not an emotional person. Well, I'm not I am emotional, but I'm not like outwardly emotional. I have very thick skin. I don't take hardly anything personal ever. Um I rarely ever think something is about me. You know, I whenever I'm talking to somebody, I I immediately recognize that whatever they're talking about is about them. Unless it is about me.
SPEAKER_02:So that is so unique. And I know you're in your flow of conversation, but I just want to say that's one of the ones that I've struggled with so much. I thought so much was about me. I'd like, you know, somebody would be out of sorts. What did I do? It's like, no, Jamie, they're just out of sorts. Somebody had something to say about what something I said. It's like, no, Jamie, that so much of this is not personal. It's on their side. Give yourself that peace. I think that's discipline and hard work to get to that point of peace that you've achieved.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yeah. Sure. I don't know what it is. Uh I uh yesterday, I think I made Magda, my wife Magda, I think I made her cry yesterday. And I was I was trying to do something on my phone, and she she's the kind of person she's the most sensitive by the most emotionally connected person and soft and loving, like all the reasons why I love her. Uh we don't we haven't had a single fight since we've been married. Not one. Until yesterday? No, it wasn't a fight. Um no, I I think I was doing something on my phone and she just like she just like was laying on me, right? And just like in front of me, because she's she's building her website right now and just like kind of like interrupted. I'm like, and I was just like, I was like, babe, come on, like give me some space like that. And that that's it. Like I'm like, you're like, I need some space. But I was very, I was in in that tone, but it but very much like get off me, I need space, you know, because that's how I am. When I feel something, I say it. I there's no and I'm like, I don't mean it in anything harsh or anything like that. And she knows that, but she's still who she is. And I know who she is, she knows who she is, and she knows who I am. But so she cried. And I and and she just like I didn't see her crying because I'm laying on the couch, right? And and so she gets up like this and just like kind of turns her back a little bit on me, and immediately I know I hurt hurt her feelings, right? Because I was too abrupt, because you know, and I've said I'm sorry, you know, like I didn't mean uh I didn't mean to snap at you like that, but I, you know, I was doing something and I need my space. I love you. And and and she's like, I know, I know, I know, you know, and that and that's it. That's that is as far as anything ever goes between us, is like I react in a way that is abrasive because that's who I am, and she reacts in a way that is emotional, and that's because that's who she is, and I recognize who we both are. Not that I did anything wrong because I don't feel like I did anything wrong. I'm not sorry because I told her to get off me or that I needed my space. She was like, she like put herself like in there, just it's like anything. I'll be watching TV, and she'll just like put her head right in front of my face, like without which is fine. And I'm like, okay, well, you're the most you're more important to me than the than the TV. So I'm gonna I'll just hold on a second, let me pause whatever and give you my full attention. Um when we're watching a show, I generally have to stop the show like 10-15 times, pause it, and give her my full attention because I don't want to divide my my attention between her and something else. I want to give her everything that she deserves. But it's I recognize who we are as people, and I recognize who I am quickly, and I understand that her reaction is not because of me, it's because of who she is.
SPEAKER_02:And by I don't I don't know, it's no, I'm trying, I'm also getting the fact that you like you recognize, hey, look, you're abrasive, and and that's you, and you aren't going to dramatically try and change that part of you because that's the fact you like you, um and she's emotional, and and that's fine, and it's fine you two being each other, and like I kind of hear so often that like relationship is about compromise, and it's like, well, you can just be who you are and learn to navigate around that. And what I kind of get is that you're owning you, she's owning herself. You're not putting the weight of responsibility of e of yourselves on each other, you're just learning how to get on while still be true to yourselves.
SPEAKER_00:There's so much truth in that relationship about compromise and relationships not about compromise, but it's always without like a deeper understanding. You should never compromise who you are for someone else, because that's who you are. We should always be growing to be a better version of yourself, but that should always be for yourself, not for somebody else.
SPEAKER_02:You know what bites really hard when you when you say that, because I recognize like if someone was like, Jamie, what's the what's the lesson that you've learned recently that you can see has brought the biggest impact, negative impacts in your life? And it's that I would love others ahead of myself, and so I would prioritize others ahead of myself, and I would deprioritize myself as a result, and that obviously over time starts to really knock yourself worth. It also puts your emotional and physical stability dependent on others, and I used to be the exact same way, creates an enormous amount of volatility in your life, and that core lesson of like Jamie, reprioritize yourself has been huge. And so, like, I always think the best lessons are like the simplest ones, and they hit at the core, and the values ripple out into so many other areas of my life, our one's life, and that has probably been the biggest one. Reprioritize yourself, love people, but don't love them above yourself, don't compromise yourself for others. Be true to yourself, own yourself, honor yourself, love yourself, let others see that the right ones will stay, the wrong ones will go, um, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_00:I think uh at least it was definitely true for me that I wanted people to like me because I didn't like myself very much. And so if I could get the emotional approval or whatever uh of other people, then I would be able to have my own approval for myself. But what I realized was like once you stop pleasing people and you just approve yourself for who you are, that people will like you. People like you less when you try to make them like you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I I recognize like yeah, I was very lost in younger years, and one of the ways I kind of got a sense of grinding was I outsourced my self-worth to my business. So like people are gonna like me because of my business, people are gonna respect me because of my business, and and that worked until I made a mess of my business, and now like oh my god, the hole in my life that I felt. And I I I I I unfortunately think that at certain parts, then I like outsourced my sense of self-worth to relationship and I and like really prioritized relationship over and above myself as a result, and then relationship goes and wow, there's like a double grieving period, and so so so much of like that so simple, and you hear it like really cliche, but like learning to just look in the mirror and and one, actually see yourself clearly, and two actually like like appreciate it, love it, prioritize it, care, care for it, and not compromise it for somebody else. It's she'd be like really simple, but really big work and enormously impacting. Uh how do you value yourself? How do I value myself? Isn't like what's the root?
SPEAKER_00:What how you choose how you want to answer that question, but the question is how do you value yourself? Again, that goes back to your definition of what value is.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's funny, my head is racing in terms of things, but the big word that's coming up is ex accept acceptance.
SPEAKER_00:You value yourself through acceptance? Um like like what is another way is how do you value yourself like what is your value?
SPEAKER_02:So there so I actually feel that there's like a trick in this question. There's not. No, no, but the the the trick is in its actually it's its simplicity. It's like you don't question your value. You don't even think about it. There's inherent value. You matter. And and I think that the this once you start questioning your value, it takes you on a pretty downward spiral. So actually it's a knowing. Like how do you value yourself? It's not even not even a question, it's you like feel your value, embody your value, know your value. But as soon as you bring that up, certain narratives, certain things are going to speak up of well, Jamie, you know, are you doing that well at the gym? Are you working there? And and perhaps actually there's an inner guidance that's coming from that, pointing you in the direction of like holes in your own integrity when it comes to your value. And so the proactive approach to that perhaps plugs any holes that might see you devaluing yourself. And the more true you are to that inner voice, that inner guidance, and the more active you are in that journey, I feel that the more evident, the more that that sense of value just is.
SPEAKER_00:Value is numerical, right? Like it's it's based off of a something that has a hundred percent value is completely whole. Uh or a hundred percent is one. If you have a if you have a pie, a hundred percent of the pie is one pie. So that's that's your value. 100% of Jamie is one Jamie. You came into this world as one Jamie. You can't add anything more to Jamie to make Jamie more than one Jamie, and you can't take anything away from Jamie to be less than one Jamie. So whether whatever you look at or however you look at yourself, you are 100% one Jamie. And so your value for yourself is 100%. There's nothing that you need to add to yourself, and there's nothing you could take away from yourself that will increase or decrease your value. Life is a journey of recognizing that you're whole, or at least happiness is a journey of recognizing your whole. And most of us don't feel what our oneness is, and so we're constantly going through this process of taking away or adding, thinking that by either one of these, subtraction or addition, we're going to somehow become more of ourself or more whole or more valued when at the end of the day, whatever that is, you're always 100%. It's whether or not can you accept that, right? Which which you talked about is your your acceptance, which is like kind of in there. That's why I was like, I wanted you to get more.
SPEAKER_02:I actually so I'm a big believer that like your vocabulary is deeply healing. And having the right words, the light line lines to put together around certain subjects can either fill you with confidence or leave you with big gaps in your confidence. And having a conversation like that, like of like, look, you know, you uh how do you see your value? And he, you know, actually putting me to a point of struggle. Like I in answering that question, I noticed my toes curled up. I started really fidgeting with my fingers, and it's a whole other thing, you know, answering that face to face. It's a different thing when you're on camera, and you're actually, you know, you're gonna share that. It's highly vulnerable, but yeah, you like hearing your like really been put in a point of struggle and disses and stress to answer that kind of question. But there's like, oh, okay, here's where you're at, and then hearing your answer, I can actually find my gaps still in self-worth, which I think are quite quite quite revealing and quite interesting. Quite like, oh well, well, now that I can see that I can work on that. Yeah, um, but hearing your answer, there's a beautiful, I love that. Like, a pie is a pie. Uh you come into this well hold hold and you go from it. I think it's a I think there's probably one of the biggest problems at the moment is that we are incessantly picking at ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:Like I yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And like that, that's this is just life. You know, you look, you should look well, you should be this smart, you should do this work, you should know this, you should up this. There's so much that you should be that it's so fucking hard.
SPEAKER_00:But it's it's it's about it's about not seeing those things as a bad thing, right? Uh was it yesterday at the gym? When I uh I after getting the tattoo, I had a lot of time of rest and and stuff, and I got a little bit fat and like talking about how you have to hate yourself a little bit. Right. There, there's I I don't think there's anything wrong with with um looking at aspects of yourself that you want to prove and and and look at those things in disgust. But the way that you look at those things is that's not who you are, right? If you get fat, like you should hate the I mean, if if that's a a value thing to you, again, we're using value in a different way.
SPEAKER_02:I am gonna screenshot that one and share it.
SPEAKER_00:But if if you get fat and you and that is something like being fit has value to you, that's still not you. It it like being more fit is not gonna make you more happy. Right? It but it's going to help you with this idea of growth and progression and moving towards something. Right? We whatever however we move, as you're still moving as a hundred percent whole as you, but you need to move. Life is movement, death is stillness.
SPEAKER_02:I think this is Isn't it funny how there's all these ideals promoted out there in life? And they're almost promoted as universal ideals. Self-love, love your body. It's like I hate my body sometimes. Some people need that. And then you, I remember that conversation where you were like, Oh, I hate this roll of fat. I hate it so much. And Magda literally turned to you and was like, Oh no, don't hurt hate yourself. And it's like, no, no, no, I can change this part of my body, and the way I'm gonna motivate that change is I'm gonna hate on it. And I will come back in a couple of weeks' time and I will say, I love this. Look, I think there's something quite interesting that like there is a singular dimensional kind of approach to a lot of psychology, a lot of wellness, a lot of ideals. Everybody's looking for like what's the four-step plan, the three-step plan, are the bullet points that are universal truths. And it's like, yeah, they may be for some person, they may be for the author who shared them, but we're individual. We all have our own different ways of working, some of which may be really controversial to another. Okay, it doesn't work for you, but this actually works for me. This is my philosophy. And what I love is that like there's certain parts where you can stand up very, very strong and confident and be like, it works for me, and I'm doing a bloody good job. So surely I'm doing something right. And there's other aspects of of our lives where we unfortunately can't necessarily stand up in that, and that's great to seek advice. But in the physical realm, like you're extraordinarily inspiring. And so that that I I that philosophy, that approach, I thought was pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I don't hate myself for being short, you know, like I don't hate myself for being American. Like these things, it's things I can't change about myself. But it's just the things that I know I could change that that that and it's I don't hate myself, I just it's just those like I need I think that comes just from like my passive like when I was uh when I was a kid, I was a wrestler, and and just kind of like that that coaching that I had was was was very like hardcore. I don't know, and it worked for me. It and I think my self-esteem is a hundred percent on on how I am, how I feel. Like I there's definitely things about me that I I I want to grow, I want to improve, I want to look a certain way, I want to be able to move a certain way, and how and then also with my followers or whatever, like that you would think that I have something to prove or whatever with that, but I don't, which is probably why I rarely ever post. I just when I do post, I just want it to be inspirational.
SPEAKER_02:Oh God. So just when you brought up your followers, I'm remembering back to one of your yoga classes, and there was a line that I've stolen actually since in some of my workshops, but I find it so inspiring. Where at the start of most classes, people will say, like, you know, if anybody has an injury, put your hand up, let me be aware of that. And the teachers essentially take responsibility then and there for the care of every individual student. In that moment, I remember at the start of the class, you were like, So if anybody has any injuries, if they're pregnant, if they're mentally unstable, remember to take care of yourself. And please don't put that responsibility on my shoulders. It's so good. It's like some people imprison themselves by thinking that they need to look after others around them, perform in a certain way, and they put an enormous weight on their shoulders. And in that moment, I saw you create great freedom for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:So many, so many yoga teachers listening to this are just cringing now. Can't believe I would say something like that. So good.
SPEAKER_02:I've said it in so many workshops. I'm like, hey, if you can't take responsibility for yourself, if you aren't comfortable in your own nose, please leave. Don't put any responsibility on my shoulders here. You're coming to learn what I have to share. Take it with a pinch of salt, take the elements you like, disregard the elements that you don't, but do not leave this putting any responsibility or blame on me.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want people to put responsibility or blame on me. Uh like as a teacher, I do my best to keep students safe and move them in ways that I know and I I keep my education up to so I understand the body well enough not to teach something that's harmful. But with with I I guess you could say it about movement, you could say it about emotions, you could say about it uh pretty much anything. And we you already kind of touched on it, it's like what is good for one person is not good for everybody. There's two types of movement. There's movement that's good for you, and there's movement that's bad for you. That's not the same for everybody, and it's not even always going to be the same for you. Like what movement might be good for you today might be bad for you tomorrow, and vice versa. And emotionally, what might be good for you today might be bad for you tomorrow, and vice versa. And what is emotionally positive for you might not always be that way. You we need to learn, yeah, take responsibility for yourself for for most things and and understand, like know where your edges are.
SPEAKER_02:What I what comes up for me is that I recognize there's a lot of introductory teachers that I went to, which are great for kind of giving me an introduction. But more recently, what I'm really finding stimulating is people sharing their practices, people sharing their philosophies. I might not wholly agree, like I could not, I couldn't actually work my way through your whole class, but I respected it deeply. Then I think you could now. Yes. I can't wait for another class. But I I I took my breaks. There's certain things I didn't do, and that was okay. And I but to to to see you sharing your practice rather than you sharing a practice that would have suited everybody. That's I think a challenge that a lot of teachers find themselves in. They're trying to cater to everybody. Are people online? They're trying to please the masses. And it's like, but that that that that only goes so far. And in actual fact, what I find I learn the most from is the people that are just going deeply on their journey and they're sharing what works for them. And having the discernment to take everything with a pinch of salt and figure out what's what's for me in that and what's not for me is helping me progress more as an individual, which I'm loving.
SPEAKER_00:I I don't remember where where I heard this, but um you've heard it before too. Like the attract your tribe or whatever, you know, we're we're tribal people. And that was the attract your tribe wasn't what I'm talking about. That's just like the the sound bite. But we're we're tribal people, and in that we biologically want to get along with everybody we want to fit into a group, and that's one of the most important um uh not characters, uh it's an inherent value and safety, of course. Well, it's one of the the most important values to us, or it's not the right word either, things for better. It's important for us to fit in. Yeah. And there's two different ways to fit in. Or there's let's say there's three different ways. And and I'm I'm saying three different ways for just simplicity, because you could definitely argue more or less or whatever, just depending on how you want to cut the pie. But you could either find a group that everyone shares the same ideals as you, which is why religiousness is so prominent and successful, why yoga is and stuff, like oh, we all think the same way and stuff, so now I could trust you, and so now we get along that way. It it if you like go back to school with all the different clicks, like you find a click that's kind of similar to you that you fit into. Well, in that click, you could, if there's if you're in a group, or let's say you're in more of a limited place where you can't really find your group, right, that that shares the same ideas as you, you're generally left with the choice of standing apart from everybody, which is not comfortable and usually not desirable. So people change their inherent values, what they feel is right or wrong to satisfy the group, to fit in with that group. And then you have the other type of person that this would be the third one that stays true to exactly who they are, and they make others change their values to fit into you. I definitely started as the one um who would change myself to fit into other groups, and I think a lot of people do that, and that's why they're so unhappy with how they are, because they don't feel they don't feel uh honest to themselves. They don't you know they don't feel true to who they are, they they have to compromise in a sense and just to fit in so that they could feel a part of that group. Where I think what brought me a lot of success is at a certain point in time, I made that switch, is where I know who I am, I know how I want to live my life, and I know how I want to move forward with my life, and I'm either gonna do that alone or with people following me. Um I love that. And I chose to be uncompromising to my values, uh who I am, and and I don't need anybody to agree with me to be a part of my group or to fit in. I mean, like our group, we have a lot of different types of personalities, and I feel like what is special about the group of friends that that we really have is almost all of us are leaders, you know, usually have one leader and a group of followers, right? But we're all leaders that are true to our values, uncompromising to who we are and what we believe, but yet have mutual respect for each other and the differences in ideas. And that's such a hard thing in society, especially with like younger generations, and you look at all like masculinity and stuff and what you need to be to be masculine, or like all these new ideas, and it seems like there's such a divide on one hand or the other, and there's just it's so far away from what I believe, right? But everyone is just you know, knowing that so much of this is wrong. Completely wrong, but they're rather be a part of that group rather than being ostracized from it. And this is where the especially young young men are are falling uh so hard to to these horrible ideas and like why society is taking such a dark turn in so many different ways. I mean, unless those are your ideas and then you you you feel like it's going exactly how you want to, but I know I've sometimes like scratch my head if it's looking at the news or just overhearing conversations and be like, how is this actually being believed right now?
SPEAKER_02:How is nobody questioning this? And I, you know, to kind of give your ideas, I I fan I found it best to just choose isolation for a good while. I found actually I was so confused by what I was reading, what I was hearing, and what was being impressed upon me that I kind of lost the sense. I was like, who the hell actually am I in all of this? Because none of this is adding up for me. I need space and time to figure myself out. And now more and more I'm following that kind of approach that you chair, which is like, John, I'm just gonna do myself here. And if people want to come along for the ride, great. If people don't, great. But I'm keeping my peace first and foremost, and that kind of priority, that self-love of like, yeah, let's let's live life on my terms, and perhaps somebody else might like that, might love that. But I don't want to compromise myself, I don't want to put somebody else ahead or anything like that and and find that I'm actually that I've imprisoned myself. And I find that like when you were sharing those examples, I was thinking that a lot of people are imprisoned societally and that they have to have certain beliefs, they have to present themselves in certain ways. And if they don't, that isolation would be crippling. But in actual fact, generally speaking, and certainly for me, that isolation was the cure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Or if you could just stand like stand up against the this is where my abrasive personality and my my overrighteous sense of self that I have uh have been a a real uh attribute to who I am. This is uh, you know, I'm not afraid to to go upstream against everybody else because I know what I believe in is what I believe in. Also, I know that beliefs can change. Uh there's uh the movie, Kevin Smith movie came out a long time ago with uh Ben Affleck and um Matt Damon called Dogma. And uh Chris Rock is in it, and Chris Rock plays an angel. And you know, the whole the whole thing is about like Catholic dogma and religion and stuff, and it's it's they these two fallen angels find a way back into heaven because of this like kind of uh loophole or whatever in the dogma of the religion that they could, you know, because they got like kicked out of heaven, how to get back in. And Chris Rock is he's saying, he's like, you know, that you have beliefs and ideas, and people people will kill each other. each other over their beliefs because the beliefs I don't I'm paraphrasing by a lot here, but you know, beliefs are who you are, right? Uh ideas ideas can change. Right? So it's much better to have ideas than it is to have beliefs.
SPEAKER_02:I actually, you know, when you're sharing that I'm kind of reminded of you going back to like the symbolism of your tattoos and like giving yourself a clean slate. And actually not not not uh not being not shying away from some of the physical pain that might be involved in that. You know oftentimes we have we have our ideas and it can be quite disruptive to reorientate them to change. But I think it's so necessary because those ideas can be like anchors. They can anchor us to the past and they cut us away from being whole and total in the present. And I feel it's a really important process to be true and honest with yourself in terms of oh yeah it's a new day. And in actual fact in this day I may have said that yesterday but circumstances are a little bit different. And when you talked about some of the mixed messaging around masculinity for me one of the big things was Jamie be consistent. And and that consistency of course it has its merits in some areas of life but the idea to believe one thing one moment and then to evolve can be seen as unacceptable. And actually for me it was like progressive.
SPEAKER_00:It's like I'm learning so of course I'm growing also are the beliefs are they even your own an interesting thing uh I can't who I who said this um this is this is not me someone else said this and I can't remember who said it but um I'm sorry I should give this person credit because it's really a a smart thought but if if you have a belief and there's nothing that I could say or any fact or evidence or anything to change that belief then that belief is not yours. If I can if I can't say if there's nothing that I could say that could change what you believe then that's not your belief.
SPEAKER_02:It's just been imprinted into you.
SPEAKER_00:You just adopted it from someone else because you didn't come there through reason or ration.
SPEAKER_02:And so anchored into your idea of who you are whereas if you could be convinced otherwise it's in the real it's in a processed experienced belief and so it's open to change and influence.
SPEAKER_00:And I could say 100% that there's not a single thing I believe in that I am not opposed to changing based on some better evidence or fact or whatever. I'm an atheist but if Jesus came down tomorrow and I was like oh there's Jesus I would no longer be an atheist obvious right but you couldn't you know nothing against Christians. I th I think belief is is a necessary part for a lot of people to survive this this world this ex this uh human experience and a lot of people need that I don't I did you know but I would much rather believe in God than not God. Yeah but there's nothing that most people that believe in God there's nothing that you could do that would ever disprove their belief. It's just an interesting thought like obviously I'm on the pro-atheism uh atheism side but you know ask yourself is there anything that would that could change your mind about what you believe?
SPEAKER_02:And it's not your belief. I've actually loved my journey over the last number of years. It's been highly disruptive like I've I've I feel like I have lived hundreds of different lives deep diving into all areas of life and like what I found is like I learned one thing in one area and it starts to ripple out changes and all others. God bless my kind of family and lifelong friends because every time I come back to them they must at certain points must have been like who the hell are you now I definitely feel there's a groundedness that's coming in.
SPEAKER_00:Oh I I love watching it I love you like telling me about your experiences and what you're up to and what you're doing next and stuff and I'm just I'm so happy that you're out exploring all you know all these different avenues and very different than anything I've ever done or experienced and stuff and you know that's it's amazing that we have this opportunity to really choose the life I mean obviously there's a lot of privilege in that and not everybody has that opportunity but you and I are both lucky enough to be able to choose that experience.
SPEAKER_02:Can I just share that even you sharing that with me there is really powerful so a lot of the times I felt like you know to to to go out into the world to explore to experiment it was unacceptable. And to some it was and to some it was met by fear and some it was met by rejection. But there was always a thing that I was like I want to hold dear those that can celebrate that that can love that and to hear it literally shared like you looked me in the eyes and that and you said here I love that about you. That's so nice. That actually inspires me to be all the more me and what I recognize unfortunately in some of the relationships that I found myself distanced from more recently is like do you know what I don't want to suppress myself and shouldn't at any value I don't want to I want to make sure I'm surrounded by people that actually love me and love those traits and it's that's something that I feel really lucky to have you in my life in that regard. So thank you. I'm lucky to have you in my life dude I would love you and leave you. There's a funny point at the end of the podcast where I'm like you know if somebody likes this if somebody wants to connect with you and I'm like how do they contact you but you're the simplest of Google searches away at Dylan Warner and you will just pop up on social media on websites on everything. So practice with me online do yoga with me Dylan Warneryoga.com absolutely I'm gonna put a like a test out to anyone like I'd actually really really invite you to do a class with Dylan as a barometer of where you're at I do have all levels one level one level two by all levels uh all levels of challenge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah and Dylan will say all levels but he he has so developed in his practice that what he sees is all levels is still extreme I really try to make level one accessible still challenging but accessible for anybody that's never done anything before and just starting out I I I really do. And then I also try to make level three um I I think it whenever you're you go out and do anything if you can do everything it's not the thing for you because there needs to be stuff that you can't do for there to be room to grow. And so if you ever show up in a fitness class or uh whatever it is, you know you're going to that and you could do everything that's there. It's it's not for you. You need to find the the place where you're challenged where there's there's actually space and opportunity to grow. So I've that I mean that's from what I stand from and that's how I like to teach like whenever whenever I teach a class I want I want my students to be able to do like 70 at least 50% of it but probably more like 70% and there always be that like 30% of growth of the things that they can't do or struggle with because that's why that's why we show up every day is is to grow. That's that's the secret of life.
SPEAKER_02:I love the way you just when you said that's why we show up every day I found when I did your class once I don't think I returned for like six months and then I came back again and I I do genuinely mean it if you do have a practice I certainly came over here feeling like I was strong and I was grounded and it was really humbling but at the same time really inspiring. And uh and uh and as I say this it's time for me to do one of those classes again too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah so dude thank you so much thank you very very much for sharing your time I'm glad we we got to we've done this before we've we have some other conversations pass and every time except for one has been really good we did we did have we did have one conversation that was just like off the walls that uh it was a weird day for I think especially for me but maybe for both of us but yeah I just remember yeah because I we did our first podcast together which you can listen back to and then like a few years later we were like both agreed like wow a lot of life has changed and evolved let's check in again and about 40 or 50 minutes later we were like we can never ever share this.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah let's just delete this immediately and so it's actually so nice to get through this and and share and uh that's a dude thank you because how you do one thing is how you do everything. Boom.
SPEAKER_00:But one second how does that even make sense coming together there now it doesn't yeah but that's okay because not everything has to make sense. That was like a South Park ending yeah Neil deGrice yeah Neil deGrice Tyson he uh um he has a book called Astrophysics for like dummies or something or for I'm messing this up too like where you got your physics references from no no no no uh astrophysics is different than physics but uh he starts he starts it out he says that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you and we we have this idea in life that everything should make sense and if we doesn't make sense we fill in that holes with whatever to make it make sense but it's okay if it doesn't make sense not everything is supposed to and it's it's our own hubris our own intellectual hubris that makes us think that we can understand everything that's going on but it's okay not to know boom I love you man love you