Steven Pressfield's Comeback Story

00:00:00 Speaker 1: Before we dive into this week's episode, be sure to follow leave a review. Like Comeback Stories, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any episodes. If there was anything Donnie and I could ask of you guys, it will be to give us a five star review in a written review. Our mission has always been to reach as many people as possible to remind that they're not alone and that we all have a comeback story within us. And we feel like you guys can definitely help us push that message further by helping us in this way. So we appreciate you guys. Morning. You'll ever know all the times you've supported us from the beginning of the show to this point, So thank you, and let's drop in deep to this week's show. All right, welcome back everyone. We are here for another episode of Comeback Stories, and I'm here always with my main man, Darren Waller. How are you, brother, I'm fantastic, bro. Anytime I get taught to you, man, I'm doing great. And this guest today, I mean, we'll just get right into it. So our next guest you'll be hearing from today wrote for twenty seven years before he got his first novel published and During that time, he worked twenty one different jobs in eleven different states. Today he's written over like twenty books, yet his first one did not come until he was fifty five years old, and since then he's written bestsellers such as the Legend of Bagger Vance, which later turned into an epic movie, The War of Art, which changed my life forever, a book called Do the Work, which is like the best title ever, and so many more. And so Stephen Pressfield, welcome to the show. Many thanks for having me, Donny and Darren's great to be here with you guys. I guess I should also mention the book Government Cheese, which just came out, what in December, and thank you for the gift spending this yeah, newly released, so you just keep from coming man. Yeah, that's that one is my comeback story. Yeah, we just yeah, I hope we get to uh well, I know we're going to get to hear about that today, so we like to dive right in. Can you tell us what it was like for you growing up. I had a real um Ozzie and Harriet upbringing. You know, I grew up in the suburbs of New York. Uh if if anything, you know I went to a really good high school. Um My mom and dad didn't get divorced. I didn't grow up in the projects or anything like that, didn't have anything, you know, If anything, my upbringing in terms of a challenge was that it was too sheltered. That I was never really exposed to a lot of the challenges that you run into when you get to be an adult. So you know what you were saying, Donnie, about how it from the time I quit my first job to try to write. It was like twenty seven years before I got a novel published, and that sort of I don't know if I would call that a comeback, but it was more of a kind of a journey through the wilderness, you know, like twenty seven whatever. It was twenty nine years of just kind of struggling to find who I was and what my vocation was. How would you say that? It's interesting. We just had another football player on we interviewed prior to you, Austin Eckler, who talked about his childhood and just how challenging it was and how hard he had to work for certain things and it wasn't very sheltered and it's actually shaped him into the machine that he is today and defining the odds being so small yet you know, being able to be so successful. But how do you feel like being too sheltered impacted you in your i don't know, teenage years, your twenties. What did that look like? Well, it just sort of compelled me. Once I became an adult, my life sort of fell apart because because of not really being ready for the stuff that you were going to get. And then I kind of, um uh, embarked upon a sort of a journey of real life, you know, of hard knocks, um to uh, to sort of get back to a place where I felt like, um I had my feet on you know. By the way, I'm a big fan of Austin Ekeler. I wish the Raiders areab onto him as fast as they can. Um uh. He's an amazing guy. You know. I got to watch that episode for sure. Well, and just for some context to our listeners, Stephen and his wife are massive Raiders fans. Stephen's wife was on here talking with us earlier, and she's the she the president of the what was the fan club called again of Raider Nation. She founded Women a Raider. Yeah, so they're they're currently grieving the loss of one of their um favor players where full and shot, heartbroken. Shock. But yees, so, I guess just getting back on track to to your story. You talked about it, h just being sheltered. Can you talk about just going back, uh into your childhood is as an early memory of pain or struggle that you can remember. Um, you know, I'm probably going to disappoint you guys, and I don't my childhood I don't really have. It wasn't really that kind of a upbringing, you know. If anything, I think of it as kind of an idyllic upbringing that I lived in a great little town. I had a great high school, you know, friends, every everything. If you on the surface, everything seemed seemed great. What what What was really going on with me at the jeepest level is that, Um, I was a writer. I'm born to be a writer, but I never knew it and I never could believe in it. I come from a family of business people, like you know, my uncle's my dad. Everybody sort of commuted to New York City or business people like that. There there were no artists in my family. There was nobody that was in a creative field. I was never exposed to that as any kind of I had no role models in that area at all, yet that was kind of what I was. I was that kind of you know, with all the things to go with that, insecurities, the ego that goes with that, and so that was really sort of part of my struggle just to believe in what I already was. But I didn't know and couldn't really grab a hold on with any real faith. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you on a comeback store. That's what it was, well and but you but you have one. I obviously when we get into the to the later years of that gap of when you were writing for so long, But I think it's interesting how you had this gift, this gift of writing, but you were not able to use the gift, or you weren't using the gift, which ultimately I think is like um, when we talk about purpose, like our purpose in life, our purpose isn't static, it's it's dynamic, it's fluid. But what is consistent are our natural gifts and talents. And if we're not using our natural gifts and talents, ultimately we're not very happy, no matter how much money we're making or how much success we're having on the outside. So I think it's it's great to bring that up and and highlight the fact that you weren't able to actually express or tap into your gift yet. Yeah. The other thing is, you know, if you're you're a natural athlete as a young person, you tap into it at right away. Right, it's very clear by the time you're in fourth grade, fifty eight or sixth grade. You know, Darren, I'm sure that was true for you, that people scouts were looking at you and everybody in the family a lot of times. You when you're a natural athlete, you have brothers, big brothers, big sisters, whatever, your dad or whatever who also happened so early on you sort of know that. But if you're in the arts, so particularly a writer, you don't really come into your own. You've got like a twenty year apprenticeship ahead of you, right, you got to learn a lot of stuff, and not just the skill of the craft, but what I would call the soft skills, like how do you handle rejection, how do you handle loneliness, how do you handle the indifference of people, how do you handle the hospibility of people? How do you believe in yourself, particularly when you start out and you're no good. You know, you're a bump. You you produced this stuff and it sucks, you know, it's it's mediocre, it's so good, and people tell you that, and so you ask yourself, what am I doing? Am I crazy? I mean, for for years, that was the real question I was asking myself, and my family was asking because I was, you know, a strange from my family for years. You know, I didn't talk to my parents, didn't talk to my brother. Um, and uh, people sort of thought of me that in my family and people that knew me growing up, like, what's wrong with this guy? What happened to him? You know? Well, you know we you know, is he crazy? And of course I'm asking that same question. Why do I keep pursuing this dream? I keep writing screenplays, I keep writing books. Nobody wants them. I can't get them published. Um? You know, I work a job. I save money for you know, two or three years, I could I go, I write a book. Nobody wants it. I worked other jobs. I said, more money, right, another goal. I wrote another book after that. Nobody wants it, you know, And so you're asking yourself like I say, am I crazy? What's wrong with me? So? I it's different from being an athlete. Um, and uh, it's just it's a long apprenticeship. It's like being a brain surgeon, except you're not in school. At least you're a brain search and you can say, Okay, I'm in my first medical school, I'm going somewhere. But when you're trying to be a writer and everything you do is getting rejected, you don't have anything to hang on to it at all. But that again, I think I'm probably blathering on here, but I think in a way that was great training for me, in a great um grounding for me, because when you when you living with failure so long for me, you know, twenty plus years, twenty seven years, you have to kind of ask yourself, why am I doing it? You know? Am I doing it for money? Because if if that's the reason, I'm really wrong? Am I doing it? You know? For women? Am I doing it? Because you know? What? Am I doing it for? And I eventually you have to answer the only answer to me is that you can't that you're doing it or the work it's done. You know. For me, the way it translated was if I had another job. Let's say I worked at an ad age, see which I did. You know it's a writer for an ad age. At the end of the day I would come home, I'd be so depressed that I just thought, I can't keep doing like this. The only thing that would save me was to try to write a story, write a novel, write something like that. Even though nobody wanted so. The answer for me was, I'm I'm a writer and I'm stuck with it. I'm going to do it no matter come hell or high water, even though nobody is going to be any positive feed And that, in a kind of a strange way, is a really great ground for you, because at least your feet are on the ground. You say, I don't give a shit, I'm doing this. I mean all the way. But it took a lot of years to get that place. It sounds like you eventually had to detach from the outcome of definitely where those where those books were going to go, and just fall in love with the process, knowing that it was the process that was actually giving you the healing and the fulfillment where you're actually using it. Maybe early on, I think that's any time I think the most important time of setting a goal, or the most important part of setting a goal is detaching from the outcome because we don't have control over that, and sometimes we get so attached and then we forget as to why we're even doing it. Yeah, it's really true, and I think it must be true, Darren, it must be doing sports too. I mean, at some point you have to ask yourself, it's love of the game, right, you know, because you're not going to be in the super Bowl every year you're not. You know, you're going to get hurt all kinds of you know. I would imagine that you come back to just love of the game, right, and love of your brothers that you're you're fighting alongside. But if I can throw something else in here, I'm thinking of people who are listening here. The other aspect of being in the creative arts, of being a writer or being any kind of an artist, is that you have to ask yourself where do ideas come from? And you realize very soon you're a songwriter if you know whatever it is that the stuff that you're producing is coming from someplace else. You know, there's a whole other dimension of reality that you have to sort of tap into and I have, And so that makes you kind of humble in a way, you know, it makes you well, it makes it This is like the spiritual side of it. You know that you can't have an ego because if you're really honest, you know that the stuff that's coming out of you is coming from some other place. And I've found that that the books that I wrote that had the most success, like the Legend of Bagger Bands, each of Fire. I don't know if you know that book about the three hundred spart Honopoly, but those were two books that when first, first of all, I had no idea where they were coming from. It wasn't that I planned them or I thought, oh, this is a great idea, you know, not at all. They sort of tucked me completely by surprise. They sort of seized me so that I had no choice except to write them. And while I was writing them, if I thought to myself, I asked myself, are these commercial? Are they going to sell? I would say to myself, absolutely not. These are the dumbest ideas commercial wise that I can imagine a golf story that's sort of mystical, or then a story about a battle that took place, you know, twenty five hundred years ago, that nobody can spell or pronounce, no Americans are involved with them, and those turned out to be the best, and coming out of nowhere and asking myself, what do I know about I don't know anything about this sort of stuff. I'm just just you know, open it up the can and we'll win it, you know. So that's another aspect that doesn't come to fruition until many years in the process. You know. Like I say, I was in my fifties and before I felt like my feet were really on the ground. I can really speak to that as well. I'm a creator. I make music, I produce, I record myself. So I'm on that journey and I think the same way. You know. I heard if you know who Farrell is, but I heard him in an interview. He's talking about how ideas are He's like, the universe is like a library and that if you're tapped in to a particular mode, particular space spiritually, like you can check out certain ideas from that library. And I feel like I'm the same way anytime anytime I've ever tried to make a song happen or you know, force lyrics onto a page like it doesn't work. But I, like you said, where these ideas come from, I ask myself the same thing, because they'll hit me out of nowhere, the hoho me in a car, they'll hit me, and three in the morning, they'll hit me in times and then they'll just start to flow out, and it's like, this isn't all me. I'm almost just like a channel here. So it's like I definitely relate to that, and I'm sure a lot of artists do as well. And I'm interested to dive more into your journey because let me talk about not having your first novel published to your fifty five and not only did I take an extreme amount of endurance, I feel like, but also can you can you talk to us about what the battles were like with self doubt, with potentially like different forms of self sabotage. I know, I'm I've been a master of self sabotage myself. Like, what are some of the battles that you were facing internally along this journey. That's a that's a great question. Um. You know, in my book The War of Art, you mentioned Donnie, which is really about the creative process. I give a name to to this force that I call resistance what a capital are And resistance to me is you're a writer and you sit down in front of one of these things. You can feel a force radiating off of the screen or the keyboard, and it's trying to stop you from doing your thing right. And and the form it takes is a voice in your head, and you think it's yourself thinking these thoughts, but it's really not. It's really this negative thing. And the thoughts that it puts in your head are, you're no good, you have no tenance. The idea that you have right now is worthless. It's been done a hundred times before, better than you'll ever do it. Who do you think you are? You have too much education, not enough education, you're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too think, you're the wrong ratio, the wrong sex, whatever. It'll tell you all that. The other thing it'll do is it will try to distract you. And this is where addictions and stuff come in. Right. It'll say, let's have a drink, you know, let's light up a dow bee, let's go hang out at the beach, whatever, right, trying to get you off the track. So, and one of the big things it'll do is it'll inflict you itself doubt. And I have a theory I believe this absolutely after all the many books I've written, is that if you start on a project and you don't have self doubt, something's wrong. You should have massive self doubt or something something's wrong, you know, because again, one of the laws of resistance for the capital are is that the bigger your idea a book, let's say, or a song or whatever, the more resistance you will feel, the more self doubt you will feel. So if you don't feel self doubt, that's a very bad sign because it shows you have a little, tiny idea. But if you have a big idea in a sense when I say big, I mean in the sense of it's important to the evolution of your soul, the big idea equals big resistance, big self doubt. So, Darren, to answer you a question, self doubt is like wakes up with me every morning to this day. It's a it's our conscience battle with that, and I've sort of made friends with it in a way. Like I say, if if I don't feel it, then I worried. Um. But yeah, so uh yeah, anyway, that's that's my short answer to that one. No, I'm actually very encouraged by the answer as somebody that you know, I've been very successful in my football career, and you know, I feel like I'm really you know, I'm six years into making music, five years into making beats, so I'm like really starting to find starting to find my sound. I feel like in that, and uh, but the self doubt doesn't really go anywhere for long periods of time. There's times where I feel peace, times where I feel confidence, but that self doubt always finds a way to loop back around. But this what you just said is so encouraging because it's almost like I feel a lot of opposition. I feel I feel the resistance with a lot of the ideas that I have pretty much every single one, whether it be music, whether it be where I want to take my career, where I want to be, as far as service in my foundation work. So it's like, honestly, if I'm facing that opposition, I'm on the right track. If you are right that resistance, I'm really doing something that's meaningful or that's going to be able to have an impact in the in its right timing. Um. So the way that you said that in place that It's like, that's very encouraging for me because I want to run from resistance. Usually I want to go the opposite way. I want the path of lease resistance. That's just yeah, all yeah, that's our default character as human beings. I feel like, have you guys interviewed Rick Rubin on the show? I would love to interview Rick Rubin? That would be that would be an amazing guest. Well, you probably would be able to get him because she's got a new book. But the one thing I would you know, we all know like Rick Rubin is sort of like the godfather or hip hop. Right, He's worked with so many bands and groups, and if you think about it, I think what he does or groups that he brings into his studios and trainer law is he eases their self down. Right. He's sort of the guru, and he's walking around his bare feet with his beard and everything, and he kind of creates this sort of really safe space for them. And he says, basically I think what he said. I've never been there to watch him, but I'm sure what he basically communicates to them is let it rip, baby, you know you're safe here. I don't care if you fail, so big, go do something you think is never going to work, And it's constantly encouraging them to do that. So I think, like any of us, Darren, you and me, whatever, Donnie, we sort of have to do that for ourselves. We have to be our own Rick Rubin, you know, and and tell ourselves, you know, really really go for it, you know, go for the ideas that seem like muched ideas. Yeah, and your book The War of Art, which you know I've had sitting in plain sight, I can't tell you for how many years and sitting right in front of me right now. But there's so many things with the idea of resistance. And one of the things I've heard you speak on is just also the closer you are to that breakthrough, the more resistance you're going to feel, which I think was so important for me to hear, because we think we're feeling all this resistance that we're actually farther away, but it's actually that we're that much closer to the breakthrough or changing. And for me, I think it showed up as like wanting to break Maybe it's generational dysfunction or you know, family dysfunction, in certain ways and like being the change and then just having opportunities, but just still feeling that resistance. But your words have really helped me understand that I'm not further away. I'm actually very close to it, so to keep leaning in. Yeah, I think it's really true that I think of resistance. It's kind of like the devil, you know. It's like, uh, it's like the most negative force you can possibly think. As I can say, Donnie, as you get closer and closer to a break two point, resistance gets higher and higher and stronger and stronger, and it's very intelligent force. It's not just a dumb force to stop you. It'll the arguments that it will put into your head, you know, the voice in your head that you think is your own voice, are very subtle, very sneaky, you know. So I always tell myself that when resistance is really high is what I'm about to make a breakthrough it Sometimes because I think we get we don't get better on a path like that. It's not a smooth we get better kind of like stair steps. Right, you run into a wall and then you make a breakthrough, and you run into another wall, and you know, in another breakthrough and resistance is always strongest when you're right at that stair strap where you're about to go to the next level. But it's hard to believe that you got to have that inner Rick Rubin telling you but to keep keep going. Yeah, well, I wanted to ask next, were there any mantras? Were there any habits or rituals that you had that would help you, you know, each and every wall that you would hit to keep going, Like, were there anything practical that somebody that's listening could take away? The only thing? Really? You know, Actually I heard Anthony Hopkins talked about this. He's another guy you could get on this show. You know, the actor that played Annibal Elector and a million other great things. And he's kind of a really interesting guy. You know, he's not stuck on himself at all, oft all of his kind of things, um and he but he appears on shows every now and then. There were somebody asked to that, you know, like what and what he said? I completely believe he said, just keep going, Just keep put one foot in front of the other. You know, it's like the rock when he talks about working out, you know, no matter how bad it is, each day get into the gym, do it, do it, and then do it the next day. That's sort of the only the only thing that's ever stood by me. Like for me, I kind of I originally totally screwed up my first book that I tried to write and blew up my marriage, really hurt my wife, ruined her life. So I was coming for years and years out of tremendous guilt and shame. Um So when I sort was I could never finish anything. I didn't ever finish a book. I should have chicken out at the very end. So this sort of shame would all would drive me to finish something. You know, it would make me keep going. Like if I quit now, I just can't face myself and I live with myself, you know, so, so I would be cracking a whip over my own, you know. Back. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. Darren and I both come from the world of recovery, and we've been blessed with so many great mantras and sayings. And one of the main ones in those rooms is one day at a time, And on a similar saying is keep going. And I think that's what's allowed us to kind of be in in the process, and you know, with one or two days sobers saying how am I gonna how am I going to keep doing this? And then for that to be pounded into our heads and just one day at a time, and eventually those days stack and become a really a solid foundation for the rest of our lives. So I love how you say that. I wanted to ask you, maybe backtracking a little bit. You had mentioned earlier that for a while you were estranged from your family, Like what what what caused that? Where you just on your own path? Were you resisting certain things or what was behind that? Um, I'll give you a little bit of the long port. My first job was at an ad agency in New York City and I was like a young kid, a junior copywriter, and I had a boss named Ed Hannibal and he wrote a noble and it was a hit. Yeah, they quit and to write to for a writer. So I'm like twenty two years old, twenty three years all I said to myself, well, shit, I'll do that too. So I tried and it just totally flamed out, choked it up, and h I sort of dropped out of the bottom of the middle class. I could know no longer get a white college job. If I walked into a place, you know, I was a college graduate, You'm a smart guy, they could just smell defeat on me. And so I sort of fell out of the bottom and I began working the kind of jobs that you you the only thing you need is a pulse to get the job. Like I worked in the oil fields and Longsiana. I worked as a as a you know, in a mental hospital, as an attended in a mental hospital. Later I went to truck driving school and I became a truck driver, and I did all those kind of you know, dumb jobs. You know, I don't say dumb, but jobs that And I was in other parts of the country away from my home. I was just I was ashamed at myself for screwing up my marriage, for hurting my wife, failing to be anything to provide anything like that. And I just was ashamed before my own family. It wasn't like I could come home for Thanksgiving and say, oh, everything is cool. I thought, I can't show my face again until I've done something you know that I can I can point to and be proud of. And on the subject of recovery, do you guys know seeing McFarland by any chance. He works with Mike Tyson. He works a lot, he's got a place here in ben and he's a real uh um guru to people who are who are having real struggles with addictions, even as a place where they can stay. And anyway, when um I go to the same gym as he didn't, we said to each other, let's go have breakfast one day. So we did go to and the first thing he said to me didn't know really anything about me? You kind of and I've I've never had any trouble with alcohol, never anything like that. He looked across the table to me and he said, are you sober? And I said, why do you? Why do you say that? And So another's a point I'm trying to make is my struggles with resistance, I think are the exact same thing as struggles with addiction. You know, it's self sabotage, it's self destruction, it's the wall that's trying to stop you from being who you were born. To me, so I can absolutely relate to one day at a time. That's my amount too. And the whole idea of a higher power, that's my two I've also heard you talking about well another form, and I think I want to get to some of the Hopefully we can squeeze all this in on one episode. We might have to bring you back for round two because this is uh there, there's so much to cover. But you have talked about the unknown and stepping into the unknown, and I've I've heard you speak on this and it's fascinating. I have a coaching exercise I do with my clients called stepping into the unknown, and I think why so many people struggle with truly stepping into the unknown is because they haven't died to the old, their old life. They're still resisting, they're wishing their life. They had this vision of their life and they're still holding onto this vision. But our our life is never what we think it's going to be. So I'm just curious, like, can you touch more on that about why people struggle to step on step into the unknown And doesn't have to do with so much of holding on to the life that they're living right now or wish they would have lived. Well, it's it's certainly true. I mean, I think it's probably comes from our evolutionary paths, ecavement and stuff. Like that where if you say to yourself, try a different way of driving, leaves mastadons over the cliff and then we all die. So it becomes evolutionary. Hey, let's stick with what we know. Let's not go into the unknown. Yea um. But certainly as as a as a songwriter, as as an artist, as a writer or whatever, that's your stock and trade is going into the under That's kind of the skill that you have to develop. Right, what's new and the more um unusual it is or or unexpected, it is scarier. It's scary going into the unknown. Right. That's you know, all the great myths and legends are really about you know theseust or abyssust or whatever going into the dark cave, right, you know, Indiana Jones. So I think it's very very natural to be afraid of the unknown. But there's a skill if you can teach it to yourself, one incremented at a time, to be able to go into the unknown. That's that's that's where the good stuff is. Yeah, I feel like it's about arriving to a place where there's a perspective shift of as opposed to I don't know what's in there. It might be scary. It might be hard to like, I don't know what's in there, but I feel like there could be something amazing in there. There could be and I never even imagine happening on the other side of of what I may be fearing when I may be thinking. And you know, for me, especially like with the life that I'm living now, I never thought it was possible. But the only way that I was able to do that was to go into the unknown and to wrestle with the discomfort of the unknown, wrestle with um looking myself in the mirror in the unknown, because you know, I feel like, really, what's what's in the what's in the unknown, what's really out there is really just a mirror that's reflecting back into what I fear, um, what I'm afraid of, what I doubt. It just just revealing the lack of trust that I have in in God and the lack of trust that I have in myself to be able to navigate, adapt to anything that I may face and still come out Victoria's still come out with a story to tell and better because of going through it. But a lot of times we just see things as threats so easily because all we've ever done in our lives is running the opposite direction. I know that's true for me. I see opportunities as as fear, as as threats first before I see them as great opportunities. But like you said, through training, through consistently seeking that discomfort, seeking to run towards as opposed to run away from, that's the only way to get there. It's the only way to develop the mental toughness. Like we were just talking about with Austin Eckler. It's like there's no way to develop that toughness or that skill without going head on into what you're definitely afraid of and just to find out that that fear probably isn't even real. Yeah, let me ask you, Darren, what, like, what specifically is a thing that you're afraid of? Any unkowners and the music is its? What specifically have you like struggled with? Yeah, I mean football wise, it has always been like being or really in anything in life. It is just like being a failure, being or being exposed as a fraud, not worthy of the life that I'm living. Like they're gonna kind of like the Scooby Doo where they pulled the mask off the villain at the end and it's just like they got them tied up and it's like there he is, Like I feel like that's what my fear tells me, is like, you know, even though that I've I've put in the work and devoted myself in all these different crafts, all these different things, there's a fear that somebody's gonna look at me because of all the mistakes that I did, because of the way that I viewed myself when I was a kid, that I'm not worthy of this, and that the whole world will just be like pointing at me, laughing like ha ha ha ha. Like that's literally a look at what the fear looks like for me. So it's you know, not wanting to fail as a football player because I know I have these gifts and I don't want to be somebody that never saw their full potential. And then music wise, it's like, you know, I don't have the pedigree of other people, but you know, I know it's in my bloodline with my family and just the passion that I have for listening to good music and making good music, Like I don't I don't want to just fall on my face in front of the crowd. You know. That's that's still something night Rustle Russell. What's getting any easier as you go along? Yeah, I feel like it gets easier. I don't. I'm not crippled by it. It's just like little little flashes, little hints of it, like little suggestions of like you know, you sure you want to go do that? No, you don't know, like you might, it might not work. It used to just be like you can't do shit and you can't do anything. Now it's more so just like little hints that float by, and if it's just like in my mind, like if I want to, if I latch onto it, I can ruminate and have that thing snowball. But if I can just see it, acknowledge it and let it flow by in my mind, it's that I can get back to what I'm doing. So it's definitely quieted down. It's it's it's gotten a little bit easier, but it's still something that I got to wrestle with from time to time. Yeah, it's it's actually the same for me. I'm a lot older than you are, but I know that I have succeeded in the past, so I can tell myself, okay, even can do it. But um, each project is still really scary, and it's still really then the unknown. It's still scary. Um, I'm gonna show you. I'm I'm working on a new book right now. This is These are something like the RGE that you work with, you know, And you know, I'm just doing that to to uh uh tell myself everything this is okay. You know you gotta handle on it. Um. But the only reason I'm doing it is because I have so much self doubt about it. Even at this date. Just listening to Darren Todd when you asked him that question about it hasn't gotten any easier. M Darren is very humbled, humbled to a fault sometimes. But I think it's gotten easier because he's done the work. Just like like your book, He's done a lot of work, a lot of I mean, he's more dedicated than most anybody I know or worked with, as far as consistencies with daily habits and rituals and turning this not enough story into acts of self love every single day. So I don't think it was just something that eventually came to him. It's been it's been a direct result of him diving in and being like super super consistent on his habits, routines, and rituals. I think that's really true. For years, I would try to shade in myself or I'm a writer, I'm a really a writer. I believe it, I'm but I never believe it. And it's only after you've done it, You're actually really done the work, you know, for years and years and I'm changing myself. Damn it, I've got you know, thirty five strange lays over here that I am or I have done you know, um, and even then you still have self out so anyway, but that's absolutely right. You gotta put it in the work, like Austin. That's you know. Sorry, I'm out of focus here. I'm not mentally out of focus, said RUMs. No, we we we hear you loud and clear, and I'm just wondering, Stephen, Um, so we don't lose the quality of the the video. Would you be open to maybe jumping on with us for for a round two? Because I feel like, uh, we might be a little short on time and there's just so much that um, I'm sure I want to ask you. Yeah, yeah, maybe we can make this a two part series because I would we be doing our listeners a disservice and selfishly for Darren and I and I know you know Darren being so creative in his music and everything else. He as I know he's he's hyped about this conversation. So maybe we can we can say to be continued on this one and have everybody jumping back for the following week. Okay, that's fine with me. I apologize, I don't know what happened with the camera. I'm a low check. We are too, man, but but honestly, it's it's an honor and I'm I'm excited to jump back in more with you and I again, I can't tell you. I'll probably give you more acknowledgement on the end of round two. But as I look at this war of our book and we'll we'll read some some of the pages from it on the next episode and you can elaborate more on them, because it's just straight fire. If you don't have the book, go out and get it. It'll it'll change the game for you. All Right, Thanks a lot, you guys. Ye, we'll communicate it and make a plan. Sounds good. Thank you, brother, thank you, great, great, thank you. The