[00:00] Anthony Trucks: I was the common denominator in all of my problems. Either I created it or I’m allowing it to persist. It sucks. ’cause now you’re gonna go, dang, I caused that. That was partly me. It’s not a good feeling, but it does give you back some power. So now you have to control an agency. To go. Well, if I got there, I gotta get outta there.

[00:20] I can do something now. And now you have an opportunity to change your life.

[00:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, and today I bring you Anthony Trucks.

[00:41] What if I told you that the guy you see today fit, confident speaking on stages all around the world? Was once sitting alone in a condo, hungover and broke and divorced, and completely lost. In today’s episode, Anthony Trucks, he’s a former NFL player Turn Transformation expert returns to the show after seven plus years after his first experience, and in this conversation it hits a little bit differently.

[01:05] He talks about what he calls a. Dark work. It’s this kind of unglamorous, unseen grind that builds not just success but identity. It’s, it’s similar to what Steven Pressfield talks about in the four times I’ve had him on the podcast, where he talks about doing the hard work and facing resistance every day.

[01:23] We dig into why success without self-worth is dangerous. We talk about why most people actually never change and why loving to compete matters more than loving to win. And here’s the part that’s gonna stick with you. He doesn’t just preach discipline, he embodies it. It wasn’t always that way for him though.

[01:38] So what was that rock bottom moment that finally woke him up and And what did he do next that Mo most people never would have the guts or courage to try. Well, you’re about to find out here is my interview with Anthony Trucks. Make sure you take a moment, give this a rating and review if you haven’t already, and give this a share.

[01:56] If you see this on social media, give it a retweet, give it a comment, give it a like, give it a share that shows the algorithm that you like what we’re sharing and we can keep putting out great podcast episodes and getting great guests. Anthony is a really fantastic guy, doing some really cool things in the world.

[02:09] So here we go. Interview number two with Anthony Trucks. Anthony, it’s been eight years. Eight years. You were episode 61, now you’re episode 500. I don’t even know. It’s gonna be 500 something. So welcome back, man.

[02:23] Anthony Trucks: Thank you for having me. I’m, I’m ready to rock and roll what you do. It’s been a, a good eight year role.

[02:27] No complaints on my end. Good catching up with you. So

[02:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: let’s go back to your story. You went from growing up in foster care to star player at Oregon Football, uh, NFL. Then entrepreneur to nearly ending at all. Tell us about when you were at rock Bottom. Let’s start with that. If we could.

[02:47] Anthony Trucks: That happened before the entrepreneurial thing.

[02:48] I think that was one of the catalysts to me going like, I gotta figure life out. You know? I came outta the NFL and most people, we have these windows of time where we’ve done a lot of cool things in life. We’ve built up to something and we find ourselves in this like really dark place. It wasn’t the plan.

[03:01] For whatever reason, the plan fell apart. Now I’m sitting there going, what is this thing? And so I was there. Marriage fell apart. Business wasn’t doing very well at the time. Just had my first business kind of pick up and it was almost, I think within nine months I was looking at potentially bankrupt, like being bankrupt.

[03:13] I thankfully avoided it by some really crazy, hard, dark work and uh, figured it out. But no, I would say it was, I wonder where I had to kind of contemplate like, what is this thing of life outside of what I knew it to be or wanted it to be, and how could I submit to whatever was, you know, being placed in front of me and then lean in and figure out who was supposed to be within it.

[03:31] And then here’s a big piece. How could I gather all the intangibles I developed in the previous parts of my life and utilize them in a better way? And so that then did direct me towards entrepreneurship at a deeper level. Started out with, you know, brick and mortar business and progressive consulting, and now, yeah, I hop on stages and I talk, but, but that dark place, it was necessary.

[03:51] I think it was, it was one of the things where I look at my life and I think we all have these moments where I go, man, I don’t like that it happened, but I have a deep appreciation for it having had happen because. It hardened me. I got a painting on my wall right here and it says, smooth seas never made skilled sailors.

[04:08] And so I, I love the idea that life has given me the rough seas. I didn’t stay at Harbor, you know, I got out into the ocean. I. I was navigating them and so because of those hard seas, I now can navigate rough seas much better.

[04:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You know, I think a lot of people look at their lives and think there’s this sort of underlying current of, yeah, but woe is me.

[04:29] And it might not even be conscious. I think a lot of this is unconscious, so to subconscious stuff. And you had every right, every reason to think. You know, I can’t succeed. I can’t create success. You, you know, grew up in a foster home in the, and the statistics on that are just not good. I think it’s, is it 50% or something like that?

[04:53] Anthony Trucks: If you go to any prison in America, so 75% of any prison in America, former foster kids, half the homeless population. I think less than 1% of us will graduate from college. So statistically, yeah. Pretty bad numbers. That’s crazy. You know, no one would’ve bagged on me if I didn’t turn out well. They’d have been like, oh, that makes sense.

[05:10] What was

[05:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: different about you? What helped you get over that? What helped you become who you are and, and find success either despite that or maybe even because of it?

[05:20] Anthony Trucks: I think two, two things. One was I had a foster mom who loved me. Past logic. Like I was a crazy kid, but she, she loved me. So I think part of that was this weird, like, man, like obviously I’m not, I think the thing foster kids have is this, I don’t matter.

[05:35] Nobody cares. Why should I care? She cared. And so it was a piece of it. The other part, which is something that has nothing to do with being in foster care, having given away, it’s something that most people can’t connect to, to be honest. But you can connect to the feeling that, that there’s something in life you’re proud of.

[05:50] What, what? Gimme something you’re proud of. Jim. What’s the, if you could say, man, I’m the most proud of this. I don’t care what it is.

[05:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Parenthood. Yeah. Raising my kids,

[05:57] Anthony Trucks: right? Was that easy or is that easy? It was hard, man. It’s hard as heck still is right for me. It’s still hard. I’m still the same boat. So I realized, I go, oh, and this is hindsight realizing this is when I was a kid, but I go, the things that we are the most proud of are the things that challenged us the most.

[06:11] And so what I did is I realized that my self-worth and all of our self-worth comes from hard work. Now, at the time, as a kid I didn’t know that, but what I did know was this. When I worked hard at something, I got a little bit of praise and I got addicted to the praise. Good job. Well done. That’s good job.

[06:25] Yeah. What did we catch that football Anthony Way to make that tackle? It was hard to do it right, but, but I got the praise and I realized that if I wanted that praise, I had to do the thing. And the thing was hard, but I just. I desired to praise more than I desired worrying about how hard it was to get there.

[06:38] And so what I did is I started pouring into something with all of my energy, my soul, my heart, not wanting to, right? It’s, I didn’t like, you don’t get up and go, I can’t wait to go and catch 500 footballs. I can’t wait to go and beat my body up on the field. Like that wasn’t the the thought, but I was like, man, it’s gonna be hard, but, but it’s gonna gimme this thing.

[06:54] I want praise. And so for, for me, what I think it was, was I found something that was worthy of my, my giving of soul felt energy. Something worthy of me pouring energy into it at a level that was beyond logic and beyond pain. And in doing so, I got something so much better back, self-worth, confidence, skillset.

[07:14] And for me at the time, worldly praise. And so that was the thing that drove me. And I think of all of us, when we think about there’s things that we’re, we’re pouring into now, like you spend time, 500 episodes, that is hard. I mean, I know, I know if I’ve done that same thing, it’s like, man, the. There’s days you got, you got five podcasts lined up, you’re like, gosh, I, I want to do them, but I really don’t at the same time, like if everybody canceled, I, I’m gonna be cool with that, you know, weirdly, but it’s like, I’m just tired today, or the kids are acting up, or I got something else going on and that can’t show up in the podcast.

[07:43] Or I got a team that they’re not editing properly and the posts are funny and you know, these little things and, and you don’t wake up and go, yeah, right. But you wake up at one point and go. I got 500 podcasts done. Hell yeah. You’re like, that’s a great feeling and that that’s why we do it. And so I think for all of us, when I take it back to my years, what it was was having something that was worthy of my, my soul fell to like deep energy and work, which I do call dark work now, is the worldly praise dangerous?

[08:12] Very much so. That’s why I said back then, because the worldly place for me, oh gosh, if the word can give it to you, it can take it from you. Imagine if your fuel source is a removable thing, right? Meaning if your fuel source is, is the world and it’s praise and you have no control over it, when the world decides to take it, you have no reason to go.

[08:33] And so I got to a funky place where I was like, the world said great job. And I’m like, yeah. And the world said, not so great job. And I go, oh, right. And so now I’m, I’m driven off this thing. So a lot of people go like, man, you just tell me I can’t do it. That’s to be the biggest reason for me to do it. I go, yeah, but what about when you prove ’em wrong?

[08:49] Right? They say you can’t do it and then you do it well now what’s your reason to keep pushing? So for me, it’s ever been about the outside world. Once I realized this, the outside world giving me praise is about having my internal sense of self realize that it was the right thing and then do it because I love me.

[09:06] Like that was a big thing that I ended up getting into is, this is actually did happen when I was a kid. I stopped listening to the rest of the world, good or bad. I just did what I knew was right. I had my own center of gravity. I had my own, what they call locus of control I’ve come to find, but it was internal and so I didn’t care what you thought, good or bad.

[09:23] I didn’t mind the positive, obviously, and it doesn’t feel great to get negative, but that wasn’t gonna de determine how much energy I gave to something. What would determine it was, was how I felt I should show up in that. Was it worthy of my time? If it was, it got all of me, regardless of whether or not the world gave me praise for it.

[09:41] And then you progressed through life with that. And I’m telling you, man, I’ve had a lot of funky things that all of us have of life. It just kicks your butt and you question, should I keep doing this? Is this worthwhile? And I don’t, I don’t have that be answered by the outside world’s perspective. It has to go internal.

[09:57] And if it’s a yes, even if the outside says
[10:00] no, it’s a yes inside, I move in the yes direction.

[10:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. There’s a quote that I came across from a wrestler who I follow on social media. Guy, guy named Johnny De Julius. And he, he was speaking to a group of kids and he said, in the sport of wrestling, if you’re at a tournament, for example, you might get your name called and your opponent gets their name called, you go to the sort of, uh, administrative table, a head table, you get your bout sheet or, and then you, you check in and you kind of like, if your, your opponent doesn’t check in, you’re like, oh man, I might get a free, free win here.

[10:32] You know, if they don’t check in and you’re like, you kind of get excited about that. And he’s like, that’s the wrong feeling. The wrong feeling, because he said, and this really strikes home with me, is you’ve gotta love to compete more than you love to win. Like enjoy the competition, enjoy the battle, enjoy the process.

[10:47] Don’t worry about what others think. It’s not about the win, it’s not about the worldly praise. And I learned this as an athlete. I was lucky enough to sort of have this. Low point in my career at the end of my junior year, that led me to saying, screw it. You know, whatever happens happens, I’m gonna do the best I can.

[11:03] And I gave it to God and I just said, this is, you know, all I can do is all I can do. And I was able to put down this fear of failure, put down the worldly praise, put down the wanting to win, because people will think that’s a cool thing. And once I did that, it actually freed, you know, it freed me up. And, and this is sports psychology and performance Psychology 1 0 1, but it’s, it’s a hard place to get to.

[11:22] Anthony Trucks: I agree because most people, they, they, they think the work is just to be able to get to the back end and have the w And it’s weird because it’s, it’s that the thing idea of heroes, two journeys. So I mean, the first journey is the accomplishment. Like, but that’s not the real one. The real one is, is who you become in the process.

[11:39] And so, yeah, if you get there, it’s crazy too. Think about people that get to the accomplishment of win the lottery. Well, they win the lottery, they got the accomplishment, but they didn’t become the person to have that kind of money. So what happens? They go broke. ’cause they look every day in a bank account that doesn’t align with their internal self-image.

[11:55] So it sinks back down and they end up going broke again. ’cause they’re not comfortable with that many zeros in a bank account. And the idea is you have to go through that idea of, of competing to earn that. Because now when you have it, you will fight for it and keep it because you deserve it. You believe you deserve.

[12:09] It’s a deeper thing. I get that feeling ’cause I used to play football, right? And so I know the feeling of like, to be a hard game. I’m gonna sideline, we’re not doing well. I’m like the game just gonna get over. And we never, it never pan out. Well, I didn’t do well in those emotional spaces, but when my thought was like, I’m about to get back out and make this dude look bad, one play at a time, then I’m, I’m trying to compete and I enjoy that.

[12:29] And then the winds take care of themselves in a weird way. But also this, and I, I can’t imagine this. Well, a hundred percent be clear. ’cause I’m not a wrestler, but this is my thought to this. There will be a moment where maybe you do get in that championship. Now if I know on the way up, I missed one or two, you know, maybe one.

[12:45] ’cause the guy didn’t show up, but the guy that steps in the ring, if he went through every single level and he competed every level when he gets up there and it’s me versus you, if he knows you get to get to skip a level to get there, you don’t get to beat me. You don’t deserve to win. You didn’t do what I did to get in this right here.

[13:01] Like there’s a different dog in that man. He’ll break your soul. And it won’t happen the first, you know, minute, but it’ll be that minute where you’re both tired. You both want to like, your brain’s like, ah, it’s too much. There’s something that’ll come at an extra level that will not let you lose ’cause you just have this different dog in you.

[13:17] ’cause you know, more, it’s, it’s a difference between getting in a boxing room with a boxer or someone who’s been boxing for a little bit. You know, it’s, it’s, there’s a certain sense of ownership of like, you don’t have the right to beat me. You didn’t do what I did. And so, you’re right. You have to love to compete because the competitor is who gets to win, not the person who just showed up there.

[13:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. You know, this reminds me of Steven Pressfield. You probably know Steve. He’s a friend of the podcast. I’ve, Evan had him on uh, four times, but he. It has a great book called Turning Pro and, and the whole concept is just self validation. It’s about I’m good enough no matter what others say. And, and whenever we can adopt that mindset, then, you know, it’s, we’re just unstoppable.

[13:58] The best version of ourselves shows up. So Anthony, I talk to my clients a lot about, failure is data. You know, failure is information. Failure is just, it’s not who you are. It’s, it’s a thing obviously, you know, we’ve heard that before. Is there a. Failure or painful moment in your life that ended up being the most data rich, was there a a, a moment that you feel like, and maybe there’s a couple you can share, but a data rich moment that really helped you grow, learn whether

[14:29] Anthony Trucks: in in business or otherwise?

[14:31] You know what’s interesting is, uh, I think as humans we’re able to endure more than we should. And we do a really good job of avoiding the confrontation of reality. My failures stacked up before I noticed them. I don’t know. It’s weird to say it this way, but it wasn’t until January, 2016, like New Year’s Day that I woke up one day and I look back at what, what I’m sitting in.

[14:52] I’m in this, this condo by myself. My kids weren’t there. I’m divorced. I have this strange woman who I flew out from a different country to hang out with me. I’m hung over and I don’t like to drink very much. I’m hung over. I’m like that feeling to begin with. And then I have like this taste of hook in my mouth and I’m like, so I’m smoking.

[15:06] I’m like, I’m not a guy that smokes. I’m not a guy that drinks my, my kids aren’t even here. What am I, what am I doing? Like, and I had this like stop at a pause and I just looked and I, for the first time noticed like my reality and I had a gym business that wasn’t performing well. I had to borrow money from my ex-wife at one point to get it going.

[15:26] I wasn’t a present person and like in a good, angered relationship. And it wasn’t an example for my kids that I know I’m supposed to be. My God wouldn’t approve of this. Uh, at the same time, my body wasn’t in the, the shape that it should be owning a gym. You know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t dialed in nutritionally, I wasn’t close to my faith.

[15:40] Like I had had many failures and it wasn’t until they, this, this moment that all the culmination of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I. And it was sitting here looking in the mirror going, I don’t like this man. Son’s gotta change. And so for me it was like this separation. I just, I stopped, I separated from all people, all things that were not headed in the direction I wanted to go.

[16:01] And so it was harsh, it was a bad reality to have to settle into. But I wouldn’t say it was one moment of like all of a sudden. You know, I got cut from the NFL, which happened, but it wasn’t the change. Right. Or, uh, I get, you know, this letter, somebody rolls up on a Harley and they hand me this eviction notice from the landlord in my first year of business.

[16:19] An interesting moment, but it wasn’t the thing, it was the fact that I’d let life slowly unravel and had multiple stacks of, of failures that I was actively avoiding. I wasn’t facing. You know, this is for people listening too. Maybe your marriage isn’t where you want it to be. Maybe your parenting isn’t where you want it to be.

[16:37] Uh, maybe your career isn’t where you expect it to be. Your health isn’t where you want. You just know there’s a level of you that used to be ticking on all cylinders, just going, and you know that person, but you weren’t in touch with that person anymore. And that’s what I woke up to that day was this realization that I had had many failures that I’d been able to pacify and navigate around without looking.

[16:57] And then I, I had come to a point where like enough was enough and it had become this, this overwhelming reality that I had to face. So that would be the thing that woke me up. ’cause now I had to look at my life and go, well shoot, how did I get here? And this is a difficult thing for most folks. ’cause you have, you have an option I.

[17:13] Option one is you can say it was the world’s fault. This is what happened there, what happened there. And you, you kick the blame out. And what happens in this situation, if I kick the blame out and I give it to them, then, then there’s nothing I can do to make it better. So this is my reality. Ongoing, I feel better about myself ’cause it’s not my fault, but it’s now my life and it’s sucks.

[17:32] Option two, I take some deep ownership. This is a reality I had, which was I was the common denominator in all of my problems. I. Either I created it or I’m allowing it to persist. When I did that, it sucks. ’cause now you gotta go, dang, I caused that. That was partly me. And it, it’s not a good feeling, but it does give you back some power.

[17:53] So now you have some control and agency to go, well, if I got there, I gotta get outta there. I can do something now. And now you have an opportunity to change your life.

[18:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So for the listener who’s sitting here thinking. Maybe they’re at a low point, maybe they had a low point and and they maybe have slowly climbed out of it, but they’re sitting there saying, okay, I want to change.

[18:14] Like I’m, maybe I’m in a terrible spot. Maybe I’m in an okay spot. Maybe I’m in a really good spot. Even I know there’s another gear. I know there’s another level. How do you change? I think a lot of people say they want to change, but most don’t actually do anything about it. Like what do you do? Like for the listener who’s like, okay, I wanna change.

[18:32] What do you do? Where do you start?

[18:34] Anthony Trucks: Is this dark work? Yeah, it’s dark work and I’ll get to that. Most people, here’s the problem, people don’t wanna waste time and energy. So if there’s not a clear guarantee of what’s gonna be the outcome that they prefer to do, no work and endure than to do the wrong work and still have the same experience.

[18:48] I. Right. You don’t, you don’t wanna pour money into something and eat your money up and not give anything back. It’s the same thing to invest time in something, not knowing if there’s gonna be return, not the greatest. Right. And so what I came to find was a couple pieces. One is this guy Harvey McKay, one time sat on stage.

[19:03] I loved it. He says, the biggest room in the world’s the room for improvement. Everybody got more room, man. I do. Everybody. You do, we all have big rooms we can fill into. There’s more space, there’s more calling. I don’t know what pace you’re supposed to do it, what sacrifice you’re willing to give. Who knows?

[19:17] It’s your own personal thing, but if you know there’s more, that’s the first thing we have to do. Then we have to have this reality. There’s a book that’s called Psycho-Cybernetics. You ever heard of it? Sure. Now the thing is, it’s an old book with a great foundation, and I happened to cross it after I’d already got deep into my identity work with dark work.

[19:33] They, they say self-image, which I believe is what it is as well. I call it identity who you are when you’re not thinking about who you are, just the, the sense of self. Now, here’s the interesting thing. You have the inability of creating success beyond your current identity. Meaning if, if you don’t identify with certain habits or patterns or actions, you just won’t do them.

[19:54] If you don’t do them, you don’t get the success that those things would bring you.

[19:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I share this point that I think is
[20:00] important for people to hear. It’s even if you, you get a prescription from, you know, people say success leaves clues, and, and it does to an extent. You can follow the same 10, 20, 50, a hundred step plan as somebody else.

[20:14] And if they believe or they have the identity and you don’t. You’re not gonna get the same results. That’s where I was stuck for a lot of my years in wrestling. It was like not being able to identify with that next level. And once I finally let go and, and was able to then changes everything

[20:30] Anthony Trucks: you’ll give.

[20:30] I tell my son, you can have two people walk into the weight room. I. With the exact same workout plan, exact same reps and sets. Someone comes out stronger. Why? What’s the difference? Because they, they had a different sense of energy given to the actions and the effort. They believe that pushing themselves here could create that.

[20:47] Where some guys just, I don’t know. I’m doing, I did 10 sets. I saw, I got the agenda of the day set for 15 minutes on the leg press while I’m waiting for him scrolling through his phone like, bro, and then I bet he went home and goes, I gotta, I went to the gym this morning. No, you did not. You went there, right?

[21:01] But you didn’t do the work there. So the thing is, yes, you can have all the information and and a lot of folks, they think that information’s a solution, right? So they get what’s called shelf esteem. They get a book, it goes in the shelf, they get information shelf of their minds, but it doesn’t get put into the world.

[21:15] And so what happens is people, they, why am I getting so much energy but not getting the return I want? Well, ’cause you’re just, you’re doing the first investment. You’re, you’re buying the information. You’re investing time to learn, but the real investment is doing it. And that’s the problem. Most folks don’t identify with that stuff or it’s too uncomfortable.

[21:33] So either won’t do it or don’t do it consistently, or don’t do it with the right energy. Like you just mentioned a moment ago, there’s gotta be this, this pouring out. And so the way I look at that is I go, okay, well if that’s the case, people are going, well, how do I change it, Anne? I don’t have that. Think about anybody who has a thing.

[21:49] You want time, money, energy. Doesn’t matter what it, whether you like them or not. Do they have something? You go, you know what? I’d like to have something like that. Well, what you do is you look at them and what you’ll realize is if you were to set up your identity, like a, like a boundary around you. That boundary would expand and contract, right?

[22:06] It’s already expanded to life at a point here, and what that boundary contains is what you have in life. Now, the boundary is comprised of habits, patterns and actions, your identity. And so what happens is if those habits, patterns, and actions at that width there have that’s in there, great. It’s gonna have the things you have.

[22:24] If you want something outside the boundaries of what you have, you have to expand the boundaries. And it’s not done one time. Most people go like, I’m gonna go big. Never go big, go incredibly small in the biggest way possible because when you do that, here’s what happens. You run into the most uncomfortable, I say, but puckering actions you don’t wanna do.

[22:46] The thought of it makes your stomach twist. We’ve all been there and you do it the the first time and it’s like, okay, it’s a difficult, and you do the second time, gets a little less difficult and it takes a while, but eventually you love doing this thing. And when you now do this thing that you have no problem doing, that used to be hard.

[23:03] Well, now it’s hard not to do it. You get it done more often, more consistently with the right energy, and it expands day by day, by day by it’s little intricate drops of energy. And eventually you would look up one day and go, oh my gosh, my boundaries expanded. Oh my gosh, I have more time, I have more money.

[23:20] I have a better relationship. And all you were doing was pressing out that identity through habits, patterns and actions that at first were not comfortable. And that’s what dark work is. It’s, it’s waking up every day going, look, I don’t a hundred percent love this thing I have to do, but I know the person that has what I want.

[23:37] They do this. I have to go do this. I’m not in the beginning going to love it, but eventually it’s gonna go from not loving it to teaching people how to do this ’cause I do it so well. And the journey there is the one that so many people will not go on. I recently lost the last 10 pounds, like I lost 38 pounds and I’m putting the weight back on muscularly.

[23:57] So I’ve slowly been adding muscle calorie counting 10,000 steps a day. Like I feel good, bro. 40, 42. This year I got abs. I’m two 10, bro. I’m looking, I’m looking right. I’m like, I look like this ever in my life. And people go, what’s the diet? What’s the workout? And I, and I replied. I did a post yesterday. I go, there’s no secret.

[24:19] The secret is you know the answer. You don’t want to accept the answer. And here’s the, here’s the thing. I could tell you my food and I’m gonna tell you the truth. It doesn’t matter what I eat. ’cause you don’t eat healthy anyways, right? You know, you know what you’re supposed to eat, right? Go to the grocery store and buy the stuff you know you’re supposed to buy.

[24:38] And then here’s what you do. Don’t gorge yourself, right? Eat. Eat at the level you’re supposed to, and then be consistent in training. And taking some steps each day. That’s it. Like if I go back and look at what my trainer’s done for me. Logically, I’m telling you, Jim, logically I don’t need him, but emotionally, I needed every single piece of that, you know, to push me, to keep me accountable to everything.

[25:02] That’s why I can tell you personally, the information isn’t the key. I have a degree in kinesiology. I used to train Pro Bowl athletes, but I had to hire somebody else to do my workouts and my nutrition, so I would get the results I wanted. It wasn’t the information, it was what was being done behind the scenes I didn’t want to do, so now I’m locked in and I got a great body and it’s not because of anything special.

[25:24] And I tell people the same thing. It took me 10 months to get here, not, not 10 days. And the thing I had to submit to was the dark work. No high fives, no clapping. ’cause if I don’t eat that donut, nobody’s giving me a high five. If I, you know, if I get that workout done, nobody comes in the room and gives me a party.

[25:44] It’s just done onto the next part of my day. And when you can fall in love with this grit and that grind and love yourself because of the hard thing you did, that’s where it starts to climb and climb. And here’s a cool thing. What you gain in confidence in one part of your life, you can borrow for another part of your life.

[26:02] So if I gain confidence in my body, I can go and apply that to my business. If I gain confidence in my business, I can apply it to my relationships. You can take it all over the place. But every level of, of these things, it takes difficulty and you have to submit to the, the hard, dark work of it. But once you garner that, you start to have this different sense of self.

[26:23] It’s, it’s a, I call it a sense of limitless, ridiculous power. It’s this thought that, like, you can’t touch me, man. I, I tell you, like when I was on football field, the thought was for me, I’ve done too much work in the dark to lose in a light. You don’t get this. I’ve done. I’ve done too much. You haven’t done what I’ve done.

[26:40] You don’t get to beat me today. And that’s how I show up to life. Because like my mornings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, bro, was two hours. I take my kid to school, I come back, I go lift weights, I do mobility. I sit in the sauna. I have to sit in a squat for 20 minutes. My knees hurt. And you’re probably like, what does that matter?

[26:56] It matters because after that two hours, when I now get into my workday or my chest is up, my head is up, let’s go to work. Because no matter what I get into, I’m coming at it with a, an identity that goes, I, I deserve to feel amazing. I’m gonna shine at all levels because I am a great human being, but if I know I missed something.

[27:15] I know I didn’t get that thing done. My psyche knows that. My identity knows that. So then it’s hard to make the ask for a bigger fee or to tell somebody they should work with you and pay for your program price, or put me on your stage, whatever it’s, or, or be a, like a dialed in. Tell my kids, Hey, kids, eat healthy, be in shape.

[27:32] I don’t, but you should. Right? It’s an incongruency. And so when you, when I look at those things and people do these things, that’s why you see individuals on online nowadays or places that they have this harshness to ’em. And I get it, like I have a little more grace, but the harshness comes from you want what I have, but you downplay what I did to get it.

[27:54] It doesn’t make sense ’cause there is no shortcut, no easy path. So either you have to downplay me or do it yourself. And most folks won’t admit that they’re not working at that level. So yeah, it frustrates me. You complain ’cause you want what I got, but you won’t do what I did. I don’t care about your feelings like that, that that diminishes what I have.

[28:10] If I had to pay a thousand dollars for this, why should you get it for 500 bucks? Right? And that’s what people are talking about in life. And so for me, I get the frustration and then I step back and go, but if you just did the work, you’d understand where I’m coming from. You’d also understand that. That the gift that you give yourself through fighting through these hard levels, it is something you can’t loan to somebody you can’t borrow, you can’t pay for.

[28:34] It is something you can only earn, but when you get it, it’s the most valuable thing you’d have in your life. Priceless, because it’s a sense of confidence, a sense of agency. So you walk into this world, you have a different flow to you. You experience the world differently. I’ll give my last little caveat on this.

[28:50] I just watched this weird documentary yesterday. It was called, we’re Living in A Matrix and it breaks down how like this is a, a simulation, all this kind of stuff. And then I started realizing towards the backend this video wasn’t made for me. And the reason why is because the people who were touting this, it’s because they some language.

[29:08] The guy goes, well yeah, ’cause you go into this game and then it’s perfect and it’s easy. You can fly around, you’re powerful. And then you turn the game off and then you go into this, this sucky world that’s not very good and it is all horrible. And I go, that’s not my experience. And I go, why? I go, oh, because I don’t play video games all day.

[29:24] I do the hard stuff. I show up and push my body, I push my mind, I show up in the world. I do the hard stuff. So when I enter this world, I have this sense of, of, of power and agency. And they don’t. And because they don’t, they get angry. And as opposed to having that anger turn towards let me be better, they want the shortcut.

[29:42] Give me the video game. Let me say it’s all a simulation so I don’t have to show up to it real. Like that’s the problem. Like go do hard stuff and you won’t desire a different reality.

[29:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So there’s a great quote by a friend of mine, Jay Robinson. He is actually, uh, a former wrestling
[30:00] coach, head wrestling coach at University of Minnesota, he said, and he is an army ranger, and there’s a little backstory behind this, but one of his wrestlers said, uh, who also was an army ranger, said, uh.

[30:11] Coach. You get tough by doing tough things. Like you get tough by doing tough things. Like that’s the simplest breakdown, the simplest formula you get tough by doing tough things and, and you’ve done tough things and to get to where you’re at. What do you do when you are off track? I do believe everybody goes off track, whether it’s, you know, you get sick or the holidays or you know, you lose out on business or, or something like that comes along.

[30:36] Is there anything that you do to get back on track, physically, mentally, business-wise, relationally?

[30:44] Anthony Trucks: Definitely Think about this. We have a GPS. You ever been using your GPS, I’m assuming right? At some point in time you ever like take the wrong turn or miss a turn? When I do that, my wife gets so angry, she’s like, oh yeah, it’s five minutes, but here’s what it does.

[30:55] It automatically reroutes the path, right? I go off track automatically how it has it, because it did this. It knew the destination, it knew the starting point, and it charted a path, and I was following the charted path, and then I went off track and it just rechartered the current location to the destination.

[31:18] Again, the problem for most people is one, they sometimes have no clue where they’re starting from. They don’t know who their identity is, how they show up. They have no idea what issues that they are living in every day because no one’s shown to them or they haven’t had the balls to go figure it out. So they’re sitting there stuck like, I don’t know what’s going on.

[31:34] Why is my life falling apart? They’re just in a funky place and they won’t take ownership of what the real issue is. Two, they haven’t clarified the destination. Most people can tell you the city they want to get into. I want more money, more time, more joy, but they can’t tell you the address. I want a million dollars.

[31:51] I want an extra day to myself this month. I wanna make sure that my wife and I make love twice a week. Right? What is it that you want? Like it’s gotta be tangible. So you know when you’ve crossed the finish line, right? When you get to the, your destination on GPS, it goes end route, right? Or you’ve arrived your destination.

[32:09] Without that, we can’t chart the path properly. Now, when you do that, I know where I’m starting, where I’m going now, I go, okay, what’s the fastest path we want that, what’s the fastest path to get there? It’s what GPS does. And now we do is you have to go in and I call it design your dark. For a lot of us, you have to go in and design the path.

[32:26] I showed you my calendar right now. This thing is tied to a to-do list based on the time of what tasks are there. It’s color coded, things are put in. That is my GPS. I know what I want to get done, how I wanna get it done. I know where I’m starting at. Here’s the things to get that. Let’s go to work now.

[32:43] All of a sudden I get bronchitis and I can’t get up off the couch or something happens. All I have to do is do what the GPS would do is step back and go, all right, same destination. Starting point’s a little bit different ’cause I got some things missed. Let me move it around to immediately reengage and get back on track.

[33:00] When folks are saying they want to change, they wanna do things, the problem is they don’t know where they’re starting. They don’t know clearly what the destination is, and they haven’t properly charted the path to know what they want to get to. And for me, when I say chart the path, it is not always the tasks to get done.

[33:14] It’s also realizing what these tasks will create in me. Like who is it making ’cause it that should determine the task. Like in a business like we have businesses. You know that for you, there’s probably been a stage in your life, maybe it’s still current. I don’t know where a podcast gets edited and I gotta, I gotta set up the calendar, I gotta get the guest there, I gotta do the work there, then I gotta record it, then I gotta edit it, then I gotta do transcripts and I gotta post it.

[33:35] And like right at this point, my guess is you don’t do all of that. And, and ideally it’s because you realize that, okay, if I’m doing these tasks, like do I really wanna be the best podcast editor in the world? Do I wanna be the best podcast social media market? No, I wanna be the best podcaster. Okay, great.

[33:53] If that’s the case, then part of my tasks need to not be editing, but I need to allocate an hour to find an editor or find a transcriber, you know? And so the skillset should tie into the task, which should be big on who do I want to be in 3, 5, 6 years or months, right? And so what happens is you should delineate, like are these tasks that if I do these over time and get good at them, do I want to be great at them?

[34:18] If you don’t, don’t do them or find a way to do ’em enough to get a PA process to hire somebody else so you can do more of what you want to be great at. And that informs me of what my tasks are on my calendar is, and it informs me of what not to do and what to press off, but that I then I can get back on track faster and actually make faster progress to the destination I want to go.

[34:39] And so for a lot of people you say, and they get off track, it’s like you’re off track. And you’re always off track ’cause you’re never on track.

[34:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. I, I tell people that secret to success is clarity. And the secret to clarity is actually a term that I coined. I call the productive pause. You know, I’ve interviewed guys like you over the years and I, I.

[34:57] Almost always have asked for, at least for the first several hundred episodes, I ask like, what’s one habit you most credit for your success? And it’s always some version of hitting the pause button. It’s not doing, it’s some version of stepping back, asking the right questions, getting clarity. And then whenever you have clarity on where I’m going, right, what’s the long-term vision?

[35:15] Like W what does that look like? And then what’s the midterm short term? You know, we have the goals and micro goals that we created in my program, but like when you, when you. Hit the pause button. Actually just identify those, like invest that little bit of time. Whenever you actually hit the go button on your day, then you’re working on the right things.

[35:35] And you can’t, you can’t do that without clarity.

[35:39] Anthony Trucks: Yeah. A buddy of mine, military guy calls it a tactical pause. He’s like, before you, you break that door down. He is like you, it’s a tactical pause check. Ready, ready. And then they go. Right. But for a lot of us, yeah, we don’t do that. It’s gotta be a moment like to sit down and, and think about.

[35:53] Am I doing the right stuff? Because now what happens, you don’t show up to that middle of the week appointment and go, should I be doing this? Should I be doing something else? And so you’re, you’re not even, not even focused on the task at hand ’cause you’re questioning if that should be the task at hand.

[36:06] And so like those little moments that matter, it’s so minuscule, but it’s big. And then I tell people, your calendar should be a, a slave to your dream. You should be a slave to your calendar. And I say slave intentionally because slaves do things they don’t want to do. Right. The calendar would love to just go and have fun time.

[36:25] Let’s to travel around and let’s play with the daisies and then, and feed the ducks. That’d be nice. But the calendar goes, it’s a dream I gotta get done. I gotta organize myself to get that dream in. And then I step back and I go, okay, calendar, you ready? I go, great. Let me show up to this calendar. And I look at it and I go, all right.

[36:39] It’s saying to do this like, ’cause I know it’s gonna get where I want, but in the moment I don’t emotionally always feel excited to do it. If I’m being honest. Like I’m 50 50. Half the time I’m like, yeah, half the time I’m like, uh, I just wanna sit on the couch. Right. But the calendar says, you must do this.

[36:55] Dark work says you must do this. My identity goes, I’m the guy that does this. I teach this. I must do this. And so I do it. And interestingly, I’ve never regretted doing this stuff. I’ve never done this hard work and, and gritted out and got it done and showed up and go like, this sucks. That’s partly because at this stage in my life, I’ve made that calendar a slave to my dream.

[37:15] So the work I did was the right work. Now, if I was doing the wrong work, spending hours getting nowhere, that might suck. But I’m not at that stage anymore.

[37:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For the listener who loves what you’re saying, Anthony, and wants to take action, what’s an action item or two that they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours to take your advice and actually start taking action and implementing?

[37:35] Anthony Trucks: First thing I would figure out is where you’re at. So if you go to dark work.com as an assessment called the Dark Work Assessment, it’ll give you an idea of where your identity’s at, and then your next step should be is one of four identities in there. But I will say this one thing you could do is just there.

[37:46] There’s probably people in your life. Who have an awareness of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish and they love you, but they aren’t loving on you the way you need to. And so, and it’s not because of they’re bad people, it’s just simply, most folks don’t wanna rock the boat if they don’t have to.

[38:02] They don’t wanna show up to a conversation you and cause friction if they don’t need to. But what I do is do this. I go, I need to reach out to someone in your life who knows what you wanna accomplish and is aware enough of your life and how you live things. So you can ask this question, say, hey. If you were to adjust one thing about me to help me reach my goal better, what would that be?

[38:20] Oh, love that question. Because, and you have to give ’em the grace. They’re gonna look at you funny and go, look, I’m not gonna justify, I’m not gonna rebut, I’m not gonna refute anything you say. I just need you to tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. And let them tell you the truth and don’t try to get, you know, well, no, it’s because don’t do that.

[38:37] Just go thank you and let it simmer for maybe a day, maybe two days, and come back with logic. I’m writing that

[38:44] one

[38:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: down. I’m a collector of great questions. Anthony. This was amazing. It was amazing last time we spoke and amazing this time. So I, I appreciate you and I, it’s been fun watching you grow and your career grow from afar and just seeing everything, all the cool stuff you’re doing.

[38:59] So congrats on all your success. For the listener who wants to find you, follow you, et cetera, uh, where, where can they track you down at?

[39:06] Anthony Trucks: Ah, man. You just go to, at Anthony Trucks on Instagram or @Darkwork at Instagram. But yeah, I’m in those places. Cool. All right.

[39:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For listener, we’ll have Anthony’s links in the action plan.

[39:16] As always, go to jimharshawjr.com/action. We’ll get that directly to you so that you can find Anthony and take action on it. Anthony, amazing stuff. Thanks for coming back on the show,

[39:26] Anthony Trucks: Dave. Rap me. I appreciate you.

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