Dealing with Negativity, with Mike Fitch

We all deal with negativity in some form or fashion in our lives – people trying to bring us down, things just not going right, a training session that seems to just want to beat you down. Even the best of us have a hard time letting that kind of negativity just roll off our backs.

In this episode, Mike Fitch co-hosts and he and Ryan discuss the negativity they’ve encountered, and the challenges of having things not go well in training sessions, and how they’ve learned to deal with that in a productive manner over the years.

Here’s a little snippet of their discussion:

“We are all going to be bad at things today, and I encourage you to embrace it.”

Mike Fitch is the Founder and President of Global Bodyweight Training, and the creator of Animal Flow.

His 13 years of experience as a fitness professional include personal training, fitness management, and exploration of a wide range of fitness disciplines, including Olympic lifts, kettle bell training, sports-specific and speed-agility training, and specialized training for post-rehab and corrective exercise clients.

Mike was a Master Trainer for the Equinox Fitness Training Institute (EFTI), through which he taught anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and program design to his fellow trainers.

You can find out more about Mike on his website and Facebook.

What you’ll hear:

• (05:25) How to avoid negativity during workouts, even when things don’t go as planned.
• (06:40) The importance of tuning in and how that can make a big difference in your training.
• (08:00) Believe it or not, your workouts don’t have to be perfect every time (and a little secret: chasing perfection will just disappoint you).
• (07:00) Setting yourself up for success, rather than failure.
• (11:25) It’s okay if things don’t go according to plan. Here’s why.
• (16:37) Our egos get in the way of so much of what we do. Ryan and Mike explain how they keep their egos in check.

Ryan: Hey, welcome to this episode of the GMB Show. Today, Mike is helping me to co-host this again. What’s up, brother?

Mike: What’s up?

Ryan: Today, we’ve got the topic of negativity that we’re going to focus on. All we’re going to do is bash on people and we’re just going to talk about how horrible life is. I’m just kidding, of course. What’s up, man? Mister positive with me, the Mike Fitch. What’s going on, brother? Tell me some good stuff. What’s going on with you? Some wonderful stuff. Let’s hear it.

Mike: I’m in Miami.

Ryan: Brother, we’re done. Drop the vine.

Mike: I’m in Miami. Bro, I’ve spent the past almost over a month at my home in Miami which is unheard of.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s crazy. It’s funny because before recording you we were just talking about you being on the seminar circuit. You’re a popular guy. That’s what happens, man. You see, everybody wants to be with the Fitch. Yeah, man. Almost a month in Miami for you is almost a record, I think.

Mike: Yeah, I think it is. I think over the past five years that’s a record a month in Miami and a month in Miami in January … Oh, excuse me. It’s December, January when it’s beautiful here. Not that it’s not beautiful all year round, but at least in the winter months you get very low humidity and still sunshine.

Ryan: It’s really different than Osaka, Japan is what you’re saying.

Mike: I’m watching you drink your scalding hot coffee, blowing your nose on the baby blanket.

Ryan: You can relate because you’ve had the experience of staying at my house in the winter where … Yeah. Just a funny story for all of you listening here. Mike comes to stay with me. I’m going to take care of my boy and make sure everything’s good. He comes and stays with me at our house and set up his bed. Everything’s going well. I don’t even know. It was four in the morning or something like that. [inaudible 00:02:24] and I walk in and I’m tapping on the door. Mike wakes up in his bed and he’s got every single piece of clothing that he brought with him on and his jacket and everything. He’s like, “Dude, I can’t figure out how to work this, the heater.” I was like, “Oh, man. I feel so bad freezing your ass off over here in Japan.”

Mike: I’ve never been so cold in my entire life. I went to that store and I found those thermal face masks that looked like ninja masks and I had that on. That’s how cold I was and my hood and the scarf and gloves.

Ryan: Looking at it in a good way, I was toughening you up, man.

Mike: I thought was a hazing process.

Ryan: That was a hazing process. Welcome. It’s our fraternity, right? We had our fraternity going on. Anyway, I feel so bad. My wife did, too. She’s like, “Oh, God.” Anyway, all right, man. Let’s get into it. The topic we’re going to be talking about today as I mentioned is negativity. It’s unfortunately a reoccurring theme everywhere in the world. If you look, it’s not just being negative, but just everywhere you look it’s out there. You see a lot of this. People bashing on other people. People bashing on themself, bringing themself down. Unfortunately, looking at a situation where that’s not very healthy. Today, I want to take a look at how we can move beyond this negativity. Really what we’re going to be talking about is in the realm of exercise, movement and whatnot. Just to start off, we were talking in a previous show about the handstand and how there’s some days where the handstand you’ve got it and there’s some days where you don’t.

A lot of people can have those days. They kick up into a handstand. It’s not happening. They’ll be like, “What the hell? I can’t believe I can’t do this.” It doesn’t just have to be a handstand. It can be anything out there. Now, yes, it can be frustrating and you feel you’re maybe not making progress, but the thing is when you’re down on yourself and negative about that, it’s just going to carry over. It’s actually going to end up expanding and it’s going to cause the rest of your workout to suck even more. Maybe, Mike, talk a little bit about … I could talk about this a lot, especially during my one arm handstand training when I was having those days where it was just like, “What the hell is going on?” kind of thing. We all have it. What are some things that you found in your own practice that have helped you to move beyond this negativity and instead look at things in a positive way or maybe as a learning experience?

Mike: You hit on a couple of really great things, Ryan, which is negativity promotes negativity. We see it so often to where it becomes this cyclical nature of, “Oh, shit. I can’t do that. I was able to do that yesterday.” Then now, you’ve introduced this negative aspect to your skill training, and then your next performance is probably not going to be better. Then, the one after that the more pissed off you get. The next performance is probably not going to get better. I’ve really started implementing this process of doing these little check-ins. This may sound cheesy, but man, I’ve gotten so consistent with acknowledging every little movement and every little thing, even it’s a push-up, man. Like, “That was a good push-up. I felt really solid. I felt connected. I felt really in tune with my body. I felt I was controlling the movement.”

I think that’s a big thing is where it’s so common for people to tune out, to completely disconnect from their body. I want to do the exact opposite which is just encourage everyone to literally tune in. That doesn’t just mean when you’re going for it. Like, “Man, I’m going to go. I’m going to try. I’ve never done this movement before. I’m going to go for it.” It doesn’t mean getting mentally ready for that. It means for any movement that [inaudible 00:06:46], experience the movement in your body. What I really love doing, especially now in my practice, is I’ll start back at the most regressed version of any exercise as part of my warm-up. I’ll literally take a one step progression all the way up until I get to my practice exercise. If that day I can’t get to my practice exercise and I stop at one regression before, then I’m like, “Guess what? That’s cool. That’s where my body needs to train today.”

I’m going to take that. I’m going to accept it. I’m going to acknowledge it and appreciate it. Then, next time I train that pattern maybe I’ll be able to go two steps forward. I think it’s those little check-ins of just going, “You know what? Today may not be where I thought that I was going to be when I thought I had this whole perception or this whole idea of what my workout was going to be today, because guess what? Sometimes your body is not at the same level that you are cognitively.” You can have all these expectations for what you’re going to do that day, but like we had mentioned before, there are so many factors that play roles in your performance that you just have to work with them versus allowing them to be roadblocks.

Ryan: Absolutely, man. There’s a couple things that I want to say about that is being positive with yourself. It’s interesting you said that because I … This is going to sound silly. People have been like, “What?” Maybe it’s because I have kids. I’m not sure, but whenever I’m training when I do something that was like, “Wow, that was pretty good,” I tell myself. What I say, I say the same thing. “Good job, Ryan.” It sounds silly, but I’m constantly telling myself this. It’s not I’m just trying to build myself up, but it’s like it doesn’t have to be perfect or maybe not a very high, high level thing. It’s just whatever I just did was like, “Hey, that was really good, man. Good job.” That is creating this positive framework in order to build upon. It’s just what you said.

The second thing I want to say is setting yourself up for success for that day. You don’t want to do that by just jumping into this high level movement that you’re after for that day. Right? It’s like you said. You start off maybe with the very most basic movement and start going from there. Then, you check and you figure out, “Am I ready for that day?” Maybe you’re not. That’s totally cool. The thing is, when I was always doing my one arm handstands and the thing that really helped me the most from a day to day basis because I was doing this twice a day for three months every single day was always ending on a positive. I wouldn’t go to the point where I would maybe get into this handstand and I would lose it and I kept losing and losing and losing it. No.

I would end on a positive, but there were days though that I would have to pull back slightly because I knew if I would go further then it would all go to pot and I would lose it for that day. Having that awareness in my body and knowing that okay, this is a good place for me to stop today and then I would stop. To be honest, it kept me going because if I had kept going and going and going and going, I’d probably been exhausted and the next day have a really crappy workout anyway. Telling yourself good job or letting yourself know that it was a good job when you did something, setting yourself up for success and it ending on a positive has been something that’s really kept me going. I still do this to the day. After this when I work out that’s just how I do it. Listen to my body. Something else too, sir. I’m going.

Mike: Go for it. You chase it. Go.

Ryan: What’s a good way to say this? Getting rid of expectations. Having goals and working towards things that you want, but not expecting that you should be able to do it or you have to do something.

Mike: That’s it.

Ryan: I think if you can do that, then you can take your place or you can sit yourself up to take yourself to a better place both physically and mentally and get rid of some of that negativity that’s going on.

Mike: Dude, that’s brilliant. There’s so much to that, especially when you think about our bodies are such amazing, miraculous units and machines. There are so many subsystems that have to line up perfectly that are autonomic that we don’t even think about. Guess what? Sometimes all of those incredibly complex intrinsic systems sometimes don’t line up with what you thought you were going to do that day. Your idea of how you were going to have your six-pack abs or how you were going to do the best trick at the bar when you did your one arm handstand or whatever. Sometimes all those other factors that we don’t have to even think about, luckily, because our body does them anyway, sometimes maybe they don’t line up with what our expectations are.

Sometimes we need to take a backseat and go, “All right. You know what? My body is way smarter than I am consciously. Maybe I need to listen to it.” Just going off of what you were saying, man, I’ve started putting into this practice something that I’ve been doing every day that I train. This has changed my outlook on training so much and just acknowledging those little bits of success. What I’ve been doing is I get up at the most un-Godly hour every morning. I get up and I hit the ground running. I do my best work in the morning. I’ll usually crank out a couple hours of work first thing in the morning and then I’ll go train.

Ryan: That’s what drove me crazy when we were in San Diego because your ass was up so early ready to go. Sorry, brother. Keep going.

Mike: What I’ve been doing, I’ll come back from my training session. I’ll usually eat because I train fasted. That’s a whole other story, but I’ll usually eat when I come back. Then, I’ll lay down for about a half an hour. The intention is to meditate, but really the intention is to reflect. This is something I do right after my training. I’ll lay there and I’ll just step by step go through the entire training session and acknowledge the successful points, and then maybe think about the things that are maybe they didn’t meet my expectations and maybe take those apart and look at okay, what were some of the factors that may have affected that?

It’s not like getting down and going, “Oh, man. I did this right or did this wrong.” No. It’s just going back and acknowledging the success of what was good and what felt great, and then thinking objectively about some of the things that maybe didn’t meet my expectations, but all while doing that, focusing on my breath, focusing on allowing my body to be nourished by the food that I just took in. Just going back and being in my body, not only the performance part, but also the reflective part of that as well.

Ryan: This is so good. We’re getting really deep and we could make a whole another show just about this. When you go back and reflect on what’s going on, in your mind when you have those experiences again and you’re focusing on the breath and the awareness, you’re setting yourself up. Like I said before, for success for the next session. Looking at what happened or maybe what didn’t happen, but not looking in a negative way. Just accepting the fact that it happened and understanding that next time this is possibly something that could happen. When that happens, here’s what you can do. Setting yourself up that way is something that I’ve used so many different times in my gymnastics, for competition as well as in my Judo competitions as well.

It doesn’t have to be competition because you can look at it for each session if that’s really what you want to do, but there’s so many times where people work out. They’re done. They don’t even think about it. Then, they show up for their next thing and they try something and they don’t understand why they can’t do something when it’s similar to maybe … I remember going to a lecture when I was in a university here. In the United States you say college. Here in Japan. I would to the lecture and it was in Japanese. Right? I would listen to it, would be taking notes. Right after class I would always go to the library. I would sit down and I would organize my notes and write things down because it was fresh in my mind. The next time I had to go back and look over those notes, get ready for the test, I was ready.

This reminds me of what you’re talking about is after your session reflecting on what happened, the positives and the things that didn’t happen, but don’t look at them in a negative way. Look at them as a way to improve and learn from. I think that if more of us could do this we’d be moving to this higher level more efficiently. Therefore, faster. Likewise, learn more about ourself. On a very deep level, understanding that it’s not about moving up to that higher level, but reflecting on where you are right now and focusing on that journey. Very, very, deep, deep thing there. I think it does reflect about the negativity. Let’s just throw it out there. Ego. Talk about this again. We talked about it earlier in another show that we did, but get rid of that ego and understanding that this is where I’m at and this is a good place. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It is what it is.

Mike: It is what it is. That’s something that I always like to mention at the beginning of any of my workshops that I teach is, “We’re all going to be bad at things today. I encourage you to embrace it. I encourage you to embrace being awkward and uncoordinated and embrace laughing at yourself because your body is not reacting the way that you think it should.” We’ve all left our egos in this big stinking bag outside of the door full of just jackass egos that rule so much of our life. If we get rid of that and we separate ourselves from that, then the learning process can truly take place. Just separating ourself from the ego and just like you said, “It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s where I am today.” As cheesy as it is, I’ve always liked that idea of we’ll meet you where you are today. I know that can be a yoga thing or whatever other discipline, but I love that idea because it’s neither good nor bad. It just is.

Going back to what we were saying before is just having the power to acknowledge that and not get frustrated by it. Just acknowledge it for what it is. Acknowledge it as something that’s almost a badge. It’s like, “Cool. I just experienced that thing neither good nor bad. It just was.” Guess what? It’s a building block to get better because our body strives off of repetition. The more that you experience movement, the more that you experience skill practice, the more you experience a different style of weight training, our body strives to become more efficient at any given task that’s consistent. Just going in and experience repetition, our body thrives off of repetition. If you go in and you get angry and you’re not where you’re supposed to be and you try to go even harder, then again your body is like you know what? That’s not good information, man. I’m not going to adapt to this new challenge because you’re giving me stuff that’s distorted. That can be distorted mentally. It can also be distorted physically.

Ryan: Now, something you brought up what I like and it reminded me of what I say during seminars and it’s a joke that I use is the phrase, “Embrace the suck.” A lot of people when they hear me say this for the first time what they think is oh, hardcore. You’ve got to embrace that hard, “Rah! Rah! Got to do it,” thing. What I’m referring to is the fact that we have got to suck at things and learn from that in order to progress. You can’t just jump into a movement and expect to be at an elite level of doing something. No. Here’s something. You’re going to suck in the beginning and that is a very, very cool thing because you can learn from it. If you don’t learn from it then you’re missing out. Embrace that suck and really focus on learning what is going on with it. Don’t tell yourself, oh, I suck. I should quit. It’s not that. No. It’s you suck.

You should keep at it and learn from it. That’s a good thing. “Every day I want to suck more.” That sounds horrible. Wow. Okay. Anyway, yeah. With my movements I’m constantly looking at where I am sucking in the movements so that I can focus on the little parts to get better, instead of, “Oh, crap. I can’t do it.” “No. Why can’t you do it?” Maybe there’s so many different factors going on. Maybe it’s because you’ve got to try it more than once. Maybe it’s just because it’s that day. Maybe you’re freezing your balls off because it’s cold in Japan and you’re not warmed up yet. There’s a lot of different things, but when that negativity starts to slip in there, it’s not just in your practice. It carries over into everything you do. If you have a crappy workout session, I guarantee you that afterwards it’s going to carry over into your communication with whomever you might be speaking with. You might take it out on your wife, your kids. You might kick your dog. I hope you don’t. This carries with this.

Understanding just what you said, “It is what it is,” and leave it, but learn from it. I think that if we can do more of this we’re all going to be better. Here’s the thing. I look at my practice as not just for those particular skills that I’m working on right now. My practice is for everything else that I’m doing in life, too. If I can focus on being better and embracing that suck in my practice, I want it to hopefully prepare me and mold me to become a better person for everything else because the real reason that I’m practicing and doing all this stuff isn’t just for me. It’s for everyone else out there. It’s for the people I love. It’s for you as my mentor and my close friend and being better for you and everyone else there and everybody who listens to this show. That’s where it’s about. Take a look at really why you’re doing what you’re doing when you’re doing these movements. That hopefully will help you to reframe for maybe when you do slip into a negative pattern and to help get you out of it.

Mike: You brought up a bunch of great points. One of the things that always pops into my mind is that humility factor of again, why are we doing this? What is the overall goal? How is this serving us? How is this serving the rest of the people that we come in contact with? The thing that always comes up in my mind is one, you’re really good at this, Ryan. You always have that play aspect to the way that you train. One of the phrases I always like to say is, “Keep the child’s mind and leave the ego behind.” That’s that idea of you know what? No matter what, I’m going to have a good time. No matter what else is going on today, guess what? My session is going to kick ass because I’m going to have a good time and you do that all the time.

Ryan: I’m sorry to interrupt. One of my favorite phrases is, “The best surfer is the one having the most fun out there.”

Mike: That’s it.

Ryan: Go ahead, though. Yeah, man. Yeah.

Mike: The other part of that is this is something that’s just been ruling my universe right now is just the idea to train to last and the idea of training today for the person that you want to be 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, because we have the option. We have the full option and capability of getting better at who we are in our bodies. We have to realize that it’s not just a linear path, that we’re not just going to continue to get better every single day. We’re going to have days where we’re really good. We’re going to have days where we’re shit. We’re going to have days where we take a couple steps forward, a couple steps back. We just have to embrace every one of those days, which is the same thing that I say at my seminars as well which is, “Go be bad at things. Go be bad at things.”

When you get to go and experience new things, same thing as embracing the suck. When you get to go and be bad at new things, your body on a physiological level is doing all kinds of amazing things. Your motor cortex in your brain is experiencing. It’s getting excitement. It’s getting stimulated. Your body is going through all these exchanges chemically and neurally and all of those things keep us alive, man. That’s our life force learning new things. Stagnation is death in so many ways. Just to be able to continue to learn new things will excite that process of cognition, as well as just the way that we experience and navigate our environment on a day to day basis.

Ryan: Love it. So much good stuff in there. So many people say, “Oh, it’s the journey that matters.” Yeah, it is, but it’s deeper than that. It’s just what you said. I love what you said about the child. “Focus on the child and leave the ego behind.” The play. I think if we can focus more on that, personally I would like to see more people doing that instead of that expectation if it has to be some way or it should be some way, leaving that behind looking at it more as a play, and the opportunity to get to explore and use your body in a way that maybe you never even thought of before. Even if you’re having a crappy day, step on the mat, get going, explore. It is what it is. Just enjoy the process. Hopefully that is a way that can help you to look at negativity in a different way. Anything else to add there, brother?

Mike: Let’s hit on other people’s negativity.

Ryan: Yeah, we might as well. Let’s just do it.

Mike: Let’s just do it.

Ryan: The haters.

Mike: I think we should start with a public service announcement.

Ryan: All right. Do it.

Mike: I’ll just say, “Hey, everyone out there. Stop wasting your time and energy being a dick. I can only imagine that it’s much easier to just be cool. Just be a bunch of Fonzies. Just be cool, man. The time that it takes you to make a dick comment on a video or a tutorial that someone put out just for free, just so everyone else can enjoy it, the time that it takes to just write an asshole comment on that could easily be used either un-friending that person or un-following or maybe making your own tutorial on how you would do it differently.

Ryan: Wow. There’s a concept. Now, obviously, everybody, this is something that Mike and I … just to let you know, it’s the first time we talked about this publicly, I believe, actually.

Mike: Yeah. Let’s do it.

Ryan: It’s hilarious because you and I have been close friends for quite a while now and it’s just funny how we could give a shit, really. Right? Okay. “Hey, Ryan. Yeah. That sucks.” “Great. Well, whatever, dude. Instead of telling me, show me. How can you make it better?”

Mike: “That’s not the best way to teach a muscle-up.” “Well, guess what? There are a million ways to teach a muscle up. Why don’t you make a video of your way?”

Ryan: Yes, exactly, because really this is how I look at it. Movement for some reason and even that terminology movement has got … I think it’s hilarious. I have a great movement every single day. Okay? When we talk about moving our bodies through space, it reminds me in my way of music. Okay? There’s only a certain number of ways the body can move. It’s similar to music. Right? We’ve got these notes. How we put those movements together is our expression of those notes. In essence it’s our song. Maybe I’ll play the guitar a different way. You know what? That’s my way of playing the fucking guitar. If you don’t like it, I won’t say what I want to say, but that’s fine. Mike and I really appreciate the fact that you don’t like it, but for those of you who are haters and have the negativity and try and bring other people down, listen. You need a hug.

That’s really what it is. You just need a big hug. To take this into consideration, there are times. I usually don’t comment on anybody when they write something negative on Facebook or whatnot, but there was one time. Someone posted something and they said, “I don’t like it.” I was like, “Okay, totally cool. That’s fine,” but it turned into this lengthy discussion. Me, I don’t argue with people. For example, this particular person was like, “Oh, you’re gay.” One of my comments was like, “Well, are you talking about in the happy sense?” I was just having fun, but it turned out that this person really just needed a friend and they were reaching out. This negativity as well.

If you happen to be a person who is new to the internet in terms of being a coach, in terms of being an instructor who is putting material out there, this is for you. This isn’t just the people who are watching the tutorials. If you’re in the fitness world and you’re putting out tutorials and putting yourself out there in public, I got to let you know don’t take things personally because these kind of people, the people are out there that throw these negative comments and whatnot, really they don’t matter. They don’t matter at all. The only way they matter is if you let them matter. Here’s another good thing, though, that I learned a while back. The more people comment about how they don’t like something of yours just simply means that you’re getting popular.

Mike: That’s true.

Ryan: That’s a good thing. The life is not all roses. There are people out there who are not going to like what you do. That’s perfectly fine. Spend your time focusing on the people that matter to you and the people that you can help and the rest of the people they can “f” off. That’s my feeling on the topic there.

Mike: I think that’s a great topic that you brought up as far as if you are someone who is getting into the field as far as creating your own tutorials and putting your own information out there. The amount of love that you will get from people telling you that you changed their life or that you helped them get their first pull-up, push-up, whatever, the amount of energy that you get from that is so extraordinary. On the other side of that, if you let it, one negative comment can be absolutely poison that poisons every other beautiful comment on there and it can change your entire day if you let it. That’s what I’m saying. You have to create this system. It’s different for every single person. It’s different for me as it is for Ryan, but you have to create some sort of system for you that doesn’t allow that to penetrate your overall message and your path or your journey or whatever it is.

For me, it was always just neutralizing it. If someone said something really shitty then it would just be like, “Oh, okay. Cool. That’s a great opinion. Check out this or maybe check out this or maybe show me how you would do it differently.” That doesn’t have to be passive aggressive. It can literally be like, “Cool. This is a conversation that you opened up that may be an opportunity for all of us to learn together. Let’s do it.” Usually, if you don’t add gasoline to it then you can figure out how to neutralize it right away. If you go back and continue the fight, continue the argument, then I guarantee it’s just going to get worse and it’s not going to help anyone out. Just figure out what your coping or your strategy is and maybe try a couple different things, but the biggest thing is take all that good energy that’s coming in and magnify it. Take all of that shitty negativity and minimize it. Throw it behind you. Throw it in the trashcan.

Ryan: Something else too along those lines is surround yourself also with good people, the two of us and then also Al Kavadlo. So many great people out there are mentors. I say mentor because it’s yeah, okay, maybe equal thing, but the thing is I’m always looking up to you for what you’re doing because I gain information from you and this positive energy. These are the people that you need in your life. Again, if you are starting off in this field, it’s not you against everyone out there. It’s not. I think this is something that unfortunately we see a lot of. It’s, “Oh, my system is better than your system.” It’s like that martial art bullshit that always happens. My sensei is better than your sensei. No. It’s just a different kind of whatever thing out there.

I think you and I and Al. I keep bringing up Al. He’s such a good guy, but we get that. It’s not us against them. It’s what can we do to help try improve this movement idea out there? A way that we can improve our bodies. If you come to GMB and you don’t like it, that is perfectly fine. I want to help you and maybe introduce you to somewhere else to Mike’s stuff, to Al’s stuff, maybe Ryan Ford from Parkour, the Tapp Brothers from Parkour. You evolve for one arm handstands or what now, because there’s so many good people out there and doing positive, wonderful stuff that it doesn’t have to be us against here. If you are also one of those people that feels that you need to leave a negative comment, you’re not doing anybody a favor. It’s whatever because we don’t really give a shit.

Mike: That’s true.

Ryan: Yeah. Do find though something that you enjoy doing. Stick with it and enjoy it. We’ve got to enjoy it. There’s no reason to be an asshole and be negative all the time. Life is just too short.

Mike: Just to tag on to what you were saying, I’m a huge advocate of that idea that we’re all stronger together. We’re seeing that there’s a big shift especially in the presenter world where it used to be the old guard was, “It’s my way and only my way.” Now, we’re starting to see where people like yourself and I and Al and the other people in our community is that we’re creating allies. John Wolf and the Onnit team and all those guys are creating allies because that’s it. We are all stronger together, but even more importantly, our bodies are far too complex to just say there’s one system that does it all. That is bullshit. Our bodies are far too complex. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach. The greatest truth that I’ve come to accept over the past couple years having seen so many great programs and so many bad programs is that guess what? It all works. The right person for the right amount of time it all works.

Ryan: Absolutely, man. It’s dead on. It really doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. Right? Like I said, all the time so many people will bash on Zoomba or something. Here’s my thought on that. If it gets a person up off of the couch and gets them moving and if that person loves to show up for Zoomba class and enjoys it, it’s awesome. That’s what it is. That to me is just amazing. You won’t hear me bashing on any particular group at all, just because if it helps that single person and just what you’re saying before, I don’t care about all the haters. It’s that one person that sends me a message and says, “Thank you so much. I finally got it,” or “I understand now,” or something. That’s what I’m after. That’s what matters to me. That’s really what matters.

Mike: It could be the best program in the entire world. Just to go back to that, you can have the best, most sound program in the entire world, but guess what? If you don’t enjoy it and you don’t actually do it, it doesn’t matter. Someone could give you the best program and you’re like, “I don’t like this,” but maybe you do like Zoomba and that gets you going. You get to dance your ass off and you get to have a great time and you do it three or four times a week. Guess what? That’s successful. That program works for you. You can say whatever you want about it, but if that works for someone, that works for somebody. That’s it, man. It’s all about having fun, enjoying what you’re doing and still continuing to explore and try new things like we were talking about earlier and getting that positivity and love, man, because that’s why we do it. Right, Ryan?

Ryan: That’s it. That is why we do it. Yeah. This particular show is an interesting one because we are still holding back a bit, but the thing is I think it’s good that we got this out in public, aired our laundry there a little bit. Let us know what you think. I’m always interested in hearing from people. I don’t have this wall in front where I shut everything out. Do because I learn from other people. I don’t think I have all the answers. I know I don’t have all the answers. All I have are the experiences and the love of my friends and the people I admire that I learn from. I would love to hear from all of you out there. What you think about this topic of negativity and some other ways or methods that you use to help you stay positive and enjoy life? That’s where it’s about. Until next time, Mike, any final words?

Mike: Don’t hate. Congratulate.

Ryan: There you go, brother. All right, everybody. Until next time, stay positive. Cheers.

Mike: Peace.

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