The Champion's Journey: Discipline and Dreams | with Stuart Dansby

Michael: Stuart Dansby, welcome to the show, brother. I'm super excited to have you here. You are the star of the brand new documentary, taking the fight. And we're going to talk about that journey today, but first welcome to the show.

Stuart: Oh, Mike, like I can't tell you, I have told you how excited I am to be here and to share this story with you.

Michael: Yeah, here's what's interesting. Everyone in life has the ability to choose the person that they want to become. And as I watched your documentary, the only thing that kept going in my head was like, this guy gets it, this guy gets it, this guy gets it. And what I mean by that is, for so many of us, Stuart, we are trapped In our own mind about what we can't have about who we can't be about what we're not capable of But as I watched the documentary and I'm going to encourage everyone to go and find taking the fight and watch this documentary, what I watched was this man go against the odds of both himself and the world to go and fight professionally not only in his late 50s, but also in his early 60s, with everyone being like you are out of your mind, which again, you probably are with all due respect, but I relate to it so much and I would just love to start at the beginning. What was childhood like for you? Because I have this weird theory that you've probably been through some shit, and I just want to uncover how do you end up becoming a champion fighter in your 60s? And I can't help but think it had to start somewhere early on.

Stuart: Yeah, it probably did. But I think a little bit later I think I had a remarkable childhood, military father, depression era appearance, that greatest generation. So I had a very normal life, other than the fact that I was little. So my mom was always like, Hey, if you're going to get picked on, cause you're little. So, if somebody picks a fight with you, just fight back. And that was like that really wasn't the green card you wanted to give me. Cause it was a get out of jail free card. At that age, I loved even then fighting, right? So, I used to get in a lot of fist fights, but back then that's what kids did too. It wasn't a big deal. You didn't get, nobody got crazy. Just got in a fight, teachers broke it up or whatever. And that's how life was. I think for me, my challenges started as a teenager. Cause up until then, I had a very normal life. But my mom got cancer when I was about 12 and as she got sicker and sicker, it started to affect our whole household. It affected my brother in a different way where he disconnected from the family. God bless him. It affected my father. My father was a 30-year military man who was. I have a quiet John Wayne type personality, right? Didn't show a lot of emotion. You knew he loved you, but he didn't, you couldn't have this kind of an intimate conversation with him. We didn't have that relationship. It affected my sister as well. And as she got more and more ill as a teenager, when you're going through that awkward time in your life and trying to figure out who you are. I became her nurse and I became the guy that took over the household and the duties and cooking and things like that. But I didn't really know how to process it because again, that generation probably didn't teach you a great deal about how to express yourself, right? It was a stoic generation. You knew you were treated with great love and respect, but you didn't know how to express yourself. And I remember she would be sick and I would be out with my friends, I was going into my senior year and we'd be out and I'd say, guys, I got to go home. They're like, what do you mean you got to go home? It's 10 o'clock. And I'm just like, I got to go home. And I wouldn't explain it because I didn't want to say to my friends, My mom's dying. I couldn't say it to myself. But it internally, I knew I had to go home. I had to go home to spend time with my mom because it was really limited. And I remember going to visit her in the hospital and seeing her that morning and the nurse coming in. And I was trying to wake my mom up and I'm like, mom. And the nurse comes in and says, Hey, did they call you? And I said, yeah, they called me. They called me to tell me she'd taken a turn for the worst. She goes, and she says, she went easy. And that was the moment I realized my mother was dead. And then my father came in and he was trying to talk to her as well because he thought she was just sleeping. And I couldn't get the words out of my mouth, Michael, I couldn't say mom's dead, right? Couldn't do it. And even at her funeral, I refused to cry because I had to be, at that point, I felt like I had to be a man. And not cry, which is a horrible way to think, right? So, I'm not justifying that, but I had that anger. And if they look back now, that anger stayed with me in the form of getting in more fights in the form of being depressed, but not really knowing what that was not understanding that not being just, I look back at some dark moods, right? And it took me years to come out of that. But I think that's what kind of drove me in many respects to always fight. And what, like everything in life, you can use it as a, this happened to me, I'm a victim or you can say, that's an experience that helped me to mold me into who I want to be today.

Michael: How do you do that? Because I think that's the thing that so many people get trapped in, is you look at your life and you take these awful some moments, maybe even the worst things that ever happened to you and then unfortunately they become leverage points for victimhood now obviously I think there's a turning point that probably takes place because as you mentioned, you know There were times in which this really interrupted your life, right? And I would agree with you not being able to cry and express your emotions Unfortunately as something ingrained in society something we talked about on this show a lot but how do you flip that on its head? What did that look like for you?

Stuart: So, I think it was baby steps, it took years. And it took finally, probably into my forties before I look back and said, Yeah, you were depressed and you were angry and you had probably some PTSD undiagnosed. You wouldn't look at it that way back then, didn't know what that term was unless it was referring to a Vietnam veteran, right? Because of, you just didn't know the coping skills, right? And that's so much of this comes down to, do you have the coping skills and then the self-belief? Yeah, yes, I can overcome that. So with me, I think it started in little bits and pieces of setting goals in business, and I remember achieving some of my first goals in business and saying, wow, I can actually achieve things that I set my mind to. I just really have to stay focused and work my ass off. And I remember those little things in my twenties where I'm like, wow, I was able to do that. And it was a little thing. It was getting a promotion at a job, but I'd set my goal to do it by a timeframe. And I started to realize that I can empower myself and then I could start achieving things. And then it's expanding that, right? It's okay, if I can do that, then why can't I do something bigger? Why can't I do something more important? If I can do that. Why can't I as house, why can't I find the perfect girl of my dreams? If that's really what I want, how do I become that person that she would be attracted to? And you start developing, first off for me, I think it started in the business side and then it started on the spiritual side and the emotional side and developing yourself into the person that you really want to be. And it takes, I have an expression, which is everything good in life comes from discipline, right? So, if you have a great relationship. It's because you're disciplined in faithfulness and you're disciplined in appreciation. You have a great career. It's because you're disciplined in your focus and your work ethic, and you can apply it to spirituality, to your health, to everything. So I think it just comes from building and that discipline is not, none of us wake up and say, man, I'm really disciplined today. It's the daily steps of applying it and applying it a little bit more. And I know you understand that better than most.

Michael: Yeah, I did not want to go to the gym this morning, and I have that moment where I'm looking at my shoes, getting ready to put them on and walk out the door at 6:30. And I'm like, I really don't want to do this today. And I've just come to realize that success has nothing to do with motivation, literally nothing. And discipline, even though it's so difficult. And we've talked about it on the show a lot, but dude, you go look at the most successful people in the world. It is massive discipline in alignment with their goals and having clarity about what they want that creates change. But here's, what's really interesting, right? Cause I look at life like this and you hear this a lot in business. If your business is flat, your business is dying, right? You hear this all the time. If you're not growing, you're dying. If you're not growing, you're dying. And in life, and I've witnessed this in myself, sure. You've witnessed this in yourself as well. You're like, you'll get to this place where life is. Better than what it used to be right and then you flatline a little bit and then because of that suddenly life starts to go down and its but the only way you keep life going up is you have to reevaluate and continue to get new clarity about your goals. And so I'm wondering like being in this place and having success and starting to get the promotions and get the girl of your dreams and have the body that you want and all of the things that you've been able to do. How do you continue to elevate, right? Like, how do you identify what's next and in front of you? Because I think that's where people get lost, like they'll do a lot of work, things will be good, they start coasting. And the next thing it's Oh man, my life is not going the direction I want it to go. How do we get it to go back up?

Stuart: Yeah, I think, man, that's a powerful question. We as human beings, we crave the comfort zone, right? Wherever it is, the comfort of food, the comfort of a nice home, the comfort of being with somebody that you're in love with. And those things are important because that's how we enjoy life. But we have to be aware of not living in the comfort zone because the comfort zone is just that it's a zone of okay Let me take this in and we should be in this moment and say, all I just got promoted, we just bought a house, we just had a baby Let's take that in but if we live in that comfort zone, that's when we flatline and without realizing it, that's when we start declining. There is a huge spike, for example, in alcoholism at the same age that most people retire. And the reason why is because once they retire, they don't have anything to do. So they're not achieving. I get asked, as you can imagine frequently, when are you going to retire? And my answer is always the same. And this is going to answer the second, this is the second part of my answer to your question. My answer is the same. At what age should I stop achieving and what age should I stop contributing in some aspect to this life? Because that is the moment. That you get old because that's the moment you choose to be comfortable and you choose to go on that decline. So I think you've got to be very aware and appreciate again those comfort zone aspects of your life, but you always have to look and say, what else do I want to achieve? Because, why are we here? Is it achievement in raising great kids? Is it achievement in business? You have to have a reason to achieve to contribute in my case with the documentary my goal for and it'll be, it's nine years now from inception to this finally launching. My goal was to allow people to understand that you can overcome what you have in your head as obstacles. You can overcome what you have in your head as problems because they're not, they're challenges. And when you switch that perspective from stress to challenge, then you can achieve those things, right? And when you start looking at how do I overcome challenges and I want to achieve more, then it continues to drive you. Does that make sense?

Michael: Yes, it makes perfect sense, but where I'm curious is you mentioned something that I think is really important, it's like having reasons. And I don't know that, and perhaps it's the world that we live in right now, but I don't know that people really have conviction in the way that they need it in order to be successful. And my fear, and I see this a is that people want it. And so how do you, because here's my thought. I was like, Jesus Christ, dude, you're in your fifties. You're going to fucking Muay Thai practice at 5:30 AM. I'm watching this documentary. I'm like, the man is up doing more at in his fifties than people in their twenties do all day. And I don't want to tout it as you're some kind of superhero or anything of that nature, but it's like, there's something in you that, that drive pushes you forward and I'm just trying to understand where that lives because you know I think people just become so complacent and I've been again I've been guilty of this where I've really had to get in my own ass and be like, dude What do you want and then find that space? And so, I'm wondering how do you find the reason? Let's say somebody has a big dream. They have a big goal They want to go and accomplish something and they're in their 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s or where are they're 18? Or it doesn't matter but they're in this place. How do they leverage their reasons to actually accomplish their dreams?

Stuart: Yeah, that's a great question. I think one of the things you have to do is, we hear the word authentic today. We hear that a lot, be your authentic self. I think a lot of people know what their dreams are, we do know there's a little voice in the back of our head that says Hey man I don't think I can be a good parent because I had lousy parents, but you still want to be a parent or man, I've been in this corporate job my whole life. I want to open a business, but I don't have those resources. We all have that thing in the back of our head, we all have the fight, we all have a fight, every one of us. So part of it is being authentic to listening to that voice, having the courage to say, okay, fuck what everybody else thinks and what I have been told I should do and should be. Let me take that and set that aside. What do I want that really fulfills me spiritually? What inspires me? And you used a word a few minutes ago, motivation. There's a big difference between motivation and inspiration. Inspiration means to be in spirit, to function within your own spirit, right? And I think when you, the first thing you got to do is analyze. What is it that you want to achieve, no matter how far fetched it is, no matter, take all that societal stuff, everything, put it to the side. Doesn't matter a theoretical world. If you appeared today and said, what do I want to do? What do I want to achieve? You first off have to identify it, right? That's the most important thing. What do I want to do? Then the second thing you have to do is you have to act as if, and what I mean is wherever your resource or person is. You start putting that energy into the world because the path isn't clear for any of us. You find anybody who's been successful at a high level and their path wasn't straight at, yeah, I'm just going to do this, go from point A to point B and I'll knock down a few obstacles. Their path was all over the place, right? How they got there, the people and the resources that helped them get there are piecemeal. And what you've got to do is you've got to put that energy into the world and open your mind because especially in America, especially in most countries in Western civilization, the people and the resources that you need to achieve your dreams are all around you, but you are not going to see them. You're not going to get them until you own it. When you know that dream and you own the energy of driving it. And you own that responsibility every day, suddenly, and if that's getting on the internet, starting doing research, then that research is going to lead you to something else. As long as you keep your mind open, it'll lead you there and you go, okay, that was a dead end. Maybe I needed research over here, but I found something that helps me. And then you find the people, and when you find the people, and the resources, one of the things that's happened, and I'll give you an example, my two coaches, one is guy named Greg Choplin, three-time world champion, WBC world Muay Thai champion, twice the highest level in the world. My other coach is in, in the Florida MMA hall of fame. Two of the highest level coaches. I don't deserve these guys to be coaches. They're opposing coaches. The only time they see each other to fight, is in the other side of the ring of the cage. They've come together and give me everything they have, both from an education aspect, from a commitment aspect. And it's because when I started training with them, they would train me to where it was, I hated it. I would go to a show up to a training session going, I'm just going to literally get exhausted. I'm going to be awkward. I'm going to be uncomfortable, I'm going to hear, Nope, do it again. 10,000 more times and I'm going to hear, okay, that was good, but I kept giving them more and more. And when they said, okay, it's over, I'd say, can we do another round? Can we do one more round? And I gave them more than they thought they were going to give. And then I would come back tomorrow, sore, beat up me, swollen and say, let's do it again. Let's do it again. What happened was they became more invested in me because I cared and I cared. And to go back just a little bit, yeah, we live in a world and I'm not that baby boomer. That's going to say, Oh, Gen Z sucks and everything's bad now. No, but we live in a world today where social media has made success feel like it's instant and we're, let's face it, most people on social media are trying to find some sort of instant fame. For being themselves and not being anything special, right? So that kind of hinders people's goals because we try it for a week. We try it for a month, maybe six months. And we say, yeah that didn't work. I'm going to go to something else that wasn't really your dream then go. But if it really was your dream, it took me 15 years of training, six years of fighting to win a championship, it took me nine years from inception to launch in a national on four national platforms to bring this documentary to life. And that's where you can't give up, you've just got to keep what you said, focused on what your dream is, focused on what your goal is, own the responsibility of the energy, you're the driving energy of your dream, nobody else is. That's one of the things I learned throughout the nine years of making the documentary. There were obviously times when it stalled, right? Stalled because of the story, stalled because of finances. And I would sit back and say, okay, you've got a great business partner. He's amazing. He owns a production company, but he isn't invested in this like you are. It's your responsibility to drive this forward, right? And that's where you just push and push on anything that's your dream. Did that help?

Michael: Yeah, I think a lot of people quit when it gets hard. And I think that unfortunately, it kills me to say this, but I think that more people are afraid of success than they are of failure. Because in success, you're going to have to discover who you truly are. Because in success, you're going to have to do the hardest things, you're going to have to walk the path that is of most resistance. when we have this weird notion in the world that you should walk the path of least resistance, which I mean, yes, work smarter than harder, we get that. But most of the time you're going to be faced with obstacles and doubt and bad circumstances where you can really be the victim. as I was watching your documentary and it's like another soldier, shoulder injection, another knee surgery, another this, another that, another injury and people around you, even at one point your wife, after you decided to take the second fight being like you're a maniac, right? It's like the world, even though it loves you, it does not want you to pursue the thing that you want to pursue and it wants to push you into this place of it's okay of complacency of all of these things that kind of give you an out. How do you not take the out? Cause this is where I think the difference really takes place. Is those moments where you're faced with two decisions, right? Because on this hand, Stuart, it', yeah, I'm fucking 50. Oh, wait, no, I'm 60. Life is this life is that no knee shoulder problems. God knows what else happens in the scheme of training. And then this, oh dude, the bed is warm, it's 5a.m., I can just go back to sleep, I'll wake up, I have my coffee and read the paper, chill out, whatever that thing is right now. Obviously I'm being a little asinine here, but how do you not take the out in pursuit of finding your dream?

Stuart: There's a couple of things there. I think one of them is you got to, you said it earlier, right? About staying focused on your goals. You cannot listen to that language that's out there. You cannot entertain those conversations. My wife has always been in my corner, but for this last fight she wasn't initially she got there. And as you saw, she talks about that, but she wasn't. And you know what? She is my world, but I didn't listen when she was giving me resistance. I didn't, I was convicted and she knew that she's you're going to fight again and it's again, she goes and question it. And I'm like, I don't care. I don't care. The outside world is not going to keep me from getting to my goals or at least putting in all the effort. You can't guarantee you're going to be there, right? But you'll probably get pretty close if you put that effort in. So, the first thing is don't listen, right? It's like you get up in the morning. First thing most people do, what do they do? They look at social media. So right now you're looking at social media. I'll go to TikTOK, I'll go to IG, I'll go to Facebook, I'll bounce around and I'm letting the world program how I'm going to think and the information here. So maybe I click on somebody that something that tells me that I can't. Achieve my dreams, but I'm just letting the world program. No, every day you have to program your own thought. I do it through affirmations, but you can't let the outside world get in there and tell you that because once you do, then that's going to create doubt, right? I have lost. If I win one round, this will not surprise you, especially as a guy who is a Muay Thai practitioner. If I win one round, I've lost 20 and that is not exaggeration. So I've literally my ass kicked. Literally got my ass kicked 20 times to win one round, right? If not more…

Michael: Do you have to be, there's a weird way to phrase it, but because martial arts is a huge part of my life and something I've shared on this show a lot, at one point moving to Thailand so I could practice for a year. Do you have to some extent, be willing to suffer, like really be willing to suffer?

Stuart: You not so much willing, but you have to want to meaning here it is. Yeah. When you're at work, you're in a corporate job and you're getting all these demands at once and everything's due in two days and you're overwhelmed and people are coming at you with problems. That's your fucking moment to define who you are. You got to want those moments, you can't say I want to hide. No, that is the moment. Everybody talks the talk, but that is your moment to say, all right, I'm I think I'm a badass business person. This is what I revel in. Bring it to me, bring me that pain. Bring me those challenges because I am going to function through this and I'm going to kick those challenges asses. I would program myself in training camp specifically to say there's going to be that moment when you want to quit. There's going to be, and I would do affirmations, visualizing this. There's going to be that moment when you're sparring and you're getting your ass kicked and you look up and this, you're still two minutes left in the round, two minutes is an eternity when you're getting your ass kicked when you're winning, it can't go fast, too slow, right? When you're getting your ass kicked and there's two, you're like, Oh my God, how am I going to survive? I would literally visualize those moments in training. Whether it was with my coach, whether it was sparring or whether I wanted to quit in strength and conditioning and say, these are your moments, these are your moments to define who you are as a human being. And sometimes I would come away saying to myself, yeah, I didn't like who I was today. I got through it, but I didn't kick its ass, I didn't really shine, I didn't really grow because I just survived that moment, but I didn't push through that moment. And that's okay. As long as we recognize that it's okay to be human. It's okay to have that struggle, but you really want to look for those moments because as opposed to saying, okay, something happened and I gave up. Think about this, if you anticipate, okay. I'm going to hit obstacles, I don't know what they are, I'm going to hit times when I want to quit. And when I get there, that's my moment to shine, that will drive you through those and you're going to get those little victories along the way.

Michael: Were there moments, I'd actually really love to go in and for you to define maybe while in this journey over the last nine years, what was a moment where you were like, I'm done? But then you really rallied because here's how I think about it in my life. There are moments, dude, where I'm done. I'm like, fuck, I cannot do another podcast, I can't speak on another stage, I can't write another book, I'm exhausted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I like snap myself back into reality. And I'm like, yes, you can. What was a moment like that for you? While you're filming this documentary.

Stuart: Oh, I'll tell you one. I was in a training camp for my first fight in a ring. I was six, probably seven workouts in. It was a Friday evening. I was training with my coach, Greg Choplin. I came in exhausted, completely exhausted. I would train with him for 90 minutes and then he would teach a sparring class. So you'd have 45 minutes of technique and then we'd spar for the last 15 minutes. I've got this young featherweight eating my ass and he keeps clinching and a guy, I fight at one seven, this kid fights at 1:35 and he's just beating me. Beating my ass and he keeps clenching and kneeing me in the kidneys, kneeing me and kneeing me. I'm trying to keep, I can't. Greg, who's always calm, is actually yelling at me and he pulls me aside afterwards and he says, look at, get your hands up. I said, my hands were up trying to argue with my coach. That's the stupidest thing you can ever do. You never win that argument. He shows me video, he's filming. My hands are down on my waist. And I was just demoralized. And then the last round of sparring class, they do abs. And he's like, why do you need to do abs with the class? And I'm like, cause I did abs yesterday, I'm sore. It's 600 abs yesterday. He said, you don't get it. There's a group of 20 something year old fighters right there. You might not be the best one here, you might be the worst one here, but you are an example and you're a champion, I expect you to be a champion. So when you're sore, I expect you to do ab class with everybody and show them how they should carry themselves. That's your responsibility to this team, and I went home that night, I was driving home. And Michael, I never thought about quitting, but I was demoralized. I was emotionally broken. And if you know the story of Man of La Mancha of Don Quixote is an old dude who thinks he's a knight who rides around on a donkey. He thinks he's fighting dragons as a knight, but he's actually attacking windmills. And I got home and I walked in the door and my wife, Stella, looked at me and she said, what's wrong? And I just sat down and I said, I think I'm Don Quixote. I think I'm delusional. I don't even win a fucking round. All I do is get my ass kicked. How do I've got a 26 year old, six foot two guy I'm going to go against. How can I possibly beat him when I can't beat anybody? And I was completely demoralized. I wasn't going to quit. But I was emotionally in the dirt and I didn't know what I was going to do. And my wife just said, you're having a bad day. You're just having a bad day, you just need to regroup, you're going to be fine. Nobody can outwork you. Nobody's going to attack this with more energy than you are, you're going to be fine. So I went to bed that night. drained, exhausted. I got up in the next morning, but her words lifted me up. And I had to go spar at a place called freedom fighters, MMA six, five minute rounds in no air conditioning in Miami in the summer. When I got up that morning, I was peeing blood and I was peeing blood because of all the knees that I had gotten to my kidneys. And I'd heard these stories before. And I'm like, okay, it's normal, minimize it. If you're not better by this evening, you can go to the doctor right now. You're going to go spar. So I made myself go spar. There's a guy named Yoel Romero. The number three middleweight in the UFC getting ready for his tie for a fight in Madison Square Garden against Chris Weidman, the former champion. Everybody's in there. Yoel walks in there that morning and he looks at me and he goes, Stuart, you got the first round with me. And I literally make a joke. I'm like, dude, you got 15 other professional 20 something year old fighters, and why are you calling me out? He goes, no, you and me right now, Dali. And I took that moment right there. And I'm like, okay, I'm about to get my ass kicked. But you know what, I'm going to give him everything I can. And this is the responsibility that I owned that drove me, Michael, to make him better. I have an obligation to lead by example and to give him the best round possible so that he gets better and I get better. And sure enough, I've never won close to a round with Yoel. But at the end, our assistant coach comes up to me, we're all done, everybody, you've been in this atmosphere after you're done sparring, everybody's talking trash over in the corner, Yoel's talking trash, holding court, talking in Spanish. And Ray walks up and he says, do you know what he's saying? And I said, what? And he said, Yoel Romero is saying, I felt Stewart's middle kick twice and I don't want to ever feel it again. He goes, Yoel Romero saying that about you. And I just walked out of there that day and I went, okay, I'm going to be all right. I'm going to be alright, I did better today than I did yesterday, just a little bit. I didn't win many rounds, but I pushed myself and I grew as a human being and I got better as a human being, spiritually, mentally, in every aspect, not even talking about being a fighter. I got better, I did something I didn't think I could do. Does that make any sense at all?

Michael: Yeah. That's an incredible story. And for those who may not know who Yoel Romero is, the dude is basically 99.9 percent pure muscle. It's like unbelievable. His nickname is the soldier of God. If you don't know, if you look at him, you'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. And he's a, and he's a vicious killer in the ring, by the way. I think that there's something about this journey where you have to be willing to outwork everybody in the room and in sport that really applies because like you can literally measure the people in the room, but in life and in business, I think that the person you have to outwork is your own mind and controlling that six inches between your brain or between your ears, excuse me. And in that, one of the things that's so difficult is fear. And sitting in front of this thing that we have in this life where, truth be told, like people are terrified of the idea that they could be great. A lot of it's from childhood. Most of it, obviously a lot of it's from the impact of social media. And, just the other day, I was just thinking about how in my own life, there's been periods of time where fear has completely stopped me and it has, the only thing that has brought me to where I am, arguably, is the people that I've put into my life to help me overcome it, having coaches, having mentors, having the right people around me, and the only way I've been able to outwork myself is by having somebody in my corner to be like, showing me the blind spots to giving me the game plan to helping me figure out what I'm doing. You mentioned your wife, you mentioned your coaches, you've mentioned a few other people in this journey. I think people are terrified to ask for help. What role has asking for help and putting the right people in your corner played in your life? Not just in the documentary, not just in fighting, not just in becoming a champion, but in life.

Stuart: Yeah, that's, it's everything. One of the driving messages of this documentary is that it is, even though fighting is an individual sport, it's not, it's all about the team. And you're only as good as the team that's around you and the amount of effort and experience and talent that they have and that they've put into you, right? So, for me I remember my very first fight on a mat. And I remember looking at my opponent and I look back over my shoulders and I saw my two coaches and my wife and I saw a legion of fighters, professional fighters that had trained with me. And I instantly became overwhelmed and I turned and I looked at my opponent and this is going to sound weird, but in my head I went. I own you, I own your soul, I'm going to snap your spine because all of those people behind me are inside of me, all of their love, all of their passion is inside of me and you can't beat me. And I meant it, whether I was going to win or not, I meant it. You can't beat me because they're inside of me, right? But that comes with a mutual commitment and a mutual accountability. So the role of my coaches. You heard what I said about Greg, Greg taught me as a three-time world champion. He taught me the mentality of what it is to be a champion. When you train with guys like him, guys like Yoel Romero, who's won five gold medals in the world championships for wrestling, and then three Olympic medals, you train around those people, you understand a champion's mentality. So, if you get exposure to a high level CEO, Absorb it. If you get exposure to someone who's just a remarkable entrepreneur, expose, understand their level of conviction and feed off that because they will, if you, I always, I have a little thing that I say, which is, but the people around you with the skill, education, and resources to get you where you want to be, and then embrace that. With no ego, right? Because our ego will lie to us our ego When your coach is pushing you and you want to quit your ego will give you every fucking reason in the world Why you should it'll justify it. You got to do with this. You got to go work out You got to do this you got to do right. And you want to quit at that moment. So, you can find a reason, but if you can embrace that knowledge with no ego, then you're going to grow. And that reflects into also the making of the documentary because the making of the documentary was the greatest test of patience I ever had. And what happened is I kept driving it forward with my energy and with kindness, with my partner who owns Roar post production, Carlos Arrieta. And this wasn't a funded project. This was out of our own pockets. And the more I would contribute to Carlos, the more I would give him, the more I would there's something called servant leadership. This concept you lead others by serving them. The more I would serve him, the more he would become invested and the more he would give me back. So Carlos has been tremendous in how we've completed this project because he's put all of his resources, love and passion in it. My wife is there as my constant rock, literally in my corner, not to coach me, not to say throw a low kick, throw a high kick, but just, she literally asked my first time. She said, can I be there? And I almost asked her why. And any successful married man will tell you that the, your best times are probably when you don't speak, I didn't speak. And she saw it in my face. She goes, I'm not going to coach you. You got Greg, you got Manolo. I'm not going to coach you, come on. Looked at me like, come on, dumbass. You really think I was going to coach you? And she said, I want to be there to be your spiritual grounding. I want to be there to be your love. Every one of us is with you. So her role is just as important as Greg's. And I literally had fighters that would kick my ass with love. Michael, they'll drop me, hit me with a leather kip. Liver kick, drop me and look at me and say, get up 30 seconds left in the round, get up. And when I get up, don't just stand, come at me right now and would force me in those days that I didn't want to fight. And I had to do those same things with myself in the documentary. The days that I'm like, man, it's stalled. I don't have an editor, we don't have enough money. This isn't going to happen, you're the driving force. You got to get up and you got to keep pushing. So that's how this, the story of the documentary coming together, my partner's son wrote the original score, which has won four awards in four different film festivals for original music. He came out of the woodwork. His partner came out of the woodworks for graphics. Everybody came out because we put this energy out there. So, none of this happens. I haven't accomplished anything we have because of all of those people contributing and believing in one thing, believing in a dream. And believing in the effort that you put forward, and I say you, cause it's for anybody. You're correct, I am nobody special, I am not a great fighter, if I've accomplished anything, I haven't. We have.

Michael: Beautiful. Yeah. And there's something about that where what comes to mind is that the universe is always conspiring in your favor. There's whatever the thing, it's so crazy, man. Like the littlest things will happen in my life sometimes. And I'm like, Oh, that was a hundred percent meant to be, like I know that was there, but it was also me being like, I need guidance. I need help. I need to invest in myself. And what's interesting is I know how expensive the sport of Muay Thai is. I definitely know how expensive private coaching is. I know how expensive creating content is and editing videos. And you're not going to make a documentary for less than 75,000 these days. And it's like people, you got to put your own skin in the game. And I think that's the number one thing. All right. Let, I want to expose this for a second. I think that the number one thing that keeps people stuck is their fear of investing in themselves. Because when I look at my journey, I will tell you right now, every time I ever tried to do anything for free, I never did anything with it ever. I dude, I must have a bazillion free courses in my inbox, but every time there's cash on the line, real investment of my energy that equal exchange. It's I show up, people have fear about this, concept around finances because for whatever reason they feel like they're not going to get their money's worth. I think we've been brainwashed. I swear to God, I believe we've been brainwashed by society to believe that everybody's trying to steal from us and take from us and rob from us. And so I'm curious from just a financial standpoint, right? Because you went and you made this documentary. It's self-funded. It costs a lot of money. You have to pay for training, for medical expenses, for God knows how many other things along the road. Equipment Talk to me about that aspect of this. What role did actually, like the literal investing in yourself, what role has that played in this journey?

Stuart: Yeah, I could probably have a couple Porsches in the driveway if I didn't go this route. Let's put it that way, I had a friend of mine one day, we were at lunch and he's like, how much do you pay for training a month? And I had it up. It's, how many, two different Jim Seattle, how much do you pay for this? And he's you could be driving a brand new Land Rover right now, just on a monthly basis. And I'm like, it doesn't matter. I don't think of it that way. I don't think of it as an ROI in, am I making money? I think of it as an ROI and investing in myself. You start your podcast a lot with asking a question. You say, give me one word that describes your journey. So, when I saw that, I said, if I had to answer that for Michael, what would it be? And I came up with one word, which was vulnerable. So, I think you have to make yourself vulnerable in what you're going to commit financially. You have to make yourself vulnerable in what you're going to commit emotionally. work ethic wise and in every respect, right? For me financially, you're right. Every time I train with my coaches, high level coaches are expensive, right? I also pay every three months to have my knees injected with PRP, both of them and my shoulder. So, the medical care that is out of pocket, because this isn't stuff that's covered by insurance. adds up every month. The amount of money we invested in the last year in entering into film festivals and traveling to film festivals was enormous. The amount of money that my partner invested as a production company would have been probably closer to a quarter of a million for those resources, right? Now he has them. So he didn't do that, but his skillset and the equipment that he has and all those things and all those cameramen filming, like it's a ton of money. I never really focused on that. And here's what I focused on. Can I afford the a hundred dollars to go train with my coach? Can I afford the money to enter this film festival, is it going to keep me from paying my mortgage or from building my 401k? No, it's extra money that I have. I can do a lot of things with it, but I'm going to invest it in my dream and it will come back to me as long as I keep driving my dream forward. And my dream, this is, Carlos gets on me when I, cause I say this too often, I've never had a goal of making money on this project. My goal is to change lives. We make some money along the way. That's great. He goes, you got to stop saying that. Now we're in distribution. We need to make some money. But that's been his goal as well is how do we change and affect lives by telling the story? And I'm simply the conduit for the story and biting is the metaphor for the story, but you have to invest money as much as you have to invest your emotion because if, and that's a mistake I made at first, I was just investing my work ethic. And my drive in it, but I wasn't investing money and we struggled to find an editor, for example, we reedited it probably six times, and finally I went to Carlos and said, I'll put up this much money. If you put up that much money, let's get a real editor and bring this thing home, and I had to come to that conclusion in order to make this come to fruit.

Michael: Yeah, and then that's everything in life, it really is like there's so many levels of this game in which it's like you have to have this desire, right? You have to be willing to I'm going to figure this out. And I think about that not only in the healing journey, I think about that in creating the life that we want, I think about that in all the moments in which I'm looking at my shoes before I go to the gym and be like, I don't want to do this today, but the desire knowing the outcome on the backside is the thing that keeps me going. One thing that I saw probably more than anything as I watched the documentary and as I researched you and something that is really potent and that really shines, is you have this positive attitude and I think that we live in such a society that is dismayed and melancholied and prescribed and dull and numb and dark that positive attitudes are almost like, the anti-Christ, and I'm just, I'm so curious, first off, where does that come from? And then how do you leverage it?

Stuart: If you come visit me someday and we get up together at 5 AM, you'll look at me and go, Ooh, the hell is that asshole? Because at 5 AM, I am not that guy, I wake up a zombie. And I don't have that positive attitude and I'm walking down the stairs of my house and I judge my day by how swollen my knees are. So can I walk down on two and two knees or after walk, step, walk, step, walk, step. So a lot of times I'm getting out of bed and I'm like, Oh my God, everything hurts. My knees are swollen, my shoulders swollen. And I get down there. And just like any of us, I have, I struggle, right? I struggle to get my day going. Just like any of us. I'm thinking, okay, I've got to get this done with my career. I've got to get that, got to get that solved. And you can easily go into a feeling of hyper anxiety and being overwhelmed. And when you can take yourself out of that, then you'll usually notice that you're a pretty happy person, right? But it's the amount of anxiety and pressure that we have all coming at us. That we allow us ourselves to get overwhelmed with that. So, what I do, and I broached this a few minutes ago is I level set. I believe in God, so I always pray. That puts me at ease whether you don't believe in God or do you can do breathing exercises and just first off, relax your body. And you look at it this way. The average person has 60,000 thoughts a day, which is both literally and figuratively hard to wrap your head around, right? So, if you're in a bad place. Let's say you're having a high stress day. You're negative and you're like, oh man, I'm stressing my boss is on my ass. And then God forbid, you turn on the TV news and then you watch that. Now you just wanna go kill yourself, right? And then you get up in the morning, you look at social media and what are we drawn to? We're drawn to the latest celebrity scandal. We're drawn to bad politics that, oh this politician said this, and then, and now you're wrapped up in more negative energy. So you're literally programming and allowing the world to program you with negative energy. There's a guy named Wayne Dyer who passed away a few years ago. I'm sure you, you know of him, right? He's a remarkable human being. And Wayne Dyer would preach. There's energy in the pictures you put in your room, in your house. There's energy in the music you listen to there's energy in what you consume, visually and mentally, right? So if you watch horror movies and listen to blasting headbanger rock all day, that's probably not going to put you where you want to be. So, I think for me, I struggled just as much as the average person. But I reprogram myself every day. I do positive affirmations on how I want to think and I want to function and what I want to achieve. And so, I just do seven or eight simple affirmations. For example, if I feel like I didn't achieve enough, I got out of focus yesterday, right? Then one of my affirmations will be, I am focus. And the second one will be, I am achievement. I just sit in a quiet place and I program myself. And one of those other things I always do is I take stock of what my blessings are because in my worst day, when my knees are swollen, when I'm stressed at work, when I have a cold, when I've got high demand, I think of, isn't that remarkable? I have this high demand at work. That means I drive value. That means I can help the organization move forward today. My knees are swollen because I got to train yesterday. I got to do what I love, right? There's a woman upstairs, still sleeping. That loves me no matter what a remarkable day that I have in front of me and how blessed am I. So again, it's an expression. If you, my son's 24 and if you walked up to him and said, what's the difference between stress and challenge, he would roll his eyes, look at you and go perspective because he's hurting his whole life. And I think it's putting our life in perspective, right? And going back to what you want to achieve today, when I impact people, one of the things I pray to God every day is allow me to impact people in a positive way for me to do that. I have to lead by example, I have to be the hardest worker in the gym when I'm training with fighters, but I have to be that positive energy that other people can feed off of and learn from. And when you draw those people to you that way, your life becomes more empowered and more enriched.

Michael: Is there a level in which, in order to make that come true, that you have to get out of your own way?

Stuart: What do you mean?

Michael: I think often people self-sabotage. People will get in their own way, people will not do the thing they know they need to do, people will intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously find reasons to not be successful. And I'm just wondering, in all of this to get to the point, as we're watching the documentary, it's not obviously a spoiler at this point because you became a champion. It's to get your hand raised, like how much of that is you got to get out of your own way here.

Stuart: Yeah, you do, you got it, you got to allow yourself to, and I'll go back to that word to be vulnerable, right? To learn, you have to say, and you asked this earlier is it hard to ask for help? You have to ask for help, you have to say, I don't know, help me. Research all you can and learn all you can on your own, but then ask for help. So you have to be vulnerable. That's the first step to me in getting out of your own way. And then the second thing is you have to, again, our ego, man, our ego, you know this, our ego is going to sneak in there and it's going to tell you every reason why you can't because your ego wants to take the course of least resistance. Your ego wants to justify why you can stay where you are because it's comfortable. So you have to be self aware, ego is a great thing, I'm not anti ego. My wife will be the first one to tell you this guy's got an ego, but you have to be aware of it, to channel it for the purposes of what you want to achieve. You can't achieve what you want. If you didn't have an ego that says I'm not satisfied with this life. I'm going to, I'm going to manage this ego to create a life that affects others positively. And you have Michael, right? And that's what I mean. But you also got to, your ego is going to lie to you, right? So you've got to be vulnerable and you've got to manage that ego because your ego told you every reason today that you shouldn't go to the gym, right? And there's this thing like you had a reason why you went. And you may not have even identified at that moment because it's so deeply seated, but you look down and went, this is everything that's important to me in my life. If I don't train, if I don't work out, I'm not as good of a person spiritually. I'm not as good of a person mentally, there's a million reasons why your ego tried to talk you out of it, but your commitment to what's important to you is what drove you to go work out this morning as a simple example.

Michael: Yeah, it's, and I've always been on the side of I don't think we have to get rid of our ego. You just have to pay attention to it, and it's, I wish more people would be honest about that. It's dude, have an ego. You should, because and this genuinely, if you don't believe in yourself, who's going to, and I think about that every single day where it's you're the one who has to get up and do the work and go to therapy and get the coach and go to the gym and eat the good food and have the vulnerable conversations with your wife and put yourself out there and then show up and then do it again tomorrow. And you've got to be driven by the idea that you can and there's a something deeply seated in my belief of what it means to, to really self-actualize, which is in this idea of like, why not me? Why not me? And I have had people over the course of my life, tell me that I'm a very ego driven person. And I respect that because I am, because I know what I want and I know what I will and will not do. Take and I know what I will and will not settle for and I think that's the thing people need is just a very clear and concise alignment of who they are. Now, of course, there's this delicate balance because you don't want your ego to be the driving force and all of your decision making, but sometimes it's the very thing that gets you out the door in the morning and for me. You know when I wake up in those days and I just don't want to do anything because trust me I'm super lazy just by nature, like I think it's just ingrained in me, you know, it's like I used to be 350 pounds. I smoked two packs a day, I drank myself to sleep, I was in horrible relationships, I was in deep debt. And I think that the thing that you have to get in alignment with is, instead of moving away from pain, which is what most people do, Oh, the gym is going to suck, I don't want to go, you move towards pleasure. Oh, if I go and I take care of my physical body, I probably won't lose both of my legs to diabetes like my mom did. Which is a real story, by the way, and so for me that the driver is that but it's also parlay of when I die, because I will, which sucks is like I don't want to have died and wasted this life, and I think that it's, and look I'll be honest with you. It may just be easier for me because I've already been through hell. My whole childhood was nothing, and so to sit here and have almost everything that I want at this phase of my life has been through just the decision making and the willingness to go again and again. And again, and it's like round after round, I'm just going to keep getting up, dude. And I wish that more people would really embrace that because it's the getting back up that actually creates change in your life, it's not the getting knocked down, ‘cause we're going to get knocked down, you're going to fell at work, you're going to fell in your relationship, you're going to fell in taking care of your body, you're going to fell at the gym. And it's I dare you to get back up because that's where you'll discover who you are.

Stuart: And I think when you get back up, what's really relevant is what is your mindset? Because you'll hear people say, I get knocked on my ass and I always get back up. Okay, you do. But what's your mindset? Were you a victim because you got knocked on your ass or did you say, wow, that was a lesson. All right. That ass weapon was a lesson, I appreciate the lesson. And I'm going to turn that into something. And that's, what's so paramount. That's where you see, we all know people, we work with them, family that are jaded, right? They could win the lottery and the first thing they're going to tell you is how they have to pay taxes, how the government's taking their taxes, right? We all know these people, right? And those people have been knocked on your ass, arguably as much as any of us. But when they get back up, they're a victim. Government did this did this, my boss did this, the company, I'm a company, I'm always against the company. You're choosing to work there, right? If you choose to work there, you're not a victim. So when you get back up, look and say, is there a lesson I can learn? But I think you're very right. We want instant gratification. I think if you can measure I went to the gym today. We'll use that as a simple analogy. I improved my cardiovascular system. My energy level went up about that much. My stress came down about that much. Got one pound stronger on my bench press, whatever your goal is, right? Then you measure not how far you have to go to be in the shape you want, not how far you have to go to buy the home you want. But man, you know what? I built my credit a little bit today. And I saved 10 bucks today. And that's what we have to measure. We have to, and we do have to take in those moments, and that's how we can continue on that course to be successful because there is no overnight. Anybody's having overnight success. They don't stay there because they haven't learned the lessons along the way, of how did I get here? And what do I need to do to continue to be out of my comfort zone to continue to find that success in any walk of life? But I think that's you hit on something to me. That's key is just the daily build of those activities that gets you where you want to be. That's what keeps you from quitting. Build it a little look at that. Okay. I accomplished this. One more step. The long term goals we as human beings aren't great at because we can't get to them quick enough. But if we can measure ourselves in short term success, you know what? I didn't beat that fighter today. But I gave him a round like he's never had. I made that dude uncomfortable. That's how I would measure myself. I'd go in and say, I landed three or four more punches and kicks than he's ever had. I made him work harder than he ever has against me. I beat the Stuart Dansby that sparred with him last week. I kicked that guy's ass. And that's what keeps me going.

Michael: That's the same way I look at life. I'm like, every day I just want to kick life's ass a little bit more than it kicks mine. Stuart, this has been an amazing conversation, brother. Thank you so much. Obviously, we're super excited for the documentary, Taking the Fight. I loved it. I'm going to watch it again. But where can people find you? Where can people connect with you? Where can people reach out?

Stuart: The documentary can be seen on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, which is also iTunes, Google Play, and on Voodoo and that's in all of national release and about every other English speaking country in the world. You can also check out all of that information. If you're curious and you're living somewhere outside of the United States where you can see it on takingthefight.com and you can find me on Instagram at Stuart Warren Dansby. It's really easy. Not a lot of us out there. And just ping me DM me. I might my Instagram is really the same message exactly as the documentary. It's one of the same. It's a message I have of just driving that ability to achieve your own dreams, getting out of your head, knowing you can achieve whatever you want in life. There's just a method of effort and authenticity that you have to give yourself.

Michael: Amazing. And guys, remember, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Stuart: I think it means. You're just what we've talked about, Michael. It's your ability to create and achieve the life you want to achieve. And you understand. There will be times when life wants to break you, right? When you think I took the hardest hit and I can't get up, but you can, because look around you, there's people in worse circumstances. So for me, being unbroken means the ability to come back from adversity, from obstacles to turn them into challenges and to achieve the life that you want. And that's a personal definition of success. What brings you, what achievement brings you the happiness you want. But that's for me what it means if that hopefully resonates.

Michael: Beautifully said, man, and I could not agree more. And I think as I teach my clients, life is going to life, but you get to decide what you do with it.

Thank you for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you guys for listening. Please remember every time you share this content, you're helping other people transform their trauma to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs and helping them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.