00:00.00 Adi Jaffe ah that 00:00.06 nextlevelguypodcast did Is there anything you don't want to chat about? 00:04.99 Adi Jaffe No, I'm an open book. 00:06.55 nextlevelguypodcast Perfect. Well, the first one that's kind of general, we can throw and the music and all that and take answers out. There's no gotchas. There's no kind of demonization. It's literally, you're the star. 00:18.74 nextlevelguypodcast I'm the weird guy asking questions. So... 00:22.56 Adi Jaffe I appreciate that. 00:22.60 nextlevelguypodcast so Well, thank you so much for coming on. I genuinely mean it. When I read your book, I was blown away by the the sheer honesty, vulnerability, and just the the sense of hope that you give through your book. 00:37.33 nextlevelguypodcast But for people who maybe don't recognize the name, how would you describe who you are? 00:44.28 Adi Jaffe I, that's interesting. I would describe myself as somebody who is incredibly passionate about continuously learning how to make myself, the people around me, the world around me better. And ah somebody who learned that and learned the importance of that through my own experiences in lacking humility, lacking empathy, lacking a sense of who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go. 01:16.73 Adi Jaffe and that led me some down some pretty dark paths. And so now I see my life is paying forward all the gifts that I've had since. 01:24.62 nextlevelguypodcast and You're certainly doing that. I mean, from when you see where you came from and where you are now, we all know that person who goes off the wrong tracks, but very rarely they come back as a sort of an inspirational story. 01:37.71 nextlevelguypodcast What was the defining moment for you? 01:38.65 Adi Jaffe Hmm. 01:39.55 nextlevelguypodcast You know, it was at sleepaway camp. We got hand in bottle of vodka, like we all kind of do at that age. But what what was it about that moment, do you think, that helped you and along that initial journey? 01:55.02 Adi Jaffe Sorry, let me just make sure I understand the question. What is it that helped me get out of that journey once I got to the end of that phase of my life? Or what is it that kind of took me down that path? 02:02.61 nextlevelguypodcast So what got you started in dealing dealing with the addictive behaviors? 02:14.54 Adi Jaffe like I used to be incredibly uncomfortable with myself. I used to be really, really fearful and concerned constantly about what everybody thought of me. And when I say constantly, I mean constantly. 02:25.39 Adi Jaffe Like, ah yeah you know, there was, if I was having a conversation with you, but we're in a room with people, as I was trying to figure out what you're thinking about every word that comes out of my mouth, which made it really hard to listen to what was coming out of your mouth, by the way, I was also trying to figure out what that person standing to our right was thinking about me. 02:42.04 Adi Jaffe If they looked at me and that cute girl walking in the room, am I standing right? 02:42.32 nextlevelguypodcast Yep. 02:46.99 Adi Jaffe Do I have the right clothes on? Is she going to like me? I mean, when I walked down the street, I was constantly scanning everything. yes, in a self-important, self-obsessed sort of way, but also a very scared, very um anxious forward way of looking at the world. um I felt very alone. I felt very isolated. 03:11.63 Adi Jaffe So everything that I did from my porn use to my alcohol and weed use and eventually hard drug use and drug dealing and the the way I behaved while I was drug dealing was really about trying to make up or create a persona, a mask of how I showed up in the world. 03:30.58 Adi Jaffe And I would argue it was relatively successful from the outside. Most people who saw me from the outside didn't know the depths of discomfort that I was having inside. 03:42.85 Adi Jaffe it was like that proverbial duck, right? They look all quiet and calm, but under the surface, their feet are constantly ah waddling. 03:48.16 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hm. 03:51.53 Adi Jaffe And I was stuck in that place for I would argue until 03:59.17 Adi Jaffe midway through. So after my arrest, after my first rehab, which I got kicked out of, it started dawning on me that there's something something I haven't learned, something I'm doing wrong that keeps landing me in these really terrible situations. 04:13.01 Adi Jaffe And i would say that was that was really where true accountability landed for me. And what I mean by true accountability, if people don't understand what that means is I'm the only person responsible for everything that happens in my life. 04:27.49 Adi Jaffe I can't blame anybody. And even more importantly, maybe I can't expect anybody else to help get me out of this. They can support, but I'm the only one who can do the work. And so that was really the turning point. We can talk about a specific experience that led to that, but that was the turning point for me. 04:44.14 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's what I love about the book. It starts off with an arrest, with a broken leg, with the SWAT team coming in, you know, and you're kind of like, what, what, you know, it blows you away. 04:50.55 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 04:53.36 nextlevelguypodcast And then when you see the, it's the, ver the honesty that you put into each these things and how open and honest, it's the sense of hope that you give in the book. 05:04.60 nextlevelguypodcast And do you think that's why you needed to write it? Because, we all suffer with a problem. We all drink to feel confident. We all take drugs to kind of numb the pain of not living up to our, you know, like what our um mission in life is. 05:19.85 nextlevelguypodcast But we only demonize the ones who are really on the other side of the line, the the extreme ones. 05:26.93 Adi Jaffe Yeah, really I mean, really, really great point. I do want to say something to a point you made earlier. actually think it's wrong. to assume that it's incredibly rare that people go really, really far down in life into whatever their bottom is and make it out. 05:40.85 nextlevelguypodcast No. 05:44.18 Adi Jaffe I would argue many, many more people than you can imagine do that. The difference not everybody's then willing to talk about how bad things were and they were when they were bad, right? 05:54.58 nextlevelguypodcast no 05:55.10 Adi Jaffe The shame and the guilt and the desire to just move on means that most of those people will never tell you how bad their life got. They will just show you the shiny version of the new phase two, phase three, who knows, phase four of their life. 06:12.15 Adi Jaffe So yes, partially I wrote the book in order to share the journey. Partially I wrote the book because as I work, I've worked with thousands of clients now, and as I work with clients, the path to success becomes a little clear for me, right? 06:28.18 Adi Jaffe And so I want to share in my first book, The Abstinence Myth. I shared the version that I knew in 2018, which is seven years ago. Over the last seven years, I've worked with over a thousand people, maybe even substantially more than that between groups and talks. 06:42.88 Adi Jaffe And so I just wanted to share the new improved version. And i I hopefully I will keep doing that. um What I learned in my work, which is what I kind of shared here that i didn't know how to put into words in The Abstinence Myth in my first book is that 07:02.17 Adi Jaffe Too many people focus on the drinking, as you pointed out, or on their use or on their porn or on their pizza before bed, eating every night. And they they get so targeted in terms of saying, oh my gosh, this thing is destroying my life. I need to stop it. 07:20.58 Adi Jaffe That they ignore all those things that you said we all know. We know them, but we hide it from ourselves. 07:26.80 nextlevelguypodcast no 07:27.04 Adi Jaffe Because... 07:30.14 Adi Jaffe rarely, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but rarely do people go to the kitchen at 11 p.m. because they're having a hard time going to sleep, eat a quart of ice cream, and then go to bed with their stomach kind of full, but the sugar making them feel a little bit better, and and go to themselves, man, you know, this ice cream thing is really a coping strategy for all the things I hate about my relationship and my work, or the trauma I experienced as a child. 07:59.93 Adi Jaffe Or the fact that I feel disconnected from my kids and my colleagues and I feel alone all the time. Those feelings are there, but they're just under the surface. You know what i mean? Because we don't want to face it. And so we come up with all these really cool behaviors so we don't have to face it. 08:17.37 Adi Jaffe So the hardest thing is coming to terms with the fact that we don't like our life and that's why we keep escaping it. That's one of the hardest things. 08:25.10 nextlevelguypodcast Because I, when I was reading the book, it really kind of hit home because when I was a child, I felt so like the black sheep. You know, i didn't feel like I could fit in anywhere. There were groups, there was teams, there were cliques. 08:38.96 nextlevelguypodcast And it really kind of made me understand where you were coming from throughout the book, where, you know, that it gave you that sense of confidence to drink where you didn't really want to, but it gave you that little, the confidence booster, you know, that, 08:52.78 nextlevelguypodcast you were getting maybe had a bad relationship with your parents at the time. So what they were saying was affecting you. And, you know, things that people just give us a throwaway comment could some could be what you use as your identity. 09:04.78 nextlevelguypodcast How did you find that with a lot of clients? Do you find that a lot of the issues are stemming from their childhood? It's from the identity, the their beliefs they get imposed on them at that age? 09:19.09 Adi Jaffe Yes, yes, and yes. um So this is, again, this is not true for everybody. I certainly have worked with clients where it started in college, it started later in life. Some people were really the ship turned for them when they were in forties. 09:33.40 Adi Jaffe But if you want to a rule, a rule of thumb of sorts, um 09:41.14 Adi Jaffe for the vast majority of people, the sort of beliefs, the sort of modeling, the kind of behavior they saw as children that then later they exhibited as adults got delivered on a silver platter, if you will, when they were kids. Because when we're kids, I give this example very explicitly in the book, 10:00.07 Adi Jaffe We're like sponges. You know, like when you when you go to the kitchen, you pull out a brand new sponge and it's sparkling clean and it can take on anything. It sucks up water. It sucks up dirt. And it's it does a really good job of taking on whatever's around it. 10:14.13 Adi Jaffe That's who we are as children. And I talk about this not only when I talk to people with addiction problems. I talk about this when I deal with executives and teams who don't understand why they have conflict. And i have to remind them You think you're dealing with conflict like an adult, like a 48-year-old, 52-year-old adult who knows how to show up to an uncomfortable conversation with a colleague or an underling. 10:38.91 Adi Jaffe But a lot of what you learn about how to manage conflict comes from childhood. And so what did that look like, right? And you would be amazed how unaware many of us are regarding the massive impact. 10:54.73 Adi Jaffe And we're talking from zero, like, and 12 years old. I mean, most people barely remember on a daily basis what being 0 to 12 years old was, but it shaped so much of the rest of their lives. 11:08.79 nextlevelguypodcast because I'm not exaggerating, but every few pages I was stopping and highlighting and saying, that makes so much sense. That's where I can explain my obsessive compulsion. 11:17.11 Adi Jaffe Hmm. 11:19.57 nextlevelguypodcast That's where I can put my intrusive thoughts to. And then I could link to the emotional hooks that you mentioned, the sponge analysis where you talk about using the pressure to to bring it out. yeah It really hits home. 11:33.71 nextlevelguypodcast But why is the current heating like healing modalities 11:33.83 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 11:38.20 nextlevelguypodcast ah focused on the outcome rather than treating it as because they treat it as a disease or you know they treat it as one whole thing where it's a individualized kind of syndrome why why why do we treat it that way is it just it's cheaper to throw some tablets and some clinics at it or 11:46.24 Adi Jaffe no Yeah. 12:00.21 Adi Jaffe I think unfortunately, just like the problem of addiction itself, the reason we have the manners, the methods, of the approaches to treat it also comes from a framing of the world. and that's what I talk about early in the book. 12:15.13 Adi Jaffe um 12:17.66 Adi Jaffe We see people's behavior. We don't understand what it took to get them there. And so... If somebody is drinking a fifth, right, like a whole bottle of vodka every single day, we say, that's crazy. 12:30.78 Adi Jaffe You should never drink that much. That is horrible for you. You should cut back on your drinking. And then they try and they can't do it. And we'd say, oh, you obviously are a sick person because this is very much bad for you. You now know it's bad for you because we told you and you can't stop. 12:49.25 Adi Jaffe You're sick. Your brain is not working right. And then we went on an entire path to prove that. And guess what? The brains of people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are different than the brains of people who didn't. 13:00.76 Adi Jaffe But then we made the conclusion that they're different because they were born that way. They were they had the sickness, this disease, and we just didn't know it until they started drinking, using porn too much, eating, you know um taking drugs, all that kind of stuff. 13:15.15 Adi Jaffe The assertion I make is people's experience in life changed them. They then end up relying on a substance or a behavior and that changes their brain over time. 13:22.34 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 13:24.57 Adi Jaffe And so what we end up seeing is we end up seeing the outcome is the symptom of what was underlying versus the outcome is the cause of what was underlying. But you that's that's the way we deal with all health issues in in this country at least, right? 13:39.35 Adi Jaffe um People bitch and complain about the fact that I think it's over 40% of Americans are obese now. 13:46.88 Adi Jaffe But It's literally in the last couple of years that we've started talking about, well, what's in our food? 13:55.84 Adi Jaffe Right? What are we allowing companies to put in food? And it's, you know, I would argue refined sugar is one of the earliest drugs, man. um It's not something you can get in and nature. 14:10.09 Adi Jaffe You have to purify. So you're taking this impact Like when you eat fruit, you get sugar, but you don't get a sugar high from fruit. I mean, unless you start downing you know berries or something. But in nature, you don't have that. So we've got people addicted to cheap, horrible for them, but super satisfying foods. 14:29.46 Adi Jaffe That's good for the McDonald's. That's good for the Wendy's. That's good for the fast food companies that sell horrible stuff, cereal. I mean, some cereals have like 40 grams of sugar per serving. 14:41.93 Adi Jaffe I urge everybody listening to this right now to take a cup at home and measure what 40 grams of sugar looks like. And I want to ask you if you would add that to any piece of food that you would eat, if you had to add it, like if it wasn't already in the food. 14:54.80 Adi Jaffe I think for most people, the answer is no. 14:54.87 nextlevelguypodcast no 14:56.66 Adi Jaffe So we're bitching about obesity, but the response should be substantially improved food standards, like from childhood. 15:08.49 Adi Jaffe The response should be, massive health um undertakings in schools. And I'm talking like kindergartens and daycares, right? Like that's what we should do, but we don't because that's the hard stuff. 15:21.55 Adi Jaffe if i If I start fixing the food supply for kids now, when am I going to see the results? In 20 years, 15 years. So that means i have to show up consistently for 15 years to get something out of it. 15:37.92 Adi Jaffe And I would argue in addiction, the work that I do, a lot of people complain that I give people an easier way because I don't mandate abstinence in my programs. And I say, no, no, I don't mandate abstinence because we work on the really hard stuff. 15:50.01 Adi Jaffe but We get people to go into their deepest demons and we we help help them fix that. Because once they fix that, they don't need to drink like they needed to drink before. But it takes year or two years or three. 15:58.98 nextlevelguypodcast no Because that's what liked about the book is you used your client's stories like Usman, where you talked about why it's just pointless saying to somebody who's struggling, just stop drinking completely, get clean, get you know just completely give up because a lot of times you're using that to deal with the emotional hook that we've got and to 16:01.05 Adi Jaffe It takes time to get that kind of level of depth. 16:27.52 nextlevelguypodcast You're not drinking because you like it. You're drinking to numb the pain. You're using porn. You're using drugs, whatever it is. Do you think that's what people are so focused on just stop it all by realizing the impact it actually has on the people and what they're using it for? 16:45.63 Adi Jaffe Yeah, I think they're looking... I mean, look, I get it. Hey, you're drinking too much. If you stop drinking, you'll stop struggling. It looks like it makes sense. I would just wish... i would pray that after 100 years of doing that, with a failure rate that's higher than 90%, some of us would go, hey, maybe the system is broken. 17:08.83 Adi Jaffe But what we've done most of the time is we've blamed the patients. We've blamed the clients. We say things like, you don't want this enough. And um I don't even think i I put that story in this book because I definitely put it in the abstinence myth, but I put it around depression. But imagine imagine a cancer patient going to get cancer treatment and being given radiation and chemotherapy and maybe even a surgery, and then the cancer comes back. 17:36.39 Adi Jaffe Imagine that we say to the client, come on, Ian, you got to really want this. I mean, if you don't really want to get cure of cancer, 17:43.22 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 17:44.49 Adi Jaffe then I can't, this medication is never going to work for you. That sounds insane, but we do it to people with addiction all the time. And it's hard when your whole life, like one of the examples I give in the book is um a woman who came to me to stop smoking weed. She'd stopped all the other drugs, everything else she could handle. 18:03.65 Adi Jaffe She comes to me to stop smoking weed and it's the one thing that she hasn't been able to, but it's keeping her from getting the kind of jobs that she wants. And it ended up turning out that when she was growing up, junior high, high school kind of level, you know, you're talking 12 years old, 11 years old, she had massive social anxiety. Like she would throw up because of panic attacks every time she had to do something in public. 18:25.68 Adi Jaffe And one day a friend gave her hit of a weed joint and within 30 seconds it fixed all of it. 18:33.47 Adi Jaffe How many 11-year-olds who are throwing up in the bathroom and on the side of the road regularly because they're so anxious, would say, hey, this thing fixed my nausea. 18:45.88 Adi Jaffe I feel better now. I feel more normal. How many 11-year-olds would have the wherewithal to say, yeah, but this I heard from the adults that this is really bad for me, so I shouldn't do this? I would argue very few. 18:58.28 nextlevelguypodcast Definitely. 18:58.35 Adi Jaffe But now the problem is you take that 11-year-old, you get at age 45. She's been smoking weed for 34 years. She forgot that she started because she was throwing up on the side of the bus because it's been 34 years since she's done that because weed has worked to alleviate the anxiety. The problem, it didn't actually work to alleviate or fix the issues that made her feel anxious in the first place. 19:24.89 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's what I love about when you explain about sparrow by using the eat technique, because 19:30.41 Adi Jaffe Hmm. 19:32.10 nextlevelguypodcast That was the first time I'd ever seen it explained as in it's not just a chemistry breakdown you know that's causing you to think like this. It's not the trauma that you can't get over. It's actually how you are reacting to it, but it's also the stimuli to the perception. And it can be two people can see completely the same thing and have complete different reactions to it. 19:54.98 nextlevelguypodcast And it made such sense. 19:55.69 Adi Jaffe That's 19:55.94 nextlevelguypodcast I was sitting there and going back going, That's why my I compare myself. That's where my insane jealousy came from when it's this person doing it, but not that person, because it reminds me of this story. 20:07.08 Adi Jaffe funny. 20:08.00 nextlevelguypodcast And it was it was like you were opening up like a video game map. You were shining the light on all these kind of roots. And I was like, what where has he been all my life? Because it really made me understand my brain and thinking. 20:19.28 Adi Jaffe I love that. 20:21.92 nextlevelguypodcast Could you give ah an example or kind of explain it? I know it's a whole book's worth, but what is Sparrow is? What e is how these concepts will open up and change your thinking? 20:31.56 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 20:33.95 Adi Jaffe Yeah. So um this is just off the cuff right now. I'm just thinking this example as you were talking, but what's your favorite kind of music? 20:41.70 nextlevelguypodcast ah Rock music. 20:43.64 Adi Jaffe Okay. Like ah name a band that is the is the style of rock. 20:45.66 nextlevelguypodcast Oh, like Aerosmith, Metallica, kind of thing. 20:46.90 Adi Jaffe Okay. 20:48.16 nextlevelguypodcast Okay. 20:48.89 Adi Jaffe okay Cool. Like nineties, eighties, like rock and roll. i love it. Okay. Perfect. So um I guess Aerosmith started in the seventies, but um do you know anybody who really doesn't like that music? 21:02.39 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 21:03.68 Adi Jaffe You do, right? So the same song could be playing and you are rocking out, man. You're just loving it. It's the best thing ever. And your friend, your spouse, your kid, whoever, right? My kids and I have completely different tastes in music. like um Could be sitting right next to you, listening to the exact same thing coming at them and cringing and wanting nothing but if for it to end. And all you want is the next song to play because you're so happy this is playing. 21:29.83 Adi Jaffe We have preferences that are built into us because of experiences. You don't just like, it's not like Aerosmith is good music and this other thing is bad music. We say that all the time, but that's BS. That's not really true. 21:41.03 Adi Jaffe Music is fully subjective, right? And so what people don't understand or have not had the appreciation for at a deep level, most people I believe, is that that is all life. 21:55.21 Adi Jaffe All life is completely subjective. We were just all born into situations that where we were told, this is good and this is bad. This is right and this is wrong. 22:05.69 Adi Jaffe This is what you should do for a living is what you should stay away from. This who should love and this is who should not. This what should believe and this is what you should not. The map of the world was drawn for us, but it was drawn by other people. 22:18.33 Adi Jaffe And the reality is you're a unique person. You're going to have a unique set of experiences. Some of those of those old lessons will be true for you throughout life. A small number of them, but some. 22:30.06 Adi Jaffe Many, you will uncover new different versions that you will take on as the truth. The problem is too many of us feel locked in by those early experiences. 22:41.59 Adi Jaffe And so it's like the way I kind of talk about it. It's like if I had a pair of sunglasses right now, it's like if my whole life I was wearing pink sunglasses and I was walking around and I thought that the sky was purple and that the trees were like, you know, had a magenta color to them. 22:57.71 Adi Jaffe And I saw everything with this lens. And then one day somebody came to me and said, yeah, you're totally wrong. that Those aren't the colors at all. just Your view is distorted because of these lenses you're wearing. 23:09.54 Adi Jaffe The first thing I would say is you're lying. 23:14.06 Adi Jaffe I'm seeing things as they are. It takes a lot. First of all, it takes recognition of the fact that the idea is true at all. Secondly, it takes humility because you've got to be able to say, oh my gosh, I've been looking at this this person in my life in a certain way my whole life, but it was because of my beliefs, not because of who they are. 23:34.43 Adi Jaffe And then if you're really, really brave, you actually try to take the glasses off. And most of the happier people that I know in life, and again, successful and happy can be two different things, depending on how you measure success. 23:49.41 nextlevelguypodcast Hmm. 23:51.11 Adi Jaffe But most of the happier people that I know in life, at some point, actually you learn that. and started being more willing to accept different versions of reality than their own. And if you're really brave and really have humility, you start gathering people around you who don't see the world the same as you, because you understand there's a specific story in the book, but you understand that knowing other people's viewpoints and making integrating all of them into yours actually gives you the closest thing to an objective, real version of the world. 24:24.84 Adi Jaffe And when you have that, here's what I've seen are the outcomes. If anybody's thinking to themselves like, wait, this is way too hard and don't want to do this. This sounds like horrible. 24:35.76 Adi Jaffe You have less conflict. You can understand people you never were able to understand before. You can solve problems that you never thought were solvable in your own life because you now have all these other angles to look at that problem from instead of the one you've been trying to hit them through the rest your life. 24:53.12 Adi Jaffe And so I think it's a huge unlock. to understand how subjective our life experience is. 24:59.61 nextlevelguypodcast Because ah it definitely makes sense when you you were discussing about the the emotional hooks, how a certain exit on a freeway could set you off. Because I remember passing a signpost that mentioned the village that my ex-girlfriend moved to. 25:10.32 Adi Jaffe Oh, yeah. 25:15.68 nextlevelguypodcast And this was my first love. 25:15.85 Adi Jaffe There you go. 25:16.90 nextlevelguypodcast And every time I see it, Bang, I'm back in that age. It's like you're reliving that moment when I passed the place where we first had our first kiss. Oh, it can come out. And like you said in the book, you're actually like living in the moment so you can feel happy and sad with these thoughts. and Can you explain ah bit about how emotional hooks are created and how they kind of get sort of planted in our minds, you know, like, what is it about that that causes us to have that, which then causes you the stimulus, the perception that you know, 25:49.21 Adi Jaffe yeah 25:52.00 Adi Jaffe Yeah. So I'll just riff off the story that you just told. yeah and um So you passed by the freeway exit where the old girlfriend used to live. And i'm going to make some stuff up. But let's say that when you were a kid, you weren't told that you were loved a lot. 26:08.48 Adi Jaffe Or maybe you had some physical abuse or maybe emotional abuse at home. And people told you, know, you're worthless. Nobody's ever going to want to be with you. What do you even offer the world? like Let's say that's... 26:19.22 Adi Jaffe part of how you grew up. And then you got a girlfriend. 26:20.58 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 26:21.83 Adi Jaffe And when you got a girlfriend, it felt like, oh my gosh, maybe this is the one person that I'll get to spend time with. Maybe I finally found my soulmate who will take me away and prove that all those other people are wrong. And you're young and you're 14, 15, 16 years old or whatever. 26:35.34 Adi Jaffe And you have a girlfriend that's great. And you finally feel like, oh my gosh, i'm goingnna I'm going to conquer all those things that people told me I will never be able to do before. Maybe my parents, maybe my aunt, maybe my brother, whatever. Then the girlfriend breaks up with you. 26:48.46 Adi Jaffe And now you go from this really, really big high to a really, really low, low. Because now all those thoughts I just mentioned, they flip on their head. Now all a sudden you're thinking, oh my God, all those people were right. 27:00.56 Adi Jaffe I found the love of my life, but I couldn't keep her. I thought I was going to be happy, but I'll never be happy. I'll be alone for the rest of my life, right? All those old stories, this is why we were talking about both before, all those old stories come back. 27:13.08 Adi Jaffe Those are the hooks. 27:14.76 nextlevelguypodcast Boom. 27:15.37 Adi Jaffe Now, they hurt. right It's like imagine literally like a fish hook hanging here and somebody's got a ah fishing wire and they just pulled on it because you just got broken up with and you start doubting yourself because of all those stories from the past and the hook is being pulled on and you're in pain. 27:33.40 Adi Jaffe I talk about this in the book. Emotional pain and physical pain get processed in the same area of the brain. So when you say like you broke my heart, I'm hurting, we mean it literally. Our brain is processing the psychological hurt almost like physical pain. 27:48.31 Adi Jaffe And so now you're hurting. Those hooks are being pulled on. If you're a very aware, very conscious, very evolved person, maybe you go talk to somebody like a therapist or a good friend that you can work through this with and and you have meditation practice and and you say to yourself, hey, i really need to pick up myself and and you know become a more whole person ah alone again and find myself. Maybe you do that. 28:16.83 Adi Jaffe Most of us become reactive. Most of us try to find something so that the hook doesn't hurt us as much. Now, the first version I gave is like trying to go put some salve on the wound, maybe even pull the hook out and say, no, I am a good person. Look, this one person loved me. 28:32.80 Adi Jaffe That probably means I can find other people who will love me, right? That would be the healthy version. Most of us, when this stuff happens originally, we're too young. We're not practiced enough. don't have the tools. So we look for something to numb the pain. 28:45.07 Adi Jaffe And what do we all do after bad breakups early on in life? We go out drinking like crazy. We start smoking a lot of weed. We go watch a bunch of porn. We isolate. We do all the things that we need to do to lower the pain so that we can go out and function. 29:02.33 Adi Jaffe And again, it works. Nobody would get problems if it didn't work. It actually works to reduce the pain. The problem, it doesn't solve The hook, it doesn't actually take the hook out. So next time you get broken up with, next time there's that hook gets pulled on, you have the same sort of problem. And I can go into the Sparrow model if if you want me to go into it a little bit here. 29:24.60 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, I mean, that that would be helpful because I found when I was reading it, I started thinking, oh, that was because I felt alone when I was younger. 29:25.28 Adi Jaffe Go on. 29:33.38 nextlevelguypodcast I didn't feel like I fitted in. So that's why my reaction to my ex is so strong when I see her because she was the first love I had. And I'm linking it to her. 29:45.50 nextlevelguypodcast but it's to the emotion and um that's what I'm like i'm locked into. 29:47.91 Adi Jaffe Yes. Yep. 29:49.63 nextlevelguypodcast And that's the beauty of the book is that you let us go above the behavior, you don't rise above it. 29:55.06 Adi Jaffe ye 29:55.97 nextlevelguypodcast But how how then do we start using Sparrow to stop and go, actually, that's linked to here and that's how I'm perceiving it. That's then, then go down the chain because I found that a phenomenal new concept that would change so many lives. 30:14.50 nextlevelguypodcast how How do we start using this for somebody who's maybe completely new to it? 30:19.21 Adi Jaffe Yeah, so let's give the example. Literally, we'll just work off the example that you just worked off. Let's say you drove by that exit and later that night, you ended up either going out or staying home and drinking a lot. 30:32.25 Adi Jaffe Okay? So I'll break it down by spare for a second. You end up drinking a lot. Maybe you black out. Maybe you just start saying things or acting in ways you're not really proud of. 30:45.27 Adi Jaffe um If you have a partner, maybe you you you say really inappropriate things and they get really mad at you. The next day you wake up and it's a disaster. It's like you're in a fight with your wife. She's mad at you. You feel really bad, right? You got drunk the night before. You kind of remember half the stuff that happened. 31:01.01 Adi Jaffe What I talk about in the book is nobody reaches out when the initial starting point happens. Everybody reaches out at the end. They wake up. 31:07.70 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 31:08.09 Adi Jaffe It's a really bad night. They had have a fight with their wife. They call me. Hey, my wife is threatening to leave me. I need some help. And then what I do with them is I break down say, okay, tell me what happened. So just so we're clear, if what if the story we're about to break down really happened, Ian, nobody would say to me, hey, on the way home, I passed the freeway exit where my old girlfriend used to live. 31:31.86 Adi Jaffe And it really triggered me. And I got home and I was really upset. So I drank. And then that's why nobody says that. Not one person. What they say is, I got really drunk last night. My wife and I always fight about the drinking. And then this morning, I guess I called her some names or I said some things that she doesn't like. So she said she was going to leave me. 31:50.77 Adi Jaffe They focus on the behavior they did and the outcome. And they want to fix the outcome. 31:54.40 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 31:55.97 Adi Jaffe My job is to then, okay, break it down with me. When did that drinking episode start? And they said, well, when I got home at 6 p.m. And I said, well, no, no, no. That's when you drink. Walk me through the rest of your day. What happened? 32:08.91 Adi Jaffe Now, it would Oftentimes, takes some work to have somebody realize that probably I'm going to make up a story here. But maybe you had a really, really stressful day at work. So stress is high. 32:20.59 Adi Jaffe And you're feeling like, oh, my God, I don't like this job anymore. this is Maybe I shouldn't be here. but What does that mean for my life and my family and my wife and everything? So yeah you're driving home from work, and then you pass the exit. 32:33.44 Adi Jaffe And the exit is the trigger. I call it the stimulus. The exit just starts a process. but you see you see the exit and you' you're not even aware of this. And you say to yourself, so stimulus, perception, activation, response, outcome. 32:49.91 Adi Jaffe Stimulus is the exit. Your perception is, um my God, I missed those simple days with that first really good girlfriend. She loved me so much. I screwed it up. I've never had it as good since. 33:02.79 Adi Jaffe I wish I could just go back to the days where everything was simple. I wouldn't have this really hard job and all these responsibilities. That's your perception of the highway sign. There are hundreds of other people passing that highway sign right with you. 33:14.98 Adi Jaffe None of them have that perception. It's your perception. 33:17.59 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 33:19.06 Adi Jaffe That's what makes this special, stimulus perception. Now you've got longing, you've got um anxiety, maybe of resentment and frustration about where your life is now. Those are the activations that the perception brought on. 33:33.31 Adi Jaffe So you have the stimulus perception. It makes you perceive your life now compared to your life in the past. And that perception creates an activation. Activation is physical. 33:44.55 Adi Jaffe It's also emotional. It's all the feeling words, physical and and psychological. But importantly, it's massively affected by your past. Because if your perception of that relationship with that girlfriend was really good, you'd pass you'd go, oh my God, that's where my first girlfriend lived. That's so nice. 34:01.48 Adi Jaffe Your activation now is nostalgia and happiness, right? So perception to activation really, really matters because the reason you then go drinking at home is the activation. 34:13.08 Adi Jaffe If you feel frustration, resentment, and anger over where you are right now, what i've I talk about in the book is you've learned ways to deal with frustration, resentment, and anger. That is why you go home and you drink a ton. 34:26.75 Adi Jaffe It's not really because of the sign that you pass. It's not even really only because of the stress. It's because the stress activated with the trigger brought on these feelings. Those hooks are getting pulled. 34:39.69 Adi Jaffe And now you say to yourself, okay, well, when I'm anxious and resentful, I drink. So you go home and you do what you normally do when you get anxious and resentful. But it works so well. 34:51.12 Adi Jaffe You don't go home and say, I'm resentful and anxious. It's just the feelings occur and you know automatically what to do. So now we have to interrupt those things. What I talk about in the book primarily is how once you break one of these things down, I can guarantee you will see that same pattern happening over and over and over in your life. 35:07.15 Adi Jaffe And now you know the point where you can fix it. 35:07.21 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 35:10.12 nextlevelguypodcast So if somebody's looking at their behaviours, would they need a coach to do this? Can they look at their own behaviours and think, because you talked in the book about a guy who would come home and if his wife's car wasn't there, he would start drinking. 35:24.17 nextlevelguypodcast If he passed this particular point, you know, it's like how his day built up to that point, but he had to have a trigger at that point. And then there's a bit about the thermostat where do you you know, depending on your actions, you can lift up and down. And i it was just made so much sense. Like every, obviously every page I was just coming back and rereading it. 35:45.61 nextlevelguypodcast Do we get to that point where, here ah we don't we can see our own behaviours or do we need somebody that can help us rise above it to say that's your point that's a problem that's a problem or can we and can we see our our own issues 36:04.44 Adi Jaffe Absolutely. It takes practice like everything else in life. But yes, absolutely. right So I can sit there now. Now, by the way, Just because I know this doesn't mean I don't go through the cycles myself. 36:16.17 Adi Jaffe So I'll be clear. So Sparrow is stimulus, perception, activation, response, outcome. That's a Sparrow piece. Then there's an eat, explore, accept, transform, which is how we complete the cycle. 36:28.81 Adi Jaffe So you cannot learn without having the negative outcome, unfortunately. 36:35.45 Adi Jaffe Because you don't know that something needs to change unless you got an outcome that you don't like. Right? Like, Nobody goes on a trip, Ian, and goes like, man, that trip was really good. Let me break down everything I did to go on that really, really good trip so I could replicate it. 36:52.86 Adi Jaffe That's something might be good for us, but none of us do it, right? 36:56.14 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 36:56.46 Adi Jaffe You just had a good trip. In business, you're supposed to do that. If something works really, really well, you break it down so you can see where it works. But even there, you're normally looking for the things you can make a little bit better, right? so The negative outcomes are essentially necessary for learning. And everybody will tell talk to you about that. Failure is where you actually learn the most. 37:15.13 Adi Jaffe And that's one of the things I talk about in the book is if you want change, you better get comfortable with failure because it's going to come. The difference between the people who change and people who don't change is the people who change, every time a failure happens, they go, wait, wait, what was that? 37:29.81 Adi Jaffe What happened there? So what happens for me now is if I have a really bad outcome, That doesn't really happen with drugs and alcohol anymore, but let's say my wife and I have a really big fight or I have a really big fight with one of my kids. 37:42.63 Adi Jaffe I still have the fight, which is still an outcome I don't like. But then on the other side of it, I go, wait, what happened? I didn't want to fight. I ended up in a fight. What happened? And then I break it down. 37:54.06 Adi Jaffe And normally somewhere in there was a perception or an activation issue, or I don't know how to deal with a certain feeling and I need to learn how to deal with it. So, 38:06.01 Adi Jaffe Yes, you absolutely can get to the place where you can do it. By the way, this is a little bit of a plug, but you know that's why I started Ignited, the online program, is if you need help with this, just join for pretty small amount of money and get some help on it. 38:19.56 Adi Jaffe But it's like we all have coaches. I mean, and have you ever played any sports? 38:25.23 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, for football, soccer, that's our thing. 38:26.61 Adi Jaffe What's your favorite sport? oh yeah Yeah, so football. like Do the best players on the face of the planet Did they ever have a football coach? 38:37.23 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, everybody's got a coach at some point. 38:38.50 Adi Jaffe Yes. 38:39.16 nextlevelguypodcast You don't need to know everything. That's something I always say. Find the right teammates and the coaches for what you need. 38:45.84 Adi Jaffe lips 100%. 38:46.35 Adi Jaffe And we know the coaches matter, right? So a good coach matters. it's not It's not weird. It's not surprising that a really good football coach gets a better football team. 38:56.75 Adi Jaffe right? I mean, they there's something they know how to do in coaching you. You should think about life the same way. If you want to get really, really good at relationships, get a relationship coach. If you want to get really, really good at changing your behavior, get a relationship, a transformation coach, a behavioral coach, an addiction specialist, right? Like too many of us think we have to figure this out on our own. 39:18.07 Adi Jaffe And then we ham and haw and we maybe try a couple of things, but we really just keep trying the same thing over and over and over. And This is a brand new practice for most people. Looking this in depth into their behavior is a brand new practice for a lot of people. And so, 39:33.61 Adi Jaffe um yes, you can get there. It takes practice like anything else in life. What I found is the results are incredible because you can take your life in any direction you want with these tools. 39:46.02 Adi Jaffe It's not even about addiction anymore. You can just take them in any direction you want. 39:49.43 nextlevelguypodcast Well, that's what I found great about the book was it doesn't matter if you just want to cut down your drinking, if you wanted just to be happier, healthier. you know There is something you can take from every section of this book, such as like the power of community, you know about how it can help just by having people to listen to, that you're not on your own. You're not the only person suffering with these thoughts, that a good set of people will take somebody back who maybe slips up. 40:17.26 nextlevelguypodcast Or they'll all listen and say, yes, that was a bad thing, but I've done this. And I think that's the taking away the shame from it i be said by showing unconditional love in a community like that. 40:29.56 nextlevelguypodcast mean, i I wasn't always a nice person. 40:30.82 Adi Jaffe Hmm. 40:31.48 nextlevelguypodcast I've done some bad shit. And I still regret stuff from 15, 20 years ago. And it feels like it happened like yesterday. And I think that's what really hits home in the book. It's that moment when you say you were doing your best. 40:47.32 nextlevelguypodcast You know, you were doing your best when you spiked the volleyball to win the match, but you're also doing your best when you were chugging the vodka to try to fit in the party, to feel like you were part of the group. 40:47.53 Adi Jaffe a 40:58.44 nextlevelguypodcast You know, you're well you're doing your best from this low point to this high point. And that kind of, I can understand why that changes people's lives. 41:07.45 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 41:07.59 nextlevelguypodcast how But how do we make them come to terms for that? Because acceptance was the hardest part of EAT for me. When you're stopping and thinking, I did this, I did that, how how do we even start that? 41:17.02 Adi Jaffe yeah 41:21.48 nextlevelguypodcast Because the shame, the hatred, the whatever it is, starts in us. How do we avoid going into the spiral and actually seeing it for what it is and trying to make peace with it? 41:38.03 Adi Jaffe Yeah. I mean, look, that's a really, really good question. It's funny that you said that acceptance is the hardest part because I think a lot of people skip over it and assume, well, but maybe maybe that's not not important or, you know, I'll get to that later. 41:48.78 Adi Jaffe I don't think you can get this right without acceptance. and And the reason is there are multiple reasons, but I'll i'll focus on one in particular. 41:51.79 nextlevelguypodcast them. 41:56.83 Adi Jaffe These behaviors are now part of you. This past is now part of you. If you can't come into acceptance with it, you're going to be fighting with yourself your whole life. And that fighting will create conflict, perception problems, 42:08.33 Adi Jaffe and activations that will make you act out. And it's a little bit like, um' sorry I'm sorry, use a crude example that I've i've talked about with a lot of my couples clients. You know, a lot of relationships start out that it's like moving into a brand new clean house. 42:24.08 Adi Jaffe And it's beautiful. The walls are sparkling white. All the fixtures work perfectly well. You know, the dishwasher is clean. It's everything. It's amazing, right? All the furniture has never been touched. 42:36.13 Adi Jaffe It's a masterpiece. And then you live in it. And if you've, are you in a relationship right now? 42:43.06 nextlevelguypodcast and Not just now. 42:44.82 Adi Jaffe Okay. So, but you've been in one ah before. 42:47.86 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 42:48.35 Adi Jaffe Stuff happens. It's just, it's life. Stuff happens. You fight. You disagree about things. You find out things about the other person that you didn't know initially that make you feel weird. 42:59.02 Adi Jaffe And each one of those, sorry for being a little bit crude. It's like the family dog took a poop somewhere in the house and you went, well, well That doesn't really make me feel comfortable, but um let's just sweep this one under the rug or like let's put a chair over it so nobody sees it. right Let's cover it up. 43:15.92 Adi Jaffe Some of these are really, really big. Like you go to dinner and you have a fight in the middle of the restaurant or you you know one of one of the partners starts crying because it's something really hard. 43:17.67 nextlevelguypodcast Amen. 43:25.64 Adi Jaffe Sometimes it's betrayal. It's really, really big stuff. But in most relationships, we avoid. We don't really fix. We don't get all the way down to the core issues and deal with them. Next thing you know, and this happens in individuals' lives. I'm just using a couple as an example. 43:41.13 Adi Jaffe Next thing you know, that beautiful house you had is now full of little places where the dog took a crap all over the house. And then clients go, i can't even find my apartment. 43:52.31 Adi Jaffe If you're individual, it would be like, I can't even find a place where I'm at peace with myself. I don't even know anywhere in the world where I'm comfortable. Everywhere has little reminders, little stimuli, little triggers of the fights. 44:04.76 Adi Jaffe We can't go to that restaurant anymore because but that's where we had that fight. We can't listen to that artist anymore because that's where we went to the concert and then she threatened she was going to leave me. we can't I can't watch that movie. I can't go to that place. I mean, like everybody who's been in a relationship relationship has been in a place where a lot of different areas of their life got marked by conflict in that relationship. 44:26.23 Adi Jaffe When couples come to me to do this work, I say, well, you know, we're going to to take the poop bags and the shovels and we're going to go clean some stuff. We can't get to the other side of your relationship without cleaning the house. 44:38.35 Adi Jaffe And a lot of them get really scared because many times they've spent 5, 10, 15 years not touching those places. And so acceptance is about saying these experiences have been part of my life. 44:56.13 Adi Jaffe I cannot undo them. I don't have a time machine. I can't reverse course. By the way, you probably wouldn't even want to because you have no idea what your life would have looked like if those experiences weren't there, right? You're just gambling that the other version of life would have looked better. 45:10.32 Adi Jaffe What you have to do is come to terms with it and say, okay, I've made mistakes. I've said the wrong things. I've done the wrong things. Some of them I feel guilty about. If I've done enough of them, I may have shame around who I am and if I'm a really a good person. 45:24.93 Adi Jaffe And the only thing that I can do, the only thing that's available to me right now is to agree that I did what I knew how to do back then and then to become the kind of person who doesn't do those things again. 45:40.54 Adi Jaffe And if you can come to those terms, now you're ready to go do some work because you're not hiding from the past. You're not running away from it. You're actually going to change the person you will become in order to not repeat your past mistakes. 45:57.26 nextlevelguypodcast No, it makes a lot of sense because I think that's the thing is we don't shine the light in that side of, you know, so we create this whole character of who we are for work, who, you know, who we are with friends. And there's like, is it the Japanese one? It's you wear a mask with friends, a mask with the public, and then you wear a mask of who you are as a person. 46:20.26 nextlevelguypodcast And that made a lot sense is how much we we kind of fake who we are. How do you deal with that? And, you because you talk about experimentation, transforming, changing it. 46:34.88 nextlevelguypodcast But how do we make sure we don't just fall into the pattern? We can rise above it like a bird's eye view of it to kind of to start making the work. Do you find like journaling? Because you talk about storytelling being helpful in the book. 46:48.24 nextlevelguypodcast Do you get your clients to kind of tell a different version of the story about what happened to them? 46:49.13 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 46:53.48 nextlevelguypodcast How would you start working to change the patterns? 46:54.65 Adi Jaffe yeah 46:59.42 Adi Jaffe I mean, there's definitely the practice of imagining what success looks like on the other side. That's certainly part of it. I have a few exercises that I work with with clients called the perfect day exercise and a few things like that, that I really like in terms of helping clients see a different version. 47:15.38 Adi Jaffe Um, but going back to the sponge example, There are two ways. One of them is actually get as connected to the pain as you can. Really like lean into it instead of running away from it. 47:30.06 Adi Jaffe Sit in the discomfort and understand what is so uncomfortable about it. And from that place, start digging yourself out. That's one version. ah Another big version is start shift the exposure you have so that you're around different people, you're consuming different information, you gradually shift through exposure to new ideas, right? Those are two, I call them the squeeze and kind of the osmosis version of doing things. 47:56.44 Adi Jaffe um One is faster, one is slower, but the the first one of leaning into pain is really difficult. It's hard to sit in that place. A lot of people don't want to do it and they run away from it. 48:07.61 nextlevelguypodcast So how would you change this going forward for to deal with, because I think we all have a level of shame. We all have a level of self-hatred. you know like Our thermostats are very high with pressure. we're all We all have our trigger points without realizing it. 48:26.41 nextlevelguypodcast How would you start changing our understanding, our health approach to make people happier and healthier? 48:35.69 Adi Jaffe Yeah, i would just I would say what you said a little bit differently. I would say at different points in time, we all struggle with those things. So 48:45.51 Adi Jaffe if you live in that constant state of super high activation where your thermometer is really, really high and you don't have a lot, you're living in threshold, you're really struggling. I'm talking like acute psychiatric care, you know, massive depression and suicidal ideation kind of acute struggling. 48:55.71 nextlevelguypodcast you 49:02.85 Adi Jaffe Um, Most people can't survive there for very, very long. So what happens to us instead is we have these ups and downs, right? Now, again, you may go down because you drank a lot so you can calm your nervous system. I mean, I'm not saying all the coping is healthy, but most of us kind of go down. We may stay up for a while. We may stay down for a while. Now, you asked the question of how do we create change? 49:23.26 Adi Jaffe How do you change that perception? Number one is the conversation we're having right now. just Just realizing that you're not the only one struggling with this is big for most people. Then just understanding why it's happened. That's why i had Sparrow and Eat. Just being able to see, oh my gosh, I am still thinking and reminiscing about the old girlfriend because I don't like the life I have now. I don't like the relationship I have now and it bothers me. 49:49.46 Adi Jaffe So I'm thinking longingly about the past, which makes me hate my future my present even more. At least makes you go, okay, now I get it. have two options. 49:57.76 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 49:58.44 Adi Jaffe I can change my present. Like I can change my job, my relationship, whatever. I can change all those things. Or I can change my relationship to the past. But if I don't do either one, I'm going to keep being stuck here. and There's nothing I can do. Understanding why you behave is another very important piece. 50:12.03 Adi Jaffe And then you know what the biggest proof is when you start seeing change in yourself. So i give I think I give this example in the book too. You know, a lot of clients will actually be successful in cutting back their drinking for a while. 50:25.91 Adi Jaffe Like maybe they drink six or seven drinks a night on average, and then they'll go down to five. The problem is the world we live in tells them five is still failure. 50:35.59 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 50:35.77 Adi Jaffe Because if you had a problem drinking seven, you should actually drink zero. That's the message we get from most places. So you take somebody who instead of celebrating the fact that they now drink two drinks less, which is like 20% less, it's a substantial drop. 50:49.21 Adi Jaffe Instead of celebrating that 20% drop, they feel like they failed. And then they go back to the seven, eight drinks now. But if they were able to celebrate the five and then celebrate the four and then celebrate the three, they may find out that they can have a drink here and there and it's not a big deal because they move things down to a level that actually feels safe, at least for now. 51:12.01 Adi Jaffe But if you are told that if you drink seven drinks every day, you have to go to zero, that's really hard. It is really, really hard for most people to do that. 51:18.61 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 51:20.99 Adi Jaffe So they go from seven to zero. They have a really tough hard time holding on. Then they go, I'll just have one but they don't know how to have one. So they end up having seven again. And now they've been a failure. So behavioral change, normally the decision to change might happen like this, but the change normally actually takes some time. 51:39.64 Adi Jaffe And i think that's something that a lot of people need to understand. First of all, many, many more people, as you've already said, many more people struggle with this than you realize. You are not alone. a lot of people are trying to figure this out just like you right now. 51:51.79 Adi Jaffe And then secondly, slow gradual progress towards your end goal is great. If you can cut back your drinking by 10% every single week, what is it? we're you know but By the time you get to the next holiday season, you'll be doing great. 52:07.83 Adi Jaffe And we need to learn how to celebrate that, not punish it. 52:13.51 nextlevelguypodcast because that's what I liked the book was how you explained that. Even if you do make a mistake, you can come back. You're not a bad person. You're not at end of the world. You just need to... The community, like your group, will accept people back and they'll listen and they'll show love and support. 52:31.40 nextlevelguypodcast They don't just shout... like the majority of the situations we have here. I mean, I know it feels like 10 minutes and we've been talking for an hour. so there's So there's so many amazing things that are part of this book, but how do you want people to use the book? 52:47.56 nextlevelguypodcast Because I found every page was a kind of an eye-opener about behavior, acceptance, dealing with shame It was just so riveting. 52:53.31 Adi Jaffe of that. 52:58.88 nextlevelguypodcast I'm not much of a reader at times and I couldn't put it down. How do we... 53:02.98 Adi Jaffe I really, love yeah that really makes the world. 53:03.54 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 53:05.49 Adi Jaffe I wrote the book kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure. Like the first four chapters, you probably kind of have to read through just to understand the ideas. 53:07.98 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 53:13.69 Adi Jaffe But then after that, I break down Sparrow into the next five chapters. And you can read the ones that make the most sense to you and go back to the ones that you need to process later. Or you can do what it sounds like you did, which is just read the thing through. 53:25.88 Adi Jaffe But I have exercise in the back. I have stories throughout the whole thing. The idea is really, really, for you to just use it like ah like a manual. 53:37.36 Adi Jaffe So you can keep going back to the pieces that help you. I'll be really frank. You know, I've been working on this for 15, 16 years with myself. 53:43.93 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 53:44.84 Adi Jaffe um It is endlessly easier now. I kind of live my life by these principles now. I don't struggle with addiction at all, even though I was a daily heavy, heavy user of drugs um back in the day. 54:00.19 Adi Jaffe But what I found and the reason I wrote the book is I find that these tools are helpful for far more than addictive behavior. Anytime that you really feel like you need to change your behavior in a big way, I think these tools really help. And so, yeah, i want people to feel welcome to just pick it up. 54:14.92 Adi Jaffe Whether you're just scrolling on Instagram too much and you find that you're losing three to four hours a day just scrolling content and it's it's blocking you from showing up to things the way you want to, or you're addicted to porn. You have to masturbate three times a day in order to be able to go to sleep. Or um like I said, you're eating too much, or of course you're drinking too much or or using too many drugs. 54:37.00 Adi Jaffe One piece that I didn't mention is, and this is something I'm still guilty of to some extent, and I use this principles to help me with that, is um sometimes we get addicted to good things. Like workahhoas Workaholism is one of those things where you can get quote unquote addicted to being a big performer and and doing well, but then there are other areas of your life that suffer because of it. 55:00.16 Adi Jaffe And so some people come to me for that. It's actually the thing that they're addicted to actually does a lot of good for them, but it also does a lot of bad. 55:09.96 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's what I liked about the book was when you were talking about Christmas tree lights, where you know you pull bit out and it starts you know you see this massive tangle or mess. 55:14.51 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 55:19.10 nextlevelguypodcast But then as you pull a wee bit here, you see where the next knot is. 55:19.69 Adi Jaffe yeah 55:22.14 nextlevelguypodcast Then you have to open it up. And it might be a bit time consuming. But every time I was thinking of things, or i wasn't goingnna i didn't react immediately. ah went, OK, is this a stimulus? Is this a hook? 55:35.63 Adi Jaffe Yeah. 55:35.61 nextlevelguypodcast quite it It really begins to open up your mind. You don't automatically go through the automatic program and of the self-hatred, beating yourself up. but You kind of go, okay, what is this? What's causing it? it's ah It is honestly a masterpiece, and it should be given out to addicts, people at school, 55:54.23 nextlevelguypodcast CBT people, NLP, people to just understand how their brain works, and to stop beating themselves up and to look at their history to create a better present that will then create a better future for them. 56:07.22 nextlevelguypodcast What happens if we do make a mistake? How do we not let it just destroy you there and then? 56:16.32 Adi Jaffe that's a mindset man i think what's there's a quote from michael jordan it may be in the book i honestly it's there's so much in the book i forget sometimes what i put in there but just know every successful person you know failed many many times before they achieved the success that you now know them for michael jordan yeah i think this is in the book michael jordan talks about how he became the success he became because he missed 3 000 shots in games but he also talks about how he took 56:41.69 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 56:44.01 Adi Jaffe In 25 different games, he was tasked, including some very big games, obviously, he was tasked with taking the last second shot and won the game 25 times. So the best player on the face of the planet only succeeded in this crazy way 25 times in his career. 57:00.30 Adi Jaffe What he doesn't say in that quote is that actually was tasked with taking the last second shot 26 times and missed. So the best basketball player that ever existed missed more than he made the most important shots of his life. 57:15.84 Adi Jaffe And many of us judge ourselves because we're not perfect. So get comfortable with failure if you want to succeed. 57:23.41 nextlevelguypodcast Well, I've literally got chunks of questions where I think there'll be podcasts on their own and we can really the go into and another one if you if you want to come back on. But what would you want people to take from this? Because I hope I've kind of given ah people a flavor of how life-changing this book truly is. And I generally mean this. I cannot thank you enough for giving an advanced copy of this. But how would you want people to start using the book and take this from the book to go forward? 57:51.59 nextlevelguypodcast Is it just simply knowing... 57:52.53 Adi Jaffe honestly i Honestly, I just want people to use it. I mean, it's a lot of work to write a book. i want My favorite thing on the face of the planet is when somebody reads it, has either the feedback that you have or tells me, man, this changed a lot for me. Thank you so much. that's all All I care about is that people take advantage of the content so that they can make their life better. 58:10.91 nextlevelguypodcast do you want them to kind of realize that you know like you say in the book fuck shame that you're doing your best at the time but let's deal with let's start pulling the tangles out to change your life 58:22.44 Adi Jaffe and Yeah, I mean, that would be great. But what i care what I care more than anything about is people living a life they're happy with. Living a life where they wake up in the morning and they can put a smile on their face. They go to sleep at and they feel comfortable. that's That's what matters more than anything. 58:36.52 nextlevelguypodcast And how would you want people to keep getting touch, to join, you know, listen to your podcast that you have with your wife, which is fantastic. How do you want them to join your group, um to work with you that, 58:45.08 Adi Jaffe Thank you. 58:47.93 Adi Jaffe Yeah, so the easiest thing The easiest way to find out about everything around the book is ah is a website called readunhooked.com. Readunhooked.com. And then ignited, IGNTD, like I have on my hat right here,.com is where you can sign up for the program. 59:03.56 Adi Jaffe And I'm on all social media as Dr. Adi Jaffe, D-R, Adi Jaffe. And please connect. 59:11.19 nextlevelguypodcast So...