Rules Of The Game - The Bedros Keuilian Show E001

[0:00]See, success is not just defined with financial success. Success to me is defined with peace of mind. Like, I want to have money, I want to have peace of mind. I want to know that my wife and my kids love and respect me. I want to know that I respect myself and so I keep myself mentally, physically, and emotionally fit. That to me is success. Welcome to the Bedros Kuilian Show. And this is definitely the beginning of something new, the BK show, the Badros Kuian Show. And the end of something that's been going on for about four and a half years, the Empire show. With over 209 episodes in the can, this is the last and final Empire show and the first of the Bedros Kuilian show. And you're probably wondering, wait a minute, B, we didn't see this coming. Well, guess what? We all grow, we go through phases of life. And I'm in a new phase of life where I don't want to just talk about business and creating entrepreneurial wealth. I want to talk to you about all of life. Um, I've always been called to serve humanity. Um, I know my purpose on this planet is to help people become the highest level versions of themselves. And for that to happen, I can't just help you make money, yet suffer in every other category of your life because that is not a successful person. So, in this first episode of the Badros Kuilian show, we are going to talk about the rules of the game. Now, if you are on my email list, if you get the weekly emails from me and you scroll all the way down to the bottom of those emails, then you know that I have the rules of the game at the bottom of every one of my emails. And the rules of the game are simple. I always look at life as though it's a game. And if life is a game, then surely there must be rules to it. And if there's rules to it, then there's a higher chance of me winning if I know the rules. And if I'm not winning, then odds are I'm losing at life. And how do we know for losing at life? Well, to me, it's simple. If you're losing at life, you're probably in a state of overwhelm, in a state of depression, in a state of anxiety. You're unsure, you feel this knowing in your gut that you should be doing more, you should be accomplishing more, that you're meant for a higher purpose. But you're not achieving any of those things. And so you're financially struggling, you're physically not in the best place in terms of your health. And you're kind of like feeling like you're just swimming in the sea of mediocrity, what Napoleon Hill calls drifting through life. And the opposite of drifting through life is having definitiveness in your purpose. And so the rules of the game that I have listed at the bottom of my email, and this is why this episode here, episode number one, of the Bedros Kuilian show is important. And I'm here to tell you this, friends, that anytime you refer someone to my show, I want you to tell them to go back and listen to episode one of the Bedros Kuilian show because this sets the foundation of what being a high performing human is all about. See, success is not just defined with financial success. Success to me is defined with peace of mind. Like, I want to have money, I want to have peace of mind. I want to know that my wife and my kids love and respect me. I want to know that I respect myself, and so I keep myself mentally, physically, and emotionally fit. That to me is success. And that creates happiness. And if you don't know this, happiness is an inside job. So, with that said, here's the rules of the game, and this is why it's important. If you are brand new to this show, you must come to episode one of the Bedros Kuilian show. Rule number one, purpose over pleasure. And purpose over pleasure is simply this, that you know that if you're on this planet, then odds are you have a sense of purpose. You have this greater calling, right? You might want to look at it as maybe duty over desire. See, the truth of the matter is, we are designed to seek out pleasure. And when we seek out pleasure, we begin to feel this vacuum in our soul. And the vacuum is, man, I'm meant to do more. I'm meant to serve humanity, I'm meant to inspire people, but I keep leaning into the vices of life, the distractions, the comfort, the convenience. Those are all pleasure-based things. And it could show up as oversleeping, it could show up as overeating, it could show up as overconsuming of social media and television. It could show up as just the pleasures of gambling, pornography, whatever. But if you're choosing pleasure over purpose, you are struggling in life. And you've always got to put purpose first. And you may not know what your purpose is. I can tell you this, people go, Hey, man, I want to I want to find my purpose. And I have to remind him that purpose is not something that is lost and therefore you're not just going to find it. You have to develop your purpose. And the place you start is putting off pleasure and putting off desires and focusing on purpose and duty first. And if you don't know what your purpose needs to be in terms of development, ask yourself this, and this is what I do with all my coaching clients. I go, if I had a gun to your head and I said, pick the one thing that you want to do in life that would just make you absolutely happy, would give you a sense of fulfillment and peace of mind. Never mind that it's not going to make you money. The thing that you would do if money was not an issue, what is it? And most people can quickly come up with an idea or at least a place to start. There is where you start developing your purpose. So understand this, that the rule of the game, the game of life, the first of the six rules is choose purpose over pleasure. The second rule is that how you do anything is how you do everything. I don't know a single person that is winning at life, and I mean financially stout, physically, mentally, emotionally fit, relationally strong and have strong good peace of mind at night when they go to bed. Like when I put my head down to sleep, I feel good that I've accomplished my goals in life, right? Someone who has that level of success is usually doing everything the same way they do anything, right? So how you do anything is truly the way you do everything. And I share this with you guys because if you think that you could cut corners in your workout, cut corners in your relationship, but then be successful in business, that ain't going to do it. If you think that you could cut corners in one area, like if you've got a messy car, like I can go out to the parking lot right now of this building that we're in, and look in the cars, just through the glass, and if I see a car that's messy on the inside, it's got like hamburger wrappers and Starbucks cups from days ago, and it's got like clothes thrown around. Well, if your car is a mess, odds are your life's a mess, your bank account is a mess, your mental hygiene is a mess. Because truly, how you do anything is how you do everything. And so I would challenge all of you, if you want to win at the game of life, consider doing everything as though you were on a reality show, right? That's always look at my life. If I was on a reality show and they're like, hey, your kids are watching this reality show, like you are going to be the role model. I was like, oh, shoot, if my kids are watching it, and I'm going to be the role model, then damn, I better make sure I do it in a way where they're like, that's my dad. I'm proud of him, right? And I'll give you a great example. And Ed, you know this, we were in St. Louis, uh, this past week. One of my clients out there in St. Louis owns a massive, massive company. And, uh, myself, Ray and Stephen Ed went up there. Ray is the Navy SEAL and Steve is the Marine. They are the lead instructors of the project, but together we also have another business called LTD, Leadership and Team Development. And we were at my client's big giant company. And Ray and Steve with LTD, work with leaders of a company, uh, departmental leaders, right? Helping them to problem solve and communicate better and get out of working in silos, etcetera. So when they're not running the project and beating the shit out of people, Ray and Steve are actually helping corporations become more efficient and profitable, creating better culture and really fixing the teamwork, communication, problem solving issues, right? So that they are better employees for the corporation. Well, guess what? During one of the breaks of that talk, um, I went and used their bathroom. The company bathroom. And in the men's room, the urinal was being used, so I went into the stall. And while I was taking a piss, I saw that there was urine sprinkled all over the seat. Now, obviously some dude who works there stood there and took a piss. Clearly, clearly has a poor side of aim and sprinkled everywhere on the ground, all over the seat. And I imagine he must have gotten a little bit of piss in the in the toilet. But then he left. And so I get in there after him. I don't know who this guy is, cuz when I got in there, the stall was empty. But I can tell you that I was like, dude, if my kids were watching me right now, they'd be like, Dad just left it that way? So after I took a piss and flushed, I got toilet paper and I cleaned up the seat. And then when we went back and we kicked off the the training again, the leadership and team development training for that team, I I had to stop Ray and Steve and I said, hey, guys, let me just tell you something. I imagine when we had this break, half of you guys in here, there are leaders, about 25 of them. I said, half of your men, half of your women, you guys all went and either used the urinal or the stall. If I even assume that twelve and a half of you are men and you use the toilet, and half of you, so let's say six of you, six and a quarter, right? Six of you used the toilet, the actual stall and not the urinal, then you saw the piss. And none of you cleaned it, especially not the person who actually pissed all over the toilet. And so I wonder how that guy who accepts the fact that he could piss in his workplace toilets toilet seat, how he does his job. I don't know if they're in financing, I don't know if they're in technical support, I don't know if they're in what level of leadership they're in in the company. But I can tell you that how that guy does anything is how he does everything. And I and I told my client, who's company it was, I said, hey, man, if you figure out who this guy is, you got to have a harsh conversation with him. And then you got to either fire him or give him the one opportunity to level up. Now, interestingly enough, the rest of the day, I kept going back to the stall and not the urinal just to check and it was clean. So whether that guy was cleaning up after himself, or everyone else decided that they're going to follow my lead and clean up, because I'm not a fucking animal. They're not fucking animals. Why am I going to have to take a piss in a urinal or in a toilet that's just covered with urine? The bottom line is that how you do anything is how you do everything. And if you're going to piss on the toilet, you're not going to run my business. You're not going to be part of my friendship. You're not going to be in my circles. I do not want you dating my daughter or or or being friends with my son, or working for me in any of that stuff. So ask yourself, am I doing everything like I do anything? If so, you better do it well and act like somebody's watching. That is rule number two. Rule number three of life, of the game of life is to never negotiate with your inner bitch. Now, that's a term from the project, right? These guys who are going through the 75-hour experience that is the project. They're like, oh my God, this is hard, this is difficult, you know. And they end up negotiating as they're crawling through the pit. They end up negotiating with themselves. Like, I don't need to be here. I don't need to be dealing with these guys yelling at me. I don't know what's coming up next in terms of are we going to hike, are we going to run, are we going to ice bath, are we going to pull a truck again. All I know is I have many more hours to go. You know what? I don't need to do this. I quit. And in that moment, they make a decision that they will later regret. Right? Because they negotiated with their inner bitch. Now, you ought to know that every single one of us, every human, has two characters within us. There's the inner critic and then there's the inner advocate. The inner critic, this person is there to tell us that we can't, that we're not good enough, that you don't have what it takes. So your inner critic is that voice that always limits and throttles your growth. Because when you limit and throttle your growth, you have this sense of comfort, right? Because you're in your safe comfort zone. But remember, you also have that gnawing of greatness in your gut that tells you that I am meant for more. I am supposed to do more, but yet you're not doing more. And the reason you're not doing more is because your inner critic constantly speaks to your consciousness and tells you to stop, slow down, give up, don't do it. It's embarrassing, you'll get rejected. What if you fail? What if they find out? Well, I'm going to tell you this, none of that matters. Interestingly enough, you have an inner advocate as well. Your inner advocate, for most people, is in the trunk. See, imagine if your body, your mental psyche, your head space is the car and you're the driver. Most humans, believe it or not, have their inner critic, that inner bitch writing shotgun. And so that inner bitch is like, kind of like that side seat driver, right? Like, hey, watch out, be careful. Don't do this. What if? And then it's not going to work out and you're going to fail, you're going to look stupid. You're not qualified for that. And so you never take those micro risks that you need to to have a fulfilled life. And then in the back, you hear this like mumbling, like, and you're like, what the fuck is that mumbling? Well, that mumbling is your inner advocate, the person that's rooting for you, right? But it's in the trunk. Hogtied, duct tape across its mouth. Your job in life is to develop to such a high place that you metaphorically take your inner critic, and you take him out of that passenger seat, and you hogtie him, put put duct tape across his mouth and throw him in your trunk. And then you take that advocate and you take him out of the trunk and put him in the passenger seat and let the advocate tell you what a badass you are. What a great human you are. You're capable of figuring anything out. You're a natural problem solver. People love you and they want to help you. That is what the advocate is there for. But unless you do the work, you will not hear the advocate over the critic. And so my challenge to you in life, friends, is to fucking hogtie that critic. Put the duct tape across his mouth and throw him in the trunk. Now you're probably thinking, well, wait, Bedros, what if I just kick him out of the car? That's never going to happen. See, life is funny that way, right? Life is funny that way. I believe that we're supposed to have both the critic and the advocate with us the entire time. You know, those old Daffy Duck cartoons where there's like the devil and the angel on the shoulder, right? Same thing. You can't just get rid of the devil permanently. What you can do is over time, begin to control and silence the devil or your inner critic. Well, the way you do that is through the self work. Maybe it's therapy, maybe it's always choosing hard over easy. Maybe it is putting through yourself through intentional suffering and adversity because life has become so easy. Life has become so complacent. Life has become so fucking complacent for many of us, that you will take your app and you will like start looking at your burrito as it's coming to you. Like, that baffles me when someone's like, oh man, it looks like my burrito is still down the street, and they're parked at the red light and it hasn't come to me yet. Like, motherfucker, you're hungry. And you opened up this app to order a burrito and customize it. And you're hand ringing over the fact that your burrito was not here on time. Like, back in the day, cave people used to go hunting for their food. And it was questionable whether they would get food, and there's a high likelihood that the food they were hunting was going to fucking kill them. And then here we are, life has gotten so comfortable, so complacent, so convenient. You gelatinous piece of shit, that you are upset that your food is delayed, even though it said, we'll get your burrito to you in 20 minutes. It's 27 minutes and you're hand ringing, you stupid asshole. And it's that mindset of comfort, convenience, and complacency that gives voice to the inner critic. What you need to do is harder things. You need to lean into adversity. You need to choose deliberate suffering. You need to take the stairs instead of the escalator. You need to intentionally, you know, people will take a cold shower. Fuck the cold shower, take an ice bath. Can you take an ice bath? Can you go on a one-mile hike? Can you, can you do a hundred burpees and feel what it feels like to be out of breath? Can you start Jujitsu? Can you start lifting weights? Can you start helping society? Because when you do, that's how you silence your critic and then give voice to the advocate. But make no mistake about it. The advocate and the critic will always be in the car with you. Your actions, your deeds, your thoughts, determine who's sitting in the passenger seat. The critic or the advocate. Rule number four of the game is that action alleviates anxiety. Now, I know today mental health is a really big deal and I get it. I get it. Since the pandemic and since the Wuhan, things have gotten a little trippy. And then there's this inflation, and then there's this recession, and then there's a supply chain, and you don't know if your business is going to work and if your career is going to stay and if you're going to have a job. But here's what I do know, that whatever anxiety that you have, action will alleviate it. Rather than hand wringing, because most people don't realize, anxiety is anticipation of future pain. Let me tell you that again. Anxiety is anticipation of future pain, which means that if you're experiencing anxiety, you're just worried about what might go wrong in the future. And whatever it is that you're worried about, maybe you ought to consider taking some action towards it. Hence, action alleviates anxiety. And I'll give you a great example. Many, many years ago, like, I'm talking 2013, Joan, were you working for me in 2013? Was it 2014? These started working. 14. So back in 2014, mid-20, oh, so it was 2013, cuz Joan never met my business partner. You never met my business partner in Fitbody Boot Camp, right? And so Joan got on board early, uh, 2014. Um, back then as my assistant, today, she's the great and powerful Joan that is the VP of my coaching company. Um, but, uh, in 2013, I had this business partner in Fitbody Boot Camp. We started it together. I know, and no one's ever made me laugh as hard as him, a a an awesome human being. However, we shared two very different work ethics. We shared two very different levels of discipline. And so he was constantly giving me anxiety, to the point where, when I would feel hear his car drive up to the old place, that we didn't even have it, we only had like six or seven employees at the time. But he got them all whirl up and dizzy, man, and we would have a high turnover because people would quit. And that whole thing gave me anxiety and for at least a year and a half, I did nothing to talk to him about it. I didn't address it. I was just kind of waiting for the other shoe to fall. And then one day, I was so pissed at something he did, that I texted him this angry text message, all caps and multiple exclamation points. And I was like, you got to meet me at the at the headquarters of Saturday. I remember that. You got to meet me at the headquarters and I had this conversation with him, like, man, either you go, or I go, but we can't do this anymore. I'm at my wit's end, I'm fucking anxious and overwhelmed every time I see you or hear you, pulling up. And he's like, bro, you know what? I feel the same way. Um, yeah, why don't we why don't we part ways? Uh, in fact, why don't you take over Fitbody Boot Camp? Cuz I said, hey, either you take over, I'll take over, but we can't keep running Fitbody Boot Camp. It's not going to work, like I'm going to lose my mind. And I'm thinking like, it's going to be something really bad, right? Like we're going to fucking duke it out or something. The guy was just like, hey, you know what? I feel the same level of tension and so how about this? The employees seem to like you more than me, so I'll leave, you stay. And, um, that's that. And I bought him out. But in my head for a year and a half, I created this massive story, how things were going to unfold and he was going to be pissed and he's he was going to argue with me and I was going to argue with him. And so action really does alleviate anxiety. When I took that action, like the next day, Sunday morning, I'm like, man, life feels really good. And why do I feel this way? Because I don't have this tension with the business partner who's also a friend. Right? So I'm here to tell you that that rule number four of life is to understand that anxiety is anticipation of future pain. And action alleviates anxiety. And if you don't lean into action, you will not lose that anxiety. Rule number five of the game of life, that's if you want to win it, is that you can't be allergic to hard work. Right? You can't. And I have this saying at the project. I say, you know, bitches look for balance, and savages go all in on whatever they're doing. And that is very true. Like you can't be allergic to hard work. In this life, we have to make money. In this life, if you want the body, you have to eat right. You have to be fit. In this life, if you want a meaningful relationship, you have to put in the work in that relationship. In this life, if you want to be a great leader, then you better develop your ability to have vision, your ability to be decisive, to communicate clearly, and of course, to build a high performing team. Those are the core tenants of great leadership, right? Like hard work is what produces the outcome. However, we've gotten so comfortable, complacent, and seeking out convenience all the time that again, we've become allergic to hard work. And when you become allergic to hard work, you start calling for balance. Only bitches have balance. You know, look, if you're going to be any kind of a high performer in life, right? You don't even have to be an entrepreneur. Like think about a pro athlete. A pro athlete has a job, right? It's a career. But that pro athlete cannot have balance, cuz odds are, he might be practicing like crazy levels. In terms of performance, for a game that's going to take place on a Sunday, which he has to leave his family on a Saturday to go across country. There's no balance there for any high performer in the world, period. My dear friend, Michael Chandler, UFC fighter, wonderful human being. You know, he tells me how he goes into these six week sprints of prep camp before a fight, a UFC fight. For six weeks, he may not see his family or if he does, it's just for like little, little calls or FaceTimes or they might visit and or he might go back to Florida and visit because his fight camps are in Nashville. You think that man has balance? What you really need to figure out is I don't want balance. I want a work life mix. And a work life mix is wherever I am, is what I'm fully committed to. See, right now, I'm in this studio at our headquarters, doing this podcast. And I don't want to distract myself with what's happening with my family. I'm not going to feel like I'm missing out what's happening upstairs with the leadership team for Fitbody Boot Camp. I am here and I'm fully present. And when I leave here and go home later tonight, then I'm fully present with my family. And I don't care if the podcast went well. I don't care if it's going to get a lot of ratings or not. What I care about is the time that I'm pouring into my family. And so if you're looking for balance in life, you're never going to find it. But if you decide to work hard wherever your feet happen to be, then if I'm in the podcast, I'm working hard. If I go upstairs and deal with the leadership team, I'm working hard. When I go home, I'm working hard on that relationship. Like hard loving my family. And that's what you want to do, man. And if you can teach yourself to not be allergic to hard work, you immediately differentiate yourself and stand out over the crowd. And finally, rule number six, for a life well lived, is that having a bad day does not mean that you have a bad life. See, often times we might go through a phase of winning or losing, right? All of life comes to us with phases of winning and losing. It's, life is seasonal, right? And if right now you're in a winning phase, well, awesome, man. I'm happy for you. Be prepared, the losing season is coming. And if you're in a losing season right now, well, hey, guess what? Keep doing the work, keep pushing through, because the winning season is coming, guaranteed. Guaranteed. What you can't determine is the timeline, but I can tell you that if you're winning, the losing season is coming. And if you're losing, the winning season is coming, as long as you're doing the work. And life is about the long game, not the short term. And I know that society has conditioned us that, you know, what can I achieve in a couple months? You know, nothing cracks me up more than when someone says, hey, Bedros, I've been doing this for a few months and I'm not making a lot of money yet. I still have my side gig. Cool, man. Guess what? Give it a decade. Give it a decade. See, I measure short-term goals by half decades and long-term goals by decades. And you're measuring by weeks and months, like, right? It can't happen. So that's the rules of the game, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this first episode of the Bedros Kuilian show. If you did, please screenshot this, share it on social media. There will never be ads on this show. There will never be a paid platform for this show. This is a show where I want to unapologetically be real with you, be unfiltered with you, pour into you, mentor you, rant at you. Hopefully make you laugh, make you think and make you realize that you're meant for more. And I wish someone would have poured into me a decade sooner. My big breakthrough came after that anxiety attack at the age of 38, 10 years ago. Imagine if I had that aha moment at 28 that I could do more, be more, earn more. I could break through my limiting beliefs. And all we got to do is understand the rules of the game. Life is exactly that. It's a game. There are rules to it. And you follow those rules, you massively increase your chances of winning. Thank you so much, friends for listening to me and hanging out with me on this show. I will see you guys later on the next episode.