Beyond Fear: Wylie McGraw on Thriving in Chaos and Challenging the Self-Help Industry

Srini Rao

Wiley, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Wylie McGraw

Well, brother, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. As I was saying before we hit record, there are a couple of things that made me say yes, all of which we will get into, but I think one of my favorite things on your About page is you've probably never heard of me and it's designed that way. And I was like, these are the people I like to find, the ones that nobody has ever heard of. But before we get into everything that you do, I wanted to start by asking you, what social group were you a part of in high school? And what impact did that end up having on where you ended up going with your life and what you ended up doing with your life?

Wylie McGraw

Ooh, I love that. That's a great curve ball. Let me swing and see if I can hit it out of the park here. I had a little baseball pun there, but I never found myself in high school being accepted to any specific social group, despite the fact that maybe I was, you know, I was perusing, you know, figuring out where it was that I might have fit. I found that I was always kind of the oddball, the one that was basically passed along to different social groups. Now I...

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

I played sports, I was a competitive baseball player and I also played football in high school. So I was part of that world or that group of athletes. But at the same time, sometimes I would hang out and play hacky sack with the skaters, go skating. I do BMX stuff with all the bikers. Other times I would just geek out with the school nerds. So I found myself just exploring more about different groups of people rather than trying to fit into one specific group. Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Where does that come from? Like that sort of ability to be a chameleon? Cause like I noticed in a lot of cases in high schools, you have this sort of hierarchy, right? Jocks and cheerleaders at the top, but you're kind of, you know, like navigating between all of them while simultaneously also being an athlete.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, you do.

Wylie McGraw

Right. I think as I got older, I started to understand more of what was causing me to be more that chameleon, was the nature of the fact that I just, my presence, my essence of who I am, what I came to this world with, and what's based on even the work that I do now today, just is not a fit for very specific hierarchies. I cause people to face force them to look at things they don't want to look at.

Kids in my school were always telling me that they always felt weird around me and that they didn't wanna like expose some of their secrets to me. They never really felt like I was one of them. So I think that was just the fact that I was born into this world a little bit different. And I had to discover what that meant through those experiences, those social experiments and those different types of environments that our school, like high school puts us in.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, tell me about playing baseball because there's a common thread. I feel like I've seen between sort of high performers across the show. And I unfortunately was just not very athletic, even though I became a surfer and snowboarder later in life, which are both athletic pursuits. But, you know, like if you grow up in Texas and, you know, you play football, as I learned in seventh grade, it's like, OK, I'm going to get the shit beat out of me as a scrawny Indian kid. Band director was like, you can either be an awesome musician or an average football player. I was like, I don't want to be average. It's shit. So that was it for me.

Wylie McGraw

Nice. Yeah, yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Ha ha ha!

Wylie McGraw

Right.

Srini Rao

And, you know, in the Texas heat, you know, it's just like miserable. But the there's something about high school athletes, like consistently across the board. I've seen this with enough people that I wonder what it is about people who play high school sports that translates into exceptional performance later in life. Like I can tell you guests right off the top of my head who are, we've been here. James Clear baseball player, and he attributes a lot of the way he thinks about things to playing baseball.

Wylie McGraw

It is.

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yep.

Srini Rao

And it really traumatic injury where he got hit in the face with a baseball bat Chase Jarvis almost became a professional soccer player Tim Ferris and said his high school wrestling coach Was one of the people had this tremendous influence and he said everybody on that team went on to do amazing things So what is it about? High school sports in general and then you know for parents listening who have you know an athletically inept child like me What do you say to them because like I regret not playing high school sports at the same time I was like I

Wylie McGraw

Yep. Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

never felt that I had anything to offer. I was in marching band, which is more of an athletic pursuit than most people realize, especially with a tuba.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, it is. Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I mean, I think we put too much emphasis or stock into sports as the only real benchmark for high performance. And I get it, it's a great question to ask. I'm gonna go to even what you said about band. It takes tremendous amount of discipline, organization, focus, commitment to be in a band, to play an instrument, to be excellent at a skill or a talent.

no matter what field you're in, does require a certain type of human approach to it. And I would say you've excelled in that, which has allowed you to be successful in what you're doing now. Now, going back to your question with sports, I grew up in an athletic household. My dad was a semi-pro ball player in the 70s. He threw away a professional baseball career because there wasn't enough money. He had some other endeavors like surfing, et cetera.

that pulled them away from it. But I grew up around pro baseball players my entire life. Guys like Rod Carew, I met Mickey Mantle, Bo Jackson, they were always around me. And I think being in that environment, regardless of how unique and weird I was and not fitting into very specific social circles as a young kid, it was still putting me in the position to learn about focus, about discipline, about mindset, understanding what it means to be in a consistent state of performance where

It's a relentless pursuit of how you can tap into your own potential. Leadership, I learned at a very young age, being a pitcher on a baseball team, I was responsible for the cohesiveness of the team itself, and everything that I did had an effect on everybody else's ability to actually perform as this one full cohesive unit. So I would say that as you get into high school...

That's where these stakes kind of change, where you're really starting to show up, where people are watching you, people are paying attention to you. This is where scouts will start to come in for college ball, et cetera. And it's forcing those with the talent and the skills to really step up their ability to commit, sacrifice, maybe pleasures, going to parties, outings with friends, et cetera, to really train and hone in their skills. And I think that's what ends up diverting people from one path to the other when it comes to high school sports.

Wylie McGraw

and finding what really works for them and where their talents actually do thrive.

Srini Rao

Well, I got to ask you, one of the things in your bio, like I said, the thing that got me was that you were a bull rider. And I was like, wait, I don't know anybody who becomes a bull rider. I was like, how do you even get into that is bullet start there? Like how in the world did you end up being a competitive bull rider? Cause like, I think my only like experience of it is watching it on Friday night.

Wylie McGraw

Uh-huh. Ha ha ha.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Oh, that's a, well, there you go. I'd say for me, I grew up with, you know, my parents, dad was more of the rock and roll surfer kind of guy. My mom tapped a little bit more into the, I would say country blue side of things. So I think I had an inkling towards more of that rough stock Western side of life, but I never really discovered it until I met someone in high school who was a cowboy. His family were ranchers and.

kind of like the, I kind of dug the whole vibe, the cowboy hat, et cetera. So I decided to just pursue it. I think I was 16 years old when I kind of dug into that world and found the seductive draw into the world of rodeo, very enticing to me. And simultaneously, brother, it's interesting because at that moment, it was when I was really starting to discern the difference between performing as a baseball player for the love of the game versus, you know, doing it for the expectation of my father and the athletes that I was being trained by. And it started to...

forced me into a place of making decisions in a very uncomfortable environment, what I wanted to pursue for myself to make me a better Wiley. So bull riding became seductive and I decided, let's give it a shot. And I went out to a place in Lake Elsinore, California. I got on the back of my first bull. I rode about two and a half seconds. He slipped in the mud, landed on my leg, and he stared at me for a brief second. It was almost like that stare woke me up to a whole new world of what it means to expand your ability to embrace.

the unknowns, fear, et cetera, and I fell in love with it and I pursued it for half a decade.

Srini Rao

So I think that, to my point earlier, for most of us, the only exposure to something like rodeo is probably seeing it through television or through popular culture and how it's depicted there. What do we not see? What are the aspects of this that we don't see? Because I'd imagine it's like an incredibly athletic pursuit that requires a tremendous amount of discipline and focus, as you alluded to earlier. So talk to me about that, and also what parts of what you learned from playing baseball translated.

Wylie McGraw

Uh-huh.

Wylie McGraw

The understanding of the fundamentals of leadership, focus, mindset, discipline, sacrifice, and commitment, I was able to parlay that into the world of rodeo. But rodeo, I think it almost like extrapolated and compounded on that and added more to the world of what human performance meant outside of systematic approaches to athletics. And in baseball, I was...

able to structurally create this version of myself that could go out on the mound and pitch at certain speeds, be effective in striking batters out, leading a team, winning games. But in rodeo, it forced me into a world of understanding what intuition was, how to manage my emotions in chaotic environments. I think when you get on the back of a 2,000 pound animal, there's a lot that can happen despite how much you prepare for it, really brought me to the presence of mind of...

of knowing what it meant to be fully present each moment that I got in the back of an animal and knowing that I was connecting to this life form that could in fact kill me at any moment if it wanted to, really honed in my ability to be present with my emotions, my mindset, my thoughts, my intuition, my faith, everything simultaneously became almost like an ignited firework that blew up every single time that I was able to get down on the back of an animal like that. And I started to pay attention to

the differences when I was distracted or I wasn't fully present and how I would get thrown off, bounced off the ground, maybe a chased hurt versus the times that I was actually able to hone tap into those areas of my life simultaneously for that eight second ride and cover that bowl. So it brought forth a new exciting version of me that I've been dying to meet as a baseball player that I didn't feel like I was really tapping into. And I think that's what I found from bowl riding was it scared me.

so well and such a good place that I was able to find untapped potential within me in those little brief moments of basically riding bulls.

Srini Rao

way you're describing that sounds the way that I describe surfing to people like riding a wave like I got the you know, the same idea like I honestly felt that I didn't even know what it meant to be present until I surfed like until I stood up on a wave for the first time and I was like, this is what presence feels like

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Right, right. That's a special feeling, absolutely special feeling.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so explain the logistics behind how rodeo works. I realize this is like a very stupid question or very basic question. But like, what goes into the training for this to prepare for it? And like, how do like, how do you win at rodeo? Like, what exactly are the mechanics for all of this? Because like I said, I mean, I just watch it on TV. And it's like, Okay, cool. It looks like a bunch of people are cheering somebody on and some guys trying not to fall off a bowl. But like, I don't understand the actual competitive aspect. Like, how does it work?

Wylie McGraw

Mm.

Wylie McGraw

Hahaha

Wylie McGraw

Oh, that's a fantastic approach to looking at rodeo outside of just seeing it on TV is just getting into it. I didn't know what I was doing. I just hung around a bunch of cowboys. I bought myself some really cheap gear, a rope, some spurs, chaps, you know, a bag. The rosin, which is the sticky rock that you break up and you heat up your rope with helps your hands stay engaged with that rope when you're being tossed around. But as you get into that world and you start becoming more competitive with it, there are so many different facets of...

training that we can go through. We have barrels that are tied to ropes in the trees where you have guys that are pulling on the ropes that are, they're simulating a bull ride so they can throw you around so you can learn how to actually sit on the back of that animal and ride that animal properly. It's just like baseball or any other sport. When you start studying different types of rough stock, these companies raise these bulls to buck a very certain way. So when you start studying it and going, okay, these bulls tend to do it this way when they come out of the gate, when you open the gate, this is their demeanor, their attitude.

how they move around underneath the cowboy, you start learning how to adapt yourself on the back of that animal in the midst of that ride. Even though it might last eight seconds, it tends to feel like it's lasting an eternity. And what I've discovered in the world of rodeo is learning how to sit down on the back of the animal when the animal is on its way down to the front legs, when the back legs are kicked in the air, versus posting up on it, which means you squeeze your legs together and you kind of sit up off the animal when he's jumping and you start leaning a little bit almost like,

you're preemptively leaning towards the direction you think that animal's gonna go, you're finding a balance while on the back of a chaotic beast. And I think that's where we start to really build skill and the approach to the competitive aspect of it is then when you start becoming a good bull rider or a bareback rider or saddle bronc rider or roper is that now you start going to events, small events all the way up to large events, you start putting money into that, you start investing time, energy and resources towards.

maybe potentially becoming a pro or semi-pro. And it becomes where you are essentially competing against the skill sets of other cowboys riding different levels of animals that have their own unique personalities that can in fact make up for half the score in the sport. You're riding and the skill sets you showcase in front of the judges makes up the other half. So it becomes a really fun, almost like wild, rough competitive sport that is exciting, it's adventurous, it's dangerous. And...

Wylie McGraw

very fulfilling regardless of how much money you might win.

Srini Rao

Yeah. What are the dynamics of the relationship between the rider and the bull? Like is it, do you just show up at a different town and it's like a bull you've never seen? Like how does that work? Like, cause I, you know, just from what I've understand about people who ride horses, like there's a relationship that exists between the person and the horse.

Wylie McGraw

Mm.

Wylie McGraw

I think when you, I started doing little small jackpots all over California, even when I was in the military in Kentucky, Tennessee area, you start to kind of look ahead and find out, okay, who's putting on the show, what rough stock company is going to be bringing their animals, their livestock to the show itself. So you start to know, okay, Growning Brothers Company is bringing this set of stock to this small jackpot rodeo.

You got bulls named White Widow, bulls named Twister, et cetera. Okay, these are how the bulls have performed in the past. If you can find video, great. If not, you hear from other cowboys, hey, when he comes out of the gate, he tends to blow out to the left. He'll lean his head to the right, and he'll trick you and go back to the left again. He'll start spinning this way. Okay, great, so now I understand what I might be in for, but you never let your guard down because sometimes those animals can change direction. They are bred to buck cowboys off of them. And what ends up happening is, when you get down in the back of that confined chute,

You have your rope that is being prepared, tied around almost like their chest area. They have a flank strap that's tied around more of their groin area, kind of squeezes them. It gives them a little bit of that extra oomph to make them buck harder. The animal knows you're there. He's very present with you. You slide down to the back of that beast. Sometimes they'll look back at you. They'll lean against your legs to intimidate you. They'll sometimes want to get out of the chute before it's even open and almost scare you, throw you backwards. I've had moments where...

I had the bowl kind of like buck forward and almost put my face into the fence post. You got guys trying to help you kind of stabilize the animal until you open up the gate. And you just really learn how to actually connect with the bowl when you're on the back of it. But you're also staying very focused on what your skillset is, what you're here to do, what your determination's all about. And then you just allow that to become settled. So when you call your gate, as they say, which means just open up the chute.

It's a ride for a life and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk a bit about the time in the military. And the reason I'm asking about each one of these components, I feel like they all have a role that they play in the work that you do today. So I've talked to a lot of military people here, but Chris Fossil here, I've had other Navy SEALs. And even when I went to Montana, one of our listeners ran a

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

non-profit where you train retired Special Forces guys, how to transition into civilian crews. He's like, hey, will you come and speak to the guys? He's like, we'll buy your books and pay for your flight, but we can't pay your fee. I was like, that's fine. I'll just have one other request. He was like, what's that? I was like, I saw you're in close proximity to a ski resort. He's like, you want a lift ticket? Like, yeah. He's like, we'll make that happen. So, but one of the guys who picked, the guy who picked me up from the airport was in joint special operations. And it asked him, I said, you know, like I wanted to know something. I was like,

Wylie McGraw

Hmm.

Wylie McGraw

Nice.

Srini Rao

And I did not. I was like, I don't mean this offensively. I've just never gotten to talk to a high ranking military official. I was like, why do we spend so much money on defense? Like, you know, when we have all these other problems at home. And he said, you got to understand, he is like people in military are following orders from politicians. He's like, everything we do is for political risk or political gain. So what I want to hear your take on that, considering, you know, like how much money we put into this effectively policing the world when we have a shit ton of problems in the United States. But then the other is.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

you just that the like being in combat, and dealing with that, because like, every person asked, like, aren't you afraid of dying like the entire time? Like, it just seems you're putting yourself in these really harrowing situations constantly. So I wouldn't hear your perspective on this, like, what did it teach you about leadership, like camaraderie, discipline, all those things like that, and that I think will make a perfect segue into the work that you do today.

Wylie McGraw

Of course. I'll start with even with the combat question. It's now in combat arms, not everybody that serves in combat arms actually sees any kind of amount of combat. They might be in war zones and sometimes they get to operate and sometimes they don't. So there's a very small percentage of guys that are in serving in combat arms MOSs from infantry to rangers, special operations like Navy SEALs, special forces, which are the green berets.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I had my own experiences. I did get to see a little bit of some combat in my three tours overseas, but I will tell you this. Number one, when we joined the military, we do it because there's this unique desire to be challenged, to join a brotherhood, to join a team, to serve something greater than ourselves. Most of the guys, if not, I would say all the guys that I served with.

in the 101st Airborne Division with the 187 Infantry Regiment, every single one of us were all bought into the same mission. So when you go across the broad of military service members, no matter what branch, they will all tell you, at least when I was in, I don't know about now, everything is going to shit now in the military, but there are still people that say we're bought into a mission of serving something greater than ourselves. We don't fight because we hate what's in front of us. We actually fight because we love what's behind us. Now we do.

operate under the orders of officers in the president of the United States. There are things that we unfortunately just cannot debate. It becomes autocratic at times, even though in the smaller units we can be more democratic based on different type of operational orders, emission sets, etc. So for me, when I went to my first deployment and experienced kind of a hostile environment,

I found it's like eerily you become calm in the midst of those chaotic moments because in your training, what they put us through, which is in fact similar to the work that I do, is stripping us down. They're basically breaking us down as human beings. They are exhausting us. They're relentlessly putting us through uncomfortable, chaotic experiences that are outside of our control so that they can actually rebuild us up from within.

Wylie McGraw

And that way we can, when we experience that in real life, we know how to operate instantly when it comes to the missions that are set forth for us. So for an example is like going to basic training for 22 weeks in the army, and then having gone to your specialty school after that, you are basically stretched, pushed and challenged to your literal cerebral limits, your mental, emotional, even your spiritual limits, day in, day out, until to the point where then they start actually executing

combat type training so that it becomes muscle memory. It's integrated into who you are. You actually become the soldier rather than just a soldiering is a job. So when they put us in harm's way, we don't think about the first thing is I could die. Yes, it's there. Our purpose and focus is operational. We have a mission. We have a reason we're here and we're gonna execute it and we're gonna do everything in the best of our ability to do so that our

brothers to the left and right of us, they get to come home. We never think about myself and how I'm gonna make sure that I make it through this. That's why you hear stories about these unbelievable heroes, these other real life, amazing human beings that will jump on hand grenades to save their teammates. They will take in the line of fire to go rescue, pull someone out of a hairy situation. They will carry their buddies despite being wounded because it's such a relentless.

It's like integration of commitment to something more than what you are. That is what makes I think the military in the United States so special. And it is why we invest so much money in it as well as because we have established ourselves as the rule to freedom. And again, we can go into a different direction with, you know, what's happening now, but just based on what we've gone through over the years, the decades of generations is that we need to maintain that.

How do we maintain that if we're not willing to invest in it despite what might be going on here? And I think the problem is that we have lost our grip on what leadership really means. And I'm using air quotes and I was, you know, I was on Andy Stump's Cleared Hot and we were doing air quotes with leadership as well, talking about what is leadership now compared to what it was then. And now it's selfish desires, it's a political ambition, it's people's desire to make more money. They're doing whatever they can to benefit themselves.

Wylie McGraw

and they're willing to sacrifice us and put us in these certain positions to achieve those ends. And the last part that I think I can share here with you, brother, is I remember going to Afghanistan right after September 11th, and we barely got into country and there was this whole Tora Bora situation. And our lieutenant colonel of our battalion, he was a bad, what we call a badge hunter. He was the kind of guy that was all about himself. He wanted the combat patch. He wanted the CIB, which is the Combat Infantryman's Badge.

our award that we get for being actively involved in ground combat against an enemy of the United States. He wanted those things and he wanted them so badly that we hadn't had been in country three weeks and we didn't even have our entire unit with us. And yet he wanted to send us on a operation where intelligence was saying, hey, you're gonna lose 30 to 40% of your men if you send them in right now. And he says, I'm willing to take that risk. He was so hell bent on achieving something for himself because that would help him in his...

ambition to be promoted to full bird colonel, that he was willing to risk the lives of his men. And of course we had a great command sergeant major who fought him tooth and nail and said, no, we're not doing that until we get all our full force here, but that's the kind of stuff that I think those are odd balls that are in the military. And the rest of us are like, look, we're willing to do whatever it takes to serve our nation. And for those that we love, despite it being politically driven, despite the fact that we're obeying orders, but despite the fact that might be some geopolitical reasoning why we're going into these different nations for

more than just fighting for freedom. And, you know, it's still due to this day, even in my mid-40s, I'm happy. I'm just thinking about like, if they called me back again and I had to, I mean, I would want to, but I would definitely do it because I understand what it is I'm fighting for.

Srini Rao

So this will actually make a perfect segue into the mean talking about the work you do on performance acceleration. So I remember asking Chris Fussells like, what distinguishes the person who gets through the SEAL training for the one who doesn't? And he told me, he said, if I had the answer to that question, I'd be a billionaire. Because he said, it's often the people that you don't think. He said like, you'll have the guy who was like, high school football player, like, huge. And he quits on day one and he's like some scrawny, like nerdy guy is the one who makes it through.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, yes.

Wylie McGraw

Yep.

Srini Rao

So tell me about what is the difference between those two? Because I think that actually will set us up nicely to talk about the work you do today.

Wylie McGraw

Sure. It's interesting, because I have a buddy of mine who is 26 year seal vet. He was a sniper and he said the same thing. It's usually the guys that are the average build. They're just, you know what it is? It's a focus differentiation and it's a mindset gap. I think the guys that are already built, they're the college athletes. They have a little bit too much ego and not enough humility. And I think humility.

as him and I were talking about it, humility really does make a huge difference when you're going through these types of extreme trainings. And, you know, BUDs being the hardest, I would say the hardest military training in the world, doesn't negate the fact that other combat arms jobs like combat infantry in the army to special forces, Rangers, to parra rescue in the air force, all of the people that are in the combat arms go through their own rigorous training that does in fact have an attrition rate. I mean, we got guys in the army that

I watched people dropping out of bootcamp, couldn't even make it through infantry bootcamp. And it's like, it's because we are basically weeding out people who are selfish and not selfless. People that are too ego-driven or too big for the britches and they don't want to sacrifice, surrender, or give into the humility that it takes to become a unit, a team member. And it's the me, me mindset. So we weed those people out through our relentless training.

so that we only have the best. Now some slip into cracks, yes, but going back to Buds, it's like talking to my seal buddies, it's the same thing. They're like, dude, the guys that are the hard chargers are the ones that have, they're humble. They are just focused. They're team players. They are quiet. They're the ones that actually just stay focused on unit cohesion and teamwork. They don't care about themselves. They are not the biggest. They are not the hardest. They're not even...

sometimes the smartest, they're just these men that are humble, focused guys that wanna be part of something bigger than themselves. And that's why I think they make it through that hard training. I think that's how it parlay's even into the world no matter what position you're in right now. We have leaders in politics, celebrities, pro athletes that are in fact very selfish. The world has become very self-centered. It's become very me, I, I focus on the self. People have lost.

Wylie McGraw

touch with faith, they've lost touch with something greater than themselves. And then we are trying to popcorn the people that actually are still focused on what we just talked about, which is that selflessness. We're trying to put them into these leadership positions to combat the dysfunction that has plagued people at the top. And that's what I see relentlessly is the problem, especially from the industries of personal development, all the way to politics, you know, et cetera.

Srini Rao

Well, I'm so glad that you brought up how that relates to personal development in particular, because the sense I got from just reading about you and the research that I did and kind of all of it was that you were not the rah rah, I'm going to make you feel good person, which is exactly why I wanted to talk to you. Cause it sounded to me, it's like, this is a guy who doesn't like fill your head with feel good fluffer. It's like no bullshit personal development. Like I, cause I remember I had a mentor who

rode my ass like he was really hard on me. It was funny because he spoke at it. We held an event and everybody was like, Oh, it must be so inspiring to like work with him every week. I was like, you're fucking kidding me. I'm like, literally every week. I hate talking to this guy. I'm granted like, I realized what he was doing is he kept preparing me for higher and higher stakes situations as hard as he was on me. Now 10 years later, I'm like, I get it. So talk to me about how the combination of bull riding baseball and the military

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, yeah.

Srini Rao

have shaped your perspective on all of this. And then we'll start talking about like the framework that you have developed and then kind of how it relates to people, because I feel like personal development is like ripe with survivorship bias because we basically use outliers as role models and think, all right, if Elon sleeps, you know, two hours a week, I'm gonna sleep two hours a week and become Elon. It's like, no, you're not, he's fucking brilliant. And chances are you're probably not as brilliant as he is. Like, we don't wanna admit that.

Wylie McGraw

Thanks for watching!

Wylie McGraw

Uh huh.

Wylie McGraw

Oh.

Yeah. There are so many directions we can go with what you just said because my biggest, I have beef with the whole self-help personal development debacle because I think it keeps people in this never ending quest for conceptualized ideals rather than people actually getting to where they say they wanna go. And I feel...

Srini Rao

You know, so let's start there. There's a lot of ways we can go here.

Wylie McGraw

People are mimicking trying to be like these popular, famous figures because they are convinced that if they can do it, clearly there's a reason why it works, so if I can adopt those principles, those systems, those strategies, somehow it'll work for me. And then they get caught up with what I call is the self-help hell loop, where it's just an ongoing endless amount of investment from a financial, mental, emotional place.

They're chasing the idea of peak performance. They're chasing the idea of peace, chasing the idea of satisfaction, success, whatever labels we wanna give on it. And they're constantly basically reaffirming the wealth of those at the top. They keep paying into regurgitated concepts, regurgitated principles, people repackaging the same types of stuff they've been selling for the last 20 years. And everybody thinks it's just really good to hear it again. And they don't like.

the fact that they have to do something difficult, which is facing yourself, like you just talked about with your mentor. Your mentor was relentless with you, didn't give a crap about whether you liked him or not, didn't care about whether or not you appreciated or even valued what he was putting through. He just knew he needed to put you in positions and places that he felt were appropriate for you based on who you are, so that you can access your potential. You can accelerate your performance. You can experience more growth and success for who you are.

not based on copying or mimicking someone else. So I just wanted to throw that there because you brought that up. But I'll go back into it. It really comes down to the fact that my life experiences were just, I think my life experiences were my biggest mentors. To me, I never found myself following someone to learn about how to make a business or to learn what self-mastery is. It doesn't mean I didn't read certain types of books or maybe have conversations with therapists or different high level psychologists

Srini Rao

Hehehe

Wylie McGraw

go to different events just to kind of talk to people, the leaders that ask questions, understand why people are caught up in like going to seminars and masterminds relentlessly. When does it end? When do you guys actually take what you've learned the last 10 years and actually apply it the right way? Do you even know what it means to apply what these people are teaching you? Or does it just actually satiate the dopamine in your brain so that you feel high for the moment and then you just keep buying that drug? And as I got out of the military, I wanted to know-

who I was capable of becoming without stress, without pain, without any kind of, I would call them demons, within me and outside of me. How do I face the world now that I've done all of these life experiences and go out and do something great to serve my community even more? And I feel like what I realized is those life experiences, I'm not even gonna say I feel like it, I know it for a fact, those life experiences were my mentors, they were just experiences.

I actually really enjoyed military. I really enjoyed going to war. It sounds crazy, but it wasn't because of, you know, getting into gunfights or experiencing death. It was the camaraderie and the chaos, learning how to really operate in the most, I would say stressful of environments that any human being can be in. It was the ultimate competition that I found myself really enjoying. So I didn't necessarily deal with PTSD when I got out, but I understood the stresses you can carry from those environments, the things that can influence your performance. It can affect your...

your focus, your clarity of mind, your ability to be creative. I would use your term unmistakably creative when you know who you are without the demons that plague you. So I look back now and realize I built my business around a gift, a skill that I was brought into this world with that I carried and possessed my entire life. Going back to what you asked earlier in the conversation, brother, was I never fit in because I was never meant to fit in. I was always the guy that exposed people's flaws, their blind spots, their dysfunctions.

Everywhere I go, I erupt that. That's how my business has operated for the last 14 years is I've always been behind the scenes. I built it around the idea of focusing on getting in, optimizing, unfucking, accelerating, slaying demons and getting out of the way of these people so they can go out into the world and have the biggest impact and influence on the masses. It is not up to me to do that. My job is to get in and get out. So it's wrapped around the notion that I built the business around who I am.

Wylie McGraw

the fact that I live my life in a way that other people should be aspiring to themselves based on what they want for themselves. It's a matter of facing yourself, facing the demons that plague you, battling them head on, being willing to be stretched, pushed, and challenged outside of your control, not allowing yourself to try to control or direct your resources, but being fully vulnerable and surrendering into someone who actually cares about kicking your ass the right way.

making you experience the true eruptions of your stress and realizing that is what it's gonna take to truly apply the concepts and the information and all the different things you've learned over your life to really make it actualize in your experience to become a successful version of yourself. And it is sad for me because I watch leaders, I've been behind the scenes for 14 years. I'm gonna tell you right now, the people that are at the top leading others, selling to others, if you would see

what is really going on behind the curtains in their lives, you wouldn't spend another dime with these people. That's why, and I mean that in a very loving way, but that's why I get calls the way I get calls from publicists, from other PR people. I always am introduced, they're, hey, will you sit down and talk to so-and-so? Yes, I'll happily do that. They go, look, my wife hates me, my children don't respect me, I'm losing money constantly.

Srini Rao

Ha ha

Wylie McGraw

And then they go out on stages and they try to sell the world on how to have a great life and follow me and look what I've got going. That's why I tell people, don't follow me. I don't need a following. I don't want people to look at me. It's all about the fact that I get in. I can make sure that you actually know what it means to hit your maximum creative potential so you can experience sustainable income, sustainable performance, experience better relationships, better health. That is who I am and what I do for these powerful people, but I'll never expose who they are because I would tank their empires.

by telling the world, look at your favorite person and how their lives are not what they say they are when they're selling you their garbage. And at the end of the day, this is where I think we're having a very serious problem in our world. The world is burning because we have people that are not willing to look at their own shit, they're not willing to battle their own demons, but they're gonna go out in the world and they're gonna sell you another book, they're gonna sell you another program, they're gonna sell you another, it's like, why aren't we experiencing more people rising to the level of Tony Robbins?

Srini Rao

Thanks for watching!

Wylie McGraw

What more can he teach people after 46 years? But everybody keeps buying into that because it's a status, it's a feel good thing, and it's an idea, it's conceptualized, but people don't wanna do the real work, which is facing yourself and having someone relentlessly push you quickly through the ringer so you can get to where you say you wanna go and then turn around simultaneously, your impact and influence only exacerbates positively the people that you're here to change.

Srini Rao

Well, yeah, now I know I wanted to have you as a guest. I had a feeling that you would speak my language. I wanna bring back a clip from a conversation I had with this mentor and kind of look at this through your lens, so take a listen.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah.

Srini Rao

So that is one of those clips that I come back to over and over again, because I think that, you know, to your point earlier, right, the personal development world in my mind is notorious for selling as on the possible without taking into account the probable. And you know, as a part of that conversation, I remember him saying he was like, you know, he's like, could you and I make it to the Olympics? Is that possible? Yeah, he's like, is it probable? Unlikely. He's I was, you know, he's like, I was like, well, we could do curling.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah.

Srini Rao

And he's like, Yeah, you know, and like, you know, for example, I'll give the example that I've come back to hundreds of times, right? Let's say I hired you to coach me and I told you, well, you know what, I want to go to the NBA, you know what, I'm a scrawny fucking Indian, there's literally nothing that is going to get me to the NBA, you could put me through LeBron's workout routine, you could have me train with LeBron. And guess what, I am never playing NBA basketball. So, you know, the questions come to that, like, so the question that comes from that is like, how much of what

Wylie McGraw

Hahaha

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, exactly.

Srini Rao

your clients are able to accomplish as a result of, you know, some of what Greg is talking about, like what they are inherently born with. And the fact that they are them because I asked ran holiday this question once about his clients like who are superstar authors. And he was like, dude, I'm not the fucking alchemist. You know, he was like, these people probably would have sold millions of books without me. They just sold millions more. Yeah, because if you look at his clients, it's like Tim Ferriss, Robert Green, Tucker Max is like, Okay, well, you know, there's selection bias when you look at that.

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm.

Wylie McGraw

Hahahaha

Wylie McGraw

Right.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah. Yep.

Srini Rao

So talk to me about that because, you know, to your point, like, I feel like there's this vicious, you know, cycle of personal development. It sounds to me like your model is not one of dependency. It's like, ideally, you want to be done with somebody, you don't want them to be a client for life.

Wylie McGraw

No, number one, great clip because he says, and I'm gonna go start with this, he says creating a safe space that allows us to be, it's almost like unconditionally vulnerable in a way that we typically are not comfortable becoming. Human beings are really weird when it comes to allowing themselves to be fully seen. You wanna talk about stripping down naked. Number one, that's why the privacy and the confidentiality that I...

adhered to at all costs for the types of clientele that I work with sticks. I have foregone interviews with Rolling Stone and other people because I will not give them the names of the people I've worked with to quote, give credibility to where credibility is apparently due. I think that's the other problem in our world is everybody's so hyper exposed, nobody feels the uniqueness of being a mystery. They think it's almost dangerous when you are not someone willing to name drop for the sake of them feeling good about whether or not they should work with you, connect with you or hire you, et cetera.

And I found that to be a challenge, but I like the challenge in itself anyway, because it really does matter with the nature of the efficacy of my work. Number two, these are people who are high achievers. They are, again, the celebrities, the pro athletes, CEOs, the entrepreneur. It doesn't matter what their industry or title is. I work with anybody who is in a position who says, look, I've done everything that I possibly can to know thyself, to optimize my life, to really experience peace.

and satisfaction with my success, but I am burned out, I'm fried, I'm still suffering in silence. I go home at night and I don't know why something still feels like it's missing. I have worked with Tony, I've worked with Brendan, I've worked with all these guys, I've done all of this. I've spent millions of dollars on personal development. I've gone to the limits. I've worked with Jocko Willinks and all the other kind of guys. I've done all these really cool things. What is still going on? Those are the people that call me and say, you know what, I need someone who actually can get into the

trenches, the nuanced areas of my life that I am not even aware of that are afflicting me and my ability to actually experience balance, peace, satisfaction with what it is that I'm able to create and accumulate. Now people think money, notoriety, and fame are success. They think those are the standard or bearers of what it means to be someone important and at the end of the day, I say no whether or not they are just byproducts of your accumulation capacity, your ability to

Wylie McGraw

achieve something, who you are actually influences or fuels your capacity. It changes based on your ability to be vulnerable, going back to that safe space. I love that clip because people then try to define what safe means to them. If it is uncomfortable, if it is ugly, if it doesn't sound like everybody else, if it comes across as different, it must be a threat to me. So I must push it away. I must just lean into where everybody else is going because that feels right. That seems good. That...

sounds appropriate. So I'm gonna avoid the thing that really does rattle my soul because I don't know if that's going to hurt me or not, even though maybe my friend introduced me to that person or I heard them on a podcast or I saw them in the news, that human element of fear kicks in and goes, whoa, I gotta stay away from that. And I say, those are your demons basically talking to you.

making you feel incorrectly, making you think inappropriately, and you are often missing out on great opportunities to truly transform your life from the inside out, whereas you're gonna spend the next 10, 23 years going to therapy, if I hire another coach, always feeling like you're just chasing that space that you truly feel you should belong in and should be in. And that's why unconditional vulnerability is required for you to truly experience real acceleration in who you are. It's...

where all the different areas of your life actually can be tapped into to truly optimize your focus, your clarity of mind, your intuition, your ability to be more connected in your faith, your spirituality, all aspects of the human experience can be fully optimized if you're willing to be unconditionally vulnerable, naked, stripped down, where you let go of control. And here's what my life's experienced with is, I've worked and been around people

that are at the top of their game who refused to surrender control of their resources. They like to hire, a lot of powerful people like to hire those they can control, the yes men. They like to make it seem like they're hiring the coach, the guru that makes them better. But in reality is if you look at the relationship dynamic between them, that coach, that guru allows their client to dictate what it is that they're going to do, where they're going to go. It doesn't happen with me. If you wanna know what it means to be truly your best, you wanna know what your.

Wylie McGraw

fully capable of, we're gonna go into places you didn't even think you needed to go, because I guarantee your lack of being able to make that extra million, 10 million, billion, whatever it is, it's not coming from your lack of systems or lack of approach or lack of organizing your schedule. It's probably coming from a dynamic in your life that you are afraid to look at or you have not addressed or that your other coaches are just unwilling to actually go to. And that's the difference in being real, it's real vulnerability versus what's a manufactured vulnerability that's sold.

to people in the personal development space. I do not like the word self-help because nobody, not one human being on this planet has ever accomplished, achieved, or succeeded by themselves all dependent on themselves. And I hate hearing self-help because it's like, you didn't do that shit by yourself. You had someone in your corner constantly doing something with and for you, often needing to carry you a certain level, but we like to sell it. We like to write the books. We like to write our websites and say,

I went into the deep work. I went into the, you know, swimming in the oceans and the meditations and nobody really wants to tell the truth. I'm like, I had somebody literally make me go into dark places that I didn't wanna go because they're afraid of how the people will look at them. Say, oh, you had to do all that kind of stuff. So why should I buy from you? Not realizing, you know what? Maybe that actually would be more authentic. If people knew I'm willing to do really hard work to better myself so I can help better you.

Srini Rao

Yeah, there's so many things that come to mind as you're saying that. The other thing I wonder about, you mentioned the vulnerability. The part of that clip that I think also really stood out to me was probability, right? I brought up the LeBron James example earlier. And I think that what I find consistently is that the personal development industry as a whole is sort of notorious for selling us on false hopes. And

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm.

Wylie McGraw

Mm-hmm. Yes, yes.

Wylie McGraw

Yes.

Srini Rao

unrealistic dreams and goals, which causes people to do stupid shit, like sit around and make a vision board and stare at it thinking that, you know, I'm going to basically manifest all this shit. And it's like, no, I'm like, this is, you know, like, I always like affirmations become mental masturbation at a certain point. Like I remember, like the conclusion I draw from all my work with Greg, I came out into like one simple short essay was that, you know, what you want to hear feels good, what you need to hear is better, even though it may not feel good in the moment.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, it does nothing.

Mm-hmm.

Wylie McGraw

Yes.

Wylie McGraw

Hmm. And it hurts. It really will hurt, but how else are you gonna shake something to the core to actually bring it to the surface? You've got to actually be, you have to get offended. I mean, you've got to see the, it's like, I have zero problems saying, doing, et cetera, to whatever, whoever wants it, because I know what is, what's going to happen when they are willing to, and that's why it's like getting into the trenches and being by their side as like, basically their battle buddy going through it.

is part of even the work that I do too, is like I live with and travel with them 24 seven, they've got access to me. I'm right by their side as we're going through every aspect of where their life is not being optimized so they can experience that acceleration. And then when we're done, we're done, I'm out of your way. There's no more for you to try to tap into after that. We get to a point where you actually end up going, okay, this is where I really wanted to be. This is who I really was supposed to tap into. I'm finding that a lot of people that are doing these careers.

are doing them based on family dynamics, what they were expected to do, what they thought was cool. A lot of the clients I've worked with go, you know what, I never really wanted to be doing this for 30 years. My creative side wanted to be doing this over here. And it's like, nobody ever actually forced me, shoved my nose in my proverbial shit, so I can see what it is that has kept me from actually doing what would make me happy. And that's where I think we have a lot of people in positions of power and influence that are unfortunately falsifying what it means to be

successful, like you just said, the probability, it's like not everybody is supposed to be a millionaire, but everybody is striving to be a millionaire, why? Why do you feel like you should be a millionaire? And that's why we see these cringe-worthy TikTok and YouTube videos where everybody thinks that they're just a superstar because they can go viral for one video. It's like not everyone is meant to be a Jeff Bezos, not everyone is meant to be an Elon Musk, not everyone is meant to be you. So at the end of the day, the probability aspect is not being talked about,

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Wylie McGraw

possibility, sell them on the possibility, guess what that does? It keeps those at the top rich and it really fulfills their desire to make their bottom line grow because they know people will just keep buying into their stuff. And here's what I've seen working. I have a unique ability to know these truths because I've been behind the scenes with a lot of these people. I've seen inner workings of some of the biggest people in personal development. Is they, some of them are laughing at people going, look at these people just giving us their money, hand over fist, raking in millions of dollars.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Wylie McGraw

in online launches, product launches, courses, et cetera. It's like, just buy that next course, just buy the next book, just keep buying my next program, come to my next seminar, come to my mastermind year in and year out, keep spending 25 grand a year, you're gonna get something new next time, and it's just never ending, relentless bombardment of promises after promise. And then the other thing is, a lot of people, I love the approach, is you have to apply to work with me. I'm an elite coach, you have to apply. They're gonna accept you.

That's just a tactic. That's a selling tactic. We're gonna, you know why? Because they want your damn money. And at the end of the day, it's like, if you're not out in the world doing stuff because you truly care about transforming those human beings and getting them the support they need, and you're actually in it truly for the money, they're gonna sell you on the concept of helping you while they're focused on their bottom line. That's why how many coaches out there, if you ever heard people go, I hired him, he didn't give me anything, but I asked for my money back and they told me, sorry, I get paid for my time. It's like, well, why?

Srini Rao

Hahaha

Wylie McGraw

Why did you keep that money if you didn't give that person the result? To me, that's unacceptable. And that's why it's like part of the dynamic of working with these people that I have is the money they invest to have me in their life is reutilized in the dynamic as part of the transformational process. Money is not the end goal for me. The leader having the biggest influence that helps humanity is the end goal for me. And I will sacrifice and go through whatever I need to, to make sure that those people who want to know what it means to experience abundant

Peace, satisfaction in their lives with their successes is accomplished at all costs. The probability of you experiencing peace is 100% if you're willing to do the hard work, not the work that seems hard on the surface, but in fact is just another lollipop that they hand you to satiate you or pacify you so that you can keep spending your money with them.

Srini Rao

I appreciate this so much. Like you're speaking my language. Like I actually did, I've alluded to this before. I started writing a book titled, Everybody is Full of Shit Including Me. That was about the role of cognitive bias in personal development. Because like I realized this at a certain point when I was talking to one of our former listeners, our former guests who had done some work with me and I'd been giving her all this like productivity shit. I was like, wait a minute. And one of my friends called me and he's like, you don't know your audience. I was like, what do you mean I don't know my audience? And...

Wylie McGraw

Nice. Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Mmm.

Srini Rao

then I realized like I was like, I'm giving you all this life hack productivity bullshit from the perspective of a single guy, you're a mom with two infants. I was like, Oh my god, I'm like, this is nonsensical advice. Like you basically couldn't follow the Tim Ferriss playbook. And now that I have a 10 month old nephew, I've seen firsthand how unrealistic that is for a parent. But you know, I think that you brought up that this is a sort of you know, darker side of things. But one thing that you

Wylie McGraw

Mmm.

Wylie McGraw

Right.

Srini Rao

I can't tell you the number of people who have come to this show, who talk about the fact that you know, money isn't going to give you all the things that you think it will and I guarantee you, like, probably 80% of our listeners are like, yeah, that's easy to say when you have the money, right? Like somebody is thinking that somebody is thinking I guarantee you. And Sunil Gupta and I talked about this recently, he called it, you know, the arrival fallacy, where we have this idea that we're going to achieve this goal. And it's going to fill

Wylie McGraw

Uh huh, yeah. Yep.

Wylie McGraw

Yep.

Srini Rao

some sort of inner void that we're feeling. And you actually alluded to it at the beginning of our conversation when you talked about, you know, why you were playing baseball and this sort of like need to meet the expectations of other people. I grew up in Indian in the Indian culture, that's very, very persuasive, pervasive in the culture that I grew up in is this like need to be validated by your parents and like, there's part of me that still feels that and I remember like, I was walking through Central Park with Jonathan Fields. And I remember turning, it's like,

Wylie McGraw

Void. Yep.

Wylie McGraw

Yes. Yes it is.

Wylie McGraw

right?

Srini Rao

now my parents maybe won't think I'm just fucking around on the internet now that I got a book deal. And the irony of that was that it didn't make a damn bit of difference from their perspective or mine. Like I'm still the idiot who refuses to put the cap on the toothpaste to my mom. Like it's like, so what you published a book, which honestly is a good thing. Now in retrospect, I realized that because that's just your ego at work. But talk to me about that whole like, why are we so

Wylie McGraw

hahahaha

Wylie McGraw

Right, right.

Wylie McGraw

Right. Yeah.

Wylie McGraw

Wow.

Srini Rao

caught up in the arrival fallacy, even though we know it, we hear it, and yet we relentlessly pursue this like, you know, I've made it moment because I remember john Lee DuMose asked this question on the show, have you ever had an I've made it moment? And I told him, I was like, john, the minute you think you've had an I've made it moment, that's when you're done.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, why are we focused on I made it? What is, it's almost like life is not, you know what the end goal is, is when you die and you go meet your maker. I think that's where we really experience the transformation in our lives. I think the idea that this I made it moment is what people are getting caught up in. It's they're too focused on what the future might be rather than being present in the moment of what's going on in their lives and trying to maximize the day that they're actually experiencing.

We're too busy projecting what we want. Everybody, again, you read these books, you see these podcasts, you listen to these podcasts, see these shows that constantly talk about plan for the future, prepare for the future. So I think we are, as this unique, weird species, we are constantly almost like screwing ourselves by convincing ourselves that we need to plan for the future but we need to be present. But we need to try to mimic and copy everybody else, but at the same time, we gotta be unique and individual. So it's like weirdly, it's almost like

misconstrued and perverted where people are, they don't know what to do or how to do it. So what do we end up doing in that moment? We end up trying to look to other people and see how they've done it. And we go, oh, let me just follow their steps. Let me just copy and paste what they did. And I think that goes back to when we're kids, you know, we're babies zero to six. I think that's our mimicking stage where we're watching the world around us, our parents, and we're mimicking the environment so we can learn about the environment. But I don't think we've evolved.

as far as we think we have when it comes to that whole mimicking aspect where we, I call it copy and paste method where, you know, either you go into these fields of help, helping others where you just follow rote steps and systems, because hopefully that will take you to the place where you feel satisfied. But then you never feel satisfied. So you keep following that same kind of protocol. And then you look back in your life and you get pissed off and you're irritated going, why 20 years later, am I not happy? Am I unfulfilled? Do I still have this void inside?

and we keep chasing something that can fulfill it, which is I think where then addictions are born, when people have addictions and different things, it can be good stuff, bad stuff, whatever, is we're constantly trying to figure out those tools that can satiate this space within us, because we are so, I think we've come to secular, I think we depend on too much of the self, too much of the ego, and we are overwhelming ourselves, and we are beating ourselves up. We're almost doing our parents' job for us, you know? It's almost like,

Wylie McGraw 

You just said about your parents that I wrote a book and they didn't care. It's the same thing. It's like my dad wanted me to be a baseball player when I became a quote entrepreneur, did this work. It doesn't matter if I had a high six figure year or a low seven figure year. None of that mattered. Nobody cared because it was what they thought I should have been. So why am I worried about that? When I've experienced every day, no matter how much money I make, no matter where I go or who I work with, I get to wake up and experience satisfaction with who I am. I have peace in my life.

I get to go out into the world and kind of do what it is that fulfills me, even though I'm human and I might have human experiences and emotions, I know how to manage them, I know how to utilize them as an asset rather than them affecting or inflicting my life and making me succumb to the lower denomination of society's conflict energy. I feel that is the biggest problem is people are too trapped in this idea that they are a never ending work in progress.

and until they actually are able to do what really matters, which is looking at themselves and going, you know what, what about my life? What about who I've become? Where have I not gone, done, looked at that still needs to be addressed, that my therapist, my other coaches, that I'm not even truly understanding. What is it I need to do to experience those resolutions first? Because I guarantee in my experience,

When you're willing to face those things, the void that you're feeling will be filled on its own naturally with other things outside of yourself. You'll start to realize that money doesn't really make the void go away. That fulfillment within, that peace that you can experience, that does in fact make a void go away. So we're chasing the wrong thing. I think people need to do more work to find peace rather than to make money.

Srini Rao 

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, as with regards to the whole book thing, like I even wrote about it in the book, I realized I was like, this has nothing to do with my parents. They're actually perfectly good with this. And I realized this is all about me and my own like, you know, fragile ego about this whole thing.

Wylie McGraw

Yeah, I'm gonna go say one thing. You popped into my head right now. You brought up your audience. You're like 80% of your audience will say, yeah, that's easy to say when you have the money. I'm over here struggling. It's like right there, right there. That mindset is exactly why you're gonna continue to struggle. If you keep looking outward and allowing that victim energy, that victim mindset to basically be the dominant focus, you're gonna keep having that type of attitude.

rather than listening to someone talk about, again, I was a combat veteran, got in the military, I didn't have money for a long time. How do you get to the place of eventually having a, I did okay for myself for the last 14 years. Why was I able to do okay for myself? Because in the moments of hardship and adversity, in the moments of sleeping in my truck, in the moments of looking for ways to make a little bit of money so I can continue to progress down the road as a man who's developing, building and growing.

post-military, I allowed myself to find the blessings in the adversity, in the chaos, in the uncomfortable moments, because I knew that nothing is going to change when I do have some success if I can appreciate these moments too. And I think that's where human beings are. They think that adversity and hardship is negative, it's bad, so they avoid it at all costs. They only want things that actually sound good, feel good, or look like blessings because it doesn't...

cause any kind of discomfort inside them. I think when we can get people to value adversity and moments of being broke and being stressed and realize there's so much good that can come from these experiences, if you can learn how to change your mindset, you'll find how much quicker you can actually get to the goal of having those blessings, like more money, more opportunity, better relationships, your health will improve, if we can get people to appreciate the hardships and the adversity that we face as human beings.

Srini Rao (01:05:56.698)

Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that so much because I think that one of the other sort of common themes that like we've seen is people are addicted to feeling good. They're like, want to be on cloud nine all the time, which is in my mind. I was like, that's it's impossible. And it's ludicrous. Like you see these, you know, people on Instagram, like, you know, look like they're living the life and like they're basically got these shrines for, you know, for religions that they know nothing about.

Wylie McGraw 

Yes. Yeah, it's impossible.

It is. Uh-huh.

Wylie McGraw

Right, right. Yeah. I get it. Yeah.

Srini Rao 

And as an Indian person, I find this really ridiculous. Like, I'm not offended by it. Like, I think it's amusing. And I'm always just like, okay, this is absolutely insane.

Wylie McGraw

Well, I get it. I mean, I get it. Do people use the cross the same way? There's always like, it's, it's unfortunate. It's like, I worked with this, this gal, this A-lister in Hollywood years ago because someone we mutually knew. And she was like on the surface, everybody's like, look at her. Oh my gosh. She's growing in her success and becoming this thing. And when we got together and it's like, I had a completely different version of her. I saw your Instagram and all the things you have. This is, this is definitely, she goes, I know.

She's like, I'm miserable. The pressures of the limelight, the expectations of all my, the sponsorships in the studios and everything she had to do, we're literally breaking her soul. She goes, and I've never had anybody really mentor me or show me how to handle and manage this type of success before. I mean, she was pursuing psychedelics on a very, very detrimental basis with a point where I finally pulled her back and she was like this disheveled version of herself and going, I don't know where I need to go.

I just keep putting on a fake smile for the cameras. And back here in my life, I'm crumbling constantly. And I've had people say I need to go to rehab and people tell me that I need to work with these coaches and this therapist, because they're celebrity coaches, they're celebrity gurus. And it's like, none of them make me feel good or safe to truly be vulnerable. She's like, so that's why, no matter how much you basically put it in my face and you are relentless with me, she goes, I still feel like finally someone I can lean into who doesn't care about the limelight, who doesn't care about the spotlight.

stripping away all of this idealized version of what it means to be great and successful, getting down to the nuts and bolts of who I am as a person and allowing me to be completely open so that I can experience what it is that I've actually chased this success for from the first place, which I wanted, she thought if I become successful, I make millions of dollars doing what I'm doing here, I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna fill that void. And she goes and nothing filled the void. And after we got done doing our work together, she was like, now I understand.

who I am and it changed her creative approach to her work and it allowed her to start actually determining which job she took, which one she didn't have to take. She stopped sacrificing herself for roles. She stopped sacrificing her sanity for, you know, people's other needs, et cetera. And she found more balance in her life. And that's, I think the thing that's missing with people is we get wrapped up in this notion that...

Wylie McGraw (01:08:51.282)

something outside of us is going to fulfill that when the fact is it's within us and we have to be willing to face that version of ourselves that most people are very uncomfortable with. A lot of powerful people are very uncomfortable with it. They don't wanna be shown what's really plaguing them. They want things to just seem a certain way and some of them are okay with that. But there are people that are listening, there are people out there going, I'm not, and I need to find someone. It doesn't matter if it's me, you, find someone who will not.

be a yes man who can get into the trenches and fight this with you by your side in a way that you've never experienced because I'm telling you, you'll know what it means to find peace if you're willing to be that vulnerable and that real and get into embracing discomfort as a good thing. Yeah, we hear that all the time, it's cliche, but yeah, I just wanted to say it again.

Srini Rao

Well, you know, I feel like I could talk to you all day because this is such a deep sort of rabbit hole of human behavior. I am, you know, and I like it's funny because I was thinking to myself, I'm like, OK, I appreciate the fact that like this is one of those conversations where like I'm going to walk away with this with more questions than answers, which I think is a good sign. Because I think that that's you know, people like you said earlier, they want the formula, they want the prescription. I mean, that was like my entire first book was about it was like problem with the prescription of formula is there's one variable that throws it off every single time look in the mirror.

Wylie McGraw 

Exactly, and nobody wants to look in the mirror. And then if they look in the mirror, they tell themselves everything is great. These leaders, these public figures all go, everything's great. They bullshit themselves. They have created a culture of BS. And everybody goes, look how great everything is in the surface of my life. And the reality is they're just miserable behind the scenes. They crumble at the first sign of adversity. Anything that challenges what they have perceived to be good and righteous in their life, it's like if it's not something they can control, it crumbles them. And then it's like,

They avoid you, they go away from you. And they get into their own little, what do they call that? Their own bubble, their own vacuum. So anyway, it's just unfortunate because, and then it's sad for me because I see people in positions of power and influence, they're the biggest culprits to that. And we've got to change that paradigm.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I have so appreciated having this conversation. This has been one of my favorite interviews all year. Like I, this is like one of the most refreshing conversations I've had in such a long time when it comes to all of this stuff. So I want to finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Wylie McGraw 

Right on, brother. Yes.

Wylie McGraw

What do I think it is that makes someone or somebody, something or someone unmistakable? I think humility and an ability to truly be who you are, no matter what you face, no matter where you're at, not willing to sacrifice your own standards, your own values, your own morals for the sake of popularity, monetary support, et cetera. I think that's what makes someone very unmistakable is they are our...

unabashedly unafraid to truly be the weirdo and the different one, and they're willing to stand that ground at all costs, and they're willing to die on that battlefield. I think that's what makes them unmistakable.

Srini Rao Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with evolutionists. Where can people find out more about you, your work, and everything else?

Wylie McGraw 

Well, brother, absolute honor and pleasure to be here with you as well. WileyMcGraw.com is a website we put together after the pandemic started. I had no digital presence. So all of that has philosophies, insights, videos, if people wanna check out a little bit more about what we just talked about. I jumped on Twitter as well at Wiley McGrath. We're having great conversations with other people like you. And I started a podcast called Wise Words and Whiskey with Wiley McGrath. We're kind of seeing where that goes too.

Srini Rao

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.