Reveal Your Inner Stuntman with John Davis

00:00 In this episode of the Team Super Dad podcast, I chat with sword fighting comedian stuntman and three-time husband mindset master John Davis. This guy was too perfect. Role theme. Welcome to Team Super Dad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time, more money, more fun. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad. Hey, dads, family, friends, members around the world. Welcome to the Team Super Dad podcast. It is great to have you back. This is one of our Wis. This is one of our interview, chit-chat, conversational episodes.

00:44 And today, I've got a guy on called John Davis, who I won't tell you too much about because it happens at the intro of our conversation. But he's too perfect. He's simply too perfect. And he looks a bit like Don DeLouise, who was captain USA in the cannonball run. So we had quite a laugh chatting about that beforehand. I love my 80s, 90s movies reference. If you are familiar with Team Super Dad, then you will know that we are helping dads create their best lives ever, working in the F5, which is Focus, Fitness, Finance, Family, and Fun. And depending on when you're listening to this, we are about to start the next focused and happy dad challenge.

01:26 This is our free five-day challenge that we do. It is an intro into the Hero Academy and our paid programs, but it's also a complete piece of work where you will really get to reconnect with what you want for your life to have some breakthroughs in your levels of fun and communication with your loved ones. Really just a time to check in, to feel great about yourself and to put a smile back on your face and to those that matter the most to you. It's totally free. So come on over to teamsuperdad.com forward slash happy dad and either register for an upcoming one or get ready to start next week.

02:07 As always, if you enjoy this podcast, please share it, like it, comment on it, pass it around and let's get as many new members into the Team Super Dad community over on Facebook. And you can go to the teamsuperdad.com and get a free link, which if you go to start here, you'll get a link to the podcast, a link to the Facebook group. You'll basically get everything you need. So head on over there. And as always, let's get on with the show. John Davis, it's a great conversation. I can't wait for you to have as much fun listening as I did recording. Catch you later.

02:48 Welcome, welcome. It's great to have you all here. And as you can see, if you're watching the live, we are joined today by John Davis, a friend from America. And I say friend because we've just been chatting and now I feel like we're friends. Absolutely. Thank you. Like I said, though, in the intro, a stuntman, a comedian, and a guy who's got a program all about your inner action hero. This is a match made in heaven. I'm so glad to have you on the show today. How are you, John? I'm doing great. I'm a little cold here in Akron, Ohio. So that's like Midwest sort of area, not far from, well, a few hundred miles from Chicago, I think, where my family are.

03:33 Well, yeah, a few hundred miles. And today we're having our, I believe it's our 20th snowstorm of the season. Okay. I know from Chicago, they've got the coldest snap and the most snow since 2005 or something. Yeah, tomorrow we're supposed to have a low of negative six Fahrenheit. For our Celsius friends, that includes me. That just means really cold, basically. Right, right, right, right. Really, really cold. That means I'm staying inside tomorrow. Blimey. Well, you can hardly call the snow we've had in the UK any comparison, but it is a little bit of snow outside.

04:16 So that's nice to have. So anyone that knows me well knows that as far as my movie passions go, it's basically action films, comedies, and maybe a bit of sci-fi, but not on the heavy sci-fi. No rom-coms? What are you talking about? Oh, the rom-coms, yeah, totally. That goes really in there. Basically safe. I like to get to the end of the movie and be smiling. There you go. There you go. As long as you're smiling at the end, right? Yeah, absolutely. Feel good. Disney, kind of happy ending, happily ever after. John Hughes, obviously, I'm a child of the 80s. Definitely no horror films. Yeah, I'm not a horror film person either. I define.

05:00 find they get lazy on their scripting myself. It just scares me, basically. But tell it, obviously. Oh, but before we get into that, you're a need to introduce ourselves properly. Just go for that. Give us your introduction and then we'll ask you about your dad life as well. All right. Well, I am John Davis, the corporate action hero, comedy stuntman, fight director, college professor, theme park director, and guy who is the proud father of a 17-year-old kid who is giving me whole new lessons in hormones. Well, I've got that with a nine and 11-year-old, a nine-year-old girl, an 11-year-old boy.

05:43 Of course, didn't occur to me that they would have puberty at the same time. But that's what's happening. Good luck to you, my son. But thankfully, and I take this as basically inspiration, particularly from my American family and my relationship with my folks. A real endeavor to stay as close and not just be friend, friend, you know, like stay as close as we possibly can, have as much fun together, talk a lot. And so that our relationship is close and real for as long as we can

06:24 through each stage of their lives. Because it's really easy when they were little kids because they just run along behind and have fun. Now they've got views of their own. But I find each stage takes about six months to adjust. And then I've relearned them. I discovered that for me, it really took giving a lot of positive reinforcement because by giving as much positive reinforcement as I could, when I had to give a negative, it meant more. So my father used to say, you know, 1-0 crap wipes out a thousand out-a-boys, right? But you gotta give the thousand Ada boys because if you don't give the thousand, because right now, if my son messes up, I can literally go, excuse me, and everything stops.

07:06 Because he knows if I say, if I say excuse me like that, that means I'm not happy. And for the most of the time, I'm just telling him how great he is. So, no, I really hear that totally. I say to my kids, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let so much go, and then you're gonna, and then you're gonna hit my line. And like, at that line, I am strict as hell, right? Right. And there's also also an accountability factor with my with all the COVID-19 and virtual schooling. Um, I found that I had to look at the at his schooling from the aspect of I need to make sure he's on top of this. So I go into his online classes and I look at his grades and what he's doing and what he has and hasn't done.

07:49 Yeah, I stay right on top of it. And I tell him flat out: I said, I'm doing this. I need you to know that I'm here to make sure that you get this right. And he's totally appreciative. We totally have open communication about that. And it's funny because me, I'm a theater dad. I'm an actor. I'm a very artistic person. He is a complete engineer-minded person with extreme skills in mathematics. And it's at a point now where he actually mocks me for my bad math. So we have a great kind of fun relationship back in the day. That's brilliant. The yin and the yang. That must be you'll be great on a desert island or something like that.

08:28 Yeah, right, right. Exactly. And before we get into all the other stuff, I'm just touching on your marriage life, John. How many times have you been married? Well, they call me Triple X because I have three of them. And don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing. I learned a lot in those marriages. One of the things that I learned in every one of them was that I need to make sure that I remain who I am rather than giving myself up for somebody else. And when I was going in, they would have great expectations. It's a matter of loving unconditionally or conditionally.

09:08 I was loving unconditionally and they had a lot of conditions. So in the end of the end of those relationships, I'm actually better off now because after all three of those, I'm now a much more rounded person. And, you know, if I ever get into another relationship again, which I'm not looking for that, but I'm going to make sure that the whoever I get involved with loves me for me rather than what they want me to be. Yeah. Yeah. And I know for myself, I have a quite a poor track record in terms of success. So I now have a fairly committed committee of people who I've had to promise that they will be allowed to vet any future serious relationship.

09:53 That's well, that's good. good that's good that you've got that that that firewall there to protect you yeah but here's a good question for you is do you did and you can tell me to naff off if you want but was there a point in those marriages where you feel like you could have left sooner and it would have been better for you oh oh yeah oh yeah my my my last marriage uh was a very interesting one and i discovered very quickly that i was was literally just being used for my skills in fact she used to tell people they'd say well how's it what's your husband like and she would say he's useful right and i and i was uh taking care of her her mentally ill aunt and i was doing all while she was on the road working right

10:42 so it turned out that i was literally just the one who was picking up the slack for her and that went on for five years and and you know i could have easily left that the first my first wife um she was severely bipolar and i you know i'm i'm one of those guys that when i when i speak that oath i mean it and i'm gonna stick with it and so uh we were going through some very serious um mental issues and i was in it for the long haul no matter what because that's my word is good um and you know when that finally when she left me i was i was like oh

11:22 thank god you know i don't have to do that anymore yeah and my second my second wife the one who is the the mother of my child um if i was going to say anything she was the love of that part of my life for many many years she was we were together for a long time and um she um she had some some things where in her past her she had some control issues and so there was a lot of controlling issues that that made her constantly look for reinforcement and she would miss she would mistake um

12:01 reinforcement for um um what's infatuation so she would look outside the marriage and find things to be infatuated about and so being in that one for as long as i was you know i could have seen some of that we were both of us by the end of that marriage were very depressed yeah yeah and that's that's that's a healthy uh awareness to have um and i you know when i'm working with with dads and i i'm really just sharing my experience and it it's okay that a marriage of course we gave our vows and of course it's important to be committed to them but i've come to realize as well that it's okay to consider that when that chapter reaches its end it's okay to to to close the book to move on to the to move on to the

12:49 next chapter you said it perfectly you we are all writing the the book of our life and the books are always filled with chapters and the the issue is we get to decide whether we're writing a comedy a tragedy an adventure story you know we get to look at that and and and decide what we're what we're creating into our experience the thing is is when you when you close a chapter your next chapter starts a new idea and a new direction and if your past wasn't a good chapter it's time to rewrite it towards a positive direction and when you look at it from a scientific uh my mindset sort of situation your your past is just um snapshots of present

13:29 moment memories right and your future is just a place where you said goals for your next present moment but your present moment is the only moment you're truly experiencing it's the only moment that you're truly active i mean you can't go to the store next thursday right now and you can't go to the store last thursday right now you can only go to the store right now so it's best to make this present moment the best it can be the issue that i see is that people sit in their present moment and they're focused on getting to somewhere else and the reality of it is that outcome that they're trying to get to that's over there doesn't you don't get to it it comes to you dependent upon what you do here and now you know it's moving towards you not you're not moving towards

14:09 it and so you need to make sure you're making small successful present moments so then those moments can stack behind you and create these successful moments behind you and then that future can come to you because that present moment is the only one you have to create anything yeah that's a really beautiful picture um small consistent actions building towards the future you you want to achieve right and uh and i know from from those relationship situations that to fall in love and to be in love and to have a child and to grow that family and to be in those goals together is brilliant but but when it's time if if you're not aligned anymore then don't drag each other down for five years

14:50 well you know and and i was raised catholic and yeah uh and i'm no longer catholic i consider myself spiritual not religious but my mother she she was so catholic she had her master's degree in liturgy and was head of liturgical doctrine at our church and she was in a marriage that you know spawned seven children thank god i was number six right and um at the end of her life she was she was depressed she wasn't wasn't happy and i was talking to her one day she said you know if i wasn't catholic i would have divorced him years ago you know now i'm grateful she didn't divorce him before i was born but but um

15:27 what a terrible what a terrible way to live her life yeah true and someone someone for myself as well i i'm brought up a christian consider myself now also spiritual i have i have a i have a christian based faith i'm all i'm all okay with god i'm okay with jesus being around some of the old testament i find a little bit questionable but you know i don't see inside of the bible or any religion where it says you must suffer right and like we are we are on this planet to have a blessed experience and i think too much of it got caught up in what suited society at a time and stay together and don't be on your

16:07 own and don't be a woman who's got kids with no husband like thankfully we're not in those times anymore absolutely you know it jesus you know the gospel john says god is love didn't say god is fearful judgment right god is waking up miserable and going to bed miserable and interestingly enough if you look at what jesus actually said he said it is your faith that heals you and you know um he washes disciples feet to show that he was no better than them he says greater works than i have done you will do now here's the thing that i always throw out when i talk spirituality and creating something new into your life jesus said um whatever you ask in god's name is granted but if you jump back in the old testament you listen to what moses said after he talked to the burning bush the burning bush when he said what's your name the burning bush said i am so whatever you're saying after i am is

17:01 asking for asking god in his name for something so i i live my life going i am blank what am i going to put after that so anything i'm putting after that is is literally what what's being created into my experience yeah creating possibility moment by moment now here's the here's it when i'm coaching someone here's the interesting part is i take words out of the vocabulary and the main words i take out are wanting needing hoping and trying because those words are completely inactive present moment words right yeah i am if you're asking i am wanting then god is going to lovingly give you wanting and that sucks right right

17:41 yeah true but if you're going i am creating i am enjoying i am living you know really creative vibrant dynamic words after your i am statement wow yeah what a great life you're going to live and i'm proof of it i mean i i have been in 30 countries around the world i laid in the in the sarcophagus of the great pyramid of giza i climbed machu picchu i climbed um mount sinai i swam in the blue lagoons of iceland i've been all over the world and done everything i've ever wanted to do strictly because i said i am going to do it right now can i can i throw a big story at you yeah cool one second let me just say hi to the people that are messaging on the stuff thank you uh mark you can see there mark's going in hi

18:21 guys another one here no name but if you if you click on the stream yard.com forward slash facebook you will get uh your name shown in lights on the on the team superdad podcast uh if you're watching on the replay well you can see that if you're listening on the podcast then you just can't see nothing i hope you're not you're driving or something or cooking dinner but it's great to have you all here um feel free to share like comment and uh and spread the love across uh your your socials for team super dad thank you yes yes john tell us your big adventure well because there's so much to get into right right well stuntman comedian the the the the flipping uh i don't know the people you must know the place

19:01 you've been so brilliant i can't wait to hear some of this go through i want to tell this story because this story was the impetus for me doing all i did oh okay okay so when i was 22 years old i wanted to be a stuntman it was my goal i wanted to be a stuntman and i was doing stage combat and i was doing you know sword fights at renaissance festivals and and i was strong as an ox and just as buff as could possibly be what sort of year are we talking uh 22 so i'm 56 right now you do the math my son would do it for you but i'm he's not here so you were born like 60s you know 63 something like that 66. yeah um so okay so so early 80s you were early 80s you were starting out on your acting career yeah Pretty much, yeah.

19:46 So a friend of mine was a professional potter. He made beautiful pottery, called me up one day, knewing that I was a buff strong young lad. And he said, can you help me unload this clay from the back of my van? I said, sure. So I came over and the clay came in 80-pound boxes. And I climbed up in the back of his van. I picked up an 80-pound box of clay. And when I turned to set the box down, my upper body separated from my lower body and I collapsed and was paralyzed. They took me to the hospital. The doctor said, John, you have spina bifida occulta. I said, gesundite.

20:24 What the hell is that? And he said, well, when you were born, three of your vertebrae right above your pelvis didn't form properly. He says, when they, you know, when vertebrae form, they come around, they make a donut, and it looks like a donut with two hands praying, two flanges. And my hands basically missed on three of the vertebrae. So there were these three wonky vertebrae right above my pelvis. And when I turned with that extra 80 pounds weight that day, I basically unscrewed my upper spine from my lower spine. And I was paralyzed. And I ended up in the hospital. And the doctors were saying, you'll never be a stuntman. You'll never be a fight director. You'll never have a physical career. You better find something sedentary to do right now, which is death for someone with an actor's mindset like me.

21:09 Yeah. Yeah, performance mindset. So I was like, okay, I'm in this real depressed state because he's telling me my life is over at 22, pretty much. And someone came in and gave me a book called The Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee. And it's a book about his philosophy of martial arts. It's still the number one selling martial arts book in the world. Found out that Bruce wrote that book when he was in traction in the hospital right after a doctor told him that he would never do martial arts or lift weights again. Wow. And so I'm reading this book and I'm seeing this whole concept of mental flexibility, of keeping your mind in play, right?

21:52 Bruce would say, being like water. An obstacle comes up. The obstacle doesn't stop you. You work your way around it. You work your way through it, but you are like water. And so Bruce, after he wrote, he wrote that book while he's in traction. And Bruce went on to do every movie we know him from in the world. He was a famous actor in China as a kid, but the movies that we know him from, all the martial arts movies, and even Cato is a Green Hornet, all of that happened after he was in traction in the hospital. So I took that as my sign and I just started remaining flexible. Doctors wanted to put a pin in my back to make sure my back stayed solid.

22:34 And I refused the pin because I knew it wouldn't allow me to do a high fall or a roll. And so I refused the pin. And by taking present moment actions, by keeping exercising my back, working it out, continually doing the things I needed to do. I went on to do over 4,000 live comedy sword fighting shows. The shows were done in 16 countries around the world. I have jumped off of tall buildings and landed in pads. I have been on fire. I have done all kinds of crazy, crazy things in my life all after that, just by keeping that mindset. That took me into a study of mindset and how we achieve things.

23:18 And is that about painting the picture in your mind of like my body is whole, this is what I'm going to become, like a real innate, on the one level, an innate self-belief, but also really consciously imagining that thing coming together or that back healing. What was the access to that? That is absolutely part of it. But that visual can take over your life. And that visual that you have without present moment action is a daydream. It's not an actual action motion. Okay. So you have to make sure that you're not going, I am, you know, it's like, it's like, I'm a believer that affirmations don't work.

23:59 And I'll tell you why. People think of affirmations. And when I hear the word affirmation, I hear I'm shoring something up that isn't solid. I have to affirm it. I believe in declarations. I believe you declare it and you do it, period. Or as Yoda would say in Star Wars, do or do not. There is no try. You do what you have to do. Right. And so when I look at that, I set a goal and they're out there. I also completely understand that that goal is malleable. It can change at any given moment. But that change is my choice. I get to choose what I want in my life. So I stayed very present moment. What am I doing? I am blank. I am exercising my back.

24:44 I am taking a two-mile walk today. I am learning to do the next style of sword fighting. You know, I am. I am, I am, I am, am. By stacking these present moment, I am moments of success behind me. I did over 4,000 stun shows. And I can imagine that you had to be very real about those incremental steps. Yeah. Yeah. Not focusing on the, I'm going to be completely better and jumping off a building, but the incremental steps that were going to lead to that and celebrating each and every one of them. So if you're a morbidly obese person, you can sit here and you can say, I am a thin person, but you still can't see your shoes.

25:28 Yeah. Right. Right. Right. But you can look down and say, I am losing weight. I am walking that extra mile. I am, you know, doing the things that are keeping that goal. I am going to achieve that goal, but I am doing this because of that goal. I am here now living the present, the only moment I have, the only present moment I have. Yeah, yeah. And what have you, have you been in any movies that we might know or have you done on anything? Everyone wants to know about the famous stuff, don't they? I've done a lot of B movies. The biggest one I was in was a movie called California with Brad Pitt. He was a movie, yeah. He was a serial killer. I was a biker.

26:13 So you can find me in the bar scenes and outside the bar and stuff like that. Mostly what I do is technical stuff is I'm one of the guys behind the scenes teaching bull whips or quick draw or nunchucks or martial arts skills, Elizabethan sword play broadsword, stuff like that. I'm an expert in those skills. So I'm training actors usually. Oh, wow. So you can wield a lightsaber or a flipping giant metal kind of sword. One of my very good friends is actually a Jedi Knight. He's actually in one of the films as a Jedi Knight and has an action hero figure name made for him.

26:56 Joe Claude Dunva was his character name. Oh, wow. And how does a stunt man end up as a comedian? Because I'm a lover of comedy. I can't say I'm an aficionado. I can't reel off 50 different stand-up comics, but from my early youth, I think it's probably inappropriately young, but Richard Pryor and we touched on Robin Williams and obviously with my family connections in Chicago, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and my cousin Sheila.

27:37 She's in the stage shows and movies in Chicago. So I've always had a love of comedy. I don't like serious movies either. If I've paid my six bucks or whatever it costs now, I want to come out happy. I don't want to be sweaty and terrified and crying. That's funny. How did I get into comedy? It's very interesting. When I first got into acting, I was still a very young man and I was drug kicking and screaming to a Renaissance festival. And I'd never been to one in my life. And so I went to this Renaissance festival and the guy who took me was already very much into them.

28:20 And he said, well, we're going to go, but you're going to wear a costume. I was like, what? And he put me in a costume and I went to the festival and I was walking around all day and people were taking my picture because he put me in like full chain mail with a Viking helmet. And I'm a six foot one. At that point, I was 250 and muscular. So I look like a film. Yeah, and I look the part. Well, all day long, I was this big, intimidating character. And I started realizing that I could be a big, intimidating character, or I can be just a goofy, funny guy. So I started joking that I was Darien the barbarian. And I started playing at that.

29:02 And the more I played with that, the more I really fell in love with the idea of just making people laugh. And then I went on and I created Sir Cyril the Chickenhearted and all these characters that were sort of Monty Python-esque, really. And as I went on, I just started loving that idea of comedy. Then I started taking comedy sports, which started like with Second City and those guys in Chicago, the comedy sports setup. And then so I started doing live improv games and hanging out with comedians. comedians all the time. Next thing you know, I put together my comedy show, Hack and Slash, which was an iteration of several other comedy shows I had already done.

29:43 I had done live, and I was combining sword fighting and comedy because I wanted to do both. And so the Hack and Slash show went on to do shows all over the world, including we did over 100 shows on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan on USO tours. Oh, for the troops. All the way out. And we actually, we were in the Anbar province when they said, don't go. We, you know, we hit every Marine base in the Anbar province. They put loaded us into two helicopters, all of our equipment in one and us in the other. And they'd fly us out to these bases that are out in the middle of nowhere. And we'd perform sometimes for eight to ten guys. And, you know, sometimes we'd be on bases with thousands, but they were flying us all over that country.

30:24 And we did that for six tours, total six. Yeah, just helping those guys and girls get some release, just some get some laughter in themselves. Laughter, that's that is the tonic. A friend of mine, Pete Can, the laughter man, he's introduced me to laughter yoga. And blimey, we had we had a blast the other day doing a podcast. One of them is a favorite scene of mine from the Mary Poppins movie when they're all laughing and they're all stuck on the ceiling because they're laughing so much. And that's the whole thing. It's like we can choose laughter. Like we don't, we don't even have to, like right now, you and me can start laughing, right? I just imagine. And it would make us feel better. It's an amazing gift we have as humans to be able to lift our mood through laughter.

31:08 And you know, you know, mood, mood does determine how you feel in weight. It's like even the Beatles used to say, life is a drag or it's heavy when they were down, right? But, you know, it's, and I have friends who are professional mimes. And you know, you know, the old story, you know, if a mime is cutting down a tree in the forest and the tree falls backwards and hits the mime, does anyone care? Right. But what I found interesting is they're so in tune with their bodies that there was this man was named Pepe from Norway, and he comes over and he's doing this exercise workshop on physical body and how the body works. And he says, come here. He says, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give me a minute. I'm going to get into state and you come over here and try to lift me.

31:52 Now, I am a six foot one, 250, strong as an ox kind of guy. Pepe is a five foot three, 120 pound guy. And I walk over and I can't budge him. I can't lift him up. Now, I could, I was, I've lifted 200, 300-pound guys over me, right? And this, this is a guy, I can't lift him off the ground. He says, all right, let me do it again. So he changes, he recenters himself. I go over and I can pick him up almost not even closing my hands, just putting my hands under his elbows and lifting him. And it's like really easy lifting. The difference was in his first state, he was thinking of being a tree, focusing himself to the ground.

32:32 In the second state, he was thinking of himself being a bird. And so his mental state determined how heavy he was. So when you're in a depressed state, you literally hang. I remember we talked about the divorces. My first divorce, I was driving home from work and I was hanging on my steering wheel like this. And I suddenly had a thought because we were now divorced. She had moved out. And I'm just depressed. And suddenly I had a thought. I was like, she's not going to be home. And I was suddenly four inches taller. Yeah. Well, mindset is a trap for people who haven't mastered it yet.

33:10 And I, after my divorce, when I started Team Super Dad, there was very much a focus on single dads and helping single dads. And I've moved away from that for a couple of reasons. Number one is that it's not just about single dads creating the life of their dreams. Like I really realize now that my goals for my life are the same as they were when I was a kid, let alone before I was married or after I was married. It's it's it's fall in love, have the house, cure the future, holidays, children, laughter, fun. And it's about how do we create all those things? Because so often men presume that it's just going to happen. Right. And then they're upset that it hasn't, failing to realize that to be an expert in all those areas is going to take a lot.

33:55 And so Team Super Dad is about answering that question. The mindset. Go ahead. Well, mindset is just a pit. Because if it's okay, well, I'm not happy. Why am I not happy? Well, I'm not happy because I'm stuck in this in this marriage or this job or this. I've got a backache. Okay, right. So then you just, it's a downward spiral telling less and less people about what's written. How are you doing? Oh, I'm fine. Thanks. Telling less and less people about it. So you're getting no support. You're getting no positive uplift from yourself. And the story that's rattling around your head is like validation of things not going that well. well, right? So, and if you really look at it from an interesting perspective, a lot of that story that we're telling ourselves comes from other people telling us things in the past.

34:39 It's our subconscious mind. But the interesting thing is, our subconscious mind is the tool. It's a partner in our success, right? Because the way our subconscious mind works is when we consciously choose something, our subconscious mind kicks in to help us achieve it. And here's the proof of that. Good or bad. Right, right. Good or bad. Yeah, yeah. So, here, and here, here's just a little test for your audience that'll prove what I'm saying here. You know, if you've ever bought a car and you've chosen, you've chose what kind of car you wanted to buy or any big item, any item that you wanted to buy, you know, did you notice that after you chose it and before you bought it, that you started seeing that thing everywhere?

35:22 That car started, you drive down the road, and there's one of those cars, and there's one of those because your subconscious mind is kicking into what your conscious mind is creating, right? Now, if your subconscious mind is mired back here with parents who told you you couldn't because of their own depression era thought pattern, right? And all these things, what's happening is you're now there's a mire behind you, and your mindset gets stuck in the I can'ts. And, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about Christianity. Jesus said, Be born again. He didn't mean, you know, anything but set down your past junk, stay in your present moment, and start something new, right?

36:03 So, you know, I live in Akron, Ohio, which is a 30-minute drive to Cleveland, Ohio. If I commuted to work every day, I would probably pass a thousand cars on the road. And every day I might see an accident off to the side of the road. But tonight on the news, there's going to be an accident on the news because it's the anomaly. What should be on the news is that 999 cars made it safely to their destination without a problem. That's miraculous, right? So our world is predominantly positive. It's just a matter of what you're focused on. So if you're focused on I can't, I won't, I shouldn't, then you're not creating anything in your present moment positively, right?

36:47 Yeah. Your positive mind will give you exactly what you ask for, what you believe in. And if you believe, that's why negative people always have something to be negative about. Yeah. And then they moan about it. Right. And if you call them on it, guess what happens then? You call them on it. They go to the next person and point at you and say, look what they did to me. You become the next negative thing. He wouldn't even let me be miserable. Right, right. They wouldn't let me be miserable. That's funny. No, it's so true, though. It's so true. And I did a post the other day just about owning our language.

37:27 So I've just contributed to this book called Being Fine. And it's 18 short stories by men, their experience of hitting rock bottom and bouncing back. And the premise of the book being called Being Fine is, you know, how are you? I'm fine. Right. Not really being fine at all. And that is mindset as well. People need to catch themselves because if it's a constant lie, I'm fine, but I'm not really fine. Then you're associating being fine with misery. Right. With complete lack, with unhappiness, with scarcity. And then we, and that's how suicide happens. The comedian George Carlin had a whole bit on the word fine. Oh, really? Yeah. He said, he said, How are you?

38:11 Fine. Fine. No, you're not. He says, fine is a soft, kind of flabby word. I'm fine. How's your hair? Fine. I need to find that. What was the comedian called? George Carlin. He's long since dead, but he's bound to be on YouTube. Everything's on YouTube. He's the guy who did the seven words you can't say on TV or radio. His whole bit on that, too. Oh, okay. He says it at a high speed. I'm not going to say it on your show. Well, we do on the we on the Friday, we do the wrap-up. Okay. The wrap-up is full of, it definitely has the E on the on iTunes that it's full of swear words. So we're okay. Oh, yeah, our old comedians and stuff.

38:55 I love, I love, I love watching, watching comedy. We mentioned before, comedians in cars getting coffee with Jerry Seinfeld on Netflix. I flipping, love that. Just to get real with those people, seeing, first of all, how raw and natural comedians can be with their humor. It's like it's no wonder poor Robin Williams went mad. Their version of the world is wild, it's different to us. the thing I love about comedians in cars getting coffee is in amongst the chilled-out banter, there's just such hilarity, just such a genuine comedy between Seinbel and whoever he's talking to.

39:38 Yeah, they find the world funny. That's one of the things that I, that I, in my life, I've been very grateful for is I find the world funny. I laugh at everything, right? And one of the things we talked about the present moment thing is a lot of people they don't find their world funny. And when they mess up, they beat themselves up over it, right? And they go, I'm so dumb, I'm so dumb. That's why I went bald, right? Another one, right? And the reality of it is, is that even though I'm so, you know, I had that thought. Are you still there? You kind of came back. We came back. The reality of it is, is that in those moments,

40:19 instead of wasting that next present moment on beating yourself up, you should go, well, that was silly. Why did I do that? You know, because I'm creating something new, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I was just trying to fix why we went off there a second. No, that's fine. But you know what? Let's shift gears. I love that podcast expression, which means nothing really, except it's a nice way to segue between two topics. But I love your honor. All these experiences that you've had, you're now, you now, through the you've got your own F5 as well, because in Team Super Dad, they got the fitness, focus, finance, family, and fun.

41:03 John Davis has his awesome, how do you call your five? Five F's, the five F's. Fearlessly focus with faith, follow through with flexibility. Love that. So you take all of your, and this is before anyone thinks we're about to get into a shameless plug here. That's not the case. This work that you do inside of corporate companies is very much, and you're going to be able to put this much more eloquently, is very much about having people see their own powers inside of them, liberating teams to create new, you know, new, new futures, new next days, new, new projects.

41:41 And dads, you know, men can do this, not just in work, but in their families, in their social situations, in their romance. Like it really is about saying, hang on a minute, this isn't working and I can do something about it. So again, this is part of why I was so keen to have you on and great to have you here. Tell us more about how your program works for people and then we can talk about how dads can actually apply that in all areas of their life. Right. Well, it's cool because it is not just for corporation. It is for the individual as well. What this is based on is hacking your fight or flight response. We all have a natural primal fight or flight response, which stops us from achieving.

42:23 And basically, everything that comes into our life, we assess it as a threat or not. And we have natural physical responses that shut down, literally shut down our brain. If you ever watch those wildlife shows like National Geographic or something on television, there's always that one episode with that gazelle that's out there eating that kind of looks like this. Right. And then suddenly the predator cat hits the field. And the first thing the gazelle does is go, they gasp for air. They gasp for air. Well, whenever we get into a fear state ourselves, we have the same response. You know, you're a father. Did you ever see that time when one of your kids almost fell down and you went

43:05 because you saw him almost get hurt? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a natural fight or flight response. That's part of your natural, you know, primal instinct. And what's interesting is most people think when they're in a fear state, they can't breathe. They actually say it, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. Well, it's not that they can't breathe. It says their body is reserving air. Their lungs are full. And the reason their lungs are full is because they've taken a big gasp of air so that they can run further and faster. But if you take an actor and you put that actor on stage and they forget all their lines and they have that fear moment of, oh my God, what am I going to say now? They're trained. They're literally trained to exhale and relax all their muscles. And what it does is it shuts off the primal response and turns the brain back on.

43:49 All their lines come rushing right back into their head because the brain, the line's already there. But the thing is, it's a matter of shutting off that response. So in fearlessness, when I was talking to the soldiers on the front line, getting ready to go out and get shot at, I said, how do you go into a situation like that? And they say, well, we have to first set our fear aside. So they've learned how to compartmentalize their fear. And then they say, then I focus on my objective, what I'm trying to get done, right? When you're talking to a stuntman, he's standing on top of a five-story building, getting ready to jump. jump. He's not thinking about getting hurt. He's not thinking about the jump. He's thinking about where he's going to land. He's looking at the pad, going, That's where I'm going, right? That's what you're focused on, right? So you got to fearlessly focus.

44:33 You get your focus and your positive focus. Because if you focus on negative, as we said earlier, you're going to get that, you're going to get a negative outcome, right? So you get fearless by releasing your fear. And think about this: fear, when I ask people what fear is, my audience is, I get like dead silence until somebody in the back room will say, False evidence appearing real. Right. Right. And I don't buy that at all because fear doesn't come with evidence, because fear is an emotional reaction to some future event that may or may not happen with the focus on it being negative. It's simply negatively focused uncertainty. So you can set fear aside because fear is a choice. So you shut off that primal response and you just set it aside, get focused on your outcome.

45:18 So now you're fearlessly focused, right? And sorry to interrupt. Can we just pause there? Because that's so important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People, people listen to podcasts, and there's just two guys talking and the words go past them. But particularly for people who experience anxiety and stuff, the way that you just summed up fear could be a real breakthrough for them. Yeah. Can you just repeat that? Could you just break that down again? That when they're feeling fear, they need to get that it's not actually real. It's just their interpretation of the situation. Fear is not rooted in your present moment. It is rooted in some future event that may or may not happen. Fear is an emotional reaction to some future event that may or may not happen.

46:02 But it's determined by you're focused on a negative outcome. Yeah. So if you change the focus to a positive outcome, your fear naturally dissipates because you're no longer in that state of something negative, right? Fear is just an emotional reaction. And so, and I, and to encapsulate it even smaller, it's just negatively focused uncertainty. Yes. I'm uncertain about what's happening and I think it's going to be bad. You know, but as Shakespeare said, there is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. Good old Will. He knew it. Be the self-help girl.

46:47 Well, you know, he also said one of the quotes that gets bypassed a lot that I love in Hamlet, when Claudius is praying and lamenting over the fact that he killed his brother, he says, Words without thoughts never to heaven go. So what you're saying, you've got to believe it, which brings us to the third of the five F's. Aren't I slick? The third of the five F's is faith, belief, confidence. You have to believe it. Because if you're not believing what you're saying and doing and thinking, then you're not creating because as Jesus said, it's your faith that heals you.

47:25 It's your belief. He also said, Jesus is a pretty amazing guy, but Buddha also said, what you think you become, you create your world. So you're creating your experience. But Jesus said, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can ask a mountain to move and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. So it is literally about your belief. What you believe is what you're creating. And fear is based upon a negative belief. So we got to fearlessly focus with faith. The next one's one of the harder ones. It's follow-through. You've got to actually take your present moment actions in alignment with those other things.

48:05 And if you're not taking your present moment actions, like I said before, if I didn't take my present moment actions, I would be in a sedentary job right now, or I would have killed myself because I couldn't get what I wanted to do in my life. I would have given up, right? But by doing those present moment things based upon my belief about what I was creating, my faith in what I was creating, I was able to do all the things that I've done. So fearlessly focused with faith, follow through. The last one is the biggest of all of them, and it's flexibility. Something's always going to come up that seems contrary to what you're trying to achieve. Something always does. And if you can take that moment and remain flexible, you know, in my when I'm doing my speeches, this is a whole numchuck routine that I do.

48:47 I do fancy, you know, the two rigid objects with a piece of flexibility in between. Right. But the idea of this is that when something comes up, if you stay focused on where you're going, you then realize that the thing that came up is only there because it's something that has to be addressed, encompassed, or gotten rid of because it's part of the process of achieving what you're going for. Right. So the reason it came up is because you're so. subconscious mind said, Hey, you got to deal with this to get that. But a lot of people get to that place and they go, Well, I can't have it. I can't have that now, so I have to give up. And you can't, you can't lose that moment, the momentum. You've got to realize that that thing came up because it's a part of the process of getting what you're going for.

49:32 Yeah, and that dovetails for me into the point we covered about divorce and separation and moving on. When if we're not flexible, when that thing that comes up that doesn't look like the outcome we planned, if we can't see it as, oh, well, that's an interesting experience, it's gonna that's gonna leave me better prepared for what comes next. If we have it just as, oh no, that's wrong, that's broken, that's the end, then we're then we're left on our flipping knees dying that we're so unhappy about whatever happened. Instead of recognizing, of course, there's some sadness, but instead of recognizing as, wow, that was an interesting experience, I wonder what I'll be able to do with that next time.

50:15 Well, and check this out: a lot of people, when they have a divorce, you know, they'll sit in their present moment and literally declare that that person was the love of their life. Well, that's declaring that there's nobody better, right? That's literally declaring that there's nothing better than that. So, I reframe that immediately as soon as I hear somebody say that, I say, They were the love of that part of your life. Yeah, they were that chapter, right? And you're now from this point out, the tragic part is done. You've established that character. Now, you're going to create the comedy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and equally, if on a positive, for people looking to keep their relationship going or rekindle it, decide there's a new chapter here, right, and now like if you can get aligned on new goals and visions, then boom, that new chapter can be for both of you.

51:01 Um, everybody, everybody in the world wants to be loved in some form. And if you can, if you can find out what's important to your partner and express it early, I'll tell you, one of the things that I do is as I said earlier in my um in my speech, I bring a person on stage and I teach them in five minutes' time to crack a whip and take targets out of my hand. Yeah, actually, and you said earlier, you you ask for someone who's not very confident on you specifically ask for someone, yeah, specifically choose the most timid person I can find to do that. Now, what's what's really interesting about that is the idea that when at one point I bring them to the stage and their first fear is being in front of their peers, being in front of all that audience, right?

51:46 So, I bring them on stage and I say, Isn't she a rock star? And I get the audience cheering for her, right? So, I immediately take the fear away. She's not going to look dumb because they already love her, right? So, I took that away. But when it gets down to the point where I'm in front of her, she's already cracked the whip and I'm holding a target. Her biggest fear at that point is hitting me. So, I turn to her and I say, Look at me, did you hear it crack? And then she goes, They go, Yeah. I go, So, you already know how to crack it. You don't have to worry about that anymore. All you have to do is just look right here. And, you know, when I teach her to crack the whip, I'm talking about fishing, casting her fishing rod. Yeah, so look right here, just cast your fishing rod. I promise you will not hurt me.

52:31 And when I give her that out out of her fear, she hits it every time, right? And in the speech, I jokingly say, I go, you know, sometimes when you're when you're guiding someone through the five F's, you got to lie to them. But the reality of it is, is I have to realize that it's her experience that she's going through. And by understanding where she's going going, what she's going through and addressing the fear she has right away, it takes that out of the equation and she can then get back into her brain. By saying that, I watched her exhale. I promise you're not going to hurt me. Okay, good. Instant relief for her. So, she shut her fear down and she just did it.

53:16 Wow. Blind me. And not to bring this always back to relationships, but people do that to each other in their relationships. So they sit there opposite someone thinking, I know I love them, but I'm also terrified. Right, right. I am terrified. What is that creating? You know, we said the I am moment earlier. Yeah. But if you can be the person who recognizes their fear, I was coaching a couple one time. And, you know, the wife called me up and she was always having a problem about, you know, with her husband. And I realized as she was telling me the problem, the main problem wasn't that he didn't love her. The main problem was that he was afraid of her not loving him. And so I said to her, I said, you know what?

54:00 Next time you start having a problem, I want you to turn to your husband and I want you to say, no matter what I'm going through, I will always love you. And they never had a problem since. Yeah. They never had a problem because every time they got an issue, you know, she would reinforce the fact because he would see like her, her growth as a challenge to their relationship, right? You know, she would go out and she started doing, she ended up, she was, when I first met her, she was a, she was agoraphobic. She, she couldn't leave her house. You know, she driving to the store was, was like a all-day struggle to even get to the, go to the corner store.

54:38 Right. Okay. By the time we ended up finished working with her, she did a solo trip to Africa, climbed a mountain and hung out with gorillas. Nice. I mean, just by changing her mindset about what she was doing and what she was creating into her life. And it's the same thing in relationships. You know, if you're, if you're in a relationship that's limiting someone from achieving what they want, then you don't love them. You love what you want them to be. You know, you can't live their life for them. You know, it's the same thing. If you're going into a relation, if you're in a relationship, you have to be you fully for them to love you.

55:16 You know, and if you're not you fully, then you're living their life and not yours. And your relationship is doomed to fail because they got together with you originally because they liked you. And then you changed. Right. Yeah, this came up. This came up in another conversation just this week about it's okay to be all about yourself because that allows you to be all about others as well. So the two pieces have to be there, right? It's not just going around being a selfish ass. But too often, you know, men have it like, I've got to look after everybody else. I've got to look after everybody else, failing to realize that they haven't got the strengths to look after everybody else because they haven't looked after themselves.

56:00 So looking after yourself is okay because it helps you look after other people. And no one can say, I am for you. Yeah. You know, you're the one who has to say the I am because it's, you're the only moment, you're the only one who can create your experience, right? I recently did an interview with a, with a lady who was a diversity and inclusion speaker. And I was telling her the story of driving home from the beach one time. I was driving back to Ohio from the East Coast and I pulled over at a rest stop on the side of the road and there were these two black men standing over in the shade and I was driving my Jeep with its, I have a Jeep that has a lift kit and big tires and the

56:40 whole bit. And I'm a big burly white guy with a beard, right? And I come around the parking lot and I see the shaded spot. I'm like, I'm going to park in the shade because I have the top off. And I'm pulling in. I see these two black men and I stopped because I realized immediately by watching the tension in them that they were looking at what they considered a redneck in his big jacked up Jeep, you know, pulling in. So I stopped. I rolled down the window. Well, I didn't have the window. I had doors open. I said, do you gentlemen mind if I share your shade? And I watched their fear go away. I watched. So by looking at their experience and knowing

57:20 the racial inequalities that they've experienced through their life and by meeting a guy going, I see it and I respect you and I don't have any animus towards you. I sat there and talked with those guys for about an hour. We talked about fishing and they wanted to know all about the Jeep and all that. We had a great experience because I was empathetic towards their life experience. And it's the same thing in any relationship you're in. You can live your life and you have to live your life and be fully you. But you also, if you choose to be in a relationship, you have to have empathy for the people around you and understand what they're going through as well.

58:00 And sometimes a well-timed, are you okay, is all you really need to do. Do you know that is such wisdom? Are you okay? And it's about having a whole world perspective. And I had to write an email to someone the other day and it was about a problem. We butted up against each other and there was a problem. And I wrote this email and it was quite direct and I'd been direct on purpose because I wasn't being straight necessarily about how I was really feeling. So I got all of it out and then I was and I reread it and polished it up a little bit. And then I changed the subject to, are you okay?

58:40 It's huge. Because actually what I said in the middle of this email was, you seem really worked up about this, which doesn't seem like you. So rather than us arguing, because we've known each other for quite a while, are you okay? Because I'd much rather rather than have this argument, I'd much rather know that you're all right and be of support to you. And I went a really long way. It did. It did. And I don't know whether it fixed it on its own or whatever, but I really can see that something as basic as that was brought a different outcome to that situation. If you look at the situation, you get two people who are butting heads, right?

59:19 I just call them being buttheads myself, but butting heads, right? And what's really happening is they're both in defensive mode, which means they're both in fear mode. They're afraid of not being respected. They're not afraid of not being right. It's just fear. It's just fear, right? But because they're in fear mode, their brains are shut off, like I said earlier. If they would just take a breath and go, oh, oh, are you okay? Right? You know, it changes everything. It's interesting. I have a theory, and I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but it's a theory that I like to work with that addiction is people looking for just being okay. Because if you watch like a drinker, they'll get their drink, right? And they'll go,

1:00:04 and allow themselves to exhale. And you get a smoker and they go and they allow them to. And back in my days of being a pizzaholic, I would eat my slice of pizza. Oh, it's so good. All of those things were giving the sensation of not having my fear. Their fear. So they're using the substance as an excuse to not be fearful. Yeah. So that's a theory I'm working with right now. No, no, it makes sense. Like if you can see a situation where someone is releasing tension, then not only can you see that they were actually in tension, they were experiencing tension, but then something broke that.

1:00:46 And so. And in hypnosis, they would call that an anchor. They've chosen that as the anchor that gives them the release. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we should all pay attention to those things, both in ourselves and in the people around us. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Wow, John, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've loved it. I've loved our conversational way of going about really important topics. Oh, brilliant. And so people can book you to speak as well as your actual going in and doing your inner action 5F work as well. So where can they come and get a hold of this? The easiest way to get a hold of me is corporateactionhero.com. But I want to offer your audience something.

1:04:33 Another brilliant conversation there. I just love having these people on. It's getting, on the one hand, harder to get good guests, but on the other hand, easier because there's so many more people podcasting or people who want to come on podcasts. If you've heard someone who's awesome, maybe you are someone who's awesome. But if basically, if you know or are someone who wants to come on the Team Super Dad podcast, then let me know. I will get in touch with them, invite them on, and we will get them to contribute and add value to the Team Super Dad community. The community, if you aren't already a member, is over on Facebook. It's a free space for dads, worn out, busy dads who want more from their life.

1:05:14 That is certainly me. That's the journey I'm on. And I'm taking you guys with me. I hope you've enjoyed this. Pass it on. The wrap-up, of course, the wrap-up, our weekly laughing, our end-of-week check-in and banter is coming up. And Blimey is coming up tomorrow. We'll be recording that. It's a Valentine's special. We've got a lady. We've got a lady on with us, Amy, her name is. Well, she's supposed to be on. We're just trying to work out our schedules. But it's all about fun. Like, at the end of the day, all this growth stuff, mindset, working out, sorting out our finances, getting on top of our game, it's all really important. But it doesn't matter for anything if we're not having fun doing it. So wherever you are today, make the most of it.

1:05:58 Have some laughs, have some giggles, get on top of your game and really live the life you desire, not the life you feel stuck in. I'll see you next time. Team Super Dad out. Bye. This has been Team Super Dad. Find us at Team Super Dad.com. Join the program and create the best life ever for you and your children. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad.