Eliot Marshall: The Gospel Of Fire

Transcript

[0:00:16] CH: What’s up, everybody? It’s Charlie Hoehn, the host of Author Hour where I interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is with Eliot Marshall, he’s the author of The Gospel Of Fire. Eliot is a former professional MMA fighter and he holds black belts in karate and Brazilian jiu jitsu and he even competed on Spike TV’s, The Ultimate Fighter, which earned him a spot in the UFC. But Eliot’s greatest opponent has actually been bouts of severe anxiety and depression and that’s what this episode is about. In this episode, he shares his story of breaking down and learning to build himself back up. If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety or depression, this is the episode for you. Just a quick note, there is some hard language in this episode so if you’re listening around your kids or sensitive ears, I’d recommend throwing in your headphones or listening to this a little bit later. Now, here’s our conversation with Eliot Marshall.

[0:01:32] Eliot Marshall: I’m retired from the UFC so I achieved my goal of fighting in the UFC, no, I didn’t become the champion but you know, like literally, the day after I retired, I was looking at the building to purchase for my Denver location. I had one move right to the next and then you know, for the next three or four years, it just went well, we opened two schools and they were both, they’re my first two businesses and with my business partner.

[0:01:58] CH: You opened schools? Yeah, Brazilian jiu jitsu schools, martial arts schools.

[0:02:02] Eliot Marshall: Brazilian jiu jitsu and kick boxing, you know?

[0:02:04] CH: Awesome.

[0:02:05] Eliot Marshall: He already had like little schools like smaller schools and we open these two 10,000 square foot facilities where we did a lot and man, it went swimmingly Charlie. Life was good, I had two kids, I had a great wife, I had a great house, you know? I could do whatever I wanted, you know? Not like private jet fucking money, not like that, you know? But like you know, let’s – what dinner do you want to have and whatever, it didn’t matter. Then, I started getting this anxiety that I had had previously in my life like – I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, I was just like waiting for everything to fall apart like you know? My businesses or my wife or my – something, I don’t know, you know? I didn’t know. Then I fell apart waiting, you know? I had a massive what I like to call first, a mental breakdown that led to a spiritual awakening. What that mental breakdown consisted of was ratchet anxiety of just racked, no sleep for four days, maybe a couple of hours a night but nothing where you can be like, “Yeah, I got some rest.”

[0:03:14] CH: Yeah, that was just compounding the problem.

[0:03:17] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, that makes it worse, sure. When you’re tired, you just lose your mind. You think you’re losing your mind and then you’re tired, you’re having physical symptoms of losing your mind and man, it’s just this downward spiral and it’s awful and I like to call it, I’m not very religious, I am spiritual, you know, I believe that there’s something greater than me and then greater than all of us. I don’t know that it cares about us or anything like that but I do think that hell comes for us and I don’t think it comes for us when we’re dead. I don’t know, I have no clue, you know? I like to say that hell comes for us when we’re alive, you know? The devil comes to say hello and the devil had me, the devil had his claws like his hooks in really deep in me and he’s hard to get away from. I was wretched, I was terrified, my wife would make plans on Wednesday to do something on Friday or Saturday like normal adult people and I’d be like, “What the fuck are you doing babe?” I wouldn’t say this to her but I’d be like, “What are you doing?” I don’t know how I’m going to get to Saturday. I wasn’t suicidal, I wasn’t going to kill myself.

[0:04:26] CH: You just wanted it to be over.

[0:04:29] Eliot Marshall: No, I didn’t want it to be over, I didn’t know why I wasn’t going to get to Saturday but I had this impending feeling, I don’t know.

[0:04:39] CH: You weren’t going to survive.

[0:04:41] Eliot Marshall: I wasn’t going to survive, don’t ask me why I wasn’t going to – I wasn’t going to get into an accident, I wasn’t going to – like none of that kind of stuff is going to happen. I just wasn’t going to be here on Saturday. Don’t ask me why, you know? Yeah, it was awful man, I was on the phone, like you know, I had a group of friends, one of them was my doctor and he’s my friend too, he’s not just my doctor, we’ve met years ago. You know, I called him on a Friday night, on the worst day, I described this in my book and not the worst day, the beginning of the worst day. The climax, I would call it the climax of before I did anything to get better. We took some steps that night, you know? He got me to take some sleeping pills and some Xanax and he called in some long term anti-anxiety medication for me, you know, I had a plan and the plan worked that night, I went to sleep, I thought I was going to be better and I wasn’t, you know? I was like, I slept, that’s all I needed to do was sleep but that didn’t get me out, you know? That didn’t get me out because two days later, I took the pills again and I just freaked, lost it, I’m like, “I’m not going to sleep” and I did exactly that, I didn’t sleep, on all of this – I don’t know if you’ve ever taken sleeping pills or have you ever taken sleeping pills, Charlie?

[0:06:05] CH: Yeah, I have.

[0:06:05] Eliot Marshall: It put you out, right?

[0:06:07] CH: Yes.

[0:06:08] Eliot Marshall: I took two and a whole milligram of Xanax and I stayed awake. Yeah, I stayed awake. It was rough.

[0:06:16] CH: Man.

[0:06:17] Eliot Marshall: It was rough man, I stayed on the phone for the next month, this is how it went, maybe more than that I would say, maybe okay, for the next month or so, I stayed on the phone, my friends like, I had three friends, Mike, Ian and Will and I would call one of them each night, when I was in the middle of losing my shit at 11:00 like 10 minutes after I just took the sleeping pill and they would just talk to me. Sometimes it would be all night that they stayed on the phone with me and sometimes I would fall out, you know? Just like them, their voice were like putting me out, I call it, they’d sing me a lullaby, you know?

[0:06:54] CH: Man, you’ve got some good friends.

[0:06:54] Eliot Marshall: I got some good friends, man. You know? That’s why the last chapter of my book is called Ride or Die, you know? That’s just how it went and that’s how it went and it slowly got better, six months, a lot of work, a lot of dance with that mother fucking devil for a solid six to nine months, you know? Every day.

[0:07:16] CH: Yeah. You know, what Eliot? You don’t know this about me but I so appreciate you sharing this story in your book because I wrote a book on my exact same struggle with anxiety.

[0:07:31] Eliot Marshall: I’m sorry man.

[0:07:32] CH: I went through it for – I mean, I’m great now but it was a rough few years. I know the exact symptoms and feelings that you’re describing and how – people don’t realize how, you describing as the devil inside you basically is exactly how it is. It’s like, there’s a passage in the bible that’s like, the kingdom of god is within man, they don’t tell you that hell is within man as well and that can come out and it’s just brutal. It’s awful to live that way and I wrote a book on how I got through it as well and I’m really curious how – which path you took to help you get out because you went through six to nine months of the work but –

[0:08:25] Eliot Marshall: The work’s still going on, the work’s every day.

[0:08:28] CH: Yeah, I’m sure but I want to say, one, I really am appreciative of anybody who is courageous enough to share their story because when you’re in the thick of it, I mean, you don’t – you had good friends that you were talking to, I kept it to myself. I was ashamed, I didn’t even know what it was, this was seven years ago when it wasn’t really talked about. I think there’s a little less stigma now but what surprising to me and maybe surprising to other people is, you are a professional athlete and –

[0:09:05] Eliot Marshall: I got in the cage man, I got in the cage and fought another man, right? Why am I crying on the phone to my friends, right?

[0:09:13] CH: Right, yeah. What’s surprising about that is one of the top recommendations you get if you’re struggling with anxiety is “hey, you got to exercise.” I can’t think of a more rigorous workout than what you were doing and you were still struggling with this mental demon, right?

[0:09:31] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. I struggled with this devil for a long – it started for me in my late – when my Baba, that’s my grandmother in Yiddish on my mom’s side. When she died, that was my first dance.

[0:09:48] CH: Was that the initial trauma that kind of started things off?

[0:09:52] Eliot Marshall: Well, my girlfriend broke up with me, this girl that I thought I was in love with, right? My first real girlfriend, it was a whole host of things probably, you know? That and then my Baba died and then all this happened within three months. Then here I am, boom. We knew it was anxiety, you know? This was in 2000. Whatever, it passed, as it always will, it always passes, your brain gets tired of it but it came back a couple of times and what seemed to cure it though was fighting. Because I had something real – I had a real fucking reason now to be scared with fighting. In my opinion, that’s why I didn’t become a champion is because I never dealt with my demon, you know? I never dealt with this bastard over here. It would hold me back, I always had fear, you know? What motivated me for fighting was fear. That is not – we know scientifically that fear is not the best way to be motivated or to motivate a person. The best way is with love, you know? And happiness. I was held back by this fear but it also quieted the fear for a while, years. Then, fighting ended, I had no outlet for this demon, I had no outlet for wanting to be tough and accepted and loved. I screamed about how tough I was in my life. It just wasn’t true, right? It wasn’t true. I knew there was this thing, when you're lying, you can only lie for so long before it crumbles. I wasn’t lying like going on telling people lies, right? I was – who I was saying I was, was a lie.

[0:11:32] CH: Explain what you mean by that? Give me an example of a circumstance where you were as you were saying the thing, you felt it was a lie.

[0:11:40] Eliot Marshall: I could fight, right? I was a good fighter and I would put this on, you know? When somebody would be in a school and they would fuck up, I would beat that, they deserved a beating let’s say, right? They deserve to come in the school and they acted like an asshole or whatever it was, doesn’t happen very much. But every once in a while, it happens. I led through intimidation and like I am the toughest guy in the room. That’s how – you know, I’m trying to think of a specific, there’s no specific, you know? I’m still very loud, I’m still like aggressive and I try – that’s who I am naturally but I try to mix that with this vulnerability now and before, there was no vulnerability, there was just this hard exterior of I’m tough, I’m very tough, I’m the man. I wouldn’t let people see that the inside, beyond the armor that I had on and now I do. I would say, that’s the difference, people know I’m tough but if somebody comes in and things aren’t going well or an employee needs to be talked to, I tend to ask them, “Hey man, what’s going on?” Rather than be like, “Man, what the feck is wrong with you,” you know? There’s something else going on and I used to have to be right all the time and I don’t feel that way anymore, right? It’s very relative so –

[0:13:08] CH: Eliot, sorry to interrupt but you have a chapter in your book called Scream your Weaknesses to the World, which sounds like what you’re talking about now is being more vulnerable. What was that transition like for you after a lifetime of being more abrasive and more kind of confrontational it sounds like?

[0:13:31] Eliot Marshall: I don’t even know man, I had to do it because I was broken man, the first time I screamed to somebody other than my wife. I think I have the chapter story of when I screamed to my wife before my fight in there, you know? I was teaching a class, it was that weekend after the pills didn’t work, that very first Monday, the medicine didn’t work, was losing my shit that Monday man. I had ended up on my sister in law’s couch crying and then I went to work, you know, I’m crying in the office with Ian and this was before I had even called him, you know? In the middle of the nights and it was just awful and I was like, “I’m going home man, I can’t teach” and I look outside and there’s all this traffic because it’s rush hour. I’m like, “Fuck that, I don’t want to have a breakdown in the car, whatever, I’m going to go teach,” you know? I go out there and I teach the class and I don’t – you know, Ian said, “nobody could tell,” I don’t know if he’s being nice to me or whatever, you know? I was just trying to get through the motions. Then I don’t know what came over me man, I was like, you know what? You can’t be a pussy Eliot, you always talk about being vulnerable and telling people to do it but you’ve never done it, you know? Here’s the time. The whole school, it was going on, probably 150 people in there, got up on the cage wall and I was just like, I told everyone I was struggling. I told everyone, you know, I’ve talked about it before but here I am. I guess I’ll have to figure this out. I’m okay, I’m not suicidal, I’m not like – none of that stuff, I’m not depressed, you know? There’s a difference, their sisters, you know? Depression and anxiety, maybe their cousins but they’re not the same, you know? I think you have a touch of depression when you have anxiety and you have a touch of anxiety when you have depression, I think? You know? From –

[0:15:24] CH: I’ve heard it defined as depression is worrying about the past and anxiety is worrying about the future.

[0:15:31] Eliot Marshall: Yes, I’m the future for sure. But I wasn’t, that’s a very good way to put it, I was not like man, “I’m going to kill myself.” You know, I was never there. I just told everybody, you know, it was real quiet, nobody did anything afterwards, some people just came and put their hand on me, you know, when we were walking down the mat or whatever. Said thanks, you know? I was like, man, I think this might be the way to do it, you know? I think this might be the way to really fucking help people and it just made me start thinking, you know? As I was going through this hell. Just made me started thinking about how to do life the best you can. What I came to was you have to have a reason that you‘re doing life. What is your why? Why are you here, why do you exist? I got to that, I existed for my kids and you know, I have two little boys and we think a lot about boys and raising children and you know, I needed to be the best dad that they could possibly have and then now you start asking yourself the house of things, right? How do I do that? Then, that one was simple, I hate being told what to do, you probably hate being told what to do, Charlie. You just show people.

[0:16:49] CH: We all do.

[0:16:51] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, show people, show them what’s up, show them what the best adult looks like? That’s what I try to do every day. I just try to get up and show my kids what it looks like to be the best adult possible.

[0:17:04] CH: Wow. What does that look like now?

[0:17:08] Eliot Marshall: That means, showing them love first of all, you have to show them love, that means showing my wife love and caring, you know? What does that look like? It looks like going to work because we have to work, you know? It looks like doing things together, it looks like teaching them that failure is good and amazing and hard but it’s what will make you great, you know? Giving them work, you know, giving them things to achieve and be bad at and then get good at. Simple things for kids, right? The dishes, what kid could put the dishes away, none of them but you know, for some reason, we all learn how to do that as adults. Let’s put the dishes away, guys, let’s take the trash out, these things used to be real hard for my kids, you know? Let’s cut the grass, you know? Look, how much does it cost to pay someone to cut the grass, like 20 bucks, right? I mean, this is something I could easily afford and I used to. I decided that I’m not going to do it. I’m going to cut the grass until my kids can cut the grass and you know, because that’s what you do man, I saw my dad cutting grass and then you know, that’s a good experience for me, I wanted to cut grass because my dad cuts the grass, my dad works hard so I’m going to work hard. Then my kid wanted to cut the grass, my oldest, he couldn’t, what kid can cut the grass the first, right? Can’t start the lawn mower, he’s all upset with himself, he can’t push the lawn mower straight, you know what I said? I understand man, I know you can’t cut the grass, I didn’t lie to him. I didn’t lie to him and say he did a good job, I just told him no man, I know, it sucks, you can’t cut the grass right now, but we’ll get there. We just got to do it every day or every week. Now, he cuts other people’s grass, for two years now, he’s nine. Yeah.

[0:19:00] CH: You’re being a dad, you’re showing them how to be men or grownups as well.

[0:19:05] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, and be soft and love each other, I came up with six rules for me and my kids, not just my kids. Rule number one is you have to do Jiu Jitsu and if you want I’ll explain them all, number two is you have to swim, rule number three is you have to look people in the eye, demand their respect and respect them back, rule number four is you have to be – if you’re scared then you have to do it, rule number five is you make your money work for you, you don’t work for your money and rule number six is we ride or die, if my brother goes down, then I’lI go down.

[0:19:35] CH: Wow, I want to talk about each of those rules. I also want to ask before that, how does your wife – has she noticed this transition you’ve made? Has she seen you transform into a different man? Now that you’ve gone through this internal spiritual journey?

[0:19:58] Eliot Marshall: I guess you’d have to ask her, you know? She’s not home but yeah, I would say so, we can discuss an argue better now, you know? Because I don’t scream and need to be right and she – you know, we all have our flaws and our weaknesses. Yeah, we just work a little better together, you know? We work a little better together and one of the nicest things I think she’s ever said to me was I started competing again in jiu jitsu and I’m older. I know I’m not going to be a world champion, I’m 38 years old and a couple of years ago, the fight company out here sponsors a bunch of jiu jitsu fighters and they want to put on a tournament and I’m the head coach of our fight team out here and they sponsor actually, the best jiu jitsu guy in the whole world currently and they wanted to do a super fight with me and him and man, let me tell you what I’m not doing. I don’t train like a 25 year old like him, you know, he’s my size, he’s better than me, I went out there and raised a bunch of money to do this and I got my ass kicked in front of like – We invited the whole neighborhood to come watch and you know, it was a good event, $70,000 was raised for the event and yeah, everyone. My wife was like, I think this is the most proud I’ve ever been of you. Because you didn’t have to do this, you know? You knew you’re probably going to lose, you invited everyone and the day before my kids got lice, you know? The night of the weigh in’s, my kids got lice. Have you ever had lice in your house?

[0:21:40] CH: No.

[0:21:41] Eliot Marshall: It’s fucking brutal man, my kids and my wife all had lice from school. You have to wash everything. The whole fucking house. For like two days, the day of the event, everything, I’m just doing laundry and washing and combing their hair over and over. It is a pain in the ass, you know? She was like man, you didn’t make like – you just went about like a normal day, it wasn’t like this huge event and you just went out there and you did your thing and it was really amazing. That was nice, that was probably one of the nicest things she’s ever said.

[0:22:23] CH: Yeah, you know, as you were telling that story Elliot, it sort of dawned on me, one of the great gifts of going through an anxiety and having this evolution of understanding, hey, I have to be vulnerable. I have to ask for help, I have to be softer is the gift of anxiety is it allows you to have healthier relationships with other people.

[0:22:51] Eliot Marshall: Empathize with them.

[0:22:52] CH: Yes, exactly. I’ve always said, one of the weirdest super powers that I had when I had anxiety was extreme empathy almost to the point of being an empath like feeling what others are feeling as they were feeling and knowing what was going through their head. It was almost like, “Whoa this is too much” but it really does give you that deep empathy for others and now it sounds like you are able to have healthier relationships.

[0:23:28] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, you know I am. I don’t know what it is. I am grateful every day for this demon, you know? Every day I wake up and I say thank you. I talk to God, I call it, I meditate and I’ll let you know – I don’t know what he or it is that I am thanking. I don’t really care and it doesn’t really matter to me, what I know is that I am thankful for everything that I have in my life, you know? My kids, my wife, my problems, my students, everything because they make me better. They just a 100% make me better. I am a better human being because of my bands you know?

[0:24:13] CH: I do.

[0:24:14] Eliot Marshall: And it’s a tough dance, right? It’s not an easy dance.

[0:24:17] CH: It’s not fun.

[0:24:20] Eliot Marshall: You can’t understand why this is happening, right? You can’t understand like it’s a feeling like no other, you know? You can’t understand why this is happening to you. You can’t see that it is going to go away. It’s impossible and all you want is for it to go away and that one thing to go away, that’s the devil’s food, you know? That is what he eats on.

[0:24:45] CH: Yeah, it is. A 100% right.

[0:24:47] Eliot Marshall: Yep, your mind all day, every day going, “Come on, go away from me. Go away from me, I need this to go” that’s his food and he just digs in deeper and deeper and deeper into your soul and then he does not leave you. He does not leave you when you are begging and when you are praying or whatever you pray to, yeah when you are praying to that going, “Please man” when it is your third night awake and you’re just like, “Please give me an hour, please God” whatever. You know just let this pass for an hour, two hours, please and then that’s his food man and he is eating. He is eating good that night you know or whatever that is.

[0:25:28] CH: Yeah, there’s a great quote that, “That which you resist persists.”

[0:25:35] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, that’s exactly what it is and you got to say hi to that devil and you got to say, “Not today mother fucker” you know? Not today because today I’m going to do me. I am going to do Eliot to the best Eliot he can, you know? Let’s go, let’s dance, how long do you want to stay? You think you’re going to get me? Not now, not today. You can stay here, we can do this together that’s cool. That’s cool, you can stay right on my shoulder but today, I’m going to crush.

[0:26:09] CH: Yeah and for people who are resonating with your story, your book is The Gospel Of Fire. It is on Amazon and you have chapters on the book on this dance and getting through it, chapters like my obstacles show me the way, all we have is now and there is a chapter called, “How jujitsu saved my life” and particularly, I’m most interested in this chapter because I’d imagine that you and I came about to the same conclusion or the same method for saving our own lives. I did something different, I did improve but that kind of resonated for me but tell me how jujitsu saved your life.

[0:26:56] Eliot Marshall: Everyone is fighting something, everybody you know? Everyone that walks this earth is fighting something and jujitsu teaches us how to fight, you know? And what jujitsu teaches you at first is how to stay on the bottom of a man or a woman on top of you trying to strangle you and take your soul, they are trying to kill you and at first, you can’t win. You have no clue how to win. First you just have to survive. You have to stay there, their arm around your neck and you’ve got to stay real calm. You are mounted. You can’t think about how did you get mounted, you can’t think about after you’re going to get out of the mount. They are on top of you sitting on your chest with their arm on your neck and you’re going to go to sleep if you don’t get out. So first you just have to survive, you have to dance with the devil, he ain’t leaving. After you dance with the devil, after you survived a little bit now you can think about getting out, you know? Now you can think about getting back to a spot where you’re a little safer, okay I am out. Now once I’m out, all right how do I stay out, what defenses do I have to have to make sure that I don’t get back there again and you know and then you build up your defenses of the mount again. So that if you do get back there then what do you do? Okay, I’ll get out better this time because I know this. I know how to not let the hand get on my neck. I might get mounted but I know not to get the hand get on my neck. And then once you learn all of these skills in jujitsu, you learn how to go on the attack and then once you learn how to go on the attack, you can kill. You can start go taking souls and we do that with another human in jujitsu and the beauty about it is we have to do it over and over again. We get to die every day in jujitsu at first. We tap like you took my soul I tap and then after you tap, you go again and you go again and then all of a sudden, “Oh okay I didn’t tap that round, nobody got me. All right, fuck yeah that was good!” And then, “Oh man, I got to the mount this time. I didn’t win, I didn’t choke anybody out or arm bar them but I got there, okay” and now, here it comes again. Now, “Oh man now I am winning. Yes! I am winning. Oh shit, here’s somebody better than me. They are kicking my ass again.” I call them nail skills but there’s a hammer and there’s a nail, so how are my nail skills? Did my nail skills got better? Can I survive the mount better? All right, yeah I did. He beat me up but it’s okay, I am still here. I am still fighting, I am still fighting you know? I’m still chasing him. I’m still getting after it, all right and this dance just keeps going, it never ends with jujitsu just like it ends today, you never come back and it’s one of those things where people like to rest on their lorrals a lot like, “Oh okay, I did that so I know it. Man, I did nothing. I have to go accomplish today” you know if you want to have good skills at fighting, you know what? You have to practice them. You can’t stop for 10 years and then think you’re still a badass. You are not a badass anymore man, you were a badass that means past impression, right? You are not a badass. You have to practice this every single day and look, I hope to never get into another fight in my life, you know an actual fight like it’s the last thing that I will ever do. You could walk up to my wife and call her a bitch as long as you don’t touch her, as long as you are not physically attacking her we’ll be good. We’ll work this out with our words or I will just walk away. I don’t need people to know how tough I am. I mean obviously I know how to defend myself because I practice every day. That is how jujitsu saved my life man. It taught me how to get mounted and how to have the devil strangling me with both hands and not give in.

[0:30:58] CH: Going back to the six rules that you have for your kids, I’d imagine that’s why that’s rule number one is that they have to learn that skill of fighting with the devil.

[0:31:09] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, you are going to get beat up man. You know there is nobody that comes into jujitsu on the first day and doesn’t get beat up. You can bring the biggest NFL, the strongest NFL player in and I have this little 18 year old, 19 year old Mexican kid that’s been training with me and if I tell him to die, he will fucking die. He fucking loves me, you know? We saved his life and he will beat the shit out of anybody that comes in off the street not knowing what they’re doing. I don’t care how strong, how tough because that’s just how it will go for them. If you don’t know, it is like not knowing how to swim you know? I don’t care how athletic you are, if you can’t swim and I throw you in a pool, I don’t care how strong you are you are drowning. That is what jujitsu is so yeah, my kids have to know how to get beat up. I don’t want them to be successful at things right away. I want them to struggle a little bit, struggle in the right way. But don’t get me wrong, I am not like sadomasochistic with my kids you know? Have some fun but struggle, it is not easy. It is okay that it is not easy, I understand. Actually I just had a great experience this weekend. I have two kids, I have a nine year old and a five and a half year old. They are three and a half years apart and my five year old loves his brother like loves his brother. Whatever his brother is doing, he is doing and his brother, my nine year old Kannen and five year old Simon who loves sports and he’s a sweetheart of a kid but he liked to compete. Man, he’s got that competition thing like I have and when the two of them, I don’t know if Simon’s ever won anything because “Kannen, just let him catch the ball one time dude, please” but now Simon can hang with Kannen. Well Simon played his first organized game, he doesn’t ever win with Kannen but he played his first organized game, Saturday, a little five year old basketball game and look, most five year olds they can’t really run very well, right? They for sure don’t dribble a basketball very well. Well Simon has been trying to keep up with Kannen his whole life and he can run and dribble at the same time because Kannen can. Kannen makes him play on a 10 foot net, which he can barely get the ball to. We have Kannen lower the basket but this game was on six foot net. It is appropriate for five year olds, right? Simon crushed it. Simon absolutely crushed it and he was the man because of the struggle. He could see it a little bit, he could see that like oh man, you could see it in his eyes and the best part combines with my rule number six now is Kannen was standing there going, “Yes Simon! You’re the man Simon! You’re the man!” and Simon scored every point, you know? He’s like, “Who’s the man Simon? You’re the man!” and so no matter how hard they are on each other they understand that rule number six too. They have each other more than they have me and their mom. They have each other so it really touched my heart. I almost cried, you know? There were some other people there and they’re all like, “Damn your kid’s really good!” and I was not even – it wasn’t even that I was paying attention. I was happy that he was winning because it was the first time that he got to do that really well but the two of them together like the whole thing combined was really touching from my heart.

[0:34:24] CH: That’s so great and it’s funny, I was going to ask you like hey, who do you think you have been able to help the most by sharing your story or being the new person that you’ve become but I think you just answered it. I don’t think there is a stronger testament to somebody’s journey than my kids are better off because of it.

[0:34:49] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, no that’s all that matters. That is all that matters and for me, look that’s what I got. I’m better because I wrote this book honestly. It made me go back through it.

[0:34:58] CH: What were you hoping Eliot? Sorry to interrupt but what were you hoping would be the impact that this book has?

[0:35:05] Eliot Marshall: I wanted one person to read my book and tell me that I helped them because look, I don’t know if I am going to ruin this for you or if you are going to cut this out or you guys won’t like this, the book costs $25,000 or $30,000 whatever it is, I know I am not going to be a New York Times bestseller, right? But that nut is a hard nut to swallow. 30K for what? Like my ego, my what, you know? What does that do? And even let’s say it brings out all these other opportunities, who knows? You’ll never be able to really put an ROI on that number like a number-number like money to money, does that make sense what I’m saying?

[0:35:45] CH: Yeah.

[0:35:46] Eliot Marshall: But if one person in their life would reach out to me even if it is on my death bed and say, “Hey man, I read your book and you changed my life” well, how much money would you give to make one person’s life better like that? That was in their dance with the devil and then somehow got out, you know? So if that happens once, one time man, I’ll write 10 more books for that price.

[0:36:18] CH: I can promise you, somebody who’s been through it you will get those and I would encourage you to have a folder in Gmail or a folder in your iPhone where you have screenshots of those messages because they’re coming and which leads me to my next question, what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you and potentially follow you if you want them to?

[0:36:41] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, so my name on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook is Fire Marshall 205, my nickname was Eliot “The Fire” Marshal when I was fighting. I used to fight at a 205 pound weight class, not anymore. Don’t make fun of me for being fat anymore but I am not 205 pounds that was a lot of work. So yeah, I’m most active on Instagram and I don’t know man, I just really love this new path that I am on with my life. I have a podcast, it’s called The Gospel Of Fire, it is on iTunes and it is everywhere you listen to podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, all that stuff. I just don’t like where we are in the world with a lot of things, you know? I think we need to be a little bit more together. We need to get back to the village a little bit. The people in your life are your life. That’s what you’ve got, you don’t have any money. You know this is just some greed upon currency thing. Man, fuck that noise. Sorry, I know you probably don’t like the cursing, sorry.

[0:37:57] CH: I don’t mind, it’s who you are.

[0:38:01] Eliot Marshall: Yeah, you know you need to do what you love in your life and when you do what you love in your life the money will come but you better really love it. You can’t fake love it, you know? I hope that as people hear me speak, they know that I am not some self-help mother fucker that’s like, “Oh yeah, do this and you’ll be happy” no man, you know you’ve got to struggle and you’ve got to find what you love and you’ve got to find the why and that ain’t easy. That’s work that is real hard work and then you got to take that work and to be honest, I think we raise kids like shit you know? We raise them terribly. We protect them, we want them to not struggle, we want their lives to be better than our lives and I agree with that. I just don’t agree with the method that we do it. The way you do it is you give them some things to accomplish. Let them see a score board where it says 30-2 not in their favor, you know? That is good for us. That is okay, we’ve gone away from this because we’re so afraid that we put our children’s failures that we take them in as our own because of our past bullshit that we haven’t dealt with. Go deal with your bullshit and let’s raise our kids together with your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor. Do it all as one and you don’t have to agree everything everyone says, you know? Where in this place where it’s like, “Oh man this guy said this one bad thing so fuck him” yeah. You tell me one person, I don’t agree with everything I say Charlie, you know? I say some dumb shit sometimes and I’m like, “Yeah I’m going to calm off that” you know? Got to fix that but we don’t have room for this in our life. I say if somebody messes up with one thing that they say or do and we just vilify them because it is what sells. It is what we like to do. You want to know why we like it, it is because we feel like shit, you know? We feel like shit and we don’t go deal with it. And I know we’re getting a little tougher here and I have been soft maybe before. You know it is this double edge sword that we need to have a little bit, you know? We need to have – it is a coin. There is two sides of it, you know you have the devil on one side and you have the angel on the other and you need them both to be balancing each other out, you know? So it’s important in my opinion.

[0:40:31] CH: I agree, fully agree and on that note, on that topic, I want to wrap this up with a bow by you giving listeners a challenge. What is the one thing that they can do from your book this week that will have a positive impact on their life?

[0:40:52] Eliot Marshall: So I have a chapter in my book that says, “All you have is now” and that’s it. You don’t have anything else. I talk a little bit about religion and heaven and hell and stuff. Look, no matter what you believe, none of us know you know? None of us know what is coming for us when we die. It could be today, it could be tomorrow or it could be the next day. So we live our lives like we’re going to live forever, you are not. None of us are and there’s no promise of anything afterwards. There is no promise of a single thing. So do this moment, this very, very moment the best you can and this takes practice. You have to practice because you have to learn how to actually be in the moment. You have to learn what one moment looks like and it’s hard. It’s hard work. So let me tell you a little bit how to do it. Notice every time that your ass leaves a seat where you get off the ground or the chair. Not the second before or the second after and see how many you can get in one day. See how many times you can notice the actual act of standing up and the reason why this is real hard is because we are always standing up for another reason. You are never standing up to stand up. You’re standing up to get a drink, to go to the bathroom, go to work, get in the car, clean up a mess, whatever it may be. That’s the future, you know? You don’t have that right now. That’s the future, you are standing up for something in the future. So our mind is always somewhere else, try to be in the present. Try to notice literally the second you get up off the chair. That will put you in the present moment, it will teach you what one single moment looks like and get up the best you can and then you just take it from there man. You’ll do every single moment the best you can and when you fail, you’ll fail and you will understand that I am going to read a quote, it is a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I am sitting in my office and it ties into what I am saying. “It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or what the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly, who airs who comes short again and again, who spends himself in a worthy cause who had best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and at worst, if he fails at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” You know and live your life like that. Live your life daring as greatly as you can for something very, very important to you. It doesn’t have to be important for anybody else, to you and get after it because you dare greatly and live today.

[0:43:51] CH: The book is The Gospel Of Fire. It is on Amazon now. Eliot Marshall, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:43:59] Eliot Marshall: Thanks Charlie. Thanks for having me guys, I appreciate it.

[0:44:04] CH: Thanks again to Eliot Marshall for being on the show. You can buy his book, The Gospel Of Fire, on amazon.com. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for show notes and a full transcript of this episode. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next: open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.