The BIGGEST Mistake Veterans Make When Seeking HELP | S2E7

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:03.576)
When the system failed him, he walked into the jungle to save his own life. Mental health is no longer a side conversation. It is a global emergency. AI is entering this space fast. Chatbots, digital therapists, automated checkings. And while access matters, depth matters more. Rob Story.

forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth. Technology can support healing, but it cannot replace presence. This episode, it is about care. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Salomon. Today's episode is a bit different, not louder, not faster, just...

Robert (01:00.346)
you

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:01.11)
more honest. With us today, I have the pleasure to have Rob Green. And Rob, please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Robert (01:12.091)
Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here. My name is Rob Green. I'm a US Navy veteran. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2015 after I made an attempt to end my life. I sought conventional healing the normal way. I went to the Department of Veterans Affairs. I talked to doctors, psychologists, and the answers were the same. They wanted to put me on a platter of medications and they weren't really giving me any real healing strategies.

I took matters into my own hands and I went on my own healing journey and it took me across several countries. I lived in the jungles of the Philippines with the tribes for two years off grid. I lived in the foothills of the Himalayas under the tutelage of a Vedic Hindu monk studying yoga and meditation. I lived in China in a Shaolin temple studying martial arts and I visited the highlands of Tibet to learn meditation from the Buddhist monks. And this brought me

to a place where I could understand trauma through somatic experiencing, an understanding of the body and form a new relationship with it. And I wrote a book called Unfiltered Wisdom, Raw and Honest Truths About Living With Trauma.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:24.716)
Well, when you were saying and talking about your introduction, first things first, thanks for your service, Appreciate everything you've done there. And you have been through a lot, personally and emotionally. And today's conversation should serve as a confirmation of our human capacity to overcome challenges.

Robert (02:32.292)
Thank you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:54.64)
appreciate you sharing with us that part of your story. And when I was checking and having a look a little bit about your story, I think something happened in 2015, right?

something that was kind of breaking internally before anything changed externally. Can you tell us a bit about that time?

Robert (03:26.457)
Sure. the thing that happened was in 2013. And I was trying to hold everything together in 2015 was the breaking point. So it was like the camel with the legs wobbling, trying to hold that straw that finally broke his back. But I lost my father to suicide in 2013 when I was in the Philippines on a humanitarian aid mission. There was a super typhoon called Typhoon Yolanda that devastated the south, what, western region of Samar.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (03:30.478)
Part 23.

Robert (03:57.155)
southeastern region of summer, I'm sorry. And the floods, the wind, the winds are coming in at about 250 kilometers an hour. There was devastation. So I went there on a humanitarian aid mission instead of going home to see my father for Christmas. We set up a solar powered Christmas tree in the middle of the most devastated area. And we're doing medical missions and helping clean up the bodies and things like that. And the very next day after getting back from that, I got a phone call saying that my father had been found with a gunshot wound to his head.

So I had to spend three days trying to get back from the Philippines all the way to the United States to go sort out that whole mess. We had a funeral for my father. Ten days later, I'm back at work and I'm just kind of carrying on like nothing happened and I have to, you know, I was in a new role so I had to perform and I was just holding it together the best way I knew how but from 20, yeah, beginning of 2014 to the end of 2015 was a two-year period where I was just falling apart inside.

but trying to hold everything together on the outside. My career was taking a nosedive. I was heavily addicted to substances. was in a very, my relationship was falling apart. I was in a very dark and toxic space myself. And 2015 was my breaking point where I could no longer just hold it together the way I knew how.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:16.974)
So that happened in 2015. That's when you kind of overcame everything that you were carrying on your shoulders.

Robert (05:25.648)
Not overcame. Like 2015 was a point where I decided to seek conventional help.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:31.206)
That's when you decided to seek the convention. it. And how was that process? How did that work?

Robert (05:34.102)
Yeah.

Robert (05:41.112)
Well, before I get into that, I will say that as a veteran, I appreciate the fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs exists and our government cares enough about us to have that, but the administrative backlog and the process of getting people help needs definitely a lot of work. I went in after an attempt to end my own life. was having major substance abuse issues, problems. I just couldn't handle it anymore. And so,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (06:08.159)
Is it really a month that you had to wait for an appointment?

Robert (06:13.4)
A little bit more than that. So what happens is I went in and I say, hey, this is what's happening to me. I'm a veteran. Here's my paperwork. What do I do? They say, okay, come back in two weeks for an eval. So I waited two weeks, came back for an eval. They said, okay, your results of your eval will be ready in about two to three months, so wait. So I waited two to three months and they said, okay, you have a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. I'm like, yeah, obviously, so what do I do? How do I see somebody?

I say, okay, well fill out this paper, this paper, this paper and call this number. So I did that and they said, all right, well, if you want to see a mental health specialist, you need to wait three months for your practitioner to refer you to mental health and the wait for another for the mental health is about three to four months. So total of six days months wait before I could even see somebody. So I asked them like, well, what do I do in the meantime? You know, I'm, falling apart here. I don't know if I can make it eight months. Well, they say, well, fill out this paper, this paper, this paper, and then you can pay for the treatment on your own. Then we might reimburse you.

And so I did that and the psychologist I was seeing would sit me down, make me talk about all the things that were bothering me, and then at the end of the session he'd just say, here's pills, here's benzodiazepines for your sleep, here's SSRIs for antidepressants, and that was it. And then he would charge me of that back then, I think it was about 250 bucks per session. And so after doing about seven, eight times, I'm just thinking, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm like.

Every time I come back to this guy, I get another medication.

This is not.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:44.084)
and you were not seeing anything changing happening with you in a positive way.

Robert (07:46.913)
No.

Robert (07:50.315)
Nothing. The medications actually made it worse because when I was on the SSRIs, the anti-depressants, I have this kind of feeling like everything's okay on the surface, but in my body I was super tense. I had a constant sense of tightness in my chest. I was having digestive issues because I always had tension in my stomach and my chest. I had a twitch in my eye. This wouldn't stop. It was always twitching.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:02.189)
Yeah.

Robert (08:16.949)
and I never felt that ease in my body but in my mind I'm just like, everything's great. So it's a weird disconnect the medication created for me so I decided I didn't want to do that anymore and then getting off of the medication was worse than being on it because all of the withdrawals and the detoxification process for that so conventional help.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:17.102)
Wow.

Robert (08:40.212)
I mean, sure, some people need it and some people it works for them, but for me and the severity I was going through, it didn't work at all and it had an adverse effect.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:42.648)
Right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:49.536)
And at what point you thought that you were going to be able to survive that? Did you always believe that was always an option for you, that you were going to get on the other side of it?

Robert (09:06.422)
There was times I really doubted it. I I've flirted with the idea of taking my own life multiple times, but the thought had started to come back. It's like, I want help. I don't want to feel this way. Nothing's working and what's the point? And so there were moments where it kind of forced me to change directions because seeking alternatives was kind of, it was the only option I really had. Cause conventional stuff wasn't working. Cause if I go into this psychologist office,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:19.875)
Right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:29.965)
Right.

Robert (09:35.338)
and I walk out with a new medication and I'm down 250 bucks, I'm supposed to do this multiple times a week after losing my job and living on my savings and everything else falling apart and sleeping maybe an hour a night. I mean, where is this going to lead me? It's not really going to lead me anywhere. So that's when I started researching alternatives and started looking into, right, well, if I can't depend on conventional solutions, then got to find, I got to figure this out on my own.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:47.17)
the perfect form.

Robert (10:06.55)
So it's not a necessity, I guess.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:08.766)
What made you make that decision like, I'm going to do it? It was researching yourself online. It was people that you know that told you maybe this is an option for you or you were just grabbing everything you have inside and you said, I'm going to do this.

Robert (10:28.733)
It happened, remember I was sitting in my old house, like my relationship had ended. So I this big three bedroom house, two car garage, all that stuff. My career was over and I was sitting there alone in my house and just thinking like, what am I hanging on to here? I had all these memories of a life that wasn't going anywhere because it was over. And I remember just kind of sitting there thinking like, well, if this isn't going anywhere, I'm not really going to try to rebuild this. It's like trying to rebuild a broken

piece of glass. It's in a thousand people. The effort is not worth it. So that's when I just started researching alternatives. And the first thing, this kind of went in stages, right? So the first thing that I really discovered was something called forest therapy or forest bathing. And this is a forest bathing. It's a practice they do in Japan. It's called Shinrin-yokyu, which means you go deep in the forest and have

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:16.696)
forest.

Robert (11:28.349)
a relaxing time, so you're not supposed to bring your phone or any devices. Just go unplug and walk around in nature. So I started doing that first and I found that, I would drive like three to four hours outside of the city, then I'd go get lost in the woods for the whole day. No phone, no map, no navigation. I would just navigate the trails and find it on my own. Yeah, that was it. And I found doing that like,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:37.282)
by yourself.

Wow.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:49.902)
Let's do you and the jungle and the peace that comes with it.

Robert (11:56.947)
I was able to start unpacking a lot, just kind of being present in my body without any mental inputs of stuff, right? Because when you live in the city, you might be able to go for a walk in the park and all that, but you're always connected to something. Like there's always something there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:10.99)
You're always connected. Absolutely.

Robert (12:14.546)
Like, you know, you got your iPhone or whatever, your Android, whatever phone you got, and there's always something accessible. So any kind of urge or impulse you have, you can entertain. When things get uncomfortable, when you're out there in the middle of the jungle, out in the middle of nowhere, it's just you, your body, and your senses. And I'm not recommending this if you don't know how to navigate land and read trails and you're not experienced, because you can get lost and things can go south. But if you know how to do it,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:42.486)
I was gonna ask you about it.

Robert (12:45.396)
If you want to take it easy at first, maybe you go with somebody who knows an area or maybe you go a place near your house but don't bring your phone and have a clearly marked trail and just follow it with a map, a paper map so you're not in a digital device. You can start to really unpack stuff because I noticed doing that I started to be really present in my body. And you know they have this saying like walk it off like an injury when you're a kid you get hurt in baseball, walk it off. Well, starting to do that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:09.571)
Yeah.

Robert (13:14.856)
being present and having to do things that were physically difficult in nature, I started to unpack stuff. Memories would start to come up, feelings would come up, and I found it to be very therapeutic. And at the end of it, I didn't want to go back to the city, really. Like, there was a couple times I just brought a backpack with a hammock, a machete, matches, a lighter, and a little bit of food, and I stayed out there for a couple days sometimes on my own.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:37.034)
It's like you found home in the jungle.

Robert (13:40.87)
Not yet. That point was really just kind of getting my toe dipped in the water. I decided to go fully in on that in around February of 2016. I had a friend who told me, hey, I have this property in the Philippines that's on a beach, it's near an island. You seem like you like nature, like no one's been in my property for like two years. It's kind of getting run down. I'm looking for a tenant. You look like you might be able to

have some good time out there. So I went and visited the place. It was beautiful. It was up on a hill. You have a view of the ocean. Then around 300 meters from me was a village where the tribal people lived in the Philippines. called them the Atis, the native inhabitants, which they look kind of like the Aboriginal Australians or the people from Papua New Guinea. They dark skin, curly hair, beautiful people. And super.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:36.376)
Were they friendly to you?

Robert (14:40.292)
In the beginning, well I'll get into that, that's the next part of story, but that was a point where I just said, alright, well, what am I hanging on to? Why do I keep going back to the city? Like, I don't really like it here, so I'm just gonna go full into nature. And that's when I decided to move out there and I stayed out there for about two years. And there's a lot of things happened in between that we can talk about depending on how you wanna take the conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:05.954)
Yeah, absolutely. I think this part of the struggles that you went through, Robert, and the life experiences that took you to a better place are something that a lot of people may not hear about in a daily basis. And I think it's also important for people to listen to stories like yours.

which is when conventional help doesn't help, that doesn't mean that is the end of your story, right? And sometimes finding unconventional ways is what really help what you're going through. So it's very interesting on how you started to find a way to, it's kind of get your body back to your body and get your, you know, and start feeling as a whole.

Robert (15:39.122)
Mmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:03.468)
when you're starting disconnecting and detaching from the day to day. From the noise, right, that keeps bothering us, that don't allow us to disconnect on a daily basis. And sometimes that's part of what we need to get back by ourselves, right?

Robert (16:17.842)
Definitely.

We're in a world now where we're always connected, which has lot of benefits and convenience, but it's not always good for us.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:30.434)
Yeah, I agree. It's a lot of what we go through on a daily basis. It's probably not good for our well-being. And we keep pushing and we push and we push because that's how we do things as humans. But sometimes it may be too much for some to bear, right?

Robert (16:46.055)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:55.694)
So one of the things that struck to me, Rob, about your story is that healing didn't come from a single moment. It was kind of a process and it was part about it came across to you from experiencing different cultures and being around people very different than you.

Robert (17:09.49)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:25.294)
And that's what, when I first hear about your story, that's what I want us to also talk a little bit more about the things that you learn on those that are different from us, right? Which I think in a world, in how the world is today and all the challenges we have, I think this is part of the beauty of what your story brings on it, which is...

how you found comfort and help and healing in those people interacting with those peoples that were totally different than your culture.

Robert (18:10.011)
Yeah, definitely. The first one was living out in the jungles with the tribes, the Aites or Ahtis. So they're very simple people in terms of what makes them happy and what they need. And if you've been exposed to poverty, like real poverty, not poverty in America, because poverty in America is luxury compared to the third world. If you've been, then you experience that. But their mindset around happiness is very, simple.

They have food, they have each other, and then they're happy. So it made me kind of explore this idea. What is happiness? We always strive for this idea. I want to be happy. I'm not happy in my relationship. I'm not happy at my job. I'm happy with it. Like, what does this even mean? And then the cliche answer is like, it's a state of mind. Okay, but, like it's an incomplete answer. There's a big chunk of that missing. So.

This happened when I was living in the, I was out there for about nine months and I was really unpacking a lot, like deprogramming, deconditioning. Because when you're not exposed to a place where you're constantly bombarded with like advertisements and options, you learn to simplify your desires, right? Because I was out there, I was building my own structures and property and farming and developing things on my own. So with the work crew as their employer,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:24.834)
All

Robert (19:34.51)
I position myself as an asset to the community. Because when you deal with these kind of people in these locations, they either view you as an opportunity, an unwanted guest, or an ATM machine. And I didn't really want to be viewed as those two. So I'm all right, I guess I'll present myself as opportunity. So I'll employ them. If I employ them and provide them a livelihood, then they'll have a reason to at least like me and not steal all my stuff, because that was happening in the beginning, right?

And so when I did that, I saw the way they were working and I decided to join the work crew with them as their trainee, but I was still their employer, which is kind of a weird dynamic. So I went down to the local market, to the little thrift shop, and I bought like an old ratty t-shirt and some cutoff shorts, and I bought a machete and a little tool belt. And they're like, hey guys, I want to learn how to do this stuff. And they were just kind of flabbergasted, like what? And I decided to just hang out with them and be a part of the team.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:14.478)
Okay.

Robert (20:34.019)
And so remember we doing a lot of really hard labor. They didn't really use conventional tools. Like they built everything with bamboo, fishing line to tie stuff together, chicken wire, and basically not minimal hammer and nails for framing stuff, but that was it. And we didn't have chainsaws or anything, so when we had to cut bamboo poles, we had to do it with a machete.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:44.515)
Bye.

Wow.

Robert (20:59.354)
and then we have to drag it three kilometers to the sea, soak it in the ocean water to kill all the bugs, then drag it another three kilometers back up the hill. And this is hundreds and hundreds of pounds of bamboo we're moving manually. This is me and six other guys carrying these bamboo poles and then building things. I remember the end of one day, I paid everybody their wages for the day and they invited me to eat with them. So when I paid them their wages, the guys went down to the market and they bought a bunch of fish and rice.

They cooked up a huge feast and everyone's sitting around and they're drinking something called tuba, which is like a coconut wine. Yeah. In the Philippines, they harvest it from coconut trees. It's like the coconut sap has a small amount of alcohol in it. I if you drink enough of it, it'll get you drunk. We're all just sitting around drinking that. And I remember everyone was having a great time. We were playing music on instruments. We had a big fire going. I was thinking, there's so much times where I've been back in the States around my family and then

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:34.082)
Bye.

Robert (21:57.305)
We have this dinner, but no one's even talking to each other. We're all just sitting on our phones looking at stuff. Not even looking at each other. And there's a kind of moment where I was, okay, what does happiness mean? So what I discovered in that moment was happiness is simply the sum of your expectations, preferences, and desires weighed against your reality.

If reality matches what you expect, what you prefer and what you desire, then you're happy. When reality doesn't measure up to that, and then we go down here to unhappiness and suffering. So how do we find that? There's only one of two ways, right? The first way is you have to make reality match up to your expectations. And if you're in a privileged position to do that, your expectations just keep growing, and then reality has to somehow catch up for you to be happy.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:20.344)
that makes sense, then you're happy.

Robert (22:49.966)
That's why someone can buy a new car and go do retail therapy and buy $50,000 worth of bags and then in two weeks they're miserable and they want to it again because they're not looking at the mind. So the second way to find happiness is you're able to control the mind so your expectations, preferences and desires can measure up to your reality within reason.

There's only two ways to really find it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:12.024)
So.

And it's so interesting and it's very logical. And we live in times that people are expecting more than what reality can provide to them. And in part, that's why we have so many people that are really living unhappy lives. And social media and this society today is pushing everyone to have high expectations of everything without even taking a look at what

reality really can offer to us. And it's beautiful that you just touched on this because I think that's something people don't pay enough attention to. And it's part of how we as humans, we can try to get back to the basics. It's not expect as much. Just live under what the reality can offer us.

Robert (24:09.027)
Yeah, well there's also like, if you look at this on a mental and emotional model, it's understanding the mind as the premise. If you understand and have a good relationship with the mind and emotions, you can create happiness in a lot of situations you think you can't.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:25.368)
Brian.

Robert (24:26.094)
I was coming from corporate, then I'm living out in the jungle in a hut. So the whole idea of like, you know, used to have a private driver and a chef that would take me places and I would go to Japan and sit with CEOs and do all that stuff. And then now I'm here in this very simple like hut, sleeping on a yoga mat on the floor while I'm these properties out. And in those situations, there's tons of times where I was like, I could just go get a hotel. I could go check into a resort.

But then it's kind of looking at it as like, well, what's the experience then? You shortcut the experience. Like there's no growth in that. If you constantly revert to what's comfortable, you're never going to step outside of that little box you put yourself in. I can, I can't. And so one thing people definitely...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:12.62)
Yeah. No one wants to live through the struggle, right, Robert? So no one likes to be in pain. No one likes to face pain. Everybody, not everybody, a lot of people are looking for perfection because perfection avoids you from getting into the uncomfortable conversations, even about yourself. So people are trying to avoid to get there.

Robert (25:33.901)
Hmm.

Robert (25:41.197)
Definitely. And if we look at this in terms of American society, like let's say there's an immigrant. I remember you said you were from Latin America, Where things are very different. Like poverty is real there. Like you don't have walls on your house. You don't have running water. You don't have wifi. You don't have cable TV. You might not eat for a couple days at a time. That's poverty. If you're coming from that environment and then you're in the United States where you have tons of opportunity, you're going to attack it relentlessly in Excel.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:48.312)
Right, I'm Cuban. Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:53.954)
very much.

Robert (26:08.43)
and this is why a lot of immigrants in the United States come there and they excel because they know what real suffering is versus Americans who have been there and been exposed to the standard but still find a way to victimize themselves or say that they can't or find reasons not to act because they don't know what the real suffering is compared to immigrants from underdeveloped countries. I saw this really clearly when I was out there. But back to the topic at hand.

If you want to be happy in your life, you have to either A. Constantly expect reality to catch up to your expectations and mindlessly entertain every urge that you have, which is never really going lead to happiness. Or B. You have to have a handle on your mind and emotions so you can align them with reality and reasonably escalate with what's actually practiced.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:02.37)
But that would mean your mind over your emotions in a way that you can control where you want to get to, right?

Robert (27:05.644)
Yes.

Robert (27:09.655)
Yeah, because another thing I learned out in the jungle in this Philippines arc of the story is that if we look at desire, what does that even really mean, right? You have a lot of time when you're out in nature to really dig into your head. Desire is a mixture of aspiration and anger.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:30.626)
Wow.

Robert (27:30.74)
Ooh, I want that. Ooh, you made me mad, right? And whenever a person doesn't get what they want, they become angry because the desire itself is a subtle form of anger. Because the thing that you want is not there and you are relentlessly chasing it. So if you look at our desires, a lot of the times, are they really our desires or are they just implants?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:44.674)
That is true.

Robert (28:00.492)
Like you're driving down the highway and you see a giant sign of a juicy hamburger and all of sudden you want one. Do you want one? Or is it just the idea that's been in your head?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:04.62)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:08.498)
know you are induced to that, right? And for the most part, that's also part of what social media, the internet, it has kind of amplified in a negative way. It's the desire of things that we really don't need.

Robert (28:12.748)
Great.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:27.276)
but we still want to get because we see that others are getting it. It looks nice, right? Or we get hungry because we see a food ad, for example, which we weren't probably not hungry or not thinking about, but it's the constant invasion of advertising that it keeps bombarding us throughout the day that doesn't allow us to really catch up. And back to this

conversation is we continue to keep expecting more and more because also that's why we see every day. But reality is also not getting there because maybe we don't have the money or we don't have the means to try to get everything that we are being exposed to in a way.

Robert (29:17.196)
Definitely. Now have a lot of friends who are multi-millionaires who've worked really hard to become successful and one trait I noticed across the board with them is that they're able to understand reality and set their expectations accordingly and then progressively escalate versus people that just want things but don't want to grow into the person they need to be to acquire the things that they think they want.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:41.546)
It's a different mindset, right? It totally is. Yeah.

Robert (29:44.043)
It's a different mindset. You can't want a porish and a six-figure-a-month income, but you're not willing to do six-figure-a-month work and put out that kind of value and have that kind of effort, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:57.524)
An effort, Yeah. It's such an interesting conversation on topic because that's a reality that a lot of people, our society is going through right now. So Rob.

Since I heard about you and your story, I always wanted to ask you about this specific question and topic, which is part of your training over there. It was the Shaolin training.

my understanding, and I'm not an expert or anything, that isn't a very gentle type of training, that is rough. Right? So I always wanted to ask you, what did you find in that discipline that, for example, therapy didn't provide to you?

And if you can tell us a little bit about that experience, think that would be from it.

Robert (30:57.555)
Okay.

Robert (31:01.034)
Yeah, definitely. Before I went to China, I did spend some time in India learning yoga, but we can cover that next. So to keep things in order, because I was living in the Philippines and then going to India, then going to China and then Tibet. But to answer your question, it takes the idea that growth doesn't happen out of your side of your comfort zone and really inflates that by a million percent. So what a typical day looks like is at 430 in the morning, you hear really loud gongs. The gongs are huge.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:07.818)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:29.282)
Gone? okay. Yeah.

Robert (31:30.315)
Yeah, gong, like g-o-n-g. It's about 10 feet in diameter and there's a monk playing it and he's chanting Buddhist sutras in Chinese. 430 a.m. Every day. And so when you hear that, that's time for you to get up. You have 20 minutes to get up and wash your face with some cold water, put your robes on and then you go to the hall where they do the Buddhist prayers. So you have these three huge Buddhist statues and then you these

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:39.616)
At what time is that? Every day.

Robert (31:59.306)
prayer sessions in Chinese and most of us didn't understand what was going on so they give you a booklet where it has the Chinese characters written out in English and you try to follow along. For the first week or so it gets really awkward but you finally get the hang of it just by repetition and then you do that from 4.30 until 4.30 to wake up you start at 5 from 5 until 6. At 6 a.m. you go outside and then you do a bit of Tai Chi and Qigong practice which is the energy practices.

At 6.45, you have to run five kilometers to the spring. So on the top of the mountain where we were, there's a spring and you're only allowed to drink water from that spring. For some reason, they say that the water has powers to help heal your body and give you energy and it's the only water you're allowed to drink. So you have your big bottle of water, your big jug. So you have to run up the mountain to go to the spring. You fill your jug with the spring and then you run back with the jug.

And so when you get back, then you're going to start your morning training. Your morning training lasts from eight o'clock until noon. So you're in your, this is in the summer. So you're in the dead of the heat. So it was about 40 degrees Celsius, which is, guess, I don't know, over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I forget I've been overseas too long. It's super hot.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:19.234)
That training is different exercises, martial arts, things like that.

Robert (33:23.753)
So you start out with all your stretching and your basic exercises, your warm-ups, and then you do your group exercises, your group movements you do every day, and then you do something called taulu, which is your form or your movement routines, and then you'll do calisthenics and conditioning and then fight training, and that lasts until noon. At noon, you get a break for lunch, so you eat your lunch and you get a two-hour break from noon until 2 p.m. At 2 p.m. you have your afternoon training, so you do the same thing again where you have to run and get your water.

So running the five kilometers to get the water, filling the jug up, coming back. And then when you get back, you'll do the same exercises again and then you do your afternoon training routine until 6 p.m. And then you'll have dinner. Then after 8 p.m. you have to be inside your room, lights out, no devices, no TV, no nothing, none of that stuff's available. And then by 9 p.m. lights up. You can't talk, you can't make any noise, you have to go to sleep. And you do this six days a week.

Now on the sixth day, which would be every Friday, we would do something called the Temple Run. So you have to climb up to the top of a mountain. The mountain is about, I want to say it's about 800 meters tall. And then you go to the other side to the temple. Then the temple has different levels. So you have to run from the bottom of the temple to the top. And in total it's 3,187 steps. So you have to do this 10 times.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:49.57)
Wow.

Robert (34:53.969)
And if you don't finish, they don't give you dinner. Like there's no quitting. There's no like, I don't feel like it. Like you either do it or you don't get dinner. And you do this, I was doing this every week for three months. So the whole training routine, then the next day you get one rest day a week which is your Saturdays.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:04.568)
Wow.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:14.092)
And do you make it every day?

Robert (35:16.789)
Yeah, you have to. It's either you get in line with the program or you get out and quit and we don't give you your refund and you're on your own. And so one of the biggest contrasts in training in martial arts in Asia, China, Japan, Korea, is that it's not there as an entertainment after school activity. Because you know in America you can go down to the little shopping strip mall and there's the grocery store and then the karate studio.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:25.474)
Got it. Wow.

Robert (35:45.724)
and then the kids go in there and they're having a good time running around and doing little movements or the adults come in after work and they do a little self-defense class. In that type of training, it's not about entertaining students for fun so you can keep your membership going and keep paying. It's about you have to learn this discipline. You'll learn the next thing when you're ready and we don't need you and we don't care if you like it.

So it's a completely different mindset. And so that experience was very, very physically demanding. I lost a lot of weight. I went in there weighing about 189 pounds. I came out weighing 172.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:27.862)
Okay, that was like plus 25 pounds

Robert (36:34.44)
It was physically intense. had a calorie deficit. I was burning a lot of calories. I wasn't eating meat either then. My protein was all from beans because there wasn't meat serves in the temple. We didn't get meat. And so what did I learn from that? It's probably what you want to hear. The biggest part of this whole arc of the story is that

Whatever you have in your body in terms of an emotion, there's a tandem reaction in mind. Let's say for example, you see something on social media and it makes you angry. And that moment your mind moves on, your body doesn't move on. Or you have an experience that makes you upset. Or anything that happens in the mind also happens in the body on emotional level. The mind moves on very quickly, but the body keeps score. And so until you push your body physically,

The emotions don't manifest and you can't really process them, in my case. so pushing yourself to the extreme physically will also push out emotions and it brings them to the surface to help you process and get over things. Because we think about this, like let's say you're doing something physically hard, right? Like if someone said do 100 push-ups and you're doing like 80 and you're like, you have to really scream and make noise.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (37:57.474)
Yeah.

Robert (37:57.649)
We do this because the emotion and frustration that were stored up in the body are also coming up.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:03.182)
Yeah.

Robert (38:04.485)
And so if you've been in the military and you're psychologically conditioned to disconnect from your emotions, it means your mind is always over here, but your body is always over here. So extreme physical activities will bring them back together in those points where you can have those moments of release. And if you're stuck with a lot of trauma or anger, right? If you got bullied as a kid or people picked on you or you're abused or you're a victim of sexual assault or whatever happened to you, you need to work those emotions out of your body.

like sitting down and talking to someone in a white coat or drinking them away or distract, it doesn't do it. Extreme physical tension and stress on the body will push your emotions to a point where they have to manifest and then you can start to really deal with them and release them and process them.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:54.072)
So it's like the body pushing the emotions. It's the extreme that you're going through physically is really what then it's pushing your emotions to come out. Interesting. And that's what you found from that experience, Got it.

Robert (39:09.072)
Definitely, yeah.

A lot of people can't do it alone. Because we get, let's say I want to go, okay, my goal is to run up this mountain and there's no one else there. I might get tired halfway up and talk myself out of it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:23.982)
we're not good at pushing ourselves, ourselves. I mean, in a personal way, it's like going to the gym.

Robert (39:28.132)
Yeah, if no one is going to know about it, yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:38.51)
we're not pushing ourselves to give our very best, you know what I mean? Especially if you are not disciplined, I'm not a disciplined person in a way that I push myself in a gym to really give my 100, 200 % unless I have someone there to push me, right? Which is kind of what you're saying. This is the push that sometimes we need to go where we need to go.

Robert (39:42.457)
No.

Robert (39:55.525)
Yeah.

Robert (40:04.611)
Yeah, and doing it in a group where everybody's suffering the same experience and you all push through together, really can be revolutionary in terms of healing. And I know it sounds counterintuitive because you're like, I don't want to stress myself out. But sometimes you need to. Sometimes you've got to force yourself in situations to break your conditioning.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:17.731)
Right.

Robert (40:24.165)
I took one of my friends hiking in Nepal, going high up in the Himalayas, over four days. We trekked 87 kilometers, had to elevation sickness, all that, going really high up, passed about 4,500 meters going up. And that also happened in that experience. Well, this person had a complete mental and emotional breakdown because of how rough it was physically. But once you're past that, you have a place of clarity.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:45.797)
wow.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:52.952)
But were you ever afraid that you maybe were pushing that person too much?

Robert (41:00.613)
They wanted to do it. I mean, I didn't put a gun to their head to make them. They're the one that wanted to do it, You want it, you got it. I would never force someone, yeah. I would never force somebody unless they're the one that wants to do it. Because you can't, that's just cruel, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:02.158)
You got what you asked for type of thing, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:16.982)
Yeah, that's

Yeah, I know that that's what I was just thinking right now. Interesting, Rob. So and sorry for me skipping, but before it was it's India, right? So.

Robert (41:33.349)
Yeah. So when I was living in the jungle, I had a lot of healing experiences that I went through, but I needed to go deeper. Because what I realized is that on a superficial level, sure, disconnecting and being in nature, helps and all that, but to do the deep internal work, I had to develop a completely different relationship with my body. And the whole idea of going to India was based on a study that one of my friends sent me.

She sent me a study that was done by the Department of Veterans Affairs with the University of Indiana. And they did a controlled study and they put 120 veterans through a series of yoga classes for six months. And at the end of the study, they reported better impulse control, better sleep, better quality of relationships, less stress and reduce signs and symptoms of PTSD. So was thinking like, wow, that's all right. That seems like it's pretty good. How do I do that?

and I went to a couple yoga classes that I found that were kind of near my area. had to go to another island to go to, and I tried it out, but it was very incomplete because it was just an exercise thing. Like they don't explain the philosophy or the postures or anything. It was just do this exercise and at the end, you know, you can take a picture of you holding yourself in a pose and a selfie and you can put it on your Instagram. It wasn't like a deep thing.

And so I decided, alright, if I'm going to learn yoga, then I need to go to where it was made. Right? Like if you want to learn to make pizza, you go to Italy because that's where it's made. If you want to learn something, you go to where it's from. Yeah. And so I hired a caretaker and I left my property in the Philippines and I decided to go to the foothills of the Himalayas in India. I went to the Uttarakhand province in Rishikesh, which Rishikesh is the birthplace of the practice of yoga.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:07.65)
Right. You go to the stores. Yeah.

Robert (43:31.65)
And so when I showed up there, I was looking for a yoga school, but I was finding the same thing that I found where I was from. was all this R-Y-T-T, very superficial, acrobatic, like you can learn to be a yoga teacher and it doesn't really get into the nitty gritty of it. And I was getting very discouraged. And so after visiting my fourth school and they were attempting to rip me off also.

saying, yeah, you can stay in a little dorm room and we'll teach yoga. It's only 5,000 bucks. I'm like, dude, this is India. There's there's a cow outside of my door. There's people everywhere. Like, I'm not paying five grand. Are you fucking kidding me? And so I got a bit discouraged. So remember I was in, I was in a place called Ramjula in Rishikesh, which is near the Parmath Niketan Ashram. And I was sitting in front of the Ganges River.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:05.688)
Wow.

Robert (44:24.888)
And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, Rob, what are you doing here, man? Came here to India, you don't know anybody, you didn't arrange anything. Like, what are you doing here? Like, I was getting really discouraged. Like, I was thinking I made the wrong decision.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:37.196)
Can't imagine,

Robert (44:39.108)
And then there was a guy that came down and sat next to me. He was in an orange robe, he had a dhoti on, and he had this head wrap. And at first I thought he was trying to sell me hashish. Like, oh my friends, what are you looking for? And I was like, nah man, I'm not trying to do that right now. And he just kind of chuckled, he's like, no, what are you looking for in you? He a really thick Indian accent, right? He spoke like English and half Hindi together.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:05.304)
Right.

Robert (45:06.456)
which I could kind piece things together and understand what he was saying. And so he sat down and we had a conversation and I found out that he was a Vedic Hindu monk, someone called a Sadhu or a Babaji. So he's a renunciate. And what that means is he renounced a worldly life to seek the path. And this is something people do in India. They have a whole system of registration for it and all that. Like it's part of their culture. And so the only possessions he had

was what he could carry in his bag, which is like one change of clothes and a few items in a bag, and that's it. And I looked at his feet. He hadn't worn shoes in 12 years, so the calluses on his feet were like really, really thick. And he hadn't slept in a bed in 12 years. He always sleeps on his mat on the ground. It's like, wow, that's hardcore. And so started talking to him about the philosophy, and the first couple days of dealing with him, I was just kind of feeling it out. Like, I don't know if I really trust this guy yet.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:46.678)
you

Robert (46:06.244)
But after the fourth day, I sensed there was a genuine part of him because I would offer him a bit of, you know, a few rupees just in exchange for his time. And immediately I see he would give it to other people.

I paid him like 500 rupees or something one day. Then as he was leaving, I was still watching him and he ended up giving it to a man that was laying on the ground with no leg.

like you have nothing but you're already giving it to other people. So I can see that he's not attached, like he's walking the path in a way. And so I decided, it's like, all right, I just asked him, I'm like, will you be my teacher? He's like, and he was very happy about it. He's like, I'll make you my chila. Chila means like my disciple. And so I started studying yoga from the Vedic Hindu monk and I learned the practices in the traditional way. And a couple of misconceptions about yoga that we have in the West.

In the West, it's all about the body. You can do yoga and you're going to lose weight and you're going to look sexy in your yoga pants. But in India, in the traditional practices, yoga is about the mind. The physical practice of yoga, the asana, the posture, is meant to release tension in the body and bring the mind into the presence of the body. So you can meditate clearly.

So after I do my series of 28 to 35 postures, by the end of that I'm not thinking of anything. I'm not thinking of how I got to check my email, or I got to... did this person... All of those thoughts disappear and then you get to a place called Padmasana, which is the lotus position, where you fold your legs, kind of like you fold your arms, which I've seen... you see the Buddha statues, they do all that. This is the position you get to as advanced practitioner, so you can do meditation practices.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:35.842)
Yeah.

Robert (47:56.449)
Now, what did I learn from all of this? Number one is that, similar to what I learned in China, the body holds tension and the body holds memories. If you do the postures to release the physical tension, the emotional tension also comes up.

When you release the emotional tension, all of the thoughts that are driven by the emotion are also clear. Meaning, if you have an emotion of anger, your thoughts are going to be related to anger.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:23.402)
are gone.

Robert (48:32.438)
Like if someone cuts you off in traffic, you're not going to think of like a cute experience where you're petting a puppy. You're going to be thinking about how you're going to curse them out or throw something. You're going to be angry. It's because whatever emotion we have in our body drives our thought processes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:39.502)
or you're going to be angry. Yeah.

Robert (48:50.59)
If you're able to start to release the emotions physically through the postures of the body in the breathing exercises, the thought dynamic changes.

When the thought dynamic changes, you're able to see and live life differently.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:06.254)
Wow.

Robert (49:07.648)
So the idea of the practice is really about what can I do to change the emotional undertones of my physical body so my thought processes change.

Give you example, if someone is in a perpetual victim state, which we see a lot, especially in the United States, right? it's so hard out here. this person did this. the Democratic party. the Republican party. When you're in a perpetual victim state, it's driven by an emotion of sadness.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:38.05)
That's correct, yeah.

Robert (49:39.97)
So there's an underlying emotion of sadness that's driving the thought processes of victim.

Robert (49:48.129)
When you're in a perpetual state of anger and aggression, it's because there's an underlying state of pain. Hurt.

You can't be angry unless something hurts you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:59.715)
Right.

Robert (50:00.993)
Like you can't have smoke unless there's a fire, right?

So the idea that I learned from yoga was that every emotional undertone that we carry in the body will drive a thought process. If you change the emotional undertone, you will also change thought processes. And you do that long enough, you'll change the entire way you see life.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:22.03)
So it's driven by the emotions then. And when you look at what yoga taught you compared to what Shaolin practice taught you are kind of...

based on the same foundations that you have to put your body, you have to put your emotions to get here, right? And to take it to the next level.

Robert (50:54.433)
Well, definitely. In English language, we have sayings, euphemisms, little sayings that relate emotions to body, like, broke my heart. You make me sick. Get off my back. You're a headache. These language cues indicate that the emotions have an effect on the physical body. But we don't really take it any farther. Pass that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:03.181)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:20.002)
now.

Robert (51:21.867)
But in those cultures, they have a deep scientific understanding of this.

Robert (51:28.116)
that's existed long before.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:28.29)
and they look for options to get away or outside of that feeling, right? Because they understand what they're going through. I think part of the main difference with us and our society, Robert, is again, back to us not willing to go through the...

exercise to really discover what's hurting us, right? Going outside of our comfort zone and do the work to really know ourselves in a way that we know that something needs to happen if we really want to get out of outside of this mental state or this emotional state. And we really, usually we don't do that work.

Robert (51:58.432)
Hmm.

Robert (52:17.877)
Definitely.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:21.42)
because of time, exactly, Yeah, awesome.

Robert (52:21.492)
No, it's uncomfortable.

Robert (52:25.706)
Yeah. I mean, time is simply an indicator of priority and importance. Like time is just a polite word. Like if someone texted you and, I didn't have time to text you back, what you really mean is you weren't important enough at that moment in time to be a priority. So we don't prioritize things because we don't see a tangible importance to do them. So we haven't framed the value yet.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:50.806)
or because...

or because sometimes it's too much that we have in our lives and we don't find a way to try to go back to the basics of

living more with less, right? And I'm hearing you and you're talking about your experience in India, China, know, the Philippines. And those cultures, they approach time in such a different way because they want to be present, right? For them, time, I think it's important because they want to be present in time.

And I don't think we approach our lives that way, in a way that others do.

Robert (53:46.707)
Yeah, a lot of people live modern lives in these countries though. So I think the people that I was dealing with are more those people that are immersed and involved in those practices. Because India has a huge tech scene where they live modern lives, China, I mean, they are the creators of TikTok, so they're also in it. But if you get down to the people who are really into those practices and embrace their culture for those kind of aspects of it, then...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (53:56.654)
Yeah.

Robert (54:13.811)
It's definitely true because they understand the power of presence.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:17.206)
Yeah. Interesting. So we have India then, and my apologies for the mix up, then after India was Japan.

Robert (54:29.343)
Tibet. No, was Philippines, India, China, then Tibet.

So after Chimus...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:37.825)
at that point.

At that point, after Tibet, you figured it out. You really realize, hey, I may have overcome. I may have found a way to start healing.

Robert (54:57.138)
Yeah, think the thing that I realized through all of this, right, all these different places is that it's like breaking a bone. Let's say, for example, you get in a motorcycle accident and you break your legs in 50 places and they rebuild your legs. You're never going to be able to come back to the original state. Like if you were able to run and play football before that, but then you had a really good doctor who fixed everything.

You might be able to jog a little bit, but you're never going to come back to how you were. And learning to accept and integrate that into your mind is the way that you can overcome the mental baggage attached to that, right? So what I discovered through all of this is that we have invisible emotional injuries.

Robert (55:54.534)
And since they're invisible, the expectation around how we behave and operate in life is skewed.

Robert (56:04.454)
And so when we start to repair ourselves and bring ourselves back emotionally by re-piecing together those broken parts of ourselves, the experience is never going to go away, right? Like if you had something very traumatic and horrible happen to you, you know, I feel for you, I'd really do, but the experience is never going to go away. It's not just going to disappear. The only thing you can really do is rebuild yourself around it so it's not the thing that's affecting you emotionally to a point where it's driving you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:23.533)
Right.

Robert (56:33.351)
to live in that perpetual state of victimhood being affected by the experience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:37.154)
Yeah. It's kind of accepting what the new reality is.

and allowing your expectations to match what the new reality is and doing the work to really understand that's really what's going to be you or your life moving forward. And the expectations will have to go around what your new reality will be. And back to our part of our conversation, expectations and reality. And I think that's kind of the key and will continue to be the key of trying to find happiness.

as we do the work on trying to match what we expect from what our reality is.

Robert (57:18.119)
Definitely. Because once you're able to coming to grips with these emotions, facing them, processing them, and releasing them, you'll understand that there's always going to be a slight sensitivity towards it, but the emotion doesn't have the power to hijack your decision-making process.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (57:37.56)
Yeah. Wow, it's so powerful.

Robert (57:43.56)
Because when it does, people create these loops and patterns in their life. Like I was working with one client who was a victim of betrayal. She had the trust and betrayal emotional injury where she was betrayed by her husband of 10 years. And so anytime she got into a new relationship, she would automatically think, my God, I have to make sure he doesn't cheat on me. So she would check her new partner's phones. She would constantly want to know where they are.

and ended up happening is people would just leave because like, hey, I don't want to deal with this.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (58:18.552)
She was in a loop. Yeah.

Robert (58:20.199)
in the loop because the fear of betrayal was hijacking the decision making process. So when we work together, we're able to release the pain and the fear and understand you're going to have these urges that might come up, but you have to understand how to operate outside of the emotion and how you're going to affect other people. If you're constantly accusing someone of doing something they're not doing because you're afraid they're going to do it, they're not going to want to deal with you.

You have to be able to manage the emotion and then decide on the best course of action that brings you the outcome.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (58:58.164)
If not, if not, that reality will continue to to be around that person, you know, and she will never or he will never find what happiness is again, because I mean, if you try to find the same errors or problems you found on your previous experiences, you will be kind of replicating the same experience over and over again, because in a way, you kind of chasing it.

Robert (58:58.493)
So that's kind of it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (59:27.906)
Right? And when you're trying to overcome that, you're trying to go the opposite way. But unless, like you say, you do the work and you put in the effort, your emotions will continue to be kind of betraying you in a way.

Robert (59:45.094)
Yeah. It's a safety mechanism, right? Because it's like having a broken arm. If you had a broken arm already, the idea of getting in a car accident is 10 times more terrifying because you're already injured.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:00:00.686)
Yeah, absolutely.

Robert (01:00:03.141)
So it's the same thing people are doing emotionally. They have an injury, but they're 10 times more terrified of re-injuring the already broken part of themselves. So they take extreme measures that end up not creating the outcomes they want anyway.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:00:21.834)
not life isn't easy, right? But there are ways to move on and to get to the other side. It doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy. It's probably won't be, but we have to be willing to put in the effort and do the work for ourselves. We really want to. It's really how this goes. Rob.

I know that we are almost there and I think we have a lot more content to continue to discuss in the future. But before we close this conversation today, I really wanted to ask you, what would you say to someone that is struggling silently right now?

What would be your words on encouragement or advice for those that deserves better but they don't know how to?

Robert (01:01:27.216)
You have to develop a new relationship with your emotions. That's the only way really. No matter what you do externally, nothing is going to stick as much as the work you can do internally.

And I know it's easier said than done, but learning the skill of emotional intelligence and emotional maturity can bring you a long way through a very hard time. If you're able to sit with this uncomfortable feeling, to listen to what it has to say, to not tune it out, not run away, listen to it, be present in that feeling, and then be able to process it, small bits at a time, to release it, you

you're putting yourself in a better position to heal. And the one thing I would definitely tell you above everything else is that if you want change, you have to change.

You can't get new results and new outcomes if you do the same thing, staying in the same comforts. If you're in a bad relationship and your partner's driving you crazy, you have to separate. If you're in a dead-end job and you hate going to work every day, you have to take the risk of trying out a new career. If you don't like the way your body looks, you have to go through the uncomfortable process of exercising. You can't get anything new unless you do something new and become a new version of yourself, so...

If you want change, you gotta change and you have to be open to going through that process of discomfort. And it's gonna suck at first, dude. I know it does. Trust me, I know. I've through a lot of physically uncomfortable things. as you just do it and get into it and you see what you're going towards, you see the discomfort of your muscles expanding, that's what's gonna give you that good feeling of looking at the new figure. And that can be figurative to anything.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:03:22.21)
Right.

Robert (01:03:23.256)
And so don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone and don't be afraid to do and try something new and don't be afraid to be honest with yourself.

You can fool everybody else all you want, but at the end of the day, you always know the truth and you can't run from you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:03:42.284)
we really can run from ourselves. That's really the truth of life and everything. It's really, it's, let's face life as what it is. And...

And there should not be any impossible mission if we really are willing to put in the work and face life for what it is and our struggles for what they are. As you say, it will be uncomfortable. Well, life is uncomfortable.

It's not easy, but I'm sure a better version of ourselves is really waiting on the other side if we're willing to put in the work. So Rob, my friend, thank you very much for taking the time tonight with us, not just for your courage, but for turning pain into a path for others. And if these episodes open something in you, share it with someone who might need it.

Robert (01:04:30.042)
Thank you for having me.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:04:46.168)
follow the human protocol, and also read on filter wisdom because every human story matters. Remember, the code may change, but our humanity is the constant. Thank you all. Thank you, Rob.

Robert (01:04:59.544)
Hmm.

Robert (01:05:03.299)
Thank you.