The Bledsoe Show

AJ Roberts on Wealth, Crypto Currencies and Meditation

Las Vegas Trip
Belly of the beast, but also hike in the beauty of the desert.

Vibrational energies
Spiritual teachers and setting their prices. David Hawkins’ letting go/ Book power, force, Vibration levels
AJ- “You brought up a great point about if we shut the receiving side down, then our giving side is limited.”
MB- “I see money as energy, and energy flows.” “I think about energy coming through a pipe and there’s a spigot, and if you close down the spigot of receiving, only as much as you can receive can be given, and so if you’re closing yourself off to receiving, your basically just limiting how much you can give. I’m not even talking about just giving money away, I’m talking about growing a business where you can have a bigger impact.” “For me if you want to have more influence in the world, if you’re like ‘I think if people adopted my ideas, the world would be a better place,’ if you truly believe that then the best thing you can do is be open to receiving more, because as much as you can receive is how much you can influence.”

The benefits of wealth
AJ- Warren Buffett giving his wealth, and all these billionaires, they wouldn’t have had that opportunity. A lot of great change has come from business builders that become philanthropists. The interesting concept about money as energy is money has to move. If you’re stockpiling money, it’s going to be taken away from you.
MB- “If you’re not giving everything you’re receiving, then that’s also going to screw up how much you receive in the future.”
AJ- “I think a lot of people when they think give, they think straight away they think to charity.”
Mike- “Right, I’m talking about giving as in building something that creates value in the world.”
AJ- It is what it is based on the value we put on it.

Bitcoin has a limited amount of coins.
United States is going to be taken by surprise.
Third world countries adopting it.

Auto Industry
AJ- Atlas Shrugged – “If you are unable to operate what you feel is your full potential because of restrictions and rules, and there is somewhere else you can go and just be completely free to push, and expand, you’re not going to stay in the place that restricts you. In today’s day and age we don’t need to be anywhere, we can still connect.”
MB- “A businessman’s or businesswoman’s purpose in this world is not to fund the government, it’s to carry out, and it’s not to make money either, it’s to provide the value that they want to bring to the world, and their self-expression.”
MB- All taxes added were supposed to be ‘temporary’, like social security from the great depression.
MB- “The way our culture is setup is, people are not setup to learn.” “We’re not taught to think and learn in school, we’re taught to consume and regurgitate.”
Bitcoin cont.
MB- Because of how many people are joining the bitcoin network, it’s gaining a lot of stability and third world countries are going to use that to their advantage
MB- If you want to make money forever, learn how to create value for other people. My coach, Brian Franklyn talks about this in his book is your education in the things that create value for others.
Creating value, and asking for what you’re worth
The business owner does not decide the value of the product, the market does
AJ-There aren’t no jobs “There are no jobs that will pay me what I believe I should be paid.” But if nobody is paying you that, then you’re not worth that.
AJ- Gender Pay gap because of negotiating.
MB- There’s a lot of correlative data, but not causative.
AJ- “People, for safety of their mind, they have to believe that the way they live is the best way because it’s hard to omit the flaws in your own reality.” “When you can stop lying to yourself, true freedom begins to happen.”
MB- “I would say 99.99% of the people walking around are operating from the perspective of I am the center of the universe. Everything has to do with them. If you can step outside of yourself and see yourself as a piece of the larger ecosystem, and you can be honest, like you were saying. I think we would be getting along a lot better.”
AJ- “If you realize you are a fragment of a whole, and then you say, ‘well, what part of that?’ So if you looked at the body, you’ve got the head, the eyes, the mouth, the lips, if you’re just a fragment of that, what is that role, and I think that what’s interesting is we have different responsibilities that have been given to us individually, and the reality is that we are constantly being tested to see if we were give the right abilities, talents, gifts, whatever it is… We’re not the only one with those and so if you can get through the test, whatever it is, if you can just move through that obstacle the next door opens, and you get met with the next obstacle, and then the next door opens. And so, as you go forward you start to realize, I have the ability to achieve whatever I want to achieve, if I can continuously get out of my own way, but if I choose not to, then that’s given to someone else.
People get sidelined, maybe they were supposed to. Maybe you’re not supposed to go back.
Feather, Brick, Mack Truck
MB- “If you’re focused on what you’re going to get, that’s a problem in the first place.”
AJ- “If it’s a straight line, you’re supposed to be on a certain path, or there’s a path, and there’s alternative paths you can take, but you have one kind of flow path, where if you’re on that everything is going to be superspeed, that’s how it feels. Then you get off, these little bumps in the road try to set you back into flow, and if you get too far off it’s not a little course correct, it’s not a 1% shift, you gotta get slapped back down because you’re so far away that it needs to do a complete reset.”
AJ- “It’s funny because in those moments that’s when we are scared, that’s when we freak out the most, that’s where we’re terrified. But if we look back on our life, and we look at those, because everyone has had these moments, everyone’s had these moments where it seems like everything is going to crash and burn. What’s on the backside of that is always better, it’s always better. So if you can shift that to all of a sudden, you bring on challenges, it’s like how fast can I meet these obstacles, so you’re inviting that into your life …”
MB- “Embracing the uncertainty.”
AJ- “All of a sudden uncertainty becomes comfortable and you move so much faster because it’s not now this big thing you have to deal with, it’s “oh, okay, let’s deal with this. Boom boom boom.”
AJ- How many people grieve a relationship still after 2 years? Why don’t they embrace the new relationships, or job… or whatever it is because they were ‘wronged by…’ The doors are there, people get stuck in those loops. Shorten the turnarounds, and the doors just open.
MB- When something new shows up at your door, it won’t look like anything that’s ever happened before. Because if it looks and feels like something before, it’s not new. It has to feel uncertainty, it has to be a surprise when you make the right choices, the right things show up and it has to be a surprise, if it’s not a surprise you didn’t learn the lesson.
AJ- Belly of the beast, hero’s journey. You’ll find yourself back in the loop because you haven’t learned the lesson. The gift to the world is the lesson I learned. If you don’t get it, the lessons will get louder and louder until they’re screaming at you.
MB- That’s when you end up bankrupt, or tearing a pec. An exercise I do, is how can I be sensitive to the smallest, quietest thought.
MB- “Because you weren’t listening, you have no idea why you’re in a bad mood. All you know is you’re a sour person, and people think you’re an asshole. And it all comes down to the fact that you weren’t being sensitive to the message and feelings that your body was giving you, you shut it down, and then over time it’s going to build up and explode.” This is why my practice, or mantra in this era of my life is how sensitive can I be? Because I don’t want to be hit by the Mack Truck, I want to feel the feather and only make a 1% shift instead of a 180 degree shift.
We’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water. Dogmatic religion has some usefulness, didn’t pray or do anything after I broke away, I was meditating for a few years before I was comfortable with doing a prayer at the end of the meditation. I had to break away from the religious dogma
AJ- We meditate all the time. Driving, in the shower, moments of inspiration.
MB- People who play devil’s advocate learn really quickly.
AJ- “I don’t need to know why I am who I am, I just need to accept that this is who I am.” People who have this why me mentality don’t understand that it doesn’t matter, it’s irrelevant. You have to ask how does this benefit the world. “What is my role? As this fragment of a whole, how do I contribute and leave this place better than when I came in?”
MB- “The good habits will naturally occur when you remove the bad habits.”
AJ’s Powerlifting career
1205 squat. Bench 910. Deadlift 815.
What drove you to do that?
AJ- “Honestly, when I began training it was with Brett Marcell, and he wanted to squat 1200. He had 1141 as the world record.” “When I did the 1205, I remember I kind of blacked out came up, was unsure if I got the lift or not, got whites, and immediately I was like, that’s it. In that moment, it was like that’s it. I think that a lot of times you set goals because that’s what we’re told to do, and there’s really no meaning behind it, and then slowly we start to put attachments towards what it will mean when we get there.” I had set that goal, and never really looked beyond it, so once I got there that was it.
AJ- “The way you live is based on the goals you set. I love what Peter Diamandis talks about: moonshots, creating the biggest goal you can play, because it forces expansion. It’s easier to 10x your business than it is to double your business”. “Because doubling your business is really operating at the same level but tightening some things down, maybe spending a little more on advertising, putting a system in place. 10X’ing causes you to shift your entire thought process.” My best squat at the time was 450 when I set the goal to be the world record holder. That’s why surrounding yourself with the right people is so important because you realize, it’s not that difficult, I can do it.
MB- What motivated you to get into powerlifting?
AJ- Grew up watching strongmen, in HS I wasn’t able to play sports, international student’s can only play one year. Powerlifting was one of the only things I could do. I always wanted to lift more weights than anybody in the gym.
I was a lot healthier in my last few years of lifting thanks to CrossFit. John Welbourne who introduced nutrition stuff to me, Kelly Starrett who helped me with mobility.
There’s no cycle for athletes, or short term jobs. That’s it. When you’re done, the lights are off.
MB-”Because the training is driven so much by competition, when the competition is removed the idea of working out or exercising or moving, the perspective has to shift. What’s your relationship to exercise and nutrion post powerlifting.”
AJ- It’s been a long journey for me, lots of hormonal issues from years of abuse. But when you have a deadline, you’re training for something. Even if you don’t like it, you show up every day because you’re going somewhere. Game Day, competition. You have to fall in love with the daily grind. You have to fall in love with doing the work to do the work. There is no end. Your relationship with it changes because you’re not goal oriented. Now training and food are supposed to fuel and provide for me. I’m not punishing my body, I’m trying to love my body, not punish it so that it responds in a certain way. “It’s in the suck that I come to life.” “At a certain point, you can’t keep hurting yourself.” I don’t know if people really grasp that. When you choose to eat bad foods, you’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting your stomach, your gut health, energy levels, clarity of mind, there is so much damage that goes into it, but most people don’t have that awareness.
MB- I would argue that what I thought was healthy 5 years ago, when i was eating for performance over health, and would look at my body, pretty low body fat, pretty muscular, but looking back now I was completely unhealthy. I’ve had similar perspective shifts. When I lift, it isn’t about lifting the weight, it’s about feeling good, and being sustainable.
AJ- When I used to workout at westside, when I first started for 3-4 months, my squat went backwards because my spine was being really compressed, so bad it was pinching a nerve and making my leg go numb, and I had to lay down and pop it somehow to get blood flow back. But now, when I workout if I go to the gym, and my knee hurts, I don’t do that exercise, I do something else. I’m not willing to risk the inflammation and damage because I don’t want to be hobbling around later. Strongest man in the world, but I couldn’t lift my hands over my head.
AJ- When you’re working out so hard and gasping for air, yeah you’re getting a good workout, but those aren’t the right metrics. The right metrics are did I have energy for the rest of the day? Then you had a good breakfast. If you ate something and had to take a nap an hour later, probably not the best thing for your body.
Everyone wants easy, they don’t want the concepts and theories, they want reps and sets. Free thinking is the most powerful thing you can have. You have to have free thinking. When keto came out and was popular, well that shit is paleo. Who is it better for. Think it was socrates on nutrition “The healthier you are, the more hours in the day you get.”
What’s the best path for you, to be the best version of yourself? Keep chiseling away, and keep getting better and better.

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