Episode 16: Chief Kirks New Book COnquer Culture
Joel Ellenbecker
I'm super excited. I got a chance, you know, a month or so ago to just get like a sneak peek at the new book you wrote. And I wanted to just take a chance to talk about it and learn about, you know, the process and the mission behind it.
And all things about the book.
CJ Kirk
Yeah, I'd love to talk about it. When I started the book, I should say just prior, I didn't really think I was going to write a book. It seemed like a pretty daunting process.
But I actually just sat down every day for five or ten minutes and started writing and tried to follow the Atomic Habits sort of playbook for creating a habit. And that actually worked.
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, I mean, I love books and I feel like they've changed my life and I've gotten so much from being able to read them. But I've also had that thought of like, oh man, like what would it actually take to sit down and get all those thoughts out and work on them? So the Atomic Habits, like you just started with like a few minutes each day and then built up from there?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, I just made a commitment to develop a habit as opposed to a page count or something that was a little more daunting. Just, you know, five or ten minutes every day. And then you look up and you go to sit down for five or ten minutes and it's a half an hour later because you've developed this habit.
I think the other thing that I really needed to recognize as I started writing the book is writing isn't perfect. What's in the book is probably like version 12 or edit 12 of what I started with. And so if you're an aspiring writer, my limited advice is just write.
Even if it doesn't seem articulate at the time, you know, capture your ideas, create your logic chains, because there's going to be lots of edits. And that was one of the things that was really almost daunting to me was talking to people who wrote books and saying, well, you'll probably rewrite your book five to ten times. And I thought, you know, who wants to do that?
Joel Ellenbecker
That sounds crazy. What got the inspiration to want to write a book? How did it start for you?
CJ Kirk
That's a good question. I don't know that I recall. I know that my kids, I'd written some stuff for my kids, just shorter stories.
And I started talking to my wife at one point about some of the things I learned and some of the parallels between the concepts and principles in Krav Maga and living life and how you can see them in different people or different things that people do. And it just spawned, I should write about this. And as I wrote about it, structurally, I realized I should probably, you know, put this into a book.
It sort of fits that particular structure.
Joel Ellenbecker
So it's been like a, you know, from the inception of your first like inkling about, oh, maybe I should write this book to it coming to fruition. It's been like years, decade. How long has it been brewing for you?
CJ Kirk
That's a good question. I mean, the stuff in the book has been brewing for nearly three decades. I would say the book, I really started it last winter.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's a culmination of things that I've learned, not a complete culmination, but certainly things that fit this particular sort of architecture.
The book, by the way, is called Conquer Culture, How Warriors and Winners Lead and Succeed. And then I have a little sub-subtitle. It's what Krav Maga training, the Navy SEALs, performance life coaching, and surviving a robbery at gunpoint have taught me.
So it's definitely a decades-long sort of tome into what I've learned or some of the things I've learned, a lot of things that I've learned as a result of those experiences.
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah. I mean, as I was flipping through it and reading some of the intros to the chapters and things, what I really loved about it so far, and I can't wait to get a full deep dive on it, is just how applicable it is for me, but for licensees and instructors and students to take the Krav Maga principles, to take what we do and learn on the mat and just integrate it and have another way of studying or consuming the information. So I think it's just like a really powerful thing that you did for people outside of the Krav Maga community, but also for everyone here to be able to go deeper with it.
CJ Kirk
Yeah. Thank you. I think ultimately I started writing the book, and I dedicated the book to my three boys who are still young and who are still navigating much of what they need to learn to set themselves up to be contented or deeply satisfied with life.
I don't say successful because it's a little bit of a loaded word, although we define what warriors and winners and success is, or I do in the book, and it's not what people think. As a coach, a performance coach, a life coach, I've coached lots of successful men that have been very successful on the corporate ladder, men that have started and sold multiple companies, and they're pretty unhappy. Yeah.
And the reason is they don't know what's next, and if what's next is the same thing they've done before, they recognize that the kind of contentment and deep satisfaction people really want in life is not available to them. And so a lot of that thought process caused me to think, I really want my kids to learn some of these lessons, so it's required reading for them.
Joel Ellenbecker
That's so cool. I don't know if I'm still a white belt in parenting, but I still feel new. My oldest son just lost his first tooth the other day, and I just think about the bond with children and how at least what's going on right now with my kids is they're both just so excited about everything they're learning, and they actually come to me and they want knowledge and they want information.
So to take your life's work, all the things that you've learned, and to distill it into this almost like, I don't know if I want to call it a manual, but it's kind of like a manual of like, hey, follow these lessons, and to have that for your kids, I think it's going to be just such a powerful thing for them.
CJ Kirk
Yeah, I would say it really encapsulates what I've learned at the cross section of learning and Krav Maga and coaching. And everything that we engage in in the world that creates an outcome consistently is a system, and the systems are in some ways similar, but when you look at one system and the intersection of the system and you see some commonality or even causality with the outputs, it's really important to stop and say, okay, I can use this system to create outcomes in my life. Oh, sorry.
I lost my voice a couple weeks ago. I'm still getting it back. Use a system to create outcomes in my life.
The book really is an introduction to what Warriors and Winners are. We go into, in the book, or I go into the book, growth precursors, precursors for growth, and then the Warriors and Winners doctrine, and then there's a section, sort of implementation section, and a final encouragement. But I think it's important that people think of it in this way.
What are the precursors for success? In other words, how do I set the conditions for success? And then what are the things, I call them doctrine, what are the things that I need to consider that can drive me forward or drive the direction of my life in a direction I want it to go?
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, that's so amazing. Maybe it's obvious, maybe it's not. There's a few ways to learn things.
One is to go through the experiences and sometimes learn things the hard way. And another way is to follow footsteps. A lot of things that we want to learn or obtain can be found in books.
For you to put this stuff down, I don't think it's really been done before in this way in our universe. We have books that illustrate techniques and go through how to do Krav Maga, but the ideas underneath them I don't think have been spelled out in this way before. So I think that's really, really powerful.
CJ Kirk
Yeah. The interesting thing to me was I kind of traced this all back to a robbery at gunpoint, which was, give or take, 30 years ago. And my super deep desire to find something – because at the time I was robbed, I did jujitsu.
It was not too long after UFC won and I was doing kung fu or kung fu. And a guy stood three feet from me, a gun was maybe 18 inches from me, leveled at my chest. And at that moment I was like, why aren't I training this stuff?
Why am I training for the fantasy ballroom brawl or parking lot encounter or schoolyard scuffle? When the truth is people that want to hurt you or take things from you want all the advantages that they can get. They don't want a fair fight.
And I hadn't really considered the idea that a weapon might be pulled on me. It's a crazy thing to say, but I got lost in the vacuum of martial arts and things that look cool and things that look tough. And they are cool and tough, but it wasn't for the application I was looking for.
Joel Ellenbecker
I think it can get easy to be lost in all of the martial arts movie, cool moves and that sort of thing. But to have all that cut away, having an experience like that, I think just probably has kept you really grounded to what's most important. Is that what shows up in the book?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, there's a lot of that. I'm going to open the book and there's a lot of talking about what being a warrior and winner really is. And the table of contents sort of outlines that.
A warrior is someone who has taken stock of their sacred things, those things for which they would kill or die without doubt or hesitation. And they live around a higher calling. It's a more selfless approach to living life.
And I think what we forget, especially in Western culture, we forget that meaning in life really is about serving something outside yourself. And as a parent, you're probably getting the gist of that at this point. But it's important for people to recognize, recalibrate even, the way they think about living their lives as a warrior.
As a winner, it's really someone who rethinks about the concept of success and what does success really mean. And I think for most people, success is really about the kind of deep contentment we want as a result of our life and our life's work. It's really not about stacking coins or whatever the kids say these days.
It's not about making money. It's not about the accolades. And we know this.
We know this experientially because when we have success, when we feel good, when we buy all the cool stuff we think we want to buy, we don't feel any different. We're on a high for about 30 minutes or an hour. I actually coached a man who was wildly successful.
He had started from the ground and built and sold four companies. And I said to him, when you finish a project or you sell a company or you hit a milestone, are you super filled? He goes, yeah, I'm super filled up.
And I said, super excited and satisfied. He goes, yeah. And I go, how long does that last?
And he goes, one or two hours. And then I have to figure out what my next thing is. And I thought it was so telling that this is a common theme for people, both men and women, that we're on sort of this never-ending treadmill trying to create meaning and purpose and sort of a validation of self-worth with external things that are fleeting.
And so the book really talks about the types of things, precursors that you need to create the kind of success that's lasting and the doctrine that sort of drive you forward into your future.
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, that's really interesting. I think I'm looking through the table of contents and it talks about what is a warrior and what is a winner. And I think you're right.
I think the cultural definition of a winner is having money and cars and big houses and all that sort of thing. And for me, even times in my life, I've been like, oh, I need to be more successful. And I might lean into just like one domain of my life and focus really heavily on the physical domain.
And then I end up getting to the end of that and not feeling totally fulfilled. So does the book define becoming a winner as having multiple facets and looking in different areas of your life?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, to a large degree. What you're really describing is the search for purpose. There's a section with Viktor Frankl, which is, I think, super powerful.
And purpose is really at the intersection of your passion, which is sort of unique to you. Like the way you relate to something that's really gives you passion or you're passionate about. Principles, which is the way that you decided to live your life, your personal ethos and the things you will and won't do.
The lines you will and won't cross both in terms of doing good and not. And the last one is potential, which is your mental, emotional, your intuitive, your spiritual, your physical domains. And when you find something in your life that helps you to grow your potential and you can operate around that thing or in that thing by invoking your principles and you have passion for it.
That's where you find a ton of meaning and that's where you find purpose. And it's not what we always think, right? Sometimes, a lot of times, Joel, that environment is just rife with adversity.
So Viktor Frankl is a great example, right? Where he's in a concentration camp in World War II and people around him are dying. And as someone who is a therapist is trying to understand his own situation and the situation of people around him.
And something really powerful and foundational and something everybody needs to consider came out of his time in a concentration camp. So for people that think about meaning and purpose, sometimes the biggest clues to what meaning and purpose will look like for you specifically come in times of great adversity. So don't just put your head down.
Don't just try to wallow through it. There's something there for you that's powerful. And if you miss it, you'll be sorry.
Joel Ellenbecker
I think another thing that's really awesome about what I can tell from the book so far is some of these chapter titles and topics are things that when I'm in conversation with you or I'm watching you teach, these things are coming up anyways. Like the most important thing, noticing. That's something that I've heard you speak about over and over again in Krav Maga and in life and in conversation.
CJ Kirk
Yeah, noticing is sort of a higher level, personalized, operationalized, almost weaponized version of awareness, right? And what I describe in the book around noticing is that I'd been robbed at gunpoint, and I wanted something. I wanted to learn something that addressed the kinds of threats and dangers in the world that people come up against that they feel like this is impossible.
I don't know how anybody would ever deal with this. This is stuff for the movies. It's not for the average person.
So I found Krav Maga, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about it. And I had a couple of issues. The first issue was, as I went to instructor school, I had great instructors, but I wanted to learn from the source, which is Darren, right?
So Darren's connection to IMI is well documented. It's profound. It's significant.
And, you know, Darren was not readily available a whole ton of time. He was, at that point, a practicing ADA in Los Angeles County for the CAPOs, the Crime Against Police Officers unit, and he had a lot of demands on his time. So I kind of thought to myself, how am I going to navigate this?
What am I going to do? And I said, I've got to notice more. When I see really high-level people, particularly Darren, I need to listen to what they're doing, but I need to notice more about what they're doing as well.
So I decided to give myself a standard, which was I need to find a way to watch Darren from three different angles do a technique or a defense and limit myself to no more than three questions about that defense and be able to capture that defense at a really deep level. So I said, okay, how's that going to happen? And the first thing is, like, you have to have really great foundational, you know, baseline knowledge.
And because Prav Maga is an architecture-based, system-first architecture and a principle-based system, it's like, okay, so there's clues here. You know, EMI left us basically the EMI code. And if I understand this well, then I can create meaning and insight around the application of this baseline knowledge while I'm watching, you know, Darren do techniques and teach techniques.
And so that concept of noticing was the thing that really helped me propel my insight and understanding around Prav Maga. I'm still learning, actually. But then it became something more.
It's like, well, if I look in the world and I have a question about how to do something in the world or why something is or isn't happening, you know, how do I notice? And how do I notice things I don't have direct access to, like using sources outside of, you know, my experience to notice things? And it just was something I wanted to call out in the book as something that led to these insights, but also something that's super important for people to start thinking about, which is not only awareness, but what's your process for noticing?
Joel Ellenbecker
Well, and for me, I think noticing takes time and effort and energy. And in a society where, you know, people are on their phones constantly and, you know, there's so many stimulus and things happening. Like, I think it takes an intention to notice.
I had taken my kids out for a hamburger a couple of weeks ago and, you know, we made our order. We sat down. I was sitting down.
I was just, you know, trying to practice noticing, like looking around in my environment, seeing what was going on. And I noticed there was a young woman at the counter who was born with some sort of deformity where she didn't have much of her hands. And I was just kind of watching her work.
And I was almost, like, blown away by, like, how she was able to still, like, pick things up and move around. And she had a smile on her face. It was going really great.
And then I looked at my kids and, you know, they were, like, looking at what's going on at the table or talking to each other, goofing around or whatever. And I just asked them, I was like, hey, what do you notice about the young girl behind the counter? And it, like, took them a minute, but they were looking and they were watching.
And then I could almost see on my younger son's face, like, some kind of compassion, like, come over his face. And then my older son was like, oh, my goodness. Like, that must be so hard.
But had I not brought up noticing and had I not, like, given them a prompt, like, you know, there's some lessons in conversation that we had after that about it that would have just totally been missed and could have been sucked away by me just, you know, getting zoomed into my phone or whatever was going on. So I think there's so much application to noticing.
CJ Kirk
Yeah, it's a skill for life, for sure. And it took me a minute to kind of realize, you know, I can noticing extends beyond problem. I think with the world that we're in now and the world we're going to have, your kids are going to have in particular, I think noticing is an essential life skill.
It's literally like almost life or death. And what I mean by that is take, for instance, AI and its applications in social media. There are already algorithms in social media that only feed you the information you already believe to the point that you can be manipulated in insane ways because they tie a piece of information to something you believe that takes your thought process in a different direction.
And all of a sudden you're in a tower with a rifle and it's like, we don't need this. And you think about just AI and social media as one application and think about manipulation of people by governments, by corporations and by criminal syndicates worldwide. And if you don't know what you believe and you don't know why you believe it, you don't have the powerful logic chain and you don't have a way to notice things.
Particularly around noticing what is likely true and what is likely untrue, like a truth checklist, you're going to be manipulated by the world around you. I don't think there's any doubt about it.
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, I think, I mean, until I met you, I mean, I've heard people like, hey, pay attention or look around in your surroundings. And I think just even the word notice just adds more intention to it. Like what you're saying with AI, some people don't even notice or aren't even aware that they're only being fed certain information.
And just to have that awakeness, I don't know if that's a word, but to be awake to what's going on, I think is super powerful. So after you get the first section of the book, it's like a new way forward and it includes the story about you being robbed and what is a warrior, what is a winner and noticing. Then it goes into, you kind of already mentioned, like growth precursors.
And are these kind of like footsteps that we can follow or are these things that we can notice to achieve growth or how would you explain that?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, a precursor sets the conditions for success. So we can talk about it in this way. What must you do to break the cycle you're in and move in a direction that you want to move in?
So the first growth, we can just talk about it quickly. Empty your cup. A lot of people in the coaching world will recognize that term.
Essentially, Bruce Lee said the cup's usefulness is its emptiness. And people think, well, wait a minute. I thought a cup was meant to be filled.
But actually a cup is meant to be filled and emptied, filled and emptied, filled and emptied all over again. But when it's full, it doesn't have any use. So it's emptiness.
And what we do is we show up in the world. We have our own patterns, our own rhythms, and we become so accustomed to them that our cup is always full. There's no room to learn anything else.
We believe what we believe. We think what we think. And the truth is we're off and raw.
So having the capacity to empty your cup, to make room for something new is super important. I say this all the time. The second one is suspend your disbelief.
Which really means just believe anything is possible. When you do that, you open up a list of possibilities for yourself that are currently unavailable to you.
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, I just mentioned this this past weekend where it's like if it's ever like between option A or B, we might be stuck. Because there's so many possibilities and so many options that it's really easy to cut that off without the idea of suspending your disbelief.
CJ Kirk
Yep, 100%. I won't go through all of them. But some of the ones that I think are particularly will land on people is one is guard your thoughts, right?
The information coming out about how we think about the world around us, about ourselves is so compelling. The level of positivity. I mean, I remember seeing a video close up.
I want to say it was Ronaldo. It was obviously in a soccer game or football. And he was about to take a penalty kick and they had a close up on his face.
And he said something. You could read his lips. He was saying something like, I'm going to score.
That's what I do. I score. That's who I am.
I'm a scorer. And he was saying that to himself out loud right before the penalty kick. So the same tools that the world's best utilize to perform at the level they're performing at are available to anybody.
They really are. And it's important people understand that. You know, for a crowd like that, one of the things we talk about a lot is prove it to yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. So taking information, ensuring that it is real and proving to yourself that it's real before you act on it is super important.
And I would say the other one, maybe to call out right now, other than when in the mind first, which is something a lot of people don't think about a lot is something called operational underway. Which is this idea that when we hit roadblocks, we face adversity. A lot of times the human condition is to kind of hunker down to get small and to wait for the adversity to pass.
And what happens is we do that with that thing, but we also do that in our life. It's like, well, I'm not going to go work out today and I'm not going to push forward with my project today. I'm worried about this other thing and I'm just going to kind of sit and stew and get small.
Operational underway is a reminder to us all that when you're facing things in life, the best way forward is to continue to operate. Right. Fix your problem while you're moving towards your objective.
Right. Fix your problem while you're moving towards the mission, mission objective. I think that is.
CJ Kirk
Something that really was powerful for me as I thought about, you know, things in the past and things that I've had to face and Understanding that you can't get bogged down by Adversity or danger or risk you have to manage it well and keep moving.
Joel Ellenbecker
You've been moving is key When I think that the adversity is gonna come whether you're moving or not, right and it's like if we stand still We're still gonna get bogged down with adversity. And if we take steps towards our goals There's gonna be other adversity, but at least we're moving towards like the life the fulfillment the purpose the values that we've we've chosen, right?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, yeah, it's just it's uniquely human.
Joel Ellenbecker
We we just kind of we do get bogged down So it have the intention to I'm gonna move towards the objective Even though this other thing is sort of circling my orbit, you know in my orbit I just I need to keep moving and then the third the third section of the book is The warriors and winners doctrine How does this change or differ from the the the second part like the growth precursors?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, these are things that you can do that when the precursors are in place You're ready to implement these concepts. Does that make sense?
Joel Ellenbecker
Yeah, I
CJ Kirk
One of my favorites is something I've landed on a couple years ago, which is prioritize Simplify organize And I write about Nick Saban as someone who embodies this concept, I mean think about a coach who coaches young men, they're really almost kids when they get to the program and He's had success at the collegiate level like no one ever has in terms of wins and losses, but also in terms of winning, you know a Championship at LSU and Alabama and in two different areas. I mean, it's it's really unheard of And I thought to myself like let me watch him.
Let me let me notice how he goes about his day so I did a lot of Noticing with Saban and one of the key things he says to the kids is is there are two questions You have to answer and that's it. And the first question is are you gonna do what you need to do? When you need to do it, even though you don't want to Mm-hmm, and are you gonna avoid doing the thing you want to do when you want to do it when it's the wrong choice?
And he said how you answer those two questions? Will really shape your entire life and he uses those two questions to shape how kids look at the time effort and attention they put into Football or he did and then he backs that up with like organized like prioritize. What's most important?
Well, let's answer these questions We'll simplify. Well, let's say it a way that everybody can understand it and now let's organize our life or our program or our you know process around the priority and the simplification of the priority and for Saban it was things as simple as You know tuck your shirt in everybody tucks their shirt in when we run lines everybody touches the line and He enforced it and he enforced it with his coaches and he did that to create a clear message to players that we have a way we do things around here and Nothing is unimportant how you do anything is how you do everything
Joel Ellenbecker
I was just thinking that it's like yeah If if you have a standard for touching the line and tucking your shirt in like that's gonna apply To the to the bigger things, right?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and there's a lot of but there's a lot of Krav Maga out here as well. You'll see some chapters that Either come from Krav Maga at our school or come from the principles of Krav Maga or more widely Fix your problems a big one that comes from our school we also have things like The five-minute rule which is which is something we try to implement when people get up, you know upset about their failure Failure is necessary is a big chapter people really need to attach themselves to especially Younger people people who are getting into their careers Or are you know climbing the ladder and they think that failures the you know the end of it are the things of failure defines them and they don't realize if failure is part of the process of you know finding success
Joel Ellenbecker
And I think that the quicker people can come to that I mean I can only really think about my own journey But I remember earlier on with one of my mentors is like, you know If something didn't go perfectly I I would kind of want to avoid him and maybe not bring it up and then as time went on and I matured a Little bit.
I started to realize I'm like man if if there's something that doesn't go well, I want to bring it to him I want to bring this information so I can learn and like the only way I'm going to get that learning is by Accepting those failures allowing them to happen and then improving and getting them better. So Yeah, I think the people who've become winners and who are Successful are people that have just often failed way more times than other people are willing to try and that they just keep learning from it Yeah.
CJ Kirk
Yeah, I think that was a chapter. I was writing. I was really thinking about my boys and what they're growing up in and how people tend to Exacerbate and accentuate their losses and they try to avoid recognizing their successes and it's this culture of You know this this competitive culture that that is it's become part of The way kids grow up is it's really destructive.
So I really thought about you know, what I want to tell them about failures necessary Hmm in that particular chapter Yeah, that's awesome and and so Obviously, we don't want to give away the whole books.
Joel Ellenbecker
We're not going to go through every single doctrine, but the the next The part the last part of the book is you're all in act like it So is this tying the doctrines and tying the precursors and things together?
CJ Kirk
Yeah, it's really about Avoiding playing small in life It's about taking the precursors and the doctrine and Implementing those things that are most applicable in your life right now and It also sets a sort of a contextual Roadmap for people so, you know defining, you know, what's sacred for them? Getting them to aim at something. What is it like to set micro goals of milestones?
You know, one of the things that I think is really interesting is Deep in that section. I'm going to turn to it and tell you a little bit about it We have this this the precursors of doctrine and I'll give you an example Precursor number five prove it to yourself and It's this little Review, what is the value of that of that precursor, right? and Then it's opportunity What opportunities does this create in your life?
And then what quality is required of you to leverage this precursor? So value opportunity and quality required and I that's maybe my favorite section of the book because it really distills for the reader you know, this is This is what this is. And this is what?
Can happen or what the value of this this precursor doctrine is and this is what's required of you to fully access it and it's It's really a sort of a tight little Section I really like it That's amazing What is the what is the plan for the launch when you know, when can people get the book? Yeah, so we had this sort of this conversation with some of the staff and the goal is to Try to get the book which I quickly published to take to Europe with me on the Amazon a bestseller list and we think that there's some value for the community in having a Worldwide staff member and grab a guy instructor Having written a an Amazon bestseller. Yeah So the more attention we can get as a community the better and so on September 1st You know during the waking hours We're asking people if they're interested in the book to purchase the paperback version on Amazon It's under $20.
I think it's well worth the the read And to see if we can't as a community Achieve a little milestone here, which is you know, Amazon Amazon bestseller Again, the book is called conquer culture how warriors and winners lead and succeed It's got it's got a pretty cool a double C icon that looks like a Spartan helmet on it, which I like I really enjoyed writing it a lot of the Krav Maga stuff is in there and I think that people will benefit from The book I think it's a quick read my mom Got an advanced copy and she goes. Oh, I don't know anything about any of this.
So I have to read it slowly so for people that Are Krav Maga practitioners for people that are in any kind of performance space Athletes coaches, you know stock traders Professors Trainers they're gonna pick up on it very very quickly and I would say people will pick up on it quickly Especially people under 50 who are sort of in this, you know revolving cycle of angst and frustration So redefining, you know warrior and winner redefining the direction you want to take your life Or even recalibrating, you know either one that's gonna be Something that those people because they're sort of primed for it. I think they're gonna read the book pretty quickly I I got the book.
My wife was out of town last week. It was on my bedside table I was like, you know what? I'll just read it.
And so I read it laying in bed one night Of course, I know what it says so I can read pretty fast But I think people will find it's a pretty quick read there's also a companion to it, which is the field manual plus journal hmm, and I had a group come in and train with last week and I showed them both the book in the field manual and some very successful people At least by the world standards walked up to me and said I flipped through the journal and I was shocked at how Useful and powerful it is Because most journals are kind of like generic and I said, well, it's it's connected to the precursors in the document So anybody that wants to get that journal and do that work?
I think it could be you know, an additional layer of power and promise for their for the trajectory of their life in the future You know potential
Joel Ellenbecker
it's just incredible what a little bit of intention some some thoughts and Reflection on like where we want to go what we want to achieve can accomplish and then like combining that with These powerful doctrines that you know, I think I think as I read through it several of them are like like you said with that coach there There are things you've noticed in the world of other people who are really successful with it so now if the reader is reading the book and then journaling about these things and putting into practice these successful doctrines like it's Just seems like it's a life-changing transformation opportunity
CJ Kirk
Yeah, I love what the book says and what it asks the reader to do It's something that can be implemented in pieces or as things become more relevant for the reader And I think it's not something that requires a specific Action from somebody what you think is important, right? Today it's like, you know how to build a house or how to build a habit or it's like this is the way to Navigate life. It's a blueprint It's not exhaustive But here's a bunch of things you need to consider And as you consider them consider what things are needed in your life right now And as you move forward what things are needed later as you you know arrive at those points in your life So I I really like I really like the book I call it my practice book because it's my first book But I I think that the end result was something that I'm proud of and something that I think Genuinely can help help people move forward in life.
Joel Ellenbecker
Well, I'm I'm really excited for CJ and I'm also excited that you started to become a writer because I think everything that you You've put together and you've noticed and that you've understood and and unraveled and uncovered Are things that a lot of people can really benefit from so the fact that you're putting it down not only for your boys, but for the world to be able to to lean into I think is is really special and I Can't wait to be able to read it
CJ Kirk
Yeah, man. I really appreciate You taking the time to talk with me about it, and I'm I'm really excited for people to to get into it I would especially Kravis, you know They'll understand Red so they'll understand Closest weapon nearest target speed and leverage at 90 degrees and we just talked about how that applies at light in life And I think one of the most interesting things I didn't mention is this This is something I've been talking with there and about for years like how do the principles of Prabhupada create a blueprint for living life? And it's not exhaustive But these are things that must be considered should be considered and will help you move forward in life.
