In this episode, Nick speaks with Victor J. Giusfredi, an author and mindset coach, who shares his remarkable life journey and the transformative lessons he learned along the way. Born in the Malbec capital of the world, Mendoza, Argentina, Victor opens up about overcoming divorces, navigating single parenthood, and losing a six-figure corporate job during the early days of the pandemic. He reflects on the pandemic’s impact, portraying it as an unexpected blessing that allowed him to fully embrace fatherhood.

What to listen for:

“Truth be told, the pandemic didn’t affect me at all. If anything, I think it was a blessing because I got to learn to be a dad for 24 hours a day.”

“And sometimes you have to find something that you care for more than yourself. And that’s what gets you through those tough times.”

“Everything you do is to achieve one emotional state and avoid the other emotional state.”

About Victor J. Giusfredi

Victor J. Giusfredi is a modern-day seeker, entrepreneur, and author on a quest for deeper understanding and personal transformation. Through his unconventional journey across 40 homes worldwide, business ventures, and life’s trials, Victor shares profound insights in his book ‘No Grail Without Dragons,’ offering a guide to love, purpose, and peace gained by facing the dragons within.

Resources:

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

Nick McGowan (00:01.263)

Hello and welcome to the mindset and self mastery show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And today on the show I have Victor Deuce Freddy. Victor, how you doing, man?

Victor Giusfredi (00:11.707)

Hi Nick, I’m doing fantastic, how are you?

Nick McGowan (00:14.051)

I’m great. I just chuckled a little bit because we were just talking about your last name and how people think it’s just Freddie, juice Freddie and we stupid Americans sometimes just can’t read shit or understand how to phonetically say things. So that was where that little smirk came from. I think you caught that. That’s why I bring it up.

Victor Giusfredi (00:23.57)

I’m sorry.

Victor Giusfredi (00:29.636)

It’s not your fault we come from different places with the weird last names, so no worries.

Nick McGowan (00:33.183)

Well, I mean, we’re the ones with the weird ones, I guess. I’m just a standard mix sometimes. But dude, I’m excited that you’re here. We were having a great conversation before we hit record. There’s some six degrees of like Kevin Bacon going on here in a sense where like you and I have been through different, I’m sure we even crossed paths at different musical stores and stuff on the East Coast at times. But, why don’t you get us started? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.

Victor Giusfredi (00:37.838)

this one.

Victor Giusfredi (01:00.338)

Yeah, it’s funny our previous conversation showed how small the world is, but well, I’ve been many times, many things in my life, but I am an author and a mindset coach.

Nick McGowan (01:03.432)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (01:11.047)

Beautiful. So with being author and a mindset coach, I know there’s a lot more that gets into that. And it’s not like that’s not one of those things you go to school for. And you’re like, you know what, I took a class on being an author, and how to write a book, I took a class on how to manage your mindset. And I always find it interesting to see how people actually get into what they’ve gotten into. But before we get there, what’s that weird thing or the odd thing that most people don’t know about you?

Victor Giusfredi (01:37.638)

Oh, no worries. I didn’t forget the question. I didn’t realize I skipped it, but it ties perfectly with the mindset coach because anything I can tell you about me, it’s new. So let’s just go with the odd and make it more interesting. And I was born in the Malbec capital of the world, which is Mendoza in Argentina. So if I ever drank Malbec wine, most of the Malbec comes from there. I don’t drink wine. I don’t play soccer, which almost every Argentinian holds close to their heart, nearly religiously.

Nick McGowan (01:50.559)

Okay.

Nick McGowan (02:04.082)

Ha ha ha.

Victor Giusfredi (02:07.61)

And by 36, I had lived and worked in over 50 places, overcame two divorces, became a single father of two, and lost a six-figure corporate job right at the beginning of the pandemic.

Nick McGowan (02:24.143)

Well, that’s kind of a hell of a punch. Um, I know there are a lot of people and not even a lot of people. I think most people struggled in certain ways, just with the pandemic. Those that were able to keep a job, those that had their job just ripped out from under them. Those that were let go because the corporation or the company had no idea what was going on. I think everybody was a little concerned and it’s interesting. Here we are four years later. I mean, literally.

almost four years because everything started to shut down in the middle of March. And what a wild thing that we’re still kind of talking about this, but that was a big trauma for the entire country, if not rather the entire world and how you actually dealt with that. So why don’t you dig in a little bit? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Victor Giusfredi (03:10.19)

Yeah, it’s interesting you mentioned because you see people with masks walking around sometimes and it’s almost as if time hasn’t moved forward, right? That sense of fear is still lingering in the air in many ways. And I think it affected the interaction between everybody. But for me, it’s been almost like everything else in my life. I’ve sort of stumbled upon the situation. Oh, so I thought I stumbled, right? That’s where mindset mastery came is to realize how I got myself there.

Nick McGowan (03:15.015)

Yeah.

Victor Giusfredi (03:40.41)

Almost like I was thrust into this situation. I didn’t expect to go through a second divorce, especially after seven years of marriage and going through hell on earth to make it happen. I brought my ex-wife and my daughter from Argentina to the United States all on my own. I had to live in a couch for a few months to save money for an apartment and buy a car. So that was a big punch in the stomach because the first divorce was hard enough to overcome at like 24 years old.

Nick McGowan (04:06.913)

Yeah.

Victor Giusfredi (04:09.358)

And then my ex sort of, you know, disappears from the picture and here I am in full charge of two little kids. And on top of that, a couple of months after becoming a single dad, I get laid off from my corporate job right when the quarantine became in full effect. So it wasn’t a thing that I chose how to handle. I just had to find ways to overcome

these punches I like in the matrix. Mr. Smith is just beating you to the ground and just punching you and punching you. And sometimes you have to find something that you care for more than yourself. And that’s what gets you through those tough times. So truth be told, the pandemic didn’t affect me at all. If anything, I think it was a blessing because I got to learn to be a dad for 24 hours a day.

Nick McGowan (05:04.135)

Mm-hmm.

Victor Giusfredi (05:04.974)

Because that in itself, I don’t wish it on anyone. I don’t wish single parenting on absolutely anybody. And then being used to getting a comfortable salary every couple of weeks, I had my side businesses. So I was living large, I had a nice car and I had all these things. And within a matter of weeks, I became a nobody. I wasn’t a husband anymore. I wasn’t the breadwinner or the head of the family. I wasn’t this…

heavy hitter that I consider myself to be in the corporate world. I wasn’t this guy to walk with a chip on his shoulder because I drove this car and dressed this way. That’s how I dealt with it. I dealt with it by fleshing myself psychologically and then taking all of my experiences from life and then just trying to dig in and find out how it is that I got there and then changing the things that I did so I could get different results.

Nick McGowan (05:38.951)

Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (05:58.495)

Yeah, there’s a lot to all of that. Um, I, I don’t know what it’s like to be a single parent, but I know what’s what it’s like to be a kid of a single parent. And I felt like I grew up with my mom in a lot of ways, almost like we were siblings in some ways, cause there’s, she was younger when she had me and there are times where I will still call her or text her and be like, yo, it just came to mind this one moment when I was a child and I’m sorry, I was an asshole. My bad.

Um, you know, and being able to understand that that’s tough, but what a, like you said, a blessing to be able to spend that time with your kids. Um, and to be able to work through it. It’s interesting how I think there are two camps when it comes to the pandemic stuff, where people think it fucked up my life and it ruined me, and then there are the camp of the people that are like, that was a beautiful thing that happened. It sucked that it happened, but there was beauty that came out of it. I ended up getting a divorce, um, 2021. But.

Victor Giusfredi (06:56.405)

Sorry.

Nick McGowan (06:56.711)

those conversations happened in 2020 when we’re stuck in a fucking condo looking at each other going, we gotta talk about shit, you know what I mean? So for you to work through that and understand that you had already gone through a divorce like that, you can get to do these things. The thing that comes to mind for me is, I think there are a lot of people that have maybe historical or generational trauma, that it’s just, they just keep powering through things. I believe there’s a difference between

Victor Giusfredi (07:03.821)

Right.

Nick McGowan (07:25.915)

working on yourself and still staying upright and moving and continuing to move and understanding that you’ve got these little fucking kids that you got to take care of and feed and make sure they stay alive, let alone all the other stuff that’s going on. But then they’re also it can be easy to just wear that badge of honor and not actually process through your shit. Now, based on the little bit that I’ve known of you in the bit of conversation we’ve had so far, I can

pretty much guarantee that you did the processing side of that to be able to really work through that stuff. But think about that. And let’s talk about it a bit, where it’s so easy to just slip into that side where you’re like, you know what? Fuck it. It’s a badge of honor. I’m all right. And you’re not. You’re absolutely not. But you still do need to keep going.

Victor Giusfredi (08:12.662)

No, I completely agree. And I think that one of the most crucial findings in my journey was the importance of healing that inner child, right? Because, so I’ll tell you something that I’m probably just gonna say once and I’m gonna leave a little bit of space in case you wanna edit it out. But throughout my journey of finding myself, I…

I explored everything. And when I tell you everything, I explore neuroscience, psychology, practical psychology, neuro-linguistic programming, fitness, nutrition. And so religion, occultism, I needed to find the tools that answered my questions. And realizing that, I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you that you’re walking down the street and somebody hands you like a flyer at a corner, right?

Don’t you attempt to grab it, right? Like your hand almost has a life of its own and it wants to grab the paper and then you have to pull yourself back from the situation, whether because you don’t trust the person or you catch yourself doing something that you’re not intending to or whatever the reason is, right? But we are wired, we’re hardwired in that sense where the first eight years of development of a child are-

where the kids learn from watching and they cannot articulate what they’re watching. They don’t know what the results of that is. They’re just simply learning ways to cope with the world and how to respond to novelty, right? To unforeseen circumstances. And so when we grow, yeah, we don’t want to be like our parents. I think most people are like, I don’t wanna be like my parents. I don’t wanna repeat the mistakes that they did. But…

That’s not something that you get to say. It’s something that you have to work on because first, the first realization was one day my kids are eating on the table and the first, you wanna hear something really bizarre. I was homeless three months after my separation on my second divorce. I had nowhere to live, so I stayed in my car. And the only apartment I was able to find in town was the exact same apartment I had moved out of with my family.

Nick McGowan (10:07.54)

Hm.

Victor Giusfredi (10:33.454)

to go to the bigger house. So when I went back into that apartment, it was like a chamber of torment. Every scratch on the wall, every hole in there, everything just reminded me of what I had come from and I was back in there alone with nothing. And so every night was an episode where I would break down and just soft my eyes out and I will have panic attacks. This super tough guy who could, yeah, I’m a…

I trained a couple of years in Kraf Maga, and I’ve been in the toughest cities of the world. So I thought I was untouchable, but here I am breaking down every night, like a crystal vase. And one day my kids are having a snack, and I’m like, kids, don’t play and drink. Don’t play and drink. Something my dad used to tell me, right? You know, either play, either eat or play. So they’re playing and they spill a glass of milk on the floor and on the dog. And by now I broke.

because I had cleaned that floor, God knows how many times. And we lived in this 600 square foot apartment, so it was a torture, right? So I lost my shit. I got frustrated and I yelled and I said, I told you guys not to because this is what happened. And I smashed my phone on the floor. And at that moment, it’s like time stopped and I looked at my kids’ eyes and they had this look of fear, you know?

Nick McGowan (11:28.831)

Mm.

Victor Giusfredi (11:55.346)

And that shook me to the core because here I was, there’s a saying that’s something like, people don’t remember what you did for them, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Right? And here I was being this angry, berserk animal, angry at the world, almost borderline misanthropic and a nihilist for sure. And I was instilling the same emotional state in my children that…

my captors per se hadn’t stilled in me and why I hated everything so much. And so that sort of snapped me out of it. And I said, you know, this can’t continue like this. Either I’m going to die of a heart attack. And the worst part is I’m going to continue perpetuating this generational trauma and these ways of dealing with challenges on my kids when I know where that leads. So that’s, so you’re right. I had to, I had to go all the way back to, I mean, I came up with things that I had completely forgotten about. And, and

At one point, my biggest enemy was my dad. He was my stepdad, not even my dad. So he showed up when I was a few years old and my childhood was really violent. I mean, I would get belt-wiped with leather, studded belts and barbed wire and a stick. So, you know, I knew that pain. I knew that anger and I was certainly not gonna go through that. So I faced my dad. Once I healed myself, I told him, you know, how can you do this?

Nick McGowan (12:56.831)

Mm.

Victor Giusfredi (13:22.426)

And I sort of cut him off from my life for a little bit. Like he was dead to me. And then, well, I had another realization where I was able to forgive him and then everything came home, you know. And now I can be happier with the way I parent my kids because they’re excelling everywhere. They have friends, they’re confident, they’re smart. They have a higher level of consciousness. And I don’t go to sleep guilty every day, you know, thinking that I need to drink a gallon of bleach because every time I speak something shitty comes out of.

Nick McGowan (13:26.247)

Hmm.

Nick McGowan (13:32.585)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (13:51.039)

Yeah. But your kids will probably still have some sort of trauma, no matter what. Like I love, I love that you’ve gone through all of that. And I don’t have kids, I’m not gonna have kids. I’ve taken precautions to make sure that I don’t have kids. But I do believe that everybody still goes through that trauma. But what you’re doing now, it sounds like you caught yourself. That might be something that one of your kids brings up in therapy fucking years from now.

Victor Giusfredi (13:59.75)

Oh, certainly, certainly.

Nick McGowan (14:19.771)

might be one of those things they bring up to you while having some Malbec or something and being like, you remember that one time and you fucking smashed your phone and we almost lost our shit. And your kid will be like, I peed a little bit because I was afraid. But they can still build from where they’re at now because of what you’re doing now. And I think that’s a big thing. There are people that will kind of compound that shit where they’re like, I don’t want to be like my parents, but I’m becoming like my parents, but I don’t know what to do. And if you start to work through your own childhood stuff.

Victor Giusfredi (14:23.563)

Hehehehe

Nick McGowan (14:48.423)

It can actually help you now. I’ve had people tell me, like when they really get to the core of like, I don’t wanna fucking talk about it. And they’re like, I don’t believe that I can do anything about the stuff that’s happened in the past because it’s the past. It’s like, yes, but your traumas continue to trigger you because of that past and you have to make the change. For you to make that change, hopefully this is that generational trauma being stopped and you get to actually help your kids understand this is what happens.

Let’s take a little bit of a step back though, because we’re about the same age. I think about how many fucking times you probably laughed off that you got hit. How many times you told friends, like, oh, they went fucking crazy on me. Well, whatever, and you just kept walking. Like, it was part of an 80s and 90s baby’s thing. How fucked up is that though?

Victor Giusfredi (15:25.348)

Oh!

Victor Giusfredi (15:35.35)

Look, I learned to detach from physical pain as metaphysical as it sounds at eight years old when I will get these brutal… My dad was a professional soccer player, so this guy was jacked and ripped and he was strong man and he had some severe trauma. That’s how I came to forgiving because I understand what was done to him. But this time around, a week before that, I had gone to a little…

Nick McGowan (15:43.615)

Yeah, cool.

Victor Giusfredi (16:04.67)

little store and I don’t know if you remember back then the soda bottles came with this neck tag, right? This paper tag they hung around the neck. That’s where the marketing was printed. And one of them had a Batman on it. So I asked the lady at the store if I could have it. She said, well, yeah, it’s just a piece of paper. She gives it to me and sends me to house. And I show up at the house with it on my hand and my dad says, where did you take that from? So I explained it to him and he says, no, come into the bedroom. And he says, go into the bedroom, face the wall and pull your pen down.

And I said, what? And so I did. And he came, I could hear the clinking of the belt and he came and he started whipping me for no reason. And at that point, it’s almost like the pandemic story. It’s just your brain automatically goes into the safety mode. And I learned what it felt like to detach yourself from pain. So from that moment on, those beatings sort of became just a transient thing instead of a thing to fear. And that’s when I lost the fear to physical violence. But

Nick McGowan (16:51.428)

Yeah.

Victor Giusfredi (17:03.542)

But yeah, you’re right, you’re right.

Nick McGowan (17:07.567)

We, our generation, are now having kids. You know, you have kids that will maybe have kids at some point. And it seems like this generation, or maybe the next one, are starting to make some changes, but we’re still dealing with that historical and generational trauma, let alone the deep, dark shit that we just don’t even know about that our ancestors had dealt with or had done and that they tried to forgive themselves for and kind of work through.

It’s wild to think how often and how many people were dealt with the way that you were dealt with. I remember my dad had a, um, he made this wooden paddle that had holes in it. You could fucking hear it. I don’t think he ever actually hit us with it, but like he would get close with it. My mom on the other hand would throw shit. She’d go fucking crazy. Like I was reminiscing with a buddy of mine the other day who I’ve known since, I don’t know, like the first day of high school or something like that.

And how we would just joke, be like, Oh yeah, she threw the remote. And then she threw this. And then once she picked up the barstool, I was like, fuck this shit, I’m out of here. But that was just a normal thing. And for us to be able to actually stop that work through that, for those that are listening that have children or thinking of having kids, you got to be able to work through your childhood stuff. I truly believe everything comes from childhood. Even if it just started to stack upon itself and it starts to show up in your thirties or forties or fifties or whatever, being able to go back through.

What sort of process work did you do that you found really helpful for you? And tell us a bit about that.

Victor Giusfredi (18:43.046)

That’s so true. I’ll echo on your thought before I tell you about the process. But I agree because eventually I was able to pinpoint my core driving need, why I went through divorces, why I was a high achiever, why did I always want more. And it turns out that it was a tough realization because I came to realize that everything I had done was simply to…

feel significant to other people, right? And that’s a thing, how can it be? I’m bending over backwards, I’m being my best. You know, if they told me to stop, I stop and I’m nitpicking myself and then they end up leaving anyways and end up getting fired anyways. I end up fucking on it. And so, and that just stemmed right from childhood, right? That lack of significance from the people around us. I mean, I was like, I would pretty much raise myself and you think that people have to take care of their kids. I just didn’t die.

Nick McGowan (19:38.817)

Hahaha

Victor Giusfredi (19:40.511)

It was like a little MacGyver. And a process, I mean, I’ve partaken in many types of processes. Like I mentioned before, I’ve really explored some dark corners, trying to see what works and what doesn’t. What’s the myth, what it’s not, because everything has a little bit of truth in it. But I think the first key…

to unlocking the door of that building, right? Because it’s almost like a video game. You have to level up and then you go to martial arts and then they teach you the basic move and they push you to the point of pain but they don’t hurt you so then you can get stronger like if you go to the gym and lift weights and then you can come back and practice again, right? And so yeah, you’re growing and you’re hurting but it’s almost like a pleasurable pain if you will, right? And…

Nick McGowan (20:23.922)

Mm-hmm.

Victor Giusfredi (20:34.102)

Part of that mental process is it’s that, it’s sometimes not pushing yourself past that pain point. And something that opened the door for me was it’s called the self-authoring suite by Jordan Peterson. I’m sure you know Jordan Peterson, it’s quite popular now. But I came into contact with Peterson in 2018 and right when he launched that program, then I got it. And it took me about a year to complete it just because I…

I went on and off. But that made me recapitulate a lot of these experiences throughout life in different segments and start gaining clarity on who I really was and maybe why I did the things that I did and why I should do the things that I wanted to do instead of sitting around and waiting for them to happen. I will say that’s a really good first step. It’s in depth, but it’s really good.

Nick McGowan (21:26.663)

Yeah, I’m right there with you. It’s funny, I said to you before we started that I’m at about 110, 112 episodes by the time this comes out, 120, whatever it’s gonna be. That’s a lot of conversations. And you get to see patterns within that stuff. Which I’m a total nerd, I look for that shit. I’m like, what, you know, success leaves clues in a sense. But especially if you can have real deep conversations, like the whole point of the show is to be able to talk about like, yes, I was successful, but.

Victor Giusfredi (21:44.298)

Yeah, me too. That’s right.

Nick McGowan (21:53.351)

book, there was a moment where I thought I was going to die because it was going to be me and like, oh, you know, being able to get into that stuff like the tough, some of the biggest things that I’ve really, really hear, like super loud, like if you think of like, a keyword, like, what are those like, word clouds, where they show like, the search terms and stuff like that, is self awareness, you have to be self aware, you have to be self aware to see that you’re actually in that game.

Victor Giusfredi (22:15.181)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (22:22.259)

You have to be self aware to see that there’s something to do something about and self aware enough to fucking sit in it and sit in the deep, deep end of it and work through that deep subconscious in programming and the bullshit that it’s just really hard to work through. Um, so you and I connect obviously on the mindset side and self mastery, which is just basically discipline, but all the stuff that you’ve gone through may be, you know, short.

and small little list of bullshit compared to somebody else’s life. It might also be like people might be listening to this going home like, God, you went through two divorces. You went through all these different things like you were beaten as a child. Don’t get it at all. But they have some other trauma and being able to work through that. So what advice do you give somebody that’s like, they can see that there are things, they’re self-aware and they see that there are problems and things that they need to work through. What do you

have you found that was like a great way for you to really start to get into the motion of doing these things. And I know that you have to step back a bit and look back years ago, but what was it that you could help people that are really starting to figure out like, Hey, I’m on this path. I get it. I’m self aware enough that I need to work on shit. Where can they go? What thing? What can they do?

Victor Giusfredi (23:37.686)

Well, let me answer that with a story, and then we’ll branch off from there. But back in the days when most media was printed, you couldn’t get, you could get either CDs or printed media, this massive company had an issue with their main printer. And it wasn’t printed for a few hours. If they lost their work, it was about a couple million dollars in merchant sales that they would lose. So the manager comes and tries to fix it. Nothing happens. So he calls his experts in-house. All these experts come in.

nothing happens. They finagle with it, they open it closely, nothing happens. So he decides and calls a specialist. So the specialist shows up, 10 minutes later comes out and says, the problem is fixed, it’s $10,000. So this manager is sort of confused because he says, wait, it took you 10 minutes and it’s 10 grand, then I want a detailed invoice of what it is that you did. So this guy says, sure. So he writes down and puts, turning one screw, $10.

knowing which screw to turn, $9,990. And I’ve pursued, see, it doesn’t matter, or I think it doesn’t matter what magnitude of experience you’ve been through before, because sure, we all experience the same emotions. Whether you get beaten or somebody calls you a name, which is something abstract that you can decide what to do with, and you still feel that emotional response.

I think everyone’s battles are just as important, right? They’re just as big and as deep and as difficult. And self-awareness is that key, right? It’s that turn of the right ball to be like, really, I’ve been suffering all of this time just because of this, right? Because I would, and sometimes I was fortunate enough to not have anywhere else to go to have to…

contemplate the things that I thought were stupid or cheesy or, you know, a fad. But I couldn’t have gotten out of the hole that I got off if it wasn’t for mindset, right? If it wasn’t for self-awareness, if it wasn’t for trying to uncover my blind spots and understand how I contributed to the things that I fear most. And that sounds stupid. And so somebody who hears it for the first time is like, bro, how…

Victor Giusfredi (26:02.038)

How can I possibly contribute to, I don’t know, a partner cheating on me or leaving me or somebody beating me? But there are many ways that you can contribute to that. And also there are many ways that you’re contributing to keeping that memory alive in a way that it’s hurting you. Because at this point in time, everyone’s been through it already. The people who hit you might have forgotten or not. The bullets that fire you might have forgotten or not. Maybe you, you know, but you still carry that within you.

Nick McGowan (26:13.257)

Yeah.

Victor Giusfredi (26:31.906)

And there’s this analogy between heaven and hell, where heaven is this place where everything is perfect and hell is this place of a never-ending flinch, right? And I tell you, man, I was not concerned about hell or heaven when I was at the age of taking my life. The emotional hell that I experienced in life and the here and now and the eternity of the now, that was enough for me to say, okay, fine, I’ll try this. If this works, cool. If it doesn’t work, cool. And…

If you want to get started, self-mastery, self-awareness, it’s the door. That’s right.

Nick McGowan (27:06.631)

Yeah. And it’s wild that we all it feels like we all as humans need to get to that point where you’re just at that threshold where fucking shit’s gonna get real bad. Or like you’ve gone too far and you hit a point where you go, huh, okay, well, fuck, how did I get this far? And it is that self awareness. And maybe some people will never have it. Maybe they won’t ever want to, you know, like you can turn that stuff off. Like we have the ability. And I guess

opportunity to be able to go, Oh, I don’t want to look at it. Fuck it. I’m not going to. And you can do that. And then you can deal with it when you’re 80 some years old, lying in bed with tubes attached to you, like, fuck, what did I not do? Um, but being able. Yeah. And that, but that’s also part of the traumas and the stuff that they’ve gone through it, it really sucks that there’s a lot of that, but I think we do need to get to those tough times and be able to work through those tough times.

Victor Giusfredi (27:48.874)

most people don’t think they’re gonna get there. That’s the problem.

Victor Giusfredi (27:55.767)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (28:02.811)

It’s in the tough times where your character actually shows up. You’ve gone through two divorces. I hope to never get to a second. I’ve been through one. I called it a starter marriage and like, I learned my shit. Um, but there are people that will have to make, I don’t know, like keep falling in certain ways. I keep thinking about video games. Like, it’s funny that you bring that up because I, I think of, do you remember the old Zelda games? Where like you would go all the way through.

Victor Giusfredi (28:26.442)

Yeah, of course.

Nick McGowan (28:29.623)

all the way to the end of this level and find out you didn’t fucking have a key. You’re like, you kidding me? I gotta go all the way back and figure out where that fucking key is. And you find the key and you go back. Life is similar to that where it’s like you’re going to get through and then you go back and go fuck. I could have learned this before but at least you can do something with it now. It can be really difficult to do that.

Victor Giusfredi (28:47.37)

Right. And that’s wisdom. That’s that’s real wisdom. Because how many in my experience and by what I know so far, most people get to the end of the stage and they realize they they’re missing a key and they stay there. Right. And then all of a sudden, somebody else who also got stuck there opened up a little lemonade shop and they say, well, you know what? I don’t need to go to the next stage. I’ll just work for this guy. He’s got me. Right. And I’ll just I’ll just I’ll just surrender my life to him. Pay me every week.

Nick McGowan (29:08.827)

Yeah, come sit. Yeah.

Victor Giusfredi (29:16.126)

And so you’re right, you’re right. And sometimes, I don’t know why I couldn’t stop, right? Because it’s almost like it’s almost like coated in my DNA. It’s like I’m this valiant guy, or I’m so committed to success, or I want to… No, I just couldn’t… I’d rather sacrifice everything else but to have that emotional hell inside. So I had to find those keys. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (29:38.419)

Yeah. I think that ties into your purpose though. You know, it’s part of your purpose to be able to keep going and keep working through it and do the hard work for it. It’s not easy work, but it’s meaningful and it’s stuff that you need to go through, which I think is probably an easy and simple segue into your book. Let’s talk about that a bit, like how you actually got to the point where you’ve written something where you’ve had to pour yourself into that.

Victor Giusfredi (29:49.582)

Agreed.

Nick McGowan (30:07.739)

Um, I haven’t written a book yet. We help people write books by way. It’s choose your calling because we have other people on staff, like my partner and all that have written multiple books. I’m in one of those spots where like, I know what that work looks like. Like, shit, that’s a lot to be able to go into and go through. And you’ve done that in itself. I don’t want to say it could be traumatizing, but like you really have to fucking work at that. And you have to pull yourself open to be able to write something like what you’ve written. So talk to us a bit about that.

Victor Giusfredi (30:36.446)

Yeah. And funny enough, I never thought of being a rider. I mean, I moved into the United States at 17. I came from having high school friends and a mountain bike to washing dishes, like 3,000 dishes a night. So, and within a couple of days. And from that moment on, it was nonstop, right? Until May of 2021, when my fiance and I,

had an argument and she said that she was moving out with her mom. Now this happened out of left field. It turns out that she has some things to deal with at specific times of the month. But I didn’t understand it. And this fight was real enough that I had to sort of freak out and say, well, what am I going to do now? My kids know her for a couple of years.

and we lived together and now, you know, like I didn’t know what to do, right? And so after that fight, I sat on the couch and I had been toiling with the idea of taking my life, mostly because by now I had endured so much pain and pointlessly in my eyes because I had given it my very best. I gave it the best.

The first time around, I gave it the best. The second time around, I gave it the best on all of my businesses and all my jobs. And then it was almost like I kept having the rug pulled from under me, right? So now this third time around, I’m hopeless. So I’m sitting on this couch and I’m thinking, I’m done. You know, I’m done. I have a life insurance policy. I have a million dollars or half a million dollars. I forgot what it was now. And it has a non-suicide clause, right? So two years after having the policy, if you take your life, the kids get paid.

or whoever is in charge of them. So I said, fuck it, I’m done. You know, it was more like a practical sort of solution. It wasn’t this dramatic thing of like, I’m just gonna kill myself, I can’t take it. No, I really came to a logical conclusion that maybe I was a rock in the cocks, right? And I’m like, maybe everyone is better off without me. You know, my fiance can go out with her mom, the kids can go back to live with her mom, right? Because at this point she tortured me that I had taken away from her, but never did anything to keep him on her side. So I would-

Victor Giusfredi (32:59.654)

So I was between a rock and a hard place. I said, fuck it, I’m done. I’m gonna go get my thing and just, pshh. And I sat there and I remember just burying my hands on my face on my hands, because I felt the rush of guilt and regret and remorse and failure, right? And I was literally just down to my last breath. And I just, at this point, I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe in anything.

because my point was I was religious too. I was raised in a Christian, you know, my stepdad was Christian, but he always embodied the opposite of the Christian principles. So to me, there was already a dichotomy there. And then going to church and all these things, you know, Nietzsche used to say, if you want to breathe fresh air, never go to a church. But, so I’m just sobbing my heart out and I’m saying, asking for forgiveness.

Nick McGowan (33:38.483)

Mm-hmm.

Victor Giusfredi (33:52.802)

my kids, forgiveness for failing as a father, for failing as a husband, for failing as a businessman. And so I had come to that decision. I had already accepted death. And in that moment, something happened. I mean, I can’t explain it. I’ve tried, I’ve read probably 150 books since, and within a split second, it’s almost like this lightning bolt hit the tip of my brain.

And it all came together. I said, $500,000 is not gonna accomplish anything for my kids. And if I have suffered this much up until now is because I was ignorant, because nobody taught me any better, because the mass media is not out there to say, hey, you’re suffering because of the things that you think for the things that you’ve been through and he’s hard to fix it, right? They give you the solution in a way of like limbic resonance, right? Like something that’ll give you a rush of adrenaline.

I had already solved answers by doing everything, having all of the hot girls and having all the hot cars and traveling around the world and having companies and none of that put out that pain. And so I said, the best thing that I can do is to leave a map of my experiences for my kids. So at the very least I can save them a few decades of pain, especially because I did accomplish a lot, right? And that the book morphed into something, I decided to give it my best.

So I sort of, in that moment, I knew that I had to write a book. I don’t know how. I don’t know how I knew. Sometimes you just know that you have to do something. And I also knew that I couldn’t fail. Almost like the Christian definition of faith is something that I felt in my atoms that I had to do. And that’s been my purpose. So it’s almost like my purpose found me because I’ve been searching for my purpose all of my life. And in that moment, I realized that

Nick McGowan (35:25.549)

Mm-hmm.

Victor Giusfredi (35:46.342)

everything I’ve been through, just like, I don’t know, when Batman goes into the Far East and trains in the mountains, or I don’t know, whoever’s your favorite hero goes and gets beaten down to shit, and then decides to climb out of the hole and become strong and go fight the evil guys. I say, oh man, that’s exactly what I need to do. I’ve survived all of this. I’ve learned all of the ninja chops to deflect or eradicate these issues. So why not?

help others either avoid my mistakes or conquer the challenges that they’re with. So that’s how the book was born and it took me about two years to write it and edit it and publish it and I published it in September.

Nick McGowan (36:27.571)

That’s awesome. How has it gone so far?

Victor Giusfredi (36:28.654)

Thank you.

I don’t track sales. It’s been selling well actually. It hit international bestseller list in probably five weeks. That’s another thing. It hits it for a second, right? And it’s like being the champion. You’re the champion for like a minute. Right. And there’s a better guy, right? Right. The minute you became the champion, there’s somebody who probably surpassed you at every level. But it was a sign that it was well received and the comments have been really humbling.

Nick McGowan (36:45.531)

Yeah, for a minute. Yeah, until the parade.

Victor Giusfredi (37:00.822)

because especially millennial men who are wrestling with this dichotomy of what they think that they need to do based on what they’re carrying from the previous generation and what they feel like they need to do, right? Like that inner fight that, yeah, you’re making 150 grand on a nine to five Monday through Friday with like 20 day pay-sales and a company car, but you’re still freaking miserable. And you still, the moment that you go to sleep at night, you hate your life. You’re lonely.

and it doesn’t matter what you have, but you still feel that whatever that hand is in your chest that is like turning like this, right? Like it’s like, and so yeah.

Nick McGowan (37:41.879)

And I think we could just have episodes about that. Like what people just think that they should do. I had an episode talking about the shoulds and the should nots and how you feel you should do certain things like you should go to college, you should get a job, you should have, you should be married and have kids and like all these things. But what we should really do is figure out what’s right for us. But we should also work through our shit to be able to figure out how we can actually clearly see those things. And I think your books are part of that too.

Victor Giusfredi (37:44.317)

Yeah

Nick McGowan (38:11.335)

along the lines of, you know, obviously what you’re talking about in your book and the path to that. What’s your advice for somebody that’s on their path toward self mastery?

Victor Giusfredi (38:19.726)

to not give up, right? To become your best friend, because as human beings, ever since we’re born, we’re creatures of connection, whether we want it or not. If you’ve spent enough time in isolation, you know that that’s probably not a sustainable approach. And while it might work for some, I believe that we still need that connection, and sometimes isolation is a better alternative than…

I don’t know, facing ridicule or humiliation to some, right? But you have to, you know, everything we do in life is to feel something. If you buy a car, it’s because you want to experience an emotion and whatever that emotional state is. If you want to get married, it’s because there’s something that you’re pursuing, something you want to feel. And that comes down to everything. Also the best sales trainers. I’ve studied with the best sales.

Nick McGowan (38:50.548)

Hmm.

Victor Giusfredi (39:15.99)

people in the United States, Tom Hopkins is one of them. And the core teaching is that people are buying a feeling, right, an emotion. And so when you understand that about yourself, you’re not just buying it, but everything you do is to achieve one emotional state and avoid the other emotional state. And hey, man, you can be like me and go spend, I don’t know, two decades launching businesses and getting married and divorce and vagabonding and hitting your face on the wall.

Or you can find that within yourself. You can become your own best friend once in a while, you know, look at your hand like this and be like, man, I’m freaking amazing. And it’s weird and it’s cheesy, but that interrupts your pattern of always being with those horse blinders. And then you give yourself the pat in the back that you want from your boss, from your wife, from your husband, whatever it is. And at the end of the day, you are your own best friend. You know, you can lie to everybody, but you can lie to the man or woman.

Nick McGowan (39:53.064)

the

Victor Giusfredi (40:12.39)

So I will say be your best friend and don’t give up.

Nick McGowan (40:15.327)

I love that. And you also can’t get away from you. I don’t know if you’ve ever done some processing where you’re like, fuck me, I want to get away from me. You can’t you can’t get away from yourself. So you do need to be at least friendly with yourself. Which is a great thing. I think that goes along with showing yourself grace as you do this work. As you work through these things have grace but be tough on yourself to be able to work through it but not tough for you beating the hell out of yourself. And Victor, I appreciate you being on with me today. It’s been awesome talking with you, man.

Victor Giusfredi (40:19.196)

Hahaha

Victor Giusfredi (40:23.394)

Hahaha

Nick McGowan (40:43.719)

Before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Victor Giusfredi (40:47.394)

Thank you. And the pleasure is all mine. You’re doing such great work for your listeners. I know that it’s not an easy task to embark on a Mindset Mastery podcast because most people are like you said, they’re like, hey, I just rather not. So really congratulations and my hat’s off to you because I know how hard it is to achieve over 100 episodes. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me on Twitter at Victor Just Freddy. That’s

Victor Giusfredi (41:17.414)

or my website victorjustfreddy.com or no grail without dragons.

Nick McGowan (41:23.119)

Awesome. Again, thank you so much for being on today. I appreciate it.

Victor Giusfredi (41:26.218)

It’s my pleasure, Nate. Thank you.