The Brian Comstock Podcast

How long should you stick with something before you're allowed to doubt it?

Nik and I picked up where we left off last time: when to zoom in and when to zoom out. My rule has always been "when in doubt, zoom out." Nik pushed back. Smart people are full of doubt, so they zoom out too often and quit before the thing has had time to work. His fix: be smart 20% of the time, and just do the steps the other 80%.

What we got into:
😴 Why you can't know better sleep exists until you've had it
🧠 Diagnosed with ADHD late, because there was always another explanation
🩺 The health checks nobody tells you to ask for
🗓️ The 90-day review: 10 years, then 3, then 1, then the next 90 days
📞 The cold caller who blamed the list
🎯 High conviction, low accuracy
🔭 When in doubt, zoom out (and why Nik disagrees)
🎓 Why wisdom is BS
💼 "What I'm doing has no intrinsic value": middlemen, recruiters and meaning
🎮 Private equity vs Valve and Steam
🍼 The algorithm that knew she was pregnant
🌍 Falling birth rates, immigration and why it's a system problem, not a people problem

My favorite line, a riff on Bertrand Russell: all the smart people are filled with doubt, and all the dumb people are filled with confidence.

Guest: Nik Bakhshalian

Watch the full episode on YouTube

CHAPTERS
00:00 Smart sometimes, dumb most of the time
00:25 Picking up where we left off
01:33 "How's it going?" has no good answer
04:00 The Uber driver from Ukraine
07:54 Physics is the only rule
08:38 You can't know better sleep exists
09:36 No inner monologue?
12:40 Is it ADHD, or is it sleep?
15:08 Why some people never get diagnosed
16:20 Diagnosed late: there was always another reason
18:21 Check your sleep, check your gums
20:37 Brushed off by doctors
24:25 Think in bursts, then do the thing
25:56 Traction, EOS & a 20% jump
26:30 Visionary vs integrator
27:52 The 90-day review
28:59 The cold caller who blamed the list
30:24 High conviction, low accuracy
31:40 Persist or pivot?
34:00 The confidence to say "I don't know"
35:21 Smart people are filled with doubt
35:51 When in doubt, zoom out
36:43 Nik's challenge: smart people zoom out too often
38:59 Be smart 20% of the time
40:43 Why wisdom is BS
42:05 You can make money doing anything
46:52 "My work has no intrinsic value"
48:47 Learning to hunt
50:06 Private equity
51:48 Why nobody can beat Steam
53:30 Rework & never taking investor money
54:05 Systems thinking: and then what?
55:10 Falling birth rates
57:24 Universe 25: are we in captivity?
58:15 Your devices are listening
59:21 The algorithm knew she was pregnant
1:01:03 If it's meant for you, it'll find you
1:01:40 Can immigration fix falling birth rates?
1:03:14 Integration, from an immigrant's view
1:05:43 We're tribal by nature
1:07:11 Paying into pensions you won't get
1:09:02 When in doubt, zoom out: it's the system
1:09:37 Get your sleep checked

Host: Brian Comstock
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What would change if you actually liked your own company?

Nico, a former SAS operator, starts with the basics in the first few minutes: fill your own cup first, because nobody gets the best of you while you're running on empty.

Last time Nico was on, I interviewed him. This time we flipped the tables. I'm near the end of his eight-week flagship program at The Order, so I'm a little raw, mid-journey, and I wanted to talk through what it's been like.

What we got into:
🫗 Why you have to fill your own cup first
🎪 Why we keep going back to the same chaos, and how to stop attending
🔦 The presenting problem vs the root cause (the problem is a trailhead)
🪶 The universe speaks in feathers, then bricks, then a semi truck
🧭 Nico's three tests for your purpose (money isn't one of them)
⛽ The $30 tank of gas that changed a stranger's life
🐊 The Steve Irwin Effect
💛 Self love, and why it changes who you let into your life
🪞 Why the mirror doesn't lie
🏺 Brotherhood, and putting it back together with gold (kintsugi)
🧘 Phones vs presence, and falling in love with meditation

My bumper sticker on all of it: I won't deal with people on an ongoing basis if they don't have a sufficient degree of accountability and ownership (friends, dates, Zoom calls, all of it).

And yes, my hamstring got the message too. Message received.

Guest: Nico Seedsman, founder of The Order. Navy at 17, SAS at 21, 12 years in uniform.
The Order · The Order on Instagram

Disclosure: I work with The Order and get paid for that work.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

This episode includes a brief mention of suicide. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline). Outside the US, find a helpline near you.

CHAPTERS
00:00 When you truly love yourself
00:12 Flipping the tables
00:53 What The Order is
04:10 There's no Batman
08:09 A little raw, mid-journey
12:42 Why you keep attending the circus
18:57 Be the main character, not an NPC
20:08 Presenting problem vs root cause
25:14 My bumper sticker: accountability or nothing
26:42 What men want most: respect
30:08 Side quest: drones, AI & sovereignty
35:38 Let it burn
41:44 A dignified way for men to do the work
47:07 Feathers, then bricks, then a semi truck
48:55 My hamstring: message received
51:13 Nico's rock bottom
55:49 The seven health spectrums
58:48 Leading with invitations
1:02:18 The hardest question I could ask Nico
1:03:57 Three tests for your purpose
1:07:53 A $30 tank of gas
1:11:49 A pact at his grandparents' grave
1:15:37 The Steve Irwin Effect
1:17:08 What eight weeks taught me
1:20:41 Stepping into love
1:23:04 The mirror doesn't lie
1:24:38 Deathbed regrets
1:30:25 Brotherhood & kintsugi
1:35:33 Divine timing & a sealed letter at Burning Man
1:41:49 Phones vs presence
1:44:13 Falling in love with meditation
1:51:28 Judo your own identity
1:54:01 Interviews are bad acting
1:58:41 Lead and follow
1:59:37 Where to find The Order

Host: Brian Comstock
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if you could draw last night's dream, then give the bad ones a better ending?

I've wanted to draw my dreams for three-plus years, but I wasn't about to pay a designer every morning to do it. With AI, I finally can. Then the very next podcast I listened to was Tim Ferriss's Random Show on dream engineering: studies where people signal with their eyes from inside a dream, and where giving a bad dream a better ending helped people with PTSD. Which sounds a lot like how EMDR works.

From there, Nik and I went everywhere:
🌙 Drawing my dreams with AI (remembering them is a muscle)
🧠 Dream engineering, rewriting nightmares and the subconscious
🤖 Why ChatGPT is losing the AI race, and why AI is a tool, not the expert
💀 The fake NFL player AI believed, and dead internet theory
🧘 Why even monks play status games (and the big ego about having no ego)
🚪 Why I quit everything I'm good at, right around year four

Plus the day I ran into the smartest guy from my high school (then at Pinterest) and told him, "The smartest people are doing the dumbest things." He said, "I completely agree with you. I'm actually on my way out."

By far my favorite episode we've done (Nik says they just keep getting better, and I'm not going to argue).

CHAPTERS
00:00 Giving a bad dream a better ending
00:26 The placeholder genius award
01:33 Drawing my dreams with AI
04:36 "We're hiring a squirrel for HR"
07:09 Dream engineering & rewriting nightmares
09:21 Intuition vs the rational mind
10:19 Why ChatGPT is losing the AI race
11:59 The rational mind as advisor to the king
16:22 AI is a tool, not the expert
19:13 Delegating vs abdicating
21:05 If AI were a person, everyone would hate it
23:09 The fake NFL player AI believed
25:54 Dead internet theory
29:06 From 6 hours to 45 minutes with AI
33:35 The enlightenment paradox
38:50 The energy has to go somewhere
40:08 Even monks play status games
41:23 A big ego about not having an ego
45:52 The midwit meme
47:25 Why being dangerous is good
48:53 Gandalf, power & capacity
54:25 The genius who quit Pinterest
56:33 Is potential power?
59:01 Just pick one thing
1:02:13 Too many focuses aren't focuses
1:05:18 My biggest weakness
1:06:32 Diminishing returns
1:07:21 Why we need to be needed
1:10:54 Zoom in, do the task, zoom out
1:12:18 Teeing up the next episode
1:14:14 Outro

Guest: Nik Bakhshalian

Host: Brian Comstock
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

Watch the full episode on YouTube

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nik Bakhshalian is back, and he opens with a question every ADHD brain has asked. He can spend eight hours straight building a castle in Valheim, brick by brick. He can't work for eight hours straight. His words: "And what is the difference?"

I spent a couple of months chasing that exact question when I built LifeQuest, my habit app modeled on video games: points, levels, a leaderboard, even staking your own money on yourself. I thought the missing piece was accountability. Nik's take: for ADHD it's not accountability, it's urgency. Someone waiting for you, right now. "He's here. He's at my door. He's waiting. I just gotta open the door."

We get into remote body doubling (and why it might be the unlock I was looking for), why beating yourself up makes it worse, treating yourself like you'd treat a friend, can't vs won't, when to accept a limitation, recovering people pleasing, why being yourself is the only way to find real friends, and the catch of feeling too spent to do the thing that gives you energy.

Also: why I never got a magnet from Italy.

CHAPTERS
00:00 "What is the difference?"
00:15 Being you vs performing
02:30 Why can I game 8 hours but not work 8?
05:01 LifeQuest: gamifying your habits
07:10 Discipline has a shelf life
09:03 Was accountability the missing piece?
10:31 ADHD: urgency, not accountability
13:02 Only going to the gym with a buddy
17:18 The planner vs the doer
18:46 Why beating yourself up backfires
19:30 Treat yourself like a friend
20:29 Can't or won't?
21:48 The piano genius who won't hit record
24:10 Remote body doubling: "It's our hour"
25:56 An hour with someone (The Alignment Project idea)
30:00 Limitation, or just how you work?
31:36 One person is enough
33:31 Years of overriding what works for me
34:33 Being yourself attracts the right people
36:31 Run the experiment, accept the result
39:36 "We can't" vs "we can't right now"
42:02 Recovering people pleaser
45:16 Real friends need the real you
50:28 Three kinds of people at work
52:35 The Italy magnet (and the best gift)
58:20 Too spent to do the thing that gives you energy
59:36 Our best episode?
1:00:58 Outro

Guest: Nik Bakhshalian

Host: Brian Comstock
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

Watch the full episode on YouTube

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Smart enough to know exactly what to do, and still can't make it stick? That's what my 1:1 sessions are for.

Actually follow through: we work on what's really in the way, you leave with one small next step, and at the next session I ask how it went (just you and me, not a room of 500).

One private session is $400, or four for $1,500. Here's how it works.

Nik Bakhshalian is back for round three. He just got home from Mensa's annual gathering, and he says a lot of the people he met there are neurodivergent in some way.

Nik was diagnosed with ADHD about two years ago, then took two more years to mail his Mensa letter. His words: "it's such an ADHD thing." And the reason nobody caught it sooner: "my intelligence made it so that I didn't have to pay attention in class. I just did well."

We get into being smart and ADHD at the same time (Nik explains the "twice exceptional" thing), how a high IQ can mask ADHD for years, the hyperfocus then zero interest cycle, how hard you should push yourself, obsession vs white-knuckling, the halo effect, and why we doom scroll instead of sleeping.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Smart enough to hide it
00:11 Nik's back for round three
00:45 Inside Mensa's annual gathering
02:19 Why so many members are neurodivergent
04:35 Diagnosed 2 years ago (and the 2-year letter)
05:19 How a high IQ masks ADHD
08:53 Smart isn't the same as growth-minded
13:14 Mensa's untapped potential
18:00 "Because I can"
22:43 ADHD hyperfocus and the don't over-invest rule
26:49 Social clubs, drive and the old guard
30:59 "We can't" vs the laws of physics
34:54 Starry-eyed reformers vs inertia
37:06 Leading change at work
38:55 Books, looks and the sweatpants years
46:15 The halo effect
49:20 Drive vs contentment (and jet lag)
52:17 How hard should you push yourself?
54:16 Obsession vs white-knuckling
56:59 Certainty, confidence and ADHD
1:02:33 What success means (and why we doom scroll)
1:06:02 Outro

Guest: Nik Bakhshalian

Host: Brian Comstock
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

Nico Seedsman joined the Australian Navy at seventeen as an electrical engineer. At twenty he switched to the Army for special operations, spent a year and a half in reconnaissance infantry as a team commander, and went into the SAS at twenty-one. He served there until twenty-nine, through multiple combat deployments, and left with full-blown PTSD, autoimmunity and catastrophic injuries, after a period where his own subconscious was steering the car toward a tree on the drive to work.

This is the story of how he put his hand up, lost his identity, his tribe and his mission in one moment, and rebuilt from nothing into what the psychologists call post-traumatic growth. Ayahuasca. Stem cells. Meditation. Finding God. And the difference between bravery and courage.

Nico now runs The Order, a brotherhood for men who want to become the true gentleman.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Find Nico and The Order: The Order · The Order on Instagram

Disclosure: I work with Nico on The Order.

This episode discusses suicidal ideation, PTSD and combat trauma. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline). Outside the US, find a helpline near you.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
00:16 Who is Nico Seedsman
03:23 My subconscious wanted me dead
12:04 How do you not give up when you want to?
15:58 Quitting vs. changing direction
21:34 The relationship that turned him upside down
27:48 Why the military doesn't let you recover
36:57 Grief on both sides
40:25 Ayahuasca and plant medicine
45:59 Stem cells vs. allopathic medicine
48:37 Finding God
56:47 Door one, or game over
1:03:18 Life before and after
1:13:37 Where to start
1:16:37 Why fear feels like death
1:24:03 Five positives for every negative
1:33:18 The Order
1:42:34 Closing thoughts
1:43:25 Outro

Host: The Brian Comstock Podcast
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Britnie Turner went from living in her car to building one of the fastest-growing women-owned companies in the world, owning a private island wellness resort, and founding a humanitarian organization that has rescued thousands of people. This conversation isn't about how she built it. It's about what it cost her - and how she healed.

We get into the movie that changed her life at twelve, the little girl who couldn't speak, learning to hear the voice of love, the relationship that nearly ended everything and the phone call that saved her life, the rebound date who became her husband - a 20-year Green Beret - and Healed Heroes, the program born from his recovery that has walked 232 suicidal veterans back without losing one.

This episode discusses abuse and suicide. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline). Outside the US, find a helpline near you.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:24 The movie that changed her life at 12
04:20 The little girl who couldn't speak
05:45 Living in her car, building anyway
09:50 Richard Branson's brand advice
11:16 An island built for healing, not escape
18:58 Learning to hear God's voice
20:30 Wrestling with whether God is good
24:45 Hurt people hurt people, healed people heal people
32:06 The relationship that almost destroyed her
39:20 The phone call that saved her life
40:41 What love actually says
48:00 The rebound date who became her husband
51:58 Healed Heroes: 232 veterans, zero lost
55:33 Write your eulogy
1:01:22 Outro

GUEST: BRITNIE TURNER
Instagram: @britnieturner
Force for Good Collective
The Aerial BVI · Instagram: @theaerialbvi
Aerial Recovery

BRIAN COMSTOCK
Host: The Brian Comstock Podcast
Transformation Artist | Coach
Instagram: @brian.comstock
Watch the full episode on YouTube

The Brian Comstock Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nik Bakhshalian is back for round two. We get into why most coaching advice fails - not because the advice is bad, but because whoever's giving it never actually did the thing.

The line that stuck with me: as soon as you miss step one, it renders two through ten completely irrelevant. Most coaches have a brilliant answer for steps two through ten. Nobody checks whether they ever did step one.

We also get into why incentives quietly run everything, including the time a bounty on cobras created more cobras, why the best networking isn't networking, and gratitude as a genuine unfair advantage.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and guest overview
12:07 The pitfalls of overengineering solutions
39:52 Stories of fairness and understanding in practice
52:07 Final thoughts and closing remarks

Guest: Nik Bakhshalian

Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=KklzUe6o2fg

Nik Bakhshalian's ADHD assessment included an IQ test. He scored in the 99th percentile — and joined Mensa. The same brain that couldn't finish a work project qualified for the high-IQ society, and that contradiction explains why so many smart people get diagnosed late, or never.

Nik and I have been friends for years, and this is the most honest conversation we've had on the record: late diagnosis, what finally brought certainty, why maintenance feels like death to some brains, and the systems that actually work when discipline doesn't.

CHAPTERS
00:00 We're back
01:47 Getting tested as an adult
09:56 Why certainty changes everything
19:55 Beating procrastination without willpower
29:48 Connection, and the fireside conversations
39:40 Clarity, variability, and what actually drives motivation
49:52 The Mensa result
59:58 Systems that hold when discipline doesn't
1:09:56 Knowing yourself on purpose

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2whS6QvM9_A

The Brian Comstock Podcast — conversations that go deeper than surface level. Hosted by Brian Comstock, coach and Certified Integrative Psychology Practitioner. More at briancomstock.com

Most disrespect doesn't look like an insult. It's the person who's always late, who talks over you, who asks your opinion just to argue. You feel it and say nothing. This episode: how to spot the subtle stuff, shift the mindset that keeps you quiet, slow it down in the moment, and the actual words to use when someone disrespects you. Disrespect isn't an attack. It's a test of what you'll accept. Work with me: https://briancomstock.co