THE PUZZLE CALLED LIFE | Warrior Week: Parables From the Pit | EP 068

Blake Sloan, Warrior Week graduate #16 & #46, is in the house as Coach Sam’s special guest in this episode of Warrior Week: Parables From the Pit where underlying stories are uncovered and several “a-ha” moments are revealed. We find out what happens to a young man who, at the young age of seventeen, loses his father to the feminine influence of a woman other than his mother, and how he creates and lives inside of a story that he will carry and run with for the next 15 years until he enters the gates of Warrior Week. Parable #1: The Missing Pieces Coach Sam: As you look back, what was it that was missing from your life? You had money, you had your significant other, you had status, so what the fuck was missing? Was it other dudes that were missing? Did you have guys with whom you could really share the things that were going on in your life? Blake: I think it was the lack of anyone that understood me or the pain that I was feeling on the inside, and ultimately the sacrifice it takes to actually be able to own and grow a business as I had. QUESTION Who do you surround yourself with that truly understands what you are experiencing in life and with whom you can share?   Parable #2: Embracing the Dark & the Light There were two massive takeaways from Blake’s experience in Warrior Week 16. “The biggest one by far was that I gave myself permission to finally be all of me – the dark side AND the light side. I used to be ashamed of the dark side because by the time I would let it out, there was so much rage and anger that I would nuke everybody around me.” “I would bottle it up and bottle it up… and then I would explode. Then I would try to be the nice guy. But it’s hard to be a good businessman while you’re trying to hold that back. It was during some evolutions that I had this big aha moment: I’m going to be ALL of me, the good and the bad. And from that day on, I feel like my entire life has been different.” QUESTION What have you been afraid to embrace about your dark side?   Parable #3: Inside the Pit of #46 In the midst of an evolution inside the Pit during WW 46, Blake closed his eyes and saw his father (who had been dead for a few years) staring back at him, something that really surprised him. “There was a whole history there. My dad cheated on my mom, he wasn’t showing up as a husband and father, and the next day he was gone. At the age of seventeen, that fucked me up a little. And that’s when I had to grow up.” In the end, his father chose to go with the woman with whom he had the affair, who incidentally didn’t like Blake. This resulted in a tumultuous relationship between Blake and his father, ultimately leaving Blake with this feeling of abandonment. “That was the person I looked up to the most who literally abandoned me.” QUESTION What did you face inside the Pit at Warrior Week that took you by surprise but in looking back made perfect sense? Parable #4: Connecting the Dots Another huge a-ha moment came to Blake after colliding with Coach Sam as they peeled back layer after layer regarding his failed engagement. The story he had been running with was that he was over it and that everything was ok…but it wasn’t. “Once we went through that process where I wrote it all down on paper, and then burned it, that was one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done in my entire life.” Coach Sam helped Blake see the connection between this and the abandonment of his father, who was under the feminine influence of a woman other than his wife. He realized his father had no tools to work through this and no one to actually have a conversation with about it. “There was no awakening that was brought to him; no one to collide with him and tell him, “Dude, you are fucking up right now!” QUESTION How have the tools of Warrior coupled with the association inside the Warrior Brotherhood served you?   Parable #5: Guilt & Shame Blake came into the game of WW #48 as a Certified Trainer serving and guiding men on their journeys going into and coming out of the Pit. He was a witness to the guilt and shame that adult men were carrying, just like his own father had. “In observing all of that guilt and shame, I had a huge a-ha moment where I could see how much everyone’s issues of guilt and shame came from their fathers.” Blake was a witness to the journey of one man who ultimately decided to leave Warrior Week. “He didn’t want to address the one issue that ultimately could have freed him.” QUESTION What are you hearing from this conversation? How does it resonate with you?     *Coming soon: Be the Man Challenge, an adventure that will take you through six weeks of self-discovery and introduce you to some of the conversations and belief systems inside of the Warrior’s Way.  Parables from the Pit: “When you look at this big puzzle called life, you realize that each piece of the puzzle needed to happen in order to be able to put the puzzle together. I want you to visualize the last piece of the puzzle being a piece of metal that is burning like fucking lava. And you had the balls to pick it up knowing it was going to hurt.” —Sam Falsafi“ “Looking back at the hundreds of books, coach after coach and all of the high-level mastermind events with top leaders such as Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy, and others – all of those together could not touch the transformation that I had through my Warrior Weeks.” -Blake Sloan