Clay Moffat: Self Trust The Ultimate Weapon Against Betrayal

Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] Now Clay, you said like Tony Robbins sells belief like gospel, but you say it’s just a dopamine trap and it’s keeping people stuck. Why

Clay Moffat: simple? A lot of people think that you need belief to start, and so they think you need to believe in something. And so you need to believe. Now I’m not suggesting and and confidence is the anticipation expectation of a beneficial outcome, right?

Which is great. It’s good, everyone loves to have some confidence, but confidence is like belief. Like you need to have this belief before you do things. And while I won’t disrespect Tony or disagree with him in the sense that the more belief you have, typically the easy it makes it, what I’ve found is that necessity is way, way better at a leverage point.

Because when you back yourself into a corner, whether it’s you are actually into a corner or psychologically, you put yourself into a corner. Or you’ve kind of burned bridges everywhere around you, inside your head, but they’re not really [00:01:00] burnt and now you’ve got no other option. You will find a way to make it work.

So a lot of people turn around and say, well, you need to have belief and you’ve gotta believe in this thing. And the more you believe, the more effort you’re gonna produce. And then you put more effort in. And when you put more effort in, that means you get better results and you get better results. Well, that means you’re gonna put more belief into it because it’s gonna become a self-fulfilling circle and they’re correct.

That is 100% true. Like I couldn’t argue with that at all. The issue is then that it’s saying that you need to believe that you can do something to start. Now, this is purely anecdotal, however, there’s plenty of other things that are not anecdotal. Writing my book, 21 days from Start to Finish, meaning starting to write to publishing the final copy was 21 days.

Did I believe I could do it? I had no clue whether I could do it, but I was under a very. Visceral timeline that if I didn’t get it done then and the surgery went wrong with my [00:02:00] eye, then I would never get a chance to do it. So it didn’t matter whether I believed I could do it or not. I just had to find a way to get it done.

And that’s why I say belief is overrated. Commitment is way more important than belief because when you fully commit to something, when you actually fully commit, and I would challenge anyone that’s listening to this right now, you could probably count on one hand the number of times that you have actually committed to things in your life and every single time you’ve really, really committed.

If you go back and have a look, not only did you get the result, you vastly exceeded the expectation you had on yourself because you went all in. So that’s why

Brent Dowlen: we’ve all been told you just need to believe in yourself. Belief alone. It’s a trap. It feels good in the moment, yet it keeps men stuck repeating the same cycles over and over again.

The real game changer commitment. Back yourself into a corner and you’ll discover what [00:03:00] you’re truly capable of. But here’s the twist. It’s not just about commitment. Most men keep sabotaging themselves, not because others betray them, but because they ignore the red flags and they stop trusting themselves in their own instincts.

In today’s episode, Clay Moffat shows us why belief is overrated, why trust starts with yourself, and how men can finally stop screwing themselves over. We’re gonna spend 90 seconds and check in with our sponsors over at MyPillow, and we’re gonna get right into it. Gentlemen, I sleep on my MyPillow. I have MyPillow Giza sheets, I have MyPillow body pillow, we have MyPillow towels, cup towels.

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For our listeners, MyPillow is an American owned, employee owned company and you’re supporting not only a great American company, but you’re helping keeping our podcasts on the air by shopping why pillows. So thanks in advance for that. Let’s get on with our show, the Driven To Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving purpose-filled intentional lives.

Welcome to the Driven Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. I’m your host, Brent Dowlen. We help men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives. My guest today is Clay Moffat ex-Navy weapons tech turned behavioral coach and author of the Thirst Trap. Clay doesn’t sugarcoat it.

He teaches the neuroscience of trust, the psychology of betrayal, and why most people will keep screwing themselves over. If you’ve ever ignored those red flags, sabotage your own success or trust of the wrong person. This episode is your wake up call. Clay, welcome to the Driven to the Eye Broadcast.[00:05:00]

Clay Moffat: Pleasure to be here, sir. Pleasure to be here

Brent Dowlen: now. Clay, we like to start on the lighter note here. How’s your trivia skills?

Clay Moffat: Average. It depends on the trivia we’re asking about.

Brent Dowlen: Alright, fair, fair disclosure. I, I look for things that are gonna be hard for people, so we’ll see. Here’s the trivia question of the show. What color is Donald Duck’s bow tie? Is it red, yellow, blue, or white?

Clay Moffat: That’s a brilliant question, and I honestly, I have no idea. I know he’s got a blue jacket.

Eh? I’ll just go with white.

Brent Dowlen: All right guys. You know the rules. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. Don’t for God’s sake look it up while you were driving. Just, you know, put it in the back of your mind. We’ll come back to that. See if anybody actually still cares at the end. Clay, I, I [00:06:00] really don’t do bigger introductions.

Honestly, that’s probably the biggest introduction I’ve ever given anybody in your own words today, in this moment, who is Clay Moffat?

Clay Moffat: Oh man. What kind of answer do you want? Do you want an esoterical answer or do you, do you want an answer that people can actually understand?

Brent Dowlen: Uh, let’s go with in your mind how you see yourself today and We’ll, we will get to backstory later.

Clay Moffat: So, how I see myself today,

it’s just an evolution of who I was yesterday, and that might sound like a very, very vague response. I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy and, and, and money investing in myself to disconnect from the idea that I’m all my past choices, that I’m a summation of my habits, that I’m all these [00:07:00] things because, you know, that’s the standard run of the mill, right?

And to get more in touch with the idea that. This thing that we’re experiencing is life and we’re living it, which is a process and we’re experiencing it, which is a process. So therefore, I am also a process and getting in touch and spending as much time that I can consciously to focus on the fact that who I am is this experience as it’s being experienced in this moment, which is separate from the previous moment, uh, to get a more grounded answer for people.

The the things that I do is I coach people I day trade. Uh, am very lucky to call two kids my own and my stepdaughter. She lives with us all the time. She’s basically my daughter. Um, I’ve [00:08:00] got a lovely partner. Got two parents that are still alive. She still together. Crazy ass brother.

We’re going to Indonesia today, Wednesday, in two days time, gonna go trek with orangutans and go rafting down rivers and doing all kinds of stuff like that. Uh, I enjoy nature a great deal. Uh, quite enjoy going and looking at animals and just being in nature and experiencing that. I enjoy helping people, although that’s not why I got into coaching.

I didn’t even wanna to get into coaching in the first place. Uh, it’s backwards is most of my life. It seems to have been like backwards. I fell backwards into things. It’s just pretty strange. But this is how it’s gone through.

Yeah, I, I think that’s, uh, as good as a summary as I can give at this point in time.

Brent Dowlen: I love it. The fact that it took some work. I, I [00:09:00] love that. ’cause I, I. And suspect of anybody who can answer that question. Just like straight off cuff. It’s a little disconcerting. You mean

Clay Moffat: because it’s rehearsed,

Brent Dowlen: right? Yeah.

’cause they, they’ve done it so many times, like, oh, this is, it’s like, uh, you’re, you’re not feeling what I’m asking here. So it’s a great answer, man. I like it. So what do you actually do for a living, Clay?

Clay Moffat: Uh, multiple things.

Brent Dowlen: You said you day trade? Uh,

Clay Moffat: I day trade, I invest and I coach. They’re probably the three main things.

I do some consulting work as well, but mostly coaching. I used to do some training. Haven’t done training in a long time. Long time. I mean, I suppose technically my coaching is also training in a way, but I’d say that that’s pretty much it.

Brent Dowlen: What is, what’s the consolidated story of Clay Moffat?

Clay Moffat: Uh, it depends.

What [00:10:00] elements you wanna know about? Do you wanna know the trials and tribulations? Do you wanna know the successes? Do you wanna know all the mistakes? Like what’s gonna be most beneficial? The condensed story, it was my mom’s 70th birthday two weeks ago, and she came to Thailand with her, uh, friends and her brothers and sisters, and we all got together just off, uh, the island ette just about 40 minutes north of where I live.

And, uh, one of her friends who she’s been friends with for a long time, who’s also a travel agent, like my mom, was telling a story with regard to how she could remember something happening when my mom was away in Africa on her holiday and I ended up in hospital with a fractured skull and all that kind of stuff.

And then she recalled about another time when I was traveling through Europe and my passport got washed and then she called another time. She’s like, you know what? [00:11:00] Your mom really should have written a book about your life because it would’ve been a best seller about the travels of Clay. So it really depends on what you would like to know about condense the amount of, there’s, there’s a very strong inclination that leans towards me being someone that would have a very high level of a DD inattentive type.

Because when I was younger, my mom got me this book called, I just Forgot. And it was it done in the Best of Spirits to, to help me start to remember because this this little weird hairy ball kid. It’s like weird little kid that’s literally covered in hair, like cousin, it like a little ball. And uh, this thing loses everything.

Like everything. And I did the same thing. I’d lose my shoes, I’d leave my school uniform. I leaves something else behind. I’d walk into a room, forget why I got there, walk back [00:12:00] into the other room. Remember why I was going back in that room, walk back in that room, forget again, come back again. Like, it’s just ridiculous.

I did these exercise called Brain Gym, which have been thwarted, and they say there’s no research back to it, but then now they’ve done more science and they say, actually it’s quite powerful and quite effective for kids use. And my grades went through the roof. I went from a D student to an A student in about six weeks.

Like there was a lot of things that started to happen and really started to work for me. So it was good. But this inness has caused me to miss planes. It’s caused me to lose jobs. It’s caused me to, uh, lose girlfriends of all things. Uh, like literally misplaced a human being because I forgot about them and went and did something else.

Like, what the hell am I doing? I need to go back. So, you know, I’ve done a lot of stupid things. Fortunately, I haven’t forgot my kids yet. Uh, and I’m, it’s a work in progress, but. Over the grand scheme of things. I’d say the story [00:13:00] is relatively normal. You know, there was no major trauma in terms of like, I wasn’t beaten, I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t neglected.

Uh, you, you could make the argument that by default, because my dad had to work so hard and he was never home, there was neglect because he wasn’t there. But I already knew, like I knew why he wasn’t there. So I wouldn’t say it was neglect, in other words, but he wasn’t there. It was absent. It was absent. Um, and I think that had a massive impact on me.

I also never really learned how to regulate emotions until a few years ago. I’d say maybe about six or seven years ago, after years and years of coaching and self work and mushroom trips and I watched ceremonies and, you know, the whole kit caboodle. Um.

Yeah, just a standard run of middle life. You know, I didn’t know what to do with my life. Joined the Navy, should [00:14:00] never have joined the Navy. It exacerbated all of my flaws and weaknesses and insecurities. I had a problem with drinking before I joined. It got way worse when I joined ’cause it was a massive drinking culture back then.

They’ve changed it now. It’s not so intense. I mean, not in the way it was when I was in. Uh, and it really did, it really did accelerate all my insecurities. Uh, I, I carried around a false bravado of confidence for many, many, many, many years. And people that were really confident, you know, you can pick up on it, but if people that weren’t confident or who were more insecure than me would latch onto it and, uh, I was really kind of a piece of shit back then.

Um, I didn’t use to use and abuse people, but a word that got thrown around, which never felt good when I heard someone else say it, but was very accurate, was, I was [00:15:00] volatile, unpredictable. One minute I’d be fine. Next minute I’d be off the scales. And that especially became true when I was drinking, right?

Because there was a lot of, whatever it was, I, I still can’t tell you. There was no deep sensitizing event. There was no, oh, this is it. This is the thing, and now I’ve done this thing. Everything’s gonna, I can’t tell you anything like that. I didn’t have any major trauma like that, like I said. So everything was pretty round the mill.

But there were some problems. There was some very, very deep seated problems that I need to go through and fix, which I didn’t realize. I spent the first 27, 28 years of my life living as a victim without knowing that I was living as a victim. I blamed everyone else for all my problems. I didn’t get this job promotion because you are an asshole.

I didn’t get this because you are that, and you know, it’s, uh. It’s not a fun process at first to look in the mirror and realize that you are the author of all your pain. But once you get over that part and the ego gets out the way, it’s actually one of the most fun experiences that you ever have.[00:16:00]

Brent Dowlen: See, you have lots to say on that, and it’s all good. I said you had lots to say on that. You didn’t, you didn’t think you had anything to answer on that. You had lots to say on that. It’s all good, man. I, I love it because you have to know where people were coming from. Well, you have to understand where people were coming from, right?

Mm-hmm. The fact that you got to a point where you could look back and go, wow, I, I really kind of did this all to myself, right? That that’s a huge, A lot of people never get there. They never get to that point.

Clay Moffat: A lot of people don’t want to get there.

Brent Dowlen: So you wrote a book. And, and, mm-hmm. Your story, what can I, can I ask what actually happened?

You said you were in danger of losing your eyesight. Was that like an injury or,

Clay Moffat: yeah. Um, blind in my left eye. [00:17:00] Uh, in 2010, no, sorry, I’ll lie. 26 December, 2009 because I can remember the day very well. I was at a music festival. I was walking along minding my own business, and all of a sudden vision just gone complete black.

I was like, well, this is weird. Me being me carried on party, didn’t go home, partied for the rest of the night, went home, woke up the next day, still couldn’t see it, and I go, okay. So I went and see the optometrist, blah, blah, blah, blah. Three surgeries later, still blind. No problem. Fast forward to November last year, November last year, with my partner and my son.

We’re driving up to the jungle. We’re gonna go look for. Sun bears, elephants, lions, not lions, sorry, tigers, lepers, all this kind of stuff, right? Which don’t exist in the jungle that we’re gonna, but I’m telling my son, we’re gonna go look for this stuff, make it fun. On the drive up there, everything’s quite clear.

Although [00:18:00] there’s this, this tendency that when I’m looking at the lion in the middle of the road, they’re like splitting off and they’re like, they’re veering in together. Like, well, that’s a bit strange. I haven’t seen that before. Like I was probably just same with my contact lens, because remember, I’m blind, so I just got the one in anyway, so I put some drops in.

I had some other things and didn’t really sit right and it wasn’t until I got back after the weekend away that I took the contact out, put my glasses on, and it was still a problem. Like, okay, and need get checked out. So I went to see an optometrist. He’s like, I think you have a cataract, a very early stage cataract, and that’s what’s causing it because I can’t correct your vision.

Like, okay. So I went and saw an ophthalmologist. She said, no, you’ve got dry eyes. You need to take your stuff. And I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth multiple times. And, uh, eventually got to the point where after three and a half months, give or take, and tens of thousands of dollars, the surgeons agreed it was cataracts.

So [00:19:00] it would’ve been much simpler to get there. However, I wanted to exhaust every single option because the reason why I can’t see today is because the surgery, the final surgery that I had actually took the vision that they gave me back away from me, and it was cataract. So it was complications in cataract surgery, and it removed the vision they gave me back.

So the first surgery back in 2010, didn’t do anything. The second surgery restored my sight to what I can see now to my right eye. And then the third surgery, removed it again, and it was a cataract surgery. So I was very much aware, acutely aware you could say. Just very, very fully focused on the fact that it could go the other way and that this eye could also be there.

So the three weeks was when I sat down with a doctor, because I went through and I saw multiple doctors because my experience in Australia was with this

pompous arrogance son of a bitch. Uh, [00:20:00] when I came outta that cataract surgery and I told him that I could not see, and my vision was worse, his response was, no, that’s not possible. Like, it’s my eye moron. I’m the one that’s looking through it. I can tell you whether it’s improved or not, and I’m telling you like, whatever you did, you’ve destroyed what’s going on in my eye.

Like completely destroyed it. And so I refused to go back there. My mom and my dad tried to get me to go back to have surgery in Australia. I said, why? Why would I do that? And so, especially not to that field, because I go there, he’s gonna wanna operate me and I’ve got no interest in having that guy near my eyes ever again.

So I spent time and I researched this guy who’s possibly the best in Thailand, if not one of the best, and went to all the other guys and they were very good. But this was the only guy that actually seemed to care. He was the only one that had a shred of empathy. It was the only one that actually sat down and asked me questions.

He could see that I was concerned about stuff and he just sat there with me [00:21:00] to make sure that I was good. So when I selected to go with him, had like this huge sense of relief, like, okay, you made the right choice. This is the right thing to do. This is the right guy. If there’s anyone that can like, that’s gonna do it the right way, it’s gonna be this guy.

And two days later I was sitting there, kind of slap across the face like. Well, while that’s all true, have you thought about the fact that it could go bad? And if it does go bad, you’re probably not gonna be able to coach anymore. Your hypnosis practice is probably gonna go under because you can’t really hypnotize people if you can’t see what’s going on.

I mean, it’s, the person could get up and walk out the room, you’re not gonna tell. So maybe you should take what you’ve done for the last 15 years and put it into some kind of content, some kind of form that can be beneficial to people even if you can’t coach anymore. And so at first I thought, lemme make a course.

And I thought making a course in three weeks is insane with all the video and editing the video. Then I’ve gotta pay for hosting, I’ve gotta pay for the [00:22:00] website, I gotta pay for. So I was like, no. So I was like, lemme just put it into a book. So I wrote the book in three weeks because I had to, because if I didn’t, then I’d have to pay a ghost writer to write.

And it’s not me writing it, and it’s not my book, it’s someone else’s book.

Brent Dowlen: So you cranked out. Three year. Alright, lemme rephrase that. You’ve cranked out years of experience in three weeks. Just jammed it out. Yeah,

Clay Moffat: so this, that’s the, let’s, let’s ease up there for a sec. Because if we’re gonna be honest, it’s not like I wrote the entire book from scratch.

Like, I’ve been on podcast, I’d spoken about this before. I’d kind of given trainings on these processes before. So it wasn’t like, oh, let me just sit down. I’ve written this entire thing from scratch. Like I had notes to pull from. I’d already been researching this stuff for over about eight years now because I really love neuroscience and, and how we can take the practical applications of what they find and distill it into behavior and patterns and processes that we can use.[00:23:00]

But yeah, it took me three weeks to put it into a book, into a form that I was happy with and write it into a structure that was, I dunno, ended up getting reduced down to like 44,000 words or something like that. Which there’s still a significant amount considering where to write and edit. Write and edit.

And my editor was insanely good. She turned the book from being, what’d she say it, Clay, this is great. It’s really heavy content and it reads like a fucking technical manual. No one’s gonna like this no matter how good the value is. People will not enjoy reading this because there’s no story, there’s no depth.

You need to personalize it. Put your stories in there, put stories about these experts, make it people interested in why these guys are here and why they’re important. And so I went through and did that. We edited everything and then off we go.

Brent Dowlen: That is a good editor right there. You, you do well with that one.

Clay Moffat: Yep.

Brent Dowlen: They’re editors out there that will just correct punctuation and grammar and be like, oh yeah, that’s a great [00:24:00] book. Nah, that’s not an editor, man. That’s, that’s, so, yeah, you, you did land a really good one, so you wanted to make sure it was down and ready to go in case. And then you went on with the No,

Clay Moffat: it was gonna be live.

I published it, it was published so that it was live to the world on the day I went in for surgery. So even if the surgery went bad, that day was gonna be marked as a great day because I published my book, my books out. That was, that was the deal, like okay. And I think I published it, but then, so when I put it to my editor, I had used a quote from Jack Sparrow and she’s like, are you sure you wanna do this?

I’m like, yeah. It’s, it’s a perfect quote. It’s amazing. Like this is, this is perfect quote. It’s like goes in this part like it’s perfect. It’s like you’re right, it is. And Disney are insane about copyright. I’m telling you. Remove the damn thing. [00:25:00] ’cause they could sue you and they don’t have to give you like a written warning.

I’m like, I’m some no net guy from that’s living in Thailand. Like they’re not gonna come after and sue me. Like, why would they do that? That’s gonna look bad for them. Like, they’ve gone after not giving a guy a cease and desist and going straight after him for a quote in a 250 foot, uh, four page book that’s used once.

Like, that’s a bit strong. She’s like, look, I’m just saying. Anyway, she planned that Cedar Doubt in my head. So I published it and then I had this knee jerk response like, you know what? I should probably just get it down. So then I pulled it down and then re-uploaded the new one. So it ended up coming out the morning after, not the morning of, but it was in the process.

Like I had uploaded it, it was going, was ready to go, came out day after. It’s okay.

Brent Dowlen: She, she’s right. Disney is insane about that stuff. I, I’ve had, yeah, I trust videos, pulled

Clay Moffat: trust, my editor.

Brent Dowlen: I, I’ve had videos pulled where I had like a really four second clip. Well, within, well within legal rights of, [00:26:00] uh Yep.

Free use or whatever. Right. It’s, you can, you can show so much before it’s a, a copyright infringement. Yeah. Well, within, I, I’ve had my videos hit on YouTube for copyright infringement when I had just like a, a momentary clip to get like a response from the character. ’cause it was just so over the top.

Right? Yeah. Wow. Disney is nuts about that kinda stuff. So, so, yeah.

Clay Moffat: Yeah. I’m happy I pulled it. The quote I put in there was, which was my backup is, I think it’s better. Like the first one was, the first one was funny. It was funny. And I think it added more character to the book. But in terms of weight and clarity and direction for the book, the second one’s better.

Brent Dowlen: Now guys, we, we’ve been getting to know Clay, where he is coming from a little bit of background, a little bit of his book. So you understand where we’re diving into today. ’cause we’re [00:27:00] gonna talk about all these amazing things that. He has learned over the years and he’s put into this book. Uh, I have not read your book yet.

Full disclosure, I have to tell everybody that. But we’re gonna dive into one of the things that Clay talks about with trust is how, how so many of us just keep getting screwed and then we’ll work onto how to stop it because a lot of it’s our own doing. If I’m understanding what I, I’ve learned researching with Clay here.

So Clay, you, you state very clearly that a lot of men keep getting screwed over and over again and it’s all on on them. Um, yeah, and a lot of us don’t, like, I’m not even sure where to go with that statement until you go into that a little bit. So let’s, let’s start there. [00:28:00]

Clay Moffat: Alright. It’s simple. There’s a, a process in marketing, which they talk about, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with.

The best thing that you can do in marketing is to make it not their fault. Now, the cool thing about this is that in this particular case, that happens to be true. It’s not people’s fault that they keep screwing themselves over, but you’ll notice in the subtitle of the book, it doesn’t say how to stop getting screwed over.

It says How to stop screwing yourself over because there is a difference between someone who thinks they’re getting screwed over and someone who thinks they’re screwing themselves over. One is at least at the subconscious level, at the very least at the subconscious level, aware that they have a part on it, and the other person is like, oh, this is someone else’s doing, like they need to fix it.

So one’s a complete victim and one is like, okay, I’ve got, I’ve got some skin in the game in this, in this controversy here. I need to figure out what I’ve done to, to contribute to this. [00:29:00] And that’s a very, very different stage of awareness. The not your fault part comes as a perfect blend of the perfect storm.

So if you are to go through and take a look at things from evolutionary psychology, you’ll see that the brain itself, which is kind of perfect for your show, is not designed to thrive. Absolutely not. It is 100% designed to survive, and one of its rules, or its governing principles, is that it conserves energy.

That is what it’s designed to do. And it’s designed to do that because 10,000 years ago, heck, even a hundred years ago, we didn’t have seven elevens on every corner. You couldn’t just go down 24 hours a day and go buy some cheap processed junk that’s packed with carbs and sugar and give you a massive energy fix that’s gonna keep you going.

It did not happen. We had to scavenge, we had to search. We had to go and look for food. So conserving [00:30:00] energy was of the utmost importance. Which means we’re not gonna take a chance on things, because if we take a chance, we’re gonna burn that energy. And that means we might not have energy to go for something later.

Like you see this start playing out across the board in so many areas. Once you start an understanding this principle like, well, if I don’t get this, then I might miss this. It’s not just like, oh, you’re scared you’re a cow. No, no. You are running off a script that has kept you alive for all these years, but that script belongs back in the past.

We’re no longer in that era anymore. So we’ve updated, but that script still plays because it’s in our nervous system. It’s how we respond to things, it’s how we respond to everything. So if you take that first element that we wanna conserve energy, then how do we conserve energy? That’s, that’s not a rhetorical question.

Like. What would you say if I say as a general rule, how would a human being conserve energy? And so we’re [00:31:00] clear rest is not the answer. And neither’s sleep,

Brent Dowlen: um, doing the same thing over and over again.

Clay Moffat: Uhhuh. Which causes what?

Brent Dowlen: Stagnation.

Clay Moffat: Habits. Habits, right. So a habit means you create mental shortcuts.

And these mental shortcuts mean you no longer need to consciously pay attention to something. So, for example, I don’t know how old you were when you first learned to walk. I started walking after two years. Like I was extremely slow. My mom said it was, I think it was two and a half years, and apparently it’s around 12 to 18 months.

My son was walking at 12 months and he was like a little crazy person by 18 months. But the whole point is at some point. That was a fully conscious process. I mean, we’re not conscious at that stage, per se. We don’t have a conscious mind, but it is something that we’re [00:32:00] doing consciously. We do not have unconscious control.

It’s 47 muscles to walk. How many muscles do you think about when you’re walking? Right? Right. Because it’s habitual, because it’s an unconscious process. We’ve got it ingrained in there. So this is an amazing capability that we have, and it’s a huge pitfall when used in areas that do not suit us, for example, trusting people.

Now, why does this hit us so hard? Very, very simple. As soon as you’ve been showing up with someone and you have your criteria for trust, and it’s different to mine, it’s different to Johnny’s, it’s different to Jane’s, it’s different to everyone else, right? So we’ve all got these different levels of criteria for trust.

Someone meets it, they put, put in this trust bracket. That means what? You no longer have to pay attention to that person anymore because you know they’re trustworthy. You know you can trust them. They’re a [00:33:00] trustworthy person. So what do you stop doing? Paying attention. So now you get these red flags popping up and a red flag.

By the way, it doesn’t mean they’re evil. It doesn’t mean they’re sin. It doesn’t mean that they’re a piece of crap. A red flag simply means, Hey, pay attention. This is different. You are getting information fed to your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind, like, Hey, hey, hey, hey, this is different to this image.

You got up here, pay attention. You’re like, no, no, no, we’re good. We know Johnny. Johnny’s a solid guy. Johnny would never do that to us. He’s great. And then three months later, Johnny’s disappeared. He’s taking your misses or whatever the hell’s going on. And you’re like, what? But Johnny would never do that to us.

Didn’t you see the signs? Well, but they weren’t signs. Like he would never do that. Well, he did do that. And you stop paying attention. So what I found was. To this day, I still have not yet a human being in my travels that when I say, okay, looking back now, were all those signs visible that this was gonna happen?

And did you ignore it? The answer is always yes. [00:34:00] It’s like, but I didn’t think that person would do it, but I didn’t think this. So if that’s the case, then the only person causing betrayal was you. You drew first blood to yourself. ’cause there is a part of you that’s like, pay attention, pay attention, pay attention.

There’s this thing going here. Pay attention. You’re like, no, no, no, we’re good man. We’re solid. Don’t worry about it. And so my philosophy, and if you start looking at the economics, behavioral economics of trust and the way that we start trusting brands and trusting other people, we sign trust. It’s a very, very lazy way to trust.

There’s nothing wrong with it until things fall apart. It’s like contracts, right? You sign a business contract, the contract is not there for the good times. The contract is there for the bad times. So legally speaking, you know where everything’s gonna go to cover your bases. You go into the business relationship [00:35:00] with the spirit that everything’s gonna work out, everything’s gonna be great, and you are gonna work together.

But that’s not what the contract’s for. The contract’s for. Like this is the baseline of what everything’s gonna be at the end. And the contract that you make with yourself is a default contract, but you make it with rose tinted glasses every single time because you put this person in this bracket, and then the information that you’re getting that is current is being ignored because this frozen representation that you’ve got inside your head of what that person was when you form that trust bracket back there.

So you’ve taken this mental shortcut. You’re now applying it permanently. You’re thinking that trust is permanence and trust is not permanence. Trust is assures of a mutually beneficial outcome. That’s it. And the second there is not a mutually beneficial outcome. You can trust that they’re gonna do what’s in their best interest, which what we’re doing all the time anyway, [00:36:00] and that now what’s in their best interest might no longer be in your best interest.

It still might be, but it might not be. So if you stop paying attention, just screw yourself.

Brent Dowlen: Now let’s, let’s translate this, um, um, and looking into some of your material before the show, right? Yeah. I wanna see how this translates to you. Are, you’re familiar with the old adage of nice guys finished last. Mm-hmm. We see this over and over again. Those people who just keep losing.

Clay Moffat: You mean those people that don’t have any boundaries or standards?

Those people.

Brent Dowlen: Yeah. So how this is connected, right? Yeah. Because so, so start translating that in for, because I know so many guys who get stuck [00:37:00] in this just non-ending cycle of we trust these people, we do these things, and we lose over and over and over again. Mm-hmm. So how, how are we not learning from this experience?

Right?

Clay Moffat: Because you’re making about who you are instead about reality. I’m a good person and a good person gives people the benefit of the doubt. So if I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt, then am I a good person? Yes. You’re just not being a fucking idiot. You know, like there’s two very big different things.

If you’re gonna, there’s a a saying, I dunno if it’s a saying or it’s something that I just, I say, but I’m pretty sure it’s a saying, so I’m not taking credit for it. A fool doesn’t learn from their mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. So if [00:38:00] you can start to learn from other people’s mistakes, you are gonna be much wiser and much better off.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every lesson that you learn from someone else, you should automatically apply to your life in the exact same way. Or that it does apply to your life in the same way. But if you’re not even learning from your own mistakes and you are continuing to do the things, then you don’t realize that you’re the author of your pain.

Like it’s not these other people, it’s you. And it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It doesn’t mean you’re mor, it doesn’t mean you’re. Anything other than someone who’s not paying attention because the pattern is there. And I would also say that you are looking to want to trust someone. And if you are in a position where you are someone that is a nice guy, there is a difference between nice and a pushover.

A nice guy doesn’t have to get walked over. [00:39:00] A nice guy can be someone that is offering to help on their terms. A nice guy can be someone that can go out of their way to help people when it’s appropriate for that person to help people, not at everyone else, not at their own detriment. And I think that’s a big difference.

I see it happen not with a lot of people because I don’t, I haven’t worked in that way for a long time. I, I go in a very different way now. Uh. Many moons ago, so 2015, 10 years ago, uh, when I was working at retreats here, a lot of the guys and women that I was working with were very much in that regard.

They were attracting these people that were just savages, right? They’re like taking and, and, uh, excuse the term raping and pillaging, right? They were not talking about actual rape in the metaphorical sense, right? They’re just taking what they want and then they throw feed you to the wolves. And, uh,

these people, [00:40:00] they have a need to be liked, and the need was so high to be liked. And the common denominator between most of these people is that they had this external validation that they needed to check off. And if they didn’t get that external validation, then they didn’t think they were worth anything.

It was kind of sad at the same time. It’s amazing if you can get to the point and realize that because then you can realize that what you are really looking for is permission from other people. And if you take a moment, just a moment and stop searching for that permission from other people and realize you can give it to yourself, you might not have been able to give it to yourself when you’re a kid, ’cause you need permission from your parents or your grandma or whoever.

[00:41:00] It’s that you’re working, working, you’re living with. But now you can. Now the only person you should be asking permission from is yourself, obviously, when it comes to what you are gonna do. As long as it doesn’t include other people. If it includes other people, you should probably ask them permission for when you go and do things.

Brent Dowlen: We live in a very validation centric culture these days. Right? I mean, that’s, that’s the whole, that is the whole basis of social media people. People are like, oh, it, well, it’s social. No, it’s not. It’s about validation. It’s about other people validating that we’re smart or we have good ideas, or we did something that was worth noting, right?

We had this obsession with everybody going, yay, you did good, or, oh yeah, that’s great. And yeah, it’s, it’s exacerbating this issue in our mind already. ’cause a lot of people seek some kind of social validation anyway. We seek it [00:42:00] from our spouses, from our kids, from our friends, but or social beings. Now, it’s, now it’s like on steroids.

Clay Moffat: I’d say it’s on steroids. Well, social media’s definitely done it by adding like buttons. It definitely played a massive thing on people’s psychology.

Being somewhat over 40. I think I’m 42 this year. Uh, Facebook wasn’t around until I was in my twenties, which meant that I didn’t grow up with that process. Yeah, we had the social pressure of wanting to be liked and wanting to fit in, but it wasn’t done on scale. I, I was at a birthday party recently and uh, one of the moms there had a 14-year-old daughter and she was showing me on her Instagram grammar account some of the things that kids were sending to her.

And it was just brutal, man. Like, they go create a fake account. They shared a login details with a bunch of other [00:43:00] people, and then they just send this abuse. And I’m like, what’s wrong with you kids? Seriously? And they’re doing this stuff, right. They’re, they’re doing this stuff to bully. So they fit in with the bullies.

Most of the bullies have massive problems at home. Their parents are so wealthy, they get nans to look after them, so they’re feeling invalidated, so they become little turds and then go ahead and abuse other kids, and then these other kids feel horrible. And it’s just, it’s brutal. Social media is absolutely not social.

It’s antisocial media because there’s, there’s no connection there at all. Uh, I go on to post things and then I disappear. Like I don’t really use it. It’s just, it’s a business process for me at the moment. Now, uh, I don’t really see the value in it. Other than that, I mean, messenger. Yeah. Okay. Messenger’s.

Okay. I can still message some people that I don’t have their phone number. I can connect with some people around the world. But Facebook itself, [00:44:00] uh, I deleted my Instagram account. I deleted all my socials actually when I was writing the book because I thought, well, I might go blind anyway, so what’s the point?

Trying delete all my socials. After I’m blind, I might as well strip it down. So. I went down from like 5,000 friends or something down to like 160, like of my actual friends that I actually connected with. And then once I realized, well, I can actually see, I could probably start adding people again. So I started adding and using it for marketing.

But I don’t have that same problem because I use it in a way as a tool. I don’t use it as a way to find connection and validation from people. I can use it as a way to validate marketing ideas, see if that’s working or not, see if that hook works. But for validation, no. But I’ve also spent a lot of time and a lot of money.

I would argue I’ve spent more money on personal development than some people will spend on a house because it was so important, right? Uh, I went through a process that cost me over a hundred thousand bucks, [00:45:00] then had stem cells three days after it, and it destroyed the process that I went and paid to do.

So I blew 130 grand in like three days. Um, you know, what are you gonna do if some you win, some you lose. But the whole nice guy philosophy is that people don’t understand what nice is. They think nice means sacrifice. They think that nice means do everything for this other person so that they don’t feel any discomfort.

And some people, I would argue, don’t think that, but they think that if I’m not like this, I’m not worthy of people’s time or attention. And that’s the biggest death threat. [00:46:00] If I’m not nice, if I don’t do this thing for this person, then they’re not gonna respect me. No man, they don’t respect you already.

And they’re showing it with their behavior, but they’re so worried about being left alone, that there’s no one out there that’s gonna like them, respect them, commu, uh, communicate with them, keep in touch with them, that they’ll be isolated and alone. And look at what happened during COVID, right? People were isolated.

People were alone. There was massive suicides. ’cause people crave connection and they’ll take, uh, a, like on Facebook because it gives a buzzer dopamine or a, I think it’s a smiley face or a love heart. I think they have now, they’ll take that because even though it’s a pseudo connection, it’s still priming them neurochemically.

So they’ll take it.

Brent Dowlen: If your relationships aren’t where you want them to [00:47:00] be, I want you to know I got you. Relationships take a lot of work and they can fall on the back burner pretty easily. As your empire building in your life, men offer suffer from damage to their relationship while they’re trying to provide for those very people they care about.

Well, I help men with the skills, solutions, techniques to rebuild thriving relationships with the people you love. Even if you’ve struggled in the past with being the husband or the father you wanted to be, reach out and schedule your free discovery. Call at purpose-driven men.com to learn the skills you need to connect deeply with the people who matter most.

Let’s get back to the show. So Clay, let’s shift a little bit. How do we go from making these same mistakes, especially such a validation driven society? A lot of men, really, they struggle with external validation because, let’s face it, men are not generally. Validated for much, uh, culturally it’s [00:48:00] just not right unless you are providing something specific.

Men don’t receive a lot of validation, period. And so it makes us particularly prone to overtrust it to seek validation wherever we can get it. So how do we stop this cycle that we’ve gotten into where we’re causing our own issues because we want to trust people. We want to because that, that we feel validated, right?

That, that validates us. If we can trust them, if we can, oh yeah. They’re our friends and they care about us and mm-hmm. How do we start to break this cycle and move in a more positive direction? Because men’s mental health is near and dear to my heart. I know a lot of guys who struggle with mental health.

I’ve had my own mental health struggles. And so how do we start to shift gears? Because you’re talking about things that. Most men aren’t even familiar with as a conversation. Certainly they’re not talking about it. So how do we break this cycle? [00:49:00]

Clay Moffat: Exactly what you just said. Talk about it, man. Right. There’s a massive stigma that, uh, there was a USC fighter, an Irish guy Patty at one of his buddies died a committed suicide like two nights or the night before.

He was, he, he won his fight. Um, and you’ll see people post this stuff all, all over online saying, I’d rather get a phone call from you at 2:00 AM in the morning, tell me you’re not okay than a phone call at 12:00 PM the next day saying that you killed yourself. There’s a research that turns around and says, the majority of men these days, like back in the nineties, they would say they have one or two best friends they could call in any moment.

And the research points into the favor that most guys say they have zero best friends they could call in any moment at this point in time, well. There’s a couple things you can do. Number one, self validate. Every single time you do something good, pat yourself on the back. Tell yourself you’ve done a good job [00:50:00] and be sincere about it.

Don’t just be a dick. Go, oh, you’re good job, man. You’re you’re good job. Yeah, no, be legitimate. Like if you were training your son, if you were your own son and you were training him so that he, you were conditioning him to show him when he is doing good things for himself, not good things for you, good things for himself.

When he calms down and he gets back in and gives another go when he cleans up after himself, when something he struggles with and he sits there, lets it go, walks off, comes back and has it go again. When he is going and someone hits him and he breathes and he calms down, instead of punching back all these things like, how would you do it?

Instead of road raging, like you don’t road rage. You’re like, you know what this fuck this guy? You’re like, yep. Good job, Clay. That is way better than sticking your hand out the window, throwing a beer can at the guy, whatever’s going on, I dunno, right? But the whole point is like you start to do these things.

[00:51:00] You walk past a donut shop and you love donuts, and this time you’re like, you know, not today. And you walk past it, you’re like, yep, good job. We did it. Five minutes later you go back and get the donuts. So what you walk past at this time, like pay attention to the things that you’re doing, not the things that you’re not the things that you’re, and validate those things, small or big, it doesn’t matter.

But validate them. Put attention, put the focus on the things that are working for you. Now when it comes to wanting to trust other people, I trust everyone. Plain and simple. I have got to a point where I literally trust every single human being on the planet. The caveat to that is I trust every single human being on the planet to do what’s right by them.

Right now it makes sense for you to do this podcast. Something about whatever has happened between us has resonated with you. Like I think this could add value [00:52:00] to my show. I think it can add value to my audience. So we had a conversation, I’m like, lemme listen to episodes, other episode. Like this is definitely something I can jive with.

Let’s go ahead. I can definitely believe I can provide value. This would be good fun for me. Let’s do it. Mutually Beneficial outcome, man. Mutually beneficial outcome. If you’d gone through my stuff, you’re like, this guy’s a joke, he’s a flake. I don’t want him on my show. Would you have reached out?

Brent Dowlen: No.

Clay Moffat: No.

There’s no chance. Like why? Because it’s not in your interest and it doesn’t mean that you’re selfish. Oh, you should give me a chance, bro. Come on. Like gimme a chance. Like, no man. It’s no deal. It’s not happening. And it’s the same thing, right? So. If you can get to a point where you’re like, okay, no one’s out to get me, no one’s waking up going, you know what, Clay, today’s the day buddy.

I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna slit your throat. You are gone. No one. And maybe there are some people, right? If you’re IPUs in a circle and like you upset him, [00:53:00] maybe you should probably worry about that, you know? But for the majority of people on the planet, that is not even gonna enter into your sphere. So you’re fine.

No one’s doing that. So if that’s the case, and if you can trust everyone to do what’s in their own best interest, and start looking for how your interests are aligned, start looking at what incentives the other person is getting. What’s the benefit that they get from doing this? Is it gonna benefit me if they do that as well?

No. Do I get anything beneficial if they do this? No. Okay. I’m not gonna do it. Stop sacrificing yourself. Now, if that’s too much of a stretch, which it might be for some people, then the simple thing is too simple. No, it is simple. It’s just not that easy. The simple thing is to go ahead and focus, really pay [00:54:00] attention on what you think you’re gonna get by doing the outcome for this other person.

What is it that you really want? Start to learn to communicate with yourself. For the longest time, my self-talk was just gutter trash man. Uh, one of my mentors Chase use, he wrote the forward for the book. He said this, uh, saying to me many moons ago and 10 years ago, absolutely, it was dead on 10 years ago, if anyone else had spoken to me the way I spoke to myself, I’d be in jail.

Right. Like, I just would not tolerate that these days. My self talk’s amazing. Like every now and go, I’m like, come on, man. Like, seriously, you can do better than this. That’s like the harshest My self-talk is 10 years ago. I’m not gonna repeat how horrible it was, right? It was, it was just, it was brutal.

It’s like a sailor [00:55:00] crossed with a redheaded Irish whore, right? It’s like the worst of the worst man. Like, just total trash. It was just disgusting, and that’s how it came. But I went to work, I went to work on myself, and I started asking myself the question like, what, what do you want out of this? What’s the intention behind what you just said to me?

Because going through this journey, I, I came to realize something that for me was absolutely true, and I just made it true for everyone else too. I assumed it to be true for everyone else, and I challenge anyone listening right now to go ahead and see if you think that your brain

ever has a bad intention for you, go and check every thought, every decision, every action, and every inaction throughout your entire life. And [00:56:00] judge yourself based on the intention, is there ever one bad intention for your entire life, for you? And the answer is no. So if you can start to train yourself to look for the intention, and you can start to focus on what the intention is and start to ask yourself, okay, if your intention is to do this for me, what’s another way that we can get that intention satisfied?

How can we create a different behavior? How can you say that differently to me? How can we, because when I talk, I say that differently to me. Usually when people say, oh, you’re a moron, you’re this, they’re kind of like talking to themselves and it’s like this other part of me out here, and it’s not me that’s talking to me.

So that’s why, I mean, how can I, how can you say this to me? And what you can start to do is you can start to create an understanding and a connection with yourself, and you’ll get to a 0.1 day, sooner or later, hopefully [00:57:00] sooner, where it will become abundantly clear that you’re not broken, that you’re not missing anything, and that every single resource that you ever need was inside yourself.

And that’s a really fun place to play from. And that life becomes better with other people and you don’t need other people. And the difference is. You want other people in your life, and we are social creatures, so we in some kind of ways do need other people, but there’s a difference between physiologically and biologically needing someone to emotionally being dependent on other people for your happiness.

Two very different things.

Brent Dowlen: I, I love how you said simple, not easy, because that is mm-hmm. Such a valid, I, I know so many guys who you, [00:58:00] you’re like, well, here, here’s the simple truth, and it, it, it is. Sometimes the answer is just so right there, you’re like, uh, yeah, I, I can, but actually executing on that really is difficult and I love that you dove into self-talk because that is such a huge problem for me.

And that’s a lot of times the things that are keeping that. Difficult. We are so utterly abusive to ourselves. Uh, I, I would never, ever tolerate somebody talking to me the way I do. And I actively work on my self-talk. Right. It’s an everyday process from years of, you know, negative self-talk. It’s getting better for me because I actively work on it.

Mm-hmm. But I would never tolerate anybody else talking to me the way I talk to myself. Like, dude’s just, just not happening, man. Um, and so we have so many guys who are beating themselves up because [00:59:00] they’ve been told they’re worthless. They’ve been told they don’t have value. They’ve told they’re not, they don’t matter, right.

And so we see these simple truths of, if I do this, it will impact me, but we, we just don’t let ourselves get there. We stop ourselves from reaching towards that. Out of fear, out of discomfort, right? We, we have that homeostasis desire. Our brain wants to keep us right here. Right here is comfortable. Right, right here is good, right?

We’re happy right here. Things work. Change is hard. Change is difficult. Change is uncomfortable. Uh, our body fights so hard and our brain fights so hard to keep us right? We’re good. We built all these, so

what you’re saying makes so much sense, but so many of us are struggling [01:00:00] with getting there.

So you, you already beginning

Clay Moffat: there is,

Brent Dowlen: say that again.

Clay Moffat: It just takes commitment. The getting there is easy. It just takes commitment, right? It, it, it circles back.

So there’s a change equation. That I think is a very simple way to explain it. When the change of staying the same, like the pain of staying same, becomes greater than the pain of not knowing what’s on the other side of change. If change it’s guaranteed, it gets a guaranteed process because we are built for survival.

So if you really need motivation, go ahead as a conscious act, not when you’re in a depressed [01:01:00] state. So we’re clear, but as a conscious act, go and write out and find all the ways that your life sucks now and how all the ways you missed opportunities and all the things that you’re missing because your self-talk bombs.

And I promise you, after a while you’ll get sick of writing. I don’t care. Keep writing. See, most people don’t wanna do the work. I was working with a lady recently, it was kind of funny, and I studied with one of my other mentors many, many moons ago. His name’s, uh, Mark Cunningham, affectionately known as The Dark Lord of Hypnosis.

And he teaches all kinds of crazy sexual hypnosis stuff, right? Like training consensual sexual slaves and all that stuff. Consensual being like the main word there. Okay. Just making sure that we highlight that part. Um,

Brent Dowlen: be really clear there. Yeah.

Clay Moffat: Yep. Um, but these people want it, guys and girls, they want it.

They wanna be like completely inhibitory free and go have the most amazing section, all [01:02:00] this stuff. Go for it, man. And it was cool. And I learned some really, really powerful ways of installing operators and helping people and going through things. So the reason I bring that up is he did a process where, uh, he says like about the 80% woman or the 80% girl, and a lot of guys will settle for this woman, ’cause this 80% of the woman that they want.

Cool. Now, most people will never actually sit down and write out a list of the woman that they want, but they will write out a detailed list of the car that they want, the paint that they want, the wheels that they want, what kind of upgrades they’re gonna get, where they’re gonna, they, and they’re going to this full thing like three months where they’re playing the car, but they won’t have, do that with someone that they’re gonna date and potentially spend the rest of their life with and have kids with.

They’ll spend a year researching, building, designing a house, but they won’t spend three weeks designing the life that they want. There’s so many contradictions and people think, well, yeah, I can design a house because I can see it. Well, you can design your life too [01:03:00] if you put the effort in and you start thinking about it.

And you can do it with women too. You can do it with men if that’s your way of going, like whatever works for you. The point is this, I gave her assignment to a lady I was working with today, uh, today, recently, and she went and asked chat PT to do it for. I said, that’s, you’re missing the point. She’s like, whoa.

It gave me like a really good list. I said, the list is trash, so we’re clear. It’s complete trash. I said, but more importantly, the act of you going through and writing everything out makes it front and center on your brain, and by you going into this list each day reinforces and reinforces, and your brain catches on after while and goes, oh, this is really important.

Maybe we should start paying attention to this. And it’ll naturally start filtering people that start meeting these requirements and all of a sudden, Hey, you like, oh, there wasn’t anyone in my life like this. And then all of a sudden you meet someone and then you start seeing [01:04:00] them everywhere because you start making and you highlighting the importance.

When I first went through a process that I teach, I’ll absolutely leave this in the link for your listeners. It’s a simple five step process for retaining yourself talk permanently. When I first went through it, I was doing. I’m guessing now ’cause it’s been a long time, but well over a hundred thoughts a day that I’d be reframing, physically writing out that thought, going through this process, waiting for the answer, literally going through and changing it within three months.

It went from over a hundred times a day to around about three or four times a day. And I didn’t miss a single day because my brain started to get the idea, okay, he’s paying attention to the intention behind. It’s just we need to retrain he, he doesn’t wanna get rid of us, he’s not trying to throw us in the bin.

He’s just trying to use us and leverage us in a way that’s more beneficial for him. Because the self-talk that you have isn’t you, the [01:05:00] self-talk that you have is passed on from your parents, or it’s absorbed from your coaches or from your teachers or from other people in your life and you sucked that in and you mirrored that and you’re like, oh, this is me.

No, it’s interject. So you’ve captured from other people because you saw how they talk to them. So it’s like, oh, that’s how you talk yourself. Lemme do the same thing, but it’s not you. Know any different because when it got installed in there, you are too young to remember it. Anyway,

Brent Dowlen: there’s so much to unpack in what we have discussed today. I think I could probably go another three or four hours. Um,

you know what I, I don’t even want to add to that. Clay, what’s next on your do list? What, what’s next for you?

Clay Moffat: We’re talking about work, right?

Brent Dowlen: Yeah. What, what’s on the next, next? Are we doing another book? Are you gonna expend your coaching? What, what’s next?

Clay Moffat: I dunno, man. [01:06:00] I’ve got an idea for another book. Expanding out the trust trap. So the trust trap takes in like this one thing, this frames it out and shows you like a universal tool that you can start applying to like every element.

Like it’s pretty crazy. Uh, I might do that. I honestly don’t know. It’s an idea that I’ve got, I’m still toying with it. Uh, the book’s kind of half written already from like notes and things that I’ve done. But I, I would say the biggest thing is to really get the trust trap out to as many people as possible.

I’d say that that’s it. I think it’s, the way I look at it is I had the chance to write one book, and this was the book I wrote. I also had three weeks to write it, so it’s not perfect. Okay. Um, but it’s the book I chose to wrote because I think it’s the most valuable and the most fundamental thing that I can do to help people.

It’s very intense [01:07:00] and the marketing has been a challenge ’cause, well, it’s the first time I’ve ever launched a book. I did it straight to Amazon. I didn’t do it on Facebook ads. I didn’t do that kind of hype, which I could possibly do. But I’ve also bad experiences with Facebook ads where my credit cards got scammed and I’ve had thousand from my account.

I’ve challenge Facebook to get it back, and they didn’t care. Like, well, you did this. I did not do a damn thing. So no. So I’m pretty dubious about that. But I’ve got some other means now where I’ve got a specific credit card for Facebook ads and I put like five daily limit on it. So it can only charge me five.

So they can try and scam me all they want, but it’s not gonna go anywhere. Um, yeah, I don’t know. I’d say just continuing on with the book and try and get it to as many people as possible, because I really, really believe it can make a difference. Like I’ve got really good reviews from it so far, but it just hasn’t [01:08:00] been pushed out enough.

It hasn’t been put in front of enough people. And so I need to figure out a way to, to get it to that point, to really get it out there and have it in a way where it can help people, it can get people across the line. It can, it can make them see the world in a way that just opens up, allows ’em to trust themselves.

And once you trust yourself and that’s circle back with the nice guys. They don’t trust themselves. They don’t, and that’s why they fall victim to trusting everyone else ’cause they don’t even know how to trust themselves. But I’d say that’s, that’s my big thing. Like I’ve been applying to Ted talk, so I wanna get the message out there.

Like I really just think this message, it’s just, if you can get to a point where you can start to see the world through a lens where you can trust everyone, it changes the way your entire world is built. ’cause now it’s not you versus them. Now it’s, okay, how am I aligned with you? That becomes the basic question.

Oh, I’m not really aligned with you. Okay, no worries. You do [01:09:00] your thing. I’m doing my thing. Oh, we’re aligned. Let’s keep going. Oh, we’re no longer aligned. Cool, man. Thanks for the ride. Let’s keep going. You go my way. And there’s, there’s no more betrayal. There’s no more heartbreak. There’s no more savagery because you’re paying attention to what’s happening real time, and you can start pulling apart things as they’re happening instead of three months later in a car wreck.

So I’d probably say that’s it.

Brent Dowlen: Okay. Where’s the best place for people to connect with you?

Clay Moffat: Uh, no idea. Uh, x maybe, or my email X is, I think it’s at Moffat Clay, I think, and my email is go Clay Moffat.com. I don’t really use socials that much, but the platform I’m active on the most is X.

Brent Dowlen: And of course, we’ll, we’ll have Clay’s, links, guys, as well as a link to the book and to his website, the trust trap.

We’ll have all that down in the show notes, uh, the [01:10:00] YouTube description, whatever platform you’re joining us on today, uh, to make sure that you can follow up with Clay and you can find what we’re talking about. I know everybody’s really concerned about the color of Donald Duck’s bow tie at this point, uh, after, after such a heavy handed conversation.

And I think you answered why the answer is red if anyone still actually cares. Like I feel like we’ve really scratched the surface. And guys, I, I encourage you, I have not read his book yet. I’m going to, um, I encourage you to go check out his book, right? If, if this is, if this has hit a nerve for you, if you’ve gone like, wait, wait, I kind of know what they’re talking about here.

Uh, then, then take this farther. Don’t stop the conversation here. Start the conversation here and share this with the guys who need it. Because I know we, we all know those guys. Like some of you are those guys. Some of you just know those guys. Like you’re listening to this going, yeah, yeah, that’s my buddy, [01:11:00] right?

Um, so share this with somebody who needs it. That’s, that’s the, honestly, like I love reviews and all those are good, but sharing this with people who need it is, is the best, you know, thing you can do for me. Is it just sharing this with someone else who actually needs to hear this? ’cause we all know them right now as we land this plane Clay, it can be about today’s topic or whatever.

What’s the most important takeaway you want people to hear today? What’s the last thing you wanna leave ’em with?

Clay Moffat: The last thing

we forget trying to trust anyone else until you can trust yourself. If you can’t trust yourself, you’ve got no hope of being out to be able to trust other people.

Brent Dowlen: Guys, for myself and Clay, thanks for hanging out today. Share this with someone and be better tomorrow because what you do today, and we’ll see you on the next one. The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping [01:12:00] men go from living to thriving. Purpose-filled intentional lives.