#595: In Case You Missed It: April 2022 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Tim Ferriss (0:24)

Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, and so on that you can apply to your own life.

This is a special in-between episode, which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests, featured today, see the episode's description, probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app.

Or as usual, you can head to tim.blogslashpodcast and find all the details there.

Please enjoy.

SPEAKER_3 (1:15)

First up, Terry Crews, actor and author of the new memoir, Tough, My Journey to True Power.

Terry Crews (1:27)

Well, you know, in our house, we call it D-Day. It was the day everything changed. And I've gone public a lot about my pornography addiction. Then there's a lot of people who say you could never really be addicted to pornography or whatever. And it's always been said that, but all I knew is I couldn't stop.

That's all I knew. For me, it was a numbing device. It was something that I went to when I was sad, when I was happy, and I always went back to it and it left me unfulfilled. And I had to get more just to get a feeling of fulfillment, but then I would be left empty again. So it was a cycle. I couldn't stop. But it was also a secret that I held from my family and my wife and the whole thing. And my wife finally confronted me on it. And let me tell you what was so wild and really, really strange. The question I was asking was, why doesn't she believe me?

But the question I should have been asking was why did I lie?

You know what I mean? Like think about that. It's all in the context is the same. And I'm sitting here lying and wondering why she won't believe me.

It's all out focused. It was all her. It was the responsibility was on her in order to make me right. Like you should believe me because I'm telling you this, but I was lying. I was lying. I don't know this. No, I got no problem. I don't do any of this. And why doesn't she believe me? But once it switched into why am I lying, all of a sudden it went inward. All of a sudden I had to ask myself the questions I had been avoiding for years and years and years. And it was like, hey man, you have an issue. Why aren't you doing something about it? And like I said, and I would pull out that card of excuses and this, and I would say, well, you know, I'm a man and you know, man, we need to, I have a high sex drive and this kind of stuff. And I'll pull out that card and then my wife declined it. That credit card was done. It was expired and she was out. And you know what, Tim, what's so crazy is that I was like, fine, bye, leave. I'm Terry Crews. I can get any woman I want. In fact, I will. And you know what, you know, this is a normal thing in Hollywood, you know, divorce is pretty normal and it's not a big deal. But in fact, my career won't suffer. Nobody cares if I lose my family. Hollywood certainly doesn't. And then I listened to myself talking like that.

And I went, who are you? I didn't like that guy.

And I started to have internal conversations with myself. And I was like, man, this is not who you say you are.

And I realized I was two different people. You know, when you have a double life, and when I say a double life, what I mean is I was more concerned with the image. I was more concerned with the image of Terry Crews rather than who Terry Crews really was.

And it was two different people. And once I started to try to put them together, my world crumbled. Everything that I knew, everything that I was around, everything that I thought I stood for, I thought I was like, yeah, you know, women are equal and the whole thing, but nothing in my behavior would do that or even said that. And in fact, I thought I was more valuable than all the women in my life simply because I was a man, simply because of the culture. I grew up in black culture and hip hop culture and sports culture, and there was a lot of misogyny. It was a lot of, you're the man, dog. Hey, man, you better get your girl in line. These kind of words, it was looked at as like, yo, man, you control your wife or your girl. You actually owned her. I remember in the NFL going to the strip club and we'd be in the club and with all the guys and the whole thing and the girls would be up on stage. And one of them would come down and actually want to talk to the players. And I would look at her like, okay, she start talking, I gotta get used for my kids and then you're like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You're ruining the experience because you're becoming a human being right before my eyes.