Christian Ray Flores
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And they want, if you do that, they will never be sort of those classic cliche people where they go, Oh, they don't know how they're so entitled. No, they won't be. So when people say it's a generational thing, it's not a generational thing. It's a parenting thing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
My kids are the exact same generation that they accuse of, oh, give me this much money and I'm not going to show up and I'm going to make sure. No, my kids work hard. Why? It's not because they're... belong to a generation because they were brought up in an environment, right? So, but yeah, you're absolutely, I mean, apprenticeship is so beautiful of a concept.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
It's actually a concept that is widely needed for grownups, right? Apprenticeship. You mentioned sort of bringing them to the workspace. I was thinking, I was like, they've seen me on stage when I was doing music. They were sitting, I have pictures of them sitting in a set when I'm shooting a $160,000 music video in a production company when we did that in LA.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And they're hanging out with extras and camera people and grips and they're just hanging out there and seeing the whole thing. And, you know, they've seen me produce videos, they've seen me do this, right? So my youngest one, her name is Bella, Bella Flores, you can look her up on Instagram, is just crushing it as an influencer, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
She edits, she shoots, she knows, she has this aesthetic about her, she understands how to frame something. And she's, honestly, I don't think she's ever going to send a job application ever. She's not even out of college, right? She's getting brand deals right now in college and partnering and designing clothing lines and stuff like this. Ridiculous, right? Yeah. Well, why?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Well, because she grew up watching us do stuff, you know? So, and all three of them are very different, very, very different. But they all three have a work ethic, right? And they all three have almost like an internal freedom of, I'm going to pursue this and I'm going to pursue that. I'm going to puzzle for a bit. And we're like totally fine with that, right? Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
They're entitled. Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Okay, so I, you know, the peculiarity about me is that I literally grew up and you'll probably find almost zero people in the United States who can say the same thing, unless they're an immigrant from like a communist country, is that until I was probably 20, in my early 20s, I knew zero people who believed in God.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And you have to just really let that sink in to even understand, okay, what are the ripple effects of a culture like that, where everybody is godless, essentially, right? It doesn't even matter which faith, but just in general, it's an atheistic cultural baseline. Now, there's, of course, it's not zero people, but I knew zero people, you know.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And what happened with me is that, you know, I became very successful as an artist. And I was literally entertaining millions of people, selling millions of albums and playing sports arenas. And there are these foundational dimensions of your humanity that were basically underdeveloped in me because there was no faith, right? There was no moral framework.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
There was not these almost like meta structures of, is there anything bigger than me? Does that anything care about me? How do I fit into the picture? Why am I here? What does that mean for my relationships? What does that mean about power and talent and money and love and sex?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
All of those things were almost like devoid of faith that is thousands of years old and have sort of perpetuated and breathed and lived within humanity. And you go, oh, this is just abstract sort of lofty sort of ideas, but it has a very real consequence, right? Because here I am, a pop star. I'm doing all this stuff. My ego is super inflated. There's nothing bigger than me in my mind.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I don't know what to do with marriage because I come from three generations of broken homes. No one taught me. anything about this, right? I don't understand submission to authority. My dad wasn't there since I was 14, and the whole faith, like obedience out of faith, out of adoration, out of love, nonexistent. And the effect is, I don't know my way around X, Y, and Z, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I am in the top 0.1% of performers and attainers, like just crushing it. And I'm completely inadequate in the most basic things like marriage, for example, right? So I'm dating all these girls. I have no idea what I'm doing. I basically sabotage every relationship I'm in. And I'm fearful of commitment. And also, just like any human being, I want love. I want family.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I want that warmth, you know, that belonging that comes with it. And I don't know how to get there. So I want it. I date. It gets too close to intimacy. I'm afraid that it's going to end up in divorce. I sabotage it. Rinse and repeat. Okay. I meet a girl. She gets pregnant. I treat her like crap. She leaves me, cuts me off from my oldest daughter, Deanna.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I'm now pop star, entertaining millions, clinically depressed. Don't know how to breathe. Forget creativity. Forget high performers, performance. Forget genius. Forget thriving. You see how even a high performer can go into a deep hole if they don't fix some other areas of life, right? I meet this Canadian missionary. His name's Andy.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And I look at his family and I'm like, just teach me how to do this. And he's like, well, are you open to, you know, listening to the Bible? And I'm like, well, it's sort of an old book. I don't really believe in it. It's sort of, but if I get what you have, sure. And basically that's how I came into the faith, you know? Mm-hmm.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So now, you know, now obviously I've been a Christian for almost 30 years, right? And I've preached the gospel all over the world in four different languages. I've started churches. I've been a bivocational pastor all over the place, right? And so it is really the most important part of my life. But I do think that, you know, even when I coached
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
In my coaching program, when I coach people, if you're not a Christian, I can coach you, as long as you don't mind me quoting the Bible, because these are eternal truths. I will be doing you a disservice if I don't quote you at least a scripture where I say, look, this has been true 2,000 years ago. It's still true about you right now. You need to pay attention.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And I'm not going to push you to become a Christian at all. If you want to know how, obviously, I will share my faith with you. But it is that important. I do think that the Bible contains the secrets to life and success and health and wealth and joy and love and all of it. Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Does that make sense? Does that land for you? It does. And you brought up something very interesting, the Tinder generation, right? Tinder generation is basically the concept is you... Experiment until you get it right, right? The problem with that is that the wear and tear of failed experiments really, really wrecks you, you know?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
You're just one atom floating in the universe, and then you find another atom and see if there's a little match, right? And Tinder itself, actually, all those, the apps are actually not, they claim to be very scientific. I would say they claim to be data-driven, right? So you're looking for a mate and you like walking on the beach. She likes walking on the beach. You like reading books.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
She likes reading books. Oh, we're a match. Well, that's not how marriage works at all. You actually... Like if you really want to be scientific, you want somebody who compliments you and you compliment them. It's very, very hard to do that through just filling out an application than putting it out there. And you won't be objective in the first place.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So the mismatches are actually probably increased by the claim of the sort of we belong together because we're the same. We actually belong together because we're different. And then the other layer of that is experimentation is everything, right? You tinder your way through life. Well, look at the outcome, let's say, whatever, seven years or ten years later.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
People are literally more lonely and getting married later, not really understanding what that means in the first place. Okay. I did that, right? I did the whole experiment until you went into it. Then I realized, you know what? I'm so destroyed internally, you know, like the damage is so vast that can you please give me another model, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
That was the hair that did it, huh? Yeah, it was the hair.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And the model was, you know, which was so like, it was, bro, it was impossible for me to even wrap my mind around, but I was so desperate, right? So I was like, okay, so how do I do this? Like, my main pain point is how to find a mate, get married, and stay married, right? That's basically the thing. And be happy. And they're like, well, you know, first of all, what's your system of values?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
If you're a Christian, you need to, who do you marry? A Christian. Yeah, that narrows it down quite a bit. Really? Yeah, really. Okay, that's an algorithm you can add, right? Okay, that narrows your focus. Why? Well, because you have the same values and you're both submitted to the same authority. That helps. People fight. People change.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
If you don't have any authority above you that is objective, you will get divorced, more likely than not. And when we fight and you have authority and I can open the Bible or somebody can open the Bible, me and my wife and go, you guys are a mess, man. Here's what the Bible says about that. You repent. We're like, yes, sir. You know, that helps, you know, so you have authority.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
The other thing is when you talk about generational wisdom, right, about dating, like I'm applying what you said in just one, this one scenario, because I want to be very practical, right? is, you know, I basically adopted a completely new approach to sex, right? I'm like, I never, ever in my life considered that sex is for marriage only, ever. Like, that wasn't even a concept.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I was sexually active since I was, what, 15. By the time I became a Christian, I was 26. I've been sexually active for a decade. And then, and on top of that, I'm a pop star. So a big portion of the population of 15 countries think I'm hot. you know, and have posters on their walls of me. That presents a whole different layer of availability, you know, of women. It's just not normal.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
It's not healthy or normal. Okay. So then I, like, imagine me in that state, 26, right? Testosterone's pretty high. And the guy goes, yeah, you know what? Sex is just for marriage. Like, I don't understand the words coming out of your mouth. He's like, well, you asked me to teach you how to do this. You know, this is what it says. And I'm like, okay, I don't even know how that's physically.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Like, I literally made the case that is unhealthy physically, didn't fly. I made the case that there's got to be some sort of get out of jail card because of professional misoccupation. That didn't fly. And I finally had the choice of whether I believe in this and will follow this approach or not. And I'm like, well, I'm in so much pain, I'll probably just do it, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And basically act as if, right? Yeah. So I do. So I'm sexually active for 10 years. I'm completely abstinent for four until I meet my wife. I court her. I propose to her. I... I marry her, and the first time I had sex, I made love to my wife, was on the wedding night. No one I knew even understood the concept, right? But I was trying to break a generational curse.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I was just determined, I'm going to figure this out. 25 years later, I'm happily married, like so happily married, okay? Never, ever did we have any infidelity of any kind, not even a hint, not even a thought. Our kids love us. Our kids are so jealous of us. They're like, you guys ruined it for us. We're never going to find a marriage this good, you know?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
But that gives them a higher bar to aspire to, right? Yeah. And then the other layer, I'll add another layer to that. So I can talk about this for hours. As you can see, I can get real passionate about this, right? Generational wisdom, right? Yeah. Okay, you met a girl. She's cute. There's chemistry. It's a solo activity in the West, in an atomized, individualized West. It's just you and her.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
You get serious, you just inform your friends that you got serious. You get engaged, you just inform your parents you got engaged. You don't get their input about anything. That's the culture, correct? That's the middle of the road situation. When it comes to ancient wisdom, and I mean thousands of years and not even just Christianity, everywhere. That's just learned stuff, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
You get the community involved. So when I was courting now and dating girls as a Christian, it was like, okay, there's chemistry, I like her, there's alignment. I want to get to know her friends. What do they think about her?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
she will get to know my friends what do they think about me and her and it's like this incredibly free-flowing beautiful holistic wisdom that is beyond just chemistry and that you know an attraction and then you do you have a mentor okay does she have a mentor let's talk to her mentor and she'll talk to my mentor and she would literally grill the guy who mentored me and coached me
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
about all of my worst qualities. And I think it's a beautiful thing to do. And then we're fully informed, wisdom is flowing, and we go, yes, I want you. I want you forever for the rest of my life. And that's what happened.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
That's a fantastic question. And I do think that all of us carry trauma. It's just the nature of the human experience, right? Just beneath the skin, there are stories of pain, right? Every single person walking on this earth. And I would say on a macro level, I would say the approach varies on a macro level.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And I can just sort of narrow it down to something very specific and then give you what I think works real well. But on a macro level, the way I see it is that there's healing your past or building a future, right? That's one way of looking at things. And I would say, and then we'll talk about which state you're in right now. But healing the past is therapy. Building a future is coaching, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And they overlap, definitely, right? So you overlap into the past and you overlap into the future. But I would say that the big buckets are, absolutely, if your past is just crushing you, I mean, you just can't escape it, get therapy, right? If you're pretty much figured it out, you know, and you want to build a completely different future, get coaching, right? Or a mentor, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
The state you're in is another way I like thinking about it is that, you know, if you are, if you had an accident, you're biking, right? And you're just bruised and you have a broken arm, whatever, right? And you have maybe some internal bleeding, let's say, like, let's say it's really bad. You know, you don't go to the gym. you go to the hospital.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Then you go from the hospital, you go to physical therapy. Then from therapy, you go to the gym. That's basically the continuum. And you can sort of apply where you are to where you need to be. But to your question about awareness... The word that I love to use, because I think it's so deep and so empowering, is metacognition. Metacognition is your ability to think outside of yourself.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
It's almost like you're... outside of yourself thinking about what you're thinking, you know, and that's a skill that can be developed, right. And so I teach that, like hands on in my coaching. And basically on the, you know, I can, I mean, I don't keep secrets at all, like everything I teach, I post and share on podcasts and everything.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
When I coach people, what they're paying me is implementation, like, okay, work with me, right. But here's the deal that works real well, and you can expand it or contract it a little bit, but sort of that works very, very powerfully. First of all, you need a practice that is every single day, that allows you to think beyond the autopilot, so to say. What you refer to, right? We're just existing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
We're sort of on cruise control, right? It's a horrible state of being, actually. I don't think you were designed for that. You were designed to build and evolve and face obstacles and overcome obstacles. That's what makes life worth living. And 90% of the population on any given decade even, in any given country, lives on autopilot mostly.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
you know, because it's painful to think beyond the uncertainty, you know, start thinking, making choices that feel dangerous, right? And we'll talk about uncertainty a little bit later maybe. But so a metacognition, a metacognitive skill set
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
is the ability to every single day have the space and the ability to get to a place where you know exactly how you feel, why you feel it, where you want to go, what's in the way, what feelings are constructive, what feelings are destructive, and every single day. And I mean every single day. And you're totally capable of doing it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
The way we do it, the way I teach to do it is, when you wake up in the morning, your mental and emotional tank is the fullest. You can do it another time of the day, but that's where you're the fullest, right? You have the most potential. You have more to work with. Let's put it that way. The autopilot hasn't even kicked in yet fully, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So what we do, we spend an hour, 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes. One is contemplation. So it could be journaling, meditation, prayer, all of the above. There's like a variety of combinations that you can do that. That allows you to think outside of yourself, right? And you start becoming way more self-aware, way more positive, way more happy, way more objective, right?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
The second is physical activity. Why? Because your brain spies on your body and your body spies on your brain. So if your body is not engaged in the thing, you're only half aware. Your body is aware, actually. And when you are exercising your body, you're contracting muscles, you're overcoming obstacles, you're doing hard things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Your mind is beautifully designed to give you antidepressants, to give you all kinds of cognition spikes and stuff like that. It makes you... You're smarter when you work out, basically. And then the third piece is learning. There's always something that we lack.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
In whatever endeavor, and especially if you're trying to build a new future, you're literally leaning into a future where you're missing pieces, or you would have that future today now. So to get those pieces, you're probably not exactly fully equipped to get those pieces in place yet.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
But if every day you pick anything, you know, let's say I'm talking back to marriage or it could be business, right? I'm like, all right, I have no idea how to even pick a mate. I don't have to, you know, like, what do I look into in a woman, you know, or I'm divorced. I don't even know how to start over, you know, or I want to switch this career to this career.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Or I want to, for example, have a business that has hit a plateau and I want to scale. Obviously, I'm missing some pieces there. What is the most painful? What's the lowest hanging fruit? Something that I can solve quicker maybe, or maybe something that scares me the most. That's where you fill those 20 minutes with.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And obsess about it until you get a more or less functional understanding of the thing that you're missing. And what that gives you is this sense of accomplishment. Oh, I can do this. This doesn't scare me anymore. Or even, I've mastered this. In any phase of that continuum of obsessing over one thing. And I obsess over stuff that I don't know every day. There's a place for it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Every single day, I learn something I don't know. And I can pick and choose when to start, when to upgrade, when to switch lanes, when to pick another topic or whatever, right? But every single day, I contemplate. I move, I exercise, and I learn. Those things bundled together, I promise you, you're operating on rocket fuel. It will change your life forever.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Okay. So thank you for, thanks for asking. And I think that is the question, right? And you know, So to give your audience a little bit of a background in a very, very fast-forward way, what you're referring to is that I basically changed four countries by age seven. My dad was in a concentration camp in Chile. We were refugees in a refugee facility.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So if you are generally if the deeper into the world, if that's the desire, probably the best place would be my newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter. It's at ChristianRayFlores.com. So it's just my name. And basically what you get there is one free Sunday newsletter and one only for subscribers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
It's just 11 bucks a month of the best of the best stuff that I can just share, find, you know, collect, curate. That's all living in that place. So I think that's probably the best place if you generally speaking want to I want to sort of just benefit from some of the stuff that I share here. And if you're one of those, probably one or 2% who go, I need to work with this guy.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
We have a wait list, but you can definitely join the wait list. Be happy to discuss it. You go to exponential.life and it's exponentially spelled without the E. It starts with an X. Gotcha. And that's basically my high performance coaching stuff.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Ryan, thank you. And I find you to be extraordinarily not only curious, but definitely full of wisdom yourself, because you can tell that you're overflowing with these ideas yourself because you don't just ask questions. You go on your own little, you know, side sidebars, which basically tells me, you know what you're talking about. You're passionate about it and it resonates with you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So thank you for that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Then we went traveling to Germany, then back to Russia, then to Africa. There was a civil war in Africa when we were there. There were bombings literally across the street from my house. They blew up a building. And then we sort of, I ended up coming back as a teenager to like the worst Soviet Union restrictive environment.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
It is 3 a.m.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And then after the fall of the wall, I just sort of, it's almost like took flight, right? There was like escape velocity that happened. And the question, I guess, is about that. How does that happen? Right. And I became one of the pop stars. And then we moved to the States. We started several businesses, nonprofits and did a bunch of other things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And none of it is really over the top grandiose, but it is sort of if you think about it, wow, that's a lot. Right. And I would say The question that I get most is what you're saying. How do you not contract? How do you expand in the midst of massive, massive disadvantages and life-threatening circumstances and things like that?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And I think honestly, for me, the answer is that there's actually a tremendous potential opportunity for growth in the midst of suffering. if you process it correctly, right? And actually, I don't think we have enough suffering in our lives that makes us weaker, right? And I mean, biologically, that's even true, right? You don't go to the gym, you become weaker.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
You go to the gym, you create suffering, you become stronger, right? But it's extraordinarily true across all dimensions of life. So learning, ambition, romance, friendship, money, all those things It actually works universally. And it's not that I wish, I mean, it's actually impossible to replicate my kind of suffering that is completely out of control.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
But you can actually replicate suffering on purpose that is constructive suffering that makes you grow. And I think that's the answer is that you interpret suffering as a win of some sort. And that's a mindset shift, right? Yeah.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Exactly. Basically what you need to do is seek out not too much suffering. because too much suffering will break you, but enough suffering to grow you. And that is actually, there's a term coined by Nassim Taleb called antifragile, right? And that's antifragility. Antifragility is the ability to get better, stronger, smarter, more agile, not in spite of suffering, but because of suffering.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So I would say the formula there is keep 80% sort of safe, predictable, and create 20% across all dimensions every single day in the unsafe, painful suffering, and you will be unstoppable, I believe.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
I mean, that was just what it was like. That's pretty third world, man.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
First of all, thank you for asking that question because I am very, very passionate about parenting. I come from three generations of broken homes, you know, and I had to really, really recalibrate my life, my character, my everything to learn how to be a good husband and a good parent, right? So this is quite literally the top of my priorities.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Like it's not business, it's not money, it's not career, it's not even impact. It's my wife is radiant with joy. My kids are functional in winning. You know, that's basically it, right? So I really do care about this tremendously. You know, and the thing is, it's fascinating. And I would love to get to even the skip 40 years and that kid is a high performer CEO.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
and how the same principle applies to that kid and to that CEO, right? Let's make that gap, right, later. But it's the same thing, right? So my kids, two were born in Moscow, one was born in Ukraine, but they moved pretty early. So my oldest one is a little bit older, she was 12, but the youngest ones were zero or like one and three, basically, right? So they're 100% American kids.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Like, they're very Americanized.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Now, here's how you still replicate the healthy patterns. No participation prizes, ever. Okay. Those are like the basic things, right? Teach them disciplines, not rules. The school system is designed as a factory. It's a conveyor belt. And it's designed to teach kids to perform to give them a certain mark. I mean, they're literally creating cogs. That's the way it's done.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
What we taught our kids, and our oldest went to a charter school, then a private school. Our youngest two were actually homeschooled throughout. We taught them disciplines. This is history. This is literature. How did literature relate to history? How does this thing relate to each other? This is economics, right? This is geography.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
And the mindset of the normal education sort of bubble is you're at the center of it, then it's your parents, then it's your state, then it's your country. What we taught them is there's the world, there's continents, countries, states, systems, then it's your family, then it's you. You are not at the center of the universe, basically. There's a world and you fit into it a certain way.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
So these are like micro things, right? But I would say you teach them relationship by not being a parent only in the morning when you drop them off and in the evening when you tuck them in and maybe play around in the backyard for a little bit. Well, integrate your life with them because they need it. When they grow up, they need to understand what deep relationships are, right? So we literally...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
We planned or even limited our business opportunities to where our lives with our kids were integrated. They're weaved together. And if you do that early on, they won't resent you when they're teenagers. When they resent you when they're teenagers, it's too late. So now we have, I mean, they're all out of the house, 20, 22, 29, but they come back. The relationship is intact.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
The dynamics change because they're grownups. We treat them differently. But they are absolutely, we love each other so much. We have such a warm relationship. You know, you can't buy this kind of influence. You can't succeed your way into this kind of influence. You have to just do the work with them, right? When it comes to sort of comfort and what you referred to earlier,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
What we did is that we invested a ton of time and money, literally from age zero, to travel. And it would be Paris, you know. It could be an all-inclusive resort. And it would be the slums of Rio de Janeiro. or the barriers of Mexico and Tijuana, or the just under $2 a day slums in Maputo, Mozambique. And they would be with us the whole time, right? They know the third world since they were born.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Turning Suffering Into STRENGTH And Success - Christian Ray Flores
Even though they grew up in America, they were exposed to the contrast. And we spoke about the things and we told them the stories, you know. So I think that's the way it's exposure, really.