Fitness Mindset: focusing on identity to recover
Eric Rogers is a born Leader, influencer and entrepreneur. Bodybuilding is one of his absolute passions, but there is so much more to him than fitness.
He is a husband and father. Family is EVERYTHING to him.
He is a God fearing man and takes his freedom seriously.
He has overcome massive adversities in his life and has built a life from the absolute bottom. Homelessness, addiction to methamphetamine, jail-time, violence, suicide attempts and trauma.
Eric is a survivor, and now he lives to tell his story and help others through their issues, through changing their daily habits.
He has been featured on multiple high profile podcasts and is becoming well known in the self development and mental health realms.
His goal is to spread a POWERFUL message. You are what you strive to be IF you put in the work! There is nobody more influential in your life besides yourself. Your attitude and mentality determine your character. Your character determines your success.
The Warrior mentality is one that cannot be broken and discipline is the only thing keeping you from reaching your full potential.
To learn more about Recovered On Purpose, get your free copy of From Chains o Saved, see the merch shop, or book a free call with Adam to help you or a loved one struggling with opiate addiction, visit: https://RecoveredOnPurpose.com
Read The Transcript Below
what’s up recovered on purpose family thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s episode of guest saturdays i’m coming in from medi from actually i’m coming from cartagena columbia right now so that’s why i’m not in the studio but i’m super excited about the guests that we have today eric rogers is going to be bringing in a message of mindset and peak performance super excited to introduce him to you guys and for you to hear his story enjoy the show keep living recovered on purpose the black represents the darkness from which we came
the white represents the light in which we now live and the red represents the passion it takes to live recovered on purpose
all right everyone welcome welcome welcome super excited that you’re here and super excited to introduce you to my guest eric rogers is a born leader influencer and entrepreneur he founded rogers fitness academy at the age of 27 an established and growing mindset fitness and nutrition coaching service bodybuilding is one of his passions but there is so much more to him than fitness he has a husband father and god-fearing man and he takes his freedom seriously he has overcome massive adversities in his life and has built a life from the absolute bottom homelessness incarceration extreme addiction abuse trauma and suicide attempts eric is a survivor and now he lives to tell his story and mentor others he has been featured on multiple high-profile podcasts and becoming well-known in the self-development and mental health realms his gr his goal is to spread a powerful message you are what you strive to be if you put in the work there is nobody more influential in your life except for yourself your attitude and mentality determine your character your character determines your success the warrior mentality is one that cannot be broken and discipline is the only thing keeping you from reaching your full potential his main focus is growth and he shows the world how effective his methods are by practicing what he preaches he lives to serve his community and spreads a valuable message to the world guys super excited to introduce you to eric rogers what’s up brother thanks for coming in yeah man thanks for having me what’s good i love i love the intro i love the intro thank you guys thank you bro of course the uh the my producer that i’ve been working with since he started working with me in my addiction we made some uh some poetry videos and stuff he created that intro with the music and everything and dude every time i hear that i’m just like i get pumped up i could swallow a dumbbell or something i love it let’s go let’s go bro you said you said some things in your uh and just let everybody know that’s watching we didn’t script this we haven’t uh we haven’t really talked about what we’re going to go into but some things in your bio and in what i just read are really in sync with what we do here at recovered on purpose because the whole mission of this is us addicts in recovery lifting up and sharing our stories powerfully with the world so addicts suffering know that there’s a way out so tell us a little bit about because you say that in your bio tell us a little bit about why you believe that too man well first of all i could say very strongly that sharing my story saved my life right and so it’s it helps others for sure but i i never i don’t think it’s ever too early to share your story because i think it’s the highest point of accountability when you’re being vulnerable with the world uh with some suffering or darkness that you’ve been through because it allows you to step in front of those demons and put them in the light and it makes it a lot harder to fall back right influencing people leading people into a better place by telling your story it puts you in this in this high threshold of wanting to continue to do better that makes sense 100 yeah i actually yeah i experienced that during covid because during covet i had what um two and a half years just over two and a half years when it all hit and there was this point i remember i was because i was confined to my apartment i was all alone i wasn’t able to go to my meetings i wasn’t able to like commune with my people and i started getting that like that suffering inside of me that restless irritable discontent that depression type state and i even like had stupid thoughts that i’ve never had in my recovery before that point and i remember at a point when i was at my lowest mentality in that moment i actually got down on my knees and just meditated about the people that needed to hear about my recovery the people that needed me to stay sober i didn’t stay sober and i didn’t stay well at that point just for myself have you have you recognized that like while you’re sharing your story and thing things have you had like experiences with people that it’s helped people reaching out to you yeah absolutely i’ve had i’ve been sharing my story for about three years now and when i started i sucked i was very bad at it i couldn’t speak in front of a camera um and actually i even put it up out of poll on instagram the first week of just doing some stories right on my instagram story and i said should i keep doing this or should i stop and i had 20 people vote 19 of them said you should stop the only person that said to keep going was my wife and it it hurt me at first but i was like you know what that’s not why i’m doing it so originally me telling my story was more of a therapy to release a lot of the darkness in me and the things that hold me back and just to express it made me feel way better i’ve spent my life lying to myself and to finally be honest and to just do it in an extreme way right telling the world my story it released it it was selfish i wanted to do it for me first and then over time you know now three years later i have people reaching out to me saying that i’ve literally my story has changed their life yeah right like i’m talking hundreds of people have said that to me that i without coaching them without even talking to them them just hearing me over and over and over again being consistent in my story my message and in my actions they’ve followed those footsteps and it’s absolutely changed their life so yeah it feels good to see that you know all the pain that you went through was worth it yeah if it helps one person right amen amen i love that bro and so you you did this poll on instagram right and this is a big mistake i mean or not or not because i can tell you before i wrote my book before i actually put it out and everything and i was talking to family members and people that were close to me and stuff i had people that were really close to me that told me not to do it that told me not to share these stories not to put them out to the world because it might harm your reputation it might harm your your ability to go out into the world because if you put out that you were a junkie you know then everybody’s gonna know that about you right and what that did i i don’t remember ever like wanting to prove them wrong or anything like that but i feel like it empowered me to make the decision no matter what anybody said and then when that book came out bro and i started getting those messages and i started getting emails and people telling me what that what my story was doing for them man i i didn’t care what anybody said anymore anybody said anymore and it’s almost like at the beginning and this goes to anybody out there that’s not that hasn’t started publicly sharing your recovery story yet it’s almost like in the beginning you have this opposition and if we look at it spiritually there’s an enemy trying to stop you from saving the people that you’re meant to save with your story and when we get over that hump right and we we push through that adversity we break through that mountain you know there’s so much freedom for so many other people on the other side of that so we’re talking a lot about sharing a story so why don’t you why don’t you tell us where you’re from tell us your tells your story and how you got to this point yeah man i’m from a very small town in california called pilot hill it’s like population 400 419 people to be exact and um you know i grew up in from the outside looking in a great family great family uh if you ask my brother and sister how their childhood was it’d say it was the best thing they’ve ever been through now my perspective was altered in for a reason that they would never understand and they actually didn’t know until earlier this year right earlier this year i got an opportunity to be on some of the biggest podcasts in the world you know top 30 podcasts in the world and i it was the first time i shared that at seven years old i was sexually molested by my sunday school teacher and you know something that didn’t happen to them but it changed my perspective and it’s crazy how that that can happen right same family same home same lifestyle but for me it was it was pain it was horrible to them it was great it was that one experience that changed everything so you know you can imagine what that would do to a child right the cool thing is is i try to handle it on my own and never happen again i actually uh i poured bleach in her coffee the next week because i knew i had to go back i knew i had to go back every single week and i don’t know what put that in me what told me i remember my mom saying just a clutch just a cap full of bleach right and i can laugh at it about it now but um i took that in a note you know to poison her and she got super sick um and that scared me she didn’t die but she got very sick and that scared me and so i never shared that story as a child never told anyone because i was afraid that i’d get in trouble for what i did right now i felt like the bad person and so i i held that in and i held it in up until the age of 27 years old and it really caused a lot of damage it was a repressed memory for most of my life but you know at the age of eight i started finding ways to mask that pain to make that pain a little bit lighter and i did it using uh my mother’s prescription drugs so eight years old i was finding ways to get take painkillers and stuff like that and when i couldn’t find that i was i was drinking a bottle of robitussin or two taking four or five six uh benadryl pills whatever i could do it was the only thing that stopped me from overthinking or being stuck in my head or feeling like i wasn’t good enough yeah and i want to i want to pause you really quick because there’s there’s a lot of listeners they they say in america about one-third of females experience sexual trauma as a child in our community in the recovery community that that skyrockets skyrocket and there’s also a lot of men in recovery that have experienced something like that and what what you’re saying that you started to have thoughts that you wanted to get out of you started having identity issues that you wanted to get out of by starting to use drugs what were those specific thoughts identities what you were trying to escape from your mind about that time in that event
well a lot of it was because of what happened it put me in a place where my behavior changed and i started becoming a bad listener one thing it’s hard to remember everything right yeah such a long time ago one thing i remember is that i could no longer trust authority like that was like that was pretty much my biggest struggle was to listen to my father was a listen to my mother was listen to anybody that was in a position of telling me what to do i would not do it i i didn’t trust anybody no matter what and at a young age you know my dad was a folsom prison guard for 30 plus years and he saw that behavior and he as a disciplinarian father he took you know he used discipline to correct that and so a lot of it was like my behavior created discipline and i’m not talking about spanking i’m talking about abuse both emotional and physical abuse and points where i was scared and i didn’t believe it was my fault it was not fair but i couldn’t tell them why i was acting this way and so it caused this huge commotion in my house where i was literally like this child like this um like the ugly duckling right the black sheep i was treated differently um i was they thought i was just a troubled child and really they didn’t know what was going on and so a lot of the pain i was running away from was how i was being treated at home right do you think and this this is just a question that’s coming up in case there’s uh parents out there listening that have a kid that’s starting to act up out of the out of the norm of something do you think that there could be a conversation to be had with a kid that age um maybe the right kind of question to ask to try to bring up a conversation where they feel safe to bring out something that happened if something happened i think there’s there’s some preliminary actions that should be taken with each child because of the way this country and society is right so before something bad happens you should have a relationship with your child that’s good enough to where they’re able to open up and don’t feel afraid to tell you things that are very scary to them right that’s been hard for me as a father because i was raised by a disciplinarian somebody that would literally abuse me for the smallest things and so becoming a father a lot of those things want to come out and i have to stop myself i have to make sure that my son is safe with me that he’s not afraid of me first of all he’s got to feel safe with you he’s got to be able to communicate with you and then you got to be able to tell them like you know prepare them for something like that obviously you know speaking words to a seven-year-old about sexual abuse might not work but there’s ways to do it so open communication with your child and knowing who he’s around it’s hard to say but it’s hard to trust everybody right um if your son or daughter experience like you’re experiencing them having a massive behavioral change just know that something is probably going on that you don’t understand sadly enough yeah and i think that it’s it’s worthy of investigation right because i’ve this is one of my in a chapter in my book and this is actually one of the things i was told not to write about i had a plan i had a legitimate plan in 2016. i saved up money for it and went out to uh go sell direct tv for a while saving up money because i was planning on being a child molester serial killer i just thought that that was i thought that was my life’s call at the time i was high out of my mind but i just like believed i had to go do this i just believed it was my call right because at that time i was hearing so many i heard so many stories about this and it just infuriated me infuriated me and i had this moment where i i was just so in this place of anger and just wanting to go get these people and i just clearly heard the voice of god tell me that revenge is his and i’m not here to get revenge and cause harm on someone else but to be here for the victims to be here for them and love on them give them a space to talk give them a space to you know grow and heal through this right right and man it’s
the amount of the amount of people that have dealt with this right and that are still silent about it it just it it blows my mind that there’s that there’s people out there still suffering with this that feel like they can’t talk about it so i appreciate you talking about it and showing the listeners that that it’s you know it’s powerful to talk about so you go you go from this experience and this is kind of what starts driving you into you know robitussin and prescription pills and things like that at a really early age eight nine years old where does that lead you oh it led me to i i went on and off of being like like a troubled child to like finding god and being very good and getting off the drugs so i went from like if you look at like my school pictures i’m like a prep and then i’m like a scene kid and like you know what i mean and so it wasn’t always bad like i when i found god it seemed to pull me out of these moods and these struggles and that’s probably why i am who i am today uh but eventually it just came to the point where i i was getting in fights i was getting into harder drugs right age of 16 i started doing cocaine i got expelled from my school i almost put a kid in the hospital i had you know i was very violent child like i my dad was violent it was what i grew up in it’s all i knew and all i wanted to do was prove to myself that i can i can be like my dad or i can stand up for myself and you know i turned me into a bully you know in a lot of ways i was a bully i got to the point where i was i was doing you know cocaine i was selling cocaine and then my dad found that on me and he just said you got 24 hours to get the [ __ ] out of my house and if i ever see you again i’m taking to jail myself like no help i didn’t no one offered me help uh and how old are you again i was 16 wow yeah and so i well actually no sorry 16 they sent me down south they sent me to another family’s house to live and i tried they tried living with them and getting better i ruined that i got kicked out of there and then i came back and it was 17 when i got caught with the cocaine and kicked out of the house sorry about that and so i was 17 i just graduated high school so i did graduate but and that’s why they were like you’re done i’m out you’re out bye and then i was living in my car um like and then that night actually the night that i that i got kicked out i called my brother and i was like hey man where you where are you at like do you have a place to stay and he’s like yeah come to my friend’s house and i went over there and i was like telling we woke i slept there we woke up in the morning and then my brother was in the shower and i was talking this kid i was like telling him like i gotta quit i’m trying to get better like i just got kicked out i want to get my life together like this is scary right and he just pulls out a bag of white powder and he’s just like you want a bump and i was just like yeah sure just right great friend and i took a bump and then he just immediately asked me like how long you doing been doing methamphetamines and i was like shocked i was like what are you talking about i know it burned a little bit but i i just thought it was bad coke and that that moment i was like holy [ __ ] like i just did the worst drug in the world in my mind right i’ve never touched the stuff and i was just like oh my god and it’s like no i’m homeless now i’m doing meth right and i was pissed at the guy and i drove off and then later that night i came over and i started smoking for them and i i’m this type of person that i’m an extremist absolutely if i’m in i’m all in and so you know me too a lot of us right right a couple weeks later i’m at this point where i’m i’m ingesting more methamphetamines than some of these 20 or 20-year veteran methods i i am starting to see signs of schizophrenia months later i’m starting to get drug-induced psychosis i’m seeing things i’m not sleeping or eating for three weeks at a time i’m i’m going insane and it was actually something that i was kind of striving for at that time i embraced it i was like that no one wanted me right everyone i everyone i talked to betrayed me in some way i was just in this victim mindset that you know what this is my life and i took that as far as i could push it and it started putting me in positions where hey i needed more and so i started getting involved in you know the aryan brotherhood and i started selling for them i started selling cocaine for the crips i started i was just like this guy i’d get my hands on as much drugs as i could take as much as i could and make as much money as i could and i would just keep this going but by staying homeless i was staying broken and nothing good was coming out of it and it came to a point where um you know about a year later being homeless no job i found myself well i found myself in jail right i had some cops pull behind me and i had a bunch of i had a bunch of drugs on me and they took me i just turned 18. um good time in jail right bro it was like a couple weeks after i turned 18 and then i’m in jail i’m about 135 pounds sucked up just what do you know like 230. 240 pounds yeah right and uh yeah and i i was scared shitless but you know what it was crazy because it was like the first time in my life for a long time that i’ve been sober that a few weeks in jail like i had to sober up and one thing i learned in there is i started doing push-ups i started doing pull-ups and i realized that helped me and i figured it was actually not that bad i realized it was not that bad to be sober and when i got out i didn’t stop i continued to do methamphetamines but i i got some help from my cousin he moved me in with him and kind of he gave me love unexpected love he was like the one person that kind of said hey you’re struggling come live with me and he helped me go to court i ended up winning my trial and from there he’s just like you look bro you look like [ __ ] and no one’s ever told me that right i i made sure i was isolated from as many people as possible at that point and he’s like you look like [ __ ] and you need to go get a job you need to get your life together and so he’s like go move up to tahoe like nobody’s doing meth up there and it’s summer time and you could probably find a place to sleep and i i packed my [ __ ] i had about forty dollars i put 40 bucks of gas in my car i had a box of canned foods a bunch of chili my guitar a tarp and a blanket and i drove up to truckee california i found a dirt road i went about 10 miles down that dirt road found a creek and i set camp and i lived there for four months and i saw my brother a few times but besides that i was isolated from everyone and that’s where i detox i lived off the land for like four months and it was quite a cool experience uh it healed me i can say that nature is part of healing me and when i uh got to the point where i i wasn’t craving anymore i was detoxed i found a job in truckee and then i met my wife um and then round two [ __ ] happened right so i mean we could go through that too but it wasn’t done because one thing i know now is that it’s not the drugs that you have to worry about there’s something else causing this pain there’s something you’re running from it’s not that you just love drugs and you like feeling good some people maybe but most of time you’re you’re running from something and until you solve that issue it’s going to keep manifesting itself into something new and something new until you you know i say life teaches you until you learn your [ __ ] lesson right so i don’t know if you want to talk my story is long i love it i love it so while you’re living while you’re living down there on the land um and you told me a little bit earlier in your story that you met god early on right yeah so how is that how is that possible to know god yet still make mistakes how is that possible oh man you always make mistakes you’re never going to be perfect right i found god because my parents were christian and surprisingly seven i said i got blessed by my sunday school teacher yeah i never blamed god
a lot of people do a lot of people do it’s it’s honestly crazy how i did it yeah it’s crazy how i never connected god to the evil that happened to me that day yeah because something in my heart i i believe i was chosen by god and because of that i believe that i wouldn’t blame that evil on god of something way worse that day that happened but one thing that i that i do know is that whatever that woman was happening in that woman’s heart she passed it on to me i don’t know like sexual sin is a demon in my understanding jezebel yeah and she passed that to me because my i mean i never dealt with like the child stuff but right but i’ve had like a lustful heart my whole life yeah and it’s one of my biggest struggles bro uh honesty and loyalty has been a struggle for me um even in my marriage and you know that’s something i don’t really talk about much but that stuff is it’s powerful and you know i’m still on my journey to healing and recovering from my past yeah and i forever will be amen and the reason i asked that i i gave my life to jesus when i was 10 years old and two years later is when i found cocaine at 12 years old so anybody out there that you know and that’s that’s great that you say you know you didn’t blame it on god because that’s such that’s such a conversation with people that have been wounded by the church because you have church wounds like that is a church wound and what is beautiful about what you’re saying is that you didn’t you didn’t let that separate you from faith right because you were able to separate human evil human yeah we’re just going to leave that evil to god because a personal relationship with god is something that everybody in recovery needs to find and especially addicts that are out there suffering it’s like the number one solution to to being able to find recovery and find freedom from addiction is a relationship with god so you go out there and you’re living on the land are you are you building that relationship or what do you what are you doing while you’re out there basically isolated and detoxing man i made my camp like amazing first of all like basically use that tweaker mentality
i built a really cool camp man i made it my man like three chords that go in and make a radio of fm and everything doing a podcast with like an antenna for real bro uh no it was cool i had like pulley systems in the tree for my food and i found a bunch of stuff i built shelters in different places just in case there was fires i built it was cool and um but out there you know i really found god by just being alone and i believe that there’s points in every man’s life where he needs to he needs to be alone and understand who he is and i think that that saved me and healed me because you know for a long time it was always everyone else’s fault right you know but god kind of showed me and he showed me this every time i’ve changed my life uh even if i fell after that i put myself here and it wasn’t anybody else’s fault and i i’m a very intense person and i’ve always had identity issues with um who i should be i’ve always been told like hey you need to calm down you need to slow down you know and that’s something that i cannot do and i’ve recently accepted that fully um and i think that i just i think that’s another cool thing about telling my story is that people understand who i am now why i know who i am instead of guessing like bro you need to calm down it’s like no you hear my story dude you might understand why i’m i’m this way and i’m not going to change it because it’s my biggest attribute now right yeah so out there a lot of reading the bible a lot of writing a lot of i had my guitar out there i always saved my guitar strings as a kid and so i don’t know why but it was perfect because i use those as snares i learned how to make a snare uh when i was a kid in science camp catching squirrels it’s like a little trap right so squirrel goes through it and it closes it like a noose and it hangs basically oh
so i ate squirrels um i ate whatever i could out there and i survived for four months wow life-changing event yeah and then meeting my wife after that after i got sober and i dated her that we fell in love and we got married had a kid and i brought all my toxicity into that marriage
and i made her life hell for a long time it turned into alcoholism and i took you know i i just chased the next drug and i fell back into that darkness where i it was everyone else’s fault and it came to a point um came to a point where it got very bad um i did a lot of bad things um in that marriage and
four years ago four four and a half five years ago she just told me after that after we had the kid she’s like you’re not fit to be a father or her husband and i’m leaving and so she picked up everything she took my kid and she moved states we were living in reno at the time she came back here to california and four months after that of heavy drinking and back to drug use and just being a victim i decided i was going to kill myself and i sat on my bed and i didn’t tell anybody that’s when i realized it was real because i wasn’t crying out for help and it wasn’t like hey look at me help me it was i made a decision that i was going to to kill myself so i took my glock and i put it in my mouth and i was sobbing crying spit everywhere i was i was ready i started to pull that trigger and something happened to me at that moment and it was god and it was this glimpse of hope it was a trip because it was like almost a flashback and i have ptsd so like i get those sometimes but this is like a flashback it’s like a flash forward of hope and it was like me and my son and my wife healthy and i realized at that moment that actually i do have a chance of being that man like i may have ruined it but i’ve re i’ve redeemed myself many times i can do it again and so what i did at that moment is i decided that moment that you know i i put myself here through my past actions i brought myself here again rock bottom i’ve lost everything it’s my fault and my habits if i can change them now than my future i’ll be in control of my future it can be it can be different so i gave myself a year and i said if i can’t make my life worth living which is me being that it was a vision of me being a good father and husband then i would take my own life and so i hustled bro it ignited something in me and i being the extremist i am i went the opposite direction i cut everything out and i started to pick up good habits instead and so the program that i have as a coach right now is built off the exact steps i took from that moment to who i am today amen and we’re going to take a quick 30 second break and then on the other side of this we’re going to be talking about what those habits are what that program is and how you can implement all of this into your own life we’ll be right back what the family i hope you’re enjoying this episode as much as i do when i’m making them and guys if you are getting value from this if you’ve heard any golden nuggets that you think other people should hear make sure that you’re sharing it with your groups or your pages so other people that are looking for a message of hope are able to find it also in case you weren’t here for the beginning of the show if you have a recovery story and you want to learn how to add impact and income through sharing it follow the link in the pinned comment to book your one time 100 free call with me where we’re going to strategize exactly how you can share your story and do just that enjoy the rest of the show keep living recovered on purpose awesome bro so a lot of people in recovery have done programs or they’ve done treatment or 12 steps things like that and something that inspired me about your story and what i want to share with people out there the audience that are listening is that you kind of did this on your own path right you found your own path with you know changing the mindset the victim mindset and giving yourself a year so what did you change in that first year that made the most impact on you what was going on in that year man my hobbies my habits and it couldn’t just be like hey i’m done i quit and sit there in a room and just try to be okay i i went to the extreme in the opposite direction and that’s how i i teach people like any negative emotion that we have there’s a positive action to reverse it right you’re always taking action against something that’s that’s what i’m all about is taking action doing the work and so instead of giving myself time to think about drugs and alcohol or being depressed or whatever what i do is i’d spend countless hours in the gym and what happened was this was great is i hadn’t been eating in years bro since i was little kid i had no appetite i was always awesome and so when i started getting into the gym and i started getting hungry again because i wasn’t i wasn’t drinking or doing drugs i started building muscle and i started my physique changed and i was like this is great right and so i was kind of blessed with that you know genetically and then what happened is i i was like i want to take this the next level started becoming addicted to fitness and so i incorporated i learned about nutrition and i incorporated nutrition in my into my life and i used um the stomach is amazing i don’t know if you know this but if you can control what you ingest you can control everything that you can control like it’s like a second mind down there it has another mind in the gut yep exactly so like if you see someone that’s shredded and ripped like you give him a handshake because it’s mad respect it’s hard to do yeah he’s got he’s got control over his brain and that’s why he was able to do that and so what i did is i used my stomach as a piece of accountability because i realized that every time i didn’t have an appetite i was either on something or i was stressed or i was anxious or i was depressed and so i realized that if i had an appetite then i was doing good and so i really focused on appetite digestion i started eating 7-8 meals a day smaller meals and i worked my way up and what happened is obviously my physique changed enormously but i also i also started to have more control emotionally and physically and surprisingly not because i took that extremist road i went from drugs alcohol no appetite no eating just being a dirt bag to being someone that’s extremely disciplined in fitness nutrition i i’ve started looking around i’m like wow i’m more disciplined than a lot of people right um a couple other steps i took as i started going to church i joined the men’s group um i started the reason why i did that is because i wanted to get around people that were normal that didn’t struggle like i did as a kid and i wanted to just see how they act so i want to see what they react how they react to certain things you know i wanted to ask some questions and i quickly realized that i didn’t want to be like anyone else i it kind of sickened me to be honest everyone was so lovey-dovey and everything’s so great and i’m here like i have these dark thoughts or these like extremely great thoughts and i was like you know what like i don’t want to be normal but i want to be good and so i just kind of i took my intensity and i took it to the next level i i put it towards my fitness nutrition i put it towards my job as an electrician and i just started accelerating at life right um other things that i did is i i changed the way i woke up and this was huge yeah a lot of us we wake up for the things that stress us out the most money kids i’m late for work right so what i started doing is i started waking up at 2 50 every single morning and i did that seven days a week for a long time and and the reason why is because i was waking up for me now right and i had this whole list of habits that i checked off every day before i started my day i put time towards myself towards god yeah prepping my food and then when i walked into my work day or into the world my mind was prepared for any test and trial drugs came my way i was able to say no but if i woke up late and i snoozed someone brings drugs or alcohol in front of me yep i’ll take it right so i started seeing that i was more in control of my daily outcome if i woke up a certain way if i had these list of habits if i had control over the things i ingest if i’m hit the gym and got all the stress and anger out yeah and six months later i called my wife and i said hey look this is what i’m doing this is what i’ve done and she didn’t know and she wanted me back amazing very good yeah amen yeah i moved to california we’ve been married we’ve been together ever since i am that vision that i had of me being the father and the husband that i knew i wanted to be and i should be i achieved in six months of hard work and i completely turned my life around in six months and i was i was that person i envisioned every single day and that vision it was a focal point for me and it was something to be driven for and because i i thought of it every day and i my habits aligned with that vision every day i was focused and nothing stopped me yeah and that’s it was all discipline brother amen so do you think that you carried a different identity into this new life and you you strive to be that identity in that vision the identity of a father of a godly man of a nutrition specialist and a bodybuilder that kind of stuff did you did you carry that into that help you to create these habits yeah you know what i my wife says it perfectly eric you have two identities you have the flesh and then you have like your your walk with christ right like you’re either the super horrible sinful person that does bad things and it’s just crazy victim or you’re the strongest most driven and dedicated godly man i’ve ever met and it was great like when she says that it’s like you’re so right and i have to be disappointed otherwise on the other area so yeah i think it was an identity that god had ready and available for me this whole time i don’t know if i would have had it if i didn’t go through these struggles but when i decided to look for it god gave it to me and you know i i think it was all the struggles i went through all the pain all the darkness that set me up for a mindset so strong that i can endure addiction i can get through my trauma my pain and you know it’s all it’s all been for the greater good now i get to decide every day what eric i want to be what path i want and it’s very easy for me to go the other way yeah very easy yeah you said two things that i want to touch on you said when i decided to look for it god gave it to me and that’s like that’s i teach that to everyone i talk about that to everyone like we have to seek we have to knock we have to seek in order to find we have to knock for it to be open to us we have to ask to get an answer right and so making that making that decision to seek was like the first step right and then when you started the the habits of the nutrition because it sounded like that was the first thing you brought up you you started the the habits that formed the bodybuilder you the bodybuilder identity of you and in charles duhigg’s book the power of habit he talks about something called a keystone habit a keystone habit that will that will basically cause you to become something better during the day like if you always do this one certain thing you start to make better decisions with all of your decisions through the day did you find that your keystone habit was the nutrition in bodybuilding or do you think that there was something else that caused you to be able to carry out the body building 100 is fitness and nutrition and i could say that a part of that fire was ignited at a young age so i have been diagnosed bipolar 2 and i’ve had i’ve been uh date a story state mandated uh anger management i’ve been in i’ve been in a lot of violence my life i’ve created my cat smelling sorry yeah it’s hot hey kitty can you hear her a little bit all right i’m a real person now you know yeah um and i’m sorry let me just yeah it’s all good brother
guys this is this is what you know there’s always a cat meowing in the background of life there’s always something going on in life right symbolic that we just have to get up and just take care of really quick all right yeah do we just have to make the decision to take care of it and then get back into it guys get back into it oh man okay where was i i’m sorry yeah i mean you were you were focusing on the nutrition you were building that as your keystone habit and yeah yeah i was out shown that fitness was a part of my healing as like at eight years old because every time i i got in a position where my dad would beat me uh abuse me or whatever right yeah i’d always go into the into the garage and hang on the rafters and i do as many pull-ups as i could and and the reason why it was the only thing that helped me not explode because i’d come into these i would you know be bullied and beat and then pushed outside and i just wanted i want to kill bro like that i had a need and a want for blood at a young age and i think a lot of it was maybe poisoning that lady at eight or seven years old the week after and getting away with it i think it triggered something in me that said like it’s okay right it’s okay to be eventually it’s okay to be you know it’s okay to be like this and so i’d always have i always had these thoughts of like being like sneaky killer i’ve never done anything like that but these thoughts of violence bro like serious thoughts of violence um would enter my mind and it would overpower me to a point where i had to do something to get them out or i would do something about it and so which would probably my dad would probably just end up beating my skin right so you know luckily he was a big guy and i didn’t get trouble doing something really stupid so i would do pull-ups or i’d fill up my backpack full of rocks and run up the hill as hard as i could and and i i remembered that in certain points in my life when i was getting better when i tried to get sober that fitness the exercising the the pushing myself to a physical limit would help me it did help me and so it was the first thing that came to my mind when i decided to get my life together like hey i want to get in shape i want to go to the gym yeah and i fell in love with it yeah and i think for me because i was i was 148 pounds when i got clean this over also because i was i was iv heroin meth and i tried crack once for like three months because nobody tries crack just once and uh yeah that’s true and i’m 215 now you know and awesome bro what people what people in there you know in their addiction it’s it’s really hard to envision who you could possibly be right and the only example that we have in our addiction are of those that have recovered those people that have recovered that have you know the life that we that we aspire towards maybe it’s the freedom emotionally and spiritually the spiritual connection maybe it’s the fitness that they’re attracted to maybe it’s the you know the family life or the relationship or something like that but us living our life to the fullest our best life in recovery is actually what attracts people to find recovery more so than us going out and telling people you got to quit using drugs because was there any time when you were you know snorting or smoking meth that you didn’t know you probably shouldn’t be doing this oh all the time bro yeah we know we know we know that we shouldn’t be doing this but the thing is like it’s the attractive thing in our life right now this is how we know how to live so us in recovery you know when we when we live our best life and we’re out sharing our stories and we’re we’re walking with light and we’re being this powerhouse person that’s what people in in addiction are like holy cow wait he was he was homeless and a drug addict that dude yeah huh i’m homeless in a drug addict maybe that’s possible for me you know right so i think it’s super important and i i the the keystone habit that broke through for me was making my bed every single day and in my first 30 days of recovery what i did was i i made my bed first and then i got up and i just did 20 jumping jacks 20 sit ups or crunches and then 10 10 and 10 push-ups because i knew i wanted to start a fitness journey but in my in my early recovery i knew that i needed to focus on these other things first and you know i think that i think that it’s it’s important for everybody out there listening right we have to find a keystone health habit something that we can start doing like today if you don’t already have your health journey down your fitness journey down something that we can start doing today that can set us up for you know a better life in the future with our health what are some things that you would recommend to people maybe in early recovery they can start implementing to to work on their fitness not everybody’s going to be a dang bodybuilder you know i’m not i’m not even a dang bodybuilder but yeah what are some things that they can start implementing now what i would say well personally what i did was i would do three four or five times a day whatever i wake up in the middle of nine crave and i go to the gym for three hours like i just went as crazy and hard as i could not necessarily healthy to do that right and that was just me that’s how i stayed sober um what i’d say for somebody to start you know doing now is disciplining yourself enough to wake up before you are comfortable waking up and because i think the bed is symbolic of our comfort zone yeah right and i think that right it’s symbolic of the comfort zone and if you can wake up without a snooze button and put your feet on the floor and separate yourself from the symbol of comfort then it puts you in a mindset to where you’re you’re able to to choose purpose over pleasure throughout the day yes purpose over comfort right and i mean that’s what this tattoo is your purpose and pleasure it’s a huge part of my life if you choose pleasure you’re going to choose it all day yeah if you choose to snooze you’re going to snooze all day so just that and like you said making your bed say i’m done with the comfort today i’m done it’s time to start today without with the other thing that i do after i get out of bed uh like 5 a.m now used to be 2 50 um as i go straight downstairs and i get my ass on the stair stepper and i do 30 minutes as hard as i can with a hoodie on and then at the end i’ll take it off um but i just suffer to suffer it feels so i hate it i hate it right i hate one like i don’t want to get on there every day but what it does to my mind is it’s the endorphins it’s the act of choosing to suffer rather than sleep it puts you in a mindset where you’re willing to continue being disciplined that day it’s going to be a lot easier for you to stay off the drugs and alcohol if you choose to split yourself from the comfort zone and suffer instead yeah i mean there’s there’s a there’s a lot in there um i don’t know if i’m gonna be going downstairs and getting on a treadmill with a hoodie on for 30 minutes but but there’s i do i do the same thing i have my i have my morning routine i talk specifically about you know when you wake up hitting your feet directly to the floor and then splash something cold on yourself like get yourself up turn the lights on it triggers your mind to be up be awake go at it and there’s something about you know waking up to an alarm and writing down the night before like what time i’m waking up and then that alarm goes off you get up you’re like all right i do what i say i’m gonna do period right away and this is coming from two people two people that you know we focus on personal development we focus on growth and you out there listening it’s been on at least half of my podcast half of my video podcast that i talk about the importance of the morning the importance of taking control of your morning creating these keystone habits doing these things that you’ve always wanted to do you know he wanted to be a eric eric wanted to be a nutrition and bodybuilder nutrition specialist and bodybuilder so in order to do that vision he had to do these habits and force himself to do these habits now he’s suffering in the morning and the beautiful thing about suffering is we all suffer it doesn’t matter if you choose to do it or not it’s like everything is hard it’s hard to be out there looking for dope looking for money for dope doing whatever it takes to get dope and then withdrawing it’s a hard life it’s hard to get up at 5am go downstairs with a hoodie on and get on a stepper for 30 minutes choose your heart what life do you want each one of these is a life that we create one of them is kind of we allow ourselves to be unconscious and the other one we’re allowing ourselves to become the greatest self to become that person that god always called us to be i’m going to end with one with one more thing uh i have this affirmation because you you spoke on it a little earlier and it’s your tattoo right i have this affirmation i say every day i’m like i’m on a mission from god and i always prioritize his call over my pleasures and by saying that i will i will you know remind myself that when something comes up and it’s it’s taken me away from that that purpose if it’s if it’s something that’s going to be pulling me in this direction that i know i shouldn’t be going you know even if it’s those little small things right i choose to do this instead of doing the the podcast i choose to do this instead of reaching out to people to do the podcast you know those those small decisions during the day if we have the mindset that we’re picking purpose over the instant pleasures we’re setting ourselves up we’re setting ourselves up to be 240 instead of 135 right for real bro let’s go right here that’s right so before this before the show you told me that you’ve helped over 275 people in the last two years with your coaching with your with uh with your programs and things like that so tell me about some of those people and and what it’s been like working with them man well i started off just doing fitness nutrition and i realized very quickly that i am not just a fan of giving someone a plan and walking away and so i’ve accelerated my my program to a point where i’m working very one-on-one with every client where we’re actually meeting every other week for an hour sometimes once a week and we’re doing a lot of life in mindset coaching right my whole goal is like i said before i had this vision of who i wanted to be and then i aligned my habits with that vision and i i did those habits until i became that person that’s what this program is so it’s not just about fitness and nutrition very small part of it what it’s about is figuring out like who does adam want to be come right like what is the general vision of adam and in his characters in his core his beliefs his values who does he want to be good father loyal honest sober whatever it is what we do is we we reverse engineer that into daily habits and those habits are repeated every single day and then in those meetings that we do we work on the belief system right because if you don’t believe it it’s going to be hard to stay consistent and so we’re finding root issues we’re finding blind spots mental limitations that hold you back and we’re diving in the darkness together it’s like therapy right and we’re pulling those out together now this is a highly intensive program it’s very effective
it’s super effective obviously it’s it’s what i took i was a dirt but i was one of the worst bro and so if it could help me i think it could help a new one now i normally work with entrepreneurs and very high highly motivated people but i have worked with with people that are struggling with drugs now the thing is is that can you show up every day right i’m not the kind of coach that wants to work with someone that’s going to quit or give up because i don’t quit or give up and so i i want to take people on and help them but they got to be committed they got to be willing to do the work and it’s going to hurt and if that’s what you feel you need hit me up and where would they find you where can they find you um instagram is probably the best place to reach me i’m always responding to my dm so the real underscore eric rogers on instagram and then also uh yeah just the link in my bio there you can you can sign an application stuff like that but you can dm me it’s the best way to do it but honestly i’m not i am not here to make clients that’s not why i’m here my biggest reason to be here like i said earlier is to share my story and to help other people maybe get a place where they could share theirs i would like to meet the people that i reach today um i would like to hear your story i’d like to to be a part of your support group i’d like to you know be a friend of yours so um you know i don’t think this is about money it’s not i want to help however i can so feel free to reach out to me amen amen i love it brother thank you so much for coming on guys reach out to him on instagram um he wants to hear your story and guys i know that there’s a lot of a lot of you out there that want to share your story and maybe you guys will click maybe you guys have something in common and maybe you guys can work together guys we love you so much eric thank you so much for coming on brother thank you yeah of course thank you brother awesome guys we love you thanks for coming in keep living recovered on purpose
