Aaron Rodgers spent four days in the pitch black, seeking illumination of the answers inside him.What was still holding him back from being the best version of himself?What will his future look like?Will he continue playing or will he retire?This is the question football fans around the world are waiting with bated breath to be answered. But more important than the answer to the question, is the process of how to go about answering life’s biggest questions. This podcast with my best friend gets into the heart of his experience in the darkness retreat and illuminates his current state of mind and how he plans to go about answering this question for himself.Connect with Aaron Rodgers:Twitter |https://twitter.com/AaronRodgers12Instagram |https://www.instagram.com/aaronrodgers12/Facebook |https://www.facebook.com/AaronRodgers12Wikipedia |https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Rodgers

AUBREY: My brother, you're out of the black. Brother of the black, not too many people I know have done that journey. How was the first moment when the light was fully out and the door closed and you knew you had 96 hours of black in front of you,
AARON: There was excitement. I think there was the understanding that I was walking into the unknown, and I think it's part anxiety and part excitement. What is it going to come through in these four nights? And also what is going to come through in these four nights, you know, just the dichotomy of just the unknown. So I lit a little candle, I closed the door and kind of arranged my food on my bed where I was going to eat it. And then I blew that candle out and that started a pretty incredible difficult at times, four nights.
AUBREY: Yeah. There's for people who haven't experienced a darkness retreat or absolute black. I don't think most people actually even understand the difference between dark and black, right? Like a lot of people will say it's like solitary confinement. I'm like, “no, no, no, no, no”. Solitary confinement. They have a very small window and a little bit of light, some fluorescent light, something. And a little bit of light in a confined space is actually torture. Like, that would make you go crazy. But in the black, yes, there's confines, you can bump into shit in the room. But it's the limitless void that you're in. It's a different thing.
AARON: It's, yeah, it's definitely not having done anything close to this. I mean, I used to sleep with blackout shades but even still, you can see certain kinds of shapes and recognize the room and you're in a brand new room and you try and get the picture of, okay, there's where my bed is. And then it's four steps. Medium sized steps to the bathroom. Only thing I can drill you is this wall on the left here, besides the bed. And then once you get to the bathtub, you take a right. And it's about three steps. You got to watch out for this big hook that's coming out of the wall.
AUBREY: They got a big hook on the wall.
AARON: Well, it's not
AUBREY: It's dicey.
AARON: It was a dangerous hook, potentially, if you didn't put the towel, I put the towel over the, it was a towel hook, when it was just standing there without, it was sitting there without a towel. I was like, that would be really dangerous. You could just. Take your eye out.
AUBREY: Did you fuck yourself up at all?
AARON: Oh my God. So many times. I've heard everything about how to walk like a ballerina or walk with your arms out.
AUBREY: That's usual though for you. That's typical. Most of the time your legs are splayed out and you're walking. It's ballerina.
AARON: Walking on toe, of course.
AUBREY: Yeah, of course. That's actually how you injured your toe that season. Nobody knows that. You went on point, but actually your ballet training, it just gave out. You're too big up, too bulky up top. You weren't as light on your feet as you were in the Cal days. You know? Yeah. That's what happened. I fucked myself up bad. I don't know if I told you the story of how that happened. So I had a little desk and I had a wicker chair. It had an arc of like the wicker around, whatever, I don't know, it looked like some bamboo type of light wood. Anyways, light chair. I didn't tuck it back into the desk after I was done. So I left it in the middle of the room. So I came out of my shower. My bathroom is the size of an RV bathroom, tiny. So I couldn't even really dry off in there because I'm like bumping up in the toilet. There's no space. So I go out to the middle of the room, which has a nice rug. And again, I was in a cold place too, in Germany. So, go in there, I'm standing on the rug, and I go to dry off my ankles, and I was going kind of fast because I was kind of dry, so I go push my both hands down and my head down, and just smash the bridge of my nose right on the back of the chair, like fucking hard, like I was bleeding. And I went into a small fit of rage at that point, and I fucking threw the chair and I just sat with myself in the darkness. It was like, God damn it. Now I gotta find the chair. Hopefully I didn't break it. I'll have nowhere to sit. Yeah. I had like a little mini fucking anger tantrum.
AARON: Yeah, I didn't have anything drastic like that. It actually made me laugh hysterically every time it happened, honestly, because all I was thinking about was if there was video of this right now, and maybe there is. That's the funny part about it. They've been filming you in the dark for four days and this is the gift they give you. Oh, by the way, we have all this footage. Here's a highlight list of the 22 times you drilled different parts of your body and all the other bizarre things you did. But my whole thing was like, okay. The worst thing to drill myself on would be that hook. So I put a towel on that, my towel on that in the sink, right? Because the sink was super sturdy. And it was also, because the bathroom is so small, there was just a toilet and the sink in the bathroom. It was dangerously close to the toilet where if you were moved slightly to maybe wipe or weren't really thinking about where the sink was to the bathroom. Bend down and brush your teeth or whatever. You could definitely drill it. And I drilled it one time and I don't think I didn't have any major damage, but it was the last day too. I was like, I fucking made it through. I didn't drill my head at all. I ran into some things, shoulders, knees, of course. And a couple of the most disorienting things are a couple of times. There was like, on the other side of the bed was a kind of a little mat, yoga mat, and like a little meditation seat and a little mat. And so you're definitely meditating a decent amount, and it's much easier with absolutely zero distractions and zero noises. I mean, we couldn't really hear any nature noises, or so there was in there.
AUBREY: Because it was quiet snow, that was on the outside, right?
AARO: But the worst part was being disoriented coming out of one of those meditations where you're like, I think the beds over here and that's how I ran into things multiple times because I think, oh, I'm good and bang, the wall for sure. Dang, there's the bathtub.
AUBREY: Especially when you apply those meditative technologies that, if you get into a deep meditative state at that point, the void becomes really the void. And then you really lose track of like, “Whoa, like really where the fuck am I?”. But that's also when some of the visions come on the backside of these deep meditations that you can get in there.
AARON: Which is amazing. And then also dangerous on the flip side,
AUBREY: Right? How did you do the toothpaste on the toothbrush?
AARON: I came up with a good idea. I put the toothpaste in my mouth.
AUBREY: That's what I did.
AARON: Did you?
AUBREY: That's what I did.
AARON: I thought I was like the smartest person in the world.
AUBREY: I kept trying and I kept missing. And it’s way too much
AARON: Way too much. I'm like, you know what? Put it in my mouth.
AUBREY: And then how about, how about wiping? Cause for me, I had a little shower, so I never knew when I was done, it's like, you can't look at it. I wasn't going to sniff it. So I just hopped in the shower.
AARON: Listen, I talked to Eric who was in there. That was one of the questions that he asked as well. Obviously you guys had the same type of issues. I didn't really have, you know, I had those, I think partly because of the diet that we were eating.
AUBREY: Yeah.
AARON: I had very smooth number twos.
AUBREY: How many times do you have a ghost shit, where you shit and then you wipe and there's nothing there?
AARON: That was, honestly, that was most of the time.
AUBREY: Damn.
AARON: It was, it was brilliant.
AUBREY: I've had like less than 10 ghost shits in my life.
AARON: No, in my life? Not that many, but it's obviously all diet related because I was grubbing on these big salads that they had for us and that's probably a little out of the norm for to eat a humongous salad like every single dinner. Yeah, my dumps were super smooth. In my mind, now this is my own rationalization. They were all two wipers. They were two wipers and done. So it didn't need more than two wipes. Honestly, they were, they were multiple.
AUBREY: We could check the underwear for the record.
AARON: Well, there were multiple though, that I didn't even think I needed a wipe.
AUBREY: Man, you really killed it on that side. It was not me one time. So we were eating raw vegan food. So I requested more coconut oil in my little morning smoothie. Cause that's what we got. It's like. I wrote a little note, because you write a little note, obviously it's chicken scratch in the dark. Write a little note, set it out on the table where they set the food, and I was like, please more coconut oil. And then they made a fatty coconut oil smoothie for me. And then I just had vicious diarrhea for the next five hours.
AARON: Yeah.
AUBREY: That was one of my adventures in the dark.
AARON: That's fun, I bet, right? Because splashing everywhere in the bottom.
AUBREY: These things are the things that people don't actually understand. Obviously, we're talking about kind of the funny aspects of being in the black, but the black is really, it is an isolation of you with yourself. There's a technology that we're both aware of, that the ayahuasca shamans use, it's called the dieta. And in the dieta, you're connecting with the spirit of a plant that you're dieting and you're isolating yourself from all other communication and contact. The darkness is like dieting yourself. It's like you're on a diet where it's only you in your own energy field and there's nothing else but you. And I imagine that's what drew you in because you had some questions to answer, and you wanted to go into the deepest recesses of yourself. And when I heard that you were going to the darkness, I was like, “Oh, fuck. Yeah.” Cause that's a place where you get to actually see what's on the inside. It's almost like the darkness illuminates our own ability to see ourselves. Like we see ourselves in the dark. There's Khalil Gibran had a quote. “There's two men, one who is asleep in the light and the other is awake in the darkness.” And I don't think he was talking about a darkness retreat, but what he was talking about was how the external world will draw your attention in a million places, but in the darkness, you illuminate the interior of the self.
AARON: Yeah, I mean, I love that quote. For me, we've had it on the counter for a while. I thought it'd be an awesome opportunity to reset. I always like to take the first month of the off season and relax, kind of disconnect. And then towards the end of that month, I start to think about how do I reset my body and mind? Body, I like to do a lot of different types of dieting, fasting, Ayurvedic cleanses, which have been incredible. But I thought this would be really, really special. And I'd obviously talked to some people who had been. Eric and I, the ability to go with someone, obviously in the same room, but just the fact that I'm in there and knowing that he's in there, when it was something that I thought would be pretty cool, knowing we're both kind of doing this thing together. And I just needed to get the opportunity to reset and as it got closer and closer, obviously, there's a lot of other questions about my future that have been on the mind and been contemplated and I knew it'd be a good opportunity to kind of sit with those things, but that wasn't the main reason I was doing it. It was, how often do we ever unplug? And how often do we even set our phones down for a little bit, read a book instead of watch TV, meditate instead of listen to music, whatever it might be, that allows us to kind of disconnect from technology and from the world and give ourselves a gift of rest. So that was the most important thing to me.
AUBREY: It's an interesting aspect of rest because it's simultaneously the deepest rest. Because there's just nothing there and time slows way down. You actually lose track of time almost entirely. You wake up in the middle of the night. You don't know What time is it? Is it 2 am?
AARON: Yeah, it must be 8 o'clock.
AUBREY: It's like 6 am. Yeah. And then you're like, I think breakfast is coming soon. You're like, maybe.
AARON: Well, then you're waiting in your bed, like “Oh, he's gotta be coming with the food now. He may be forgot.”
AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah.
AARON: Did he forget the food or is this a test? They don't feed you on the second and third day? What is going on here?
AUBREY: So I think everybody imagined that you went right in and you started thinking about football right away, right? Because there's a lot of people waiting with bated breath to hear what your thoughts are about the continuation of your career. But hearing you talk about it, there was actually other stuff that came to the forefront that actually arose organically from your psyche that you wanted to kind of process and work through. So, how did the journey start for you?
AARON: Well, I wanted to have a loose plan but not be rigid. I wanted to leave space for anything that was going to come through and there's going to be hours of contemplation, hours on the yoga mat or meditation or in the bathtub or laying on my bed, where I just had time to just think in the quiet, in the absolute darkness. But one little nugget that I'd gotten from a friend before I went in was to make sure that you allow the rest to set in before you start to try and figure out the world. And so, that first night I was in bed, dinner was at six. I was asleep before seven for sure. And had a beautiful night's sleep. And then I really wanted to contemplate some things with some relationships in my life, some family stuff, and then obviously, career stuff and just kind of let whatever was going to come in, come in. And it did. It definitely did. And there was a lot of great contemplation the first day and a lot of lessons around. How I show up in the world and how I show up to in my relationships and friendships. And there was definitely some interesting insights around my childhood and things that happened in my childhood that I was able to sit with and heal. And then I spent parts of a couple of the days imagining what it would be like to retire and then imagining what it would be like to continue to play.
AUBREY: What I sense and what I feel from just the limited amount that I've seen on sports casting. And kind of the general media is it feels to me, you're my brother and like there's a friendship that extends beyond even time. And I see you in the fullness of yourself. And that's what I care about more than anything. So for me, thinking about you going into the darkness. It's a far different thing than I think what the media wants, which is like, this is a time where Aaron better be fucking thinking about football the whole time, it's like they try to reduce you to like a football robot, and that's what they want. Like, all right, a football robot needs to go in here to figure it out. But it's like, it's a far more holistic view of you as a human being who just happens.
AARON: Yeah, I think that's one thing that really was interesting around this whole last few weeks, I'm obviously do the McAfee show and it's a wide open show. We talk about a lot of different topics and just about really everything is fair game. There's nothing that's off limits. And yeah, I've basically been saying the same thing since the end of the season. I'm going to take some time. I'm going to get away from it. I'm going to get away from the emotion of the season. And start to let the off season settle in and then see how I'm feeling and what I want to do moving forward with my future. And obviously that's not good enough because it doesn't create a big enough story. So, then things are said and made up and unnamed sources and all the common media cycle, which can be draining if you give it a lot of energy, which I don't. But I think the thing that was interesting to me was just how people so desperately wanted to either be a part of this story and make it out to be that I was going in the dark to figure out, the only reason was to go in there and figure out if I'm going to play or not play. Number one, that's not true. It never was true. All I mentioned about it when I mentioned on the show was I'm going to do an isolation retreat. And I feel like afterwards. I'll be in a better place to make a decision about what I'm thinking about for the future. And then there were people who wanted to be a part of the story again and said, Oh, he's going in on Monday after the Super Bowl. And then I was going on McAfee on Tuesday and then the same people were like, Oh, well, he must be coming out after one day to do the McAfee show. I'm like, “Shut the fuck up. Stop with the bullshit.” And then it's like, “oh”, then he's going in on Thursday. It's like, “no, I'm not”. And then it's like, oh, he went in on Monday and he came out on Wednesday. He's only in there for two nights. No, I didn't. And I understand that much of my life, I think it's been, interesting to people because I have been a little bit of an enigma at times with trying to keep my private life private, cause I believed that that was really important and I didn't want to work through problems with my family in the public sphere, as unfortunately they did at times. And so there was this mystery around me. And then I did kind of a preliminary opening to this with a show with a local beat reporter, where I was, I think, a little more honest and people started to go, Oh, okay, this guy's interesting. He's starting to talk about some stuff. And then obviously the McAfee show has shown a different side of me and talking about with you last summer about plant medicine, I think was a great opportunity to talk about the things that are important to me.
AUBREY: Yep.
AARON: And it's all kind of been a process. But it is interesting to see how people wanted to spin this in a certain way. There was almost like a negative thing. Like why would you want somebody on your team who has to contemplate whether he wants to play football or not? You want me to talk about, you want athletes to talk openly and honestly about mental health and champion them, but when people are taking time to contemplate their future, to reset their minds, to really work on themselves, we're trying to cut that down. I think that's my issue with some of the media is, and really life in general that's, I never really do this anymore. I used to a lot when it was fun, but, but I responded to a guy on Twitter, who was trying, who was kind of ripping the darkness retreat. And I said, one of my favorite quotes, which is from Ted Lasso, and it might not be, Ted Lasso said it on the show, but it was, be curious, not judgmental. And I remember watching that clip on, and I love the show. And I remember watching that clip and just seeing how beautiful that moment was in the bar as he's playing darts and trying to win for his sweet boss, who's been kind of belittled by her former husband. And he's parading this young girl around and he basically says, “you actually don't know me. You haven't taken the time to get to know me.” And if he did, you would have known. Yeah, I play darts every Sunday with my dad. I just think there's such a sweet moment about that. And I think part of my life is responding that way. Like, you don't know me. But I'm trying to give you a glimpse. I'm trying to. Because I want to be seen. I want you to understand me a little bit more. And I want to inspire people as well to have the freedom to go do those things. But don't tear it down. Don't tear it down. Be interested. You don't understand ayahuasca, plant medicine, darkness retreats, fit for service, anything that we love to do and talk about first response shouldn't be trying to tear it down. Be interested or just let it go.
AUBREY: Yeah. You can't argue both sides. You can't say, we need to really pay attention to supporting the mental health of all of our players. And then when players are actually supporting their own mental health. You start to criticize them for it, not recognizing that it is part of that mindset where football is everything and the only thing that creates so many challenges. There's been lots of documentaries about it, about what happens after somebody wins a gold medal or somebody wins something where the entire locus of their identity has been placed in the function of what they do and then that's finite, that ends. There's a whole big ass long life afterwards. So if you haven't built different ways technologies, practices to explore your inner universe. It's going to be incredibly hard. So like this as a model for being like, yeah Ball out, like when you're playing, fucking go for it. And that's whether you're playing in front of the big lights or we're playing in the backyard, playing hoops, like go for it.
AARON: That feels like the big lights.
AUBREY: It does. Cause we definitely talk about it. We probably have more conversations about it. But I think for me, this past season was really, it was special, man, it was really special to be there with you. And I just think back to like some of those moments and obviously there's the fucking incredible celebration of the big wins and all that but there's so many like the quiet moments and the hard moments, like the hard moments before that Dallas game and that game, I mean, if I think of one of the top moments of my life, it was everything that led up to that Dallas game and right after that Dallas game too. And it was just being with you, the man who was also playing football, but being with my brother and fuck, like nobody really knows what that's like, unless they were there.
AARON: Yeah, I mean I was just running through some of the images from the season with having you out to so many games. I mean, you were in Miami, you were in Tampa, you came to multiple games at home. Where else did you come?
AUBREY: Yeah, it was Miami, Tampa, and then four home games.
AARON: Yeah, those moments after the games and before the games were so sweet, but the moment after the Dallas game was was just really special to me, to be able to walk out of the locker room after everything that happened that day, I mean, reconnecting with Mike in a really special way, McCarthy, my longtime coach, and having some really special moments with him pregame, and then being down and coming back, 14 in the fourth quarter, went into overtime, and then all the conversations we had preceding, leading up to that game and in the share and embrace after the game and just weep, it was wild. And it's just one of those special moments that you just don't, you're never going to forget, but you don't expect just how people can show up for you at just the right time.
AUBREY: Yeah. I mean, leading up to that game, that was a tough stretch. Talking to you on the phone before I got out there.
AARON: We'd lost five straight.
AUBREY: Five, lost five straight games. You got your hand, your thumb was fractured. And it was like, it was a low moment. And I was like, I remember I talked to you maybe Tuesday and then I was coming out Thursday. And it was like, Yeah. Like this is rock bottom, and so the first thing, the first concept that we were talking about was like, all right, here's bottom, like, feel it, feel, and this is for everybody, right? This applies to this specific situation, but feel the bottom and feel the weight of it, feel the stableness of actually the bottom and the knowing that like, “all right, Yeah, you could have lost more games than five, but five was like already at the threshold of just fucking nightmare material.” Right? So it's like, at that moment, like here's bottom. And I think that got us to, when I got out there and then we started in some real deep, kind of conversations and contemplations. And one of the things that I'd been working through is something I've been tracking my whole life, which is, there's me and then there's this force. That I call the anti-me that is constantly trying to fuck me up, like just finding a way to drag my attention from my highest focus or harness the voice in my own head, my superego, my inner judge, and just beat me down in a way. And so I just started sharing some of my experience about the journey of You versus anti you and that really kind of landed for you too, as it does with most people, because we know that force. It's the inner resistance as Steven Pressfield would say or the Yitzer Haraz, the Kabbalists would say.
AARON: They're strong too. It's the greatest opponent you're going to face because it knows you. Inside and out. And it knows all your triggers and how to deceive you and it shows up in a myriad of different ways, but it's that for me is that negative self talk that sitting on your shoulder saying, you can't do this maybe you should quit, maybe it's time to move on, you don't have it anymore, like you're not good anymore, you suck. Whatever it might be during those games and off the field, it's just all the negative things you could possibly think about yourself. So like putting a name to that was awesome. And then just like upping the awareness around that and letting that force. No, not today, not today,
AUBREY: Not today. And so, in this version of you, which like you said, it's like a carbon copy of you, it is an exact copy of you that knows all of your weaknesses, knows all of the ways to talk shit to you in just the most perfect way. And because it has full access to your psyche, it's like you make a carbon copy, like those martial arts movies where the final contest is Bruce Lee versus Bruce Lee, in that kind of contest. And I ultimately realized that the Purpose of that force was to drive evolution, because if you're competing against somebody that's exactly as good as you, the only way to beat them is to evolve, is to actually become a little bit better. And in that moment of becoming a little bit better, the force that we talked about calling on was the king, like call on the king, the highest version of yourself to which everybody else, including the anti you has to bend the knee when you call the king forward. And I remember watching that game from the box and I could tell like, Oh shit, like the battle is on. It was 2814 and it was like, all right. And even though I can't, they didn't follow you in the sidelines and I have a bunch of close ups of your face. I could feel that that was like, that was a place where there is a significant moment of Aaron versus the anti Aaron.
AARON: Yeah, I think it shows up a lot of times in the, oh, here we go again mindset. We're getting our ass whooped in various ways over the last five weeks. And what's going to happen this time? Oh, we're going to have this punt block or whatever. And then this short field and turnover and there's so much that goes into being able to kind of beat back that force, but at the end, at the root of it is very simple. It's knowing who you are, reminding yourself of who you actually are, and you refer to it, which I love is the king, and reminding yourself who you are in those moments. For me allowed me to win those battles against myself. And there was a moment in a game where I was banged up and I was thumbs broken
AUBREY: Thumbs jacked, losing the game
AARON: Losing the game. Maybe they're ready to run me out of town and sit me down on the bench
AUBREY: There was talk about that, right?
AARON: Yeah. And scrapped the season. And sit Randall down, sit big dog down, maybe put a couple of guys who've been banged up on IR and just say, “Hey, this wasn't our year.” And although we lost the next two games, I just felt like we needed to get one of those three in that stretch. We had Dallas, we had Tennessee, we had Philly, and that one was a big turning point for all of us. And we didn't play our best game the next week, but we played tough and then we played Philly tough and then we won four straight and gave ourselves a chance, but that night was really special for a number of different reasons, but most of all, you were there that we had spent that time together and that, in those moments of doubt that came up, I said, “Hey, bro, you're really good at this, but not today. Not today, Anti Me.”
AUBREY: Mad respect, Anti Me. But not fucking today. You guys started to make that run, to close the gap of the two Dutch town deficits, which I think I heard some stats that the Cowboys had like maybe never lost a game when they're up by 14 in the fourth, in the fourth quarter. So odds are way against you, but there was some force that I could just feel. And that's the interesting aspect of anybody who plays sports, we talk about momentum. And we talk about it as if it's almost like this rational material thing. And we also kind of get that it's emotional, but you can feel an energy. You can feel it if you play. And if you're really feeling it, you can feel the energy, if you're tapped into the game as well. And there was something that started to shift and it was like, “Oh shit, like here comes, here comes the King.” Like the King's been fucking bloodied and beaten in the lion has been trapped in a corner for a long time, but there's a fucking roar that's ready to emerge and your whole squad kind of lined up behind you, everybody would permeate it, not just you, but there was a feeling. And I remember like that feeling of like, all right, here we fucking go. And then it started, the drive started and scoring started.
AARON: Yeah. I mean, that was the night that Christian Watson will never forget because he came out, I threw him two dimes and he dropped them both. And he was over on the sideline, I think, kind of feeling sorry for himself and pissed off. And then I threw him a deep ball and he made a ridiculous over the shoulder catch.
AUBREY: Ridiculous.
AARON: And then backflipped and was like, and here I am. And I was like, fuck.
AUBREY: HIs Christian versus anti Christian had to be fucking strong at that moment. And the King Christian showed up that fucking day.
AARON: And it lasted the rest of the year. And maybe the rest of his career. How fucking sweet is that? So cool. But the biggest play that got us going was we had fourth and eight, and I had kind of come up with this play during the week that was based off of some stuff I'd seen on tape where. I felt like if we got in a three man stack, and instead of breaking out like the team we had watched had done, do a couple in breakers, then we can maybe get Christian free on a deep post. And Matt called it in on the fourth, that is, hey, you want, I can't remember what we called it, but hey, you want this play? I said, oh, yeah. And I hit Christian for a touchdown and that kind of changed things. We stopped him. We had a nice, beautiful, long drive. We got it. We went to overtime, they had a chance in our territory. They were marching down and we're thinking, oh man, like after all this, we've come back. Like, are we really going to lose this in overtime?
AUBREY: Well, also had a chance to win in regulation. There's that, if I recall correctly, like had a chance to kick a field goal, like make the right drive and it didn't happen. And it was like, that was that moment also where the anti you could have been like, oh, fuck, that was it. And now we don't even have the ball first and overtime, fucking A.
AARON: Yeah, but there was just something different that night.
AUBREY: Yeah, I agree.
AARON: And something shifted, for me, obviously something shifted for Christian, and he loved when it comes together like that. I mean, those are the games you live for. Obviously you want to win championships, but at the end of the day, you think about the games that stick out or where your backs are against the wall. It didn't seem likely. Nobody really believed it was going to happen. And then one thing changed, and that's life. When your back's against the wall, you're in a dead end street. You don't think anything is, your future is going to be a certain direction, then bang, something changes. Intuition. Tragedy sometimes. Wake up to life in a new way. Epiphany. Finally say, fuck it, I've had enough. Quit. Major change. But it all starts, usually, with taking ownership of your role in life and saying, no, no, I'm going to show up as the king or the queen in my life. And I'm not going to give in to the anti me. I'm not going to give in to the outside world or any force that wants to bring me down, hold me down, keep me down. That's when you can step into your power.
AUBREY: Yeah. I remember when Mace kicked that field goal to win the game, like, the joy of that moment for me, I've had it a couple of times in my life. I had it when my friend Bodhi won the gold medal. I had it when my friend TJ won the championship against Henning Brau, when Cody Nolove won the championship against Dominic Cruz. These are all my friends. And even though that was a middle of season game and we didn't know if it was going to ultimately “matter” to the ultimate arc of the season, that win for me was like, it's this flood of emotion where I was so happy that all I could do is just sob, because it's a kind of love that you have for somebody else that it's the most beautiful thing. And if anybody hasn't experienced that feeling of rooting for somebody so much, like so much and not trying to shield yourself. And this was, this was my commitment to myself in the game. Like don't shield myself from the utter heartbreak, or the utter ecstasy of it, because there's a way that you can remove yourself and just observe yourself, and like, “Ah, it'll be alright, like, no matter what, it's gonna be fine”, and you can put yourself, and you can do that as a player, or you can do that as a fan, but to like, go in and be like, no, I'll be wrecked, I'll have the courage to be fucking devastated. Or I'll have the courage to feel like the ecstasy of this. And that's the way of the warrior poet, right? Like that's the commitment to be, no, I'm all in, I'm pushing all my emotional chips in here. And to do that, in support of your brother or your sister, when they're doing their thing, it's a feeling that you just can't describe, it's unbelievable. And to me, it's transcended. The ecstasy of any feeling of anything that I've ever done. And again, I haven't had a massive athletic career or anything like that, but there's been incredible moments of accomplishment and achievement for me. Like the moment my book was made it on the New York Times bestseller list or anything like that. It's me, it's always been like right on. Like, that's cool. But then when it's like, it's somebody I love, I fucking lose my shit. And it was just such a cool moment. And of course, like seeing you back at the house and just knowing that we knew, we knew the story within the story. We knew the game within the game that was happening and it got to play out in this unbelievably dramatic stage.
AARON: Yeah. First of all, thank you. Like the way you showed up for me this year is incredible. And that's what you do for your people you love. Anybody that knows you and loves you because of that characteristic. I just knew how much it meant to me and also because of how much love we have for each other, like how much it would mean to you. And so you had already gone home, right? You had gone back to the house because I was long at the stadium. And this is like giving away the ending to my darkness retreat a little bit, but it was the exact same feeling. Seeing you walk across the dining room table, or from the room you're staying in, into where I was at in the dining room was the same feeling I got when I opened my eyes out of darkness. And that was just an overwhelming sense of love for life. Yeah. Because I was looking at my brother, who I knew was, like, so proud. Yeah. And also knew how much went into that, and how much it meant to me. And because it meant so much to me, it meant so much to you. And there, we were in a ceremony together. Like, we've had incredible deep conversations, but moments like that lock in the friendship for a lifetime, for sure. And remind you, email at your low points, I'm always gonna be able to count on this man to be by my side.
AUBREY: To the end.
AARON: So thanks, bro.
AUBREY: To the end. So, alright, you're in the darkness, and you've had incredibly high moments like that come through the challenge of it. Like you said in the season before, isn't this romantic, right? Like, the romance of the season, the pain, the joy, all of this, that's something you've been doing for a long time. This is a pivotal decision point, you're going into the darkness. So open up how you started to think when you turned yourself from your own inward gaze to heal what you needed to heal to get the kind of rest and that kind of parasympathetic drop and to really plumb deep and you turned your inner eye to football. What started going through your head?
AARON: On the third day, I kind of woke up as usual, brushed my teeth in the real smart way, after eating some breakfast and then kind of getting into my meditation and long bath. And it kind of came to me like, today you are going to experience your life in the present and in the near future and in the long term future that you are retired. So today you are retired. What does that look like? What does that feel like? And I think there were a lot of amazing things that came through and, and I had to work through a lot too. You've played as long as I have, I think there's something inside us that wants to say, I'm going to be totally fine when I'm done playing. I have nothing left to prove. I've accomplished a ton in this sport, and I have, and I don't need to play for anything other than the joy, and I'll be totally fine and in retirement, I got a lot of stuff going on and I got plenty of things I can transition into, but sitting in the darkness with your thoughts, I woke up that morning, probably about 3:30 or 4, thinking it was maybe like 8:30 or 9, so I had maybe nine hours to when dinner was coming when in fact they had what I had like 14 hours. So by the time you go through your breakfast and meditation and bath and stuff. You got a good 12, 11, 12 hours to like, just think in the quiet, just you and your thoughts, and a lot of insecurity and fear came up around what retirement looks like that I hadn't really acknowledged or even thought was there. I thought I'm fine. I got my foundation. I got philanthropic stuff. I want to be a part of, I got business stuff that I've been cultivating for years now. I have dreams outside the game. I want to travel. I want to get my body back and not wake up hurting and all these different thoughts that I thought was like my justification. I'm probably totally fine. I got friendships. I got plots of land next to best friends and life to experience and hopefully fatherhood and kids and all these different things. But there were some deep insecurities and fears that came up in the darkness around what retirement is. And I really had to sit with those and then go to the root of what those are and trace those back to. Childhood or chase those back to college or traces back to early days in the NFL and and work through those moments that came up and and the insecurities. And the beautiful thing was probably by what seemed like now looking back was probably early afternoon so after five or six hours of kind of going through that I found a really nice sweetness and comfort in the reality that I was sitting with that day, which was retirement and what that would look like. And what wouldn't nourish my soul best, where would I want to live? Who would I want to spend time with? What do I want to do with my free time? Where would I want to travel? How would I fill the competitive hole in my heart? That is because I have played sports since I was six years old. So really beautiful ending to that, but a lot of really difficult contemplations around, all this insecurity and fear that came up of like, what happens when they turn the lights off to your career? what happens when you're, Oh, when somebody says, Oh, you used to be Aaron Rodgers, right? I still am. I think the overarching message that really hit me both days. So the third day was retirement and the fourth day was playing. So the reality that I lived in there in those two days separately was obviously the third day was I'm retired and the fourth day was unplanned.
AUBREY: I just want to unpack a little bit of some of those insecurities that come up because a lot of people would. They always hypothesize the difficulty that a player will have after they're done playing football, right? Like they project because it's, again, they expect and also the energy around it is that you are a football player and that's what you do. And that's the entirety of your personhood is reduced to how you perform on the field. And so there's a lot of collective energy around that. And so people assume that there's going to be an identity crisis, they assume that to me when I stepped down as CEO of Onnit, like, are you going to be okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be fine. I did my thing. I brought Onnit to the best place that I could possibly go and it was time for me to step back and let someone else run it. And it was also because that happened, honestly, that actually happened, right after my darkness retreat, like within two weeks after my darkness retreat, I handed over the CEO ship of Onnit to Jason Havey. Which is the best decision I could have made, but I was able to actually think that through in the darkness and see if there was anything else attached to the letters, CEO, behind my name. And to me, it was like, no, I know myself in the fullness of who I am and that doesn't reduce it. But the whole world was projecting. Like how difficult that must be for me and in this case, and that's a smaller version of what you were talking about here for you, because that was only a relatively shorter period of my life, one decade, rather than three decades of football. But what was it like, what was it actually that the insecurity came up about? Was it that you were worried, maybe you wouldn't love yourself or that other people wouldn't love you or that, like, what was it precisely that really came up that you had to work through.
AARON: I don't think that there was one specific thing. It was a combination of a lot of things, but it was everything from irrelevance to boredom to, I think it's probably this, if not anything, it’s regret. It's living a life and regretting making this decision.
AUBREY: Not knowing what could have been.
AARON: What could have been. So that's the fear part. The fear is waking up every single day and wishing I was retired if I was playing or wishing I was playing if I was retired. And the reality I was sitting in day three was, I was retired. So waking up and going, what are you doing? You should be playing, why were you so scared of whatever failure or hanging on too long or whatever it might be. That you just every single day regretting that decision. But the other step came up was the insecurity of, okay, what am I, if I'm not playing, like, does anybody, who am I to people now? And not the media, not like anybody gonna give a shit what I'm doing anymore. Like, it's not about that, but about like, who am I to people, to my people. If I'm not providing a game to come to and an experience to have, how do they look at me now? It's the stuff I was dealing with, and am I still lovable? Am I still interesting? Am I still worthy to be included in community and included in activities and well, people still want me around. Which are all brilliant lies from the anti me. Brilliant though.
AUBREY: For sure.
AARON: Because they can hit you on triggers of, they go back to childhood of being a kid who is athletic, but also really smart. So not quite they're like super jocks and not quite the nerdy kid and didn't really have the popularity that, maybe I wanted when I was in elementary school and junior high, cause that's such a interesting formal years for us where kids are, it can be really tough at times and then finding my way through life as a young person in sport, and then dealing with family life and teachers and coaches and obstacles to get to where I was at. And then the regret of like, I put in all that work just to walk away when I still could play. Is that what I really want to do? The overarching theme that came through in both days was an idea that I'd always set up, I think, is a way to protect myself. And that is that there is life and then there is football. And the reason I set it up like that was because I never wanted to be just a football player. Because I'm a smart guy who went on Jeopardy, and won and hosted Jeopardy, and I'm interested in all these other things and look how don't pigeonhole me is just a football player, I'm not a dumb jock and I fought so hard for this, what seems now ridiculous way to differentiate my life or private life and my career. But what hit me in the darkness, on both days, as I said, as a retired player and as a current player, was that my life is football. My life and football are connected, and that's totally okay. I always thought that if that was the case, that I would only find my identity in football, and then I would never be able to walk away easily, and I would never be able to be seen as somebody who was like, not just a dumb, football player, but football has been my life, has given so much to my life. And it's a part of my life. So it's connected to my life, and there's no difference in my life and my happiness is directly connected to how I feel about football and it gave me such a deep calm about the decision because I finished those two days with deep love and admiration and blessings in a retired life of fulfilling all the needs that I have and spending time with the people that I love and having no regrets about the game. And then also, a reality of going back and playing, but not playing to add spite, to prove something to someone for the money, but playing because I fell in love with this game when I was six years old and it makes my life better. And I'm happy. I'm happy when I'm with my guys. And I'm happy when I'm with my people out there, battling, working out during the week, practicing, traveling, playing cards. Spending time with, with those people and trying to pass on any of the wisdom that I got.
AUBREY: This reminds me of a model that Mark Gaffney talks about a lot. And it's a three stage model. And the first stage is pre tragic. And this is where You're just playing football and you're not really thinking about it too much. At least not consciously. You're just kind of playing football and enjoying playing football. You get we're talking early career stuff. It's like, Holy shit, I'm out of here. I'm fucking balling. Like, this is great. I always dreamed of this. And you're not thinking about too much else other than that. That's the pre tragic. It's like the original Edenic state before you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, right? Of course, lots of interpretations of that myth. But then there's the tragic stage where you actually start to realize like, wow, I don't want to be solely identified with this game of football. I need to actually carve out an identity that's separate because I'm aware of the challenges that could come from this, losing my identity in the game. So you create a split, a rift between your life and football. There's what you do and then there's your work. And then what I'm hearing you say now is what would be the post tragic stage, which is the second sweetness, which is actually having all of the knowledge of the tragic, all of the knowledge of what can happen, all of the knowledge internally and externally about the game, and then the potential to step back in, in the second sweetness and go like, man, I fucking love this game, this is fucking cool and it seems like as you're going into day four, and I want to hear about the meditations on day four, but it seems like you were able to access the timeline where you could play football in the full post tragic stage of consciousness, where it's the second innocence, where it's just really the love for the game.
AARON: Yeah, I think it was breaking down that, what I'd set up in my mind that I'm not just a football player. And when I'd say that, my life and football are one, what I found was I looked around in my life and I said, look at all that football has given me, even being in this hole is because, I met you. And we connected after you watched me play a game and say, how can you not be romantic about football? We'd already met each other, but we became close after that moment, which was when I was deeply in love with football, in that moment after beating the Niners, an incredible game. The reason I'm in this hole is because I met you on a deep level and became brothers with you. Looked at my life, I have three godsons now, and I'm so thankful for them and their fathers and mothers, but fathers mostly which was who I was friends with all met in some way, shape or form because of football, two of my best friends in the world. One of them is Randall Cobb, who Kate is my godson. I met him through football. David Bakhtiar is blocked for me for a decade watching my backside as one of my closest friends in the whole world and somebody can call on at any time and like, “Hey, I need you to cheer me up today”, with so many days we'd be driving around on that golf cart he got me and just those moments football, my house, money, the opportunities, people I've met, football. So like, instead of trying so hard to be, I'm not just a football player. What if I just embraced, I am a football player and look at how fucking beautiful it's impacted my life. Six years old, watching Joe Montana drive down the field and win a championship and dreaming and waking up saying, I'm all grown up, man. And this game taught me how to be a man. Taught me about life. Gave me some of the deepest friendships. That I'll have the rest of my life and some of the most incredible moments.
AUBREY: And the temperance, right? Like if you want to have a strong blade of your soul and your consciousness and your psychology, you gotta go into the forge. Somehow you need the heat, you need the hammer. Like, all people need the forge if you're gonna forge strong steel. If you want that Hattori Hanzo fucking super katana. Like you have to go into the heat in the hammering and the pressure applied from football itself. Of course, you can look at it like, fuck, this is a negative thing. But there's also the other aspect of it like, it's a chance to go put your current self into the forge and any weaknesses that are there, any cracks will be emerged from the pressure, pressure always reveals the cracks and it also strengthens all of your positive attributes as well. So it's not only the beautiful parts, but it's also the fucking gnarly parts that forge a stronger self and soul. And so I can at least see what an incredibly strong Forge football is. Fuck, when I play my rec league basketball with like three fans, Vy being one of them, like I'm learning shit about. It's a small little Forge for me, maybe because I'm fucking, I'm too competitive for playing in rec leagues, but it's a big deal to me. And it's like, I'll reveal aspects of my psyche. I remember there was one time in this past season where I thought I was well beyond this, but close to the end of the game, and we were down by one, we needed to score, and I had a chance to make a move and take the shot, but I thought, “oh man,” I had that anti me come up, like, “Don't miss the last shot, man”. So I fucking passed it, homie misses the shot, I managed to get the rebound and I put it in and so it like saved the day, but I finished and we won the game. But I finished, and I was quiet. Vy's like, “why are you quiet?” Poor Vy, I'm like, taking this like a real, fuckin
AARON: Vy is your biggest cheerleader.
AUBREY: Yeah. “We won! fucking, you made that shot!” But I know, secretly, that there is a little voice of the anti me that came up and made me a slight little coward in that moment where I said, I don't want the pressure of this game winning shot because what if I miss it? And I got to see that part of myself and go like, “alright, motherfucker, you won that time.” And it all worked out in the end. Of course, it doesn't matter, it's a rec league, but like, I learned something.
AARON: It all matters.
AUBREY: Yeah, it does. It matters to the forging of the blade of who I am. And even the pressure of a rec league game with a couple fans and a team that, of course we're fucking giving it, trying to win our best. That's what makes it interesting, is when you give it everything you got, but it's such a powerful tool to use about life. And that's what people who don't play ball or don't play any sport or don't compete, I don't think they understand that this is the place where you practice life. Like this is the place where you start to really learn who you are and how to navigate. And that's why, like when I have kids, yeah, I'm not going to force them to play any sport, but competition is, if I can impart anything upon them, it's like, this is a necessary aspect. And I'll be leading by example. Of course, they'll see me and Uncle Aaron.
AARON: They're gonna want me to take it easy on you. Can you help my parenting out today? Kid's gonna be watching, right? So just like, let me win this one so he feels good about his day. Being pretty awesome. And then the next time he won't come to the game and you can win.
AUBREY: Yeah, yeah. Some version of that. Some version, something like that. And I learned that from my mom. Professional tennis player, semifinals Wimbledon. I knew it. Like, I knew that was in my blood and I wouldn't be anywhere close to the human that I am if it wasn't for competing full out. I wouldn't know myself. I wouldn't know myself at all and I think that's
AARON: What are your limits?
AUBREY: Exactly. So, alright, now you're building this kind of internal mental case for, “fuck, maybe I come back.” So bring us into the way you started thinking about that fourth day of like, all right, maybe I'm back. How does this look? What does this feel like? And I know obviously the question everybody wants to know, what fucking Jersey are you wearing? Lots of those types of questions.
AARON: Well, so day three happens and it ends and it's just super beautiful and I feel great about it. And I feel like, man, I just kind of healed that insecurities about retirement and I don't need to retire because I'm tired. I just retired because that's what serves my soul the best. That's what nourishes me the best. And that's what, that's the, the next step of my journey. I'm feeling just super great about it. I wake up in the morning, like one more day, one more night and I'm out. Maybe I'll entertain what it'd be like to play today, but we'll see what comes through. Like, I feel great about where I'm at. And then, I go through my breakfast, bath, and meditation. I'm like laying in bed going, what if I did play this year? And so I went through that whole thing. I love football. I always have. I used to say is my favorite sport when I wasn't even allowed to play it yet. I'd be playing basketball, baseball, soccer, and people would say, what's your favorite sport? I'd say “football. Of course, football.” We didn't play. Yeah, but it's my favorite. I'm gonna play, at some point I'm gonna be a quarterback. And a famous story that we told last time, a famous for me, but that crazy food appreciation teacher at Cal who told me I never amount to anything in the league, there were some people along the way who definitely helped with inspire me to like, “Oh yeah, Oh, let's see about that, huh?” Yeah, see who's laughing less. But so there's always sources of inspiration to that. But when you have that deep, deep love for the game, it's not that hard to start that idea in your mind. “Oh yeah. Yeah. I love it first and foremost.” So that's great. How would I want to, and why would I want to play? And what are the reasons for playing? Don't feel like I have anything left to prove. For the most part. I mean, you say that, but there's always like, I could still prove one thing,
AUBREY: Ofcourse, yeah. You transcend it, but include it also
AARON: I don't feel I have any left to accomplish, for people like, show you like, “Hey, I can do this,” or I got to win another Superbowl, so people think of me in a higher sense. Like, no, I’m not doing that, I love plan and that's a good enough reason. What's going to make it most enjoyable? What do I love about the game? Competition, of course. Laying it on the line, but all the other stuff that goes before it. The mental game, Monday to Saturday. The discipline. The little advantages you try and gain through diet or sleep, meditation or acupuncture, whatever it might be that you're doing, and I've done a number of different things over the years to try and like, I'm gonna try this and see if this works or this works or these herbs or this tea or this, whatever it might be that, this diet, I'm going to eat vegan this year, I'm going to eat, paleo or I'm going to try different things for different advantages. But the root of it is you want to be the best and love competing and you want to dominate. But what makes this sport special is the people. It's people, it's a people business. People win championships. I know teams get the credit for it, but the people win the championships. You win championships and you have success with great people. And look back on my career on 18 years and some incredible, incredible friendships, some amazing characters that I've played with and some great friendships that I've made. And I thought a lot about what made our best teams best. What made them a cut above the other ones? And it was a group that was super connected, that really truly enjoyed each other. And that's what teams are always trying to replicate, is how do you create that environment? I think there's a lot of different ways, but you have to allow for leadership on a football team to take control of the locker room. And to set the parameters and the goals, and then you have to have it wrapped in accountability. There has to be accountability because that is life. There's accountability for actions. There's accountability for decisions that you make and true accountability. There's two types of accountability in my mind that I've seen in football, one is real accountability and the other is forced accountability. So forced accountability is that there's an environment that exists where people will only do enough to not get in trouble. Do they not put on a decision, actually? They're just doing enough so they won't get fined here. They'll spend 20 minutes in the sauna to make their weight instead of actually changing their diet to eat better, to make weight. They'll make sure they're at this point. Waiting at the right time or going through their workout set at just the right time and just getting their stuff done instead of no, when we're in here, we're going to actually get our work done. We're going to be on time to meetings. We're going to take notes. There's two different ways of doing it. One is bullshit. And I've seen a lot of that in the league where the environment is created where accountability is forced and there aren't ramifications usually in that for breaking that accountability and nobody's worried about breaking that eventually. So that's how teams derail and coaches can lose teams.

AUBREY: I mean, obviously that type of accountability is led by example, right? So like you play a big part of that by actually leading with your own internal accountability, it seems like it has to encompass the coaches, the coach, the coaching staff, the whole organization, like all the way top to bottom, there has to be a coherence of a mutual agreement of that accountability. And then what about trust, because it seems like that's another key element too. It's accountability.
AARON: Trust is a part of the other type of accountability. It's the real accountability where I'm going to trust, I'm going to create an environment where my players, my team can flourish. But ultimately it's on them. Every single day, they have a decision to buy into what we're doing. But in real accountability, there involves, obviously trust, but there involves free will and a decision. But when it involves free will and a decision, if you really want it to be real accountability, it has to involve consequences. Where if you do not adhere to the accountability as defined by this player led team or this team or this locker room or this trip or whatever it might be, then you are, there are consequences for that. So then people know I can do whatever the hell I want. But there are consequences. How does this happen a lot of times? You win a lot. When you win a lot, it cures a lot of things. It covers up even more things. So we've had a lot of success for a long time in Green Bay, but there's been definitely years in those 18, where after you go through stretches of winning where some of that accountability starts to lack, some of that structure, lacks. But it's ultimately all on the players and the coaches and the setup of that accountability, to allow for people to make a decision to buy in and the best teams that we've had 2009, 2010, 2014, probably 2020. We had player led teams that had enough great dudes, coaches and players who said, here's the options. We're going to come together. We're going to spend time together. We're going to believe in each other, but we're going to get our work done. And we're going to understand that everything that we do matters. And we're on a decision. You fuck up, you're late to something, you're fine. No questions asked. You do something that brings negative attention to the team, then there'll be ramifications. Recently I went through in my own medicine journey. I was getting some body work from a really talented body worker as I was in my medicine journey, which is become kind of a part of a practice that I have understanding that the body, the Soma, carries a lot of both karmic trauma. In this case, it really felt like karmic trauma and she was working rolfing style with her elbow between my ribs and my back in a place that I've never had worked that intensely. And she just intuitively was guided to it and I went into this state of like, again, I'm on medicine, ketamine and cannabis, and I go into this state where I see myself In the heat of battle just swarmed by orcs. Let's say, if we're going for middle earth analogy, but swarmed by orcs and I just have my Sword pulled wars bane is just singing, but i'm getting fucking overrun and I look to my left and right to see Legolas and Gimli and whoever else might be there my fucking brothers. And they weren't there. Where are you? And I just started saying, and I got emotional thinking about it. It was like, where are you? Like, where are you? Like, I'm in the fucking fray. I'm taking shots. I'm bleeding. And we know that this is the path. Like, we have to make it through this. And they weren't there in this karmic replay of this wound. And to me, of course, sports is still sports. It's not fighting the orcs, but it's a way to feel that and access that kind of feeling. And I think the real accountability is not because you'll get punished as a deserter. Like, it's not like, yes, the Spartans, yes. If you deserted, you were dead. So accountability, like you said, fines, whatever, that's, that's the framework, but for sure the reason why the Spartans didn't turn and run is because they loved each other to a point where like they would never, if they saw fucking Leonidas looking and some like that moment of shame is far worse than death
AARON: Far worse
AUBREY: Far worse than death. So it's that kind of bond of like, I wouldn't dare. Sell this workout short or this practice short because I love my brothers and I'm gonna go to battle for them with them to the fucking end.
AARON: 100 percent. And that's exactly what I'm trying to say, is it those teams that loved each other had that deep knowledge that you know what? Everything we do matters because I owe it to the guys on my right, on my left in that locker room in that huddle. Because they're all counting on me. And what greater tragedy. And to not be there for your brothers when you're needed. And I don't think it's specific to one organization, I think businesses have the same issues when you have sustained success for a while, you start to think like, “Oh, we're on autopilot. This is what's going to happen all the time.” And you start letting little things go. It can happen to an individual as well, not just an organization.
AUBREY: I mean, I think we have this collective sense of the wrongness of when a player steps out of that, and you know that a player is just there for their own stats, and they don't actually give a shit about the team and about their brothers that are out there playing. Everybody has this sense, like, this is fundamentally wrong. And I think it's from thousands of years of our ancestors. No matter what ancestry you come from, you've been in battle, you've been in war. Our ancestry stretching back to fucking Atlantis and before, right? Like, the deep.
AUBREY: And everybody's like, oh, he said Atlantis. Whatever. It's fucking look at Graham Hancock and figure it out. Call it what you want. But there were old civilizations everybody's gonna have to deal with it.
AARON: And shit keeps getting older
AUBREY: It keeps getting older. Shout out to Graham and Randall and all the Anthony West. All the fifa who are out, illuminating this. But for thousands of years this has been a part of us and it's like a microcosm of what that would be like. And we know that it's wrong when someone chooses self over the team
AARON: Because we know that person goes out by themselves in our war party, either he's dying or we're dying. So you just innately know, like, this is fucked up. Something bad's gonna happen here. Right.
AUBREY: And that was the idea of the phalanx, where everybody locked shields. If one person retracted their shield, there was a hole, and that hole was then vulnerability for everybody. Right? And that's the idea. As soon as one person breaks out, you lose that coherence that actually makes you powerful. As a team. So if you're going to play again, you're going to want to find a situation that that is fucking alive. Right? Because otherwise, fuck it.
AARON: Yeah. And it's never like you don't have a list of 32 teams and go, okay, look, this team has that. And this team has this. This team doesn't have that. And this team may have that it's every year is such an interesting, fascinating journey because you don't really know what's going to happen. You have ideas and there's always, I felt for years and years and years, there were really about seven or eight teams that could actually win it every year, every now and then there was a wild card that would come up and make some noise or win kind of out of nowhere. But most of the time you had a good feeling as you went into the off season and training camp and even preseason, like, okay, I think these teams in the NFC are going to be really good, and these teams in NFC are going to be really good, and it's probably going to be one of these eight teams, probably, that does it. And I don't think that's really changed. I mean, there's definitely a lot of parity in the league, but ultimately, every year, I think maybe as much as many as 12, but more like probably 6 or 8 teams that you feel like really should win it, unless something terrible happens injury wise or they should be in the mix. So, you want to be one of those teams, and I feel like, damn near every year, in Green Bay, we were that team. We had a chance definitely since 2009, we had a chance to win it all. We fortunately and unfortunately only one of those times, but those are things you just can't measure. You can't measure how the chemistry comes together. You can't measure how people play on last year's of contracts or first years of new contracts, how rookies step up, how veterans find a role and people embrace their role. How new coaches step up. Like we had last year with Rich Passaccia, our special teams coach who totally changed culture like that. If you thought something could happen like that, but you never knew the type of impact that you're like that can have. And that's the beauty in the game. It can happen the opposite way too, you lose certain players or certain coaches and those roles or voids aren't filled then it can definitely take from the team. And I've seen that over the years too and some of that is you just can't get anything about it. A guy gets hurt or maybe a guy gets an opportunity to go coach somewhere else. Things change promotions. There's been, obviously, Mike Sherman was my coach, my rookie, or he got fired and a whole new staff came in. Mike McCarthy was there for 13 years. He got fired after that new staff. So there's been turnover, but it's always about the people. So, who are those people that are going to create that environment, that's best. And then also, like, yeah, I'm under contract with the Packers for sure. So if I decide to play like first as a conversation with them, where are you guys at? Like, honestly, I've been there 18 years, and I have so much love for Green Bay and the organization. I mean, 18 years, that's a teenager. But the second to last year of being a teenager, think about how you felt at 18, and all the lessons you learned, and driving, and dating women, and finishing high school, and just that's what I did in one city, playing there, and learn, and I got there, I was 21 years old. Now I have gray hair and gray on my beard and started 15 seasons and know the city inside and out and my favorite places and tons of people outside the facility, who are I call friends.
AUBREY: Amazing Indian food in Green Bay, by the way.
AARON: Oh my God.
AUBREY: Surprising. Shout out
AARON: India Bhavan, man.
AUBREY: Shout out to India Bhavan. We ate that, probably.
AARON: Hey, thank you guys. Incredible man. Unbelievable. For those of you who don't know, it’s where the Hooters used to be. It hasn't been there for a long time. And I have to admit, I only was there one time in 2006.
AUBREY: India Bhavan, I gotta say. It's probably an upgrade.
AARON: It's definitely an upgrade. It's phenomenal. But yeah, man, I miss that place.
AUBREY: Yeah, for sure.
AARON: That's incredible. That was like every Friday or Saturday was India Bhavan.
AARON: Definitely when you were in town.
AUBREY: Oh yeah. We went deep. So if you had to say right now, and I know this, people are probably hoping that this podcast yields this concrete decision. This is what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. But it feels like very much there's still a process and also conversations that you need to have conversations with Green Bay and a sense of what other opportunities are out there that actually get you really excited that you are fired up.
AARON: Yeah. I mean, I think people have to first. I don't know when they're going to see this, but we're like 48 hours getting out of the dark and actually getting my eyes back. So 48 hours ago, I was in the dark and now I'm out. But it's been a lot of time reflecting out of that and journaling and trying to really adjust back to this reality, even though there's only 4 days, but so much happened during that time. And there's just so much contemplation out of that because there's really four separate days and many different topics. I think as much as anything before there felt like one scary option and one unknown. That's what the two felt like. Now, that's not how I would describe them, before I went into darkness. In the darkness the realization was one option was scary and one was unknown.
AUBREY: And which was which?
AARON: The scary was retirement. And the unknown was going back and playing and what does that mean? Is that Green Bay? Is that somewhere else? If that's somewhere else, what is it like being somewhere else? And now it feels like there are two very beautiful options, that both feel really nourishing and special and that it's just life and life is about making decisions and living your great name story and going through the ups and downs of the journey, because that's what makes the best stories. The best stories aren't, the most incredible high and everything went your way. No, it was like, can you believe this happened after this and this and this, and then this happened. And then we overcame this, and then we overcame that. And in that story, the great story, there's mistakes, there's regrets, there's sadness, there's joy, there's frustration, there's sorrow, there's heartbreak, there's elation. It's all part of it, it's all part of life. And my life has been football for as long as I can remember, and I'm fucking damn proud of that.
AUBREY: And you're still nasty. I saw something from Allen Lazard, and I really appreciated what he said. Someone asked him what he thought about you as a football player, and he just goes, “he's the best player to pick up a football, ever.” Period. And I know a lot of people might disagree with that claim, but he's someone who's been your teammate. And been with you, and I think there's that feeling, like, fucking A. And I can say, like, when we compete and stuff, like, you still got your fucking, you got your fire, you got your body. You still got the skills, so it's not even though the anti me voice might say, like, I don't know, sometimes, but I think you do know that you still fucking got it. And that's also, like, another one of these factors of, like, man, I can still fucking ball.
AARON: I've been doubted before. And look, honestly, I felt In the first year that Matt was here, Matt was in Green Bay at 19, I felt at times like a game manager, like I didn't quite understand what we were doing at times on offense and my job was to take care of the football and I did, I threw four interceptions and 26 touchdowns and we were 13 and 3, but I felt like there was so much more and then they drafted my replacement and then I went MVP twice and I threw 85 touchdowns and 9 interceptions in two years. And obviously there were some changes that happened on the team and the coaching staff, and I didn't have my best year plan. And there's probably people that think I'm done. I thought I was done before I became COVID MVP twice. Again, there'd be plenty of inspiration. Down that road. But I have a great piece about it. I did not have, without the darkness. So I'm really thankful for that experience. And the stuff I work through it's all connected like it's all one big through line life and part of that is relationships and friendships and experiences at football.
AUBREY: Have you set a kind of timeline for yourself where like, all right, one way or another, I'm going to make a decision by this point, or are you still leaving it kind of with some leeway?
AARON: Well, I think it's best for anybody who has an interest in this to make a decision sooner rather than later. I remember, when Favre, before he retired, there were times where he, it was in April and May and he's still, we weren't sure if he was going to come back because he didn't come to any off season program. And then in 2008, he actually did retire in March. And then kind of said, “no, no, no”, actually in June after OTAs, I actually want to come back and play. And then that's when, I've been traded to the Jets and there was obviously a lot of tension that summer. But for everybody involved directly and indirectly, it's best for, a decision earlier, and I feel really good about the conversations that are going to be had, that have been had with important people in my life, yourself included, that helped to orient me, but I'm not looking for somebody to tell me what the answer is. All the answers are right inside me, and I touched many of them, and definitely the feelings on both sides during the darkness, and I'm thankful for that time, but there's a finality to the decision and I don't make it lightly. I don't want to drag anybody around. Look, I'm answering questions about it because I got asked about it. I'm talking about it because it's important to me. If you don't like it, when you think it's drama, you think I'm being a diva or whatever, then just tune it out. It's fine. But this is my life. It's important to me and I'll make a decision soon enough. And we'll go down that road and be really excited about it.
AUBREY: Yeah, brother. Well, for me, as really, in many ways, you're my best friend in the universe. And I know we haven't known each other for the lifetime that usually causes that to happen, but it's that type of energy. And I have some other best friends in the universe too, that you've become friends with as well, Eric and Makad and some of the other friends that you're getting to know more like Kyle and all, the whole crew and the posse, of course. And for me, I want you to be fucking happy. And there's a timeline where we get to spend, instead of the season, we get to go travel around the world and do some wild shit, go into ceremonies and see some amazing places and start some fun projects. And then there's another timeline where I'm coming to see you in some city and maybe we're eating Indian Bhavan or maybe we're eating some fucking Hakkasan or maybe we're eating some other thing, like whatever that might be there's both of these timelines and for me I have just absolute equal excitement about both, because I trust you to make the best decision for you and I wouldn't want you to make any other decision than that. And so, I know everybody here is like, man, I was hoping Aaron would fucking say and say like, it's going to be this team or this team or this team, and I'm doing it or not. But if you care about Aaron and you care about actually putting the human before. And before the player, which is important, then I think you gotta care about taking the time to make the best decision for you, which will ultimately yield the best decision for whatever team that you're in. Cause if you're on reconcile, if you're halfway in and halfway out, that's the only decision that would be a disservice is to play, but you didn't really want to, or not play, but you really did want to, and you really could, so this is a sacred period of time. And I'm eagerly waiting with big baited breath and excited about both fucking options. So I'm right here with all of you who are trying to figure out what this man's going to do. And from a different perspective, obviously is. such a close friend to you,
AARON: Well, you can also say like, I'm not being coy right now. And I've told you kind of off camera.
AUBREY: Yeah, exactly.
AARON: No, like, we're not going to talk about it today. What's going on, right? It's like, no, I'm enjoying, I mean listen, this is a special weekend because, there's a really special individual who was born.
AUBREY: Thank you, my brother.
AARON: My Pisces brother. So we're celebrating you, and I don't want to upstage your birthday with some big announcement about my future, so that's priorities, bro.
AUBREY: Yeah. Sair enough, my brother, fair enough. Well, it's an honor to share this life adventure with you, and I know that, we both know in our bones that one day we're going to be old men, still smoking cigars
AARON: Scrapping
AUBREY: Scrapping, fucking scrapping till the bitter end and having a great time and a great life. And to see that both choices yield this great life and it's a beautiful place that sets me at ease to know that, my friend Aaron is going to be happy no matter what, and that's what matters most to me.
AARON: Yeah, I appreciate that. What I saw in both the third and fourth days was I saw myself, my full self. At the end of that journey, on the one side, and I saw my full self at the end of that journey on the other side. I wasn't missing anything. I was fully myself in both those timelines. And that was a really sweet, sweet thing to experience.
AUBREY: Yeah. That’s how it is, brother.
AARON: To the end.
AUBREY: To the end. To the end. Thank you everybody for tuning in. We love you guys. Aaron, are there any final words you want to share before we bounce out of here and continue this weekend's adventure?
AARON: Let's party.
AUBREY: Let's fucking go. Much love, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.