Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

didn’t know his name, but I mentally labeled him Trucker Hat, for the very obvious reason that, contrary to all logic, he was still wearing a trucker hat about five years after society had collectively decided that it was no longer okay to do so.
    It was 12:47 A.M . in Vegas, but my body was still on New York time, and I had been playing for a few hours already. I should have been exhausted, but instead felt elated. It was too early for Trucker Hat to be making moves like this.
    I glanced briefly at my cards, as though they might have changed in the last minute or so. Didn’t matter. Play the man, not the cards. I counted out a pile of chips from my stack, and set it aside. I took a few deep breaths, deep enough for Trucker Hat to see. I stared at the queen, then the ace. I waited a bit longer and then doubled, declaring a raise. Eleven black chips went into the pot.
    “You really think that’ll work?” Adam resumed his questioning once the chips were down. It was a game within a game.
    I glanced at Adam, then at Trucker Hat. “Raising? Yeah, usually does. Makes guys think twice about calling with middle pair.” I ended the speech with a smirk and a wink. Adam wasn’t talking about the bet. I knew that.
    “What? No,” Adam said. “ Campbell . Do you think guys will get Campbell? Not everyone’s a fucking Star Wars geek.”
    His point was lost on me. I don’t understand people who don’t like Star Wars .
    “Dude, everyone gets Campbell. It doesn’t matter if they haven’t read his stuff. That’s the entire point. It’s burned into the consciousness of every culture. It’s the way we tell stories. The monomyth isn’t . . . isn’t fucking invalidated because you don’t know about it—it’s the fact that you can understand it without learning it that makes it more valid. And valuable. I think they’ll get it.”
    Trucker Hat was eyeing me. Well, sometimes. His eyes darted back and forth from my face to Adam’s to my chips and back to me. He was clearly trying to reconcile the spectacle of muscular guy in an unnecessarily tight T-shirt * talking about Campbell. In the mind of most people, meatheads and myths are probably not related.
    Adam considered my words. Trucker Hat considered his move. I considered his chips.
    Call.

    STARTING FROM SCRATCH
    Who the hell is Joseph Campbell? And what happened with the bet?
    If you are like most people, after reading that your brain is probably processing one of those two thoughts; possibly both.
    Why? It’s something called anterograde memory . We focus on the last thing we heard and forget about everything else that preceded it. Our memories therefore, are the result of strategic timing of information that is shared—or not shared. Knowing this, it’s easy to understand how most people come to understand the world. It’s always about who has the final word. And when it comes to your body and health, the wrong people are repeatedly delivering the final salvo that leads you down a frustrating path. It’s the same path you take with every diet and fitness book.
    Which is why we arrived at Campbell. It’s time to take a new path and an entirely new approach to your life and your body. This is bigger than a fitness book. This is a life overhaul. And Campbell’s ability to make it blatantly clear how we subconsciously avoid or fail to recognize the hurdles that prevent us from becoming who we want to be was the perfect structure to help us end your frustration and guide you to a better life—to take you from ordinary man to Alpha.

    CHARTING A NEW COURSE: THE HERO’S JOURNEY
    Joseph Campbell was an American writer and lecturer who was best known for his discussions of mythology—particularly comparative mythology. He examined the myths across cultures, generations, and centuries, and he realized that all great stories converged around analogous concepts. Campbell plotted an outline that covered the universal patterns that appear in myths from the cultures of antiquity like Greece, Sumer, and Babylon; medieval and Renaissance-age folklore from Germany, Spain, and Britain; and even more modern stories in books that were published through the mid-twentieth century. This pattern results in a seventeen-stage storytelling structure known as the monomyth.
    Also known as the Hero’s Journey, the monomyth was covered in Campbell’s definitive work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This book became one of the most influential of the twentieth century and