Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 14 - Motivation and Purpose

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

What is this?? A Friday Podcast?? Monday's podcast was about Failure, and you can't talk about Failure without at least dedicating the same amount of time talking about the other side of the coin. Many people spend time obsessing over motivation, which is a good thing, assuming it is there when you need it. If you ever find it lacking, you may find your world unravelling, unless you are backstopped by purpose.

Yes, I'm back. I know what's going on here, right? It's right now, it's Thursday, but this is going to get released on Friday. You people don't know what I'm going to do. And I know that because I don't know what I'm going to do. I've been releasing these podcasts on Monday, but you know what? I've been thinking about something consistently since the last podcast I released on Monday. And I'm not going to wait until Monday to let it loose.

Plus, a ton of people have been reaching out to me. if you didn't listen to the last podcast, it was quite simply titled Failure, and it was talking about my 48-hour experience bow hunting in Utah, which at the end of this month, I'm going to give it round two. But a ton of people reached out, and I was thinking about it. I think it's unfair to only talk about one side of the coin. So if failure is one side of the coin, what's been nagging at me in a really good way this last week, because in all honesty, I've actually had a really good week. I've been training hard.

My head's in a better spot. I'm shooting better. Everything is trending in the right direction. And that is all because of that failure and what I did with it. So the other side of the coin of failure is motivation. And then what I think is more important than that is purpose. So that's what we're going to talk about today. A bunch of people have reached out to me asking about how I stay motivated or what I use for motivation. So we'll talk about that a bit. And hopefully something in this will help you out. And to everybody who has reached out to me, yeah, I don't know what to say. It's kind of awesome. The power of social media, I've been hit up via every medium. And it's, I'm going to be all right, people. Everybody just take it easy, okay? I don't wake up in

the morning and wonder whether or not I'm going to brush my teeth with my toothbrush or a six-shooter. So it's all going to be okay, but I appreciate the help. So let's dig right into this thing. Episode number 14, it's getting a little weird. Two in one week. I don't know what's happening. Here we go. I'm looking at danger close now. Let's get into this.

I got asked in the last four-day stretch. I don't know how many times. Things that I do to stay motivated or tips or techniques, I don't know the right word, for what I do just to keep on trucking. So I wrote a few things down because I just like anybody else. Actually, that's probably a good starting point. I'm just like anybody else. The one thing that I can't recommend enough is do not put anybody on a pedestal.

I come from a community having spent a long time in the SEAL teams where it's an inspirational or aspirational community to a lot of people. And having lived inside of that community, I would say it is an inspirational and aspirational community from the inside as well. surrounded by people, constantly surrounded by people who I thought were better than myself. But the one thing I will say is this, they're people. Everybody, you'll hear me say this probably a couple times throughout this episode. Everybody lives on a sign wave.

You have good days and you have bad days. And don't think for a second that, you know, team guys have only good days. We go through the same emotional roller coaster. It's kind of just how you deal with it, the people that you surround yourself with, and some of the tools that you can use to maybe shave off the bottom part of that sine wave and trend yourself back up towards the positive side of the house. So for me, here's a couple things that work. First one is visualization.

I think, I don't know, I think I would call it daydreaming when I was younger, but I love kind of living inside of my head and visualizing. And when I say visualizing, I'm talking about, let's say it was an athletic. event. I would visualize things going correctly and I would visualize the outcome that I want. So be careful with visualization. Do not focus on the negative. Don't sit there and manifest what it is you don't want to have happen. Visualize the perfect execution of whatever it is that you want to do and it's going to help you go out there and live it. So I actually spend a lot of time visualizing probably the time in my career or one of the times in my career where I did it the most would be in

sniper school, visualizing long-range shots and all the things you need to control, not only on the weapon system itself, but inside of your body. For me, I found it really helped in that environment. And number two, seeking inspiration. I am constantly searching for people that are better than myself, which in my case is actually very easy because damn near everybody is better at me than something. I was always surrounded by people who were better. shots who were better jumpers who were stronger who were faster fill in the blank but my theory on

that is seek out those individuals and spend as much time with them as possible don't avoid them right let them get into their get behind them and draft off of them let them pull you down the road towards where it is you want to be so constantly look for inspiration for other people use their ability and use the fact that they're able to do something that you're not able to do to elevate your game. And one way that I use these individuals, because sometimes they're, well, you know, probably often, they're not going to be able to be right there with you. I still use people that I use to work with as inspiration, even though they're not here. And I use people now who I have, I'm very fortunate enough to call friends. I use them as inspiration as well, even though I don't get to spend much time with them.

and when I'm feeling like not wanting to do something, not wanting to get out of bed, or knowing that I should work out and I don't want to, right, there's a list of things that I don't want to do. And basically the things that I need to do, it's the exact same list of the things that I don't want to do. Another way that I help myself is, I'll ask myself, what would I do if they were there?

Or what would I do if this person were there with me? Would my behavior be different? And almost always, almost every single time the answer is yes, my behavior would be different if there was somebody else there to help motivate me. And just that thought alone is usually enough to get me to put one foot in front of the other. And if I can get the momentum rolling in the right direction, then things usually trend well. You know, I'm going to give you some good examples. For me, I have to work out.

If my brain is going to function properly, it helps my emotional state, it helps my mental state. But a lot of the times, I don't feel like doing it because sitting on the couch and eating a bag of what was I eating the other day? They're corn chips. God, their little scoops. They are amazing. I'm pretty sure they're very healthy for you and don't cause cancer at all. I can't remember the exact name of them, but I think I could have eaten the whole bag,

but I stopped myself. Not because I was asking myself, what would I do if one of the people that I'm inspired by was here, but because I had a stomachache because I had eaten so many. But I digress. I know that I need to work out. And a lot of the times I don't feel like working out. And a guy that I use is inspiration for this. His name is Cameron Haynes.

And this guy, go search him out on social media. This dude is generally working harder than I am at times where I'm still asleep. He's up running. Before I wake up, he's in the gym after I've already gone to bed. And if ever I need the kick in the ass or to look in the mirror and say to myself, what would I do if Cam was here, or if I have, had the ability to go hang out with Cam. Would I be going to work out with him right now if that's what he was doing? You goddamn right. I would. So I take that motivation and that little kick in the

butt and I drive it down the road. Another perfect example for this week. If you listen to the last podcast, I'll sum it up and just say that my bow and I, we had a little bit of a disagreement. You know, we're in counseling right now. We're talking to each other, but through an intermediary, It's a very controlled environment. We're taking controlled steps back toward each other, but I think it's going to be okay. But we're in counseling right now. The last thing that I wanted to do this week was to pick that bow up and shoot. But I have a great fortune to be good friends with a guy named John Dudley.

And if you are in the archery world, you probably know who that is. And if you're not in the archery world, you need to look him up. He knows the thing or two about bows and arrows. and I know for a fact, without a doubt, that if he were here or I were, I were to be where he is, the one thing that he would want me to do is pick up that bow and shoot. So as little as I wanted to, and believe me, I didn't want to very much. I knew that if he was here, it would change my behavior, and I use that as the driving force to walk over and pick up the bow and take it out in the backyard and start over again at the fundamentals.

I needed that inspiration. Another guy I use an example, and this is my go-to when I don't feel like getting out of bed, even though most of the time I'm definitely a morning person and I'm up before the sunrises, is my good friend, Jocko Willing. Jocko is a complete and utter crazy man in the best sense of the word. I'm sure most people have heard the term, you know, as tough as nails. I think the nails that they're talking about that are tough would bend, against Jocko. This dude is, he's hard. And he's up every single morning, or 99.9% of the

morning is taking a picture of his watch, holding himself accountable, and he's working out. And on days where I feel like sleeping in, I just imagine him standing at the side of my bed, tapping me on the shoulder, saying, hey, what are you doing? And that's enough to get me out of bed. If you, I mean, I think of it as probably, it would be the most effective alarm clock ever that when your alarm goes off, Jock appears and just taps you on the shoulders. Like, hey, it's time to go. You may never be able to sleep again

if somebody is able to figure out a way to make this product. But if you were able to sleep, I guarantee you your ass would be out of bed. So, I mean, there's three examples right there of people that I think about all the time to bridge what I'm doing to what it is I need to be doing and to use them to help me gain momentum in the right direction.

Is it temporary? Yeah, it absolutely is. Motivation is awesome. Having people that you can be inspired by that can pull you along and motivate you also amazing. But there is something that's more important and valuable than motivation, and that is purpose. The only issue I have with, I don't have an issue with motivation.

The only thing I'll say about motivation and the only reason that I'll say this is because I don't want people to totally hang their hat on it is that motivation isn't always going to be there when you want it to be or when you need it to be. And I know this because of my time as a Buds instructor. If people don't know what Buds is, it's the super wide end of the funnel, the entry selection course to becoming a seal. When you graduate, you're not a seal. It's the very beginning of a probably 18 to 24 month process.

As a Bud's instructor, I spent 18 months as a Bud's instructor, you basically develop and refine a PhD in demotivation. Another word for that would be breaking people. And I mean breaking people without ever laying a hand on them. And I mean breaking people without ever raising your voice. You develop an incredible ability to just burrow your way in between their ears. and cause as much mischief and damage as possible when it comes to their motivation and desire to become a seal. I had some very interesting tools that the military allows for. You know, the first one probably would be pain, not like hitting somebody pain,

but the ability to, I guess, force, for lack of a better word, individuals to do things that they may not want to do and to do enough of those things that it hurts really bad. I will say this. Pain really doesn't hurt, right? It stings a little bit. If you want to experience true hurt or true pain, try a regret on for size, okay? That's by far the worst pain in the world, in my opinion.

That was just one of the tools, you know. We could play around with fear. I could get in your head and play around with uncertainty, exhaustion, I could keep you up for long periods of time or I should say the curriculum keeps you up for long periods of time. Environmentals, sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold. And probably the most powerful one was time. And by that I mean I could get into your head and manipulate how you think about time.

So over the course of my time at Buds, every instructor is required to work. A hellweek shift. Hell week, I think they've moved around a little bit. When I went through, it was the fifth week. of the first phase of training. And the first phase of training is just basically physical-based. At the end of Hell Week, and I'm probably messing up the statistics here a little bit, but I'd say about 80% of the attrition occurs from the first day to the last day of Hell Week.

So it's one week. It starts on a Sunday evening, maybe in the middle of the night, and it ends sometime on Friday, usually in the afternoon. So during that time period, you don't sleep much, you don't sit around much, you're constantly moving, you're constantly hypothermic, you're constantly hungry, and there is a mad rush to go to the bell that you have to ring three times when you quit. The most effective tool that I ever had towards people who said it was their only goal in life to become a seal was to get into their head and talk to them about how long I was going to keep them cold or tired or in pain.

And all I was trying to do is going down that list of things that I rattled off to see if anyone individual worked. and if that didn't work, I would just get creative and go with combos. But it all had to do with how they approached their goal. If they could keep the world small and only focus on the next thing in front of them, they were very likely to continue on to get through. If I could get them to think big and take control of how they think about time, to think about how long they could stay awake, how long they could stay running,

how long they could keep a log over the head, how long they could keep a boat over their head and get them to start questioning their motivation, the odds drastically swung in my favor that they weren't going to be able to complete it. The whole purpose is all that is, I'm going to catch you at the bottom of the sign wave as a Bud's instructor. That's literally my job, is to push you as low as I can get, and then to kind of sit back and throw in some variables to see how you behave with the goal of getting you to quit.

Quitting is just a lack or loss of motivation. That's all it is. I'm going to get you at the bottom of that sine wave. And guess what? Life's going to get you there too. So what do you have to rely on when you're at the bottom of that sine wave and your motivation is gone? My answer to that question is purpose. Now, I hear people talking a lot about motivation. And it is important, but I don't hear many people talking about purpose. And I think the two go hand in hand. And to use the analogy of a vehicle, the motivation is your gas pedal. It can help you. get where you want to go faster if you happen to be on the upswing of the sine wave and you have a lot of it. Or maybe it takes you a little bit longer because you're on the down swing of the side wave and you don't have a lot. But it shouldn't steer the car unless you want to play tick-tac-toe with the concrete barriers that are on both sides of the road. The steering wheel is purpose. You need to have both, right? The motivation to modulate the speed, but the purpose to keep you centered and pointed in the right direction. So how did this apply in my own life? Well, it took me a bit

to figure it out. That's first and foremost. I knew that I wanted to be a seal since I was 11 years old. I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to really, I believe, articulate it correctly. And I certainly didn't have the maturity to articulate it correctly. It was a desire that I had. And looking back and trying to make sense of that desire now. I'm almost, I turn 40 next month and looking back and trying to make sense of the desire that I felt at that young age, I think it was that I liked or believed in the idea of fighting for what I believe for or what I believe in. And I know that I wanted to do something that I thought mattered. Those feelings were turned into concrete and solidified throughout the story arc of my career in the military.

I have, I believe, a good sense of who I am and what my purpose is, and I don't know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow, and I don't know what my job is going to be in a year, and I don't care because it doesn't matter. my steering wheel is pointed directly at my purpose and the decisions that I make in my life as to what it is I choose to do and what the things that I choose to avoid are based off the direction of that wheel. I want to make a difference. I want to make the world a better place for my kids. So I have some guidelines that I use in my personal attempt to make the world a better place for my kids. I don't know necessarily what order these should go into, but the first one, and I think it's one of the most important, is that I try to set the example for my kids. And I don't mean by

what comes out of my mouth. I mean by the actions that I choose to take or the actions that I choose to avoid. I try to teach. I try to teach my kids and I try to teach leaders in business, in the military, and law enforcement, whoever's willing to listen. I try to teach. I'm trying to take my experiences from what I consider to be relatively bizarre and unique career in existence in the military. And I'm trying to mold them into something that's digestible, you know, pieces of information is this so other people can not repeat my mistakes, of which there are many, not repeat the mistakes of our history, of which also there are many, but so other people can lead and be the example as well. Having a nugget of information that could help a broad group of

people, if you don't distribute that, it's not valuable at all. I want to make a difference, but I know that it takes other people to make that difference. So I try to do all those things. And then I try to reinforce in my kids, I have two boys and a girl, that they have to stand up for what they believe in, and they have to stand up for people who can't or won't. One of my favorite quotes is what you allow in your presence is your standard. And that leads me to a story, again, from my personal life that I'm not proud of, and I did not seek this situation out. But to me, it speaks between the difference of motivation and purpose. So we have lived in Montana for two and a half months. We crossed the border on July 1st into Montana. I don't remember exactly

when this occurred in June. And I alluded to this situation, I think, in an earlier podcast. And I didn't feel comfortable talking about it because it involved the police. And I haven't heard from them since. So I'm going to talk about it in very general terms and the hopes that I'm not going to have to talk about it in court at some time. But my daughter was still in school. So this was in probably mid-June. We were still prepping our move to come up here to Montana. And I remember we had gone out to her school. They were doing a talent show. If you've never been to a talent show for third graders, I mean, invest in a flask. That's all I can really say.

So we went to the talent show and then we went to dinner afterwards and we drove around a ton and we couldn't find a restaurant and we finally settled on a pizza place. And we went in there and my son had to go to the bathroom. So myself and my son went into the restaurant first. We went in and we found a table very near the bathroom. Went to the bathroom, came back and sat at the table and my wife. wife and my other son and daughter came in and they just had a relatively concerned look on their face and my wife asked me she's like did you see what happened outside and i didn't because she dropped us off

right when we got up to the front of the restaurant she said that a man and a woman were arguing it appeared like they were drunk and the guy was being relatively aggressive in tone and in words towards the woman So I didn't see it. I didn't know exactly what she was talking about. I got up out of my seat though and I went outside and she said it was happening by the garbage can out in front of the restaurant. So I got up and I went outside and there was a garbage can right by the door that I didn't notice on the way in. And I didn't see anything going on. So I went back into the restaurant and we ordered our food.

I remember I think we ordered our appetizers. And just as the waitress left, the man and woman that my wife were talking about, came back into the restaurant and they were making their way towards the bathroom apparently the woman had to use the bathroom that we were sitting next to well in all honesty most of the time I'm not going to care if it's two adults who have had too much to drink settling a personal issue like go ahead and handle your stuff there's things that are worth investing your sweat equity into and there are things that you're better off you know picking up your picking up your tool your toys from the sandbox and just going somewhere else and letting it play itself out

For myself, personally, I don't seek out confrontation at all. I'd rather walk away from a fight. You can insult me as much as you want to. I'll buy you a beer before I'm going to punch you in the face. Like, let's just, you know, move on with our day. The reason this story takes a different turn at this point is that in the woman's arms was a child that I would say, I'll call it two years old, able to walk on their own, not able to talk.

So she was making her way to the bathroom. The guy was leading the way. actually I take that back. She was leading the way. The guy was following behind because I heard him say as he passed in front of our table, we need to hurry up. They called the cops. And a member of the, a member, an employee of the restaurant was following them to the bathroom. We were sitting very close to the bathroom and we could hear what was going on. The guy who worked at the restaurant was saying, hey, you guys need to knock it off. We called the police. You need to stay here. The man started getting much more animated. made it and what he was saying, all of my kids could hear what was going on. They looked concern. And the single thought that was going through my head was, God damn it, I'm wearing flip-flops right now. I'm not joking. That was the first thought that went through my head.

Because there was no doubt in my mind that at this point in time, I am committed. I tell my kids every day when I drop them off at school to stand up for what they believe in, and to do the right thing. And there's no doubt in this situation as to what the right thing to do is. So I stood up and I just kind of peeked my head around the corner and the guy is completely into the female bathroom except for maybe his feet or sticking out. They're yelling at each other in very colorful, full letter words. The guy who works at the restaurant is trying to calm everything down.

And I'm just kind of observing this from afar, six to eight feet away. Everybody in the restaurant at this point is verbally or not verbally is, audibly aware of what is going on in the establishment. The woman comes to leave the restaurant, or it comes out of the bathroom, she comes to come out of the bathroom and bounces the child's head directly off of the door jam of the door. I watched it happen. Not a word out of the kid, completely glassy-eyed. It's a look that I've seen in young children overseas.

It's quite simply shock. and it generally in my experience comes from them having lived in this type of environment many times before. The life is literally just drained out of their eyes. So at that point I stood in front of the guy, I'm like, hey, you know what? They've already called the cops. I'm not letting you guys leave. I'm not letting you put a child in danger because they were talking about going to their car and driving away. In the words right after they were complaining to the employee of the restaurant that they just spent $250 at the bar.

they should be able to use the bathroom and leave. So they're just talking about how much they spent on booze and then they want to hop into a car with a kid. And at this point, I'm not going to let it happen. So I stood in front of the guys like, listen, they've already called the cops. We're going to let the professionalists come here and they're going to be able to decide whether or not you guys were able to leave.

He didn't like what my thoughts were on that. So he pushed past me and he and the woman and the child made their way out into the parking lot. And the employee of the restaurant followed him. and I followed them as well too. Now, a little bit more about what was going on in the restaurant, there was nothing but able-bodied adults, the majority of them men, sitting down at tables, watching what was going on, reaching for their cell phones, instead of putting their cell phones down and doing something about what was happening.

I'll get back to that in a minute. So we get out to the parking lot. at this point I confirmed that somebody had called the cop so my head I'm thinking probably a maximum of a five minute response time that probably 90 seconds of that has already been eaten up so let's just stall this dude so I'm talking to him as he walks to his car I'm like listen he's what's going to happen I'm going to take a picture of your license plate when the first responding officer gets here he's going to get a picture of you your license plate the vehicle description and how far do you think that you're going to get with that information you're going to have police waiting for you you at the house, nothing good is going to happen if you leave the scene. Just sit here and wait and let the professionals decide what's going to happen. And again, I don't give a shit about this guy or the girl. The only thing I cared about was that kid because that kid is 100% innocent. And nobody was doing anything to protect that kid. So I thought the suggestions that I were giving were amazing. I thought they were the best suggestions ever. The man and woman disagreed with me.

So they got into the car, or he put the child in the back seat of the car, in the car seat without actually strapping the kid in. He got the woman to get into the front right seat, but she pulled the classic drunk girl move and she wouldn't put her feet inside of the car. So she's kind of sitting sideways and the guy can't close the door. So I went to the back of the car, took a picture of the license plate, took a picture of both of them, took a picture of the car. And kind of just stood back there and in the distance I could start to hear the sirens. So, you know, no big deal. Cops are coming.

The professionals are here. Wild success. We've delayed them and everything's going to be fine. I'm going to go back in and I'm going to eat dinner. So the first cop shows up or a police officer shows up. This guy was probably 5 foot 8 on a good day wearing two inch heels by himself. And total pro jumps out of the car like, you know, hey, let's separate everybody. We're going to talk to everybody.

individually, I step back because, again, I honestly, I'm not looking for a confrontation. I've had enough confrontations in my life. The last thing I'm looking to do is be violent at any way, shape, or form. The situation got really bad at this point. The woman, obviously, under the influence, ramped up substantially. The man ramped up substantially. Think of an Oreo cookie. The woman is one side of the chocolate Oreo. The police officers, the delicious marshmallow, center and then the man is the other chocolate side. It's the absolute worst place that you want to be. Oh, with an open car door on the other side as well too. So he's got nowhere to go. The man is probably 6'4, 250 pounds. Sloppy 250, but still 250. To shorten this story up a little bit,

at some point, the police officer changes his mind as to whether or not he wants to talk to the woman. He decides he wants to detain the woman. So she gets pulled out of the car and back towards the police cruiser. I don't know if she was cuffed at this point. the man was absolutely against the fact that the cop is going to remove her from the vehicle and he started pushing up against the police officer. At this point, I stepped in between the guy and just backed him up with my hands up in the air and said, hey, back up and let the police officer do his job. So he backed up.

She got taken to the cop car. When the door opened on the cop car, all I can say is that all hell broke loose. And the last thing I saw over my shoulder is the woman getting wrestled to the ground and in the end it took, I think, between six to eight officers to subdue her. I've never seen anything like that. I also don't have a lot of experience on people on drugs, but I've never seen or heard anything like that. The volume level of her screaming and her ability to sustain that was, to this day, shocking.

The husband or boyfriend, whatever it is, at that point when she got, she didn't get thrown under the ground. She got taken down. I actually think he took her down pretty generally. when it escalated with the woman, the man decided that he wanted to get involved as well too. And again, just to fast forward through, it ended with him in a guillotine choke. And there was some blood on the ground that all belonged to him. So it wasn't a good day for him.

It wasn't a good day for her. And as he's in a guillotine on the ground, I'm looking up and all I see are cell phones. all I see are able-bodied people that could have easily stepped in and stopped a situation from getting worse, doing nothing but sitting there and holding onto their phone, or doing absolutely nothing at all with their jaws on the floor. It's the difference between motivation and purpose. Nobody wants to get involved in that situation when it happens, right? Because you don't have any motivation.

Nobody's looking for that. I mean, I guess some people are probably looking for that, but they're psychopaths. But most normal people are not motivated to get involved in that. But if it's your purpose in life to do the right thing, you don't have a choice. At the end of the night, it had to have been a terrible experience for everybody. The child was taken by child protective services. The woman was put into what I can only describe as like a nylon retention bag. I mean, she was getting strapped down to this sack.

So she was trying to bite and kick and spit. Never seen anything like it. And the guy, I think, eventually got let go, but I don't think he had the best of nights either. And I went back into the restaurant and my family, you know, my son and my daughter, they're crying. They don't understand what's going on. There's lights and sirens. And it was a mess. We went there for dinner.

ended up getting an appetizer and a wrestling match. And the only good that I can say that came of it was a chance to reinforce to my kids that you can't talk about doing the right thing. You have to do the right thing. That, and we got a free dinner and a goddamn ice cream sundae, and I had them put brownies on the top, and it was delicious. I've asked myself quite a bit, actually, what causes people to sit back when they know something visibly wrong is occurring instead of taking action?

And the conclusion, and I could be, I'm open to being totally wrong on this, but the conclusion that I've come to is that most people have never come to grips with who they are as a person. They never look in the mirror and ask themselves, you know, am I doing what I want to do? or am I doing what others think I should be doing? You'll never find your purpose until you come to grips with who you are as a person, right? And nothing paralyzes people more than uncertainty. And nothing is more liberating than knowing who you are. Because if you know who you are, you have nothing to lose.

I could have had my ass handed to me in that parking lot. It doesn't change who I am. It doesn't, and I would, and if I'm knowing the outcome, I still would have done it again a second time had I got my ass handed to me, because it's the right thing to do. And it doesn't change who I am. And I don't give a fuck what people think about me. I care about doing the right thing.

Only because I am comfortable with who I am. And being comfortable with who I am, allow me to figure out what my purpose is. Once I find that purpose, then I can use the motivation to continue driving me in that direction. To use an example that's no nearer as ridiculous and maybe applies to more people, I got hit up via email very recently from a couple who was talking about they were

they're overweight and they've gotten to a point where they feel like they have to do something about it. And I look at that challenge, which I know a lot of people struggle with that challenge. And I feel that there's two ways to view this challenge. I suppose one, I suppose they could both be successful. But in my mind, one is about motivation and relies on. motivation and the other one is about purpose. Imagine the difference in likely success. If you feel like you need to lose weight to appease society or appease other people's opinions

and you only act when you get positive reinforcement from others, right? You need this external motivation to drive action versus the individual or individuals who look in the mirror and they realize that they want to lose weight not because of what other people say. but because they're not happy. And they realize that they would rather go down fighting. And they have to start fighting to make a difference. And they can make that difference in their fight and their success, the example for other people. It's a choice.

It's a choice you have to make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times in your life. But it could be the most important choice you ever make. And the choice I'm talking about is the choice between doing what other people want you to do and what other people care about and doing what is right for you. Look to other people for motivation. I totally support that. I do it myself. But I do not look to other people for purpose. I'm in control of the car that's my life, right? I'm going to point the car in my direction and you need to point the car in your direction. And don't turn the radio on. It's just white noise and negativity. I have never heard more shit talked than I have about people who are successful and who are

grinding it out. Everybody wants to look at a way to undermine them and has nothing to do with the person. It has everything to do with the person that's talking shit. Look for difficult things. They're the ones that have the worth. If it's easy or it's free, it likely has no value. When you look for difficult things, you're going to learn a ton about yourself. You're going to emerge much stronger than you were before. And that That is the key takeaway that I'm taken from the failed hunt, in air quotes, the failed hunt from last two weeks ago or a week ago. Everything about that hunt that made me question my motivation that made me question my capability,

my ability, all of those things are eventually going to help me emerge stronger. And by being stronger, it's going to drive me even farther towards my purpose of trying to make in the difference. Take that mindset of seeking those difficult things, learning about yourself, getting stronger, and keeping the wheel centered towards your purpose. Take that mindset and help other people with it. Motivation is great. Spend your time finding your purpose. Once you find it, don't deviate.

And that is all I got. Thank you again to everybody for all of the support. It is amazing. Everybody reaching out. I love it. I try to get back to as many people as I can. I try to get back to everybody. I can't always do that.

But again, I will do the best that I can. If you dig in the podcast, do me a favor. Tell somebody about it. And if you haven't written a review on iTunes, do me favor and write a review. I don't care if it's one star or five, I am interested in hearing your opinion. If you got a suggestion to make it better, I am all ears. I'm a complete amateur slash novice at this. And I seek inspiration from other people when it comes to this podcast for sure.

So let me know what you think. Oh, and for everybody who has purchased the shirts and the coffee mugs, send me a picture. God damn it. I want to see these things out in the wild. I'm like boxing stuff up every single day. I want to see where these things are going. So thank you, everybody, for the support. I have no idea if I'm doing another podcast for Monday.

We'll see how it goes. The schedule is completely amiss, but I feel better. Now I can go to bed. You guys have a going. Later.