Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 43 - Never Give Up

Episode Date: June 11, 2018

A combination of recent events and a conversation with friends has had me thinking consistently thinking about adversity, and how we each decide to deal with our personal struggles.  Bottom line, some of us deal with them better than others.  Some dig their feet in, some throw in the towel.  I have been fortunate in my life to be surrounded by mentors.  They took the raw material I was born with, and enhanced it in many areas.  As a society, I think we would be far better served to embrace this mentality, than the "everyone for themselves" approach that most seem to live by.  You can teach mental toughness.   You can teach people to face and work through adversity, arriving on the other side improved, not destroyed.   Adversity is essential, it is not the enemy

Ladies and gentlemen, cleared hot episode 43 coming at you. It was supposed to be an interview. I was actually going to have my first female guest for today's episode, and it wasn't going to be my wife. I'm still working on that one and talk about that here in a minute. But things got in the way. The timing didn't necessarily work out. So that is not going to be the case.

and I'm kind of glad that it didn't work out. I'm not glad that it didn't work out. I'm not disappointed that it didn't work out because a couple of recent events won a conversation with some friends at the house and a comment specifically that my wife made and a situation or situations that have occurred recently that I'm sure most people who follow the news of any kind

will be familiar with really got me thinking about a particular topic. And I'll dig into those in a minute. but before I get into any of that, most of the time, or not most of the time, in the three episodes previously, I would like to think that I had, I don't know, some atypical intros for the sponsorship, which if you're a listener, part of the cleared hot community, you will know that the last three episodes were brought to you by bluechew.com. Now, today, in this fourth episode, is also brought to you by Bluechew. but I really couldn't think of a good transition

like the ding-dong story or the flags at half-mast so it just is what it is so let's talk about what bluechew.com actually is or let's talk about it in this perspective every tradesman needs their tool all right every artisan

every craftsman they got to have their tools so let's say that you were a carpenter and you had your tool belt on and you were on the job site and you had a bunch of nails you had to drive home and you couldn't find your hammer that would be a problem if you didn't have a prescription or subscription to blue chew.com because let me tell you if you did you wouldn't have to worry about the hammer in your tool belt you might have another one that you could have access to for a little bit so what is bluechew dot com

Essentially, it's medication for guys. Actually, it's specifically for guys. And here's the deal. As guys get older, yeah, some of the hardware stops working sometimes. Specifically, what are we talking about? Yes, we're talking about, you know, the bedroom. If that's where you choose to partake in this particular activity. But let's not limit it to that, right?

Creativity is not a bad thing sometimes. So if you're in that situation, maybe you're looking to go a few extra rounds. Maybe you want to be a little bit more confident. Fortunately, there's a company that is support in the podcast, bluechew.com, B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W.com. First ever chewable that brings your performance to another level. It's a pretty interesting process. You go online, go to bluechew.com, and you fill out to, medical questionnaire. Give a little bit of a background of what it is that's going on or what

you may be looking for. And a doctor reviews it, writes your prescription and what shows up at your house. It showed up in my house like a basically a manila envelope with a traditional packaging on there. You'd never know what it was is the point it is. What you got in there is you have, it comes in packs of five. Same active ingredients as Viagra, Seales. So you know it's going to work. They're chewable. So it works faster than a pill. And you can take them anytime. day or night, even on a full stomach. And I guess having zero experience with a pill of either Viagra or Seales, apparently if you take them on a full stomach, I don't know, it takes a long time to work. If you take the chewable form, it's a different story. And it's also cheaper. So it's

pretty much a no-brainer. And skipping the doctor's office, I don't know about anybody else, but for me, I would have a very difficult time going and looking a doctor in the eye and having an honest conversation about what it is I was looking for. But that could be just me. If you're in that situation, though, with me, you can skip that line. You can skip the doctor's visit. You can just go straight online, ship straight to your door. Like I said, it's pretty discreet packaging. You wouldn't know what it was unless you'd ordered it. And right now, if you visit blotchew.com, you're going to get your first shipment for free when you use the promo code hot, HOT, uppercase, lowercase, I don't think it matters. You're going to pay five bucks in shipping. It's prescribed by an

line doctor it's made in the u.s it's super easy to do b l u.c hw dot com so if you got your tool belt on and you can't find your hammer now you know which direction you can potentially go for a stand-in you know see what i'm saying see what i did there all right episode 43 let's do this so like i said in the intro intro, today's episode was actually supposed to be an interview. It didn't work out. But a few things that, well, one thing that happened in my life and one thing that happened in other people's lives, kind of have had me thinking about a particular topic for a few days now.

And I'm actually glad that I get the opportunity to at least address it or talk about it for a few minutes in the hopes that maybe it will shed some light. on somebody who's in this situation or knows somebody who's in this situation or just maybe change some behavior or thought process. I guess at the end of the day, that's all that I would like to do. Specifically what I'm talking about for the external situation that what happened and has kind of been in the news for the last few days was suicides, specifically by two celebrities or well-known individuals. One of them was Kate Spade, who I don't know much about the women's fashion world, but I understand that she was in the handbag or purse market.

And the other one was Anthony Bourdain, a pretty well-known world-class chef. The combination of those two suicides and the proximity of those two suicides really got me thinking about just in general struggles. And before I go any farther, let me state the obvious for anybody who might be questioning my authority to speak on this topic, because I have absolutely none. I am obviously not a psychologist, and I am not a psychiatrist, even though I have spoken to both, both voluntarily and voluntold to go speak to them. And both times I pretty much prefer to argue with them and try to play, I don't know, I don't say I would like to play games with them, but I like to have theoretical conversations about where they derive their opinions and where I derive mine from. But that's away from the point. Point is, I'm neither of those things.

And when it comes to suicide, if I'm completely honest with suicide in general, all I can say is that I really, I don't understand. understand it. But having said that, I've also never been closely touched by it. I don't think, and I've been thinking about this for a few days, I can't think of an example of in my personal circle of friends, a close circle of friends or an acquaintance, or even in the community of people that I worked from, even though there have been seals that have committed suicide, I haven't known any of them, and it hasn't had a very deep impact on my life or any impact. Or any impact. at all, to be honest. And I also have no experience with depression.

I would certainly think that, or I feel that I had been depressed in my life or I'd had times of depression, but I don't think I've ever been anywhere near clinical depression. And I say that because I've never been in a place that is so full of pain and unhappiness and suffering, which is what I am assuming. that feels like and what that station in life feels like where I consider taking my own life. Having never been to a place like that in depression, maybe not going that far, I also have no experience with antidepressants or the treatment for depression. I was prescribed antidepressants when I went to the National Intrepid Center of Excellence,

which is a medical treatment facility that is attached to the Walter Reed Hospital in the Washington, D.C. They sent me there at the tail end of my military career for a very robust medical workup. And I was completely honest on every questionnaire that I filled out. And with every question that both the psychologist and psychologist asked me. And they prescribed me antidepressants. I have been prescribed them, but I have never taken them. One, I was scared to death of them. But two, at the time, I was flying quite a bit.

and I had a first class medical certificate because I was doing charter flying. And the second I would have popped one of those antidepressants in my mouth, it would have essentially grounded me until I could have worked my way through the process to becoming fit to fly again under the FAA rules and guidelines. So the combination of being scared of them because I didn't know anything about them and the impact that it would have on what I was doing to make money, that was enough for me right there. I didn't go any further.

point in all of this is that I have absolutely no clinical background when it comes to talking about depression or suicide or the combination of the two. Now, like I said, there was two things that kind of got me thinking about struggles. The first was actually a conversation that, it was a conversation that we were having out by the fire pit at our house one night last week. it was specifically a comment that my wife had made about her continued, I don't want to say resistance to doing a podcast episode with me, even though I think she is slightly resistant to the idea, but I also understand why she is.

A lot of the things that she would say, I think, might surprise people, especially when we start talking about her impression of the military, her impression or experience. with being a military spouse, her experience with military medicine, or just a military machine in general. A lot of her feelings are other than positive. They're not glowing, but they're honest and they're earned, and they're hers. And the specific comment that she made in essence was something along the lines of one of the reasons why she's hesitant is she has or she feels like that people have the opinion

or the impression that I have my shit together. And she doesn't want to do anything to alter that, specifically when it comes to talking about any of the relationship dynamics that her and I have experienced throughout the course of our marriage and what we're going through right now. That comment got me thinking right then and there. And then shortly there after that, there was the subsequent suicides that kind of occurred right after one another. And the combination of those events has had my head kind of in that space thinking about struggles since they happened. The reality is I don't have my shit together.

And I don't want people to think that I do. My life is anything but perfect. and I think that that's the situation with every single person's life on the face of this planet. Personally, I suspect that everyone's life resembles a roller coaster much more than a rocket ship that always seems to be climbing higher. And I think we're living in a world where it's just really easy to be dishonest about that if you want to. the most or not the most but in my opinion the easiest place to do that is on social media which it seems to me from the cheap seats where a lot of people spend the majority of their time it's an environment where the dips i don't see them on display that often i see the highs the roller coaster going

very rarely if ever do i see the roller coaster cresting over the top of that peak and coming back down. And that environment, it's bullshit. It doesn't help anything and it doesn't help anybody. And I'm as guilty as playing that game or as guilty of playing that game as anybody else has or is. And it's really easy to justify it to yourself, especially if you were in an environment where not that I'm not a brand. I don't have a brand. But I work with brands. And I try to stay positive and put positivity towards what I do instead of negativity. And it's very easy to say that what you're doing is, you know, I'm just creating a balance between my personal and my professional life. But what you're really doing is highlighting the good things and the things that you want people to see.

And you're selectively not showing the things that may not paint you in the light that you would want to be seen in. So again, from my view in the cheap seats, which is exactly what this is. is. I'm uneducated in many respects and I'm certainly untrained. What I see, though, is a society of individuals that is hanging on by their goddamn fingernails, literally a death grip. And the last thing that is holding them is that fingernail grip that they have holding onto reality to get through the day. It seems to me that stress is at an absolute all-time high. And I think most people are trying to make it from sunrise to sunset. Some days I am for damn sure.

And it also seems like success somehow has been equated and is now equal to having things or having money, which is then somehow equated or equal to happiness. So success is things and money and things and money is happiness. If that were the case, I don't think people. people who have net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, who would be considered by most to be celebrities, would be taking their life because they have all of those things. It's a trap. And I have absolutely fallen for that trap because that's exactly what it is.

And when I look back at the choices I've made purely for the sake of money, they have led me to probably the places in my life where I have been the most unhappy. and I had the sense of being the most unfulfilled. And that's a terrible place to be. It's a terrible place to be. But like I said in the beginning, I don't understand. And perhaps it's because of my DNA and who I was born into this world as. And perhaps it was because of my background.

Or perhaps it was because of the lessons that I have learned along the way when it comes to adversity and either tackling adversity or running from adversity or just how to deal with adversity in general. Perhaps it is because of all of those things that it doesn't make sense to me. Or perhaps it's the chemicals in my brain are just not wired to think that way. So there's no way that I could understand it. But it's terrible to see people getting to a point where they feel like the single best option is to end their life.

And I think there's, I think there's things that we can do about it as a society. You know, I see people putting out a lot the suicide prevention hotline number. And I think about myself in just the way that I am having, again, no understanding of suicide. But I know for a fact that if I were to get to that point, I would be very unlikely to call a suicide prevention hotline number. And the reason I say that is I don't feel like I'm the type of person, well, I know that I'm, not the type of person that feels comfortable reaching out for help. And I think that most people are like that. I don't think that I'm atypical in that sense in any way, shape, or form.

And the reason for that is, is there's some fear involved. One, fear of being judged, fear of having a stigma attached to you. And two, it's embarrassing. I mean, those are the reasons that I can think of as to why I wouldn't use a number like that or even necessarily reach out to a friend. It would be, you know, you're not only battling how you feel, you're battling the fear of those emotions and the fear of that judgment as well. And that would go with people reaching out to me as well. I'm much more likely to say I'm doing

fine than I am to be totally open and honest and to let somebody into the struggles that I'm going through as a human being. And it goes back to that fear and embarrassment. Those two things for me will govern a lot of the time how far I will let people in to what I'm dealing with in my life and I'd be better at dealing with those things if I were to let people in. Easier said than done, obviously. So I understand why people don't necessarily reach out for that suicide hotline. So there's, I know I see a lot of people posting that number, which is good. I would never ever recommend against doing that. And then another thing I've seen people post about or talk about quite often is friends reaching out. And again, I think that's good, but it also depends on the person

that you're reaching out to in the place that they're at. If they're afraid or embarrassed, don't be surprised if you're not going to get an honest answer. So I would add to that as well. And this is where I think just about everybody on earth can make a difference. And that's, it starts with being a decent human being to one another. And I'm going to point back again to social media, specifically the banter in the comments that I constantly see on social media. In my opinion, how you behave online and how you conduct yourself is an amazing window into the character of who you are. It's essentially how you act when nobody is watching.

Even though people are watching, there's no consequences attached to it. So you're really allowed to be and express who you really are. and you see some beauty of humanity online, but I don't think anybody could argue that that's the majority of what you see. It's a cesspool, and people really pull the curtain back on who they really are. It really shows your character. It shows whether or not you take the time to listen before you talk,

and it shows whether or not you are a caring person when you do decide to talk. Or do you come out with anger and hate and desire to inflict pain, on other people. I know more than a few people who in a face-to-face interaction or in conversations with them will claim to be, you know, a stand-up person, a stand-up human being. And then their behavior online is the exact opposite of that. And to me, that gap between the two is such a deficiency in self-awareness. Because I don't care what you act like when people are watching. I care what you act like when nobody is watching, when your character is free to be, whoever it is you actually want to be.

That's the person that I either want to know or want to have absolutely nothing to do with. So when it goes back to be decent human beings, I mean, for the love of God, can we just be a little bit more generous with how we interact with one another? And to me, it sounds silly, I guess, a little bit for me to hear those words coming out of my mouth. But I do think it would have a drastic impact with the suicide hotline being there, with friends reaching out, and with people being just more decent human beings, more generous to each other. I think all of those things would have a difference or they do have a difference. And I think we can also do a better job as a society of teaching people how to deal with adversity. and teaching people not to avoid adversity and teaching people that adversity is okay and that it's

actually essential. So I get asked all the time, well, all the times maybe not right. I get asked frequently about mental toughness and people ask that usually through the lens of how do individuals make it through seal training known as buds, basic underwater demolition seal training. And the stats on seal training speak for themselves. The attrition rate floats between, I don't know, 75 to the 80th percentile, mid-80th percentile, kind of depending on the time of the year.

Bottom line is extremely difficult to successfully complete the program. And the vast majority of people who attempt it do not and are not successful in making it through. So people will always ask me, what's the deal with mental toughness? In your opinion, are you born with it or is it something that can be taught? And my answer to them is yes. When it comes to mental toughness, there is an essence of it that you are born with. And everybody is going to have a certain level of capacity.

But there absolutely is an essence of mental toughness that can be taught. and I believe the same thing to be true of your ability to deal with adversity. So when I look at mental toughness, if you were to ask my opinion, I would say that in my opinion, looking backwards, mental toughness is a combination of two things. And I'm not sure the recipe on this if it's one-third and then two-thirds or it's half and half, whatever it may be. But when it comes to mental toughness, it's two parts. First part is resiliency, which if you go to the dictionary and look it up,

it's going to tell you that's your ability to bounce back or spring back to your original form when you're bent or pushed. Now, to be a resilient person and to develop resiliency, there's only one way to accomplish that. And that comes from bending yourself in order to be able to withstand being bent by others or being bent by the world. To become strong and resilient, you have to willingly bend yourself. What does that mean? It means you have to seek adversity.

So that's one part of it. The second part of mental toughness, which I have seen time and time again, improved through teaching people how to set and approach their goals. And depending on the audience or the age range, you can use a variety of terms. You can talk about chunking, you know, breaking things up into small, digestible pieces. You can talk about micro goals and using them for macro success. keeping your world small. Another thing I focus on is, focus on or talk about is focusing on the process and not the outcome.

We're talking about dominoes and the kinetic energy that dominoes very small things can have and how small items stacked sequentially can lead to large successes. Whatever it may be, it can be taught. Whatever the size of your audience or whoever you're, you're talking with. There's a way that you can improve the way that they approach and they set their goals. It will enhance what they naturally have when it comes to mental toughness, if they can improve it. When it came to being a Bud's instructor, the number one thing that I saw that tripped

students up and caused them to quit in the lowest moments of their life, which is what the training is designed to do, was becoming overwhelmed. Essentially, their world got too big. They started thinking about the totality of Bud's training as opposed to the evolution that they were in inside of Bud's training. Or instead of focusing on the moment that they were in, they started thinking about the evolution and then they started thinking about the totality of the training. However, their world started getting large, it grew to the point where it became overwhelming and they threw their hand up and they quit. Now, time and time again, when I've encountered people who have quit training or a selection process of any kind, the number one answer or

emotion that people feel from making that decision in the low point of their life is regret, time and time and time again. Now, the students that I found to be successful and what worked for me was focusing on whatever it is that I was doing in the smallest, most digestible piece in erasing everything from my mind except for that small step. Now, Hell Week is a good example of this. It's basically in the middle of first phase of training. It starts on a Sunday and it ends on a Friday.

You get a couple hours of sleep throughout the week. It sucks. The description of the week is right there in the title. It's hell. Most people in Hell Week will quit in the first 48 hours. It's actually surprising how many people will quit really, really early. I don't know if they realize what they were signing up for. There's a couple ways you can think about Hell Week.

You can think about it as a week or some of the best advice that I was given before I went into Hellweek from somebody who had made it through was, hey, don't ever think about it in the perspective of being one week long. Don't ever think about it in the perspective of being even one day long. Just remember that they have to feed you and they have to feed you every six hours. So make it from meal to meal. Don't worry about what day it is. don't worry about how far you've gone or how much further you have to go.

Just worry about getting to the next meal. And that's a strategy that I took into it. Now, that strategy allowed me to focus on the moment and stack one successful evolution on another one, on top of another one. And the next thing that I know, I'm at lunch. And I get 30 minutes of I'm not going to call it rest, but we'll call it a reprieve. And then after that, focus on an evolution and stack that on another evolution.

And then another evolution until I got to dinner and a 30-minute reprieve. And before I knew it, you know, the sun is coming up and it's going down. And these evolutions continue and the meals continue. And before you know it, you are done with Hellweek. And you're moving on with your journey, completing the rest of training. So am I more mental? tough because of how I strategized my decision making, I would say yes, regardless of how mentally tough going in, that strategy helped me. It absolutely enhanced what I naturally had and what I

naturally brought to the table. And I've used that strategy ever since then. We have to do the same thing with adversity. We're doing a disservice to society by not taking that same approach when it comes to adversity. And when I think about adversity, honestly, I use the same strategy now that I used when I had the first job that I ever had with my dad, who was a brick mason. And for the first year that I worked for him, really, all I did, because it was all I was qualified to do was move bricks around. And pallets of bricks show up in blocks of 500. And the tongs that I used to carry those bricks, carried six at a time. And when your job is to take them from a delivery point around the back of a house,

up a set of scaffolding and place them on the roof, it's at the age of 11, that's a job that sucks. There's some adversity there. But what I went with and what my dad told me and what was reinforced later on in the SEAL teams was just take it one step at a time. Instead of thinking about the 500 bricks, think about the trip that you need to do, the one trip that you need to do.

And essentially what that is is picking the smallest victory that I could achieve when I look back at the age of 11. That was the victory that I had in front of me, six bricks at a time from the pallet to the roof. I wasn't trying to win the war. I'm just trying to win a gunfight. And my goal in doing that is momentum.

and I would only lift my head high enough that I wouldn't lose sight of that momentum. I wouldn't lift it so high where I saw the gap between where I needed to be, where I needed to go and where I was, that grand canyon of difference. I wouldn't focus on that. I would lift my head up only enough to see the progress that I had made. When you lift your head up and you focus on how much further you have to go, or how much farther you have to go would be the appropriate term, it's really easy to lose your objectivity because you're going to become overwhelmed.

It's really easy to start feeling that everything is working against you, and it's really easy to fall into that trap of telling yourself that you can't win. It's a miserable spot to be. I found myself in that spot many times working for my dad. It is not like he told me this one time, and I became a Jedi knight of being able to think this way. I had struggles along the way and had to fall flat on my face to realize that that strategy worked when it came to adverse situations.

I have fallen flat on my face by losing that mentality, by becoming overwhelmed, by losing my objectivity in my adult life as well. It sucks. It's miserable. I've been there. I think everybody on earth has. I think there's two types of people when it comes to being overwhelmed. We're feeling miserable.

There's those that have been there, and then there are those that'll lie to you, and then they say they haven't been. In addition to thinking about things, one digestible step at a time, the other strategy that I learned along the way, and I don't know to whether or not to say it was my parents that taught me this, or it was going through seal training that taught me this, or the community in and of itself. but it's the principle that nothing lasts forever. And this is something that I remind myself very often because, like I said, my life looks much more like a roller coaster than a line going up the bar graph, just up and up and up. That is not what my life is like. And when things suck for me, and that might be relationship-wise or where I am in relationship to a goal or being in physical, pain, I constantly remind myself that nothing lasts forever. I will literally repeat that in my head when I am at the lowest points that I get to throughout the course of my life or at the

course of my day. And on the other side of that coin, I also remind myself of that when things are going really well for me, when I'm having great days. And I don't do that because I'm trying to be morose about it by any stretch of the imagination. I say that to myself because I'm trying to appreciate the great day that I'm having for what it is and to realize that it could be fleeting. I don't want it to be fleeting, but I'm not going to be there forever. And just like when you're in the pits of hell, when you're on the peaks and basking in the sun, it's not going to last forever. At this point of my life, I'm trying to have more days in the wind column than the loss, and sometimes I'll hit a bad run. And when I hit a bad run, what do I do? I go right back to

taking it one step at a time, trying to build momentum to get my way out of that, reminding myself along the way that nothing lasts forever. So I don't know if anything I've said has made sense. I hope that it has. I feel like I've kind of rambled a bit, but I also feel like it's important. So I'll just end with a few thoughts that I've been thinking about since, again, that conversation and then the recent events that have hit the news. I think we'd be better served to realize that we are all a mess in our own way. Not all the time, but no one is immune. I don't care who you are. You're going to have peaks and valleys.

But I also think we'd be better served to realize that a life without struggle is a a life without meaning, at least in my opinion. The value comes from the things that you put the most work into. The things that have come easy to me in my life that I haven't struggled for and that I haven't worked for, they have almost no value to me. They're inconsequential. The ones that I have struggled for and fought for the most, they have the most meaning to me at the end of the day. I think we'd also be better served to realize that some people can handle more than others. It's very easy and I have fallen, I'm guilty of this, probably more so than other people, of expecting people to be able to tolerate the things that I'm able to tolerate. And I say that when it comes to my

kid's behavior, the relationship that I have with my wife, and many times that's been to my own detriment and to the detriment of the relationships with my kids and with my wife. We all have cups of different sizes. And we have different cups for different things. It doesn't matter how big your cup is and how much you can hold. If you're going to be part of a family or a community and you're going to be a leader, you have to understand the volume of the cups around you as well. I think we would be better served if as individuals, we did not spend a single second idolizing another individual or a group. The SEAL community is a great example of that. A lot of people want to make it out to be,

utopia of perfection, and it's not because it's populated with just human beings. There's crime, there's fraud, and there's suicide. There is no such thing as perfection. In addition to not idolizing anybody, I don't think you should compare yourself to anybody else. Social media makes that really hard. So perhaps we should accept social media for what it actually is. It's make-believe. you get to choose what people see. It is completely selective on what you want to portray. It is not a complete picture. I don't know if it ever could be,

but let's just take it for what it is. And probably the easiest way to not compare yourself to other people is to throw that crap away. Take social media and just throw it in the garbage. Easier said than done, I know. I fall victim to this as well. And then I'll end with, if there's one thing that I learned that is,

or has been impactful in my life, in addition to the understanding of mental toughness and how it can be taught and can enhance what you naturally come to the table with, which therefore that theory can be applied to just about anything to include adversity and your ability to work your way through it, is that the advice, and I tell this to my kids too, regardless of how hard something is,

regardless of how much something hurts, never give up. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Real strength is actually picking somebody up, not putting them down or holding them down. And if you can get it stuck in your head that you'll never give up, then tomorrow's always going to come unless you do something permanent to prevent it. So don't. Never stop putting one foot in front of the other.

The sun is going to come up. but sometimes that next day is going to suck. And you know what? Sometimes the one after that's going to suck too. And for me, sometimes it's weeks. Sometimes it sucks for more than days. Sometimes it sucks for weeks. But I consistently and constantly tell myself nothing can last forever because it can't.

And I don't know. I don't know if, again, like I said, I don't know if that's complete rambling for the last 20 minutes or it actually can help somebody. I hope it does somewhere. And for people listen to this, if none of this makes sense, then do me a favor. Be decent, caring, and compassionate human beings because it might just make all the difference in the world for somebody else. And that's all I got for this week.

Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Appreciate all the reviews on iTunes. I appreciate the emails. I appreciate the feedback. If you have a question, comment, concern for me, go to clearedhodpodcast.com and hit the contact button and it will send me an email and I do everything I can to get back to every email that I get. Sometimes it might be a little bit, but I'll do the best that I can. I'm always open for suggestions. I'm trying to think what else is new. The Hunting Camp slash Black Ops version of

the Be the Example T should hit the streets here in about a week. That thing hopefully in real life looks as sexy as it does on the, I guess it would be a PDF or an Adobe Illustrator. that I got my hands on. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll release the details on that on social media. In addition to that shirt, thank you to everybody who's buying the t-shirts and the hats and the stickers. Please take pictures of you out in the wild using that stuff.

Send it to me. I love seeing them. I'll try to repost as many of them as I can. I think that's about it. Yep, that's it. Stand by in the next few weeks. I will have my first female guest in the podcast in two weeks. probably not going to be my wife.

I am still plugging away, and I think it's going to happen eventually, but the timing just needs to be right, and the headspace needs to be right. But it'll definitely happen. She's got some fire, and I don't want her to lose it, but I also want her to feel comfortable

spitting a little bit of fire as well, too. So I'm with this. Thank you to Bluchu. They agreed to sponsor four episodes of the podcast. This is the last of the four. And in case you miss the intro, You're curious about what Blue Chew is. Blue Chewable.

Blue Chewables has the first chewables with the same active ingredient as Viagrincialis. Get your first shipment free when you use the promo code hot, H-O-T. It's not hard. You might be afterwards, but the promo code itself is hot, H-O-T. You'll pay five bucks in shipping. Blue Chew, B-L-U-C-H-E-W.com, promo code hot. And that is it. And you know what?

Actually, if you get that prescription, go to Blue Chew? I would say send me pictures of that, but just send me pictures of the wrapping. I don't need to see pictures of anything else. You savages, okay? So keep it kid friendly for the love. Come on. Keep it kid friendly.

Nobody needs to see that stuff. But I do want to see the rappers. Because I'm curious as to whether or not anybody actually tries it. And that is it. I'll see you next week. See you.