Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - 10/17/2025

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Nothing fancy today, just some traditional Q and A to round out the week. Of course, I only picked controversial and divisive topics, oh wait, not even close. I did actually cover: -Tandem Skydiving Fatality in Tennessee -How to have hard conversations about money with your spouse? -Why do I keep going back to the same woman? -How do you manage problems you can't solve on your own? Enjoy    Today's Sponsors: AG1: Go to https://drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ. Pique: Get 20% off + a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first purchase with my link https://Piquelife.com/CLEAREDHOT

Okay, got the red smoke. Oh, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. Whist of the smoke? I'm looking at danger close now. Come on, wait a minute, baby. Good morning, everybody. Man, it is an early day at the studio.

Some days, you just can't sleep that well. And you get up and you're like, you know what? I got a bunch to do. So here we are. Quiet early morning in Callisbell. City's still sleeping. I kind of like it. Normal questions for today.

Before I get into the four that I have selected, A lot of people have been hitting me up about a skydiving incident slash accident that occurred in the state of Tennessee. Now, I don't want to scare anybody away from skydiving, testing gravity on their own, or Adam Singer's theory that if you jump out of an aircraft, you'll be sucked forward into the propeller, which is not supported by gravity, physics, science, any of those things. Perhaps one day I'll have him back on the show and he can explain again, because it still doesn't make sense to me how he thought that was. possible, but that's, that's a different portion of the story. Today's episode is brought to you by AGZ. Now, that might sound familiar to you because if you've listened to the podcast, you know I work with AG1. Same company, different product. AG1 for me is about my morning routine. How can I hydrate and get a variety of macro and micronutrients at the same time? Evening routine for me,

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Back to the show. To the best of my knowledge, here is what happened. I can give you the grand details of this. There was a tandem pair. And for those of you totally unfamiliar with skydiving, obviously it is, sometimes it's called free fall because you are falling freely through the atmosphere until a, parachute deployment altitude to deploy a parachute safely land on the ground and do it again ad nauseum as much as you want to hopefully thousands of times every once in a while you'll have a malfunction where your main parachute malfunctions but every skydiver at least in the u.s is

required to jump with two parachutes your reserve is packed by an f aa certified rigor uh it was it's been 90 days it's been 180 days not that it goes back and forth often but the regulations have shifted and that's their frequency with which the rigor is going to redo your reserve parachute There are things called AADs or automatic activation devices. It's a computer with a small explosive charge that's going to slice a razor blade through your reserve closing loop. Firing a reserve if you were incapacitated and you meet criteria for both speed and altitude. I'm not going to sit here and try to explain to people the safety involved in skydiving because at the end of the day,

is it fair to call it safe, in air quotes. I don't know. But it is something you can do as safely as possible. There are accidents, there are fatalities. Most fatalities actually occur under normally functioning and equipment with people who are maybe a little bit over their skis doing something with a piece of gear that they are right at that edge or maybe over the edge with their ability to do so. But it does happen. Now, there is solo jumping where you jump out with your own parachute, but a lot of people choose to experience skydiving for the first time via a tandem, which is two individuals that are connected together sharing one. parachute system. The main and reserve are much larger,

both are designed to carry the supported weight of both people. Both parachutes have to be able to absorb the force of opening at a terminal velocity. Very well designed current modern day systems. They're pretty much bond proof. The harness itself is a multi-point harness. You are connected to the tandem instructor by four connection points. Some are rated at 2,500 pounds. Some are rated at 5,000 pounds. you are cinched down. You are riding in the front. The tandem instructor is in the back, has multiple ways to deploy both parachutes. He can throw out or will throw out.

He or she will throw out a drogue, which essentially slows, since you have the surface area largely of one jumper, but the weight of two jumpers, you would fall very rapidly without a drug parachute to slow you down. So they throw out basically a micro parachute that adds drag and slows you down, gives you more time in free fall. when I was going through the tandem course in the military, one of the jumps that you do is a tandem terminal

where you jump out and you don't throw the drogue. And let me tell you, you are cooking. And then when you get close to deployment altitude, you throw the drug out, slow yourself down, deploy the parachute. Parachutes, I'm sure, are tolerated, they can tolerate a terminal opening, but I don't want to put that level of stress on my neck. I don't want to get whipped in the head by the passenger sitting in front of me. So yeah, we'll just deploy that parachute at a normal speed and altitude.

So here's to the best of my knowledge what happened in Tennessee. There was a tandem. So we'll call it a student and a T.I. A tandem instructor. But there has been a little bit of uncertainty about the exit and whether or not they got hung up on the aircraft, meaning a piece of the equipment became entangled with something on the step of the aircraft. Now I have read online, and that is the only information that I have seen on that, I think, was through Facebook. So we're going to take this one with a huge grain of salt.

But how this terminated is that the student was found under a functioning canopy hanging from a tree. The T.I. or Tandem instructor was found without a parachute in a field, and I'll say nearby, even though I think they were separated by a few miles, which would make sense of a parachute open, the drift associated with that. So what am I saying? It appears that a tandem instructor and a student exited an aircraft together,

but only one had a parachute deploy above their head. How does that happen? Essentially, the tandem master fell out of their harness. And I'm not going to make any... What's the correct word here? I was going to say accusations, but I don't have anything to accuse. There is an investigation that is ongoing. There's two narratives that I've heard.

One is that the pair became entangled somewhere near the step of the aircraft and the tandem instructor in a mindful decision to save the life of the student, cut himself out of the harness. and I can understand where that narrative comes from and I can understand why people would want that to be true. And I'm not saying that it isn't true, but I am very, very familiar with tandem harnesses, specifically the tandem instructor's role. I went all the way up to being a military tandem master examiner in the military. Cutting yourself out of that harness, assuming that you, you are connected to the student appropriately. Everything is connected and stowed. And you get yourself outside of an aircraft in a piece of equipment where to hang up on that.

Your ability to cut yourself out of that harness, I question. There's another possibility that as much as people may not understand this, I can see to be probably far more likely. and from everything I'm heard, this particular individual was awesome. Never met them, highly skilled, current, competent. But I have seen this in myself and I have seen this in others. Complacency. If you are at a drop zone and you are working as a tandem instructor,

I know guys who would do 10 to 12 tantams in a day, somebody else briefs the student. They come in and they do their check-in process. They pay, they sign the waivers. They, sometimes it's another tandem instructor. Sometimes it's just a staff member that teaches people who are going to do tandems in bulk. They talk about body position.

They talk about the harness. They initially get them into the harness and get it to the 90th, you know, percent solution. The final TI that's going to do the jump will modify it and get it exactly the way they want to before the jump. But the reason that another staff member is doing that is that the tandem instructor is off just turning loads. They're jumping out with a student, getting them to the ground, high five, picture, video onto the next. They'll pick up another rig, throw it over their shoulders, and walking back to the aircraft sometimes, meet their student for the first time.

And that can seem, I guess, impersonal, but it's not meant to be impersonal. It's meant separating those duties is meant to be as efficient as possible once you're burning jet A. And if you have a lot of people that want to do tannums, you don't want to shut the aircraft down in between. They're managing their fuel load. They're managing, especially at a DZ that has multiple aircraft, who's loading, who's up in the air, who's climbing, all of these things. So it's a very choreographed symphony or circus, depending on how you want to look at it. I, there are tandem rigs. There are, you know, it's like a backpack. I mean, it is not that different. Actually, I think I have my backpack here. So the shoulder straps.

Do they look like this on a tandem rig? Kind of, but in concept, people can understand. You slide a shoulder, an arm through one, and an arm and shoulder through another one. There is a chest strap. There is a waist strap. And there are two leg strap. So similar to a backpack, but obviously it's got a lot more stuff, as it probably should, because I'm not going to ever jump out of an airplane with that backpack on.

I would wear my magic backpack for that, which has the two parachutes, the AAD, all those things I've already talked about. some tandem systems it is a continuous loop on the leg strap where yes you could if you wanted to unweave it from the friction devices but it is not a quick disconnector and then there are systems that have quick disconnectors and they make these things really easy to get in and out of you can throw the rig onto your back pop the quick disconnects that'll say that sit right around maybe like the sockets of your hip generally route the leg strap, connect it back together. Now, people probably understand where I'm going with this.

In a place where you are just turning and burning, and you've done this for a long time, is it possible that you could throw a rig on your back, do the chest strap and waistrap, and not do the leg straps if they were the quick disconnect version, or even, I guess, it would be possible if they were the non-quick disconnect. Yes, if you were to attach yourself to the student in the aircraft,

Is it possible that you could think that you were completely ready to jump because you're going to feel that tension, that connection with the student? Yeah, it is. What's going to happen, though, when you exit the aircraft and either set the drogue or in the parachute deployment process where you actually release that drogue, it collapses a little bit. You actually accelerate and fall through what's known as the trap door. Oftentimes you'll go with a little bit of a hips low attitude

as you are rotating through vertical because as the canopy is above you, as the instructor, I'm looking up, I'm identified and making sure by line groups are straight. I'm making sure that there, you know, there's no tension knots. And you can visually identify this stuff once you know what you're looking at very quickly.

So you look up, you're like, good, it's opening properly. But notice what I said, you're going from a horizontal position rapidly to a vertical position. If you didn't have your leg straps attached, there is a world I can see where you would fall out of the harness. And I can't think of any other way.

that a tandem instructor gets out of a harness while in free fall. But this is one person's personal opinion who knows nothing about that particular incident other than what they have read. But those are the gross, not meaning like disgusting, but the gross overarching details. The student was found under a functioning tandem system canopy hanging from a tree hours later and the instructor was found in a field with no parachute system on them. whatsoever. So it's a horrific experience for probably both parties, the families, obviously. Tragedy for sure. I'm not saying it was complacency. I'm not saying that the T.I. didn't cut

themselves out of the harness with the intent of saving the student. I'm hoping that there will be a thorough review and after action, because whatever happened needs to be presented. to other tandem instructors, every tandem instructor. It needs to be taught in the initial curriculum where you go from not being a tandem instructor to learning how to actually safely execute tandem operations with people who have never left an aircraft in flight before. Even if that information doesn't paint,

not necessarily the TI, but the actions in that moment, I've been there. I've seen it happen. I've seen people getting ready to jump out of airplanes, individual jumpers, without their chest straps. done, which on a hard opening, you could probably blast right the front out the front of your parachute system. Excuse me. But we'll see. And bottom line is it's horrible, but I don't want it to turn people off from experiencing skydiving either. It is an amazing activity. I've had some

incredibly enriching activities with friends, with family. I spread my mom's ashes or a portion of my mom's ashes with my sister on a tandem over San Diego. I've gone to all seven continents skydiving. It's amazing, but it can bite you. And it takes one time where your mind can drift a little bit and it can, it can bite you. It's not a safe sport, but it can be done as safely as possible and enjoyed for a lifetime. And I highly recommend that a lot of people do. So let's dive into question number one here. Diving right into my core competencies, relationships. That's a joke, by the way sarcasm is deep in that statement. How do you recommend tough conversations about money in relationships?

I'm a saver. My wife is a spender. And let's be real here, that can be fuel for fire. Yes, yes, it can. I've been here. I make enough to support us, but in order to put us in a better position to start a family and pay off her debt, I'm struggling with finding a way to put it lightly that her spending is out of hand.

Anytime that I do, she becomes a victim. And I become a prince that has done zero wrong. Not true. I negligently discharge every day. Good usage of that term. Should I rip the bandit off or should we get a second party involved to mediate the conversation? Well, let me tell you, I've tried both of those. I've probably tried everything in between. My recommendation, and I'll give you some options here, but my baseline recommendation is this. If you don't want to spend the money that you're trying to save on a third party to mediate in between, I think this is something that you can solve between couples. My biggest piece of advice, on this is try to treat this or when you discuss this with a little bit more of the Socratic method. Ask questions instead of being directive. You are like this. You are doing this. What do you think we should do here?

Let's talk about our goals. Where do you want to be in 1, 3, 5, 10, however you would like to structure it, right? So a question-based approach is as opposed to more of a directive-based approach. I've tried both. A Socratic approach is way more effective, at least in my own personal experience. And it's not that people can't become defensive. It's just you're not starting the conversation with them in a defensive place. I think there's another question today that is about conversations with significant others.

And I'll say this, a healthy relationship, in my opinion, there shouldn't be any taboo subjects. You should be able. Now, that's not to say that there shouldn't be any conversations that aren't going to be hard, but you should be able to enter, engage in, and hopefully exit a conversation, even if it's a sensitive topic. In this case, it might be finances. In another situation, it might be previous sexual encounters or behaviors, previous relationships, previous occupation, previous personal behaviors. I mean, I've yet to meet a perfect person out there. Anybody watching this on video is looking at likely the most imperfect person on,

planet Earth. There are things that are easier for me to talk about in my own life and my own performance and my own behavior and there are things that are more difficult. But you should be able to navigate this. It doesn't have to be a minefield. And I believe personally that a healthy relationship, you should be at least able to enter into and exit these conversations without it being catastrophic, regardless of what the topic may be. Sometimes you get to chunk it and have shorter conversations, but you should be able to get through it. Addressing things directly. is the only thing that I have seen consistently work. Now, direct doesn't mean,

hey dude, hey lady, sit down. We're going to talk about this. I mean, if you know something is wrong or something is bothering you, address it directly. What I have seen not work almost every time is to ignore it or push it down the road, kick the can down the road,

and the hopes that things are getting better on their own. I've yet to see that happen, at least in my own personal life. Maybe somebody else has a different experience. But every time I kick the can down the road, when I get farther down the road, what I find is a can that's staring me in the face, largely not in a better condition, but most times than a worse condition. And money is a good example of this. If you believe somebody has different spending behaviors than you do, addressing it later just means there's more time that has passed for those spending opportunities to express themselves. So food for thought there.

I would have this conversation. There's a variety of things I've tried throughout the course of my life. And let me tell you, I've talked about this. People may look at me and think, oh, man, you got to figure it out. You must be rolling in cash. I am a reverse millionaire. I owe millions of dollars. And I will be paying back the bill on the coffee shop for years intentionally.

It's not like I accidentally slipped and signed the lending agreement associated with that. So to me, wealth is the ability to do it. you want to with your time. And that is the goal for me when it comes to money. I have made poor investments in my life. I guess at this point I have made the coffee shop being a good example. I have made good investments in my life, short-term investments, long-term investments. But I'm not an investment guru by any stretch. And for a long period of time, and this is when I was in the military and married with kids, I'd live paycheck to paycheck for a long time. I remember days before I got married. I remember days paper checks.

Float and check on Friday, knowing that the first or the 15th for the military was going to come on a Monday or a Tuesday. And, man, that's a, it's not a great feeling to float checks. But I'm glad I have that feeling because, man, I get it when it comes to differences in money. I like nice things just like everybody else does. I'm arriving at a place, though, where nice things just end up taking space up on your shelf and you end up getting rid of them. And for a lot of people, I think it's the excitement of buying the thing. and then you get the thing and just like, it's not what I wanted it to be.

So it actually can end up being a letdown. A saver and a spender, though, that's a tough one. I hear some questions that I would ask, or this is how I would approach the conversation. You know who you are and you know how you feel about the spending and how you want to save, pay off debt, and set yourself up for later in life. Do you have that answer with your wife?

Do you know what she wants? to look like financially, one three, five, ten years, you know, the timelines that I mentioned. It doesn't need to be any necessarily any of those things. And I would ask her, if I were you, I would say, okay, if you were in my shoes, what would you feel is an appropriate allocation for, this is the amount of money that I make? Where do you feel like we should allocate this? And I would go down to black and white. I would have a piece of paper in front of you and I would break stuff down, be like, listen, this, because money is math. This is what we have to work. with. If we obviously it is possible to spend more than you make. So I mean that terminates in debt.

Right. So this is what we have to work with. This is our pie. How do you want to slice this thing? Let's work together so we can find a place that works for both of you. There's probably going to be an essence of both of you are going to need to work your way towards the middle a little bit. perhaps you'll save a little bit less. But if you extend that over a long period of time, you're going to be good to go, make smart investments. And perhaps she'll spend a little bit less. So both of you, instead of standing on one side of a line,

can put a foot on the line or a foot in the middle. That level of compromise I have found to always work well. And even though you're the breadwinner, which I'm pretty sure you put that in here, you make enough to support us. Okay. So you're the breadwinner. don't put don't present this or enter into this that because of that you should have the overall say of what happens with the money

i have tried that approach let me just tell you how that works it doesn't so learn for my mistakes for many years ago don't do that i am telling you the collaborative socratic question based approach what do you want this to look like where would you like to allocate what are what is important to you Do you want to save for our future? How do you want to be in our 30s, 40s, 50s when it comes to economically, do you want to have investments? Do you want to buy assets? Do you want to have real estate? Do you want to do none of that and live in the moment because money is a made up thing in the matrix that we live in?

I don't know what our answer is going to be. And maybe you don't either, but you should ask her. Get down to the black and white. I've tried a variety of things. I've tried cash budgets before where I would pull out at the beginning of the month cash for a boat. and this, I did this with my ex-wife, with myself and my ex-wife. And the cash is essentially your disposable income. We created a budget.

There was, you know, the amount of money that we made, and then the hard costs associated with that. Your mortgage, your rent, whatever it is, cars, insurance, like the cost of life. Everything was taking care of a small amount of savings. And I'm just talking about where we were at that time of my life, the E5 or E6 and the Navy. And discretionary budget between the two of us. This is your cash.

This is my cash. Let's not touch the debit card. Let's not touch the credit card. Now, gas, groceries, things of that nature. That's budgeted so you can use the card for that. But when you're through with the cash, which you can do with what you want. And this is a tough one because you're going to get your lump of cash. She gets her lump of cash.

She gets to do with what she wants to with her cash. You can stuff yours away in a mason jar and bury it in the backyard if you want to. But you don't get to judge her. on what she spends her money on. Now, if she runs out of money and comes back to you and then starts hitting the credit cards of the debit cards, that's a different conversation. But I have found that was an interesting one because it's way more tangible. I don't have my wallet in front of a bunch of cards in it. Each of the cards has a different purpose, whether it's personal or business.

But you're not handing over cash, right? You're not just like watching your physical stack of because you're doing so well, hundreds, just shrink down. I find it's easier to overspend, especially when you're not seeing it right in your face. And I actually think the card companies, they prefer it that way, especially credit cards. They would like for it for you to be easy to spend and not be able to pay off your balance. You should look at credit card companies and where they make the vast majority of their money. Yeah, it's in debt servicing, which, man, sucks. And I've been there, man, been multiple times in my life.

I've refinanced a home to pay off and consolidate credit card debt. not because I'm awesome, because of the opposite of that, because, God, poor spending habits over time. You could try a cash budget. You could go to a financial planner. Now, this might cost you a little bit of money, but what you're going to get is a neutral third party. This is like the counselor for financial stuff. What you're going to get is somebody who can look at where you are and is probably going to do that exercise that you guys could do together. But it's not you and it's not her kind of crunching that.

math and when they present to you the picture of where you're at where you could be but what you would need to do along the way that's not really coming from an emotional place from either of you. So a lot of the times it can be easier to receive that information that way. But I would try it first. I would try to have the conversation first about any topic, whether it is in this case financial or whatever level of tension or friction that you feel. The advice that I would give on my second marriage, I'm three years into being married to Leah. it is such a different relationship in so many different ways.

And there's a lot of factors in that. My age, who we both are. But it is one of the things that I try to avoid at all costs is letting things faster. It doesn't help. I've tried to learn that lesson from my previous relationship. I'm not perfect with it because sometimes things are hard to talk about. But don't let it. Get in front of this because if you don't address it, it's not going to change on its own.

This is not a fine wine situation where the longer you leave it on the shelf, the better it's going to taste. And even with fine wine, at some point, it goes over the other side of the bell curve. So try to do this without spending your own money, obviously because you could put that into saving. But if that doesn't work, go to a financial planner. And they'll help you not only save, but maybe round the edges. Best of luck. To be a favor, email me back. Let me know how it goes. Today's episode is brought to you by Peak, the finest purveyors of tea available on the internet. That's me saying that. That's not them making a claim. I'm not really known for being a tea guy. I'm mostly a coffee guy, but I am absolutely loving this stuff.

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I've been a longtime listener of your show and thoroughly enjoy it. I love the objective view to situations you seem to have and would highly value your input on this matter. I will say this. It's a little bit easier to read a lot of these things that are going on and not have to live my way through it, especially in real time when people are sending in these emails. So I have said this before. It's easy to give advice. It's hard to live your own advice sometimes.

I am a very transparent person. The advice that I give is how I try to live my life. I am not perfect in my execution of that by any stretch. it is easier for me to be objective on these things because I'm not living through it. But don't please anybody out there confuse that with me completely having my shit together because I don't. My wife and I recently had our first child. Congratulations. It was a rough pregnancy for my wife and while she was pregnant they discovered multiple defects with our daughter's heart. My wife had to have a C-section at 36 weeks because our daughter went into distress.

From there our daughter needed to be relocated to a higher level of care. She will need to undergo a few surgeries in order to repair some of her issues. All of this being said, there are many emotions as a father that I have. Fear, sadness, and joy, just to name a few. As a father yourself, who I am sure has experienced much of the same emotions surrounding your kids. Oh, yeah. Enjoy your beautiful daughter at an age where it is unconditional love and they can't get into a car and discover drugs, alcohol, and sex. there's a lot in between those two.

I have so many friends and people I know that, you know, oh, man, I can't wait to my kids are older. And don't keep me wrong. It's amazing. I love the relationship I have of my kids. I'm so fascinated by who they are and the things that make them tick. But it was also pretty cool to just be able to cradle something that I don't have the vocabulary to describe how much I love.

And yeah, they would throw up on you. and piss on you and shit on you and you would have to clean that up often. But that was the limit of the complexity. It was cool to be able to, you know, set the baby up for any three of the kids and the carrier and full laundry. And then one day you put the baby down for a second to go get the laundry and you come back. You're like, oh, shit, where they go. And that's kind of the beginning of, oh, my goodness, existential dread is apparent because now they're mobile and they're getting into stuff. trust me, they're getting into stuff they shouldn't be getting into.

But I digress. So enjoy where you're at right now. It does get so much better, but it gets more complex as they get older. So all of that being said, there are many emotions as far as a father that I have. Fear sadness, just a few, enjoy just to name a few. How do you manage your emotions from wild scenarios involving your kids? I have always been the fixer type when it comes to problems that arise from the sounds of it from the little time of your life you share with this on the podcast how do you manage

problems that you can't solve on your own i'm curious to hear your thoughts on this since becoming a father myself keep on putting on the show i look forward to your response yeah this one can get really tough i would love to lie to myself i would love to believe that i can solve every problem in the orbit of my life everything that i encounter in my life i have a solution to it or it's going to be fixable, or at least that I have some semblance of control. And with my kids' lives, too, I'll protect them from everything. I'll never let anything bad happen to them. There's never anything that'll happen to them that I can't fix or undo or unwind.

And that is just not the objective reality of life or my kid's life. So I'll work backwards from this. White knuckling through life thinking you can control everything, it doesn't work. It'll give you stress. It'll give you ulcers. And I've tried it. It's not great. it when I was younger. The older I have gotten, the more I have realized that I don't really have

control over much other than myself. And actually, I think you could take the control over much out of that sentence. You really can only control yourself. And I don't think most people to include myself really like that concept at times, especially when it comes to your kid. What do you mean there's nothing that I can do? Well, let's use the example that you're going through. and figure out what could you possibly have done. Let's assume that you and your wife are healthy individuals, that your wife had amazing prenatal care and took care of herself. Is there anything you could have changed that would have prevented this?

From my understanding of things like this, no. This is sometimes genetic. It is just sometimes the way the human body is as is growing and evolving inside of the womb. things can happen, right? Perfection is impossible. We all have our blemishes. We all, you know, there's differences in everybody and sometimes things express like this. So is there anything possible that you could have done leading up to that to change it? No. A C-section, understandable, follow-on surgeries in medical care. Is there anything that you can do to change any of that? Probably not. So is it been a better?

to put bandwidth, energy, and time into worrying about that. It is not. Is it possible to completely not worry about that? Also, it is not. My point is this. If you can get to the place where you understand that you can't control the outcome, you can then arrive at a place where you realize that the best thing you can do for everybody involved, your daughter, your wife and yourself is to take as good of care of yourself as possible as an individual, to become the best version of yourself that you can be. When I have been at times in my life where I am at the most stressed or the most overwhelmed, the last thing that I want to do is take care of myself.

And when I don't take care of myself, guess what happens? The slow clockwise circle around the drain. Oh, I don't need to be physically active. I'm too busy today. There's too much going on. How can I carve out time for myself when all of these other things are going on that I'm worried about? And it drives me slowly into the dirt. And then because I'm not a very good version of myself, I start making bad decisions.

I start getting emotionally reactive. I start getting short with people. I will lose my temper. Don't lose control, but I can get a little sharp. And nobody benefits from that. The doctors that you're going to be working with are not going to benefit from me. an attitude. And I'm not saying that this is the way that you're going to be, but I'm just trying to show you some of the expressions that can happen if you don't focus on being the best

version of yourself. All right, nobody benefits from all those things that I mentioned. You're not going to be the best version of a husband and be there to be supportive of your wife, who's probably going to be recovering from the C-section and also has an equal level of concern for your daughter. You're not going to be the best person you can be for your daughter. You need to be when you're going to these medical appointments as sharp as possible, ask as many questions as possible. educate yourself as much as possible so you can identify the things that you can do to have a positive impact and then beyond that you are going to have to if you are white knuckling find a way to loosen up the grip a little bit because it doesn't matter how tightly you're holding on it

will not impact the outcome in a positive manner but it could impact it in a negative manner and i don't want to see that for anybody um i've never been able to shut down worry for my kids I have never been able to completely shut down occasionally when, you know, things are going on in life. An overwhelming thought of dread or staring at the ceiling fan, I try to really manage those things. And when I get to a place where I feel like everything is out of control, I find somebody to talk to. Because sometimes we all need a little bit of a reorientation of our true north or our compass. whatever you want to describe it, I am my own worst enemy if left to my own devices in situations like this. I can talk myself into the spiral and it's not based in objectivity. It is based

in emotionality, irrationality. And that's not where I want to live. That's not the best version of myself. Being a parent, here's, you know, being a human being, you're going to struggle. You're going to have things that happen to you in life that suck. And not everything is going to be this amazing lesson. You know, people out there, oh, you need to learn your lesson from everything. and, you know, and just because this happened, there's something to be gained. Like, I'm not so sure that's always the case. But I'm pretty sure you're not going to escape life without having to deal with things like this. The more prepared you are going into it, the better off that you are going to be.

So in these moments where you might feel like things are out of control, focus very deeply on the things you can control. Being the best partner you can be for your spouse, communicate with her. because what you can't communicate with is a daughter who doesn't have the ability to talk, right? I'm not saying, you know, ignore your daughter. You can, I mean, I've been talking to my kids since the instant that they were born. But it's more of a one-way conversation when they're that age. Your wife is in the thick of this with you. Do your best to go through this with her together as a couple, mutually supporting each other than doing so by yourself.

It's going to be hard enough as it is. There's going to be enough worry to go around. for everybody. Communicate that. If you are worried, share that worry. If you are concerned, share that concern. If you have questions, ask questions. Educate yourself to the best of your ability. Control what you can. And recognize that there will be a point in time. And this is tough with my own kids. You can't control everything. Bad things are going to happen. As long as it's not catastrophic, you can rebuild from there. Even if it is catastrophic, you can rebuild from there. obviously the tapestry of your life is going to be substantially different.

But that is all pinned to you taking the best care of yourself as possible. I'm not saying being selfish. I'm not saying disappear for six hours and go to the gym. Carve out 20 minutes and go for a walk if you need to. Find a physical expression to take care of yourself, take care of your partner, take care of your daughter. It's the best you can do. and even as the best version of yourself, this is going to be really, really hard.

So I wish you the best of luck. And the same thing to you. Please email me back and let me know how it goes. Hopefully that'd help. Question number three. I hope this email finds you well. I'm 21 years old and a longtime listener in the show. I emailed you September of 2022 for the first time to ask for advice on a relationship I was in at the time,

which you replied to via email. And I completely ignored being an all-knowing. mature 18 years old. I've been there, buddy. Your advice at the time was to end the relationship and focus on your goals or my goals, but not my goal is me reading this, your goals being the person who wrote in. Instead, I dove head first into it and thus I write to you again. Turns out I didn't know everything at 18. Shocker. I ended up following through with my plan enlisted in the Navy and in the second week of boot camp, I found out I had been jodied. I actually don't know what that means. I was going to look that up, but whatever it is, I feel like it's not awesome.

Otherwise, it wouldn't be in air quotes and all capped. I will admit that it mentally broke me. I thought I was a man with an iron mind and it came as a big reality check that I was far weaker that I had thought myself to be. I proceeded to wash out of buds and began and began living a degenerate life in the junior ranks of the fleet. The following year, I ended up rekindling with the same girl, and we've been together ever since. It has been essentially the same thing over again. I'm now switching from the Navy to the Army, and I will need to go to basic training again.

That is wild. I thought inter-service transfers were allowed. So maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe they allow it to go the other way. Maybe because the Army's role is so different than the Navy, you need to go through. for boot camp again, but for some reason I thought they allowed inter-service transfers. I know they do from the Marines, but yeah, I don't know. Okay.

My question is not necessarily whether I should try to be with this girl. I've already seen that it is just not meant to be. But why is it that every part of me has changed in the past three years, from the way I think to the way I act, to the beliefs I have and the habits I've formed, and yet this young woman has never changed in my mind. Do you mean your thoughts about this young woman, your feelings for this young woman? I'm unsure on that point. During the year's separation, I had no desire to date other women.

I met a few. I was interested in a few. But I never did I actually consider, I never did what I consider dating anyone else. Is this just an emotional problem that I can't seem to set my sights on the other fish in the sea? or could this just be a maturity issue that will develop as my frontal cortex continues to also develop? I know this is a long-winded question for perhaps a simple answer, but I appreciate you taking the time to read if you've made it this far. I love to know what you think.

I love the show and listen to every episode even while I was in buds. Well, I guess there's that. P.S. Don't take it easy on Michael. Oh, I won't. All right. So you are, yeah, okay, you're 21 years old. Is this a maturity issue? Yeah, for sure.

you're going to be struggling with that maturity issue. I just turned 48 years old. Guess who's still struggling with maturity issues? Me. There's one thing that stuck out on this. Where is it? Okay. Why is it that every part of me has changed in the past three years from the way I think,

to the way I act, to the beliefs I have, to the habits I've formed? But yet, this young woman has never changed in my mind. Because you've put effort into those other things. And you're a young man. who is thinking with his little head and not his big head, right? Hopefully there's a huge size discrepancy between the two. Otherwise, that could be uncomfortable for people. But have you ever heard the saying that the grass will grow or that flowers will grow where there's water, right?

Where you put the water or where things are going to grow? Where you put your time, energy, and effort is where you're going to see the result. You put in parentheses that you have already seen that this is just not meant to be. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think that every relationship has to terminate in a marriage. It's probably essential to a degree. Well, I'm not going to say it's essential because that's not fair. There is an argument to be made that getting a few reps in, depending on your personal beliefs,

wherever you may land on religion, you know, what you're comfortable with before marriage, after marriage, all of those things. Because there are certainly multiple schools of thought on this. Having a few reps in on relationships that you knew weren't going to last forever to identify maybe in depth more of who you are, what you're looking for, what you like, what you don't like, even recognizing that it's not going to be forever, but just treating it as, what it is. It's a training rep. It's a practice rep. It's something that made sense at a phase in your life that you know isn't going to make sense forever. But in the phase of your life that you're in,

there are aspects of it that you're going to enjoy or participate in because you want to. I think that's okay. I don't think every marriage or not every marriage. I don't think every relationship needs to just be on a railroad track towards marriage. I really don't. And I think it's a good thing that you've identified that, you know, it's not meant to be. So I would just, if you were sitting right here, I would ask you, how much are you willing to invest in this? If you've already identified that and it seems like you have goals, you're going from Navy to Army, who knows what you're going to do in the Army, but I bet you have goals associated with that. How much time do you want to invest in this person who you know is going to have a shelf life

or an expiration when it comes to the relationship before it starts to have impact on your other goals in life. How much water do you want to put on this grass? Or do you want to save that water? Maybe collect some rainwater for a bit. Store up some water in a big old cistern. And then when you find something that you think is amazing, you'll have a little bit of water left over. Not trying to give you advice either way, but just recognize you've already identified this is what it is. you seem to have drastically changed in three years. My concern with this is if you have put time, energy, and effort into many other areas of your life and you've made large changes in that three-year time period, but now you are considering

going back to essentially something that you were or an environment that you were in in the past when you weren't exhibiting those changes in behaviors, thought process, all those things, do you think this is going to be an accelerator for future growth or do you think this is going to be an anchor that's going to drag you back towards the way things were? My guess is this is going to be the latter as opposed to the former. And I don't know why anybody would want to do that, especially if you don't like the person that you see in the rearview mirror, which to a degree I think it's okay for all of us to not like every aspect. You can look at that and go, ooh, I think I can do a little bit better. I think I need to do a little bit better. That to me, I think, is a really positive thing.

So yeah, buddy, what are you doing here? All right? Is this just for fun? Is this convenient? Is this lady just crazy in bed? And it's like, for whatever reason, she turns your lights on and off. If that's the case, do what you want to do. But I feel like you're barreling towards a car wreck that you can see on the horizon.

There's already brake lights from other cars that have seen it, but you have your foot on the gas instead of on the brake. or your turn signal on to either get off of that freeway and pull to the side of the road. It's your life to live however you want to live. But how many times specifically with this individual do you want to look back with regret? And maybe she's a fantastic person. Let's assume that she is. But that doesn't mean she's a fantastic person for you. And it doesn't mean that you are a fantastic person for her.

What are you going to do about it? This is the only question. You've identified the issue or the situation as you lay it out. you want me to tell you to break up with this person? I'm not going to do that because I'm not living in your shoes. I'll try to present you situations and let you think about things from a different ankle or ankle angle. Man, I need more coffee this morning.

But I'm not going to sit here and tell you how to live your life. I'll give you some advice because you ask for it. But, you know, the definition of insanity is doing, there's a variety of definitions, but my favorite is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result. I'm not going to say that's the situation here. I'm not going to say it's not either. I mean, you're 21. You got a lot of runway.

There's a lot of amazing people out there. At 21, try to put down more anchors than you pick up. That's the advice I'll leave you with. That's how we'll end the show. Anchors are heavy. Put them down if you can. Your life will be better for it. That's all I got for this week.

Thank you.