Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 102

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. I received a death threat based on something that I said 21 years ago 2. How can I shift gears more effectively between my work "world" and my home "world" 3. Advice for my teenage daughter who is the new girl in school/town 4. I'm struggling with the feeling I "have not done my part" Enjoy

All right, it's Friday. You know what that means. Time for Q&A. Follow to Friday, number 102, not to be confused with 101 or 103. Let us begin. To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, one minute. Can't be clear not. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, got some questions for today. I'm going to start off with some shorter ones. And then, if I have time, depending on how long this actually takes, we'll get into a little bit of a darker, deeper one. And if we don't get to it, what we can do is just open with that next week.

Question number one. My ride home from work every Friday starts with Full-Ard Friday. That's awesome. Thank you. My question for you is a topic that I haven't heard you bring up ever, I don't think. After 21 years, someone recently emailed my work email address with basically an indirect death threat. Stemming from myself and others verbally bullying this person on a bus. in high school. Something they said was, there's much hope your time on earth is limited,

and soon you'll be where you belong. I remember from the past, this individual may have mental health conditions. What advice can you give me to help deal with this current situation? The first thing I know I would like to do is genuinely apologize to this person, but I doubt they would want to hear it after 21 years. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. man this question is such an interesting one because it gives you it gives you the opportunity to really have some self-assessment um one of the biggest things well actually before i can get into that let's talk about who we were when we were in high school and maybe there are some people who listen to this who are in high school and maybe this can help you in the future i don't know of anybody

and that includes myself that was the actual best version of who they wanted to be in high school. If I look back at who I was from ages, what was it, 15, 15, 16, 15 through 18, I was a fucking mess. Not in this sense that I was incredibly malicious in nature by any stretch, even though I did say something. things to people that I still, I think it's been over 21 years for me. If given the opportunity, I actually would apologize for, and I'll get to that in a minute. But I just didn't know who I was. So I didn't, I didn't know how to be comfortable in my own skin. So my behavior wasn't the way that I wish that it could have been. And I look into the, into the mirror of that time in my life. And it's, ah, it makes my skin crawl a little bit because I just was.

in this phase of not knowing what I don't even know. And I think we all go through that. And it's really, it's really easy to discount the things that you may do in that phase. And you can't for exactly the reasons that you received this email. The things that you say or do to people, although they may seem trivial to you, you never know what's going to hang on with somebody and you never know how impactful the things that you say or do could be both in a positive and a negative direction. I have no doubt that there were things that I said decades ago that people are still pissed for and they should rightfully be

pissed. And that's on me to, if ever given the opportunity or if I ever find the ability to communicate with those people to correct those things. And actually, I take that back. I can't correct those things, but I can accept responsibility for those things and try to explain to that individual how ridiculously sorry I am that I behaved in that way. And actually, I wouldn't even necessarily give them the explanation of why, because I think everybody understands why like I just was it a phase of my life where I was an idiot literally a developing idiot but that doesn't excuse any of the behavior it is on me to try to do the best I can to make amends for that so if this person is emailing you after 21 years then I think they may

want to hear your apology whether or not they accept your apology is completely up to them, whether or not you should provide that apology is completely up to you. You know, people have the opportunity and ability to do whatever they want to with their behavior and you can only control yours. But obviously, this instance or instances that occurred on the bus have stuck with this person for over two decades. And I hope that people listening can understand that that is the impact that you can have on somebody. It might be trivial to you and it might actually become an anchor on somebody else's life. So be very careful with the things that you say and the things that you do to other people,

regardless of where you are in life. And it was so hard for me, if not impossible, to recognize that when I was younger. And it is something that I wish I could go back and change and I can't. So if you're listening to this and you're in that age group, maybe it's not even possible for you to change your behavior but do the absolute best that you can I feel like everybody probably has somebody from 21 years ago that they're still sharpening an axe for metaphorically not literally hopefully you may have had that impact on somebody else's life as well just food for thought do the best that you can't god I wish I could go back in time

and change some things and I can't so I'm trying to to improve those things continuously in the future. So going backwards. Well, maybe they wouldn't want to hear it after 21 years, but if you remember it and they obviously do, I would say give it to them. Another thing this email really gives you the opportunity to do, like I said, is this self-assessment. Let's take this as, it doesn't really sound to me necessarily like a death threat unless you sent me only a portion of the email and it got much more specific. This person maybe they do have mental health conditions. Put that aside and focus on your ability to assess your current situation.

Let's say there there was somebody out there who actually had enough of an axe to grind with you that they were going to come do something about it. Would you actually be prepared? That's the assessment that I'm talking about. You get this email at work and it should be a little razziness. to you if you receive something like this. And it should give you the opportunity to look in the mirror and provide yourself with a great assessment. And that assessment is, am I actually capable of being self-sustaining and protecting myself against somebody who may feel like this? And if the

answer is no, guess what? That's the opportunity to improve your baseline condition. If the answer is yes, that is awesome. And it's the ability for you to continue to refine that edge. And what do I mean by that? I mean, I feel like everybody should have the ability to handle and control themselves in a violent confrontation. I don't think that you should go out and seek violence, but if you wait for life to ambush you with a violent situation, and it's the first time that you've ever been in one, the opportunity for you to perform in a manner that is below what you think you would in that situation, I would say is actually relatively high. So what I'm saying is, I think that everybody needs to go out there and find some level of training. When I look at

training and things like this, if somebody were to send me this email, I look at, I oftentimes, I will look at an assess threat from the lens of range and distance. And there's a variety of ranges and distances. There's me touching this table that I'm sitting in front of it. Maybe that would be another human being. That's a very close range and there's a lot of things that it can have an impact at that range. But then there's, you know, from me to the curtain across the studio, which is probably about six feet. That's a different range. Probably a little bit too far for striking and kicking, but you need to be able to manage that distance. External tools can come into play at that range. And then there's everything that is beyond that. In my personal opinion,

you should be capable at all ranges. Now, depending on where you live, you may not have the ability to have tools on you at all times for those intermediate to longer ranges. And I totally understand that. But what I would say is that should drive your focus and emphasis towards those closer ranges. If somebody puts their hands on you, whether you know them or not, you encounter somebody who is an ax to grind after 21 years or somebody who's having a mental health crisis and they decide to put their hands on you, whether you know them or not, you encounter somebody who is an ax to grind after 21 years or somebody who's having a mental health crisis and they decide to put their. hands on you and you don't know what to do with that, I worry about the outcome. Can people get away with it sometimes in quotes and work their way through that situation? Sure, they can.

But let me just tell you from personal experience, fighting your way out of a crisis, metaphorically, where you're underprepared and under equipped and you get to the end of that, it's not a feeling of success. It's a feeling of like, oh my God, I just scrape by. by the skin of my teeth. And that's a feeling that hopefully would drive you to practice and train because that feeling is completely different than finding yourself in a situation that doesn't even actually emotionally elevate you. And from a physical perspective, it's not that it's laughable, but you're just dealing with

things as they come because you're so used to being there. At the end of that situation, you actually leave that with an enhanced sense of confidence in yourself and your capabilities. That's where I want people to land, not a place of uncertainty. So back to the email. Somebody sending you a work email. I mean, hopefully they sent you a return address. You could always start with just by hitting reply and telling the person the truth,

whatever your truth may be about how you feel about that situation. I would open with an apology like you mentioned. And from there, take a critical look in the mirror as to take the content of their email seriously, how would you rack and stack yourself when it comes to actually being able to hand yourself in a situation like that? And if you find holes and deficiencies, do something about it. Try to fix them. And then the biggest thing is come to the realization, and hopefully you already have, and hopefully people, like I said, listening to this can come to that realization that the things that you say and do can have a much deeper impact than you may ever think that

they would. Keep that in the back of your mind when you have verbal interactions with individuals. Something that may not mean a lot to you could be very, very deep and hurtful to somebody else. And I've been on the receiving end of that, as I'm sure other people have, and it sucks. So stop that cycle and don't allow yourself to treat others in that manner. So hopefully that helps. And yeah, I hope you don't get any more emails that are like that. Question two, been a city firefighter for almost 19 years now. I was a lieutenant for about seven years, in parentheses, crew leader. And now the captain for about a year and a half.

So you lead the entire station. I try my best to set the example that I can. And I really feel like I work for the guys, not the other way around. I try to empower my firefighters and support them as much as possible. I'm proud of my team and I can look in the mirror

and be reasonably okay with my performance and who I am. Here is my question. My job is mentally and physically exhausting sometimes. And it's tough. to shift gears from work life to home life. I can be short and kind of abrupt or cranky. And I wonder, do you have any advice for shifting that gear more effectively?

I also feel the cliche midlife crisis coming on. Have I ever felt that? Thanks again, much respect. I'll go backwards on this one. Midlife crisis. Have I ever felt that one? Yes. I'm going to say yes that I have and I think everybody is going to at some point in time in their life.

And I don't know if it's tied to as, As the numbers keep flipping by and getting bigger and bigger on the old age wheel, I don't know if it's more time spent thinking about your own mortality and wondering how much more time you have left. Like how many times can this calendar actually flip over before I get to the end? It's like, your run has come to the end. Or you start earlier in your life and you have an occupation and you're doing it. it for a decade or two decades or three decades and you realize at some point it isn't for you

what it once was and maybe you want to move on but then you look at that mortality matrix again you're like oh shit how much time do I have and it lends you to this place where you question a lot of things I think that's totally natural I think it's totally normal and I think when you start looking at that mortality or maybe making a huge career shift it actually provides it provides you the opportunity to take it in two different directions the oh shit I don't have enough time to do the things that I want to do and I'm so committed to doing these things I can't change, or I don't know how much time I have left, and I'm going to try to maximize every drop of it that I can. And because I have already done these things in the past, I am now going to experiment and change

a little bit in the later chapters of my life. So that's kind of a split in the road that people can take. I think everybody gets to that split at some point in time. So to your question now, shifting gears from a job that can be physically and emotionally challenging and you want to come back and you want to be the best version of yourself for your family. I totally understand this question, the job that I used to have, I feel fit directly into this category. And let me be very clear. I failed at this transition more than I would like to admit. I also failed deeply. I don't know how many times, many times often. However, I would leave that to up to my ex-wife and my kids to decide. In my mental presence, as opposed to my physical presence, I was physically

present, but mentally checked out and still focusing on things that were happening or getting ready to happen in my previous career. Again, if I had a time machine and I go back and I could change some things, those would be one of the things, or those would be some of the things that I would take the time to try to address. So when I was successful or things that I have heard others talking about that could kind of help with this transition, for me, I was thinking about this because I knew I was going to be talking about this question today. I was trying to think back occupationally. Have I ever had a job that was physically very close to where I lived? And not really is the answer. When I was at the East Coast or on the East Coast, that was the closest I ever lived to where I worked.

It was about five to seven minutes. So that was my shortest transitional period. The farthest I ever had, it was about an hour. And that was when I was in San Diego. I didn't have to drive that far, but traffic often would suck on the way to work and on the way back. And it's easy to view it like that. but in the end, the traffic and the time it took me in the vehicle actually was very beneficial to me.

And this leads me right back to your question. So when it comes to that transition between your occupational character, for lack of a better word, and coming back to being a husband and a father, I think one of the best things that you can do is have a routine. and have a space in between the two that is very intentional. So on the drive to work, and I'm probably more on the drive home from work for me. Because it would take somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour, you know, it's really easy to just throw on a podcast or throw on music or space out a little bit and not make use of that windshield time.

And that is something that I tried not to do. And it is something that I consistently tried not to do even now living, up in Montana. I live about 45 minutes out of town. And I try to make that time very useful. I can either do things professionally talking on the phone. But a lot of the times what I'll do is I will try to use that time as my transition. And I will, I will, if you look, if you say you had a stick and a piece of string around it and your options were to continuously wrap the string around the stick and it gets tighter and tighter and tighter, that's not where I want arrive at my house, or that's not how I want to arrive at my house, wound up like that. So I try to

use these transition times as my ability to unwind that string. And however many wraps I may have put on it throughout my day, my goal is to unwrap it as much as possible. So I can transition from one to the other and arrive at a place where I have the best ability to be the best version of myself. Hopefully that makes sense. And you may not have that, depending on how far you work from your station. So what I would recommend to you is this. Find a place in between those two. Let's see you live directly down the block, like you live a mile away from your house. What I would recommend is actually parking your car somewhere along the way for like five minutes, five to 15 minutes. Whatever you feel would work for you and spend some very intentional

time unwinding from your occupational day so you can arrive at your house as the best version of yourself. And I'd be very honest with your spouse about what you're doing as well, because if you're leaving work and it should only take you five minutes to get home and you're getting home like 20 minutes later, you know, let your spouse or significant other know what you're up to and let them know why. I think you'll probably find that they're going to be very supportive of this. especially if there is a change in the person that is arriving back at the house. Be intentional about your time. And what I would say is that there are maybe a little bit of, you know, you could find an app of some kind that can help you unwind.

I'm not an expert as to what is actually out there. But I know for a fact that there are some guided meditation apps that are designed to help people let go of stress or transition from environments. I'm not an expert at meditation by any stretch of the imagination. I don't do any type of structured meditation. What I try to do when I'm driving and I'm trying to unwind that stick is I will allow myself to kind of think through anything that might have happened in the day. And then I do the best that I can to just, for the time being, let it go. I'm not saying that I forget about what happened in my day, but I will think about it to the degree that I can. And a lot of the times when I'm having that windshield time is what I call it, I'm trying to work my way through solutions to problems that I may be encountering.

I'm not talking like life-altering problems here, but things that I need to do and perhaps the best way that I need to do it. And I'll let my mind wander for a little bit. But I kind of have these four little mile markers on the way out to my house and on the way in from my house into town. and at each one of those, and it's not actually marked out, it's just a topographical feature that I pass along the way. If I'm stuck iruminating on one particular topic, if I get to that mile marker, I will force myself to let it go and try to unpack something else. And I know that the following day, when I am coming back into town, I can go in the reverse cycle and I can start thinking about these things again. But what I actually find is that if I can kind of stop focusing, focusing on it directly, oftentimes later in the day, the solution will pop into my head

and I'll have a much more creative solution as opposed to sitting down at a table with a notebook and just like, I have to figure this out right now. So I'm actually taking a little bit of pressure off of myself and I find that the creativity is drastically better when it comes to the problem solving. The point in all that is that I'm actually, I'm actually very intentional about how I try to unwind and again I fail at this just like everybody else does but I try to be very intentional about it and that's what I would recommend for you find that intentional break and find a tool that allows you to make that shift so you don't end up a little bit short and a little bit cranky now of course you're going to have days where you're exhausted and as a first responder you're going

to you're going to be dealing with some stuff that a lot of people aren't because of the 9-1-1 calls that you are responding to say this all the time but it's it's true people don't call 911 to report that they're having the best day of their life. So you are showing up probably more often than not to medical emergencies or people having their worst day. And that stuff is going to wear on you a little bit. And that's where I would say for anybody who works in your world, I would recommend talking to a mental health counselor or therapist as frequently as you need to to be able to offload that stuff so you're not offload it onto your family through abrupt and cranky behavior. Because all that stuff can add up, the stress can add up. have an intentional break. Maybe it's only five minutes. Maybe you can find tools that allow you in that five minutes to metaphorically open the door, walk through it and close it behind you. And that would be you leaving your occupational world and then you're going to be with your family.

And mess around with it as much as you possibly can until you find what works for you. What I have found is that the more intentional I am with it, the less time that it actually takes and the more impactful it can be. If you give yourself just 30 minutes to fuck off, you'll probably end up scrolling on Instagram or daydreaming. And I'm not saying that those are useless, but they're probably not very useful in regards to your question. So hopefully that helps.

And for everybody out there who has a job that is like this, try to find that time where you can intentionally shift from one to the other. I think you might find that it'll have a very powerful impact. not only on the occupation or a situation that you're transitioning from, but also the one that you're transitioning to. And that's it for question number two. All right. Question number three. My question is about my 13-year-old daughter. She is super shy and reserved, and we just moved to a small town in Utah, so she is the new kid in school. Now, I grew up in a small town, so I get the click atmosphere and the struggles that new kids can

encounter when integrating into small town schools, but I'm honestly worried about her. the drama. It is one thing after another and one rumor after another. She is so emotionally and mentally exhausted at this point that I am truly worried about her mental well-being. The advice I gave is for her to just concentrate and focus on her schoolwork and try to ignore all the outside noise. I know this is easier said than done, especially for a 13-year-old girl. I also told her that none of this shit is going to even matter in a few more years when she leaves for the Air Force, which is her plan. I told her if she's lucky, she might talk to one or two people in her adult life that she grew up with.

And that's it. Anyways, any advice on what you might tell your son or daughter in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated. Man, this one hits home for sure. I know exactly what you're talking about. My daughter is 13 years old. The fucking drama is unbelievable and it is exacerbated by this thing right here. And for those of you just listening, I'm holding on to my phone. in the 24-hour constant and connected nature of these adolescent girls and boys for sure.

I think you're very correct in that she may talk to one or two people in her adult life. That's the situation that I found myself in as well. Granted, I'm Santa Cruz is an amazing place to grow up. after leaving there, I have gone back incredibly infrequently in my life took a very divergent path from then most of the people that I grew up with. And I lost touch with a lot of them along the way and developed a different and much more complete social circle in my adult life. And I have sporadic communication with one or two people from that previous life. So I think, yes, that can absolutely be the case. But she has to get to the point where she has that new social circle in her adult life.

And that is my concern, not even just for your daughter, but for any young man or young woman in this situation. I have no data to support what I'm about to say. But in just talking with all three of my children or teenagers at this point, the number of suicides that occurred in the previous two years. And I have no doubt that the isolation from the pandemic was a part of this. but even though they were physically isolated again this fucking phone and the social media apps that they use they were isolated but connected and they were connected with people who they're probably never going to meet in real life and so therefore they can just feel like they can say whatever they want to say and so it's some of the worst most gnarly shit that i've ever read my daughter has been on the receiving end of some online bullying

and you know there's a good chance that she might have participated in some as well and i have these conversations with her. And it very much like the first question that I was addressing, the impact of the things that you say and do and what they can have and how much impact they can have on other people. You writing something in a moment of trying to be a smart ass might have a completely different and unintended consequence for somebody on the receiving end. It may mean nothing because it's happening on, uh, fuck, TikTok or Snapchat or whatever the apps the kids are using these days. It might not be real for you, but it might be so incredible. real for somebody else. And that means that you have to navigate this so you can get to a place

and come to the realization that that shit doesn't actually matter. And I'd like to say that everybody does, but I am absolutely shocked by the number of suicides in the teen and the teenage realm what's currently going on where I live. And I was just talking with my middle son about this the other day. And I was trying to think back when I was in high school, he's a junior high school, getting ready to be a senior, I don't remember people killing themselves. And maybe that's because I'm a piece of shit and I wasn't paying attention. But I do not remember when I was in high school, the four years that I was in high school, I do not remember anybody killing themselves. And there was a stretch of time here with my kids. It's like every two or three weeks,

there was another, and it was male and female. And it breaks my heart. And I don't know what causes it, but I think you hit on portions of it. It's the drama. It's the connectivity. It's all of that combined and you throw a pandemic on top of that. And it's a nightmare. So what I would say is you're obviously older than your daughter and you realize because you gave her the good advice that, you know, the shit that's happening right now is not indicative of what's going to happen in the rest of your life. And a lot of it is young bullshit drama.

but we have to make sure that she gets into her adult years so she can realize that. If she's emotionally and mentally exhausted and you're truly worried about her mental well-being, my first recommendation for you would be to find somebody that she can talk to, which is not easy for people at that age to talk to. I remember there was a point in time where my parents took me to a counselor. I think I was, I don't know, 15 or 16, and I didn't want to talk to the person. I didn't feel like I had anything to do anything in common with the person. person. And now, looking back, I wish that I would have talked more, but I also wish that I had found

somebody else to talk to. It just wasn't a good connection. So take your time to find somebody that can connect with your daughter and that can help you. So she can hear the things that you are saying from just more than one person. I would also advise you to the best of your ability to talk with her about social media and limiting interaction with people online and setting hard boundaries for the phone and for any social media platform. There's got to be a point in time, you know, maybe it's in the evening at like 8 o'clock, like shut it down. And of course, this is easy to say.

And in actuality, it's very hard to do because what you'll probably get pushed back on from your kids is, well, all of my friends are on these platforms. and this is how we communicate now. You don't understand, Dad. This is just how, this is how kids are, you know, this is what we do now. And I get that. I actually think it's really cool that they can connect with people. And I've talked with all three of my kids about really interesting connections that they have made with people all over the world that they'll probably never meet.

But they're talking with people in different countries who have different experiences. I think that portion of it's awesome. But what's not awesome about that is if your phone is going off at one. and 1.15 a.m. and 2 and 3. And every time the alert buzzes or your phone beeps, it disrupts your sleep and you're checking in because you have fear of missing out on something. And the app is managing you as opposed to you managing the app and you're not sleeping well. And then you have stress. All of that can snowball and build. And that can become overwhelming for anybody. And it's one of the biggest things about phones and our connectivity as a species at this point.

I think it's an amazing thing, but I watch people, and don't, don't misunderstand me. I'm talking about myself to some degree here, too, from time to time where the devices are controlling us, as opposed to us controlling the devices. Some of the best trips that I have are when I'm out hunting or I'm out in the backcountry and I have no access to my phone. Or maybe I have access to my phone for 20 minutes per day. And it forces me to be very precise with how I'm going to spend my time and I'm not wasting time surfing and looking at it. in, you know, fucking Instagram or Facebook or whatever it may be. I communicate with the people that I want to. And then I'm back in the moment actually living my life.

I come out of those environments more refreshed than I do having downtime with a phone in my hand, wasting time scrolling, looking through madness or getting involved in bullshit internet drama, which I don't recommend that anybody does. And I've done it plenty of times myself. So find somebody that she can connect with and she can. and she can use in addition to you as a framework for support. And when things get to a place where she may not feel comfortable talking to you, that she has the ability to talk to that other person and try to implement some level of

control when it comes to using their device. And then the last piece of advice I would give you is get her into as many sports as possible. Get her out in the vitamin D, get her out playing, get her. get her out physically working very hard. And I think the combination of all three of those things will land you at a place where she's going to get to her adult years and then we can look back and realize, fuck. I wasted so much time. None of that shit mattered. Oh, and by the way, I owe a bunch of people some apologies.

So hopefully that helps. Last question, because I think I drug this long longer than I wanted to. My name is Fong. Now, I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly. P-H-O-N-G. I'm going to say that your name is Fong. If I said that incorrectly, I apologize. I'm currently still in the Navy as an H-M-1. That is a hospitalman or a corpsman first class, E-6. I served in Afghanistan in 2008. I never saw combat unlike the rest of the guys on my team. Out of the 21 guys, we had five guys that didn't receive their C-A-R, which is combat action ribbon.

I struggle with feeling, I struggle with the feeling of not having done my part. I know this is not a logical feeling or something that makes sense to me. I try my best to be a good husband and father. I know this, along with my military service, should be enough. But I do get that feeling of failure. I know that you stated in a video that combat credibility means less to you, as you know, a lot of people that are shit people with tons of combat experience. I asked this question as, how do some, how do some, how do? some older seals deal with that feeling or do you know anyone that experienced the same feeling?

Thank you for your time and for your service. Well, thank you for your service since we're just closing with that. I'll open with that. The combat action ribbon. Combat time. I don't remember saying that there are a lot of shit people with tons of combat experience. I think what I have said in the past is it's a really dangerous metric to use. The amount of combat you've seen or the number of people that you've,

you have killed versus others because there will be drastic periods of time where the opportunity for both of those don't exist. And what does that say about your peers? Somebody who served in peacetime in the SEAL community had no choice as to whether or not that was the case. You know, largely the political environment or what was going on in the world, determine those things. So if you serve from 20 years from like, say, 80 to 2000 and then 20 years from 2000 to

2020, let me tell you right now, the experiences are drastically different. And they're largely out of the control of both of those individuals that serve during that time period. So the metric can't be combat or killing people. The metric has to be something based off that can be experienced by both parties. In your situation, the combat action ribbon, Let me tell you right now what your kids and your spouse are never going to give a fuck about, your combat action ribbon, which for people listening, I don't even know the best way to describe what it is. Because the criteria, it seems to me it shifts, almost depending on the unit or who is submitting for it. And I don't know the actual doctrine of what it says that you need to receive a combat action ribbon. I don't know if it means that you are in a war zone or that you had to receive.

direct fire, the combination of the two. I really don't know. And I really don't care. And I hope that you can get to a place where you don't care either. And the baseline of all of this, my answer is the only person that is going to be able to get past this for you is you. You are going to have to come to a way to deal with this. Because what you're doing right now, if you're talking about things that happened in 2008, you are living in the past. And there's nothing. something that you can do to change it. I'm dead serious when your family, your kids and your wife, they don't give a fuck if you have a combat action ribbon or not. What they want is a great husband and father. So what we're actually talking about is your own measurement of yourself

against your peers, which is tempting to do. And I think it's really dangerous. You probably had no control that you were one of the five guys that didn't receive the combat. action ribbon out of the 21. And you know what you can do about that? Nothing. That is going to be the way that it is. So I don't know how you're going to be able to get past that, but it is something that you need to put down. This is, you asked at the end of the question, do I know any of the older seals or seals that served in peacetime that experience this same sensation that they didn't get to do what they wanted to do or a feeling of failure. I don't know if they would describe it in those terms. But yeah, there are certainly people in every community. I bet this

happens in law enforcement. I bet this happens as firefighters that are those that, I mean, it's probably unlikely to be a firefighter for 20 years and never end up at a fire. But I bet you it's very common to have a vast level of discrepancy between how many fires that you can go on. And right, what's the temptation? Well, that guy, he's been to 400 fires. and I've been to 40. Well, you know, I guess I missed out. I guess I'm not as good of a firefighter. And maybe that's not the case at all.

And that's certainly the deal in the SEAL community. For those who may feel like they missed out or didn't do what they served to do or what they joined up to do, the only thing I can say to you is you need to find a way to get over it. Because all of this, even your whole email, we're talking about an occupation. and the combat action ribbon is this little like three quarter of an inch by a quarter of an inch piece of fabric that nobody outside of the military and most people in the military don't have a fucking clue what it means. I was in the military for 17 years and I will see people with their metal rack and their awards and I will have to go look up what the fuck half of them are. I'm pretty good at stuff like Bronze Star and above, but I have absolutely no idea what the rest of that salad dressing is on people's uniform. so I have to go look it up as well. But we're talking about something that is completely tied to an occupation, not who you are.

So maybe start there. Start by realizing or recognizing that what you email me about is not who you are. It's what you did or what you were still doing because you're serving in the military still, which is awesome. But don't allow it to become your identity and don't allow it to become the metric by which. with which you judge yourself, especially against your peers. Even though I know in the military, that's exactly what you do. You rack and stack yourself, based off your e-vows, based off of your awards. And that works in that system.

But again, that's occupational. That's not who you are. You didn't fail because you didn't get a combat action ribbon. Service of all kind is honorable, peace time and war time. They just happen to be different. And I don't think that there should be a value placed upon one above the other. Because if you do that, all you do is you are demeaning at least one of those two. Right. If you have combat and non-combat and you place way more value on the individual because of one over the other, you are demeaning 50%. If you got a pie in each

hand, obviously it would probably be a peach cobbler and an apple pie. You're saying one of those sucks when in reality is they're fucking delightful. And what you can do and what you should do is take a slice of one and put it on top of the other with whipped cream, which has nothing to do with your question. However, I think if you haven't tried that, people should try that. So to wrap this up, because I'm starting to ramble here a little bit, you are going to have to figure out a way to get past this. 30 years from now, if you are still thinking back about a lot, you are still thinking back about a combat action ribbon that you didn't receive and it is an anchor on your life to this day, it's going to be an issue. And I don't want that for you. Figure out a way to compartmentalize

what you do with who you are. And don't let one have more weight than the other. Or don't let your occupational self drag down who you actually are when you take your uniform off. Because at the of the day, nobody fails. You know damn well that you are just as capable as your peers who got their combat action ribbon. And it was a matter of circumstance that was outside of your control. So figure out a way to come to grips with that, put it down, and then move on. I guarantee you that your life will be better because of it. Time spent looking in the rear view mirror is not beneficial unless you are learning from your experiences or your mistakes. If you're not doing that, And you're just thinking back to 2008 and wishing that you had gotten a ribbon as well.

The technical description of what you are doing is wasting your time. And that's it for this Friday.