Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 31

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Rapid-fire listener Q and A with a 5-minute time cap per question.  Submit questions through the podcast website if interested.  1. What makes a friend 2. Death, and its ability to make life more precious 3. My co-workers suck, minimum effort crew 4. I want to be a SEAL, my dad doesn't have faith in me Enjoy   

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Full Auto Friday, number 31. We're on a new magazine right now, unless we have some weird circular 100-round mag, which I don't have. So I'm going to say we've just done a reload, and we're back on magazine number two. This episode today is actually brought to you by Rhino Safe.

Now, the past few, I think weeks, last week's fallout of Friday, Monday's episode, talking with Evan and Trevor. It, you know, we talked about some gun stuff for sure based off of what Black rival who has been navigating through at Evan himself. And to be honest, I'm a little sick of talking about the Second Amendment. It's such a, I'm not going to say a difficult topic, but it's a topic where people generally come to the conversation with their ideas fully formed and are not interested in actually having a conversation. Most of the time I have found people are just interested in screaming at you and telling you how fucking stupid they think you are. However, none of that has anything to do with Rhinosave. Here's my thing.

You can love the Second Amendment or you can hate it. But I think one issue that everybody can agree with is that if guns exist, safe storage of guns is mandatory. It's absolutely critical. Nobody wants guns to be in the hands of people who would use them with ill intent. or what scares me even more is children or people who are untrained on how to use them. Enter Rhino Safe. These guys sent me an amazing gun safe. And what I'll say is this.

The stats on people who own guns versus gun owners who own safes is startling to me. One of the stats that I've read recently is 50% of gun owners do not own a safe. And in my opinion, that could not be more irresponsible. It goes against everything that I just said about how critical. and important it is for responsible gun ownership. Rhinosafe.com, go and take a look. If you own firearms, even if you own a firearm, here's the beauty of a company like this.

You have choices. You don't have to get a massive safe that takes up half of your garage. You can get what works for you. And also, like for me, I retired from the military, so I have a DD-214. And I can't get a new one. So I actually keep sensitive documents inside of my safe as well. So it's something in addition to just gun storage.

Back to Rhino Safe. They make an amazing product. They make it right here in the U.S. Fire rating up to 85 minutes at 1,400 degrees. I feel like that's a very good fire rating. I wouldn't want to be in 1400 degree heat for that long. It's made at a 12-gauge steel. They have up to a 76 long gun capacity.

Some of the safes have a patented swing-out gun rack, biometric entry that's another thing that people will say about safes like oh it's going to take me too long to get into there the safe they sent me it couldn't be easier I have my fingerprint on there and I think I can use it hold up to five users I put them in there and one finger one second turn the wheel and it's open or you could go analog right you could go dial if you want to I don't know if you're into 1950s tech or you could go digital keypad it's just and it's so easy to access I know some people love guns. I know some people hate guns.

And I don't care where you land on that issue. But I need you to land with me on the issue of responsible gun ownership. And that, to me, begins with responsible gun storage. So regardless of the number of guns that you have, from one to, I don't know, a hundred, go to rhinosaf.com and just scroll across the top. They have safes. They have tool chests. They have furniture, accessories, things to go with their safety.

a variety of sizes. I think one of the best things for people who are pro 2A that you can do to continue to secure that Second Amendment right is to ensure that everybody you know who is also pro 2A and yourself is a responsible gun owner. RhinoSafe.com go check out their products. They are in a word amazing. Now having said all of that, let's get into this. Full Auto Friday, episode 31. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's get into this.

I have four questions for today. But first, might as well start off with my last week and a half, two weeks. It's been a little bit interesting. I tested positive for COVID early last week and just finished up my quarantine. I'm back in civilization. As far as I'm concerned, I'm basically a superhero slash superhuman for the next 90 to 60, 90 to 60, 90 days. to six months, depending on how the CDC rolls with how long they think antibodies exist. And it was a little wild.

I didn't know necessarily what to expect. And before I say anything else, I can only tell people about my experience. I in no way, shape, or form want anybody to think that I am talking about COVID as something that is general or what happened to me is going to happen to anybody else. That's not it at all. but if I don't talk about it, then, you know, I feel like I'm also doing it a disservice. So for me, I think I got a very mild case. And I also believe that how you go into this, physical-wise, it's probably going to have a large bearing on how you come out of it.

And obviously are some risk factors. I am in a much, much lower risk factor than a lot of people. So all that has to be taken into account. But if I'm being totally honest, if I could remove everything that I had not, known about COVID going into this. Like if it wasn't leading the news every second of every day, and I didn't know that COVID existed, I would have felt under the weather for about 48 hours. I had some muscle aches and sinus pressure. I can still hear it in my voice a little bit. That's probably the biggest residual I have is some sinus compaction. That was it. I would have maybe taken

a day off and continued on with my life. Again, I think I had a very mild case, and I actually probably wouldn't have gotten tested unless I hadn't lost my sense of smell and taste, which I did. And as soon as that happened from what I have been reading, that's the number one warning sign, or not necessarily even a warning sign, but an indication that you might have COVID, went in and got tested. Boom, 24 hours later, got the results, quarantined, off of all of the guidance, stayed away from everybody and everything. And actually, it was pretty productive at my house. Didn't put me flat on my back. Wasn't an incredibly enjoyed. experience for those two days of muscle aches.

I was able to manage it with Alka-Seltzer cold and sinus. There's some over-the-counter stuff and then a little bit of NyQuil for a decongestant at nighttime and to make sure I got a good night's sleep. And that was it. Not something I would wish on anybody, but at the same time, not the worst illness that I have ever had. It's certainly real. I hope people are taking the precautions that they need to.

and that was my experience. And I'd say I'm 99% back to where I was. I have like this residual, small residual disconnect. I went and did Jiu-Jit-Ti today, and perhaps it was because I'd taken two weeks off, but it just was a little bit of a disconnect between my brain and my body and my sense of how my brain is working.

Like I said, I think I'm like 99% there. But it also could be because I still have that sinus compaction. So I just feel super close to being totally normal, but not 100% there. But very, very close. I digress. Now into the questions for today. I got four. Try to keep them short.

Try to get everybody into their weekend. The first question doesn't come from the traditional route, which for these, a lot of them are through email. And if you want to email me a question, go to either, well, if you're listening to this, you obviously know it's a podcast. So go to the podcast page, cleartoppodcast.com. There's a contact me button. It routes to my email.

That's where most of these come in. Sometimes I will get social media messages, and if it catches my attention, I will answer those. And I also, I don't talk very much about this, and I don't necessarily know why. But on Mondays, I do a live Q&A over Zoom. It's hosted through Patreon, and the questions are awesome, and the group of people that I do it with, they're awesome. So if you're interested into something like that where for one hour every Monday, we can sit there and we talk about whatever people want to talk about, by all means, I think you can find that on the, you can find that through the clear hot podcast website as well. But the question today came from Monday's Q&A and I didn't have a chance to answer it.

But it was one that has had my head spin in thinking about this, churning about this for a little bit. And I'm going to paraphrase the question and probably get this slightly wrong. But it was, how do you know when somebody is truly your friend? And the more I thought, about this, the more I think my own personal litmus test for this has changed as I've grown up age-wise. I'm not going to even remotely say that I've grown up emotionally. But when I was younger, call it in 20s and below, I think to me, you know, the metric of a good friend was somebody that I went out and had a good time with. We had probably the shared values and beliefs. They were people that I got along with. We went out and we had fun. And that was about it. 20s to 30s, probably still relatively

the same thing, and now I'm into my early 40s. And I was thinking about this question, what is it that actually makes somebody a good friend? I still think it's all of those things. I think it's somebody that enriches your life. I think it's somebody who you enjoy being around, and very importantly, that you can absolutely be yourself around. You don't have to shelve portions of who you are or round edges on who you are because you're worried about your friends and what they may think. Hopefully, you have a social circle of people that you have. You you can absolutely be yourself. And in addition to that, I think the one key thing that I value the most now in my 40s,

my friends, the people that I consider to be my true friends, are the ones that will tell me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear. I think we can all agree, and we all know somebody in our life, maybe multiple people, that sometimes they're a pain in the ass to deal with. Or you can see a glaring deficiency in their character. or they are just, in another word, to put it fucking up somewhere in their life. And what we choose to do is not say anything to them. Why?

Because that's the easy route. Now, for me, I look at it from the other perspective of what if I was that person? What if I was that person who had a glaring gap in either behavior or mentality or belief? What would I want? What would a true friend do? What a true friend would do would be, regardless of how uncomfortable the conversation might be, they would pull me aside and they would sit me down and they would say, hey, You know, I consider you to be a friend.

I'm concerned about you. This is what I see. And I'm going to be honest with you, regardless of whether or not you want to hear what I'm about to say. That, I think, is the most important thing that a true friend can do for you. Or, again, to flip the coin back over, what you can do to be a true friend to somebody else. Because look at that person again that we all have in our life where you choose not to say something. What does that mean when you choose not to say something? Does it mean that you're not or they are not a good enough friend for you to actually take the time to do that?

Or does it say that you're not enough or not good enough a friend of them to take the time and say something? Both of those suck, right? Because if they're not a good enough friend for you to take the time to say something, regardless of whether or not it's uncomfortable, perhaps your life would be enriched if they weren't in your social circle. But flip the coin back or the mirror back to you and put the emphasis or onus on yourself. maybe you're just not a good enough friend to them to go and do it. And if that irritates you or pisses you off, here's what you need to do. Go talk to that person if you want to be a true, high quality, enriching friend to somebody else. It's my belief that we evolve as human beings and it's my goal, 43 now. I want to evolve when I'm 44 and 45 and 54 and 55 and however many laughs around the

sun I'm going to get. I want to be the best person I can possibly be. And I feel like I can't do that by myself. I have to surround myself with people that will enrich my life. They will challenge me and they will help me move forward as a person. And that only happens when they tell you the things that you probably don't want to hear. They tell you the things that you need to hear, not the things that you want to hear. So when presented with that situation, I highly recommend if you value the friendship or if you would want your friends to have those conversations with you, step into the breach, find a way in a lot of these conversations are going to be probably uncomfortable. That doesn't mean you have to be rude or mean or arrogant or any of those things.

Find a way to impart that information with empathy and then be there for the person if they struggle with receiving it. Because I think we can all agree when somebody points out your deficiencies, it's oftentimes hard to take an objective look at it. Nothing better than when somebody is standing there with you to help you through that. And that is what I think is the true measure and metric of a friend. And on to the questions. These all come from email. This first one says, hey, Andy, lately I've been thinking about death and its ability to make life more precious. I'm wondering how to be aware of death so that it helps me to live fully rather than being crippled by fear of it.

If you want to give your advice on my question below, it would be greatly appreciated. I've had a tough seven years in London, UK. My mom died, my long-term relationship ended. I got into an abusive situation after that and barely escaped alive. I moved several times, changed several jobs, long story. However, 2020 has been a great year for me, a turnaround. I had a profound near-death experience that made me reevaluate my life. I have moved to Slovenia recently, my country of origin, and I'm starting from scratch and I'm excited

about it, but also afraid of making a wrong job. turn. I'm 36 and I'm well aware that I can't afford to waste my time with too many dead ends and more, and more even if those are, hold on a second, that I can't afford to waste my time with too many dead ends anymore, even if those are educational. Like I said, I'm a little bit off people. What would your advice be to those of us who are starting again, a little bit older, hopefully wiser and probably scared what to be careful of or pay attention to a lot of a lot of a lot of meat on this bone i'll start off with death i have never been one to sit down and think about like death all the time at a very morose level however i do try to remind myself occasionally

that we're all going to die and i want to get at the end of my lap right we're all going to get one lap, I want to get to the end of my lap with it as full as humanly possible. I want to live a life that is well lived. And I have to remind myself often that I think a life well lived is through experiences and not possessions. So I actually use death and the reminder that you don't get to take anything with you, nothing that you physically possess with you to re-center me a little bit. and it helps me reevaluate, re-evaluate, and recalibrate my thoughts on things versus experiences. And experiences I've often found are enriched with people. You know, the first question was about friends.

So doing things with a great friend network, I think to me that is the most powerful and impactful thing that I've ever been able to do. It trumps any physical object, any car, new device, you know, fill in the blank. So I use death as a reminder that it's not. things that matter, its experiences in people. What I definitely don't recommend is people sitting there like scraping a day off of the calendar and wondering, oh, man, there's one down. I wonder how many more I have left. That would not be the way I would recommend you live your life. Use it as a reminder to fill your cup up before you don't have a chance to put any more in. And I think this ties

into your question a little bit. So first off, it sucks about the seven years you had in the UK. sorry for the death of your mom, into a relationship, out of that relationship, near-death experience that force you to reevaluate your life. And I think that's a good thing, having your mortality thrown in front of you, not often, but every once in a while or at least once in your life to, again,

recalibrate and perhaps use the thought of death like I do as an anchor. Advice to those of you who are starting again. You know, you're 36, so I have seven years on you. And I remember thinking that I was old when I was 36. I'm like, oh man, I don't have any time to mess around. I am now of the belief that I don't care what my age is. And I don't say that because I'm continuously getting older, as we all are.

But I refuse to get myself into a position where I feel like I am too young or too old to learn anything new. I refuse to put myself into a place where, well, because my driver's license says this, I can no longer do that. And I'll get this one occasionally with jiu-jitsu. People will hit me up and they'll say, I'm in my late 50s. or I'm 50 or 40 or fill in the blank, and sometimes it's into the 70s. I've had a guy reach out in their 70s and say, Jiu-Jitsu sounds incredibly interesting to me, but I feel like I'm too old to start.

I'm never going to be the person that says that. If I have a desire to try something, I'm going to try it. And there are ways for people at any age group to enter into Jiu-Jitsu and do it safely. Now, again, I've been at this for two years and a month or two. So take what I say with a grain of salt, but what I can tell you is on the mats where I train, and I train at a gym network called Straight Blast Gym in the Flathead Valley, there are people in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s,

and maybe one guy might be in his 60s. And they all train slightly differently, and they all roll slightly differently, and they're all looking for different things out of it. But it's possible. It's not possible, though, if you look at a number that's going to get larger by one every year and then start carving a wall,

things that are available to you. So you're 36. You have time. Now, I'm not going to recommend that you waste your time, but as long as you're not sitting on your phone and spending hours a day on social media, I don't think you're wasting your time. To me, that is just a sinkhole of productivity and time, what I was describing on sitting on your phone and accomplishing nothing. If you're out there looking for things that interest you, if you're looking for things that you might be passionate about and it's, you know, you find a couple that don't work. That's okay. Educational mistakes, they're going to happen for the rest of your life.

So accept those and don't try to avoid them. I have had to start over many times in my life. When I got out of the military, I had to start over and redefine myself. When I stopped working for CrossFit, I had to completely redefine myself because I went from an income to no income in about 30 seconds, about as long as it took me to send a text message. Same thing with flying. Same thing with delving into the skydiving and base jumping world. Same thing with podcasting. Same thing with public speaking. I went into all of those with no experience and I was redefining myself and who I was and what I wanted to do. Take the experience that you

have through your 36 years of life, which is going to be a good volume of experience. And what you're going to find is you've probably made the vast majority of mistakes. It has, at a general level. And you can apply mistakes, and I've applied mistakes I made in the military to podcasting, whether it's workflow or efficiency. And I have applied mistakes that I've made public speaking when it comes to podcasting, when it comes to word efficiency, or trying to work on my vocabulary or avoid certain words, or try to speak in a certain tone or direction, depending on the individual that's sitting in front of me. So I take lessons all throughout my life

and I apply them to what it is that I'm doing now. And what I have found is that helps you round the corners. Biggest piece of advice I would say is do you not be afraid to try new things? Don't look at your age as something that's standing in your way. Look at it as a foundation of experience that you can build on. It's okay that you're a little bit older because you're probably a little bit wiser.

Fear is a good thing. Being afraid is a natural reaction, whether it's a physical injury or something uncertain. I think it's totally normal. The people who tell me that they have no fear are the ones that I worry about. When I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, base jumping, I'm scared out of my mind. And that's a good thing because my body is warning me that what I'm about to do is exceptionally dangerous. I would stop base jumping the day that my body didn't give me that feedback. So if you're scared about something that you might be attempting or a pattern,

that you're going to be going down, that's a good thing. That means that you are going to be paying attention. You're going to be looking out for pitfalls. You're going to be trying to avoid mistakes. Seek the things that scare you because they, in my experience, will net you the largest reward. If it doesn't scare you, perhaps don't pursue it because in the end, it may not get you where you want to be. That's what I have to be careful of and pay attention to. Seek the things that scare you and never stop that evolution and growth. list of what your driver's license says. Question number two. The subject line of this question is what got me.

Midget's doing BJJ in sumo suits. I am going to read a message that has that in the subject line. However, I apologize to those of you listening. The question has nothing to do with that. You've often talked about working in a community of overachievers. I am an LEO, law enforcement officer, and my current work environment is the opposite of your previous world. I am surrounded by people who want to do the bare minimum work required to get by. To the point, they resent me for wanting to do my job.

Like you, I would describe myself as average at best. The agency I work for is not exactly the FBI. You don't have to work too hard to do your job to an acceptable standard. How do you deal with it? Being around people for 10 hours a day who hate me is starting to creep into my personal life, making me unmotivated to train, etc. I started BJJ recently, but the tension of work has drained my confidence to do anything new. Interesting question.

How do you survive and thrive in an environment where you are surrounded by people who are there to do the bare minimum and not maximize their efforts? My first thing that I would say when reading this is, remember that your job is what you do. It doesn't necessarily have to be who you are. You are, at least from the description of your email, you sound like you're pretty unhappy, which sucks because you're spending, like you said, 10 hours a day with people who hate you. I'm going to make an assumption here. and my assumption is that your attitude towards what you do and where you work is different than the vast majority of your peers. And they probably are uncomfortable with your mentality because it makes them feel uncomfortable

about theirs. And that can absolutely suck. And then there's a couple, you know, suggestions here. One of them is, is if it's really this negative suck on your life to the point where it's impacting your desire or confidence to try something new, it may be time to reconsider a career change. You know, if you're surrounded by people who you are expressing are putting in no effort other than to meet the minimum standard and you're the exact opposite person, you could, of course, try to inspire them, you could set the example, you could try to get yourself into a

leadership position, you could try to motivate them and none of those things could work. So let's just keep in the back of our mind, maybe it could be a chance for an occupational change, or you could pursue those other things that I just mentioned. And what I would add to that is how you conduct yourself at work. If you truly are surrounded by people who are the exact opposite of who you are, maybe you could round the edges a touch on how you, I don't want to say portray yourself, but how you conduct yourself, right? I would say in this situation, whatever you do, don't verbalize the difference in how you feel about yourself in your peers. What I would do if I were you is I would set the example at every level that I would expect from my peers, especially in an LEO world.

And I would let that example speak for itself. And that in and of itself, though, might make people extremely uncomfortable. But that's okay. That's not on you. That's on them. If you go that route, I'm not saying it's going to necessarily make you have it change how you're feeling about your job. I'm not saying you're going to have this incredible job satisfaction. But focus on that and then do the best that you can to leave your work at work.

The biggest thing I get from your email is that your work is it's seeping into your personal life. And I think it's very important for people to have a work life balance. And I say that looking back on nearly two decades of my life where I didn't really have. a work and life balance. Again, what you do doesn't have to be who you are. I think very infrequently, those two things actually merge. So I would block in that time where you need to be at work. And like I said, be an exemplary employee. Be the example in any way. And then leave your job at your job. I'm glad that you started jiu-jitsu. It's challenging. You're going to suffer. And you know what, though, you're going to find people in jiu-suitzu as well that are there to do the minimum effort.

and then other people who are just on the mats constantly trying to sharpen the blade of their own game. You know, pick which one of those that you want to be. It sucks that your work life is draining your confidence. And that's why I opened with perhaps it might be time to find a career change. And maybe that's just a lateral inside of your own organization. I'm not saying scrap everything and burn the ships on the beach. maybe you could lateral somewhere else or to a different department or to a different role or responsibility that will put you around a different cohort of people because if you're

losing confidence in trying anything new, it just concerns me that that 10 hours is consuming the other 14. And I've been there and it's frustrating and the most powerful thing that I was able to do was cut that cancer out of my life. I was able to do that because I had other opportunities and maybe you don't have those right now. So if you recognize it to cancer, maybe now is a great time to start looking for those other opportunities to put in term a long-term strategy.

So you can get yourself out of that insidious situation and put yourself into a place that's better for you mentally and probably physically. So you'll have less tension. It won't affect your confidence. You're going to feel renewed and refreshed. And I say that having felt that myself a few times, it's like, oh, I can actually breathe for the first time.

and then things that seemed not even remotely interesting to me, I found interest in them. Again, it's important to find that space so you can, again, evolve and continue to grow as a person. So that's what I would recommend. Set the example in every way, be an exemplary employee, let your behavior speak for itself, do the best you can to separate that work-life balance, find things that challenge you outside of that job, and if it's really just circling the drain for you, find something else that perhaps, you might even find to be more rewarding than your current LEO position. So hope that helps for you.

Last question. Andy, my twin brother and I are seniors in high school. And since we were little kids, we've known we wanted to be team guys. Well, actually, I wanted to be SF for a while, but just because he wanted to go Navy and everything is a competition between the twins. All right. I can get behind this so far. I've since grown up and realized that the teams are way cooler. I'm going to stop you right there and let you know that all of the specials.

operations, occupations, they're pretty much equally cool. And what I recommend for people is not to pick the one that's the coolest, pick the one that goes to your strengths. If you like the water and your water person, perhaps the amphibious world is better for you. If you're a mountainous type of person or you grew up in the backcountry and, you know, Army, for whatever reason, has a calling, then go that way, or the Air Force or the Marines. But don't worry, they're all awesome. One is not cooler than the other. Anyways, as the time, at, at, I, At that time, at the time we can actually enter the Navy, we've gotten more serious in our desire to be seals. So as this time has approached, you're getting more serious, which is good.

We work out. We practice mental toughness as much as possible and read books and listen to podcasts like Cleared Hot, Jocko, team never quit. We are all in. Our parents have always been supportive of our goals. But our dad seems to not have faith in us. Whenever we talk about going to buds or being in the teams, he always brings up that we have a a high statistical probability of not making it and that we should put more effort into a backup plan. Obviously, we have realized this and we do have some idea of a backup plan, but we have heard

multiple times that what helps a lot of guys make it through selection is not giving themselves any other option. We have tried explaining this to our dad, but he does not seem to understand or accept our die first, then quit mentality. We were hoping to get some advice on how to get this across to someone whose support matters so much to us. Thanks for everything that you do, Rob and Mike. I did not have a backup plan when I went through, and I've talked about this pretty openly. I didn't realize, I knew that people quit training, and I knew what the attrition rate was, but I did not realize the medical issues and how much of an impact that can have on your

likelihood of success. I will say that for some people, it probably helps to not have a backup plan. For me, it did help because it's not that I think I would have been comparing where I was and how uncomfortable it was to the backup plan. I think I just save mental space by not even considering it. Having said that, a backup plan is called a backup plan for a reason, and it's not a bad idea. You're going to have to find that balance. I can't get between your ears. And for some people, I would say they have a mentality where if you give them a backup plan,

that's going to be a weakness. For other people, if you give them a backup plan, it's going to be nice. no factor, so don't worry about it. You're going to have to determine which one of those that you are. Do you keep in the back of your mind, though, that regardless of whether or not you do have a backup plan, buds isn't fair, and neither is life. It takes one fall off of an obstacle. I've literally stood there and felt the sand move next to my feet as people auger in and break their pelvis or have a spinal injury or horrendous lower body injuries to their legs, and they're not recoverable. So whether you have a backup plan or not, that is not.

not going to impact that small aspect of this that is just going to be luck. I mean, that's really all that it is. So keep that in mind. When it comes to your dad, that's a tough one. You know, it's a tough one. However, what I'm going to say is it's largely irrelevant. It might be, and it sounds like it is very important for you to have your father's support. And I can completely understand that.

What I'll say to you is this, whether you, if you, I'm going to assume you will, let's say you pursue you this path, you and your brother, Robin Mike, we go down on this path. Your dad is not going to do it for you. Whether he supports you more than anything else in these lowest moments where you're going to have to make a decision between continuing and ringing a bell, even if your father completely supported everything that you were doing, it won't make a difference in that moment. And it won't make a difference either if he doesn't support you. So I understand exactly why you want your father's support. You want your closest friends and family to understand who you are, what drives you, and for them to be on board with your goals. I feel exactly the same way about my life.

Unfortunately, you're not going to always have those people who are going to be in your corner. Your dad's still going to be your dad. He's going to love you unconditionally. And you might have to show him this diaper. then quit mentality. And when you do, if you do, what I can tell you is he's going to have a renewed sense of appreciation for who you and your brother are. The desire to go to buds, the desire to pursue these occupations, it's abnormal.

And I say that, as again, somebody who went through this. Most people just don't want to do these things. It's a bizarre desire as a career path. Not uncommon that both parents. don't totally understand and that's okay. So don't, I'm not going to call it wasting time. Don't spend more time than is needed explaining to your dad or trying to sway your dad's opinion or anybody else's for that matter. If you want to go down this path, prepare yourself, which is the only thing that you can control. Whether people support you or they sit there and

they mock you openly every day telling you that the odds are not your favor, it doesn't matter. None of those things matter. It will be you and the bell if you go to buds. And only you decide whether or not that thing rings or not. So just remember that and focus on that. And I'm telling you right now, if he doesn't believe you or you can't change his mind before you go and you are successful, that will change his mind in and of itself. And as a father, speaking about how I would feel about my own sons, be a renewed sense of appreciation for the young men that they are. And I hope that helps you guys. Good luck in the process. If you guys continue down and you choose to pursue it. And if you do, hit me up later on, whether it goes good or bad. But I wish you the best.

That's all I got for this Friday.