Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 58

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Rapid-fire Q and A submitted from the listeners! A variety of topics with a five-minute time cap per answer, sometimes. 1. Advice/tips for public speakers 2. Is love worth fighting for 3. Parachutes a...nd pickup trucks 4. I hate and loathe myself, what can I do Enjoy

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Good morning, everybody. Full Auto Friday, number 58. Before we get into it, let us take a moment and discuss the brands that help make this podcast possible. The first one I think is actually my longest running sponsor, and that is On It, your landing site, landing page for total human optimization. If you're into, I don't know, health, making yourself better optimization, well then, go to Onit.com slash hot.
Starting point is 00:00:28 And instead of me explaining every single thing they offer, I'm going to read the categories across the top. Supplements, nutrition, fitness, apparel, sale, and then content. You can dive into each one of those. Hover your mouse across each of those, and you're going to see a variety of options. The landing page itself has a few things that I use, Damner, on the daily, whether it's the Alpha Brain, their flag ship nootropic, the Power Food Active, some fitness equipment, total gut health, everything you could possibly need for optimization. As I've said many times before, I'm going to say it again. Before you start spending money on optimizing, make sure that you have the big building
Starting point is 00:01:06 blocks in order, your recovery, your rest, your sleep, your diet, your training, then start allocating some cash for optimization, and only then. Onit.com slash hot for all of your optimization needs. This episode is also brought to you by Christensen. arms, the makers of the most amazing rifles on the face of this planet Earth. Their claim to fame, they are the original creators of the carbon fiber rifle barrel. And currently, they're the makers of the lightest and most accurate rifle in the industry. They have sent me a variety of calibers, some 308, some 300 wind mag, which is my personal favorite. They are so incredibly light.
Starting point is 00:01:49 It's amazing the difference that the carbon makes when it comes to weight saving at the very least. I'm talking a rifle with suppressor, optics, lighter with all of those things on than the stripped down versions of the rifle that I used to carry overseas. You can check out all of their rifles if you go to Christensenarms.com. If you do that, though, and you're not familiar with rifles, you might realize that there are some options. And when you're shopping for a rifle, you obviously want it to be the best rifle for the intended use. Christensen wants to help you with that, so they created a tool that's going to help you find the perfect rifle. And so, they created a tool that's going to help you find the perfect rifle without the hassle, research, and potential gun jargon you may not understand.
Starting point is 00:02:28 They've created the Find My Firearm tool. It's a short questionnaire that will match you with the firearm that's going to meet your needs. You can take the quiz at Christensenarms.com slash find my firearm or again go to Christensenarms.com and just click on it when you get there. That is it for today on the business side of the house. Let's dive into this. Full out of Friday, 58. Close now. Good morning, everybody. Here we go. Friday, I got stuff to do this Friday. You got stuff to do this Friday. Let's just dive right in. I have five questions. We're going to go a little light, a little deep,
Starting point is 00:03:21 a little light, little deep. And we'll get as far as we can, keeping everybody's time in the back of my mind. I'll try not to go too long. Question number one is on public speaking. Finally, a question that I know something a little bit about. Andy, what advice would you have for a novice public speaker? At the end of this month, 27th of June, I will be officiated. my brother's wedding. I have little to know public speaking experience, but I do have a degree in video production and have been to some bad weddings, so I know what a good presentation looks like. I'm going to assume you know what a bad one looks like as well. Listening to you talk about training with firearms, I started some stress inoculation by doing some push-ups and air squats
Starting point is 00:04:03 prior to run through so my heart rate is elevated while reading. Sometimes I tend to laugh when I shouldn't and it can be hard to recover, which is actually my biggest concern. Any input on any of the above? Well, sir, congrats to your brother, first and foremost. They're going to be getting married, and I like your training program. I don't know of anybody who has dedicated themselves to doing push-ups and air squats prior to practicing for a speech, but I get it. Public speaking can be pretty nerve-wracking. And I've actually heard and both read that some people actually was a really high statistic. I think it might have been, it might have exceeded 50%. 50% of people fear death more, or I'm sorry, 50% of people fear public speaking more than they do death. So to me,
Starting point is 00:04:56 it's that, you know, when I hear that, first off, it's a little bit weird because worst case scenario public speaking is you make a complete note or ass of yourself, which guess who's done that? You're right. I have. And that's it. You can totally recover. Death, not so much. So getting up in front of an audience and talking to people can be challenging. I never thought that I would do public speaking. I didn't start doing it until probably about eight years ago. And the first organization that I ever spoke at was just a friend's company. And before that, though, I had a little bit of an advantage. I had some reps. In the military, I was forced to present as an instructor. So it didn't matter whether or not I wanted to.
Starting point is 00:05:38 I was presented with material and I went up and I had to present when I was a buds instructor. And then I also started working for CrossFit on the weekends. And it was actually working for CrossFit on the weekends that broke me of any nervousness when it comes to public speaking. And what happened with that, it wasn't some amount of magic. It was just the reps. The reps got me to a place where I realized, hey, I'm probably going to say some things that I didn't mean to, meaning errors. but they're recoverable as long as something catastrophic doesn't come out of your mouth. And when I say that I'm talking about misspeaking or misstating, I'm not talking about making
Starting point is 00:06:12 an atrocious comment and trying to recover from that. Sometimes you're going to search for your words and you can't find them. And sometimes they just come flying out of you in the perfect sequence. You're a human being, you're talking to human beings. And I also realized when I was up there presenting that most people are very appreciative of the fact that they are. not up there presenting. So they understand to a degree and to a level the difficulty and complexity of being up there and presenting. They don't want to do it themselves, so they're happy that you are
Starting point is 00:06:43 doing it. So don't worry about it. I mean, everybody, they kind of get it to a degree is what I'm saying. They're probably more thankful that you're up there making the mistake more than anything else, because what they really don't want is to be put up into that position. So some tips for you. sometimes I tend to laugh when I shouldn't and it can be hard to recover. One thing I recommend, and I'm not saying that you're doing this, but just a word of caution perhaps for anybody publicly speaking, I really wouldn't try to write any comedy into something that you are presenting. I think if comical things happen while you are presenting, that is okay in the moment,
Starting point is 00:07:21 but I have seen just catastrophes when people try to create an artificial environment and force a joke or something comedic in where it's not the place for it. So don't do that. And, you know, you laugh when you shouldn't. Maybe you're talking about when you get nervous. Okay. You know, try not to do that in the middle of officiating your brother's wedding. But if it happens a little bit, you know, maybe just move on and I'm not saying pretend it didn't happen.
Starting point is 00:07:46 But just kind of pretend that it didn't happen. Now, you have, it says like you're going to be reading while, yeah, so you're doing your pushups and your air squats. So you can get an elevated heart rate while you are reading. Okay. So one thing that I do when I publicly speak, and I've seen, I guess, every version of this. We'll go to the version that I currently use now after years of publicly speaking versus what I've traditionally seen, I think, from people who are just starting public speaking. What I do now is I simply have bullet points. And by the way, I don't go up and just try to remember everything from memory.
Starting point is 00:08:26 I will take cue cards. I will take actually what I have is a notebook that I take the most often. But what is in there on that presentation from somebody who is looking at it, if I were just to give them my notebook, it may not make sense because it's really just bullet points. And that's where I'm at right now. So I will write down bullet points and I worry less about the individual words that I'm going to say in between the points that I want to make. I just ensure that I hit those key points. And I have enough experience now doing it. and I've done it enough times that I know I'm going to be able to navigate my way.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And sometimes maybe this is more specific to what I do when you're talking in front of an audience. You have to be able to read the audience. And sometimes you need to take a longer path on certain topics and a shorter path on others. It really depends on who you are standing in front of. When it comes to a wedding, I've never officiated a wedding. I would say keep it simple, short and sweet. You know, the wedding should be about the two people standing there and not about the person officiating or presenting that wedding. So keep it as short as sweet as possible.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Now, the other side of that spectrum, like I said, what I have seen from people who are starting off is instead of bullet points, they write down every single word that they want to say. And that's a tough one. Because to make sure that you say every one of those words, what ends up happening is you are head down into your notes or your cue card. And I think the best thing that you can do is be head up and engaged with the people that you are talking to. Make eye contact. Try if you can to look at every single person that is there. And I have found that that engagement is much, much better. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong when it comes to this.
Starting point is 00:10:07 I'm saying that in nearly a decade that I've been doing public speaking, I have trended more and more and more towards bullet points versus every word that I want to say. The last piece of advice that I will give you is just try to be yourself. Before you go up there and before this starts, you should expect that you're going to be nervous. Totally fine. Don't worry about that. You probably have some sweaty hands. And also, right before you start, you may feel like you have just forgotten every single thing that you want to say. What I would recommend for that is, again, if you are going to have bullet points or if you are going to write down maybe one small section of every word,
Starting point is 00:10:47 that you want to say, make it your intro. Get yourself rolling and then I would trend more towards those bullet points. I've had those moments where right before I'm getting up in front of an audience and as I'm getting introduced, I'll have this thought of do I actually even remember anything that I'm supposed to be saying right now? And I'll get started and then it's boom. You're right back on track and it feels like you are a caboose on a set of rails and you're headed in the right direction. Be yourself. base what it is that you're going to say out of love and appreciation for the two people there getting married. And please express my congratulations to the bride and group. Question number two.
Starting point is 00:11:27 Like I said, we're going to go a little bit light, perhaps a little bit dark. We're going to get right in this. I'm a 23-year-old male, and about a year ago, I met this girl. She's 22, beautiful, intelligent. She shares the same interests, but we are opposites, and we challenge each other in the healthiest of ways. Overall, we couldn't be happier, and one could say we fell in love with each other. About three months ago, I got a call from my family saying my dad, in parentheses, I cut contact when I was 13, got an infection, fell into a coma, and had DNR.
Starting point is 00:11:56 Do not resuscitate. My family asked if I wanted to go, and I said no, and I thought I had made peace with my dad. A few days goodbye, and my sister visits him in the hospital and told him the entire family is coming to see him, but me. My dad then wakes up from the coma and begins to cry that his youngest son wasn't there to be with him. Talk about feeling guilty. I eventually fly out to see him, and I had no idea how much suppressed emotion there was left. We eventually bond, and his recovery looked promising. During this time, my girlfriend calls me and tells me she's pregnant, and she's not keeping it,
Starting point is 00:12:29 which I fully supported her choice. I tell my dad, I have to cut my trip short to be with the girl that I love. He fully supported and respected what I have to do. I left, and two weeks pass, and he dies. To be fair, it didn't affect me as much as I. I like. But I believe I was so focused on supporting my girlfriend that there was no, that there was time for grief later. We eventually have an abortion and a week passes, and I can see her regain her vitality, which was awesome to see. As I think things are getting to seem more normal, she invites me out and tells me she doesn't love me anymore in the way I love her. Her reason being is during the abortion she had to let go of all associations, including me, and man did that
Starting point is 00:13:12 hurt. I never knew how hard it was to get out of bed when life feels like it's crushing you from all angles. I try to keep my mind off things going by going to the gym, being with friends, jujitsu, talking to a therapist, but nothing seems to get my mind off of it. It just feels like I've failed the person I love and care so much for. So my question for you, Andy, is when you love someone so much and have gone through so much is love worth fighting for. Well, Welcome to the doctor's office. Because as you know, this is my specialty relationships. I'm just kidding.
Starting point is 00:13:48 I don't know shit about these, but I do the best I can. Let's take it from the top. Your dad then wakes up from the coma and begins to cry that his youngest son wasn't there to be with him. Talk about feeling guilty. I don't know why you cut off contact with your dad when you were 13 a decade ago. But perhaps your dad has something that he should be feeling. guilty about. And perhaps he's crying because of that guilt. What I'm saying with this is don't put this whole serving on your plate. Without knowing any more details, without knowing the
Starting point is 00:14:21 specifics, all I can say is perhaps both of you, maybe even one of you, had more of a hand in that separation than the other. So him feeling bad that you're not there, you know what? You don't necessarily have to take all of that guilt just because, again, I don't know exactly what happened, but if it's what I suspect happened or if it was something that was catastrophic, the person who should be feeling guilty is the one who woke up in the hospital bed. Again, moving on. This is a tough one. I've had moments where I feel like it's tough to get out of bed where life feels like it's crushing you from all of the angles.
Starting point is 00:15:03 I think you're doing as much as I could possibly recommend. You know, you're going to the gym, you're being with your friends, you're going to Jiu-Jitsu, you're talking to a professional. So it sounds like you're staying physically active and you're trying to do the work mentally. That's awesome. Nothing seems to get this off of your mind. I would suspect that that's probably in part due to the proximity from when this actually happened. So it seems like this happened relatively recently.
Starting point is 00:15:32 And I am not an expert in female hormones by any stretch of the imagination. I am not an expert in abortion and the impact that that can have on the endocrine. system for women, but I do think it's reasonable to say or to hypothesize that that procedure at a hormonal level could have changed her body, maybe for the short term, medium, or long term. Again, I'm not an expert, but from my limited understanding, it certainly can have an impact. And that impact and that change, it may change how she feels about you. It may change how she feels about herself or her life, her life in general. I think, again, I got my doctorate by watching House on TV. I would suspect that she probably will return if that is the case. If this has any impact at all, I would suspect that she would return back to baseline or whatever that may be. So my point in saying all that is she may come back around. And if she does, all the things that you're doing, the physical and mental work, that's going to make you an even
Starting point is 00:16:43 better partner for her, if that happens. If she doesn't, and she doesn't change her mind, you know, and you love somebody this much and you've gone through so much together, is love worth fighting for it? At a baseline level, I'm going to say yes. I think love is an amazing thing. I really truly hope specifically and especially for my kids that they all get to experience the breadth and depth of love that I know that they are capable for and that they can find somebody who can provide that for them, that they can come together and have that with somebody. I think it is such a beautiful and amazing thing. Is it worth fighting for? Yes, it absolutely is. but if you look at a relationship as an equal sign as a mathematical equation with an equal sign in the
Starting point is 00:17:31 middle it has to balance and you could do all of the work that you are doing on yourself and you could continue to do all the work that I suspect that you will and make yourself into the best version of who you are and she may not change her mind at some point you will have to determine and only you can make this determination whether or not it is worth continuing to to invest in this person that is not reciprocating those feelings. What I'll say to you in my limited experience when it comes to relationships, you can change yourself, you can work on yourself, but you cannot change somebody else.
Starting point is 00:18:08 You cannot change their mind and you cannot force them. Well, I mean, I guess you could. You could force them to stay in a relationship with you, even though that to me is like the foundation of an unhealthy relationship. And I think there's an egg timer on how fast that is going to heal or not heal, but hold together. And I think at the end it would be a catastrophic explosion. So there is a point where you may have to move on. What I'll say is this, you're 23. I'm glad that you have experienced this early in your life. And what I'm here to tell you is the better that you
Starting point is 00:18:42 make yourself as a person, the more work you do on yourself, you might be surprised at how many other people you encounter or are introduced to through random chance that could also provide to you. you or become for you an amazing relationship. So don't lose the forest for the trees. I love what you're doing. I feel very empathetic of what it is that you're going through. Do the best that you can to be empathetic of your girlfriend and what she is going through. I would set a time where, you know, you're going to devote yourself to yourself and to trying to heal this relationship. But at some point, man, lift up your head, look around. Like I said, don't lose the forest for the trees. Half of all the population on earth is women. She's not the only one out there. And I'd rather have you,
Starting point is 00:19:37 instead of try to force this, maybe go find something where the gears fit a little bit more seamlessly. Next question. Title of this email was crazy as fuck and I need to know how impossible it is. Of course I'm going to read this. I watched a new movie. Can't remember it. for the life of me, too many hits to the damn head the other day. And this crazy bitch got in the back of a pickup and pulled a parachute going down the road. The landing looked rough, but I've thought about this for years. How fast would you have to go to, one, not just get pulled out and tumble down the road like a ball of blood and bad ideas? And two, not go so fast that it just rips you apart.
Starting point is 00:20:17 I'm fucking curious and terrified at the same time. This is an interesting question. I've never been asked this, and we're going to dive right into it. So I'm going to go bottom to top. How fast would you have to go, number two, to not get, just not to get ripped apart? If you look at this from the perspective of skydiving, which also uses the same parachute system, most of the time you're falling belly to earth and you want to be falling with your belly to the earth when you deploy your parachute. Terminal velocity for myself, I'm six foot, about 205, terminal plus my rig, so probably 212.
Starting point is 00:20:52 with all my gear on is going to be, I'm going to call it somewhere between 110 to 120 miles per hour. When I deploy my parachute, it actually, it's not violent. It, it orientes you vertically. Your feet swing low. Your head swings high. And if you pack the parachute properly, it opens in a very sequential but delayed manner, which reduces the amount of G forces that you're taking. And it doesn't get anywhere near ripping you apart. I've seen videos where people are flying into vertical orientation, where they don't mean to deploy their parachute, but their parachute comes out. Now, it's very violent. You might get a non-consensual chiropractic adjustment, but it doesn't rip you apart.
Starting point is 00:21:34 And we're talking speeds that are approximating like 200 miles an hour. I don't think there's a speed that you could go where it's going to rip you apart. I don't know what would fail first. The human body or the webbing on those containers. I mean, man, they are made well, but it would be hundreds of miles per hour, which is faster that you'd go in any car. So two is not a possible one. One, how fast would you have to go not just get pulled out and tumble down the road like a ball of blood and bad ideas? Unfortunately, the faster you go, the more that's going to happen.
Starting point is 00:22:06 Because parachutes, if you think about like the gross concept, it's not very complicated. It's just drag. So it's a backpack-looking device when they're folded together in packed called a container. It contains your parachute. It has a reserve up top and a main on the bottom. And attached to your main parachute is a bridle, which is a strip of fabric that goes to another very small, essentially round parachute, which is your pilot shoot.
Starting point is 00:22:30 So you route that bridle to a small pocket on the back of the rig or the bottom of the rig, which either has like a PVC handle in the old days. I don't recommend that, though, unless you are more experienced or you can tape up the sides of the PVC. And a lot of times it's just a hacky sack. So you reach back, you throw that a very small, parachute opens, which pulls on the bridle, which pulls a deployment bag out, which is your parachute folded up into the deployment bag. It extends the lines, which connect your parachute
Starting point is 00:23:00 to your container and it pulls everything out, and your parachute starts opening. The faster you're going, the faster that's going to happen. The slower you're going, the slower that can happen. It was one of the things I loved about skydiving in wingsuits is that you can flare and really slow down your vertical airspeed. And so when you deploy that small pilot shoot, it was a, it was like falling into a bed of cotton. It was so, it was so just like casual and soft when the parachute would open. So if you're in the back of a car, though, let's say you're in the back of a truck. Yeah, she's in the back of a pickup. If you're standing in the back of a pickup and you pull your pilot shoot out and you're going fast enough for it to inflate
Starting point is 00:23:43 it and it can extend your bridle and pull your deployment bag and your parachute comes out, which is a large, in the grossest of terms, it's a large rectangle that is designed to catch air, both to ram into the canopy, but also the entire bottom skin could just act as a sail and rapidly grab that air. You're going to get yanked out of the car, the pickup truck, and you're going to hit the ground like a bag of shit.
Starting point is 00:24:07 The slower you're going, probably, if we're putting this into perspective of how hard you're going to hit, the slower you're going, the softer it's going to be. The faster that you accelerate, the more gnarly that is going to become. You're never going to get pulled up. You're basically going to get dragged straight back and you're going to tumble down the road. I've never tried this, but I assume that's what's going to happen.
Starting point is 00:24:28 So there is no speed that you would have to go to not just get pulled out and tumble down the road. Because your canopy, you've got to look at the perspective from the relative wind, meaning where is it relative to the inflation of your parachute? If you wanted to get pulled up, the relative wind, if you're standing the wind, if you're standing there, you know, feet to the ground would have to be coming from underneath your feet for it to pull you up and then potentially it could set you down. We need to rotate that 90. So now it's coming horizontally over the hood of the car. Your parachute is going to inflate in relationship to that relative wind at a perpendicular angle to that relative wind and it's going to take you
Starting point is 00:25:04 in the direction of the relative wind, which is going to be on your ass tumbling down the road. So I wish I could say it's possible. Well, it is possible. I highly, highly, do not recommend it. But sorry. If you do this at all, you're going to get jacked up. And I really don't think there's a speed that it could rip you into pieces. Back into the depth. Here we go. Self-hatred despite self-improvement. Guilt haunts me. Here we go. Apologies in advance for the length of this question. In short, no matter what I do, I hate myself. The whole damn thing. I'm 34 years old and I have struggled with mental health problems, bipolar, and a learning disability, ADHD throughout my life. I grew up in a small town in
Starting point is 00:25:51 New England and was bullied so damn bad that you wouldn't believe it. I had the shit beaten out of me more than once. I was always a fighter, though. The more shit I took, the more I was just determined to say, fuck you to the whole world. My parents are slash were good people, both from humble working class backgrounds. My dad's people especially have known a lot of pain and struggle. I know my mental health problems were a significant source of stress for my parents and siblings. I was always able and willing to be in therapy as a kid. I got in some trouble, but nothing major. I was always trying to fight the demon, but my brain gave me bad information often. I grew to be an angry and hateful person. I fell in with a bad crowd for a while before I was 21. I thought of
Starting point is 00:26:38 myself as a good kid back then, but I had this anger and it left me looking for bad action. Got in some street fights, had the shit beaten out of me some more, things like that, nothing crazy. I was just a dumb kid out in the world thinking I was something that I was not. I spent most of my 20s as a wasted, paranoid, recluse trang wreck of a person. When I was 26, my dad died abruptly. I moved to a new part of the country with my girlfriend and tried life there for a while. For a whole list of reasons, we were pretty miserable with the lifestyle in the city with which we were living. We worked our asses off and put up with a lot of bullshit, but we are now living in a rural mountain area about five hours driving from where I grew up.
Starting point is 00:27:20 We make just barely enough to get by, but we are happy and we have each other. We also have a great dog. The place where we live is beautiful and peaceful, and we intend to buy a home someday when we are able to settle down here. I've lost 70 pounds in two years, 50 of that since you started doing cleared hot. Congratulations on that, by the way. That's amazing. please keep doing whatever it is that you're doing. I eat in all capital letters, healthy as fuck.
Starting point is 00:27:49 A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a condition which causes the muscles in my head and neck to spas the fuck out without my consent on a regular basis. It can be painful. It's an all-day, everyday thing, and man, it is a real motherfucker. I like this guy's email. He writes like I talk, and sorry,
Starting point is 00:28:07 sometimes, you know, it's okay to have a potty mouth. I deal with some shit. I still work hard to hold myself accountable, but no matter how much I improve myself and therefore improve my life for my family, every day I just feel this heavy self-loathing. I think about things I regret constantly. My incredible partner has to constantly remind me not to hold myself to unrealistic standards. I'm extremely fortunate to have her. I feel guilty over my dad's death.
Starting point is 00:28:32 We were really tight, and I've always felt like the stress of dealing with fucked up crazy bullshit for 26 years contributed to his death. I feel guilt for how long it took me to get my shit together. I feel guilt that I don't make much money being disabled. My partner doesn't fault me at all for any of it. My family doesn't fault me for any of it at all. I fault myself daily. For ways that I've hurt people I love, for ways I've hurt total strangers, for the ways I've hurt or embarrassed myself.
Starting point is 00:29:03 I really struggle with being around people. I just feel like there's a glowing sign on my back that says, fucking headcase. I listen to some of the incredible guests that you have on and I feel guilty that my whole life has been spent selfishly dealing with my own crazy bullshit. It's a big part of the reason I dig living in a rural place where people pretty much all like to keep to themselves. It helps me keep calm and secure. The empty roads, the same faces, a feeling of freedom you can't get in urban or suburban area. The feeling of calm and freedom has allowed me to improve my physical health, but I still find myself angry and fixated on all the things I have ever done wrong.
Starting point is 00:29:43 I've done some good things in my life, beyond self-improvement, but none of that is what my mind fixates on. How does a person forgive themselves? It's not a sustainable path forward. Any advice is appreciated. Damn, that's a lot. Again, I'm going to start with the positive. You've lost 70 pounds in two years. That's amazing. Stay on that path. Let's break down a few things in here. You feel guilty about the death of your father and you think that or you worry that the stress of dealing with the fucked up and crazy bullshit for 26 years contributed to his death. It did. But so did everything else that your father was dealing with.
Starting point is 00:30:32 What I can say is I'm going to, I'll say this from the perspective of my own kids. I don't have the vocabulary to describe how much I worry about them and how much I care for them. And that's not a burden that I want them to have to bear. That is the reality of being a parent. It was our choice to bring these children into the world. And I accept that burden of that worry, of that unconditional love. And everything that comes with that between those two things, the good, the bad and the ugly. I accept that as a parent and your dad did as well. You said you guys were
Starting point is 00:31:12 tight. You didn't cause your dad's death. Were times in your life very stressful to your father? Yes, they absolutely were, but that's okay. I guarantee you, based on how you described your relationship with your dad, that he loved you. And that's it at the end of the day. The rough around the edges stuff, let me tell you from my own personal experience, it fades. But doesn't fade is that love. So you can probably put that rock down just a little bit. In a nutshell, it sounds to me like you're living in a past a little bit. You're really, really focusing on things that have happened in the past. And my worry with that is you'll lose or miss everything that could potentially happen in the future.
Starting point is 00:31:55 Now, I'm going to say this, and this may not be a popular position to hold, but I actually think there's some benefit from self-hatred, to use words, that you used and maybe a little loathing of who you are. The benefit is that it can spur motivation to get you out of where you are and to move you towards a place where you are improving. Can it be taken too far? Oh, hell, yes, it can. Because you could sit there and look at yourself in the mirror and browbeat yourself into paralysis. I also think, you know, the other side of that would be, you know, love for oneself. That's essential as well, but I think that also be taken too far, where you have this overinflated sense of ego or hubris and you think
Starting point is 00:32:41 that you have just arrived and nothing else needs to be done because you're perfect. And therefore, again, you're paralyzed. So you get to that paralyzed place or unwillingness to do anything because you've either arrived or you feel like you're immobile. You kind of get into the same place via two different roads if they're taken to their extreme. You got to have some level of love and grace and empathy for yourself. And I mean, God, I'm lucky there's not a recorder. with some of the language that I use for myself. I use that language. It's actually not even a willing choice.
Starting point is 00:33:14 Oftentimes it's the first way that I will speak to myself internally. But something that I do and something that I would recommend that you do or try to do is recognize the negative pattern and you have to stop it. It sounds to me like you are caught in a cycle of very negative self-talk. Talk, Jesus. Very negative self-talk. And it just seems like that's where you're focusing the majority of your attention on things that you've done in the past, where you have fallen short. And you're going to have to find a way to break that cycle.
Starting point is 00:33:48 The first thing that I would recommend to you is go find a professional to talk to. Talk to somebody who can teach you about the mechanics of the human brain and help you figure out a way to break that chain of constant negativity. Or it's probably going to start with recognizing the change. chain, then understanding how to break it, and then how to reorientate that towards something that is positive. Not an expert at all. That's not going to occur in the first time you talk with somebody. Probably not the first 10 times you talk with somebody.
Starting point is 00:34:18 It's going to take a while, especially if you have a very long history of talking to yourself and focusing on these negative things. We all fuck up in life. God, my list of mistakes that I have made in my life exceeds by a. a magnitude of order, the successes that I've had in my life. And I think about those things and I try not to forget them because I want them and I want to use them as logs to throw on the fire of motivation. What I don't want to do is build them into a wall that blocks my forward momentum. So again, I do talk negatively to myself.
Starting point is 00:35:01 I'm not joking when I say I'm lucky that there's not a recorder in between my ears that could catch some of that stuff because I talk to myself. because I talk to myself sometimes in a way that I would never talk to somebody else. It's amazing our ability to do that, to be so vicious to ourselves in a manner that we would never say to somebody else. And think about that for a second. Why do we do that? You know, if you wouldn't say it to somebody else, consider the fact that maybe you shouldn't be saying it to yourself.
Starting point is 00:35:28 And that'll probably be part of the process when you speak to a professional because that's part of the process I got by speaking to a professional. but I still, at the end of the day, I still think there's that place there where that self-hatred, that self-loathing, there can be benefit from that. And like I said, I think that the utility of that decreases as you get to a point where it starts standing in your way. If you could think about a mistake you made at the past and you maybe could identify something that you did that caused that, and there was an action you could take now that would change the future to make sure you didn't repeat it, that's a good thing. focusing on it to the exclusivity of everything else, that is a bad thing. So if you have a stereo bar, you know, I think right now you're at a 10.
Starting point is 00:36:10 I think your life would be drastically improved if you could find a way to maybe get it to a seven to start with and then a five. And what I'm saying is the balance of positive versus negative talk, the balance on thinking about the past versus thinking about the future. 10 to 7, 7 to 5, and then maybe optimal is a 3. I don't know. I would leave that into the realm of the professional because that's their job and their professionals at doing it. But what I don't want to see is somebody losing themselves in their past and having no ability to enjoy the future. I feel for you that the best route forward would likely be talking to somebody who is trained and how the brain works because I feel like this is a system error that can be fixed.
Starting point is 00:36:57 It's not going to necessarily be easy. But things that are worthwhile and actually meaningful in life, they often are not easy. So this will probably be a very difficult journey and path for you. But having said that, if you walk that path, I think you might end up in a place where you'll look back and, you know, you've lost 70 pounds in two years. That's an amazing feat. Maybe two years from now that weight loss will continue and you'll look back at your mental state and it will be an equivalent change as those 70 pounds that you've already lost. don't go on the journey alone that's one of the biggest things that uh interrupted my ability to change my thought process as i thought i could do it for myself and i couldn't i wasn't smart enough to do so
Starting point is 00:37:40 and i wasn't honest with myself enough to do so i needed a third person a third party to go and talk to so hopefully that helps and that's it everybody that's full out of friday 58 see you ladies and gentlemen thank you Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people.
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