Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 66

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Rapid-fire Q and A submitted from the listeners! A variety of topics with a five-minute time cap per answer, sometimes. 1. Thoughts on the COVID vaccine mandated by the military 2. Should I leave my relationship so I can go pursue my own self-growth 3. I am trying to get ready for military service but my social circle isn't helping, what can I do 4. When you befriend someone who has issues from serving how do you get them help 5. Does earning a black belt mean you are a good person Enjoy

Full Outer Friday, 66. Before we get into it, briefly, the sponsors that make this podcast and this episode specifically possible. This episode is brought to you by Benchmade, headquartered in Oregon City, Oregon. Benchmade Knife Company has been manufacturing high-quality cutlery for over 30 years. They take pride in the fact that they manufacture an heirloom product with the potential being passed down from generation to generation with proper use and care. Each of their knives carries a limited lifetime warranty and free sharpening and maintenance. throughout the life of the knife. The company puts a strong emphasis on family values and tradition encompassing the people and products that they create. If you like knives,

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for you to find what you want. Gators.com. That's it. Let's get into this. Full out of Friday 66. I'm looking at danger close now. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Let's get into this four questions. I almost started off by lying to you. I'm looking at four questions. I had a fifth one that I got so many of the same version that I can just encapsulate the question right now and we can move on. Question number one.

What do I think about the military mandating the COVID vaccine? Here is the thing. When you enlist into the military, you sign on a variety of dotted lines. I don't think they're dotted. I think it's a very solid line. I actually don't know where that phrase comes from. But you sign an enlistment contract. And when you do so, if you read the fine print, what you are going to do is give up some of your liberty and your freedoms and the regency that you have to make decisions in certain aspects of your life. The decision to join the military, it has consequences, both on the positive side of the house and potentially at the negative side of the house. Positive. Let's talk about that. Healthcare, educational benefits. The, the, ability to get occupational training and many more actually to travel if you want to to see the world on uncle sam's dime potentially negative you could get blown up shot or killed all of those things kind of suck you could be forced to move geographically around the united states or the

earth at a interval greater than you potentially would want to and when it comes to things like vaccines, you very well may be mandated to be the recipient of a vaccine that you may not agree with. That is the way it works when you enlist in the military. So I don't really have any thoughts on it. That is part of the bargain, part of the gambit, if you will, when you sign. And just so people understand, you are going to get a lot of, you're going to get a lot of shots. I'm actually not even positive the amount of shots that they gave me when I joined boot camp. When I joined, and this is back in the late 90s, we went through what could only be described, a gauntlet of people on both sides of you jamming you in the shoulders with what felt like an air gun,

sounded like an air gun too. And then the crescendo of that is a massive penicillin, what felt like a railroad spike into your ass cheek. And then you rolled around on the ground trying to massage and not of peanut butter out of one of your ass cheeks. I'm not positive the shots that I got in that, and I'm sure that it is somewhere in my medical record. Point being, that's kind of the way that the military operates. Know that going into it, and you're going to be okay. If you go into it blind and you don't understand that that could be a possibility, perhaps do some more research. Right. Life's about the choices that you make.

I'm not going to say there's wrong choices or right ones, but there are consequences and benefits. So let us move on to the questions for today, or the ones I have in front of me. here we go question ones on relationships i wanted to reach out and get your professional advice on your favorite subject relationships from my perspective you seem to have dialed in this relationship shit better than most i'm going to stop right here and say i don't think so i disagree but we could agree to disagree so here it is i have a battle going on in my head regarding whether or not i should leave my relationship to pursue more self-identity work and individuality for context i'm a 27-year-old professional working with vaccines in big pharma. I have a girlfriend of three years who is pretty

much everything I could ask for. She has been a great influence on my life in many ways. She's totally committed to a life with me and wants to take the next steps in relationship, in parentheses, marriage, house, kids, etc. She hasn't verbally pressured me into getting on a knee in any specific time frame, but she's 28 years old and doesn't want to wait around indefinitely. I've previously shared this passion for the future with her. Things changed for me about eight months ago, roughly around the time of designing the ring I wished to propose with. I started questioning my future in ways I haven't before, basically realizing that I'm incompetent in far too many areas of my life. And this has led to a lot of self-questioning and doubt about

my ability to be a decent husband slash father-slash-individual in the near future. I don't think I've really accomplished anything of worth yet in my life. The second thing that put a damper on my engagement plans was the new opportunity to work remotely and, move out of a metro area to get to the mountains where I can ski and enjoy the outdoors more often. The idea of moving away to the mountains alone to find out more about myself outside the confines of a relationship seems very enticing. I feel a strong pull towards exploring more about who I am as an individual. I've gone back and forth a thousand times about staying in the relationship or leaving to do my own thing. A large part of me feels that I'd be giving up a great girl and my

responsibility to the relationship if I left. How do you know when it's time to leave? leave a relationship to work on yourself and pursue personal goals. Should I suck it up and take on the responsibility of the relationship and make the best of it, or make the best it can be? Can I continue the relationship and develop an identity at the same time or is the latter best done alone? I'm struggling with the prospect of giving up a great relationship and a potential future to go after a seemingly ever-elusive self-fulfillment goal.

Damn man. Okay, hell of a question. First and foremost, here's what I'll say. it sounds like you're describing a great situation. So I'm happy that you are where you are. It seems like you have somebody you've been with for a couple years at this point. You seem to get along well together. You're happy. You're talking about the future. And right now you're having some more questions about yourself. You said in your email, I don't think I've really accomplished anything of worth yet in my life. Well, guess what? Join the fucking club. Because I worked and came from

a community of peers that I was never able to. I have never been able to achieve so many of the things that they were able to achieve. And if I play this game of comparison, of myself comparing to other people that I worked with, I was very fortunate to be exposed with top level individuals in the intellectual space, the athletic space, the tactical space, you name it. Guess where I end up on the list, on the fucking bottom. And that makes you feel terrible. It's a very dangerous game to play when it comes to comparison, you versus somebody else. What you need to be doing is thinking about where you were as an individual, where you are now, and where you are going. The only comparison that matters is when you are comparing to the person that you see in the mirror.

So let's take a greater context and maybe look at where you were five years ago or 10 years ago, even though you would have been 17. Guess what, though? You're not in high school anymore. progress, right, winning life. So that's a perfect example. Where were you 10 years ago? Where were you five years ago? Where were you three years ago, a year ago, and where are you now? It'll probably help reframe how you feel about your station in life and just really try to avoid that comparison game. It sucks, especially if you do it on social media because guess what? Everybody looks awesome on social media. And in real life, not all of them are.

The question that you're asking, what it narrows down to me is, can I work on myself while in a relationship with somebody else? I think that if you're in a truly healthy, fulfilling, empowering relationship, the answer to that is yes. You can absolutely commit yourself to somebody else and also commit to working on yourself and exploring yourself, challenging yourself, pressuring yourself, pushing yourself to build resilience, to build mental toughness, to build a better version than you were yesterday when you looked into the mirror. You talked about going into the mountains or moving out of the metro area. You can do all of those things with a partner and still spend time alone in the mountains, testing yourself and learning about yourself. What I would say to you is

if you make this decision and you leave this relationship with somebody that you described as being a great influence on your life, pretty much everything that you could ask for. Your words, not mine. Let's say you go on this journey of self-reflection and growth and you blast off into the woods and let's say you're gone for a year or 18 months or even six months and you grow and you feel like you've become a better version of yourself and you come back and you want to find this woman because, as you described, she's been a great influence and everything you could ask for and she's moved on. Guess whose fault that is? That would be your fault. So you risk if you just up and leave because you have questions and doubts about yourself,

if you just up and leave, you risk potentially not having this person when you get back. So again, I'm not telling you what to do, but that's something that I would think about. You said here, this has led you to a lot of self-questioning and doubt about your ability to be a decent husband, father, and individual. You are describing what goes on in between my ears every single day of my life. I struggle with, and I think a lot of people do, probably the most recognizable term that I have heard is imposter syndrome. And you could apply that to whatever. I've heard people talk about it when they get a new belt in jujitsu. I get a brown belt, and I feel like I'm an imposter.

I got an advancement at work, and I feel like an imposter. You fill in the blank with wherever you are. It's not uncommon to question whether or not you are good enough. I actually think it's a very healthy thing. I worry about the people who no longer question whether or not they are good enough. And they sit there and they arrive at the station and life with a different headspace. And that has space is, you goddamn right, I'm good enough. I don't know if you guys have really checked me out, but I'm kind of a big deal.

I worry a lot about those people. I don't worry about people who describe doubt in personal abilities and the ability to be a decent person, father, and husband. I think that's a great headspace. That's a growth headspace. not an arrival and I need no more work. No more work needs to be done on me headspace. So what I would say, my advice to round this out for you is I think you absolutely can work on yourself and explore yourself and challenge yourself and do all those things I talked

about previously while with somebody else. Maybe if you feel that you need some time to do that, be very open and honest with your partner. Take two weeks. Take a month if you need to. But let the person know why it is or where it is that you're going and why. Involve them in that conversation. I think that is the mark of a healthy relationship. If you're with somebody who truly is everything that you could ask for and has been a great influence on your life, they're going to understand. They might actually be very enthusiastic about you going and having that growth. It might actually influence or spark in them the desire to do exactly. the same thing. So be cautious, just cutting ties in this desire to go out into the woods and find yourself, because what you might do is come out of the woods and find yourself alone. Question three. I am a senior in college with aspirations of the army, and I'm beginning the process for OCS, which is officer candidate school. My time in college has been, has been as what you would expect it to be, drinking, partying, et cetera. But as I am, as I am, I,

am gearing up for graduation and taking these steps towards my future in the army, I have hit a wall when it comes to friends and relationships. All of my friends have no aspirations to go out and do anything that doesn't involve drinking, partying, or playing video games. I'm currently engaged to a woman who is also taking similar steps as me and enlisted in the Army Reserves. My question for you is how can I form better relationships with friends that want better for themselves and want a more fulfilling life? I feel as if I'm trapped with these friends and do not know how to get out of this situation. Any advice is appreciated? Thank you. Well, I forget the exact phraseology, if you will, but you're the sum total of what, the five people who are the closest to you or maybe the 10 or 12 or

whatever it may be. But bottom line is your social circle says a lot about, I mean, I would say less about necessarily who you are, but likely about your trajectory in life. And in this situation, what you need to do is change your social circle. And I would recommend seeking different friends in different environments. So if your friends want to go out on a Friday night and they want to go get fucked up because apparently that's what people major in when they go to school, both two and four-year degree, I've been told I've done neither. What I would say is choose not to go to that activity and maybe go to the gym.

Maybe stay on college, on your college campus and go to the gym and actually interact with some people who are there at a time when most people at your station in life are out partying, right? What you need to do is look for and seek out those individuals. individuals that are not really saying much about what it is that they want to do, they're doing it with their actions. If they're in the gym at Friday at 8 p.m. while everybody else is out getting fucked up, I know a lot about that person and what they want for themselves and what they want for their life. So I would remove yourself from the situation that you are in. And that might be

harsh to say. And that's okay, because do you want to be successful in your pursuit in the army with your fiancé and her pursuit in the army reserves? Or do you want to, you want to to keep sitting here and repeating the same behavior and hoping that your outcome will be different when it is time for you to enlist. You got to make the hard call. You have to prioritize. You're probably senior in college, so I'm going to put you in your early 20s. And this might be a tough one. This might be the first time that you've had to do this, cut people out of your life, maybe an entire social circle so you can focus on who you want to be and what you want to become. Learn that lesson now. It might be painful. Those people might be pissed at you. They might actually do every

that they can to undermine your success. Hey, man, don't go to the gym. Just come drinking with us. Hey, you know, just come out with us. Don't you miss us? Hey, come celebrate. You're getting ready to leave. We're not going to see you very much. That's more about them and what they want to do and the fact that they feel better doing those things with other people. It's like it aggregates the laziness of what it is that they're doing. If you can spread it out amongst people, don't be that person. So figure out what it is that you want and start taking concrete actions to get those things. Seek out people who are developing that better version of themselves, who are pressing themselves when others are taking the opposite direction. And instead of pressing themselves,

they're pressing buttons on video games. Your lives will be better for it. And the people that you find in those environments, whether it be intellectual or competitive, whatever it might be, that's the social circle that you want to hang out with. That's the social circle that's actually going places. Question four. I grew up in a strong military family, Marine Armed and Navy. I never felt the urge or courage to serve, but I'm honored to help those around me that have. One night after talking to my brother-in-law who did three pumps to Afghanistan, slang for deployments, and has some issues from it still. The million dollar question is, when do men who have served or not have to stop and admit they need help mentally? When do men who have served or not

have to stop and admit they need help mentally? I think I nailed it on that second try. I feel So veterans in active military are more apt to suppress it. But what about the average blue collar Joe just trying to survive? Also, if you come to befriend someone who has issues from serving, how do you get them help? The VA doesn't seem to be helping with an endless supply of Ambien. I'm going to go backwards on this one. The VA, first of, Amiens is a sleeping pill. Actually, it's not a sleeping pill.

It's a hallucinogen that allows you to go to sleep. And it can be really, really dangerous and it can totally fuck up your natural sleep cycle. So use with caution, anybody else. they're using it. But the VA gets a lot of shit talked about it. And oftentimes, people really don't celebrate the things that the VA does. The VA does have counseling programs. They do have outpatient programs. They do have a network of care providers that 100% are standing by to help veterans. And in addition to that, there are tens of thousands of service-based organizations prepared standing by to provide help, whether it be a mental sounding board.

financial help, help with school, books, computers, housing, vehicles, fill in the blank. And a lot of them are directed very specifically towards communities inside of the military. So, Brother and Law did three points. Let's say he's in the Army. I guarantee you if he had an MOS, which I'm sure he did, there are programs and organizations dedicated directly for that. So if they're not finding what they need in the VA, get on the Internet. there are probably more solutions than you are prepared to receive.

It can actually be slightly overwhelming. So the help is out there and available. If you befriend someone who has issues from serving, how do you get them help? The short answer to that is you don't. They have to find it inside of them to get help for themselves. And yes, there is a stigma or there used to be a stigma. I would say from at least early on in my military service, I hope this has changed. I'm obviously dated and have been out of the military for quite some time.

But it was basically, hey, do your job, shut the fuck up. And if you have issues, go tell somebody other than me about it, right? You need to be on time, on target, capable of doing your job. That's what it was. Anything outside of that? Deal with it on your own. So if you build that mentality or you come from that world, yes, it's going to be common that you're going to suppress it. But I think mental health therapy, I think awareness, it is coming more to the forefront.

As I was leaving the military, the SEAL community was doing a much better job of addressing it earlier on, whether it be through pre-deployment screening, post-deployment screening, third-party decompression stops, a variety of things involving the family unit inside of the, you know, the nucleus, that core of the service member. There's a lot of things out there, again, that are standing by, and there are people who are willing to help. But you can't force somebody to get that help. You can be there. You can be there to support someone. you could have a conversation with them about it.

I wouldn't necessarily spring it on them. But the most success I have ever had with people is knocking on a door with them intellectually and allowing them to open the door and step through it. I've had no success by physically grabbing somebody and having an intervention and taking them there. So that's how I would recommend that you do it through a conversation. And here's the thing, though. A conversation is one thing. if this individual that you're talking about is expressing negative or dangerous or hurtful behavior

and you are willingly participating in that by being there or enabling it, you're becoming part of the problem. You can address all of those behaviors. And again, I do it through conversation. I do it through asking questions. And I try to get them to arrive at the decision on their own. And to be totally honest, one of the most effective tools that I have, and I realize that not everybody has this tool, is that I talk to people very openly about the impact that myself reaching out to help, to get help, the impact that it has had on my personal life. Through counseling, through therapy, it has made a tremendous impact on my life.

And I can use that example when talking to other people. I know that that doesn't exist for everybody. but if it does exist for you, use that as a tool. And when it comes to your everyday Joe versus your blue collar Joe just trying to survive versus people in the military, I mean, listen, everybody has problems. It's all a matter of context. The military problems are, they don't make a lot of sense to some people

because the context is so incredibly different. But let me tell you this right now. A lot of the times in the military, we'll talk about the average blue collar Joe, and we don't understand the problems that you have either or the things that you bitch about. because it's an issue of context. It's not to put a value or a judgment on either.

Problems are fucking problems. And some things impact people more than others. And what doesn't bother me might crush somebody else. And what doesn't bother somebody else might crush me. So it's not a matter of what you do for a living. It's a matter that we're all human beings. And some communities, they try to have this facade of toughness or, you know, you got to be the alpha. You never show weakness.

And others are a little bit more laissez-faire. with that type of attitude and it is less of that environment and again no judgment in either but i think if you come up in one of those environments you'll be less likely to uh reach out externally for help and another one it would be it would be easier to do because there's less stigma associated to it but strip the job title away from it and just realize that everybody has issues everybody has baggage everybody has shit what i would like to see is people taking a proactive approach to dealing with their shit, whatever it may be, and that is why I do the best I can to talk openly about my own experiences. Hopefully, that helps. Last question. Hope all as well. I would appreciate your thoughts

on the following. There is a junior black belt at my academy who never rolls. And if he does, it's with a very select few. I respect him, and he is a great ambassador for the school. He's a good instructor, but not that great on the mats. This has really reshaped my thoughts on what it means to be a black belt. Have you come across similar situations throughout your career where you may have had good instructors who were not necessarily the best operators? The other junior black belt is a beast, but I remember him in the early days, and he was a very timid and awkward type of guy. He has put in a lot of work and kudos to him. He deserves all of his accolades. However, he has transformed into a bit of an asshole on the mats. This also has reshaped my thoughts

on being a black belt. It seems that some people go from one end of the spectrum to the other with their newfound skill set. Did you experience any of this in the teams? It's a great question. I'm going to talk about this, do my best to talk about this from the perspective of being in the military because I've been at jujitsu for just over three years

and this is a better question for somebody who's been at for much longer. But what I will say about jujitsu, it's not magic. It can seem like magic if you're rolling with somebody who does jiu-jitsu and you are somebody who does not, but at the end of the day it's about connection posture pressure angles weight distribution it's not

you don't need to put a sorting hat on and told you know that you're part of fucking hufflepuff to do jiu jiu jutsu right it's not magic you're not going to see it in a movie it's a skill set and like many skill sets just like in the military they can be used for good or evil and i actually find that those skill sets, the more powerful they are, they give you a better window into the soul of who somebody actually is. I find money to be the same way. Money, one of the best ways I've ever heard money described is that it's an amplifier. If you are a good person and you come into money or you work your way into money, it allows you to enhance your reach and probably be a better person.

But if you are a narcissist, self-absorbed at the end of the day, asshole, and you come into money, what I have seen, at least in my own experience, to be true every single time, is that it just amplifies that and it allows you to be more of that. Jiu-jitsu is a tool that, for the long-term jiu-jitsu practitioners out there, please excuse this definition. But let's just say it's a tool that allows you. you to control people. That can be used for good or for evil. And let's say that you were somebody who didn't have the ability to do so earlier on in life, but you really fucking wanted to. At the end of

the day, what you wanted to do is you wanted to actually hurt people. You didn't have the tools to do it. And you work your way through it. And one day you get a black belt slapped around your waist. Well, guess what? You're still exactly the same person on the inside. And if you have those desires, now you have a very powerful set of tools to do so. You have the tools to control a human being that can be resisting at 100% of their capacity. So it's actually not about the black belt. It's about the person who is wearing the black belt. And one of the things that I like a lot about my Jiu-Jitsu Coast Travis specifically when he talks about giving black belts, which he's given, I don't know, over a dozen, I think. He talks about it in terms of it's not just about what happens

on the mat. It's about being a black belt in life as well, which in my opinion is actually impossible, much like I think mastering jujitsu is impossible. But the journey towards mastery is what allows you to get better day after day after day. And I think that's what allows you to get better at life as well. Is that journey towards trying to be a black belt in life? You're not going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fall short. But you continue to try to make incremental process to be the best version of yourself that you can be. Again, I've been at jujitsu for just over three years. I hear people say often, and I've said it myself, too, that I don't care about the belt.

And the reality, when I'm saying that what I mean is I don't care if I win, I don't care if I win or lose based off the color that is around somebody's waist that's holding their kimono top closed. It shows, to me, when you look at it, you could probably take an estimate of how long they've been doing jiu-jitsu, the work that they put into it, the discipline that they put into it, the effort, all of those things, and that's great. But I don't care the color of fabric around your waist. If you're an asshole, you're an asshole.

If you're an incredibly humble person who on the mats happens to be wearing a white belt, guess what you're probably going to find off the mats? An incredibly humble person that will do everything they can to try to help other people. And if they get a black belt on, guess what? They're still that same person. So my advice to you, rambling a little bit here, my advice to you is take people as an individual. And that comes with the same warning that I give people when it comes to the SEAL community. I know plenty of people have had an incredibly negative interaction with SEALs.

And there's probably people who have had an incredibly negative interaction with me being that SEAL. I might even be talking about myself. As a matter of fact, I know I'm talking about myself in some occasions. I don't speak for the SEAL community. and if I had a negative interaction with you and because of that, you're like, fuck the seals, well, then you know what? That's my fault. The seal community is the single most amazing group of individuals that I've ever been around. Do they have assholes in it and pieces of shit? Yep, they certainly do. But nobody externally would be able to know what that looks like because only

internally can we determine that based off of reputation or work ethic or things that we see on the job. Point being, take people as individuals not as this one, person, right? You have two different expressions of a black belt. Just realize there's probably 50 different expressions of that. So like you said, they deserve the accolades. They deserve the credit for their hard work, but don't give them a pass on anything else in their life. It shouldn't matter. It means that they're very good at Jiu-Jitsu. And I'll leave it on that. Follow it Friday, 66. Hope you guys had a great weekend. See you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio only.

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