Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 71

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Rapid-fire listener submitted Q and A with a five-minute time cap. 1. Is it possible to navigate our way out of the political division that seems to be getting worse 2. My ex-fiance is the worst, all I want to do is call and cuss her out. Should I do it 3. Is it worth changing career fields to "get into the fight" 4. I'm incredibly overweight, should I still start Jiu-Jitsu Enjoy  

Good morning, everybody. I was going to say ladies and gentlemen, but I realized, I don't know if the people that listen to this are ladies or gentlemen. Could be a bunch of savages. So, hello, everyone who may listen to this. Today's episode of Full Out of Friday is brought to you by Christensen Arms. Now, if you've heard me talking on the podcast for the past year, you've probably heard me talking about them on Friday episodes. And I have a hunt with them coming up in November. It's going to be amazing. There's going to be content. Stand by. Mule deer. They're probably going to die. But that has nothing to do with the add. Christensen arms. Their claim to fame are they, is that, not are they, is that, they are the original creators of the carbon fiber rifle barrel. If you've never shot with a carbon fiber rifle or with a carbon fiber rifle barrel, you're missing out when it comes to a heat dissipation perspective, a weight perspective. It's just a huge leap forward in technology, in my opinion. Christensen is the makers, are the makers of the lightest and most accurate rifles in the industry. I have a variety, a suite of, if you will, of their rifles, chambered in both 308 and 300 windbag, 300 windbag being my favorite round.

If you're interested in seeing what they have to offer, visit Christiansenarms.com. Now, Christiansen Arms, they want you to make easy for you to find the perfect rifle without the hassle, and you may understand some of the jargon that is used. So they created a Find My Firearm tool, which is a short questionnaire that will match you with the firearm that's going to meet your needs. You can take the quiz directly at Christensenarms.com or find my firearm or go over to Christensenarms.com and it's right there on their landing page as well. I love them. Moving on. Today's episode is also brought to you by coffee. What coffee you might ask? Well, the coffee of the podcast. I'm very lucky and fortunate, which is probably a version of the same thing, wings of the same

bird, if you will. To know Evan Hafer from Black Rifle Coffee. He agreed to make me my own signature blend, which I get a refresh every month. That's the plan at least. I just got mine. So if you're listening to this, it generally goes pretty quick. Go over to shop.com. And click on the coffee section if you want to get some coffee. What I'll tell you is it comes ground. It has fantastic tasting notes of chocolate, leather, and your mom. It comes ground. So it's perfect for a pour over and it's perfect for cold brew. But I am telling you right now, if you make a cold brew and you let it sit for 24 hours, you might want to drink it on the toilet. This thing, wow. Let's just say the logo on the bag might end up being what your experience is like if you have that cold brew.

But it is legitimately an amazing blend of coffee. I have been having it with my ChemX pour over every morning. So that's it. That's kind of an ad read for my own coffee. That's kind of weird. Let's move on from that. Let's get into Fallout Fighter 5.1. All right, good morning. I have four questions for today. I try to keep it under 30 minutes. Before I get into these, I realize I'm not wearing my hat right now. And I also realize that when I don't wear my hat, people are shocked, A, that I have hair that's not buzzed, and B, that it's gray. So, yeah, I have hair people. And also, I have hair people. And also, So I'm old as fuck. I'm almost 44 years old. So I'll definitely be dead of old age soon.

So don't be surprised by the gray. And then other people say, well, why don't you dye it out? And my question to them is, why would you dye your hair out? Because aren't you stuck doing that once you start? And then wouldn't it look really weird if it grew out a little bit and you didn't keep dying it? I'm not even going to get on this rabbit hole anymore. Never mind. No hair advice from me.

Question number one. Andy, great podcast. Do you think there's a way out of the political division that has entrenched us. over the last few years. I live in M.Y. And I think that was a typo. I think you mean NY? Because I don't know of a state in the U.S. or it's not coming to me off the top of my head that has an abbreviation of M.Y. I have young kids. It's become toxic here. Very concerned about their future. Any ideas? Well, I tell you what, I do, I do have a few ideas. I think it's becoming toxic almost everywhere, depending

on who you choose to engage with, where you would choose to engage with them, and the tact that you take when you do. I'm not a fan of people living in echo chambers. I don't think that that is the best economy of ideas. I am a fan of disagreement. I am a fan of objective thought. I am a fan of throwing things metaphorically against the wall to see what sticks and doing that openly. I don't believe in hiding speech. I think speech should be drawn into the light and the best ideas should have their opportunity to fight their way to the top. But I do agree it's becoming toxic, especially on social media platforms, whether that be Facebook or Instagram or wherever else that you cats and kittens may choose to be interacting with each other. I would say

that the news media both written and spoken, spoken being not necessarily podcast because I don't follow in any news podcasts, but news television. It's become very myopic in the angle that they're coming from and very argumentative. And I would say it's becoming toxic. And I think a lot of people will point to the partisan nature of current politics. Now, to get to your question, do you think there's a way out of the political division? I do think there's a way out of the political division? I do think that there is a way out. I do think that there are solutions to just about every problem that we face as a human race and as a society. But I most often find people pointing towards the things that I listed first. They will point first at either politicians and their narratives on either side of the aisle. They will point to those media outlets and then to social media. And they will say, you know, these things are terrible. And they're toxic and we need to fix them. And I agree.

But I think the mistake is to point at anything other than yourself first. At the end of the day, we're just talking about human beings. Politicians are, of course, human beings at the end of the day. The people that you see on television are human beings at the end of the day. And even though you may not know the person, you will never meet the person, you have no idea about the person that you're interacting with and engaging with online, They're still a real person too, unless, of course, they're a bot, but I don't actually know how those work, so I'm not going to talk about that. My point is it's so much easier to point the finger at somebody else than to take that hard look in the mirror and focus on your behavior first.

I do think that we can navigate our way out of this political division, but it will start with people regulating their own behavior as opposed to pointing their finger at somebody else and saying, hey, you need to change your behavior. I get it, right? Maybe this is like a pie in the sky idea and like, oh, yeah, great idea. You know, not everybody's going to do that and they won't and you don't have control over that. But you know what you have complete control over yourself. Now, listening to and watching the news is a choice. And it is a choice that I have made to do very infrequently and only enough to keep a pulse on what is going on in the world around me. And I do my best to try to try to draw from sources that would normally disagree with one another. Because it is startling to me how you can hear of an issue and you will watch reporting of an issue on one network and watch it on the other.

And you might as well be or may as well be listening to and watching two very different incidents, but they're reporting about the same thing. So I don't sole source any of the information that I have, but I have removed myself from onboarding that information because it is so overwhelmingly negative. And I noticed in myself that it's having a negative impact. So I would advise people not to completely detach, but to limit the exposure to negative or to use your word, toxic information that is bombarding them. The information that you bring in is going to inform your behavior on the way out. At least that's what I have found it to be true for myself. Social media is another interesting universe where I think things get completely out of control. And I've talked about this before.

It's relatively a consequence-free environment. You don't actually have to see the people that you are talking to. And you can curate your feed to end up in an echo chamber. And I don't think people do that necessarily intentionally. I think a lot of the algorithms that are, designed to draw your attention naturally do that for you. They see what you engage with and they give you more of that and they start avoiding giving you what you don't engage with. Well, I don't think that's a good idea when it comes to ideas, especially ones that could potentially

change your mind on subjects. And I've had my mind changed on many subjects over the years. And I get asked that question occasionally and maybe one day I'll dedicate an episode to things that I have changed my mind over. But the point being is that it's not going to happen if you don't expose yourself to those other opinions. So be cautious with using social media as your only social interaction. And I do know many people who use it as their primary social interaction, even though they are surrounded by human beings. Those human beings are just mostly sitting there looking at the phone in their hand,

as opposed to looking up and engaging with the other human beings around them. So I think those are some pretty critical and important steps to really limit your engagement. you know, it's okay to not have an opinion on something. It's okay when somebody says something utterly terrible and atrocious to you online to not respond to them. The block button is an interesting tool that I use occasionally, and I don't use it based off of a difference in idea. I use it to block assholes, right? You can have a different idea than me, and we can talk about it all day long, but if you create it as an attack on me, then I don't really have any interest in listening to you and you're probably not going to be in the social circle that I want to be

involved with. So I'm a little bit down the rabbit hole here, right? But it all comes back to controlling yourself, the information that you onboard, how you conduct yourself in those environments and be cognizant of that before pointing your finger at somebody else. Take a look at your own behavior. The beauty of this is I find that people's behavior is different in person than it is online. I've talked about this in the past as well. My litmus test for communicating online is the elevator principle. I won't say anything to anybody online that I wouldn't say to them in an elevator that we were trapped in because there would be consequences for that. But most of the time, I don't even feel like I, well, at least in real life, I don't have to use that principle a lot

because people are chilled out a little bit more. It's a different type of engagement. And I think the fastest way that we could get out of this political division is to stop arguing about it online and to start engaging more face to face. So maybe that's the super long-winded answer, or at least my thoughts to your question. That is how I think we will start to drive ourselves out of this political division. And another thing in that, I think when you start interfacing with the people that are around you in real life, not online, is that you will realize Even in a small neighborhood, there's going to be people who agree with you and disagree with you, but they're still part of your community. And I think that that is lost on the internet because you don't actually deal with them or interface with them.

And it's so easy to just to snap back with a remark and to snap back with cutting them off or cutting them out. You know, the community of people that you see every day, you know, those are likely going to be the people that are first on the scene to come help you if you need them. and you should treat them accordingly, and hopefully you would want to do the same thing for them. It just changes the interaction. It can be toxic, but it doesn't have to be. Most people, I find, are willingly involving themselves in a toxic environment and then standing back and complaining about how toxic it is. So you're complaining that your shoes are wet, but you're the one who's actually walking down the steps into the pool. Everything I said is pretty simple, but it's not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

And I hope I actually somewhere in there answer your question. I at least gave you my opinion. All right. Question number two, switching to my specialty relationships. Almost a year ago, I separated from my fiancé with whom I was in a relationship with for over six years. There are countless things she said and did during our relationship breakup and after the breakup that were not appreciated to say the least. She has recently made attempts to contact me by spoofing phone numbers and creating new social media accounts. in parentheses, she is blocked on all platforms, saying she misses me and has asked me to talk to her.

She moved over 1,000 miles away, and we have no children together or mutual financial assets. So I have ignored her as I have nothing nice to say to her. In my experience, she only reaches out to see if someone will help her if she needs it, or to start trouble for the satisfaction of knowing she pissed somebody off. Some of my friends have suggested that it would give me closure and be a good outlet for my residuals. anger to tell her how I feel about her now that I have realized that getting back together with her is not something I should want for myself. Do you feel it is healthy or even appropriate to start a conversation with someone with the intent on telling someone they are a garbage human being

and a profanity-filled tirade at the top of your lungs? Or should I continue to not say anything to her since I have nothing nice to say to her and let silence. be a better revenge than any words I could say to her. Thank you in advance for your input. God damn. All right. This question is deep and it hits home to me for a variety of reasons. The healthiest thing, in my opinion, that you can do is put this woman in your rear view mirror and never look at it again. I think that perhaps, in the moment. Let's say you go down the path of, and I've said this before, there's a step between, you know, forgiveness, you know, before forgiveness, there needs to be revenge. I'm largely

saying that tongue in cheek. There are very few people that I actually want to get revenge upon, but I will be clear, those that I want to get revenge upon, I want to fucking burn to the ground. It's not healthy, and I don't do it because I realize that it's not healthy. Now, to your question, It might feel great for you to be able to say the things that you want to say, but I'm telling you right now, there's some negatives associated with this. For one, you don't actually know how the conversation is going to go. And if you want to have that conversation, you're forcing yourself back into communication with this person. You have her blocked on all the platforms for a reason. If she's spoofing phone numbers and trying to get a hold of you that way, that to me is not a good sign.

That is not a sign of somebody that I want to interact with at all. And you're talking about potentially doing that just so you can get some weight off of your chest. I feel like what would probably happen, and I say this based off of me a few times in my life, giving somebody the howsy what's it and how tos, really kind of dressing them down, if you will. What actually happened afterwards is I felt like shit about doing it. It didn't make me feel any better in the long term. In the short term, I was like, fuck yeah. Yeah, I just did that.

That was awesome. And in the long term, like, God, I'm such an idiot. What did I get out of that? And another little game that I would play with myself sometimes is I will pretend when it comes to social interactions. I'll pretend as if somebody is filming our interaction. And I had to go back and watch it maybe a day later, a week later, a month later, with people that I actually really care about and people that I would care about how they think about me. and we all sit down in absent explanation, I hit the play button.

And in the times that I've kind of dressed people down, had I gone back and done that, hit the play button, the person that would look like a piece of shit is me, regardless of what that other person had done and whether or not they deserved it in air quotes. Because at the end of the day, this person that you're describing, I feel like she, because you said she's a she, is likely going to get what she deserves anyway. from her continued behavior. I absolutely know the kind of person that you're talking about who likes to stir the pot. Some people feel fulfilled by creating drama and arguments. Stay away from those people. Get a 10-foot pole and then buy another one and tape them together and shove them away from you as hard as possible, which is another reason why I would not recommend getting back in communication with this person. I'll go back to what I said in the beginning. The healthiest thing that you can do is put this person in the rearview mirror. It sounds like you don't. dodged a bullet or stepped left or right on a landmine because it doesn't sound like you were going to be with a stable person. And I think you start to see the real person when you tell them no. So your relationship in the bigger scheme, there was a no. And this is the behavior that comes from that. Like I said, you dodged a bullet, man. Do everything you can. Oh, actually, here's what I'd recommend. Write down everything that you would want to say to this person. Maybe it's in an email.

Maybe you actually write it on a piece of paper. Dress this person down as much as you want to. Get it out in the best manner you possibly can because nobody's going to be telling you what to say or how to say it or limiting you on time and then don't send it. It'll give you the chance to say anything that you want to without the consequences that could potentially come from it. And you won't feel bad because you'll have nothing to feel bad about. If it's a letter, burn the fucking thing. If it's an email, drag it into the trash bin and be done with it. And just live your life looking forward. Take the lessons that you can from the relationship and be thankful that you are actually not in a legally binding agreement with this person.

Who sounds like in my very limited exposure, a train wreck. So there you go. Question number three. I was performance dropped from buds. this week. And this is a slightly older email. You guys will understand why in a second. In parentheses, the O-course proved to be something I suck at currently. As is normal, a lot of the buddies I came here with have also D-O-R'd, which stands for dropped on request. Or another way to say that is quit. And we are all now awaiting new rates and ship dates. Rates would be the

occupation inside of the military. So it would essentially be a school that you would go to, so you have a job that you can do in the fleet navy. A lot of guys are getting offered jobs like EOD, which is explosive ordinance, disposal, and diver, which is self-explanatory, as well as some less than desirable big Navy jobs. Now for the actual question. This morning, and this is why you'll figure out why it's an older email,

12 Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed in Afghanistan, and several of the guys here are considering basically giving up the seal dream and going EOD in order to hopefully get attached to a seal platoon and get into the fight as soon as possible. I also find myself itching to get into that fight and make a difference, but I can't seem to get myself to abandon my seal aspirations. My current plan is to take whatever big Navy rate I get and come back to Buds, which is basic underwater demolition seal.

I should have explained that in the beginning, in a couple of years. But I hate the idea of doing nothing, relatively speaking, in the fleet for two plus years, while the fight I joined to be a part of goes on without me. So the plan of getting into that realm as quickly as possible has some appeal. It's just hoping to get your thoughts on that whole situation. So I'm not going to address the situation that happened in Afghanistan because I think it's been addressed at length. But I'll talk to you about the headspace when things like this happen and changing your path in the hopes of what I'm going to call chasing the dragon. Being there when the big mish comes down so you get the call.

Put me in coach. I'm ready to play. In my experience, the people who chase the dragon are generally the ones who miss it the most. So just from an educational perspective, I hope that your buddies realize, because this is a few weeks ago, so they probably already made these decisions, going down the EOD pipeline is not an overnight introduction into the fight to use your terms. I would recommend that your buddies do some research on the length of the EOD program, because to my knowledge, knowledge, it is an extremely long program, multiples of the time that it would take you to go through buds and then likely make it through SQT to get your trident and then be off on your way with whatever SEAL team that you start with. And if it's not longer than that, I would say that

they are equal times. So I don't know what is being sold to them or what is being told to them, but signing up for orders to go to EOD in the hopes that you are going to, in some relatively rapid time fashion go anywhere, you're not getting sold a bill of good that is up to par. That one would not pass inspection. However, they may be doing that or thinking that because they don't know any better. So when it comes to decisions like this, I highly recommend taking your time and actually educating yourself about the options. The fight that you're trying to get into, it's not going anywhere. It's been here now for over 20 years. And I really don't foresee it stopping any time in the near future.

I have heard terms like Forever War, which I agree with in certain aspects. I think the term can be a little inauthentic at times. It could be a little bit maybe too much or all encapsulating. but I do believe specifically that the special operations community will have a lot of work for many, many years to come, potentially decades. And if that's the desire, and if that's what you came into the military to do, would be go down the seal pipeline. What I'm trying to say is that you have time to allow yourself to go to the fleet Navy, perhaps practice the obstacle course and anything else that might have been tripping you up. while you were at Buds and go back more prepared. And in doing so, is there a chance that you will miss out on something?

Yes. Is there a chance that you're going to miss out on everything? I really, really do not think so. And if you join to become a seal and you pick another rate because you think it's going to get you there faster, you may end up with a really low level of job satisfaction and you still. may not get there. You know, you might get deployed somewhere else. You might get hung up in the school. Whatever it may be, there's just no guarantee. My recommendation would be to stay true to the reasons that you join the military. And I say that with nothing but admiration and respect

for people who work in the EOD community and the diver community. One of the people I hold in the highest regards, John Barclow was a Navy diver. He was fucking awesome and had a huge impact on my military career. One of my best friends was a guy who served in EOD. And there's no, you know, at a personal level or professional level, there's no like judging one against the other. What I'm saying is there's amazing people in both of those communities, but the communities are just different. They're going to have different job opportunities. And you may not get everything out of the EOD career that you were searching for from a seal career. Or you may get more. So my advice is slow down.

Hopefully your friends pumped on the brakes. There's plenty of fruit out there in the orchard, and there will be for years and stay true to why it is that you join the military in the first place. I think you'll be more fulfilled and probably happier with the occupation if you do so. Question four, switching gears to Jiu-Jitsu, which before I answer this, I am not an expert at. I don't proclaim to be an expert at. I love it very much. It's very empowering for me from a mental perspective. It's very healthy for me from a physical perspective and a mental perspective. So just take that with a great when I answer this. Hey Andy, I'm a super overweight guy, but really want to start rolling. Do you think it would be a good move to just get out there and start rolling? Or

should I lose the weight before starting that journey? I'm going to assume what you mean by rolling is start doing jiu-jitsu, which may not, depending on where you go, start with, rolling. It's probably going to start with you learning the fundamentals, depending on the school you go to. So I'll talk about the school that I train at, SBG Calispel and the progression that I went through. It was a few months of learning the fundamentals and a controlled class that was designed around fundamentals. The intensity was lower because, well, it's easier to absorb information and a lower stress environment. After that, there was a transition period when you got your first stripe on your white belt. And you joined what I'll call

a more advanced class. And now looking back on it after a few years, I guess in some ways it's more advanced, but what you really get to do at the end of those classes, which take the fundamentals and they start expanding on them. So if you have the base of the tree, and now you're talking about the branches, you also get to roll after that.

So if you go to a school like that, where you don't necessarily start off rolling and you start off with foundation or fundamentals, you're probably going to start losing weight just in those activities. Jiu-Jitsu, even learning the basic structural frames and how to use them and how to move yourself, it's, you know, you're rolling around on the ground. You're moving your body weight around. If you have excess body weight, you're going to be moving that. You're going to be sweating. You're going to be active. So it probably will start your weight loss journey.

And I would, what I want to tell you is, yes, start right now wherever you can, but I'll just tell you, you're going to be limited with what you're going to be able to do. So you, you're, really need to set some expectations for yourself. And to be honest with you, you might get your feelings hurt from time to time. Because depending on how much you weigh, you really might have limited training partners. People who are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 pounds underneath what your body weight is. And of course, I'm making some assumptions there. They're not going to want to roll with you. I'm sorry. So you might feel like people are mat dodging you. And that's because they are. But please don't let that prohibit you or prevent you from starting. I can only talk

about Jiu-Jitsu and the impact that it has had on my life. And it's been all positive, physical and mental. And I try not to talk about it too much because people get all torqued out about it and like, Matt didn't come here for a jihitsu podcast. So it's like, yeah, go fuck yourself. Because it's my podcast. I'm going to talk about what I want. However, I take your feedback. I'm bored. I'm doing the best I can. I would love for you to start right now, but I would hate for you to get really bummed out because you feel like nobody wants to train with you and then you stop. So in addition to starting rolling or going to Jiu-Jitsu, which, yes, you absolutely need to do, let's start talking about your diet.

Let's start talking about other things that you could do to maybe accelerate that weight loss journey. Could you park a half mile away, you know, four or five city blocks and maybe walk? Could you park a mile away? Could you join a gym or workout at home? Do you have a Peloton? Do you have a treadmill? Do you have, what do you have at the house? Because let's say you just dive into it and you're getting an hour a day of awesome training,

that's not going to be enough for somebody who really wants to progress and continue on in that weight loss journey. It might be when you first start, but I'd recommend if you want to accelerate that, add those additional things. So yes, start now, but go in there with some expectation management, especially if most of the people that you're there with are smaller than you. just be advised until you lose some weight you're going to have limited training partners but maybe that could be a great motivation for you once you start and realize you either love it or you don't and I suspect you will so get started on your journey and I hope it brings a smile to your face and it makes your life better it has for me pretty much every

single day and on that note that's it go enjoy your weekend I'm out that's all I got 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. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible.

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truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.