Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 87

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. I'm afraid of being hired for my dream job as I am worried that I will underperform as I have in the past 2. I am in a management position and my boss is undermining the potential of my team with his behavior. How do I stop this behavior/solve this problem 3. Money or quality of life....Which one should I choose 4. I have everything I could ever want to buy, but I cannot find a sense of happiness/fulfillment... Enjoy

Okay, got the red smoke. Boom, right into it south, west of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Boom, right into it. How do you like that, ladies and gentlemen?

That's possible because Black Rifle Coffee is fucking awesome, and they bought out all the ads for the year. So, yeah, pretty amazing. Full out of Friday. 87, I believe it is, starting the year off with a little bit of a cold. So bear with it. My voice sounds very bizarre to me inside of these headsets. But here we go. Question number one. As we enter a new year, I'm trying to take a good, hard look at myself and address some of the failures in my past and hopefully learn how to avoid them. In particular, I'm reflecting on my sketchy work history. I've had a handful of career-oriented jobs interspersed with retail jobs.

I have gone from a six-figure salary to minimum wage more than once. Simply put, I have been fired from all of my career-oriented jobs, not laid off, not the department downsizing, but fired. I couldn't perform well enough to hold onto these positions. And for what it's worth, two of these jobs were in fact my dream jobs, working with companies that are at the pinnacle of their fields. I'm really trying to be honest with where I failed and not met expectations. I still find myself pointing the finger at former bosses and colleagues for letting me down. With these dream jobs, I recall being very overwhelmed and unable to focus clearly, saying yes, sure, when all I wanted to say was slow down.

With your experiences training people in grueling and overwhelming experiences, have you ever seen someone turn things around and become a competent member of the team? How did they do it? I have the possibility of working for another dream company and I'm terrified of actually being hired because I'm worried I won't be able to perform. In case it's helpful to know, I'm a 42-year-old designer on the East Coast. Awesome question to start off the new year. Let's go with, I still find myself pointing the finger at former bosses and colleagues for letting me down. I would love to be able to sit down across the table from you and dig into this particular section a little bit because I'm curious where you feel that your former boss's. bosses and colleagues let you down. And what I would recommend not being able to obviously have that conversation is to put that aside and stop looking anywhere other than at yourself for where you fell short. I'm not saying it's possible that the boss and colleagues didn't let you down, but focusing any energy on that, especially since you don't work at those companies anymore, is not going to do you any good, right? The most powerful thing that you can do is what you're already doing,

which is take a hard look in the mirror and try to identify where you failed in the past. and figure out a way where you can strengthen those deficiencies moving forward. I can't even imagine being in a position where you're actually terrified of getting hired because you don't know if you can do the job well enough. That sucks. That's not the headspace that I would want to be in. And the recovery from that, like I said, starts with identifying the deficiencies in yourself, the shortcomings that you've had in the past with these jobs.

And that's not going to be a fun evolution. And it's not something that I think you'll be able to figure out in a day or two. this is something I think you should reflect over over time. And I would write down and prioritize from one to five or however many things you may be able to be able to determine the one that had the most negative impact to the one that had the least negative impact and obviously attack those from top to bottom. Now to your question, have I ever seen someone who's been able to turn things around? And the answer to that is yes. But my experience training people in a grueling environment or in a very stressful environment was that we were very calculated in our approach to doing so.

Even in the evolutions, you know, Buds is a crucible. It is a pressure cooker, and it's designed to expose the students to whatever their weakness may be. Maybe it's physical for some, maybe it's mental for others, and maybe it's the combination of the two. But post-Buds, the complexity of some of the things that are really, required from the SEAL occupation, if you just threw it at people from day one, and say they graduated through Buds and went through SQT, which is the pipeline where you get issued your Trident and then you go to your team, they still would absolutely fail. And in the SEAL community what we're looking for is small groups of very capable individuals

being able to do difficult things and remote and austere environments. And a large portion of that is, I don't know if you can necessarily truly inoculate somebody from stress, but what you can do is develop an incredibly high level of resilience by introducing it to them incrementally. And I feel like in your description here, where you were saying, yes, sure, to your bosses, instead of saying slow down, what you were experiencing was simply getting overwhelmed. Maybe it was too many tasks. Maybe it was a task that was above your preparation or job requirements. And you basically got sounds like you got overwhelmed and snowballed. And because of that, your job performance suffered and you get fired, which sucks.

Now, what I will say, you know, don't point the finger at your boss or your colleagues. Your boss should be accountable to you. If you're in a leadership position, people think that the term accountability means that those underneath you are only reporting up. They are accountable to you. And that's completely incorrect, in my opinion. As a leader, you're incredibly accountable to your people as well. You need to make sure that they have the training, that they have the equipment, they understand the commander's intent, that they understand that the direction that the company or that their team is going into, that they have the tools and training that are going to allow them to be successful. And if they don't, you're failing your people. So in this instance, what I'll say is there's if you were overwhelmed and you got completely snowballed and there wasn't a system in place where your leadership helped you prepare for the demands of the job, then yes, there's improvement there. But again, right, we don't work for those individuals. or organizations anymore. So what can we do in the future? Incremental application of stress.

You know, if I can give you 1% on the first day, hopefully I can give you 2% on the second day and 3% and 4% and 5%. And eventually what will end up happening is, like I said, I don't really believe in true stress inoculation, but you can develop an amazing amount of resilience and ability to work in stressful environments because I do think that the lessons learned under stress they can apply in areas where they weren't maybe specifically being learned in as an example. The pool comp test that I administered was really about following procedure in an environment where you don't get to choose when you're going to be able to breathe or not, which is incredibly stressful. But if you've heard me talk about this before, it's a week-long series of tests that starts with very little stress and ends with a lot of

stress. But at the end of that, they can take with them that lesson that, hey, regardless of what's going on around me, if I can follow the procedures, it's going to lead me to where I need to be. It doesn't matter if the test is then in the water or on the land or in something completely outside of the realm of diving. So if you can learn that, what you can do is apply it elsewhere. Now, how can you, though, as the individual that's in that environment where you're worried about getting overwhelmed. How can you guard against that? And the best advice I can give you is that you're going to need to communicate with your chain of command, and I would say set boundaries. As opposed to always saying yes, sure, what I'd recommend that you actually do is be very open and

honest with your fellow employees and with your leadership. If you are getting to a place where the stress, especially early on, is getting ready to cook you and job performance is going to suffer, I think you'd be better off approaching the people that you work with and for and letting them know that as opposed to having a subpar performance. One, you can train and remediate and probably get a deeper level of understanding of what you do. And then the other one, people are going to be looking at you like, what the fuck, man? Like your work quality sucks. And who knows, you may end up getting laid off again, which I don't want for you or for anybody else. So communicate with the people that you work with and set these boundaries.

Don't get yourself into a position again where you find yourself just being the yes man. Because in doing so previously, that yes man turns you into an unemployed man. So recognize it early, communicate early, and really develop that dialogue again with your team and with your leadership. When, you know, in the military world, obviously it's a rank-driven organization, I had no problem whatsoever with people coming up to me and saying, hey, I don't understand the guidance. I don't understand what my roles and responsibilities are. I would so much rather have that than have somebody fail. And when I look at them and go, hey, man, what the hell happened? Then they tell me afterwards, right? One, I can fix proactively, or at least put you onto a path that you can fix proactively. And the other one becomes crisis. because then you're working your way out of a problem set, and nobody has their best performance in those moments. And if they do happen to for some ridiculously, you know, luck of the draw, you pull this excellent performance out of your ass once, that is not something that you're going to be able to replicate often. So, food for thought, get ahead of it.

Identify now where you fell short and start working on those things immediately. Question number two. I'm quite the fan of the podcast, as well as your brand of Leadership Council, advice, which is why I'm reaching out to you today. I am a restaurant general manager in New York at a successful restaurant. While we are not at the white tablecloth Michelin Star establishment, we serve the same clientele in a relaxed setting with an emphasis on quality in all things. So standards are paramount. We are solvent, profitable, and actively looking to expand. About me. I was brought on board for my exceptional customer service and crew management skills,

which the owner lacks per their own admission, as well as for my knowledge of human, factors psychology. I've worked under both awful and amazing leaders in the past, and I was raised in a military LEO family. I've even almost commissioned as a naval officer until a paperwork typo decued me shortly before I was supposed to leave for OCS. Currently, I'm processing to hopefully join a law enforcement agency. All this is to say, I have made sure to cultivate a certain mindset about work, including engaging in extreme ownership, a la Jocko, motivating, or I'm sorry, motivational interviewing, soliciting feedback, and making sure my team is set up for success. All of those things sound great, like I'm loving this description so far.

My problem is thus. We run a tight crew of mostly young adults, ages 19 to 25. They're all what I would call excellent employees, but they have been slipping ever so slightly as of late on the secondary most static demands of the job, like punctuality, dress code, and sidework. Since we are short-staffed, like every restaurant in America, formal discipline like write-ups and terminations are off the table, save for egregious offenses. Luckily, my crew is invested in the restaurant and each other, so a verbal check-in is usually sufficient for course correction.

This falls apart, though, as soon as the owner arrives, even if matters have been dealt with. The crew is subjected to intensive dressing downs by the owner that include verbalized musings about why they haven't been fired yet, whether they care about the their fellow employees, et cetera, et cetera. These rants are impulsive, abusive, and not constructive in any way. The owner doesn't realize that they are destroying employee morale and performance on the way to satisfying their own temper. I've tried guiding the owner out of this pattern, but to them, feelings are facts and the beatings will continue until morale improves. Nothing is

truly accomplished unless the owner has a hand in it, including disciplining employees. I do not want to undermine the owner's authority, but this also needs to stop because ultimately the team's performance is a referendum on my ability to do my job and the owner assigns all of our paychecks. For the sake of my own integrity, I can't bide my time until I become an LEO. I want to grow where I'm planted, but this situation currently has me stumped. No pun intended. And I added that part. That wasn't in the email. Damn, interesting email here.

So one thing for you as a manager or any managers that are out there. You run a tight crew of mostly young adults, 19 to 25. That's what they would, yeah, they're what they would call or what you would call excellent employees, but they've been slipping ever so slightly as of late on the secondary most static demands of the job. Punctuation, dress code, side work, etc. So this is something that I say often. And it's an easy one to say and it's a hard one to live up to all of the time. but what you tolerate in your presence is your standard.

And the reason I bring that up for you, this manager, and anybody else listening is that that's going to go both up and down because you're in an interesting position right now. You have some issues that are below you, and you obviously, based off the email that you sent in, have some issues that are above you. When it comes to the punctuality dress code and sidework, remember, if you are in a leadership position

and you have verbalized to your employees that punctuality dress code, sidework, etc., are important. And you notice a slip and it's not addressed or even worse. You notice a slip among many people, but you only address it with a few. You have a very big problem on your hands. You completely undermine your integrity. If you tolerate it in your presence, it is your standard, regardless of what the doctrine of your organization is or the code of your organization is or the work standards of your organization. And this can be very difficult because it actually starts with yourself as the manager.

So what I'm saying to you first is your punctuality has to be impeccable. Your dress code has to set the example. The sidework or whatever the other requirements that your employees may be falling short on, your example to them has to be impeccable as well. It has to be addressed every single time. if you don't and they watch you tolerate it, that's your new standard, regardless of what it is that you say. Now, above you, you have an individual that is speaking, it sounds like, not only to you, but the

people underneath you in a very demeaning way, which you are also tolerating. Now, you don't sign your own paycheck, right? And this is a challenging one, and it kind of goes, I would say in line with the military because it's a rock paper rank organization. I have also worked for amazing bosses in shitty bosses. The best people I've ever worked for and the worst people that I have ever worked for were inside of the SEAL community. They all came from that and I saw both sides of that pendulum, far left and far right swings. How you deal with it is going to set the example for everybody underneath you as well.

So, and again, I would love to know what you have tried when it comes to guiding the owner out of this pattern. because what I would, it sounds to me like perhaps that was a slightly more, uh, passive approach. I would recommend a direct approach, obviously though, not in front of your subordinates. What I would recommend is take the time to figure out exactly what you want to say to your boss, the owner of this organization, and have a meeting that is offsite, as neutral in territory as you could possibly get, maybe a coffee shop or somewhere that they would enjoy going, and have a very upfront an honest conversation about their behavior and the impact that you see it having not only on the employees, but the team that you are trying to facilitate. And I would also like to know,

you're saying that the boss will show up even if the issues have been handled and they want to have a hand in the discipline to use your word. And I'm curious, how does the owner know that? And that's just, I mean, it doesn't necessarily have any particular bearing, but it sounds like if you had already dealt with the issue and they show up and they still, they want to, you know, choose some ass over that. You know, maybe there also is a way for the, for you to handle these issues at the lowest level and have it never even rise to that of the owner, right? That might actually be the shortest path to some success with this, but something to look at. How do they know that these things are still happening? So I would sit down and have a talk with that boss. and one thing that I would recommend or I would suggest if I was in your position is I would I would present to them some options and the first option that I would present to them would be this I would like to try for the next week or two weeks to be completely and utterly in control of any disciplinary manners or any corrective behavior that we need for our employees and I will personally

and solely be responsible for whether or not they improve or they get worse. And the goal of that is obviously to try to detach the boss from overbearing your position as the manager of the restaurant, right? Because if you're the manager of the restaurant, what the boss needs to actually let you do, or I keep saying the boss, what I should be saying is the owner. Because those are two very different things. And people who are in business, I think often confuse them. this. If you want to own a business, that's amazing. If you want to be the boss, I think you can do

both, but you have to be very clear. And I think it's better if they are separated. So does this person want to be the boss or does he want to be the owner? Because if you're going to hire a manager and pay a manager the money to do that job, I think the owner can really sit back and focus on the bigger picture, right? That's the analogy of the chess board where you as the manager, you're moving around the vast majority of the pieces and then you check in with the owner and you can align with the strategic vision going forward, talk a little bit about greater strategy, and then you get back down and you start moving the pieces around again. So, you know, the people who are underneath you, you know, food for thought for this. I'm not going to ever tell anybody to quit a job. I have quit jobs before for a variety of reasons.

But what I'll tell you is, again, it goes back to what you tolerate in your presence is your standard. If you're allowing this person to talk to you in this manner and you're just taking it and you're only taking it because of the money that they that they're giving you every two weeks, I think it's worth taking the time to sit down and to try to figure out how much is that check actually work to you. What I have found in my life is that there is no amount of money that is worth tolerating behavior that you know. to be wrong. And I think it gets even worse when you have a team of people underneath you, and they're looking up to you. Trust me, they're listening to you and they're watching you. And they're going to be able, more than able, actually, I should say they're going to be ready and willing to mimic your behavior. So think about the example that you want to set for them. And I get it, right? Like, this isn't, you know, a lot of people point at the military as the

end all be all. And trust me, it's not. But there are some examples, specifically when it comes to, you know, behavior in combat. Some severe. very severe consequences. Obviously, this environment that you are, that you're working through or working in, the consequences are not that severe. Perhaps they would only be monetary in nature, but those are still wings of the same bird. Okay. One may not have the instantaneous consequences, but I think understanding integrity for yourself, what you're willing to tolerate and the example that you want to set for others, you know, it can be obviously that sliding scale of consequence, at the end of the day, you have to know what your true north is.

And I would be prepared sitting down with your boss. Once you understand and determine what your true north actually is, be prepared to tow that line. In my experience, a boss like the one that you are describing will try to get you to deviate your true north. They're going to try to push you around a little bit to see if they can get you to bend. And if you do, again, what you tolerate in your presence is your standard. So that's the best advice that I can give you, you know, try to lead up the chan of command, maybe go a little bit more directly, but think about also the example that you're setting down. None of the advice that I gave you was necessarily easy because it certainly could tolerate, could terminate in you having to make a pretty drastic decision about what you want to do in your life, specifically with this occupation. But I don't think there's a job in the world.

There's not a job in the world or a paycheck in the world that at the end of the day has you feeling unhappy going home. I just don't think that it's worth it. All right, question three. The episode with Micah Think, among others, has had a major impact on the way I view life in the terms of time versus money. My wife and I are faced with a slightly tough decision. Four years ago, we moved from our hometown in Mississippi,

family and friends so that I could work for a company that provided great experience and paid much better than the previous job I had. In the past year, we feel as if we are living in limbo. Not much goes on in our lives except for work, sitting in an office, stressing over projects, exercise, eating, and drinking, and traveling back to Mississippi on the weekends. Not many friends have been made as we work most of the time.

We have been discussing moving home for quite a while now. We have a paid-off house and family and friends there. I'm 27 years old and make quite a bit of money for my age. If we move back to Mississippi, I'll be taking roughly a $40,000 pay cut. I recently told my company that I am contemplating leaving and moving home. This resulted in a $22,000. pay raise to entice me to stay. I hold steadfast in my beliefs that work is a small portion of life compared to soul, health, family and friends, and most importantly, time. Though we still think

moving home would bring more happiness in life, the extra money would go a long way. Do you think we would be foolish to leave a life that we benefit from monetarily to live a life that could bring more happiness and time to enjoy? We would still be able to make decent money, but not near what is made here. Awesome question. Actually ties right into what we were talking about, I guess, I guess a little bit on the second question. And first and foremost, I'm never going to tell somebody, hey, you need to make this move or this amount of money is worth that. I think the best thing that I can do is talk about my own experiences when it comes to money and using money as the vehicle to happiness. And my experiences haven't been great, but I can't give you an answer as to

what you should do. Maybe I can give you some food for thought. Where to begin. The $22,000 pay raise to entice me to stay. First off, that can be awesome. Asterix. Unless you modify your life or spending habits to wear that $22,000 that you have to have it. And I equate that to putting golden handcuffs on. And the great thing about golden handcuffs is that you put them on yourself. And I have actually done this. You know, it's not about what you make. It's about what you spend. So, and I've seen this happen with so many people, like I said, to include myself.

Let's say, for easy math, let's say people think that making $100,000 a year isn't an incredible amount of money. And it is. But not if your expenses are $103,000 a year or $99,000 a year. So you can be paycheck rich, but bank account, point. You know, what would be amazing is to make 100 grand a year and spend 50,000 and be able to bank 50,000 or spend, you know, 40 or, you know, as low as possible, still fulfilling your minimum requirements for life, but not being tied to that every two weeks. Because what happens is if you allow this $22,000 to entice you to stay and you go, you know what? God, we're making a little bit more

money. Let's buy the bigger house. Let's get that sports car. And let's just go ahead and back ourselves into that $22,000. If you do that, what happens is making the decisions that you're thinking about and trying to be able to balance this work, life, money, health happiness balance, become much more difficult because you are handcuffed to that income. It's not about what you make. It's about what you spend. I wish I had learned that life.

I wish I had learned that lesson in life so much earlier. I know a couple people who, God, their income is insane. But the only thing that is more insane is their expenses. And that is not how I want to live because it limits choices. Again, tying this back a little bit to my own life. When I stopped making decisions specifically about money and got rid of the thought, you know, you ended your email with, we still would be able to make decent money. but not near what is made here. And my question for you would be this.

How do you know? And I say that because I've been in places in my life where I thought there's no way I could ever match the amount of money that I'm making. So I have to keep doing these things. Otherwise, what am I going to do? Take a giant step backwards. And it took me mistakes and pain and poor decisions to get out of that headspace. And now it's not about the money.

It's about the opportunity in whether or not I feel like it would bring happiness or fulfillment or a combination of the two. And what I've actually found is that by changing the way that I make decisions about money, it has provided a magnitude of order greater of those opportunities. Where did I say that backwards? Is a magnitude of order? Or an order of magnitude greater number of opportunities have come my way. So don't put yourself into this headspace of if we move back, we're not going to be able

to make as much money because you don't actually know that. The only reason that you wouldn't be able to make that much money, or more money in the future is if you don't allow yourself to it. Because I'm telling you right now, at least anecdotally, in my own life, when I stopped pursuing just a paycheck and started making decisions about my own health and happiness, the opportunities for paychecks to go up drastically increased. And I also was presented with opportunities that I never had any idea that they would even be possible. Like five years ago, I never thought that I would have a podcast.

And now it is the single most enriching thing that I do. I love sitting down and having conversations with people and learning more about people that I consider to be fascinating and what makes them tick and their journey and their drive. I never, in a million years, when I started this, did I think that I would actually be able to, let alone make any money for it, but pay the bills. And that's slowly over time what it's allowed me to be able to do.

If I would have limited myself to what I was doing before the podcast and not have the ability to take that risk or look outside of the direction that I was facing in, I don't think I'd be sitting here today. So again, that's why I try to tie this back to my own personal life. I think you have to find a balance. You know, obviously you need a certain amount of income to survive. The fact you have a paid off house, though, is legit. For some of these 27 years old, I think that's amazing.

I don't know, maybe I know some people who are 27 when they had a paid off house. But that's a leg up for sure. So don't discount that because that's going to reduce the monthly nut that you're going to need to make. So you can't just drop everything and, you know, walk the world barefoot. You know, you're going to need food and water unless you're going to rely off the graciousness of others. But at the same time, don't think about only the pay and only the direction you're going to go from a capitalist perspective as well. I think it's about finding balance. and the biggest piece of advice that I can give you, because like I said, I can't tell you if you're right or wrong, the best advice or the advice that I would try to leave you with is that, you know, don't limit what you think you are capable of doing. And I think oftentimes when you start putting ones and zeros on a spreadsheet or trying to calculate exactly what you can make or what you're worth, you really end up doing that. I would say have that as a part of your decision-making process. The health and happiness is another one, but just don't limit

where you think you could be. I bet you five years from now, you're going to look back and even with this $22,000 raise that you just got, you'll laugh at it and go, man, let's say hypothetically you decide to detach paths and go somewhere else. You might look back at it and go, wow, I'm glad I didn't stay there because I'm making 2x or 3x or 4x that. You'll never know those things unless you are in a place where you're not going to limit yourself and you're willing to take that step into the abyss and into the void. And it sounds like you've got a great opportunity to do that if you want to, starting with having that house paid off. So hopefully that helps. Last question for the day. Firstly, I enjoy the podcast. There are things you have said that resonate

not only with me, but my wife and kids as well. Feel free to use my name if you grace this with a Friday episode. I'm not going to because I cut your name out of this so I make sure that I don't make that mistake with other people. My struggle is this. Everything I have set out to do in life I have accomplished. Yet I still feel hollow. After high school, I went into the Marines because everyone said that was the hardest. Served my time and gained a skill. Everyone said, you can't be successful without a college degree. Not sure how to measure that, but financially, I'm there. Married an awesome woman, have two great kids, bought a house in the most desired neighborhood, had the best cars, truck money in the bank. There's nothing I can't buy, yet I feel empty. I had the life I wanted when

I was 20, the wife I always wanted, kids that are great, a career I spent years working towards, I'm here and I'm not happy, now what? I'm at a point that nothing makes happiness. You can give me a new boat and I'm concerned with gas and maintenance. I know that there's a point where adulting is, but fuck, there's no struggle, there's no pain. Five-year white belt, I suck. I know I do because I love the struggle. I don't care, don't care to be a 10-year white belt. A little bit lost on that last sentence there, but I think you identified the actual solution in that last sentence. Before I get to that, though, go back and read your email and look at how many things you use to describe success. And this goes directly back to the last question. I didn't mean to pull all

these and have an interweaving theme throughout, but I'm actually kind of glad that it came out that way. I hate to tell you, but, you know, money and things they don't buy happiness. They can buy a lot of cool shit. And I'm not saying you can't be happy with money, but if you always, if you have like a dollar amount that I will get there and then I will be happy, man, you might be a little bit, you might be a little bit disappointed when you get there. Or I need this truck or this car. If I can just get this particular model in this particular year and this particular color, I'm going to be happy. And then you're going to get it and you're going to feel empty inside after about a month. And I've watched people extremely successful.

Founders and CEOs of organizations, if you will, buy thing after thing after thing. And it would be their thing for like two weeks and they'd have to buy another thing. And then another thing. And then another thing. Because at the end of the day, the issue was more with themselves than what they were buying. Now to the last sentence, your five year white belt. I suck. I know.

But I do it because I love the struggle. Okay. You are at a place where you have. been able to purchase the physical things that you want. What you need to do is find a struggle for yourself in life. You're not setting your goals high enough or hard enough when it comes to you as an individual because there's nothing that comes with a price tag that is going to make you feel complete as a human being. But struggling like you're doing in jiu-jitsu for five years. Also, it sounds like if you've been a white belt for five years, you train about once every two months.

So immediately increase the amount of time that you train and you won't be that 10-year white belt that you seem to be worried about. But if you realize that you do it and have done it for so long because you love the struggle, that's the answer to finding the happiness that you're looking for. Keep getting the external things if you want. And by all means, obviously be there for your kids and for your wife. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally be there for that. But find a way to challenge yourself.

And maybe that's, you need to go run a hundred mile race. Not that I would ever advocate that, but it sounds pretty fucking hard to me. Sounds like a lot of struggle that's involved in that and a lot of personal growth and grinding away at who you are. Or set a goal for getting your blue belt. Or go climb a mountain. Or go join a CrossFit gym. Whatever it may be, you need to go and figure out an activity that is going to challenge you as a human being. And by challenge you, what I mean is present you with failure.

Failure after failure after failure after failure. And I think that is what I love the most about Jiu-Jitsu. It's failure every day with incremental progress followed by additional failure. It challenges your ego. It challenges your sense of worth. It challenges just about everything. I mean, physically and of course, mentally. Now, again, it's not the solution for everybody.

And I'm fortunate to be able to train locally in a variety of locations. Not everybody can do that. But that's my advice. And that's my advice to everybody. is, you know, I truly do hope that everybody is in a place in life where they can have the nice things that they want or they're working towards that, but just don't think that that's the end state. Having the nice things and being a miserable person is not the definition of success for me, and I don't think it's the definition for success for most people.

It's that balance of fulfillment and purpose as a person and success in the real world, however you would want to describe that. But your struggle, sir, it needs to start from within. And if you can't find that struggle, and if you can't find a goal that scares you that you have to struggle and work for and grind for, I don't know if you're ever going to find the happiness that you want.

And I want you to have that. So that's what I suggest. Go out and find that grind and then dive headlong into it. And that's it. See you guys Monday.