Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 9

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Full Auto Friday is a "rapid-fire" format of Q and A submitted by listeners. Topics from all walks of life with a 5-minute cap on all answers. 5:32 Q1: How to separate your identity from your occupation 11:28 Q2: Finding a new career path later in life 17:20 Q3: Principles and techniques to foster a productive learning environment 21:35 Q4: Ignoring external stressors Enjoy

Okay, got to red smoke. All right, north and south. West of the smoke. West up of smoke. Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winter, man. They give it to me.

Can't be cleared hot. All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Full Auto Friday number, whatever the hell it is. I think it might be eight or nine. It could be ten. I'm not sure. It's later in the day. I don't know if this video is going to be backlit.

so I'm doing the best I can. The internet was very vocal. They prefer full auto Friday in front of my green screen. So I'm back in my other studio, got the green screen behind me. Hope it makes everybody happy. All right. Before I get into this, I'm going to play a little bit of cleanup. There's two things I want to cover.

The first one is I have been growing my hair out for a while now due to the global pandemic. and I feel that at the age of 42 and at the length of my hair is approaching, that it would be appropriate to get a perm. Now, I have been told by people that I shouldn't get a perm, but I don't want people to be able to tell me how I should be able to have fun. So, thoughts from those of you watching or listening, perm or no perm, because I can always buzz it. I don't see the downside to a perm.

I feel like I could get a perm, tight, tight perm. Small little wispy circle things, whatever they're called, curls. Go to jiu-jitsu class and make people tap to the perm. And then for the rest of the life, they'll have to say that, that they tapped to a perm. And that is in and of itself, I feel like enough reason to do that. So feedback is welcome on this one. I'm leaning very heavily to pro perm.

second thing I wanted to cover a little bit of cleanup from last week's full auto Friday the question I answered about whether or not we can celebrate the Confederacy and still be patriotic before I get into this it is not easy to solicit questions from the internet put your thoughts together in a palatable format and then deliver them with a five-minute time cap week after week after week after week. So for anybody who has told me that I was anything but clear on that particular answer or that they didn't enjoy the answer, I would say to you, just imagine it from that perspective. There is going to be in the last two and a half years examples of me being slightly less clear with my thoughts. And let's be very clear. If it came off like that on that particular question

from last week, that is 100% my fault. I believe, based off the feedback that I've gotten, it appeared as if I was framing it as a binary choice. Either we keep the statues up and retain the lesson, or we rip them down and we whitewash it from history. And my mistake in that was in phrasing it in those terms. What I meant to say, or what I was hoping to say, was if I was only given those two options,

I would choose keeping them up and retaining the lesson versus pulling them down and removing the lesson. I'm not a fan of keeping them up, though. and I'm not advocating for that. I'm not a fan of celebrating anything from the Confederacy. And I should not have left that question, my final part, with that binary choice, either this or that. Because I think the answer is somewhere in between. And in some of the feedback, you know, people reached out and they would say, this movement to tear down statues is not about erasing history.

And my answer to that is, to some, at least in my opinion, that is exactly what this is. And I say that based off of what they say. what they write. So I hear what they say. I read what they write and I take them at face value when it comes to those things. And that's just how I listen to people. And also to be clear, the extreme movements on both the left and right side of the political spectrum, I'm not a fan of. I get very wary of people who live on the extremes. I personally don't feel like I live there. So those that do oftentimes give me reason to pause for what I feel like is cautious. And you know what, though?

Those binary choices that I unintentionally left were, in fact, the extremes. Leave them up, tear them down. The solution, I believe, is in between. We need to take a very objective look at what we memorialize, what we turned into a statue, what we turned into a monument. And if they need to be changed, taken down, destroyed, then absolutely that we should. I just want to make sure that there is a place where the lessons from those monuments, monuments, and I keep saying monument because that's large what we were talking about in that question,

where the lesson from that individual or whatever is memorialized can continue to be passed on and learn because I don't want to see people make the same mistakes. And that's it. I'm going to leave it at that. Let's get into this. Four questions for today because I want to get everybody into their weekend. And by everybody, I also mean myself. So I got four lined up. Let's start top to bottom. First one comes from Jared. You seem to have been able to not define yourself by your past accomplishments and titles. As a police officer who has done many different assignments, one being a homicide detective, of which I was most proud, I find it hard to separate my identity from that, especially with the current political climate. This wears on me and a lot of the younger guys.

I want to show them that there is life outside of this job. Any ideas on how to accomplish this? Let's start the top stopwatch and see how far I can get with this. You, Jared, to me, in my opinion, at the end of this question, you opened the door to what I would consider to be the answer. You said, you want to show the guys that there's life outside of this job. And my first piece of advice on an idea to accomplish this is to have a life and to show the younger people, the younger generation, that is going to eventually surpass and replace you and take the organization to wherever it goes, show them that there is life outside of a job.

The SEAL community is extremely insular when you are a part of it. I would work with a very small group of people, and then after work, I would go hang out with that very small group of people. Guess what we talked about when we were hanging out? That's right. Work. So if you have a job and your friend or social pool is largely comprised of people that are only from that job, what I would recommend is try to find a way to diversify your experience and touch points when it comes to who you socialize with. Same thing as if you only have your job and you have no hobbies, I think there's something that you could do there to enhance your perspective. You need to diversify, I guess, is the long-wind way of what I'm saying.

And that means, occupationally, with hobbies or interests in what I would consider to be social circles. I don't think there's anything wrong with marrying somebody from the same career field that you work with. But I do think that if you find yourself and you were to actually draw, I think, I don't know the exact, the graph that has three circles that overlap. I believe it's a Venn diagram, but as I've said many times, I'm an idiot and I could be incorrect. I would like to personally, you know, I have, I do jiu-jitsu, and I have a friend circle that comes from that world. I obviously am a veteran and come from that community as well too.

And I have friends that are from that world and they don't overlap. And then I have skydiving and base jumping and a set of friends that I have met and experienced things only in that world. And what else could there be? bow hunting is another one or an outdoor activity. I have that circle and friends that I only experience things with in that aspect. And all of those things, not only do they enrich my life personally, but they enhance my perspective and context on the world.

And hopefully, as I was going through those circles, I made a point of pointing out that each one of those circles has friends where there's no overlay. And I appreciate that. not because I don't want the people to meet, but because I want to have a diversity of experience. And I can only assume that the law enforcement force responder, firefighter world, you work hard together, you play hard together. And I can see this a little bit with my brother-law and my sister. My sister will say, you know, they're having a firewives party,

which there's nothing wrong with whatsoever, unless I would say that's the only type of party that you ever have, or those are the only people that you ever have. you have that lack of diversity. So if you're defined by your badge and you're already recognizing that you're having a little bit of a struggle when it comes to your identity,

I think that's the first step. And the best way that you can show the young guys that there is life outside of just that badge and that the badge doesn't have to define you is to live it yourself. So I would identify a hobby, maybe a sport or an activity or something that you can do

that would detach you from the people that you work with on a day, a day and develop some other relationships in that world only and make sure you're managing your time in between the two. I actually find that there's a lot of value to sitting down with a piece of paper and a pencil and write out a list of your closest friends. I've done this. It's an interesting experiment. Right out a list of your closest friends and in one of those circles they fall into. And if you notice that they're all falling into one, you might be falling into that trap of defining yourself by any one thing. You could go out and exercise. You'll get a bike, join a

running clock. I mean, the, the opportunities are endless. But it starts with recognizing that you don't want to be defined by any one thing. So don't just do any one thing. And remember, a job is what you do. It's not who you are. And from my old life, it's very easy to confuse those two. And you see people who get out and struggle because they have lost their identity, because their identity came from their occupation. And I don't care who you are and what you do. Whatever your occupation is, at some point in time in your life, it's going to end, and you're going to have to, to some degree, redefine yourself. Get ahead of that curve and diversify yourself.

That's all I have for question number one. Let's talk about question number two. This is from Lisa. First, though, a tasty beverage. I know that's people's least favorite salad on a podcast, the Ice and a Yeti, but it's delightful when it hits your lips. So I had one. Okay.

Lisa says, hey, Andy, I just got done watching your podcast with Matt Vincent. I love the conversation about kids in college. I have two kids, 19 and 17, and I know exactly what you mean about hating the question. What do you want to be when you are older? The part that really hit home was when you said that you were 42 and still don't know what you want to be. I feel the exact same way. I just turned 40 and I have no idea what I want to do career-wise. I have a good job working at a hospital, but I know I don't want to make a career of it.

I've always thought that by the time I got to 40, I would have a job. successful career in a job that I love. My question for Full Auto Friday is how do you think someone around our age should go about finding a new career path in life? I don't want to waste any more of my time at a job that I don't love, but I also have no idea where to start. I also want to say thank you for the inspiration to go skydiving. I went for the first time on Sunday and it was beyond amazing. Well, yeah, because skydiving is fucking awesome and everybody should go do it. Even if you're scared of heights because it's abstract you're not going to be like standing on top of a ladder here we go my thoughts on on my career path in life and if you listen to the podcast you'll know this

is my take i thought that the only thing i was ever going to do is be a seal and then one day i woke up and was like oh no i'm no longer a seal so i need to figure out what i'm going to do from here the beauty was is that i had a job and it happened to be crossfit that allowed me to leave the military, work for that organization, and then find the next. So for this question, when you're in your 40s, I still personally think that 40, anywhere in the 40s, is young. And I'm using that with air quotes. It's a relative term, right? It's obviously older than 30, but it's younger than 60. My point is, I think you still have some flexibility. And even if you had to hard reset, I think it would be okay. I think as you hit 50,

or 60 or 70. If you're looking at occupations and you want to just shit can one and completely start over, I think you have less flexibility to do that as you age. But at the age of 40, I still think if you needed to, you could. But you mentioned you have a good job working at a hospital. So what that tells me is that you don't have any pressure. You've identified that what you're doing is not fulfilling what you wanted it to be in this point in your life.

Awesome. That's step number one. what I would recommend having put myself into a position before where I found myself not doing something that I wanted to do and I just quit, I had to stumble through everything that came after that from a financial perspective. I had to correct and hustle because I had money coming in on a Thursday. I'm not sure that was the day that I quit, but on Friday, there was no money coming in. And let me tell you, the day after day after day from that day that you quit, the pressure increases gradually and gradually and gradually. And it sucks.

So don't do that if you have the opportunity. If you have a job that is ensuring that you have all of your needs met, like that would be the initial criteria for me. Can I ensure you have kids? They're older. It seems like they're probably going to be moving out. But if I can meet my basic needs and I identified that I'm doing something that I'm passionate about or I don't want to do for a long period of time, make sure you're doing a great

job at the job you currently have, and then spend your off time trying to find what it is that in your heart or mind that you actually want to do. And there's no rush because you're maintaining your job. You're doing a great job, so you're not going to get fired. Your needs are met, and it will allow you to pursue things because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. I took some opportunities after I quit working for CrossFit because I felt like I had to. Not all of them were bad. Not all of them were good. And it was a good lesson learned for me. If I could have gone back into a time machine, I would have done exactly what I just recommended. I would have done a great job at work and found something that my heart or mind wanted to do

elsewhere dedicated my off time to that until I realized or got it to a point where I knew it would be able to provide and then I would have shifted over. And that's exactly Lisa, what I recommend that you do. And don't put a timeline on how long that takes. What I liked in my 20s and 30s, it's kind of the same is what I like now, but I don't know what I'm going to like in five years. and I don't know what I'm going to like beyond that. So I'm in no rush to try to figure out new things to do. Right now in this phase of life that I'm in, I'm trying to figure out ways to optimize what it is that I do.

I love public speaking. I love doing the podcast. I find both to be incredibly enriching to me as a person. So I'm trying to figure out ways that they can become the things that I do into the future. And maybe that'll change. And I tell you what, it might change it for me. The landscape of public speaking right now, have fun with that.

There's, you know, unless you're going to talk to one person at a time at each organization, it's not going to happen. So it may not come back. And if it doesn't, I will try to find something that I do, first off based off of enjoyment or passion, and try to figure out a way to roll that into becoming my occupation in the future. And I am of the belief that I don't think I'll ever be retired because I don't enjoy sitting on my hands with idle time. I probably will continue to do things like that into the.

point where I am not physically able to do so. But as long as I am mentally and emotionally able to do so, that's my plan. So I've made my timeline as long as possible and it actually really helped me reduce my personal stress that I was applying to myself. Hopefully, that was helpful for you. Question three, we're ripping through these. Two more. This one comes from Carston. As someone who has occupied the roles of instructor and student, what core principles and techniques do you see fostering a learning environment that will produce both a knowledgeable and critically thoughtful individual. This is a kick-ass question. And I had to put some thought into this one because initially when looking at it, I was like, huh, what is it that makes that learning environment

so powerful and impactful? I'm landing on respect. That to me is the number one principle that is going to foster a learning environment that will produce knowledgeable and critically thoughtful individuals. It starts with respect, knowledgeable and critically thoughtful, respect in the ability to have a conversation. I don't know how many briefs I have been to in my military career where somebody is hammering you with information, regardless of your experience level, regardless of their knowledge of the topic.

they get to the end and who's got questions? And they're fired up. And it's an environment where nobody actually feels comfortable having a conversation. That is not a environment that will develop critical thinkers. Because as an instructor, you should welcome. And when you ask for questions, you should be hoping that people have them. Welcome a challenge to your knowledge base. I've heard it said many times, you know, the best way to gauge how well you know a topic is to teach it to others.

And I could not agree with it more. Once people start asking you the most powerful question, at least in my opinion, which is why? Why do we do it like this? Why is that the tactic? Where does that tactic come from? Those questions are powerful. It will gauge the breadth and depth of your knowledge as an instructor. And it hopefully creates this two-way exchange between the instructor and the student.

And again, if there's no respect there, if you expect as an instructor for it to be a radio type transaction, where you transmit, they receive. it could be a or an environment where knowledge is passed, assuming you have a syllabus and you follow it. But if they're not given the opportunity to ask questions, powerful ones like why, you're robbing people of their ability to think critically. Now, if there's a time limitation, and again, you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of 300 what ifs or why. I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is facilitate an environment where people feel comfortable receiving, and asking questions. I was thinking about this

from the perspective of a Bud's instructor. The instructors that yelled at me, I immediately tuned him out. Could care less what they were saying. I would listen the absolute minimum amount. I would listen to the point where I understood what they wanted from me as a student,

and then I would completely turn them off, execute the activity that they had asked, but I was gaining nothing from the environment that they had created. Then there were the instructors that would sit down, and speak to you like a human being. They would talk in a conversational tone.

They would welcome questions. They would have thoughtful answers. They were not afraid to say things like, I don't know. I'll get back to you on that. That is a measure of respect. That is a respect that you have for your student when you are an instructor.

When you are challenged or asked a question that you don't know the answer to, instead of making up some bullshit answer or saying, hey, shut up, I'm the one who's, you know, teaching here or asking the questions by saying, hey, you know what? I actually don't have the answer to that, but I will get back to you. And then actually going and getting back to them, it's incredibly powerful.

And it rewards critical thinking. It rewards critical question asking. And it creates a better environment for both student and instructor. So to me, to summarize, it starts with respect on both sides of the house. create an environment where people can communicate and facilitate questions in the mutual exchange of information, not just a one-way radio or fire hose transaction. Last question, and then we're getting everybody into the weekend. This is from Chris.

Chris says, I just entered in the delayed entry program for the Navy a few months ago, and I have been in the warrior program since then, getting my contract for SO. which means special operations. Due to COVID, my ship date won't be until September at the earliest. Yes, I suspect that that's going to be a struggle given the pandemic times. I'm 22 years old, have been to college, and I have a decent amount of independence and growth as an individual. In the program, we PT several times a week and PST, which I believe is physical standards test.

I don't know, PRT, physical readiness test biweekly. During PTs, they are conducted by former naval special warfare guys that know how to stir up the inner ego. I was just talking about this. And I catch myself letting them be successful at it by increasing my frustration or anger towards them or myself, which I know is one of the points of the training. Yes, it is. It's a weakness and I want to get rid of it before I ship.

I feel it's a common problem for guys my age or older that have been shaped a little bit already as compared to individuals right out of high school. Any words of wisdom? I'm not sure it is, whoa, I hit a 30 minute timer. We're not doing that. We're doing five minutes. I don't think it's that common for people of your age versus somebody coming right out of high school. What you're talking about are people who came through a selection process full of instructors that their job was to do exactly what you're describing.

Their job is to figure out a way for lack of a better term to fuck with you. to figure out a way, to chip away at what you think you're the best at, and to try to expose the things that you maybe are the most insecure about, whether that's your physical ability, your likelihood of graduating the program, fill in the blank. We all have our own personal insecurities. And I love this question because I can just imagine these old guys sitting there fucking with you. And my biggest piece of advice, and this is going to be easier said than done.

And I know I say that probably too often on the podcast. tune them out their job is to chip away at your ego to try to figure out a way to frustrate you to get you to a place where you're questioning your ability or whether or not you belong at fill in the blank the pre-selection program in buds whatever phase of buds it might be you got to tune them out all right that is their job and for their job to work you have to be a winning participant you have to allow them to interact with your psyche and let what they say have an impact. I'll tie this back to something I've said before, keeping your world small. The circle of influence, circle of concern.

You cannot influence whether or not these people are going to chip away at you, right? You can be concerned about it, but you actually can't control what they do. But you can control how you respond to it. You are in 100% control of how you respond to whatever it is they ask you to do and whatever it is they say to you or whatever it is they say something to you about. It has to be a two-way interaction. And what I would recommend is follow their instructions, try as absolutely as hard as you possibly can, make sure you're performing at a high level. And when they say things that you can tell are designed to merely fuck with you, tune it out and move on. if you notice that you're having an emotional reaction to that, pay attention and do some,

do some soul searching later on as to, not in the moment, but later on is, why does that bother me? Why did it bug me or why did it piss me off when this individual said this? And more than like what you're going to find is going to be a personal insecurity. And maybe that's something that you will have the ability to work on as you lead up towards training. Or maybe it's going to be a lifelong struggle. I don't know what that particular insecurity is going to be. I've heard from people before who came from what I would describe

I don't know the polite way to say but a rough upbringing where parents were constantly the hammer negatively reinforcing you're not going to be good enough you're not smart enough just being a piece of shit parent and trying to push your kids down instead of lift them up and allow them

and empower them to do incredible things you know motivation can go two ways there they could they could see and recognize at an early age that their parents aren't doing the right thing and that could become motivation or when somebody talks to them like that it could be a trigger and it could immediately shut them off so it could go one or two ways and i don't know how or exactly what these people are saying to you or the exact response that it's having but identify those

things and if you have the chance to work on it work on it and even better if you have the chance to let it go and tune them out that is the strategy for long-term success in the pipeline that you are getting ready to go down. So hopefully that helps. Remember, it's their job. It's literally their job to say stuff that's going to make you question whether or not you can graduate the program. Get used to it. Embrace it. Water off a duck's back or a beaver's back, whatever metaphor or analogy you want to use. And you know what the best way to show them is that they have no impact? Fucking graduate. That's all you need to do. And that is 100% on you. And that is also all I have for Fallout Friday. So that's it. See you next week.

Thank you.