Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 95

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. How to break the negative thought process/feedback loop 2. When should you let a coach handle a situation vs stepping in yourself 3. My body may not allow me to pursue my life goal, what would you do if you were in my shoes 4. Thoughts on Ukraine Enjoy

What's up, everybody? You ready for Q&A? I'm ready for Q&A. Let's do it. Fuller Friday, 95. Question number one for today. Five years ago was my last BJJ, for those of you who don't know what that means, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition.

I won my first two matches but lost the third to a much better grappler. However, the minute my first match started, wanted the comp to be over and I just wanted to go home. I mentally checked out and spent the rest of the competition thinking about how shit it was and if I really wanted to be there. So when I was beaten, I was more relieved than I was disappointed. I have not competed since because of the memory of this last comp and not wanting to feel that again or put myself in that situation. Cut to five years later. I'm a police officer and I'm at a pre-selection for the dive unit. This can assisted of a beep test, which I wish I knew what that was, but I don't, an obstacle course run

and a dummy drag before a 1K swim in the pool. I passed everything up to the 1K, and when it's time to start swimming, the negative self-talk starts again. I tell myself, this sucks. I don't want to be here, et cetera. Ultimately, what happens is I can't get into a good rhythm, my turns are sloppy, I cramp up, and I don't make the time, despite making the time in training. I was in my head and talked myself out of this opportunity. My question is, when you get into these negative feedback cycles and everything seems to be snowballing, how do you bring it back to achieving the goal you have set out? Thanks for the podcast, big fan. P.S.

Can you chat to your courier to lower the prices on international shipping? I can't justify 50 bucks for postage to Australia for a rashy, which I'm assuming means rash guard. I actually have nothing to do. I'll start at the bottom of this one. I have nothing to do with the shipping rates. They are set by basically everybody other than me. And the system that I use, I fulfill through ship station, it is what it is. So I apologize.

I try to get the most economical shipping that there is, but I do not know what other options there are for countries like Australia. If anybody out there has better suggestion or advice, better advice for international shipping, hit me up. And I'll do it for sure. Okay, now to negative feedback loops. This email, I picked it. It's going to tie into, I think, one of the ones I selected later on. It'll tie into it regardless. I picked it because it speaks to the power of negative self-talk.

And on the other side of that coin, of course, would be the power of positive self-talk. But I have gotten trapped in this loop many times. And if I look back, this is the loop that we try to trap bud students in when they are in training. Because essentially the same thing happens. If we can push an individual to their lowest point, and maybe that's through exhaustion, maybe that's through sleep deprivation, food deprivation, exertion, all of those things. And we can get them into a negative feedback loop. And all you can think about is how much more you have to do or how far away you are from your goal.

Guess what happens to the odds of us being able to get them to quit? astronomically higher. So there's a reason why we do that. And like I said, there's a reason why I pick this question. My biggest enemy in life, and I suspect most people's biggest enemy in life, is in fact the person that they see in the mirror. The ability, my ability, I should say, to talk myself out of things or to completely interrupt my process, which will then determine whether or not I'm going to be.

successful on a goal that I have set for myself, it's not rivaled by anything that the world has ever thrown at me. So I love this question. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I'll tell you the advice that I give to people who are looking at selection courses, just when it comes to negative self-talk. And that is the best advice I can give people when it comes to setting their goal. And I know this is indirectly talking about your question. And I'll talk specifically about that in a second, as you have to break your goals down into digestible chunks. Buds is 180 days long. But the people who think about it from the perspective of 179 days left, 178 days left, 177 days left, versus those that just focus on it one day at a time. And they wake up in the morning and they say,

you know what, I'm just going to see the sun go down today and then I'll make a decision about whatever I need to make a decision about after that. The difference between those two and their likelihood of graduating. Same goal, different approach is pretty startling. So maybe that doesn't work, though, for somebody out there listening. Like, okay, a day is too long. Not a problem. Break it down into halves. So maybe you need to make it to lunch and then make a decision. And then from there, you'll make it to dinner. If that's too long, you break it down into quarters. If that's too long, you break it down into eighths. And I'm sure people get the point. You break it down into however many chunks that you need, so you can focus on only what it is that you need to be doing

in the moment. Once you complete that, you focus on the next step and then the next step and then the next step and then the next step and the next step. And you avoid at all costs focusing on where you are and where you want to be and the distance between the two. The reasoning for that is because if you start focusing on that and you get into this cycle of negative self-talk, the power that that has to destroy your motivation, to destroy your performance, to destroy your mindset, like I said, I think it pales in comparison to almost anything, if not everything, that the world around you could actually throw at you. The most powerful tool that I think

human beings have is what's between their ears, but you have to be able to control it. So to answer specifically to your question, one, it sucks that you took five, years off of competing in jujitsu because of the experience that you had. I would actually say probably what you likely would benefit from doing. I was going to say what you should do, but that's not the case because I'm not an expert in this, but what I would suspect is what you would benefit from is diving headlong and head first into these things that push you into this headspace. So, and since you're a jiu-jitsu player, everybody knows that person that they want to avoid a role with because maybe that person smashes them. Maybe they're a really difficult role.

Whatever it may be, we all have these people. And you'll see them at the gym. You're like, God damn it. And it's an open mat and you'll avoid making eye contact because what you don't want to do is make eye contact and have that person come towards you. It's like, shit, here we go. But if you were to really ask yourself, how would I get bad? better at jujitsu. It's not going to be by avoiding roles with that person unless, of course, you're scared of rolling with them or uncomfortable rolling with them because they're dangerous, they're out of control, and you're afraid of getting hurt. That's kind of a different story, and that could probably be handled via a conversation. But if you're avoiding this because you know

it's somebody that challenges you and you might not like the potential outcome, the fastest route to growth is actually diving headfirst towards that person, towards that experience. experience. So people will ask me, how do you inoculate yourself against stress, which I don't necessarily know if it's completely possible, but you can become very resistant to it as soon as you start exposing yourself to it more and more and more. So in the BJJ aspect of this question, what I would say is, hopefully you're still doing jiu-jitsu because I do believe it has a direct correlation to your job. And when I think of an officer that I may want to encounter drunk Andy or my young children,

I want them to be as capable as possible. I would want the police officer that encounters me or my kids to be as capable as possible without reaching to their Batman tool belt. So I hope that you're still doing it. And I hope that you could consider at least willingly putting yourself back into these situations where mentally it has crumbled you. And don't necessarily expect that the situation is going to change on your first exposure back. What I would suggest is continuing that exposure until it changes, which will probably be a long,

painful, mentally, an arduous path. But at the end of that path, you'll be substantially stronger between the ears. Now, to the pre-selection and the dive unit, you don't make your time on the swim specifically, even though you are making the time in training. Like, cool. Okay, so you've already identified that you can do that. And for anybody, people who have questions about selection process of any kind that has criteria. Again, I don't know what a beep test is.

The obstacle course is exactly that. A dummy drag and then a one-case swim in the pool. For people who are looking at selection programs, do not use the standards that they are going to present to you in those tests as your baseline. They should be easy for you to beat. You should have to trip and fall on your face to not. make those things. So don't make them your maximum effort day. Train yourself to the point where even on a poor day, you can meet those standards. And if you are looking at a selection program in the modern era, get on the internet and find as much information as possible and train specifically

for the tasks that you are going to be challenged with. I've actually had quite a few people who hit me up and they say, well, this is the selection course that I need to make my way through it. I need to, you know, what I'm really focusing my training on is what's going to come after that in my operational career. I'm not going to tell anybody that that's right or wrong, but what I would say is don't put the cart in front of the horse. Make sure you can get through the selection program first and then you can work on the after after that.

So for this individual, obviously you can make the time. It's not a physical issue. It's not a physiological issue. It sounds like it is a psychological issue, which you have already identified. You start talking to yourself negatively and what does it do? It interrupts your rhythm. You get sloppy. You cramp up.

I don't necessarily know if the negative self-talk has anything to do with the cramping. But as far as being in a rhythm and getting sloppy, I think it absolutely has something to do with that. So step number one to try to give you some specifics would be identify when that is happening. And also maybe identify the headspace that you have when you're. you're doing swims in training. Maybe sit down for a few minutes or as long as need be or as multiple or as many times as need be to figure out what's the difference when you are training versus when you're actually taking the test. You know that you can meet the time. Are you talking to yourself differently before the test? Are you nervous before the test? And if you think about

it, right, if you train hard enough and that these standards are something you can meet on one of your shittier days, there's really nothing to be nervous. about. So this physical prep before this could actually really help alleviate some burden in that headspace. But try to figure out why in training it doesn't bother you and then why when it counts, for lack of a better term, it is bothering you. When you get to that place where you're actually testing and somebody is sitting there with a clipboard and a stopwatch, I'll go right back to what I opened with, chunking your goal of one-k swim in the pool. I have no idea how far your pool is or how many turns would be necessary.

But I would break it up into as small of a chunk as possible and only focus on that little chunk. And it may be one, not even a lap in the pool. It might be from one end of the pool to the other end of the pool. And all you need to focus on in that moment is your rhythm and your technique on that small stretch. When you get to the wall, you reset.

And you do not allow yourself to focus on anything other than that. If you start creeping in thinking about, oh, I don't even want to be here, you cannot in those moments entertain those thoughts. But what you need to do is give your brain something else to focus on. And that is going to be, you know, maybe look down at the line in the pool. I actually don't even know what stroke is allowed. As an example, for Buds, it's sidestroke. So you don't actually have the opportunity to look down at the black line that's paid in most of the pools. If you're doing freestyle, you know, you could focus your mind on that strike.

or the other wall that you're going towards, again, depending on the distance. The point being in all that is, you have to recognize when it turns negative and you cannot tolerate yourself thinking like that. Why? Because the results are already what you have described them to be. Give your brain something else. Give it something else that it can focus on and then give it a reset and set another small goal for it. It truly is, in my life, one of the most powerful strategies that I've ever that I've ever encountered. If you can really break it down, it allows you to, if you're doing something that's physically arduous, like, fuck, I have to do this for the next hour. That just sucks. That sucks for everybody. You know, pain hurts, whether that's

self-induced or somebody else is inflicting it upon you. But I can do just about anything for a minute. And if I can break it down into small, small chunks like that, and I'll go back to the jujitsu world to give you an example of something that I think is challenging but allows for a higher intensity a lot of times at the gym what we'll do is open mat is going to be five minute matches but we'll do a lot of two minute positional sparring and you can go really hard for two minutes and you can you can tolerate a lot of pressure and pain for two minutes it seems like a long time but god it seems like so much easier than doing that five minute time period why because you know you only have to do it for a short period of time. So in the middle of a two-minute drill,

there's no reason why you can't focus on the first 60 seconds and then the next 60 seconds. You can always break these things down to a smaller, more digestible chunk. And it's amazing how much more you can tolerate when you do that. I'm going to get to the end of this minute and then we'll reevaluate and make a decision from there. I'm going to get to the end of this five minutes or the end of this lap. So it's something that you can apply anywhere. It's something that you can apply when it comes to saving money, when it comes to a business goal, a personal, a professional goal, a relationship goal, figure out the small steps, but take control of how you are thinking about and talking to yourself. That all starts with having a strategy, identifying it first

and then having something else to focus your mind on. If you don't have that other thing, can take a guess as to where your brain is going to drift back to. So hopefully that helps. Question number two, didn't mean to pull it like this, but it's another slightly jiu-jitsu related question. I have been practicing jiu-tzu at my local academy for a little bit over a year. We have a great group of people from all walks of life. We have one guy that freaks out when he gets to tight pressure or in a position of tight pressure. His attitude before class is light and friendly. There seems to be a switch that flips during a free roll that doesn't go his way. Tonight he got stuck in a triangle choke. Instead of casually tapping, he slaps his opponent's

leg and yells tap. He then got up, threw off his guitop, and walked out. He's been with us for almost a year, and I would like to talk to him about his irrational behavior. Do I step in and try to help him work through his issues or let the coaches deal with it? I know he loves jujitsu. I would hate for him to keep this up and ostracize himself. It's a good question. And I think, I guess, I suspect that every gym has this person. And maybe all of us who do jujitsu. will be this person from time to time, you know, finding that, finding that level of comfort with being able to accept not winning. For competitive people, which I am a competitive person, it can be really difficult.

But there is a point where you're just going to have to realize, hey, I'm new to this and there are levels to this shit, and there are people out there who can absolutely murk you. And if you end up freaking out or not tapping when you should, you're going to end up getting hurt. And that's actually not anybody else's fault other than your own. Now, directly to your question, though, do you step in and try to help him or let the coaches deal with it? I think this is a very good question. And this can apply to pretty much any, I think, sport or activity where there is a setting where there is a coach and then participants. I would say it depends.

My default position is always going to be let your coaches coach. I get asked on the mat for feedback or questions about, hey, how do you do this? And my default answer always is, hey, I would ask the coach because I do not feel qualified or experienced enough to answer those questions. And I'm also a paying member of the gym. I am not a paid coach at the gym. I don't think it is my place to give people any advice or coaching because that's not actually what I'm there for.

Now, if it's like a simple question, like, hey, where did you, where are we? supposed to put our hand for this in the middle of the drill or in the middle of a role? Of course, I'll answer that question. But as far as giving people advice or feedback or, hey, you should focus on this on your journey, I stay out of that completely because I respect the role of the coach and it's their job to do that. And I want to be coached by my coaches and not by the other people that I'm doing jiu-jitsu with. Now, having said that, I'll use the gym that I train at as an example. The mat space is upstairs and there's a changing room downstairs. And in the changing room or before class, there's a lot of chance to interface with people

who are going to be taking class with you. And I do think that there is an opportunity for you to talk with somebody in a non-coaching manner and potentially have an impact in this person's experience. Now, when you're out, it's an opportunity for a conversation to present itself. And in this case, maybe you could force the conversation. down that path where you could say something to this person. Now remember, you're not their coach. So I would, I would, I would begin this conversation, maybe with a question.

Or talking to this person about your own experience. Don't, I would point in saying that is, is don't try to have this conversation from a position of authority. Have it from a casual perspective. Like, damn. Like, you know, I was in this particular situation, I would almost say something like, hey, man, I saw what happened yesterday, you know, where you got upset about that, you know, getting stuck in the triangle and you walked off the mat. I'd be like, hey, man, I've totally been there. I know exactly what that feels like.

And I actually took it too far one time. I ended up getting hurt. And that really sucked. And I would hate for that to happen. you. It's kind of like, you know, I'm thinking in real time here. It's a chunky intro to potentially what could be said. There's a variety of ways that you could say it. But there's chances to bring this stuff up where you can approach somebody as their friend as opposed to as their coach. And I think both can be impactful, especially if you bring up the conversation from the

perspective of, hey, I just want you to be able to keep doing this. And I actually was in that place and here's the negative outcome that came from it. So, you know, learn from me and my mistakes. Hopefully it'll help prevent injury and keep you on the mats longer because I can tell that you love this. And hey, it's, I think we all go through this phase. I don't know how many times I've heard people in the changing room at the gym that I train at talking about like, God damn it, I need to calm down. Like, I just can't stop freaking out. And I laugh. And I look at them and it's like, how many people do you think have been in this locker room or in locker rooms all over the world who have said exactly that same thing?

And the answer is every single one of them. So don't even worry about it. We all have time, you know, moments from time to time where we freak out. And it's not about being perfect. It's just about reducing, you know, the amount of times that that actually happens. And guess what? You'll learn faster once you can get through that phase. But every single person to include the most experienced and badass black belt on the face of the earth, I guarantee you went through that phase.

So it's okay. You just got to work your way through that. Who's there to help you with that? Primarily your coach, but also your. your cohort and your friends who are in those locker rooms as well. So let the coach is coach, but don't let that stop you from having a friendly conversation with somebody and maybe they can learn from it. And if they can't or if they don't and you're really worried about this person,

maybe go and have your conversation with your coach and express your concern and then let the coach do their job. So that is how I would approach that. Question three, I'm 30 years old and for the past year and a half, I have been training hard in the hopes of securing an 18X.X. contract in the National Guard. Strength rating is going great, but something that I have been failing horrendously at is my running. Every time I go for a run, a pain starts creeping into my lowered legs, typically my left one more than my right, a couple of inches above the ankle on the

inside. It feels almost like shin splints, but as I mentioned before, the inside of the leg. After a run, it's tender to the touch. The pain gradually gets worse and worse with every run I go on. And eventually it gets to the point where it feels like I'm about to cleave muscle from bone and I just can't run anymore, which point I'm forced to take a break from running altogether. I've done this a handful of times now, and I feel like I've gotten next to nowhere with it. I've contacted quite a few people on how I can remedy this, taking their advice and done numerous things to alleviate the issue. It always comes back, always. This time around I thought I had finally beaten it, only to go for a run not even an hour ago, and the pain came or the pay

pain came climbing back in. I'm at a crossroads. I wasted my 20s just drifting from job to job, trying to find my purpose on this planet. Right before I turned 29, I decided to turn my life around, succeeding and completely altering my view on life. And I decided I wanted to be a green beret. However, every time this pain causes me issues, I lose more hope that I'm ever going to see this dream realized. I asked myself, how the hell am I ever going to make it to selection if I I can't even go for a brisk jog, let alone a dead sprint. I've recently started to wonder if I should try finding something else to pursue. But I know with zero doubt, I'll never be able to make peace with the fact that I failed to even get my foot in the door.

I wonder if you had a pun intended in that, since we're speaking about your feet and legs. What would you do if you were in my shoes? I'm feeling incredibly dejected and lost on this. Thanks for your time. What would I do if I was in your shoes? Well, I wish I could ask you a question at this point because when you said you've contacted quite a few people on how to remedy this and you've taken their advice, are you also talking about going to a doctor? I don't know much about shin splints other than, from my understanding, it's largely based on overuse. We're potentially running in footwear on a surface that doesn't provide enough cushioning or the combination of the two.

but if it feels like you're about to cleave muscle from your bone, when you run, my first step in that would actually be go to see a doctor to make sure there's not something physiologically wrong with my body. And if there is something physiologically wrong with your body that's not going to allow for running, and I have no idea what that could possibly be. But if it does exist, I mean, I hate to tell you, it's probably going to disqualify you from service in the military anyway. So I would try to determine that as soon as humanly possible.

If I were in your shoes, if I look back at my younger self and I was 18 and I knew I wanted to go into the Navy and I knew what I wanted to do in the Navy and nothing was going to stand in my way and I had this issue, I would exhaust every resource possible going to every expert possible to try to figure out a solution. I would be looking at different running shoes. I would be looking at different ways to do cardio training that had a lower impact but could still have a benefit when I run while I figured out that solution. You know, the combination of all of those things. And then if it got to a point where you had exhausted all of that, you had gone to all of the experts, you had messed with everything that you could from a practical perspective with footwear or insoles. and I'm not an expert at running, so these are the only two things that come to my mind in real time. But if you got through all of that and it just was not going to be physiologically possible, what you're going to have to do at some point is put the suitcase down and move forward.

I hate that you say you wasted your 20s just drifting from job to job, trying to find your purpose on the planet. And I hate that because I don't think that that's uncommon. I think the community of people that I worked with and the frequency with which you would hear in that community that at a really early age, people knew what they wanted to do. And it was the sole motivating factor or purpose in their life. That is an anomaly I have found in greater society, not the norm. I think it was very atypical that I was like that.

And it was much more typical for people to drift around a little bit in their 20s. I think one of the worst things that we do for young people is this pressure to get them to have a concrete answer for what do you want to do when you grow up? You know, what if they don't have an answer? That pressure at that age to try to figure out what they're going to do for the next 20 years of their life, given the fact they haven't even lived that much time, I think it's unrealistic. And I think that you should be allowed to drift a little bit and to go from job to job

to try to determine what speaks to you, what enriches you, what empowers you. I mean, there's a reason why there's, you know, Baskin Robbins has, what is it, 31 flavors? It's not everybody likes vanilla. But you don't know that until you have tried vanilla and then you tried chocolate and then you tried strawberry and then you tried mint chip, which for clarity is the best fucking ice cream on the face of the planet. And if you disagree with that, I don't know what to tell you. Your taste buds are broken, but I digress. You have to sample those things to know which one you like and which ones you don't like. And again, the pressure at early at life to try to figure out.

and determine what flavor of ice cream is going to be the best for you for the next 10 or 20 years, slightly unrealistic. So I would say maybe give yourself a little bit of grace, take a wrap off with how much pressure you have put on yourself in the time that you have spent in your 20s, because I bet you do have a better idea of who you are. You did find things that you enjoyed and things that you didn't, and you were able to make decisions because of that. And you will also be able to make informed decisions into your future because of those experiences.

So maybe you didn't waste as much time as you necessarily. necessarily thought. But this goal for you of joining the National Guard, at this point, the impediment to your success seems physiological. You have to go figure that out and don't delay in doing so. Figure out whether or not it's even going to be possible for you to continue down that path. And if it's not, you're going to have to do some work on yourself to make peace with the fact that you may not get your foot in the door. But, and this is something I've talked about many times on the podcast for those who reach out and say, I never join the military. I feel like, you know, I'll never be able to forgive myself. What can I do now? And my answer to that is always the same. There are so

many different ways that you can serve. Some of them allow you to wear a uniform and others don't. You can serve locally in your community. You can be a leader in the community that you live in. And that could be anything from volunteering at the church you go to to being an assistant coach on a kid's sporting team and being a positive role model and people you actually interact with on a day to day level, the ripple effect of being that positive influence so they can be positively influenced and that rock continue to roll down the hill or the ripple theory to go back to what I just said. I'm not saying that's necessarily going to be easy, but the military is one option to serve among many.

Don't forget that. And don't wrap yourself too hard around the axle about the time you have spent in the past. But get yourself to a doctor and figure out physiologically what could potentially be going wrong. Last question for the day. And this topic has been blowing up my inbox for about the last 10 days. What would you say to someone in the military who's excited about potentially going to war over Ukraine so they can. in air quotes or in actual quotes, get some. And I'm going to add to this a lot of people reaching out for my thoughts on what is going on in Ukraine.

And some people actually reaching out to me saying, how can you be so quiet during this time? How can you not be making a statement about what's going on in Ukraine? And perhaps I'll start my answer to this question there. The reason that I haven't been vocal about what's going on in Ukraine is that I am not an expert about Ukraine or the Soviet Union or any potential tension between those two nations. I have access to the same information that everybody else does through the same sources that everybody else does. I don't have any secret recipe or sauce to understand what's going on there. So I am trying to figure out more about the conflict just like everybody else is.

And I don't feel like I am in a position to say anything about it. And in addition to that, I have watched very quietly people on social media trying to use what is going on in Ukraine as a method to gain followers on social media. They want to be this real-time commentary. They want to be the go-to for their inside information about what's going on there. and at the end of the day, what it really looks like is what they're trying to do is use a crisis and what's destroying some people's lives to actually just benefit themselves and build their own platform. And I'm not, I'm not good with that at all. I would rather say nothing and sit back quietly and try to educate myself as opposed to as a poised. I don't know if that's a word, as opposed to trying to turn myself into some war correspondent.

which I'm not, and I have no business doing that, which is why I actually keep my mouth shut on this. So for people who want to know what my thoughts are on Ukraine and what's going on with Russia, from what I can tell, it seems, you know, war is a horrendous thing. And it should be a measure of last resort. it should always be the last option after all other options have been exhausted it's so sloppy it's so the opposite of being black and white of what people think it's going to be or what it should be and the rules of war and why can't we just do this and why don't you just do this all the time and people are going to die who shouldn't die and there are going to be atrocities and there are going to be

crimes and there are going to be horrendous things that happen that forever shape people's lives that are anywhere near those conflicts. And as a nation, the United States, I would hope that over the last 20 years, if I had one hope when it came to our involvement in 20 years of warfare, is that we have taken the lessons learned when it comes to the cost of committing human capital to these engagements, and we truly consider that moving. forward. I think the United States is doing a good job of supporting Ukraine by sending over one of my favorite weapon systems, the javelin, which is over there just absolutely fucking shit up because that's what javelins do. And a lot of other nations are supporting in that way.

Should the United States go over to Ukraine? I don't know the answer to that. My baseline default position is, I don't think so. I think we should use with extreme caution because of, what I had just said a minute ago. I hope that we take the lessons learned in committing human capital all over the world, and we are very and extremely judicious doing so. There are ways that we can support without committing boots on the ground. Now, to this individual, what would you say to somebody in the military who's excited about potentially going to war in Ukraine so they can get some? What I would say to you is, be very careful what you ask for. The idea of going and getting some and the reality of going and getting some can be two very different things.

Like I've already said, war is super sloppy. It's not black and white. It's not even gray. I don't even know what color it would be. And if you think that you're going to go into a kinetic environment and that that kinetic environment is always going to be one-sided and you're going to be the person on the get-some side, you're just crushing and dominating your enemy, well, maybe that'll be your experience.

Or maybe you're going to have a really shitty day. and luck is not going to be in your favor one day. And in your desire to go get some, some people that you really care about are not going to come home. Or maybe you won't come home. And it's really easy as the military member to not think about the cascading effects of that, especially in the moment where you might be the one who is getting ready to launch overseas to go do your job. But the impact and the effects are absolutely real on everybody that you're going to do your job. you leave behind. I totally understand at a very, very deep level, the desire to go and do the

job that you have been trained to do. It seems all fine and dandy until you are on the receiving end of the get some, as opposed to the delivering end of the get some. So what I would say to military members who might potentially be excited, like I said at the beginning, be very careful. what you wish for. If you touch war, it will touch you back. And the reality is, if you get into those kinetic environments, you have far less control than you actually think that you do. And the potential for it to go the opposite direction that you may want it to is absolutely

there at all times. And then that cannot be discounted. So hopefully you can temper your excitement or potential excitement with some realism. and hopefully at the end of the day, you don't end up going. And that's all I got for this Florida Friday. See you guys Monday.