Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Lead the Charge - Unpacking Leadership

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

In this listener-submitted Q&A episode, I tackle two questions that touch on resilience, leadership, and the martial art that has made an impact on countless lives. The Aloha Roll jiu jitsu academy was devastated by the fires in Lahaina, what does it mean for one's mental and physical health, and how would it feel to lose such an integral part of oneself? Then, for all the service members and aspiring leaders out there, Andy shares his wealth of experience on leadership. Hear from someone who's been in the shoes of both a leader and a subordinate, and glean insights on how to be the leader everyone wants to work with. Whether you're chasing your next promotion, or facing life's challenging fires, this episode has something for you. Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

What's going on, everybody? Couple of everyone's prepping for an amazing weekend. Got plans with friends and family. You're going to suck up all the remaining summer that is left before your kids go back to school, unless they've already gone back to school, in which case, as a parent, you know what you're doing. Backflips to celebrate the fact you got a little bit of free time. Before we get into today's episode, hunting season's right around the corner.

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That's it. Let's get into some Q&A. Away we go. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, everybody, welcome back. Like I said, hopefully you are prepping for a killer weekend. we're going to dive into some Q&A. I have three questions today. They run the gambit a little bit. So let's just get right into it. Question number one. I've learned a lot of the things. I've learned a lot

from the things. You and the people you've had on your show say, and they always make me think about how I can live life to the fullest and be a better version of myself. First off, that's amazing. There's no question in there. It's a statement from somebody else. I've said this before. on the podcast, if I, if you had given me 10 years ago, if you'd give me a piece of paper and an unlimited amount of time to write down things that I thought that I would potentially do in my life versus things that I thought I would never do in my life or have no interest in, podcasting would have been on the latter category. I'd never thought it was something that I was going to do. It was never something that I thought of pursuing. And looking back at it now,

I think we're somewhere between the six to seven year mark of doing this. It is the most rewarding thing that I do. I learn about myself. I question the depths of my own beliefs on certain issues and explore the limits of those beliefs often with other guests. And for people who have asked me how I pick my guests, it's purely from a perspective of whether or not I think the conversation would be interesting. I received a few emails this morning, some specialists in the AI world in their application to health, a country music artist. and someone whose sister was in the Marine Corps. It sounds like a total badass.

And I said yes to all three, or at least tried to facilitate booking all three of them, because I think it would be interesting. And I think that I have something that I can learn. And I think that there is something that other people can learn. Now, to get to my incredibly long-winded point, emails like this and realizing that people have benefited or gained in whatever metric. trick that they would apply that to in their personal or professional life or just as a human

being is more rewarding than honestly I think anything else that I have done professionally. You know, podcasts, they don't have borders. You hit upload. It's really weird. You hit upload and you don't know where it's going to go. I don't know where it's going to be downloaded. I mean, I can look retroactively and see on the software and behind the scenes where it is being downloaded globally or in the U.S., which is cool.

but I have almost no data on who it is that is hitting that download button or who is subscribed. And it's not until I get emails like this where I truly understand the impact that it has had. And I will say that that impact is despite of me, not because of me. I'm not certainly not sitting here or staying awake at night looking at a ceiling fan, trying to thinker out, oh, what topic could I wax poetically on to try to make myself seem like I'm smarter than I am? or any of those things. I truly don't feel like an expert on anything other than a few very narrow topics and skill sets, which almost never come up on the podcast.

But I think the open and honest conversation and dialogue is meaningful to people. In emails like this and hearing things like this from people that I don't know from wherever in the world they may be is the most rewarding aspect of what it is that I do. do. Moving on. I'll cut to the Chase question. I've been in the Army for around four years now, and I have been asked to put my packet in for a promotion to a leadership role, which I am highly grateful for. But as someone who was in a leadership position for many years, what is some advice you'd give on being a better leader and one that people can work with? In parentheses, rather be the NCO, which stands for non-commissioned officer, people run to instead of run from, end parentheses. Thanks again. I hope you and Michael have a great day. First off,

Fuck Michael, right? Whether he's having a good day or not having a good day, we don't care about him, all right? He exists to flip the camera angles and look things up for us on the internet. All right, it's best not to think of him as a person. He's basically AI with a skeletal system in flesh and blood. But no feelings, no emotions. Obviously, I'm just kidding. Michael's amazing. I was actually considering for next Friday's episode sitting down, putting him on camera for the first time,

and letting him do the Q&A. So we'll see if we're actually going to end up doing that. If we do, it might be a banger. Or it might suck. I don't want to ruin his life. I don't want him stalked down the streets by paparazzi, which is not what would happen anyway, but that's what I like to tell him.

So to answer your question, I wasn't in a leadership position for many years. What I can say is one of the things I enjoy about the seal community is that officers enlisted we have the same origin point, and that is the basic underwater demolition seal course. leadership is expected, both officer and enlisted, regardless if you're an E1 or an O1 or an E3 or an O3. So there's no free pass. You don't get a pass just because you're enlisted.

And you actually, in seal training, I would say the leadership expectation is heavier on the officers. But in totality, you look back, the B of Buds is the most important. And by that, I mean it's basic. We're not asking for complex. leadership behavior, but it is expected. You know, and then you go into the community and you're an E3 or an E4 and an E5, and you're not really in a leadership position. You are expected to conduct yourself as if you are a leader. You're expected to think of yourself as a leader, being proactive instead of reactive, but it wasn't until later in my career that I got into a leadership position.

So I can't sit here and say that I spent an inordinate amount of time in that position. I would say I spent one-fifth of my career in a leadership role, a traditional via a hierarchy, a hierarchical leadership role. One-fifth of my career was spent there. The other fourth-fifths, I would say, would be the middle rungs on the ladder. And they both were enjoyable, but for very different reasons. Now, you'd rather be the NCO that people run to instead of the NCO that people run from. I think my biggest piece of advice and suggestion for you would be to find your balance. You don't want to be the person that everybody runs from, but you also don't want to be the person that everybody runs to. If you create a role for yourself where people are consistently

and constantly coming to you with everything, with the expectation that you are going to solve their problem or help them work through their issue, you are actually going to be robbing from them the work ethic and motivation that they are going to need to develop to be successful later on. If you, and I say this broadly, if you work on a team and you find yourself constantly doing everybody else's job as opposed to having the hard conversations with the other people, and it doesn't actually have to be a hard conversation. If you really want to dig into leadership. I've heard a variety of different ways that it is described or what it actually means. Oh, let's reduce motivation, or not motivation. Let's reduce leadership down to one word.

What could it be? I've heard influence, which is pretty accurate. And let's just go with that one. Influence. If you're a leader, how can you influence the people around you? If you see subpar behavior, should you just step in and do the job for them? What is that from an influence perspective? Is that a rising tide lifts all boats perspective or is that a get the fuck out of the way and I'm going to do this and develop a mindset in the person that was pushed out of the way? Well, when push comes to shove, I don't actually have to do this because I know this person will. Again, I'm not going to use terms like right or wrong. Let's use terms like better or worse. In the long run, being a micromanager is worse for yourself as a leader and for everybody else around you.

And I say that. I think the most insidious thing about being a micromanager is that it develops other micromanagers underneath you. It robs ingenuity. It robs people's desire to be creative because what they're waiting for at all times is for somebody else to come in and say you need to do it like this in this timeline. And these are the steps that you need to follow. And actually just get out of the way and I'm going to do it for you. you're going to rob your people of their ability to find whatever in their, who they are makes them click and drives them at the log on the fire of their motivation to get the job done. Are people going to make mistakes? Yes, they are going to make mistakes.

Am I saying that the opposite of micromanaging is that you don't pay attention to your people? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is you need to find a balance. And for most leaders, I would start you off at a basic record. recommendation of 80-20. 80 being the amount of time, 80% of the time you are focusing on having your head up and out looking at issues that are at your level from a leadership or a managerial role. 20% of the time you're down and in with your people making sure that they have the tools that they need to do their job, that they understand what their job is. Roles and responsibilities and

expectations are understood and you can course correct and orient them if they're drifting off of course. Your job as a leader is not to do other people's job. Your job as a leader is to actually lead. And 80-20 before people get that, you know, written in stone or tattooed on their forehead is a guideline. Maybe for some people it needs to be 70-30, depending on the maturity level and experience of the people that you're working with. Maybe it needs to start at 50-50. By suggestion, is to skew it back more towards that 80, 20 as fast as possible. And maybe you net at a 9010. Maybe you net at a 955. If you're working with a team of very seasoned individuals that know the job well and require very little oversight in interaction to accomplish their job. It's actually an

amazing thing as a leader when you can get yourself to that place because then you can truly focus on making like the macro steps that an organization or team, needs to make to evolve to the next level, to continue to succeed and excel. You're really looking at big picture items while the rest of the people that are working for you and with you are looking at the micro steps that make those macro steps possible. It's an amazing thing, but it takes time and it takes practice. So you're going to have to find a balance. You don't want to be the person that everybody runs to with their issues. You want to be the person that people come to with solutions more than they come to with problems. If people come to you and they're constantly saying,

hey, what do you think I should do? That is a bad sign. I would orient people more towards coming to you with, hey, this is what I see as an issue or a problem or something that we need to accomplish. And this is what I think we need to do to be successful or to accomplish this. They are being a proactive thinker versus a reactive thinker. And the role you're in, I don't know if they're going to have you laterally transfer outside of your department or outside of your command if you do get this leadership position. But it can be challenging because if they're not going to laterally transfer you, you're going to go from being in a pool of your cohorts to now being in a leadership position over the top of those same people. And there are 100% going to be relationships that preexist your leadership position that you are going to have to have to. to balance and manage. And again, this goes back to finding this balance between being somebody that

is approachable, but then also being somebody who can hold the line and clearly, broadly and fairly apply the standards to everyone. What you do not want to have is a standard that is unequally applied. Whether somebody is your friend, right, because you were a week ago, you were in the same department working with them and now that you are overseeing that department one of the worst things that you can do as a leader is to have two different individuals let's say they fall short for the same reason but the application of the standard or the corrective measure or punishment whatever term that you would want to use is applied differently do not lie to yourself and think that you can get away with that if you apply it differently everybody

who works underneath you is going to see that and it's going to instantaneously be a problem. Your integrity is going to be eroded. The trust that people have underneath you is going to be eroded and you are going to have an uphill battle to work your way back to a place where you can maintain that trust and integrity. As a leader, I think one of the fastest things or one of the quickest ways to you erode your integrity and trust is to say one thing and do another. And you can apply that to the situation that I just laid out there. You can say, hey, here's the standard, but then you can do another. You can say that this is the standard, but apply it differently to one person and then to another. So if the standard is applied unequally, what is the actual standard?

It's confusing to people, and it's undermining to your position. You're going to have to find a balance. And I know with this email, you're probably looking for a step-by-step, like how-to. I can't give that to you. Because everybody, everybody responds differently to leadership styles. And I know very little about you, other than the five sentences that you wrote in. I know very little about the situation that you are in. But what I do know about your situation is that you have leaders around you right now. And I think a valuable exercise for you would be, if you do actually continue with this and put your promotion package in and hopefully you get accepted for it. Use the examples of leadership that you already have around you to determine what it is that

you have found to be effective and ineffective, what it is that you as an individual like in certain leaders and what you dislike in others in leadership positions. And then you can kind of create a template for yourself. Oftentimes for me, I've actually found it's difficult to identify good leadership qualities and characteristics. It's not impossible. It's harder because you see somebody who really effectively and seamlessly can navigate any type of leadership challenges and environments with a variety of people working underneath them. It can be hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that they're doing that makes them so successful. The other side of that is, of course, the train wreck.

and identifying poor leadership characteristics has always been easier for me because the train wreck is a little bit easier to do a post mortim on. Like, wow, that guy's a fucking asshole. He doesn't care what other people think. He gets emotionally involved in everything that he is involved with, whether it's a simple problem or a complex problem. He's not interested in feedback. The guy's behavior seems to be defined by his ego. Those things are really easy to point out. pay attention to them. Look at the environment you operate inside of right now. I suspect that you have a mentor locally, wherever you are that you sent this email from or whatever duty station that you may be attached to, leverage those things.

I would sit down with your current leadership now and have conversations about leadership, what they have found to be successful, what they have found to be a pitfall or a mistake. And again, I'm not going to use terms like right or wrong. There's better or worse. Some people really do respond better to negative feedback, negative reinforcement. But that is not a broadsword that I would recommend anybody use widely. That's a scalpel. That's a scalpel for a very small kernel of individuals that you better use judiciously

because you can absolutely turn off almost everybody else who doesn't respond well to that. But on the same note, you know, constant positivity and praise and only positive. positive feedback, you can turn off a lot of people with that as well. So it's about finding a balance. And I wish I wish that you are that I could provide for you an ABC checklist and I just don't think it's possible. The best piece of advice, I'll go back to what I opened with, is finding a balance. You are going to have to manage personal and professional relationships, which is not impossible, but it can be challenging. You'll have to find a balance between being approachable for all issues and holding an expectation that people solve issues to a certain level and then can

come to you for a higher level of responsibility or feedback. It's a stereo scale where you can move things up and down as needed. And honestly, when it comes to leadership, if you have 50 people, you might have 10 versions of that stereo scale. People are different. They respond different ways, and it's going to take time. Do not expect yourself to be perfect in your first leadership position or role, and also don't expect other people to be perfect either. So have some grace for yourself and have some grace for your people as well as you learn and grow into this. Hopefully that's helpful.

All right. Second one. This email comes to me from somebody in Lahaina. Anybody who's been anywhere near social media or traditional news outlets over the last week or so is probably aware that Maui, specifically the Lahaina area, area of Maui portions of it burned to the ground. It looks like an absolute catastrophe and disaster area because I think it meets the criteria for both of those. It's horrendous. The loss of life catastrophic. And I don't even think they've even come near the total tally that it's going to

be structural loss, the value, you know, people, places, things, pets, horrendous. And I actually had been to Lahaina. I went there last November, so almost a year ago with my wife and my son and my business partner and his partner and our very dear friends from Chicago. And my wife and my son learned how to scuba dive. And we stayed at a house in Lahaina. And we did a lot of diving in Lahaina. And we rented gear from a scuba shop in Lahaina. And all of those things are gone now. Which is hard to wrap your head around. While we were there, also we went to a jiu-jitsu gym called Aloha Roll. And this particular email comes from somebody from that gym. And I'm hesitant to answer this question and I'll explain why in a minute. So I'll read it

first. We lost our Jiu-Jitsu Academy to the Fires in Lahaina this week. The name was Aloha Roll run by Professor Gilberto or Gibearto. Hard to say sometimes when the L is there hard, if you will, or when it's silent. As you know, Jiu-Jitsu is a source of both mental and physical health. I'm a longtime listener and Coast Guard veteran. And all I'm asking, for as a shout out or any ideas. Thank you and hope to see you at Worlds in Vegas. I won't be there, but my wife Leah will be. I'm going to be trying to kill an elk while she is competing in the black belt category.

A good question for your Q&A is, what does Jiu-Jitsu mean to Andy Stumpf? And what would it mean to lose it? I think your listeners would love to hear your perspective. And with this, he added the website to Aloha Roll. And I do believe that there is a GoFundMe for Aloha role. and I'll save that until the end when it comes to people wanting to make a difference and wanting to have an impact and what they can offer currently as money and what should they do with it. So I'll end this particular question with that. Let's talk about the jiu-jitsu aspect and this is why I'm hesitant to answer this question.

I've been training now for just over five years. I just crossed the five-year anniversary this month, actually. And I had heard about jiu-jitsu well over a decade ago. And I was so utterly and completely resistant to trying it because of the way some people talked about it. It was everything that they could talk about. It was all that they could talk about. They would just, it was like they were preaching the gospel or a sermon when they talked about jujitsu. They were so enthusiastic and so overbearing talking about it that it actually turned me off to being interested.

And because of that, my own experience, I try to be super cautious about how I talk about it. It is meaningful to me. And it is very important in my life. But I try to be sensitive about any of the things that I personally do in my life and any of the things that I like in my life. Because I realize that if you get overboard with it, if you are out there just preaching about the thing that is important to you, instead of having the impact that you may want it to have, you can actually push people away. So I try to be judicious in the way that I talk about it. I train almost every day.

I train on average about two hours per day, almost every day of the week, because my schedule allows me to do so. And I've actually crafted my schedule to make sure that I can do those things because it is important to me. But I realize not everybody's going to feel like that. And to some people, it's wholly uninteresting. So I pick and choose the questions that I will answer about it when it comes to Full Auto Friday stuff. I will sit down with jiu jihitsu practitioners and talk to them about it because I do think it's impactful and I do think it exposes people.

I just am cautious with what it means to me because in my own enthusiasm, I don't want to tune people out. So to answer your question, actually, let's go a little bit up here. As you know, jih Tjitsu is a source of both mental health and physical health. What I'm going to say is I would throw an asterisk on that. For some people, it can be. For other people, it can actually be the tool that they use to hide from their mental health. It can be an activity that they lose themselves in instead of dealing with what they need to deal with.

And I get this insight, not from my own personal experience, but in conversations with my wife. My wife is a two-stripe black belt. She was a world champion in the adult division at Blue Belt. I think she meddled it purple and she's a multi-time master's black belt champion. And she has been coaching for over a decade. And she has talked about her own experiences and the experiences of others of using Jiu-Jitsu as an escape, not as a tool to develop or refine your mental health. There are other activities that I have done that focus your attention so closely into the moment. that you can pay attention to nothing else.

No other problem in your life is important. You just truly don't have the bandwidth to think about it because if you make a mistake in that environment, you're going to die. Wing suit base jumping is a good example of this. When your toes are on the edge and you're zipped up in your nylon straight jacket with your magic backpack on, if you are not thinking about the next one to three seconds of your life,

you are in a very dangerous headspace. And if you can find something that allows you to focus to that level of granularity. It is amazing the relief that you can feel by not being bombarded with the stress that we all have in daily life. I call it like that static. If you were just to turn up a stereo, just a burr. Imagine being saturated with that for years and then finding something that allows you to mute that for a little bit. It's an amazing thing.

It can clear your head. And in my own experience when it comes to wingsuit base jumping, it would do exactly those things. And the mistake I think that can be made, both in that environment, even though there are far fewer people who participate in that than in Jiu-Jitsu, I've heard the same thing described by people in jujitsu. It allows them to shed all of the other stress or issues or concerns or worries that they may be having in their life in that moment. and it gives them a sense of peace while they are out there participating in that activity. I am not an expert in mental health. I'm not a psychiatrist, psychologist, any of those things. So this is just me talking through my own experiences here.

I think personally from what I have seen, both in myself and in others, the mistake is you find something that gets you to that place and you think that it solves the problems. And it doesn't. it allows you to escape from those problems for a little bit from the perspective of thinking about them or being bombarded by them. But if you don't actually take the time after that activity is over to still focus on your problems, you're just kicking the can down the road. There are some things when it comes to jiu-jitsu when it talk about mental health. You know, continuous and never-ending learning. You will have to learn how to deal with failure. Your ego is going to get absolutely smashed while your physical body is getting smashed, especially when you are starting.

You're going to internally recognize in yourself when you're avoiding rolling with people because it's a harder role versus an easier role. And in my own opinion, you should go after those harder roles because that's where the growth can be gained, both in your technique, your jiu-jitsu, your physical attributes, your mental health. So all of those things are there, but you could also completely look. lose yourself in the activity and do no work on your mental health whatsoever. And you could be an absolute savage on the mats and a fucking mess off of them. And that is what I have heard described from my wife many times. So it can't be used as this prescription for mental health. It can be used as a tool that I think can help you address mental health issues that can put

you into a place where perhaps you'd be more malleable or susceptible to coaching and conditioning and help and training from a professional that can help you work through issues by maybe opening a cracking a door that you can walk through by participating in the activity. But I don't want anybody to be confused that the activity itself is what provides mental health. I disagree with that very deeply. I do think it puts you into a place or allows you a portal to a place where you could work on them effectively, but it requires additional steps outside of jiu-jitsu. Physical health, I absolutely think it provides a great level of physical health.

People ask me all the time, like, do I need to get in shape to start jiu-jitsu? My answer to that is no. Wherever you are right now, if you have the ability to move, I would recommend doing it. I've talked to so many people who tell me they need to get in shape before they start jiu-suitz. I personally think that's an excuse. But if you want to give yourself excuses or lie to yourself, go ahead. It's not for me to correct the course of your life. It's for you to do that.

You're the only person with the hands on the wheel. You can start doing jiu-jitsu if you are physically able to move. So what does it mean to me? The biggest thing to me, and again, everything I say from here on out or until I clarify further is just my own personal experience. What I love the most about jiu-jitsu is that I don't think you can master it. It is a never-ending. It's a treadmill of, it's a treadmill.

It's a treadmill of education, not a set of stairs that is fixed in place. And once you get to the top, that's it. You've gone from the first floor to the 10th floor. And when you get to the top of the building, you stand above everybody and you survey the peasants and you lord over them. That is from what I can tell the exact opposite. It's a treadmill that is set on a really low incline. And once you step on it, you just keep walking. and maybe you get to the 10th floor.

And by that, the 10th floor is only your 10th floor. I think the biggest mistake is people comparing their 10th floor to somebody else's or the 9th or whatever it may be. But it just never ends. And I am fascinated by things that are like that. I love things that are impossible to master because I like learning. I would describe myself as a relatively curious person. And I like doing things that challenge me. I have never had a day in five years.

years of doing jiu-jitsu where I did not have a challenge that was either physical or mental or both. Most often, it's both. On Sundays, your head, you just seem like you're clicking, but it's still physically challenging. You're getting a workout in. You leave feeling better about yourself than you did going in, assuming that you can actually leave what happened on the mats, on the mats, which you absolutely should. I think it's easily forgotten that you're out there participating in a rule set, in a constrained environment, in a uniform, with your friends, with people that are not actually

hopefully trying to hurt you. They're out there. You're training partners and you're training each other. You know, jih Tzu is something that you can't do by yourself. It's an individual team sport. You progress at the pace that you progress at, but you need other people to train with to do so. And it's easy to develop a grudge. You know, there's a guy out there that, a gal that just kicks your ass every single time and you confuse what. what's happening on the mats with who they are as a person. Or what happens on the mats is taken off of the mats and your personal relationship with that individual is strained

because of what happens on the mats. And for most people, I think it's easy to separate the two and not, you know, don't take work home with you or don't take what happens on the mats home with you. Easier said than done in some cases, but the more that you can do that, the healthier it's going to be for you. So it's this challenge that pushes me physically.

I feel better as a as a person. I think I can for me, and I've said this many times and I'm generally quite open about it, there is a direct link for me personally between physical activity in my mental health. The times that I have struggled the most with my mental health are the times that I have been unable to physically work out. And the ability to train a couple hours every day with my friends in an environment that I enjoy does great things for me both physically and mentally. What I'll say is you don't.

need a gym to find a community of people that you can train with. Aloha Role was super cool. I love the fact that we were able to go in there. It was a beautiful gym. It was very clean. The members were awesome. The coaching staff was awesome. And I hate to see people losing that infrastructure. But don't confuse infrastructure for community. I have trained in people's garages. I've trained in my own garage. I've trained out on my patio. We have a private training facility that we use and it's less about where you train and more about the people that you are training with. So I know that this infrastructure loss sucks. And my recommendation for the people at Aloha role is find a way to train with each other. Keep that community intact until you can find a second piece

of infrastructure. And I think it will help you that physical and emotional and mental challenge will help you deal with the absolute horrendous catastrophe that many are dealing with. specifically in Lahaina. For me, it would be very difficult if I lost Jiu-Jitsu because it has become a staple of my physical activity in my life. But what I'll say is this, if I did lose it, if something happened where I was unable to continue to train, because I can identify in myself the need for physical movement and its association with my mental health, I would find a different activity. Be cautious, becoming overly dogmatic about one thing and just planting this anchor in the ground and convincing yourself that it is the end all be all. I'm not sure that there is anything

in life that is the end all be all. And I would put Jiu-Jitsu in that category as well. It's an amazing thing to participate in. But in the absence of Jiu-Jitsu, my advice to you and what I would do myself is find something else to keep me physically active. In the meantime, to bridge me until I could find that community or infrastructure or until I could find what it is I was going to devote my time to next. Like I said, I trained two hours a day. Let's say for whatever reason, Jiu-Jitsu got wiped off the face of the earth here in Calispell, Montana, I would find in that two-hour time period something for me to do that probably would net me less of a reward from a physical and mental perspective, but enough of a reward that I could continue to add things or subtract things

or allocate more time elsewhere to replace it, whether that be hiking or some people want to go into a CrossFit gym and do something that's a really high intensity to get that physical and mental stimulus from that, or archery or, fuck, off-road mountain bike riding or dual sport motorcycle riding. It would be physical in nature and I would allocate that time. Having said that, it would suck because it's an activity that my wife deeply loves and has meaning in her life. And I love the fact that we are able to share it. And we have like a shared vernacular of things that we can talk about, shared experiences. We can do it together.

I'm not allowed to win, which is a mistake that I learned by accident for the couples out there that do jujitsu for the guys. even if you can win, consider the consequences. Is it worth it? Is the off-the-mat frustration worth the on-the-mat victory? Survey says no. So it's still something that is meaningful in her life, very meaningful in my life, but it's not irreplaceable. but it would be it would be it would be a hit for sure and I do I would advocate that people start training for one people's assessment of how they are going to react and behave in certain

environments baffle me specifically around violence people's perceived self-perceived capacity at violence their capacity and ability in any level of violence. And I've actually, I've seen and heard this when it comes to projectile-based environments and physical-based environments. Most people would rate themselves, themselves, I'm going to throw out a random number here that I have no data to support, but it's totally based on what I've seen and heard. I would say most people would rate themselves at a level of three to five times at a minimum

beyond what their actual capabilities are. Oh, you know, I'm just going to see red. I'm a game time player. Like I bought a pistol and I have a fanny pack or a concealed carry permit and I carry inside the waistband and I'm ready for a gunfight. And if it ever pops off, I'm going to be ready and I'm just going to handle my business. I'm not saying that you wouldn't. I'm saying that there is a massive difference between what people think they are capable of versus what they are really capable of. And one of the things I like about Jiu-Jitsu is that is strip draw almost immediately.

You slap hands with somebody who's been at it for a year and a half to two years or even beyond that. And if you don't leave scratching your head, there might be something wrong with you because you're going to get manhandled. You're going to get controlled by people that are smaller than you that are weaker than you. If you're a dude, you might get manhandled by a woman, which can be a very humbling experience. And it can leave you walking out, quietly driving home with the radio off, questioning the life decisions that you've made. But that just puts you in a place where you have a choice that you can make that could have an amazing impact on your life. my my my suggestion for people when it comes to violence is expose yourself to it before you're put in a real world situation now don't confuse jiu-jitsu schools with violence because again you're on mats cushion mats with probably cushion mats on the walls with people that probably care about you in an environment that is structured for learning that there's going to be a competitive aspect to it but there's a rule set you both agree to participate in it that is not the level of violence that you're going to encounter when you see somebody who is drunk at a bar who's acting a fool, which my suggestion to that would be to walk away and avoid it at all costs.

But don't confuse rolling around on the ground with your friends with a high level of capacity in actual violence. You know, on concrete, on asphalt, you probably don't want to be rolling around as it is. You'd probably be better off keeping it on your feet as long as possible. And if since, you know, you're on your feet, run the fuck away. There's a good idea for you. It's an exposure to violence and it's a skill set that you can apply in the real world. But just please don't lie to yourself and think that because you put on your magic pajamas three days a week for two hours that you are Stephen Seagall walking around with the ability to beat the shit out of every human being on Earth. It's a great exposure.

And trust me, you will do far better in the real world with training than you will without. Now exposure to gun violence. That's a tougher one. I mean, you can go to shooting courses and stress tests. and all of those things. And my recommendation is to, you know, practice in the equipment and configuration that you are going to be wearing throughout your daily life, not your high speed gun belt, even though there's nothing wrong with those things.

But unless you're walking around with one of those on, what is the training that you're doing and what is it you're actually applying it to? So be realistic and expose yourself to those things. And I don't even know how the fuck I got on this tangent. But that's as far as exposure goes. I do want people to train. I think, one, when you are exposed to violence, you realize you don't actually want to be violent because it sucks. You can win and still go to the hospital.

You can win and still go to court and lose everything. And that's just absolutely not worth it. And, of course, there's that physical and mental health associated with it. Does it have to be jihitsu? No. Would it be the end of my life if I lost it? No. Would it have a hit for me and would I miss it absolutely?

I would. And anybody who sticks with it for longer than six months? or a year, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say the opposite. So my advice is, give it a try. Or don't. It's up to you. But find something in your life that is a physical anchor that hopefully allows you to find that place where you can turn down the static volume a little bit. And then when the static comes back, deal with those things that perhaps is making it that loud. Don't lose yourself in an activity under the guise of mental health. when you're not actually addressing the mental health.

You're actually avoiding the issues that you need to deal with. And I say that as somebody who's absolutely done that. So that's it. I'm going to end my rant for today because I have no idea how the fuck what I just said ties to Jiu-Jitsu. Hopefully it does. And see you all on Monday. And for those you who are about to be out in origin camp next week in Maine, see you guys there.