EverydaySpy Podcast - How I Used CIA Training to Face My WORST Parenting Nightmare! | Day 6

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/4kWjrHE We all have to do hard things sometimes. Whether we choose them or they are required of us, difficult times are always ahead. As a parent and business owner, nothing has equipped me better for dealing with difficulty than one simple lesson I learned at CIA. This is that lesson… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am the proud father of a 12-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. And as much as I love looking at life through their eyes and watching them grow and watching them change, I also feel the pain that they feel when they go through those difficult transitions in childhood. And one of those transitions just happened to my son. Now, for anybody out there who has had braces, who has had their teeth corrected, who has had any kind of significant mouth trauma, this conversation is for you. Because my son is the most susceptible person in the family to terrible things happening to his mouth. When he was six years old,

he was swinging on a fence. Now, in my parenting defense, I told him that he shouldn't swing on the fence. But like any parent of a six year old, they oftentimes don't listen to you. So he swung on that fence over and over again because he got excited because he loved the fence because he loved to feel his feet swinging in the air until one day he slipped and he fell and his teeth hit the metal fence when that day happened teeth shot out of his mouth other teeth cracked his bottom jaw stopped working it kind of hung there limp and it put me and my wife into a tailspin of what do we do next because nothing that bad had ever happened to my face and nothing that bad had ever happened to her face, but here we are holding this six-year-old

who has white flecks on the ground and broken teeth in his mouth and his jaw isn't moving, and he isn't even crying because the shock of the pain and the trauma was so significant, he was just panicked about the fact that he couldn't move his jaw. So as he's making these mouthing, moaning noises to try to communicate and it's not working because his body isn't working either, we scooped him up and took him to an emergency dentist as quickly as we could. Now the good news was his jaw wasn't broken. It was just trauma from the impact that basically made his jaw lock up, his muscles lock up. But he really did lose teeth and some of his other teeth really were broken or shoved back into his jaw from the trauma.

It took months before we were able to get all the teeth removed that needed to be removed and get the other teeth back on track. And he was put into this temporary sort of mouth brace that went around his back molars and helped to guide the remaining teeth so that they would grow in the right direction and let the wounded teeth come out or heal correctly. That's when he was six. And he wore that brace for about two years until he was eight. And to this day, he has never forgotten the pain and the trauma that came from that fall. Now he's 12. And about a week ago, the dentist told him that it was time for him to get braces. Now, my son is not afraid of much. He's a very cautious boy, but he's not afraid of much.

After he heard that he was going to be put in braces, for the next five or seven days, he really started to relive the trauma of the last time he was put in a mouth brace and how painful that was. Because he had broken teeth and shattered teeth and impacted teeth that had to come out. So he associated that pain with this new experience. I spent seven years in braces when I was a kid. My teeth were total clown teeth. and my wife ended up spending about three and a half years in braces. Her teeth, while better than mine, were still kind of clownish.

So we already knew both of our kids are at some point in time going to need to wear braces to prevent us from looking British. For all of our British brothers and sisters out there, sorry to hurt your feelings. You know it's true. But my point is, we had this opportunity to explain to him the realities of what was coming instead of letting his fear from his trauma of the past take over. CIA has this concept about expressing transparent truth. The whole purpose behind this spy journal is to share with you radical transparency,

the kind of transparency that everyone looks for and very few people ever get. When you go through CIA training or when Secret Service goes through Secret Service training, they have this concept where they tell you outright up front how difficult the training is going to be. They tell you up front how likely it is that you will either quit or be kicked out, because of the attrition rate. They tell you how dangerous, how difficult, how challenging, how time-consuming, how painful the months ahead of you are going to be. Yes, part of them is testing you for tenacity and testing your persistence, your courage to move forward with the training. Absolutely. But the bigger part of it is they're doing something else. They are triggering in you

the understanding, the recognition, the acceptance that you are about to do something hard. When you know you are about to do something hard and you choose to do it anyways, it changes the way that your brain actually processes the experience itself. It can physically and chemically change what's happening in your brain so that as you start to use your cognitive functions in the moment, you already know you're doing something hard. So the pain isn't as painful because it's not a surprise. And when you're exhausted, it's not as difficult because you aren't surprised. You knew you were going to be exhausted. You knew you were going to be cold. You knew you were going to be wet.

You knew it was going to be hard. When you start thinking about quitting, it's less powerful. Because of course you were going to think about quitting. They told you from the beginning that 80% of people will quit. So in those hard moments, it can make all the difference if you knew in advance, if you were primed in advance to recognize you are about to do a hard. hard thing. In 2006, I ran a half marathon with one of the members of my family. I trained for about three to six weeks in advance to prepare myself for that half marathon. I knew the terrain. I knew

the route. I had read reviews about that half marathon in advance. I knew what parts, what miles would be the most challenging and which miles would be the most relaxing and the most enjoyable. I also had an idea that I would need to consume calories on the run to make sure I avoided cramping and to make sure that I had the energy I needed to finish to the end. And because of that, when the race came, I was able to do a hard thing and run those 13 miles and have success doing it. I actually broke my own personal record on that half marathon. But I didn't run it alone.

Like I said, I ran it with a member of my family. Now, that member of my family was excited to run the half marathon with me. That person didn't think about the fact that it was 13 miles. They didn't do the research into. seeing what the terrain or what the route would look like. They didn't do any preparation to understand about calories or eating or even hydration before the run came. So on the day of the race, when we met in the city and when we gave ourselves high fives and we hugged each other and we talked about how excited we were, they were very excited for a race. I was very prepared for the

race. As we started the race that day, we split up very early on and we promised we would meet each other at the end. I finished with a personal record. My family member barely finished at all. In fact, they were walking, limping towards the finish line at the end, supported by other people who had found them along the way and were encouraging them just not to quit on the rest of the half marathon. Now, a half marathon is challenging. It's by far not the most challenging thing in the world, but many people don't ever run a half marathon at all. My family member was one of those people that would never run a half marathon on their own. So when they came limping and walking across that finish line, that was the first time they realized how hard the thing was that they had chosen to do.

Again, you can see the difference in understanding, being primed, being prepared, being advised early on that you are about to do a hard thing, committing to the hard thing before it starts, accepting the pain, the difficulty and the challenge of the hard thing before you move forward. story started because I was talking about my son and I was talking about the pain that he has from his memories of losing his teeth when he was very young and the reliving of that trauma that was happening as I told him that he had to have braces and as he prepared for those braces. So about three days before he had to get his braces installed, I pulled him aside and I had a heart-to-heart conversation. The kind of conversation that every dad loves to have and every kid wishes our dad's had with us more

often, those conversations that you know are going to be a lifelong memory for you and you hope will be a lifelong memory for them, even though it probably won't. But I had one of those heart-to-heart conversations with my son, and I told him, look, you're about to wear braces. It is a hard thing. They will make your mouth hurt. They will make your lips swell. You'll get scrapes and cuts inside your lips. You're going to feel awkward when you smile. People are going to look at your teeth before they look at your face. You might even find girls that don't want to talk to you and boys that want to bully you. Braces are hard, but they're not as hard as what happened to you when you were six. They don't hurt the same way that losing teeth hurts. You don't have to

worry about needles. You don't have to worry about months of healing. You don't have to worry about blood. None of that is going to happen when you get your braces. And the look on his face, when I explained to him how different his fears were, you could literally see peace of mind wash over him. You could see that a few scrapes on his gums and awkwardness in front of girls and maybe even bullies, was nothing compared to the trauma of having your teeth broken out of your face like he had had in the past. And that simple act of transparency is what not only got him through the next three days, but when he took a seat in that dentist chair and when he started getting his braces, he was cool as a cucumber with a smile on his face. He communicated whenever his lips were getting

dry and whenever his tongue was getting dry. And before you knew it, the kid was out of the dentist chair with braces on his teeth and ready to rock and roll. Even more impressive, the days following his braces, he couldn't eat the same way. He couldn't eat the same things. There were even times when he was so hungry that he wanted to eat, but he couldn't eat because clenching his teeth caused him so much pain in his jawline as his teeth got accustomed to being inside the wires. Yes, I'm proud of my son. Yes, I'm even proud of myself for having a father-son conversation with him, but the most important thing here is for you, for you to understand that there are going to be difficult things ahead of you that you want to do, that you have to do, that you're assigned

to do. And that's okay. Don't be afraid of the hard thing. Instead, tell yourself at the beginning, this is going to be hard. Do the research to learn just how hard it's going to be. Whether you're learning a new technology, whether you're traveling to a new place, whether you're taking a new job, Whether you're working with somebody who has a reputation of being hard to work with, it doesn't matter. Except up front, it's going to be hard. When those hard things come, you will be able to process them better, make better decisions, have better judgment in each of those moments simply because you primed your mind to be ready

for the hard thing that you have to accomplish. I've been doing hard things for the majority of my adult life. CIA has been doing hard things for multiple decades and intelligence. officers have been doing hard things since the dawn of civilization. Hard things will never go away. But being one of the few people who can handle a hard thing well is a unique advantage that will always serve you now and forever until the day that you no longer walk this planet. And if you can exercise this bit of knowledge, if you can impart this knowledge to your next of kin, your next generation, your legacy supervisors in your company or your business, you are going to transform

the trajectory of your success simply because you are preparing people to do a hard thing before the hard thing starts. You are essentially making the hard thing less hard for them and for yourself. I'm excited to share the hard things that I have coming up in my future personally, professionally, with my marriage, with my kids, with my business. And I hope that you're excited for the hard things coming your way too. If you've learned something today that you found interesting, I hope that you'll leave a comment, like, subscribe, and share this conversation with a friend. And if you want to know more about me and how I built my business and what I'm doing at EverydaySpy, check out Everydayspy.com and I'll see you on the other side.