EverydaySpy Podcast - Independence Day Secrets Nobody Told You

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

American independence was less about the birth of a nation and more about the survival of a people. But while history books skip the grittier details that led to the 4th of July, there is an awesome espionage lesson hidden between the pages. In this episode, Andrew explains the value and power that stress can have for making tomorrow better than today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. My family and I are spending the summer in New England, and this was a decision, this was an adventure we have been excited for for probably about the last 10 years. We've tried to make it up to Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Maine at least three times in the last 10 years, and it wasn't until this year that we were finally able to make it all the way here, and it has been absolutely worth every bit of anticipation, every bit of excitement, every bit of waiting. And I wanted to tell you this awesome story that really highlighted to me an important spy lesson that I want you to have because just this past weekend, Americans celebrated our

Independence Day, our 4th of July, the day that we declared our independence against the British back in 1776. So if I can paint a picture for you, we are, my wife and I, Ghee and I are in Boston with our two kids in early summer, which in the Northeast, early summer is kind of like early spring in the rest of the United States, because it was cold and it was gray, and it was rainy. And in Boston, it gave me a sense for why so many folks in Boston and in Massachusetts get a little bit surly and cranky because it was terrible weather. And we were there multiple days and the weather was cold and nasty in the summer for multiple days. So we took a trip into the city after waiting for the weather to break and the weather would never break.

We took a trip into Boston with the two kids and we made it a priority to go see the Boston Tea Party Museum. And it's a great museum. It's an outdoor museum if you've never seen it before. I have had no idea what to expect. Gee, he had made all the plans for us. And we got there and it was just a miserable, miserable afternoon. It was in the high 40s with a cold, steady rain that was not necessarily a downpour, but just above a misting. So it was just pelting you with cold, consistent wetness. It was so yuck. And we had these two kids that were dragging with us. Now, everybody brought a raincoat. Everybody brought the clothes that they needed. That's something that we are very proud of when we pack to go anywhere. We pack effectively. But even with the gear and the effective packing, it was still

a uncomfortable afternoon. And we get to the museum and it was a beautiful, awesome museum. Replicas of the ships that were in Boston Harbor, the night of the Boston Tea Party, everybody was in classic period outfits. The museum was small but very well appointed. and very well taken care of, even though this was just immediately post-pandemic coronavirus. And still, everybody was in a great attitude and the staff there were spectacular. Now, what humbled me was that as we were going through the museum, which meant as we were going through the outdoor exhibits, actually going from ship deck to ship deck and then into the ships themselves to see what the ships and the tea and the revolutionaries had to go through, the

night of the Boston Tea Party, we found out that the conditions that we were experiencing were almost identical to the conditions the night of the actual tea party. So think about that. What that meant is that these 120-ish American revolutionaries on a cold, miserable, wet night stormed Boston Harbor to break onto these ships and throw tea into the harbor. I was blown away when I stopped to think about what kind of condition, how unhappy, how unsettled, how angry must these people have been to leave whatever quality of life they had at the time to go into these horrible outdoor weather elements just to throw away tea that they knew was going

to make Britain the colonial power over the United States angry. And they did it anyways. And it didn't take like 15 minutes. They were out there destroying tea for six or eight hours. It was a massive undertaking the Boston Tea Party. And still, it was worth it. And what that showed me was that the American colonists must have been in some immense distress. Right.

Now, if you remember anything about the American Revolution from grade school or if you studied it separately as an adult, We know that there were all sorts of changes that had happened between 1765 and 1776. There were new taxes that were levied on American colonists. There were unfair taxes. There were new duties that were put on imports. Rights were taken away. Parliamentary procedure was taken away. And loyalist royal governors were put in place over the colonies themselves.

So there were these massive changes that made life. for the American colonists very, very difficult. It caused them distress. There's that word again, and you're going to know why I'm talking so much about distress here in a minute. But it put the American colonists under so much distress that the American colonists had to find some sort of relief. Now, the famous Declaration of Independence that happened in 1776, there's a secret meeting that nobody ever talks about that actually happened a year before that on July. 5th, 1775. And on that day, many of the American forefathers met to create something called the Olive Branch petition. And that Olive Branch petition was actually a declaration that was sent

to the King of Britain, King George, to reemphasize America's loyalty to Britain and to ask for some some relief, some respite from these terrible duties and taxis and these tyrannical activities that were making life so hard for the American colonists. So think about that. A year before we declared independence, we actually sent a letter swearing our allegiance to Great Britain. It's a misconception that our American forefathers wanted independence. That was never what they wanted. What they wanted was freedom to live a healthy, respectful. enjoyable life. That was what they wanted. 150 years before, the first pilgrims left Britain to come to the United States in search of a new and

better life. And here, the colonists who had, you know, happily been a colony for Great Britain for the last 149 years, they were happy to continue being subject to the crown. British citizens or recognized British tenants if Britain would just give them a break, give them some peace of mind, stop taking their money, taxing their tea, taxing their documents, and preventing them from being landowners. Now, what we don't know, or what many history books don't talk about, is that when that olive branch petition was sent to the king, the king got very angry. And he actually chose to dispatch 50,000 British troops to the United States.

That was the true straw that broke the camel's back was when the American colonists found out that not only was the Olive Branch Petitioner rejected, but that the king was sending troops back to the United States colonies or the U.S. colonies, the American colonies, to forcibly enforce all of the taxes, all of the duties, and all of the really strict measures that was making life so distressing for the American colonists. Just to give you an idea of what their life looked like back then, the American, the American American colonies existed just to give, just to provide exports to Britain. That's the reason the colonies existed, to send tobacco and fish and rice and grain and bread from the new world,

from New England, to Britain, because Britain had basically run out of land. They had maxed out what they could create in the UK. And now they needed, or in Britain, Great Britain, forgive me, for any British folks out there who hear me slaughtering their own history. But the reason the colonies existed was to send natural resources back to Great Britain. And in exchange for those natural resources, Great Britain would send finished products that people needed to survive back to the colonies, like glass and ceramics and clothing and shoes. In fact, one of the largest shipments ever to be sent from Great Britain to the United States during the American Revolution was actually a shipment of boots and leather souls to give the British Redcoat Army new shoes

because there was no way to create shoes or to work with leather indigenous in the American colonies. They didn't have a way. The American colonists had no way to make their own clothes, make their own shoes, make their own glass. They had to depend on Britain to import all of that into the new world. So this was the way of life for more than 100, years for American colonists. So the distress that Great Britain was putting, that the British crown was putting on American colonists at the time became so great that it essentially left our forefathers with no other choice except to pursue revolution. That is the true story of how American independence happened. It wasn't that a bunch of brave people stood up and decided that they should become,

an independent country, it was because a number of loyal citizens realized that they were in so much distress that it was time for them to make a change and pursue independence for themselves because they were not being fairly treated. They wanted freedom. They did not want independence, but they chose to pursue independence for one important reason. And that reason is the reason I want to talk about today. We've talked a lot about distress. and the distress that the American colonies were under from the British crown. Distress is something we all experience. Distress is the negative stress that you have in your life from work, from bills,

from not knowing what's going to happen. It's the stress that you get watching the news at night. But on the opposite side of distress or negative stress is something called eustress or positive stress. Now, use stress is something you don't hear about very often. You stress is the kind of stress that you get whenever you pursue something challenging, something productive, something that helps you grow or mature, something that teaches you a new skill. When you go to the gym and you exercise, you're putting yourself through eustress. When you learn a new musical instrument or a new language, that's eustress. When you spend the night up studying for an exam, that's a form of eustress,

not a form of distress. And eustress inspires. U-Stress drives and motivates. And U-S-Stress is exactly what our American forefathers, the revolutionary fathers, needed to create a movement of people willing to fight for their own independence. And that's where the independence movement in the American colonies came from. In an effort to flip all of the American colonial distress into U-Sress, to flip it from something negative to something positive, from something destructive, from something destructive.

Our forefathers created the Declaration of Independence and started an independence movement to fight against the British oppressors and motivate American colonists to take up arms and fight. Now, they couldn't be in many worse circumstances. And that's what made the use stress, what made the independence movement so successful because things literally could not get worse. There were troops already on the way from Britain. There were no privacy laws, no citizenship laws. There was no way of owning your own property that British had taken away everything from the American colonists and essentially turned them into forced labor in the New England, in the new territory. So there was no way for things to get worse.

So the independence movement was able to suggest that through a fight for your rights and your freedom and the future of your family, that you would have a chance to change the world and make your property, make your land, your home. The entire concept of fighting for freedom, fighting for independence, taking what you deserve, all of those concepts are examples of eustress, positive, productive, challenging, motivating, motivating, forms of stress. Stress that helps people sleep better at night instead of stress that keeps you up late at night. And that is the true story behind the American Revolution, behind the holiday we just celebrated on July 4th, behind every independence movement around the world. When you are able to flip distress into you stress, amazing things can happen.

And that's how the American colonials ended up being. the largest naval and military force in the world to gain their independence against the British. That's the power of eustress. When I was at CIA, eustress became a very important pillar in our training. They wanted to put us through as much eustress as possible. But what was even more valuable than the eustress that came from medical training and driving training, shooting training, and asset management and asset development training. The powerful piece of it all was when they taught us how to convert distress into use stress, because they knew

that intel officers, field officers, were always going to be under distress. You're going to live in cities. You're going to be deployed downrange to uncomfortable, dangerous, horrible places where you're going to get sick and you're going to lose sleep and you're going to be attacked by insects and you're going to be attacked by people. And if you're not careful, the distress of the environment can actually decrease your ability to perform the tasks of a field deployed intelligence officer. So they had to teach us how to flip distress into use stress. And the way that you flipped distress into use stress was by focusing on what you're trying to achieve, not focusing on what you're being subjected to. It's so much easier to stay hidden.

in the woods waiting for an asset to show up, even though you're getting bitten by bugs, even though you're soaking wet, even though you're uncomfortable, when you focus on the fact that after that meeting is over, you're going to have the key piece of intelligence that the United States needs to protect itself from some threat. Maybe it's a terrorist threat. Maybe it's a domestic threat. Who knows? But when you focus on the outcome, instead of focusing on the situation, you flip that distress into use stress. When you're saying, on alert for weeks or months waiting for someone to show up who never gets to travel outside of their country.

And you're waiting and days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months and your family is waiting for you, but they don't know where you are. The way that you flip that distress into eustress is by being as productive as you can be with the time that you have, reading classic books, learning new languages, learning a new musical instrument, getting yourself back in shape. are all forms of eustress that are productive that offset the impact, the negative impact of distress. Now, I know in your life coming out of the corona pandemic, going back to work, finding a job, getting your kids back in school, we're dealing with some of the worst heat waves that

America has seen this summer. This is all causing distress. I know that every night that you turn on your TV and watch the headline news, you are experiencing distress. Because the world has found a way to make a profit off of distress. If you can flip your distress into eustress, if you can turn off the TV and instead open up a history book or open up a language book or open up a travel book and learn something new, get excited for something you're going to do, instead of letting yourself get stressed over something that has already happened. Then you start taking all of that energy, all of that negativity that would keep you up at night

and make you drink one or two extra glasses of wine or make you eat one or two extra scoops of ice cream. You take all of that negative energy and you flip it into positive, productive value. Something that motivates you to exercise, motivates you to get up early, motivates you to try something new and maybe even start your own business. Whatever positive, productive energy you have is born from eustress. So I want you to put yourself in positions of eustress and take yourself away from distress. When you can successfully identify what distresses you and you can transform that negative energy

into productive energy with eustress, then you're doing what the professionals do in the field. Then you're on the leading edge of what elite operatives do to win against any enemy and any adversary they face against. That is the power of eustress, and that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at EverydaySpy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission.

And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.