EverydaySpy Podcast - The #1 Trait I Learned from CIA | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 25

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Some of the most impactful skills CIA taught me and Jihi had nothing to do with weapons, locks, or lies. In this episode, we are excited to share what we learned about building, training, and improving personal courage. It's not what you think, and not at all what the movies make it look like. Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The thing that changed my life about being a CIA officer was what they taught me about courage. The lesson in courage was so powerful to me that I've taken it with me everywhere. We started defining the core values for our company. Without a doubt, courage was the first one that came to my mind. Like, of course you're going to be honest. Of course you're going to provide something of value to people. Courage is truly optional. Like, courage really is something that you can choose to ignore or avoid.

I'm in a new state, in a new hotel room. I have been on the road for another week, and I'm still not coming home for another week. My love, I miss you. I miss you, and I love you, and I miss the kids, and I miss the North Florida fall when it gets so beautiful in our backyard, has like perfect sunsets. Yeah. Yeah. Don't feel sad for me, but feel a little bit sad for me. We miss you, too.

Although I was telling somebody yesterday that I see the pictures you post on like the locations you're at. And they're just stunning. And I'm like, oh, I really wish I was with Andy, but kind of without the kids. Well, yeah, there's, I mean, there's upsides and downsides to traveling. And, you know, now that I'm traveling to make television shows, you know, it's really quite impressive. I mean, this week alone, I found myself scaling a mountain, climbing. climbing through caves, on boats across rivers, I mean, just stunning, amazing locations that most people pay to go on vacation to do.

And I'm doing it, and it's all documented by like five professional cameramen, right? So it's been a real privilege and a real treat, but at the same time, it is work. Yeah. And that's, you know, I never thought a travel show would be so much work until I did one. but I'm also like, I'm notorious about underestimating how challenging things are going to be. I think that's true. That's a fact. I remember when I first started learning how to fly with the Air Force,

I was like, I want to be a pilot because it's going to be like, it's going to be like top gun. It's going to be like, what was the other, there was another famous Iron Eagle from when we were kids. I've never seen that movie. Fighter plane movie. It must be a boy movie. And then I learned how to fly, and it was nothing like Top Gun. And it was nothing like Iron Eagle. It was all about can you fly at a certain altitude for a certain period of time

and check your instruments every 15 minutes because every ounce of gas that you spend in the airplane has to be accounted for by some accountant who works for the government. And it was just, it was absolutely mind-numbing. Yeah. So it's funny because when I watch Beyonce and Walker Ranch and I see the, you know, they have beautiful video, like B-roll of like the vistas and all these things. And I mean, there's like four seconds here, three seconds there. And you're like, yeah, that took us 12 hours to shoot. So that's what Top Gun is, right? Top Gun, like, it's all the exciting, you know,

two minutes of excitement. But you really have a 12-hour day where you're like, you know, logging your flight plan and like checking your whatever and like going through all your checklist, you know. They just, they have to cut all that part out. Nobody wants to see. It's true. I was reading an interview from the cast of the second Top Gun movie, the most recent Top Gun movie. And they were talking about how difficult it was because to get, just like you're saying, to get that two or three second reaction shot where they're in a cockpit and they turn their head, right? Like that one shot took multiple takes of a high speed jet and they're in a jet and they're just actors. And they're not used to all. All of the G forces that happened to you in an airplane. So they were talking about how they would get sick at night and how they would lose their lunch and how miserable it was

and how much training it took, like physical training. Yeah. And I could, I was, I mean, a little bit in my heart, I was laughing at it because I was like, what the hell did you think it was going to be? Like, did you think it was going to be easy? You're going to sit in a plane and just turn your head? No.

Those things move fast. They're freaking machines of war. Yeah. So I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself, like 43 years into my life that now I know anytime somebody says, we're going to do this great thing. It involves a boat or a plane or driving through windy mountain roads. I have enough experience now to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I am going to yak all over you. Like, I'm sure that's really exciting. There's no way I'm going to make it. So it's funny because that just

happened. I just reserved us a boat trip for New Year's Eve and sent you the message. Yep, I know you did. So somehow after 13 years of marriage, I still haven't learned that anything with a boat, a plane, or windy mountain roads is going to get rejected. Just for me, though, I'll hang out. But I did want to do, it kind of touches on the topic that I wanted to talk about today because I wanted to do something a little bit different today, which if you were saying that to me, I'd be like, oh, but me saying that to you, I'm pretty sure.

sure you're excited. So I figure Andy can wing it. So this is so, so I'm sorry, time out real quick for a marriage moment. Because I can't even ask you to change what time we're going to the grocery store today. Like if I ask you for any kind of change, it's grinding gears and it's like it's a massive risk in our day. Otherwise, I'm going to upset you, make you angry. and then you're not going to like me tonight when I want you to like me tonight. Yep. But the other way around, like, I like you a lot right now. It's really kind of hard to be so far away from you right now.

You're asking for spontaneous changes to the schedule. Oh, I'm glad you like it. You'll have to cash it in in, what, 10 days when I see you? Oh, my gosh. Just remember. Don't remind me. I'll put a reminder in the calendar. We'll schedule it.

So what did you want to talk about? I'm so curious now. What's the change? So we've been working a lot on our business and there's been this recurring theme that I keep seeing everywhere. And then I was going through our Q&A that our viewers send us and there were a handful of questions that I thought this idea that I've been thinking about for so long now could apply to. So I thought we can make today a little bit more like audience focused and answer, you know, more than one question today, but through the lens of this topic and the topic is courage. So courage is one of the core values of everyday spy. Courage is also one of the core values of the CIA, right? Is it really? Yes. So the values.

I never put that together. Because because the integrity value is so beat into us at the CIA that we've forget about all the other ones. So the Central Intelligence Agency core values are integrity, service, excellence, courage, teamwork, and stewardship. Stewardship is the one that I always, I mean, I never remember. I didn't know what that means, and I work there. Well, we're stewards of the, of national security, right? So, you know, courage as defined, you know, by the dictionary has, you know,

If you Google it, the definition, there's two different definitions, right? One is the ability to do something that frightens you. And I think that, you know, when we're thinking about everyday spy, that's the definition of courage that we really latch on to as one of our core values. But the other one... And I'm sorry to interrupt, but, I mean, coming out of CIA, the thing that changed my life about being a CIA officer was what they taught me about courage. Like that's near and dear to me personally.

Yeah. And I remember the transformation of being a 27-year-old boy, because let's be honest, right? Yeah. At 25, 26, 27, we're not who we are in our 40s. Right. We're not even who we are in our late 30s. Yep. We're still like just kids.

Yeah. But the lesson in courage was so powerful to me that I've taken it with me everywhere. So when we started working like you were saying, when we started defining the core values for our company, without a doubt, courage was the first one that came to my mind, which is really funny because integrity and service, which like you said, were absolutely tortured into us at CIA, just beaten into us. Not for a second did I ever think about those as meaningful core values? Because they're so, to me, they're just like built in. Like, of course you're going to be honest. of course you're going to provide something of value to people. Why would you even need to say that?

But courage was truly, courage is truly optional. Like courage really is something that you can choose to ignore or avoid. And the thing that really struck me, I think what got me thinking about it so much was we were talking to a friend of ours. And he was saying that the reason he liked courage as a core value in particular is that courage isn't necessarily something you have to be born with. Courage is something that anybody can learn to have, right? And I thought that was so powerful because courage has resonated with so many people that

we've talked to, like the ability to be courageous has really resonated with, I mean, a surprising amount of people to me, honestly. So the fact that he pointed out that courage is something any of us can have, any of us can build up to, it's a skill that any of us can attain. I thought that was super powerful. That is awesome. That's awesome perspective. And that's exactly. I mean, I learned it. Yeah. I think I had the like the seeds or the sprouts of courage when I was in high school and when I was going through college.

But I mean, I was always the one that didn't speak up and kind of stayed in the back and kept my ideas to myself and was always afraid of asking the stupid question. Like I remember that first definition of courage that you were talking about very well, like not step, not stepping into. to the discomfort, not doing what I was afraid of. Right. It was something that I absolutely had to learn through a process at CIA. Right. And it's something that I'm actively trying to teach to our kids. So our kids have up until now shared a room, but they've come to a point where they really

kind of want their own space. But at night, when you turn off the lights, they're afraid. And so I've been working the last two weeks to get them comfortable in their own room. but I'm teaching them courage and I'm having to figure out along the way as all parenting tasks are, right? You're figuring out along the way, how do I teach them courage? How do I get them to be courageous at night when I turn off the night, you know, the light and I say good night and I leave the room? So it's just been this this recurring theme throughout my life in the last couple of weeks or so. It's been, you know, just like this, it's in my thoughts constantly now.

hurt. And so I absolutely want to hear more about how this, uh, this idea crashes into the questions that we've been getting from our audience. But the first thing I want to highlight is that, you know, when you talk about teaching the kids courage, our kids are so different. Oh, yeah. The two of them are so very different, right? Our son is a very sensitive boy. And that sensitivity makes it so that he actually has a very low threshold. Hold on, a very high threshold. Yes, a very high threshold of what scares him. He doesn't, because he doesn't think about it. Like, he'll just kind of stumble into something frightening and then look around and realize he's terrified, right? He'll pick up a book that looks interesting and he'll read the back cover and then

he'll start reading the book. And then it's not until page like 50 that he's like, I'm scared. Exactly. He'll watch a movie and not even like, like Sina, this is a movie about a war where lots of people die and there's killing and there's blood. Yeah, I know, dad, but it's also about ninjas. Yeah. I just, I mean, to get to the ninja, you've got to wade through a lot of killing death and

murder to get there. Yeah, I'll be fine. And then 20 minutes in, he's like, I will never forget when the first time he watched me TV. Do you know what I'm about to say? The yeah, I do remember. The first time he watched me on TV, we had only gotten like four minutes into the episode. And the music in the show was building tension towards this big reveal. There was no big reveal because it was a TV show and it was a teaser, right?

But for him, just the music caused him fear. Yeah. Our daughter, on the other hand, is like brazen, and she has very few things that actually scare her. And the reason I bring this up is because courage is facing the thing that scares you. It doesn't matter whether lots of things scare you or only a few things scare you. You still have to face the things that scare you in order to be courageous. If you only do things that don't scare you, but they scare other people, that's not the same thing as courage. Right.

Right. That's just you not being afraid of what other people are afraid of. Like maybe you're afraid of snakes and I'm afraid of spiders. That's not the same thing. Sorry, I went totally off the handle on that one because I had to talk about the kids. Yeah. And I think you're totally right because he's had a much easier time than she has transitioning. And just like you said, I mean, she is not scared of anything.

She's, I consider her to be like very brazen and very brave. But the truth is that she's afraid of the dark. she's afraid to be alone at night. And so she's the one I'm having to work with the most on how do I help her learn courage at night. What she's really afraid of is the party's ending. That's what she's going. Like the lights go off, the party's over.

Oh, no. I don't want the party to be over. That was honestly, one of the reasons he wanted his own room is because she, she, he was like in tears. She keeps me awake at night. She talks to me. So what are the questions that you've been seeing that make you think of this, that make you like kind of highlight this core value? Yeah.

So let me first tell you the second definition because it's, I'm sorry. I think it's also important, right? Well, the first one I think is the one that people think of first and is probably the most broadly applicable, right? But the second definition is strength in the face of pain or grief. and that one's really powerful because that is also something of a form of courage that we experience at the CIA, right, that people experience in the military, that people experience, you know, the emergency, you know, emergency responders.

Yeah, emergency responders, right? And we've touched on before, you know, the idea of how do people continue with their work when they are, you know, surrounded by horrible things happening, when they are overcome with pain or grief. And, you know, we've talked about the technique of compartmentalizing to be able to get through your work and so you can deal with your emotions later. But, you know, part of being able to push through those things is courage. So that's the second part of the courage definition that I, that really spoke to me and I thought was important as well. Yeah, that's a great, a great call out because one of the things that I've always been bad with is pain.

I mean, the one place where I've been able to kind of face pain, physical pain, is really in athletics. Because, you know, when I had to do like survival schools and when I've had to do some of our sear training and some of our other exercises, like the pain element really, really not. knocks me down. I haven't had to experience much grief. I've been blessed by the fact that I haven't had to experience much grief yet. But I mean, you and I often talk about the grief that's coming. Yeah. Right. Like when we look at aging family members, when we look at the people, I mean, my grandmother raised me as a child. And she is, she's quite along in years now. And I'm watching her slow down, and I know that there's grief coming. And I've seen you cope with grief. I've seen you cope with pain. I saw you deliver two children. I absolutely saw you

grapple with pain, my love. But that's a great call out that there takes an incredible amount of courage to one know that pain is coming and then to two, stay strong in that pain. To know that grief is coming and then stay strong through that grief. Great call out. Yeah. So I have four questions picked out and I put them in order of like the the definitions right definition one definition two because this is just the way my brain works I also I also I love your brain I also want to highlight however that it's really interesting to me because what I based on what you've said already today yeah I it's it's clear that you are suffering through a cognitive bias called the availability heuristic oh yeah yes because you you

have been so focused on helping the company to define and roll out these core values, that it's constantly in your mind. So now you're seeing the number of instances where it's relevant in the world around you. Yeah. It's not that there's a lot of people asking questions about courage. Right. It's the fact that you're overlaying courage onto all the questions that people are asking you. So that just makes it look like there's more. It's kind of like how I want to buy a new car. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

And I'm back and forth. I'm like, should we, should we go big and go with like a brand new BMW, you know, high-end cruise like a high-end beamer? Or should we play it safe and go with like a Toyota SUV? Yeah. Now everywhere you look, all we see are Toyota SUVs and BMW sedans, right? And that's all we see. Yeah.

Like somehow there's more of them. There's not more of them. We're just now very sensitive to them. So it's really fascinating to me because that's clearly something that's happening to you right now. Not that it's a bad thing. It's just something we can identify. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. I mean, it's just, it's on my brain. And so I know I'm seeing it everywhere and I'm applying it to things that in the past, it wouldn't have even come up as a thought. So you're totally right. And I did pick these questions. And, you know, I'm reading through, like, we have

a big list of questions and I'm reading through and I'm like, oh, it's interesting. That's interesting. And then I hit a couple in a row where I was like, you know, I could talk about this through the lens of courage and, you know, and we could do, you know, just a few, a few more than usual and, you know, see how it goes. Let's do it. So what's the, what's the first question you want to tackle? So the first question I thought was interesting and this is also another bias because I'm an introvert, right? So somebody asked, does the CIA disqualify candidates if they're too introvert to be a case officer? Oh my gosh. You couldn't be more wrong. Holy smokes. Yes. And I thought, so, you know, I belong to this, like, you know, introverted moms Facebook group.

Right. So I'm in there with all my little introvert, you know, moms. So I thought it was a great question because I oftentimes feel like, you know, really introverted people feel like it's a limitation for them. And it's really not. And in the context of the CIA, it's definitely not. and when it comes to being a case officer, you know, what you see on TV is, you know, James Bond at a party, at a casino, blah, blah, blah. You know, the reality is like, yes, you might, you know, you will attend functions,

but the real meat and potatoes of being a case officer is one-on-one meetings, right? And introverts can absolutely handle one-on-one meetings. I mean, the whole, the definition of being introverted is that, you need to be alone to recharge. It doesn't mean that you can't hold a conversation with somebody else, right? It doesn't mean that, I mean, it doesn't mean that you're socially awkward necessarily. I mean, we, I think we all, I think most introverts probably feel a little bit socially awkward, but the- All people, all people are socially awkward. I mean, that's a good point. Come on. Just because an extrovert is out there talking a lot

doesn't mean that they don't create plenty of awkward moments. Yeah, but they don't care about. But they don't care about them exactly because they're just rolling through. All of a sudden it's like, you know, it's like, it's like when you eat, think about the chips in a bag of chips, right? You pour yourself a bowl of chips. Some of those chips don't taste really good, right? You've got the burnt chip and you've got the chip that looks like it might have been mutilated and like the chip that still has the eye on it, right? But you just eat it and you're like, that didn't taste great. But then you eat the next one.

You're like, nope, they're good still. And that's just kind of, that's how an extrovert rolls. But you are so right. You are so right. Introverts are the people who rule the world. And introverts, frankly speaking, are the people who should rule the world. Because there's so much work to be done in groups, but there's so much more work that has to be done in private. And you can't count on.

on an extrovert to do work in private. Because an extrovert needs other people in order to gain their energy. Yeah. When an extrovert goes to their room at the end of the day alone and they pull out a book, they don't get more than four or five pages in the book before they put the book down and pick up a phone and watch a movie or start watching YouTube or go to sleep

because they need to rely on something external to energize them. I'm an extrovert. I am fully guilty of this. But introverts, when they are alone, they can just go for hours. They are actually deriving energy as they focus on what they're learning, as they complete the project, they're writing, as they, you know, whatever it might be that they're doing, they're developing. They're actually creating their own energy. And that's why CIA recruits so heavily from introverted people. I'm convinced the whole reason we have

psyche bowels is so that they can find people who are exactly the right combination of introvert with extrovert abilities right an introvert who's capable of four hours playing craps in a casino in a tuxedo looking fancy sounding great but still has the ability to go back to their office that night at one o'clock in the morning and spend the next six hours writing reports and not fall asleep and not cut corners and not make false statements. Exactly. And so because you and I see this truth about introverts working for the CIA, that's what brought up the idea of courage.

Because what I wonder if what's behind the question is, you know, am I too shy to go out? Am I too shy to, you know, maybe I feel like I'm introverted and I feel too awkward to go to these events or to sit with a person for two hours in a meeting. And so in my mind, it's not that, you know, being introverted isn't, you know, as an asset, right? Being courageous is maybe what you need to be working towards, right? That's awesome. That's awesome, girl. Yeah, I think you are, you are nailing this idea because the biggest problem with introverts, the thing that most introverts that we've met lack is really just courage. Yeah. Because as an introvert, there are, especially if, so here's,

here's kind of the order of events, right? If you're an introvert, then for a long time, you've kind of shied away from, because you're not naturally disposed to, putting yourself into social situations. Right. The social situations that you have gone into have drained your energy because it takes a lot of energy to be social. So when your energy gets drained, you start to feel very self-conscious about the fact that you look and feel different than everybody else in the group. That over years, right, from the time of being a child to the time that you're an adult, having that happen to you over and over again starts to create a level of anxiety. So then you start to become anxious about going into social settings because you already know at some point

you're going to tap out. And then when you want to tap out and nobody else wants to tap out, you're going to feel self-conscious. And that creates that anxiety, that flywheel that just spins in your head, right? Yeah. So then as an adult, to avoid the anxiety, you avoid the social group. And then you lean into your introversion and you start to ask yourself the questions like this person is asking, like, is there something wrong with me? Do I have less opportunity than an extrovert? Will I be less successful than an extrovert? And the reason I'm going through this whole step-by-step sequence is because I've seen it with you.

you and I are working on working very much on it to make sure it does not happen to the introvert in our family, right, our son, even though our daughter shows huge introvert tendencies. Yeah. But we're working on it by helping our children to understand what it means to actually want to be alone versus what it means to want to be with people. But more than that, your point about courage is critical here because if that same introvert suffering from anxiety, suffering from the fear of social awkwardness, feeling like some kind of social. outcast or feeling like they're losing opportunity because of their introversion. All that person has to do is be strong in the face of that fear and go put themselves in a social situation. That's all they have to do. And if they can make a plan for how they're going to leave early, you just did this. You just did this recently when you went to go visit my cousin. You sent me a message and you were like, you were like,

Andy, I'm going to go visit your cousin. I'm taking the kids. We're going to get there at lunch. I'm going to leave by four o'clock. I'm not going to let myself get into a situation where my energy gets drained out of me because of all the craziness in the house, right? Exactly. That's all an introvert needs to do, and they can enter into a scenario that used to cause them anxiety, and they can actually conquer that situation. Right. And it's, I think what you said about having, like, knowing what you need as an introvert to be able to recharge and having a plan to, you know, having a plan and a backup plan to put that in motion, that's key, right? And if you have those things and you, you know, and you build up the courage to take those steps forward to do the things that,

that frighten you, there's no stopping you, right? You can do anything you put your mind to. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What a great point. I absolutely, I would have never, I would have never thought to look what we call one question deeper, right? One why deeper. What you're applying here is something we call a 5-Y process. Something presents itself, some problems, some challenge, some issue. In this case, somebody sent you a question, do introverts have less opportunity or would they make, would CIA not hire introverts? And you applied the 5-Y principle by asking the first why. Why is the person asking this question? And then once you get the answer to that, you ask the next why, right? why does this person feel like they don't have courage?

And then you ask the next why and the next why and the next why. And eventually you get to the root cause of the true concern. Right. So well played, my love. Well done. And then, you know, if, and they specifically said too introvert to be a case officer. So I'm assuming they want to be a case officer. But the other truth is that the CIA has so many positions beyond case officer that, you know,

you can find the place where you want to be. Right. If you're too introverted to be a case officer, you would never want to be a case officer. Exactly. My virtue of the fact that you're even thinking about it, you would probably be perfectly well suited to do it. Yeah. Because nobody, the movies do not tell you how many hours case officers have to be alone. Yeah. The most successful case officers that we know, the most successful are strong introverts.

And they can go out and they can schmooze for sure, but they also. have the energy to work for hours, days, weeks alone. Yeah. Alone in a jungle, alone in a tent, alone in a war zone. It's incredible. Yeah. What's the next question that you found? I'm super curious now. So the next question is kind of another CIA hiring question. And it was, we get questions like this one fairly often. So I thought it was good to bring up. The asker said, you know, is there anything I can do now, and they're in high school, that can help my chances of getting into the CIA later on? And of course, this brought up courage, right? Because there's no, there's no recipe for getting into the CIA, right? The CIA is looking for a large, you know,

a large diversity in their demographic, right? So there is no, like, you should go to college and you should major in international affairs and you should learn French and blah, blah, you know, those touch on components of what the CIA is looking for. Like, if you learn a language, that's appealing to the CIA. If you have spent time traveling and working overseas, and so you understand what it's like to live and travel overseas, you've taken the time to understand what it's like to be among a culture that's completely not your own. Maybe you speak the language. Maybe you don't.

Those are assets for you when you apply. You know, they honestly, what you study in college is, like, you should study what you're passionate about in college because they look for a wide variety of backgrounds and they need a wide variety of backgrounds. So if you actually want to work for the CIA one day, but really right now you want to be an accountant, do it because the CIA and the FBI both look for officers that have those kinds of backgrounds, right? So really it's about being courageous enough to put yourself out there and gain like this broad, you know, these broad experiences. That's what the CIA is looking for.

Right. What I would add to what you're saying, because what I'm hearing you say and what I'm thinking are there's a strong overlap, right? But one thing where I would say it differently is that the courage, especially if you're in high school, high school and college especially, if you're thinking about CIA, the thing that takes courage is not being a dumbass. I actually had my very first thought. That's the thing. That's the thing that takes the most courage. When I read the question, my very first thought was, don't do a bunch of drugs. Don't do a bunch of, seriously. don't do a bunch of drugs. CIA has no problem with people who have experimented with drugs.

They have a major problem with people who have become addicted or abuse or sell, right, illegal substances. So you know what? You want to smoke pot now? Well, pot's not even illegal in most states. Whatever experiments you want to do, you did some hard drugs. You experimented with some very hard drugs when you were in high school and college. and then it came out in the polygraph and that's it done right i i have been drug-free my whole life until you give me permission to actually finally enjoy some drugs not going to happen sorry to tell you

maybe i didn't marry the right person but uh but yeah so i've been drug-free so i didn't have to worry about the drug question going in but we've had so many people who we've worked with who all had drug histories they just all it was was experimented and they were very honest about it, right? So you don't want to do drugs. You don't want to get bad grades. Yeah. Right?

So if you choose a major that isn't right for you, if you study something that you're not good at, you're going to screw yourself, right? You don't want to get into the position where you, like, start having babies too early. Not that CIA has any problems with people who have children. They have no problem with parents. But the amount of demand that is asked. of you in your first few years of CIA, if you have children, it's really hard to put CIA above your children in those first few years that you're actually recruited, right? Not to mention the

fact that your whole life changes when you have kids. So if you're on a, if you're trying to build a life that's, that's going to be, you know, dedicated in service to the country. Remember, core values of CIA, second core value service. Service. Yep. Which means you don't count to you. your family is not nearly as important yourself you're not as important your goals your dreams your hopes your ambitions nothing is more important than the mission that's what it means but service before self is what it means to have service as a core value at CIA so if you have anything you care about other than the mission it's going to be a hard fit but yeah you're exactly right it takes it takes courage to lean into who you actually are.

Yes. It takes courage to do the things that you really want to do that are not easy. It's really hard to be in college and go overseas. It's really hard to graduate college and take a year off to travel the world. It's hard. But if it's something you want, do it. Do it because it's going to make your application package to CIA stand out among the rest. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think like what you were saying initially, you know, it's, it takes courage to stand up to the influence of your peers, right? You're, you're, you're, if you are asking this question, you are thinking well beyond what your friends are thinking, um, most likely. So, you know, if they want to, you know, go out and do joyriding or go out and do something that's just completely asinine, you know, it's courageous to be to just say, you know what, I'm going to skip this one. right because i mean that was big lesson learned for me right in the end your social life isn't a great predictor of uh what you're actually able to accomplish um yourself right so i'm actually so on i'm on set right now and uh one of the cameramen that i'm working with out here is getting married soon and uh his wife's one of the bridesmaids that his wife had planned for the

party recently got hired by CIA. Wow. And when she was hired, she cut off all ties to her friends, which is something that's also important. That also takes courage and that's relevant to both you and I, right? Yeah. Once you accept a role with CIA, whether it's overt or whether it's covert, you basically cut ties with everybody.

Right. And if you're working hard to build a network of friends and if you're working hard to impress people in college and high school and you think CIA is in your future, I hope you feel liberated because you don't have to be friends with any of these frigging people because you're going to cut them all off. You're going to retain like maybe 2% of all the people you've ever met once you actually swear in and take that oath. Because unless they are super important to you, you just won't have time for them. And two, if they are anything other than uplifting, encouraging, and empowering, like the job is so draining that the only people you put your energy into

or the people you care the most about or the people who lift you up. Everybody else, you just, you cut ties. Right. And I, you know, to what you're saying right there, I think that, you know, one of the things that you could do to prepare, which, you know, might make people uncomfortable. But, you know, there's a number of lessons that you teach, you, you, you have a product called Optink and it's, you know, one of our masterclasses. And there are a number of lessons in there about changing your mindset and how you interact with other people. So if you start early learning how to view your relationships with other people as, you know, I use the word transactional, but as, you know, everything is a give and a get. There is no free.

friendship. There is no free relationship. Everything is a push and a pole, right? So if you start early on thinking about your relationships with others through that lens, I think that that's really helpful because it helps you in interacting with your professors and networking and choosing the jobs that you're going to take. It helps you in cultivating the network that will eventually help you get you to where you want to be. And those might not be the friends that you have right now. Yeah. And especially when you tie it together with our previous conversation about introverts, right? Because we all, we all human beings, people aspire to have equal relationships, right? That's what we think in our head, like we aspire for an equal relationship. And then we all feel bad

and we label it bad when there's a lopsider relationship and there's one person who's in more control or more power, right? We often call that manipulative or narcissist, right? We all want to avoid an unequal relationship because we want a balanced relationship. When in reality, especially for introverts, what happens the most is a lopsided relationship in the other way, where it's a lopsided amount of sacrifice where the introvert is sacrificing constantly for the other person. And the sacrifice on the other side is not equal. Right. So it's, you don't really, we're taught to say that we need some kind of equal relationship, but they don't say what the equality is. It's not equal education. It's not equal income. It's not equal energy. It's all about equal sacrifice. And unfortunately,

most of us are in a relationship where one person sacrifices a whole lot more than the other person. I mean, you and I found ourselves in a very similar situation until just recently. And then we had to take real actions to stop you over sacrificing because you would do things and not even tell me. Yeah. You would feel pain and not even share it. You would be, you would have anxiety and not express it. So there was all like, that's an introvert tendency to keep everything bottled up because you know,

that all you need is time alone and then you'll be able to overcome it. Yeah. But when you've got a business and kids and a husband, when do you get the time to overcome that stuff? You don't. Yeah. You have to process it out outright. So, you know, there's an element that we have to acknowledge here about preventing against over-sacrifice. And a lot of that comes down to understanding that a relationship is transactional. that doesn't mean that it's not emotional. That doesn't mean that it's insincere. It just means that we are supposed to give equally.

And you're right, Opthink, our course Optink, our master class on operational thinking is one of our bestsellers and probably our most highly lauded product. If anybody's interested in getting Optink, they can, of course, go to the shop page on the homepage and it's sitting there waiting for anybody who wants to buy it. but it completely transforms your mindset. So if you don't know where to go to learn how to think differently, go to EverydaySpy.com, go to the shop page and go check out Optink. Great call, my love.

That's exactly right, that you've got to change your mindset if you ever plan to be able to embrace courage. What's the next question you have? Unfortunately, I think we may only have time for one more because I talk too much. So the last question is actually something that touches on the second definition of courage. And, you know, I've been hearing a lot of people talk about how they feel with everything of eye on in the world, how they feel this sense of helplessness. And we had a good friend recently when the conflict in Israel began, you know, and that was what she was, she was distraught.

for days, I feel so helpless. And I feel like this speaks to the second part of the definition of courage is strength in the face of pain or grief. Because usually when we feel helpless, there's something happening that's causing us pain or grief. And we feel overwhelmed by it. We feel like there's, what can we do? Right? The problem is bigger than us. And I think that part of that, and this is partly for my own experience is showing courage having strength comes from in part accepting that sometimes there's not anything that you can do sometimes showing strength means that you double down on what you can control right taking care of your family taking care of you know yourself right i mean when our when our friends was feeling helpless

she completely wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, like was letting herself go downhill, right? So, you know, courage is accepting the fact that sometimes there's not anything that you can do, right? And then when you have the strength to take care of what you can take care of, then you leave yourself open for when the opportunity comes that you can help in a different way, you're ready for it. And so I just, I've been hearing this sense of helplessness a lot lately, and I thought it would be great to talk about it and hear your perspective. Because oftentimes we, you know, you and I have examples from when we worked at the CIA where we knew people who were going into very dangerous situations and you wouldn't hear from them for weeks because they were, they were dark, they were operating. And the sense of helplessness that you feel sitting there in the office day to day, you know, not knowing and not being able to do anything about it. Yeah, there's so much here to unpack.

It's really hard to do it and just, you're welcome. I believe in you. So I think a big important point to start with is that feeling helpless is not the same thing as not being helpful, right? Feeling helpless is not the same thing as not being helpful. So when things are happening and you feel like there's nothing you can do to impact the thing that's happening, someone is getting sick, someone is aging and dying, someone got hurt, someone, you know, on the other side of the world, there's an event happening and, you know, it's important to you,

but what can you do about it? that is a that very much makes you feel like you are you are outside of being able to have any impact the truth is that doing nothing different doing nothing different in your normal day is a choice it is you doing something right if you are a student and war breaks out in your home country somewhere else Your job is to continue being a student. There is nothing you can do that is going to help your homeland. If you quit school and then start drinking too much or getting angry or drowning yourself and self-pity, right?

You quitting school to get on a plane to go fight in the homeland isn't actually helping anybody in the homeland because you're not a soldier. You're a student. Right? The best thing you can do is continue being a student. Sometimes when somebody in our family gets ill and starts to decline and you're a mom or a dad and you provide a source of income because you're an accountant or an attorney or an IT programmer, like you want to rush home and be with the person who's getting sick. You want to rush home and be with the person who's ailing. But why? What are you going to do? If you, quit your job, then you're cutting off the income stream that feeds your family. If you leave the family, then you're taking away the one person. If you're the mom or the dad or the husband or the wife, you are critical to your partner. You are critical to your children. When you rush off from that critical capacity to go sit at the right-hand side of your aging aunt or your uncle, your

mother or your father, right? You are actually not helping them. because you're not a nurse, you're not a doctor, you're not a medical professional. You may not even be offering them any sort of support or encouragement because they're surrounded by other family that are not actively being mothers and fathers and husbands and wives. Right. So the way that you help that person is by staying where you are and doing the thing you do every day and being the conduit that helps your children and your partner understand

your sorrow, your sadness, because now the whole family is experiencing this together. If you leave, they're on their own. They don't know what's going on. They don't understand why or how grandma or grandpa is on the decline. So it's really interesting because people oftentimes mistake helpful with helpless. Helpless is when you feel like you can't impact the events happening somewhere else. And oftentimes you're right. You cannot impact them in a positive way.

even if you were to throw yourself into the middle of a disaster relief effort, right? If another hurricane hits in Florida, my love, and I quit making content for everyday spy and throw myself into the fray, all I'm doing is I'm taking all of my strong skill sets and I'm leaving them behind so that I can go do something that I'm only partially good at. Yeah. Right. Running water or making band-aids or feeding children, feeding homeless people or people who have lost their home.

That's not the thing that I'm the best at. There's somebody else who's better at that. What I should really do is everything I can to create more content about the disaster, to get people to support the disaster in their own way, right? I've got to maximize my impact by doing the thing I do every day to be helpful and not be helpless. Wow, you are so good at this, girl. You are so good at finding these awesome questions. Yeah, and I love everything that you.

you just said. I think, I mean, you and me are, you know, we're on the same page so often. And I really do think that this actually taps into, you know, both definitions of courage, because you have to have the ability to look internally, right? The ability to do something that frightens you. And I think oftentimes for a lot of people, it frightens them to really take a quiet moment and look internally at their feelings because the feelings are so big and so scary that, you know, they don't want to let them come out and really assess, you know, what am I feeling and why am I feeling this way? And then once you can make that assessment and really recognize your feelings, you know, do that scary thing and make the internal assessment of

what's going on here, then you can move on to number two and show strength and the face, the face of that pain and grief, right? You recognize, I am feeling grief. I'm feeling pain. this situation that's happening, but I have to show strength. And then you show strength through doing exactly what you were saying through, you know, assessing, right, making an assessment, an objective assessment of I have these feelings, but this is the most helpful thing I can actually do, right? And when you throw yourself into that, then you will no longer feel helpless because you've shifted your mindset into, there's nothing I can do, you know, you've shifted it from that into I'm doing the best thing that I could be doing right now. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What a what a really cool conversation today, my love. This was great. I was so glad. And I loved it out. Yeah. I love it. You know, even though we're still talking through a camera and a computer, literally on opposite coasts. Yeah. I am on the California coast. You are on the Florida Atlantic coast. Wow. And I still feel like like you're so close. I feel like I can reach out and touch you. So thank you for such an awesome connecting conversation, babes. Yeah, thank you for, you know, all your wisdom that, like, you know, after 15 years with you, I still. I know, right?

I still find so inspiring. Yeah. 13 years of marriage, 14 years of dating and one year of you trying to avoid me. You mean chasing you down? Yeah. Trying to get that ball and chain wrapped around your ankle. Well, to everybody who's listening and joining us on this conversation, thank you so much for being part of this conversation. It was fantastic to share this with you.

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