The Bossticks - Tim Kennedy On How To Open Your Mind Using Perspective & The Power Of Listening

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

#309: On this episode we are joined by Tim Kennedy. Tim Kennedy is an entrepreneur, and former middleweight UFC fighter who simultaneously served in the US military special forces as a green beret sniper. On today's episode we discuss how we can open our minds by opening ourselves up to new and different perspectives. We also discuss the power of listening to others and how a different perspective can help us understand people and each other better. To connect with Tim Kennedy click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Just Thrive During a time when boosting our immune health needs to be at the forefront of our minds Just Thrive has the answer for you. The Just Thrive probiotic can help boost your immune system and heal your gut. 80-90% of Americans suffer from gut issues and these issues can track to many of the diseases that humans face. With Just Thrive probiotics we can help combat these gut issues. Use promo code SKINNY at www.justthrivehealth.com/skinny to try today!  This episode is brought to you by BLUBlox  Blue light damages our eyes and leads to digital eye strain. Symptoms of digital eye strain are blurred vision, headaches and dry watery eyes. For some this could even cause heightened anxiety, depression, and low energy. Enter BLUBlox. BLUblox was created to change this with high quality lenses for daytime, nighttime and for color therapy exactly in line with the suggested peer reviewed academic literature. Go to www.blublox.com/skinny and enter promo code skinny for 15% off our order and free shipping! This episode is brought to you by PLAYBOY Ladies we know that when it comes to orgasms men orgasm way more often then we do! That's why we have been obsessed with the all new CBD infused sexual wellness line from PLAYBOY. CBD is the new glass of wine at the end of the day and PLAYBOY has 3 incredible products. The CBD Bath Bomb, CBD arousal spray, and CBD intimacy gel. PLAYBOY is offering a 15% discount on your purchase when you visit www.pleasureforall.com and use code SKINNYPLEASURE for 15% off. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

So you first have to like strip away that ego so that you can listen and be a good listener. And to be a good listener, like that's actively. listening and trying to understand from that person's perspective what like clearly i have lived an extraordinary life that is dissimilar to most people so the lens that i have the glasses that i look at this world through is different than most people when i get to be with somebody that thank god hasn't had to see the things that i've seen and i just like tell me more one two three one two three back at it again that clip is from our guest of the show today american patriot hero professional fighter. Tim Kennedy. This is an exciting one for us. We actually flew all the way to Texas just to do this in

person. And Tim Kennedy definitely delivers. For those you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur and brand builder. Most recently, the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network. And to my left, actually to my right, sorry, I'm getting a little confused. It's been a long day. My wife, Lauren, here we are again in the studio. Hello. Taylor is eating something that smells perturbing. Is that a word? It's not there on. It smells like. It smells like. It smells terrible. What is going on? What are you eating?

It's like zucchini chicken and potatoes. You're bringing zucchini chicken and potatoes into the studio when I have to concentrate and record and get a good intro. I don't know what the fuck are going to. We're hungry, Taylor, and you're eating some weird chicken. Anyways, Taylor is just like bombarding us with the smell. The studio smells like a disgusting bomb of trash food came off in this network. Sorry.

I mean, hopefully that doesn't offend you. I mean, it just doesn't smell good. So we're going to get through this intro real quick. Guys, this is an exciting episode. You know, we like to have all walks of life on. this show. Just when you think we're going one way, we're going another. And this one definitely does that. Tim Kennedy, for those of you that do not know who he is, like I said earlier, he is an American patriot, a hero per se, keeps a lot of our freedoms. Him and a lot of his friends

keep our freedoms what they are to keep us safe. So who is he? He is a retired American mixed martial artists and current soldier. He enlisted into special forces right after 9-11, then went into the Army Reserves and actually re-enlisted recently in his active duty again. He has seen some wild shit in his life has a lot of crazy experiences, a lot of crazy stories, a lot of very, very impactful perspectives that I think is beneficial for every American to hear, every person to hear. And so we're excited to have him on the show today. Isn't he a green beret? He is a green beret, Lauren, special forces. He, listen, this guy, I've never felt safer in a studio. I mean, he's in there. It's got to, you know, if I was not, anyone could come in. This guy will literally

rip your head off with his bare hands. Yeah, as a woman, too, this interview was so interesting because it's so raw and real. Listen, there are people, I was talking about, I was trying to describe Tim Kennedy. There are people that are professional fighters, badass dudes, badass women, people that are like, you know, per se, scary individuals.

And then there's the Tim Kennedys of the world that are a different level, a different thing. You told me he is the guy. He is the guy. He's the guy. Like, you know, like when you think, like, I think about Tim Kennedy. I'm like, you worry about like,

okay, what do you got to defend yourself against if someone breaks into your house? Like the people that are breaking in the house should be worried about the Tim Kennedys of the world. Like when you get to the level of a Tim Kennedy, not to like, you know, get on this guy's dick too much. But if you get into a level of Tim Kennedy, like he is at that level where there's like, you know, there's scary people and then there's killers. And, you know, and there's some real scary people. And he falls in that cage. But he's also the one of the nicest, most humblest, most American, most patriotic dudes ever.

He's a dad. He's a husband. He's just a good dude. He's a good fucking dude. And a lot of us in this country. Oh, a lot of gratitude to people like him and the friends he serves with. So with that, Tim Kennedy, thank you for coming on the show, man. Thank you for your service. And welcome to the show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. A lot of living in my life. And then I met my wife. And I was like, like, your capacity for love grew, right? And I was like, oh, man, I could love something more than I thought I was capable of loving. But that was the limit. Like, there's no way I could love something. I love war. I love my, you know, being a green brain and a sniper and a ranger. And Love fighting and I love my wife.

Like I've never loved anything ever. And then I see my first daughter. You know, you're like, oh my God. My heart has like met capacity. I can't grow anymore. Right. And then like there's no possible way that I could love something more than I love this thing.

But I thought I'd already reached my full tank of love ability. But then like there's different pockets and fucking boys and daughters just make your goddamn heart explode. This is you. Okay. That's me. I brought that for you. Well, maybe you can give it to your daughters. Yeah, Tim, I don't know if that's the book for you, but maybe you never know.

Is this like the skinny confidential is similar to the scarred-faced, hairy-handed troll? Whatever. You know what? It's tips and tricks for anyone. It doesn't matter who you. In this day and age, like I'm just going to say it's for everybody. Yeah, if you are happier doing these things. And who knows? I could take some of this hair and some of this troll-like ogreish posture that I have and just roll right into a better happier life. You guys could do like a co-brand, like the troll hand and the- Perfect co-brand right. here. So three daughters, one son. Okay. And what's the order of that? Was it three daughters at first and then a son? Yep. I have two, no, I have two big girls, teenagers. Okay. And then I have a five-year-old son who actually, I'd get really mad if I was not specific. He's five and four-fifths. Okay. And then I have a one-year-old daughter. Okay. She rules the rest. And where'd you and your wife meet? Fort Bragg, North Carolina. How'd you meet her? What's the story? Pretty gross. I love gross. Okay. So I was, going to, I just finished special forces selection. I was in the Q course. The Q course is the two years, once you've been selected to become a green beret. It takes about two to three years to earn your green beret. You go to all these different schools. And while I was going to those schools, I was also moonlighting as a bouncer at a bar called the ugly tree. And it was like one of those coyote ugly bars, you know, where the girls like dance on the bars, but it was called coyote ugly because we always joke that all the bartenders hit

every branch in the ugly tree on the way down. We're in North Carolina at a military base. So these were not like the cream of the crop. This would be like the third string at the strip club by the airport. Just to give you the quality. Michael knows it well. Exactly that one. Yeah.

You know that crew. It's not like the peak hours. Boy do I ever. Yeah. It's like the 4 a.m. crew. So I'm working at this bar and this just stunning beautiful girl walks by me. and that's not common in a military post. So I go to talk to her and I walk up and I start talking to her

and she slowly turns around as if I wasn't there. But I was still talking. I was like, I pleasure to meet you, you know? Like I already had a little notoriety as like top 10 in the world as a fighter. I'm about to be what I thought was about to be a green beret. So I thought I was really cool. Because you were in active duty and professionally fighting same time. Yeah, yeah.

And she just turned as if I wasn't there. and then slowly started walking away and I'm like do I continue like is she deaf you know did she not but she didn't care so she walks away so I give it another whirl another time and similar results and

then I watch a guy come up and talk to her and she does like this weird headcock thing and she pours her drink on his head and then walks away then she's walking up this ramp to go to where the live music is and this guy grabs her leg and she balances on a

and stabs him in the arm. And at that moment, I knew that there was no other woman on the planet, but that woman for me. So then the game of cat and mouse began. It took a lot of manipulating, borderline stalking. So I had to befriend one of her friends. And then I had to talk all of her friends growing up in Monterey, California, to coming over for a wine pairing at my house. So we're going to do like some fondue pair, all of the, yeah, high class for military

base. You were like rolling it out. Yeah. And I told them different time. So I told my now wife to come at six, and I told everybody else to come at seven. So thank God. She didn't check with the rest of her friends, what time they're showing up. So she showed up at like 620, and I texted everybody, up, it's off.

Don't worry about it. Night's canceled. And I took her out to dinner. And then we spent every single day together until I left for Iraq. That was how I tricked her into. What is that like when you're in Iraq and your wife that you're in love with is back in the United States. Have you ever heard of Jody? So Jody is the worst human. He is a fake person, but he exists in every single military base, in every single unit with most guys. And when Tim Kennedy

goes to Iraq, Jody's the guy that tries to get with the girl that stays back home. And there's lots of Jodys. Oh my God. I didn't know that had a name. I've heard stories like that a lot, though. Yeah. Oh, no, no, Jody's real. And Jody is usually a pretty good looking guy and he knows all the right things. Oh, man, I'm so sorry that your husband's overseas. I fully understand. If you need somebody to talk to, I'll happily, you know, be there for you. You know, totally platonic. Oh, right. And then like two months or two weeks later, he's like, hey, I'll come, you're having a rough night. I'll come by at 11 p.m. You know? You want me to make dinner? You don't like Jody. You see those Jodys in the movies. No. Yes, there's so many Joddies in the movies. Yeah.

I guess the Chad is the version in the, in college. Yeah. But Chad and the military is a Jody. But you know, the Jody sound, I mean, listen, Jody's terrible, but like, Jody's got to have some balls to go after, you know, active duty. Tim Kennedy's wife. Yeah. I wouldn't, if I was a Jody. So I don't know how you, I don't know how, I don't know, like, Jody's also got to be kind of dumb, kind of crazy, kind of like it's kind of a, you know, like there's a lot of different women out there. I don't know if that's the one I pursue. Yeah, there's lots of them at the military bases.

Like a criminal, when you look at a criminal, I got a burglar try to break into my house. And you'd think, why would a burglar try to break into it? I was trying to tell my wife. Can you explain this story? Can you explain this? No, yeah. But the same thing, it's like, they're also just dumb. Yeah.

Why would someone try to break in your house? Because they're dumb. And they're desperate, just like Jody. Maybe they didn't check whose address. I want to, listen, you're a super humbled dude. And I know you're going to be humble about this. But like, I also want to give some people some context of just about who you are. So it's a very high demographic of female listeners, which we're going to,

we can talk about in a second and go into some different subjects. But like, if there was one house in America or two, like maybe two, that I would not want to break into it would be your fucking house and I want to go back if it's a very fair statement and I want to go back a little bit and get a little bit of context on you because I know we kind of just jumped into it but and maybe we can fast forward you know where you grew up but like when you decided to go into the military and kind of like your journey there and we can condense it because I know you're going to want to through it but like just to give a little context everybody yeah these are kind of these are like serious topics yeah we do we get super serious no we go all over the place

this is a bag of check okay so I was in college and there was a serial killer in San Luis Bispo named Rex Krebs. And he was going and kidnapping girls and raping and murdering them. And I was working at bars in San Luis Bispo. And I remember being about like palitably, you could taste, you could smell fear. Like all the girls at 1 a.m. Like how am I going to get from where I am to where I'm sleeping tonight without dying? And they were scared to death. And at that time, this is pre 9-11, that was the worst. form of fear and that was the worst form of evil i think people consciously recognized and you know from silence of the lambs you know the geoffrey domers and that's evil a serial killer nothing worse right

and so i wanted to go into the fbi i was in grad school to do that i had already finished my undergrad and that was my trajectory i was going to go work for the fbi i wanted to track people like this because i wanted to find the worst forms of evil and put them in the dirt or put them in jail for forever And then I'm working in California and I watched planes slam into the buildings. You know, everybody remembers what they were doing at that moment. And I watched live a bunch of Americans standing in those towers, sticking their head out to take a breath of fresh air and then look down and then look back into the building as they were struggling between the decision of jumping to their death or burning alive. And nobody knows exactly how many people made that choice. There's a famous photo called a falling man.

And I remember watching that guy fall. And the camera, as it panned from the man jumping from the window all the way down to the concrete where he died, when he plummeted through a building, the camera came low. And there was a bunch of firefighters and police officers that were helpless watching these Americans jump to their deaths. And that was the first time that it like hit me that there's so much more evil out there and how much more effective and efficient evil can be if it doesn't meet resistance. Those were untrained peasants that had a few hundred thousand dollars that brought America, the largest most powerful country in the planet to its knees. And, you know, not one guy scaring some college age girls, which is horrific. And if I ever find a serial killer, I can't wait to wear their skin as a birthday suit. But this was like different.

And I walked into the recruiter's office on 9-11 and tried to enlist. At the time, I said, I want to be a Navy SEAL, Special Forces sniper, green beret. I didn't know that there was a check out all the walkers. Give me all the boxes. I'm going to check them. And so that was the beginning. I was already a professional fighter. I was already ranked top 10 in the world.

And I didn't care. I wanted to find the people that did that. And I wanted to bury them. Took about a year and a half to get the right contract, which was an 18 X-ray, which is a special. You go in as an infantry soldier. And at the end of infantry training, you go to airborne school. And then you go to selection. About one in a hundred, two in a hundred get selected.

and the rest go to the needs of the army, the one or two, three or four that gets selected, get to move on in training, which is that Q-course that lasts three to four years. While I was in the Q-course and in special forces, I continued to fight for the UFC in Strike Force, tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, South America, and every kind of horrific job you can imagine, from counter-human trafficking, sex trafficking, to counter-poaching, to counter-piracy, obviously fighting terrorism and hostage rescue. Hey, Michael. Hey, Lauren.

Did you know that women come way less than men do? Not with me, Lauren. Really, Michael. I don't know. I'm just kidding. I've heard rumors. No, that was a joke. But I have to answer it that way.

Okay, enter Playboy. So they have, and yes, the Playboy. They have this all-new CBD-infused sexual wellness line from Playboy. So CBD is the new glass of wine at the end of the day. People are going crazy about CBD. Playboy has this CBD bath bomb and a CBD arousal spray. So what we did the other day is we filled a bath up and then we put the CBD bath bomb. We had a little bath in there. The ingredients are natural. It smells light. The bath bomb is so amazing. And then you can get out and you can use a little arousal spray. And however you choose to use it is up to you. Dim the lights. turn on your salt rock lamp, get some Marvin Gay going. I mean, Michael, you could have thrown in some rose petals, put some effort into it, hint, hint, but at least we had the arousal spray and the bath bomb to get things going. So you can spray the arousal spray directly on your clit. This kind of has this warming sensation, and Taylor, don't pop a boner, but it gets the vibe just right. Playboy recommends

to spritz it on after oil but before sex and do the bath bomb, I'm telling you, before sex, to get you nice and relaxed, okay? The scent is light. It's all natural. It's not super heavy. It's perfect. The holidays are coming up. Your significant other ones is a stocking stuffer. Put a little arousal spray in there. Throw in a bath bomb. They'll be very turned on. I'm telling you, you want to add this to your bedside treasure chest. Michael and I have a big, big old treasure chest. You got to keep it spicy. You know what I mean, Michael? When you're being... The big old chest. When you're married as long as us, you got to keep it. You got to keep it fun. And just for skinny confidential listeners, Playboy is offering a 15% discount on your purchase. Go to pleasurefor-all.com to check out the bath bomb and the arousal spray.

At checkout, enter the code, skinny pleasure for 15% off. You're going to have so many orgasms. I'm telling you. You were a little bit older than the average age then because you were, because it wasn't necessarily your trajectory. Like, did you still have to go through the same length of training or because there was an active war? Do you just get, do you kind of get fast track? Do you still got to wait? No, there's no fast track. Yeah, still have to wait. And even I thought I was going to be kind of this unique extraordinary. I'm the beautiful bird in the room. When I got to the team, I was a dime a dozen.

I was like, oh, you're also a professional athlete. And oh, you're also a national champion. Oh, you're an Olympian. Oh, you guys all already speak multiple languages. And oh, you guys all have graduate degrees. So I was like, I was literally nobody. Like I went from thinking I was like the fastest, the strongest, the most badass to like, awkward. For someone who doesn't know a lot about the training, like for me.

Yeah. What is the training? Like, how gnarly is it? Are you up at four? What are you doing? Is it all working out? Like, really describe what it's like. Green Berets are unlike all other special operations because they take a small group of men and they drop us behind enemy lines with other people that share our mission, our value. So let's just use Venezuela for example. Venezuela right now is pretty rough. Yeah. Right. Pretty evil. socialist president. People are starving. There's breadlines. Nobody knows when they're going to get their next meal. But there are insurgents that are pro-freedom. Hong Kong, another great example, surrounded by China communism. But Hong Kong is like it's this beacon of hope for capitalism and democracy. So they're, you know, they're, please just give us a chance to live our lives

free. And they're being just, those poor people are just being demolished by China communism. Those would be examples of places where green berets could be inserted. And we go and we train that force, those people, those insurgents, that have the shared value for democracy and for freedom. And, you know, we build them up so they can go by with and through. We advise, we assist, and in some case, we accompany them to go and overthrow our government. And then we help them substantiate that government. throughout Africa, there's lots of countries that are struggling with radical fanatics, and they bring us in a stability.

So we go to the government and to the military, and we show them how, like, well, here's a way a constitution could be written. Here's what an actual Democratic election looks like. This is how you secure your polling stations so people can have the freedom to go and vote. If you look at Afghanistan at the beginning of the war, the first time that they held an election, And it was like bombing here, VB IED here, IED there, somebody driving a cargo truck through a bunch of polling stations. Like, how do you, it seems so simple. And we've taken it for granted in the United States.

Democracy is not an easy thing. And we, and us living in this beautiful republic that we're in, this constitutional republic, we have always really taken it for granted how complicated and nuanced it is for this to run effectively. I want to talk about that for a second. I think, to your point, a lot of people, and maybe ourselves included at points in time, take this country for granted and the safeties and the liberties and the freedoms that we have because we haven't seen some of the things like someone yourself has seen in the world. You've been to some of the nastiest, ugliest, ugliest places, most war-torn places in the world, and you've seen that.

And I think people here, they get to a place where if they're not aware of those situations, never seen it, they have this sense here where it's like, they've never known anything but safety. It's partly because people like you and your friends go out there and make the world safe for Americans. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I think, like, Lauren was looking at your page and she's like, oh my God, this guy's like loves America. Like you're like the one, like you absolutely love American. I think like, of course, if you've seen what you've seen and been able to live in this country, like you almost have to, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't hit the nail on the head more accurately there. I do love this country and it's imperfections. Just like I

love people. Like people are imperfect. That doesn't mean I don't love them, right? Our country, we were founded with a hope that we have not yet realized, a hope where every man is equal. Everybody has the same freedoms. And we have been on this trajectory to meet those goals, those aspirations. And if you look back to 1776 through the Civil War in the 1800s, like even to the 18, 1960s, we were a mess, right? Like we did not. Oh, a woman can't vote. Sorry, you can't vote. Locianto-Mucho. You know, you're black. You can't vote either or drink out of this water fountain or go and get an ice cream here. You know, that was 60 years ago. Have we made improvements? Absolutely. Are we done improving? Absolutely not. But from the founding documents,

it has always had the trajectory for what we could be. And we haven't realized it yet, but we're still in the way. And that's why I love this country is because we acknowledge our faults. We address them and we try to improve on them. You know, while Abraham Lincoln was a revolutionary, he was not perfect, right? He had a ton of failures. But he got a couple of things right and doing that whole Civil War thing, and of having fought in Civil Wars, they are horrible, could not have been the more right thing to do at the time. Do we have more things to do? Yes. But, man, this country's special. So, like, are there examples, and I know it's like, not necessarily you don't want to talk about everything, but are there examples, like, that you could give

to the audience where, like, some things you've seen, which just help contextualize, like, how good we have it here. Because, listen, Lauren and I catch flack all the time, say, you get too political or, you know, with everything going on. Like, it's a hot button issue all the time. But, like, I'm probably in Lord, too, like, one of the most pro-America. I love this country. Like, it's afforded a lot of opportunities. And I, again, like, it's not perfect, but it's constantly strive to try to be. But I always try to point out, like, there are many worse places.

Like, we just had a woman on the show that grew up in Romania under communist rule. And, like, sharing her experience compared to, like, our experience is night and day. Yeah. The list is. There's a lot going through. Yeah. Well, it's like endless. I was just in Mortania this year.

And Mortania has had half a dozen revolutions. since you guys have been alive. Working in Burkina Faso and Niger, another two places that have had countless revolutions with from radicals. So when I say radicals, it's not any one group or idea, right? It's not radical could be anyone

from a far right guy trying to kill the governor of Michigan. You're a radical insane person to the far left in TIFA that is burning down federal buildings in Portland. You're a radical to the, I love, I have great friends that are Muslims and I love them. And I've deployed with them, worked with them. I would jump on grenades for them.

But there's also radicals that think you're gay. I'm going to have to push you off a building or set you on fire. And those radicals, they exist all over the world, but they're more prevalent in third world countries. And you cannot. So what we try to do is create security and stability in a place so freedom can flourish. If it is not stable and is not secure, there's no way that commerce can occur. There's no way that voting can occur. There's no way that a president can go and say, here's my ideas.

This is how we're going to do health care. This is how we're going to do education. And this is how we're going to do taxes. This is how we're going to fix a road. Oh, he just got skinned alive and hung from the bridge. That's when you don't have stability and security. So going in and helping them create stability and security provides them the opportunity to see their dreams for their own country become realized.

and having been in places where I was driving down. I mean, I hadn't seen a person in like nine hours. I was driving this land cruiser, this big huge donkey dick of an antenna, satellite radio thing, you know, gas tanks on the back, water tanks on the side. I have a 240FN, 762 by 5.1 machine gun sitting next to me in the seat. Like totally gangster, just driving through the desert of Africa. And I see this dude dressed in the most flamboyantly beautiful. robes and like what is this guy doing so i pull off to the side and we start chatting him up and he's on his way to his wedding and i'm like this is the first horse i've seen like why do you have a

horse he's like i'm giving the horse as the endowment to the mom to the father to pay for the wife i'm like what else do you have on you he's like i have one bag of water so i've been driving for eight or nine hours he's been riding a horse for probably 14 and he has one bag of water on him. And this is the happiest day of his life. And he's also really rich where he's from. Because he has a horse. He's like up there, political rich.

Politicians shouldn't be rich. That was mean. It just blew my mind that the joy that was in this man's moment and in his life. And really all he had to his name was this horse that was given to him by his father and this bag of water. And it was like, beautiful. I want this country to be secure and stable. So what you envision your life with your wife to be can come to fruition.

And that, I mean, I could give you a bazillion examples. Wait, I need to tell you about blue blocks, the best thing ever. They are so life-changing when it comes to winding down. I actually think that if I was going to list my top three things when it comes to winding down, it would be blue light blocking glasses. So here's the deal. blue light damages your eyes and it leads to digital eye strain, especially when you're in bed, it's like 8 o'clock or in my case 7.30 p.m. You're winding down you're in bed. You're scrolling

through social media or you're watching housewives and you're not wearing blue light glasses. And this is horrible because it's not telling your brain it's time to wind down. If you're wearing your glasses though, it signals to your brain, okay, it's time to get relaxed. It's time to get cozy. It's time to go to bed, which makes your sleep way better. Have any of you noticed this year, being at home a lot more and staring at our computer screens, our TV screens, our phone screens, more than ever that your eyes are starting to bother you a little bit. I noticed it earlier. The reason they was hurting is because we were staring into these computer screens and TV screens and phone screens all day long. And it can't be, I mean, it's just not good for your eyes. We've had so many experts

come and talk about the effect of light. Inner blue blocks. They were created to fix all the problems we're talking about and block out the blue light with evidenced backed high quality lenses. Out of all of them, I definitely picked the Chester's. They're very nostalgic. and charming and you could wear them out. If you want to look at other frames, don't worry, they have over 20 frames in the latest fashion trends, and they come in prescription, non-prescription, and readers. This is also cool, too. Blue blocks can turn almost any pair of your glasses into custom blue blockers. And lastly, you should know that they're always and obviously backed by the latest science and made under optics, laboratory conditions in Australia. For each pair purchased,

they donate a pair of reading glasses to someone in need. Get your energy back, sleep better, and block out the unhealthy effects of blue light with blue blocks. Go to Blue Blocks today and get free shipping worldwide with 15% off with code Skinny. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com and use code Skinny for 15% off. All right, back to Tim. No, but I mean, even like something when you like flippantly say, like, yeah, someone's skinned and hanging from the building. Could you imagine if that happened in America? Like, people wouldn't even know what to do.

That happens all the time, all over the world. Yeah, but that's my point is like if you have your perspective, like, I think like what we try to do without getting super political is just try to point out like how lucky people are if they get to live in this country and develop a life here because it's just there's so many things that we're granted here that you just that are just not granted in other places. And loving America isn't shouldn't be like a polarizing issue. Like we can all come together and like you might think there's some faults that we need to

address. You might have some different ones. I also have some and we can address all of those together. but more importantly, we can come and talk about them. And that conversation's been lost. I don't know how people forgot how to talk to each other. But if you had a different view from me, now it's like you're dumb, you're a racist, you're a bigot.

I have no interest in talking to. And a matter of fact, you shouldn't even have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, Instagram account. You should just be off all communication methods. So nobody can hear the insanity that's coming out of your mouth, let alone me and all of my followers. That's insane. Do you think that's social media?

Like, why is that all of a sudden? Do you think it's like what do you think is you think it's a mixture of things? I think it's a mixture of things. I think we have created echo chambers in our own life, not just in social media. It's the easiest to do it because you can curate and editorialize your social media feed. Right. Like I like what she says. I don't like what he says.

I'm only going to listen to people that agree with my own feelings. So immediately you're able to editorialize and create your own echo chamber of your own ideas. And your phone's listening to you on. top of it. So it's only serving you ads that are what you like. I'll tell you a story. My wife is like, hey, there's all these Instagram models out there. She's like, I can't have you on here surfing the web. So she started following about like, I don't know, 100 Chihuahua accounts, little Chihuahua dog. And then to his phone, I said, Chihuahua, Chihuahua, I love Chihuahua. All it populated was chihuahua. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? I didn't, I didn't know why it's

aggressive monogamy right there. I did not know what was happening. I'm like, why is my phone only giving me this? But it's like, to your point, you know, if you're just constantly, building this echo chamber for yourself and only following things you like to see, like that's all you're going to see. And then when you see things that you don't necessarily like to see, it's going to be almost jarring in a way. Because like, what the hell? Like, what's this? I haven't seen this. Well, the same thing happens in life. Like, well, it's really, really easy because you can do it in five minutes on your phone. Follow, unfollow, subscribe, unsubscribe. You're curating your own amount of information. You can do it on the TV. You can do it on the

radio. You can do it on serious. You can do everything where all the information that you get only substantiates or supports your own ideas, which makes them more radical. But in life, people are becoming more socially distanced because they're living in communities that align with their own beliefs, just like you're talking about moving. People do that. So they move to places that align with their beliefs. And they move to areas specifically, if you look like grin, global, regional, immediate, and near.

people are curating their lives to be, okay, I want to live in America. Okay, that's global, regional. Okay, I want to live in freedom loving places. So I got Montana, I got Idaho. You know, Florida's kind of always on the fence. Texas for sure, you know, okay, California's probably out. New York, probably out. So immediately they start creating social dynamics that they're reinforcing that.

And then to the community and then to their jobs. Like they're going to go into jobs that align with their own beliefs. and then where they spend their free time. So whether that's going to be church or volunteering at a sport. So just like their Twitter feed, they're curating and editorializing the influences that they're getting. More so now than I think we've ever been in history, people are more isolated in their own ideas, which makes a different idea shocking. Why could somebody think that?

That's insane. I've never thought about that ever. Of course you haven't because you've never exposed yourself to anything different. You know, like, oh, Kate, you've traveled around the world. Tell me about your trip to Paris or London, super interested about how that check the block about how you now understand global ramifications and the nuance of governments. The problem is I feel like self-awareness of not stepping outside and observing your thoughts to say, I need to be more open-minded. Like, you almost have to do the inward work to open yourself up to be non-judgmental because you're right. Everyone is so stuck in their judgment and they can't see anything else but what they can see.

Yeah. Actually, I think it's really wise and intuitive. Listening, for somebody to be a good listener, they have to first get rid of their ego, right? Because if, you know, I want to hear what you have to say. But every time that you say something that I disagree with, I'm going to be like, this guy is so stupid. Why would he ever think that? Right.

Like, I could never hear what he has to say. and there's not a chance for anything that he has to say to ever reach. There's no seeds that are going to be planted because there's no soil that's fertile in me because I'm just this rancid, disgusted, disgusting feel that's already been salted and bleached. So you first have to like strip away that ego so that you can listen and be a good listener. And to be a good listener, like that's actively listening and trying to understand from that person's perspective what, like clearly I have lived an extraordinary life that is dissimilar to most people. So the lens that I have, the glasses that I look at this world,

through is different than most people. When I get to be with somebody that, thank God, hasn't had to see the things that I've seen, and I just like, tell me more. What do you think that lens is specifically? Like, I mean, are there certain traits or certain qualities of life that you look at and you just can't see the same way anymore as other people? Is it like, do you look at the world like as it's as a darker place? Or does, because you've seen things improve, you look at as a place for hope? Like what, you know, kind of where I'm going with this? Yeah. So I view everything in such extreme contrast. You know, as in Africa for most of the beginning of this year, when I came home and I smelled my kids to do with that, that smell is like, makes my heart explode. Best smell.

But I hadn't smelled that in months coming back and being able to eat food that I ate brown MREs and went on the local market and bought goats and like stewed goats, which was like the best meals that we had was buying recently killed goat. And that gives me this lens where I get to look at the world through these extremes. Like I get to appreciate beauty, kindness, sincerity, passion, truth, freedom because I see the adverse. I see the antithesis of all of those things, which makes me value and love them that much more. Like being able to see my wife and get that kiss, being able to see my son go play lacrosse, watching my daughter walk for the first time. Like, I know it's special for everybody else.

I'm not saying it's more special for me, but I've seen women that had their chest cut off of them so their children would starve to death. Literally seen that. So yeah, maybe I do get to have a little extra special love seeing my kids. Do you like war? Like when you're out there, do you like it? Like, is it something you enjoy or can you not wait to come back? There is nothing like the brotherhood and camaraderie that you have with the people standing to your left to the right. I know it's so cliche in the damn movies, especially the Navy SEAL movies.

They always make it like so like, you know, I'm going to do this for the guy standing next to me. You're like, God, that sucks. But it's so true. Why did you make it so cringe worthy? I mean, I love these guys. I would do anything for them at any moment. and you know it affords me a lens that I love, a lens of contrast and of passion. War is the worst of human, of humankind.

War is the depravity of man. But in war where bullets are flying and people are screaming, and I watch on my teammates run to pick up a four-year-old girl that's scared that's going to run across the street, and he risks everything for something that is not mission critical to go save that damn little girl. and he's never going to get an award for it. He's never getting any accolade.

He's never going to get any praise. But I just saw him risk everything for somebody that nobody else cares about. She's probably an orphan too. So like literally nobody cares about. You know, like let alone any America, any real American that has any idea what's going on over there. Watching guys body barricade teammates that have been hurt. So like if you got hurt, you and I run over with our body armor. and we cover you with our body armor

while the medic is working on you. So if a bullet comes in, it's going to hit us so he can have a chance of saving you. I get to see this. So while war is the most disgusting, horrific thing that man can do to man, it also shows the beauty that we have for each other and the love that we have for each other.

It is freaking amazing. Let me ask you this for men and women. I feel like in a way, especially if you're in special forces, there's got to be something in your head that's different than the common person in order to be able to go out and do these type of things is there like a common trait or something you see

with the people that you've worked with in the military they're like and you could just spot it like that person has the thing or like there's something I don't want to say off but like there's got to be something a little bit here. Like when you talk to Jock you told us like when you're on it is there something that you and Jocko just both have that's like this magic.

Like there's just some people that just have that thing and maybe some people don't. Like if you ever see some like, hey, you don't got it. You shouldn't do this. Like, and some people are like, so you say you shouldn't do this. We get to say you can't do this. So during that long period of training, all of those, yes, I have to learn how to set up a radio and how to use a machine gun and how to write an op order and how to, you know, Met TC and all like military planning. But all of those things are just opportunities for us to judge each other on our merits.

So it's like a hot button topic right now, I guess. But. merit-based admissions into schools, for example, or it's really difficult to try to explain to normal people that we get to judge each other off of our ability to perform. And nothing else matters. Gender doesn't matter. Race doesn't matter. Intelligence, physicality, you can either do it or you can't. So every single course that we go to, there's 13 guys. And of those 13 guys, 12 of them get to move forward and one of them has to take a walk. And we rate each other one through 12. And the guy that scores the worst, cumulatively, on average over all 13 of us, he goes.

And it sucks sometimes because sometimes you have 13 studs. Like these are 13 amazing dudes. But one of them's the worst. And we have to look at each other and be like, you don't have it. Hey, hey, hey, let me talk to you about the gut to support your immune system, all the things we just had Tina on the founder of Just Thrive Probiotic. Okay, probiotics are so preventative. It's all about your gut and your immune system, especially right now.

70 to 80% of your immune system lives in your gut. We learned that on the last podcast. And I don't know, but I feel like this is a theme of 2020. Your gut health is crucial for immunity. So after we had Tina on the podcast, I did a bunch of research with Michael on this probiotic and found that it is a very, very clinically researched probiotic. And these ones are very effective without a bunch of added shit. They're vegan-friendly, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy, sugar, and histamine-free, and they're non-GMO. Yeah, and I highly suggest, even for myself, you know,

going back and re-listening to that episode, episode 307 with Tina Anderson, who's the founder and creator of Just Thrived probiotics. And if you listen to that episode, you'll hear how important it is to take care of your gut, not only for your immune health, but your overall health. She talks about how most of the diseases in the human condition originate from the gut. And here's a wild fact that she told me, 80 to 90 percent of Americans suffer from some gut issue. So if you have gas, bloating, diarrhea, indigestion, heartburn, acid reflux, look into healing your gut. I'm telling you, probiotics are where it's at, especially this year. And make sure with whatever probiotics you take that you do your research, because there's a lot of them that promise all these different things and they don't deliver.

Just Thrive probiotic is very different because they have these strains that have been third-party clinically tested and proven to arrive 100% alive in your gut. That's the word that you want to hear, guys, alive. Safe for anyone, any age kids can take it. Pregnant moms can even take it. If you're looking to give your body the important immune support, it needs to feel your absolute best. Get your gut in order with a Just Thrive probiotic.

To get 15% off your order today, check out justthrive.com slash skinny and use promo code Skinny at Checkout. You're going to get this and you're going to be in love. Listen, this is a little different. Like, you guys aren't going out and playing soccer. Like, I can understand that when it comes to these circumstances. Like, I wouldn't, I don't think anyone would say, hey, I want to go into the line of active duty in a war zone and not know that the person next to me is absolutely capable of covering my back, right? You asked, is there a single thing? I don't know if there's a single thing, but discipline and an inability to quit?

are absolutes. So I promise you could have walked into that. When I went to selection, there's 400 of us. And I think 80 guys got selected. And of the 80 guys that got selected, you could have walked up and put a gun to their head and said, I'm going to shoot you right now if you don't quit. And you are about to deal with a honey badger

that just snorted a kilo of cocaine from Medellin because that dude is going to take that gun from you and he's going to beat you to death. There's nothing you could have done to make any of those guys quit. But they had gotten that far because of discipline. And then from there on, you just can't get them to stop. There's nothing you could do to make them stop. So what do you think that trade?

Like, what do you think it is? It's just like. Discipline? No, I know that. Sounds like. That's the thing. But like, what do you think is it something you're born with? Is there something that like happens?

Like what does it manifest itself? You build it like a muscle? The no quit? Yeah, you can build that. Like what were you like? kid. I was insane. Like what? Like a second born, I mean, before I could walk. So I started walking like seven months. But when I was five months, my brother would try to walk by and I would lay there if I was dead. And when he would get in arm reach, I would grab onto his leg and I would start

biting him. And they used to joke, they'd like put that one in the corner at preschool and like put extra padding around him. So Laura LaCarrie, I'm in kindergarten. Oh, Laura. She's beautiful. but she got a haircut. Kyle told Laura that she looked like a boy with her new haircut. So I followed him up onto the top of the playcape and I hit him in the face and I pushed him off and I broke his arm. So that was the fourth time that I got a spanking at North County Christian school that year in kindergarten. So you don't like bullies. No, I hate them.

I do not like them. And so, but a lot of the guys, you see a lot of wrestlers, you see a lot of water polo players. and you're like, what is the commonality here is they've struggled, they have seen pain, they have seen failure, and they have learned to quit less. I joke nowadays that I try to find my quitter, and my quitter I have named to a very specific X of mine, and I want to see that quitter come up every single day so I can smash that thing in the face and bury it down deeper. And then I have to go and do an even crazier thing, whether it be a workout or a stress test

or climbing into a fjord in Norway to dive down 200 feet to try and find a German U-boat. Whatever that thing is, it's like, I'm gonna find her and I'm gonna bury it. I wanna talk about that version of the, I think the first time Lauren and I were exposed to you

was we were listening to Tim Ferriss. So this is maybe a little while ago, a couple years ago that you did a show and you had that concept. Yeah, yeah. Like you, Tim. You were talking about the concept of like hurry up and fail.

Maybe we segue a little bit and talk about training and how you look for that point. in order to, you know, to get started and actually like break past. And I think there's so many people that are looking to get, you know, they say like, what's motivation? But I think you got to go deeper than that if you're going to like in order to continue to push yourself. And I want you to talk about a little bit.

Motivation will fail you. The, you know, you go listen to a motivating speaker and you're like, you feel so good for two hours. Because people message me and they, hey, can you give me a book on motivation? I'm like, that's like the thing to maybe get you fired up, but it's not going to be the thing that takes you there. Yeah. I love that.

I say on fitness. I'll just use fitness because it's the easiest example where somebody's like, man, I want to, you know, I want to lose weight. I want to, you know, be more attractive to my partner. And can you give me some motivation to go work out? And I said, no. What you can do is give me your diet for the next seven days

and then journal your workout for the next month. And if you do that, I'll give you some motivation. But what did I just force them to do? Take action. I force them to be disciplined. I force them. to have a regiment. I force them to do a very specific thing. Nutrition and exercise are two very necessary elements to become more physically fit. But I forced them to be disciplined about them,

to be disciplined about that. So discipline, while motivation will fail you, discipline never will. Back to Jocko. Jocko's thing, discipline equals freedom. That's so simple, but it's so true, where the only way to, I say the only way that you can get what you want, everything that you want is on the far side of hard work. And hard work is discipline. It is being up early. It is working late. It's finding the time.

It's strategically organizing your time so that you can be efficient. Discipline is what separates success from failure. And discipline builds confidence. Discipline builds everything. Yep. Because people like how,

like we talk about, and there's people like want to talk about confidence a lot. And I know, and it's Lauren and I cannot take credit there's this confidence comes from the promises that you keep to yourself. I think who said that to us, Ed my letter or Tony Robb. Somebody said that. But it's true. And with discipline, like when you're keeping those promises and staying on top of them and getting up early and showing up to that workout and eating healthy, like, you start to be like, oh, I can do this. And it gives you that

self-assurance like, oh, I actually, like you become confident. What are some rituals that Tim Kennedy does? Like, what time are you waking up? Are you doing an ice bath every morning? What are the little things that you do to make you really effective? I think there's like four components for total human condition to be successful, right? You have to, your body has to work right. So that's sleep, that's exercise, and that's nutrition. Like, that's a necessary component. And then like the interpersonal development of having meaningful relationships that give you

the capacity to do great things. If you don't have a developed interpersonal skill and you don't have a body that will work for you, you can't even get on to the next two things, which is like doing rad shit. I want to like go make the world better. I want to save lives. my company motto is to preserve and protect human life. That is the mission state of my company. Right.

And then soul. Like you got to develop those. So that's the kind of four meaningful compartments for me. Some of the things that I do, when I come home, I see some horrible things in a day. And I do horrible things to myself willingly, like gross chunky hands and scarred. And I think I have a chunk here from grappling today. But the moment I walk through my door, I walk straight to my wife. And I spend the first 15 minutes.

with her. If you're not taking notes on this, I'm divorced. I got the computer. Get your composition notebook out. So most men, and my father was this way, he would get home and we were not allowed to talk to him for 30 minutes. He'd come home. He'd take his stuff off. He's a narcotics officer. He's brilliant. He's one of the most kind, generous, selfless servants I've ever met in my life. I wish I could be as incredible as him. But here's an example of how he failed as a person where he'd come home. You couldn't ask him any questions. You couldn't talk to him. He'd go take his gun. He'd go take his gun. And off, you know, he'd take his vest off. Maybe he was buying dope so he's wearing like a wife beater that had like fake puke and beer on it. So he'd do whatever you need to do to like kind of

settle in, right? And then he'd come. I remember like you had to gauge time. He had to make the first move, right? Like he had to come in and be like, hey son, so, uh, how was practiced today? Now I know I could talk to him. Right. But for the 30 minutes, like I just had to hold your breath, you know, hope that like he doesn't freak out about something or that I didn't break something or you know and like a snap and ruin the night and what a horrible precedent to set for your family the first thing you have to do is come in and show them who's the most important thing and for me that's my wife and kids so when I walk through that door go straight to my wife so all of my kids know that she's the most important thing in the room and then as soon as I get kind of the first sigh

from her that I know she's good I get to move on the one year old she gets scooped up by an ankle I'll shake her a little bit, you know, like, ah, bite her chest. And when I hear that first scream, it's like, ah! Like, I know I got her, and I go find the long-haired five-year-old boy, and he's usually out there tormenting one of the dogs or he's climbing on top of the pirate ship,

or maybe there's, like, some blood dripping out of his head. So I go and I try to get the blood back in his body, and then I clean him a little bit, and then I go and do a rad thing with him. Maybe that's bayblades. Do you know a bayblade is? Oh, man, they're pretty rad. What are they?

Roller blades? It's like a spinner. It's like a spin top. Oh, no, I know what those are. friend has a son, Wolfie, and he loves those things. Okay. And then the other two, are they living at your house? They live anywhere they want. So one of them's

in college and the one is in senior high school. So yes, sometimes. I want to know how you keep it hot and spicy when your wife and you were separated. Are you writing her love letters? Can you guys FaceTime? Like, what are the tools that you used? All of I use them all. So

she's going to get flowers delivered to the house on Friday. Like, she doesn't know this. So, like, just ordering flowers randomly for no reason, for no purpose, for nothing, and doing the note of, I'm sitting here, thought of you, will love you forever. Love what she loves. Finding the things that are meaningful and that matter to her and spending time and learning about those things.

Like, do you think I want to know anything about Pinterest or decorating the house? Would those be things that I would be interested at all? No, but I'm going to love them. You got a Pinterest board? Do I got to go to the TV? I do. I do and they're all the things that my wife likes. And no, that is not emasculating.

Sure. She loves our kids more than anything on the planet. I would be remissed if I did not love them more or try to love them more than her. So she loves that little girl, her new baby, you know, like with everything. And like the moment she's done nursing, I'm like, give me that baby. The little girl is mine, you know. But that same lake that you just had, she has too. And she's like, oh, okay, you can have her.

You know, but I love what she loves. That's a hard, humbling thing sometimes, because I'm not good at the things that she loves. I want to do the things that I'm good at, right? I want to, like, go out and be manly and, like, lift weights and throw stones and, like, shoot guns and bring home the meat, you know, and, like, drive my truck. Like, does that do anything for her? No.

No, but I think, like, that's, I mean, that's a great explanation of what makes a successful marriage and relationship work, right? It's, like, you kind of, like, mesh into each other. I think the people that go into a relationship They're like, I'm not changing a thing I'm being exactly who I'm like, yeah, good luck buddy That ain't gonna work You luck with that

What time are you waking up? I need to know the time That varies six Okay, so not like you're not like up at three or something No, no I do get a lot done before my kids get up So I'm working on my private helicopter pilots license And studying the far aim Which is like the flight manual Is really difficult when you have a five year old and one year old

I go to bed late and, you know, with a 6 a.m. workout or wake up, spend the morning until they wake up, make them a fresh homemade breakfast every single morning, and then take them to school. And once I take them to school, I get my workout in. And then from the time I get, I finish my workout until they get done with school, I am just hammering work. Just trying to be as efficient and as effective as I can. Just the moment they get out of school, those little bastards are mine. Yeah. Yeah. So if you were to give advice, we have a lot of female listeners, and maybe you're going to say there's nothing we can do, but is there anything we can do for self-defense? Like, should we be carrying something on us? What do you tell your wife?

We had Joe Schilling on the show. I don't know if you know him. Yeah, I know. Yeah, we just had him on the other day. And she brought up this question to him. And it was more from like the fight perspective. And his answer was like, there's some things you can do. But like if a Tim Kennedy's going after.

He said, Slim Pickin. He's like, get a gun because he's like if, you know, if someone like you or me is going after my wife, like maybe she, like, you're in some trouble there. And so, but I think, like, I think about this now, like, having a daughter, a young daughter and a wife. Yeah, what do you tell your older daughter? And with the world, like, you know, there's a lot of crazy shit going on right now. I'm like, you know, I want to make sure, like, I want to be, like, if I'm not around

and they're on their own, like what, and there's a lot, same with sisters, anybody. Like, you want to know that they can handle themselves. Like, is there any advice you give or is there courses or things you tell women to do? Or even men, honestly. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm kind of a badass. Yeah. Like black belts in a few different martial arts, professional fighter for 17 years.

and master sergeant special forces, like, I still carry a gun, like right here. Like, no matter how badass you are, if we hear screaming downstairs, sure as shit, I'm running down there to fix it. And I would be very hampered and handicapped if I didn't have the tools to be able to preserve and protect. I'm an ogre. I'm straight up. I'm not going to walk out of this building and worry about somebody coming around from a dark

corner from an alley and grabbing me, right? Like, that sounds like an amazing afternoon. for me. This dude's, yeah. Hurry. I was like, this dude's gonna try to rate me?

It'd be awesome. Or like, I'm at the pulse dance nightclub, you know, like a bunch of gay people I'm just having fun with and somebody comes in. They're like, oh, I hate you guys.

I'm going to kill everybody. Be like, this is so cool. This is what I've been waiting. Yeah, this is ideal for me. It's about to be a rough night for you. But you and I have different skills, right?

Like, we're different people. When I say assets and liabilities, while I'm going to say some things that are not assets for you. Like, you don't have hairy arms and you don't weigh 220 pounds and you can't take somebody's face off. Like, I can do that pretty effectively. You have assets that I don't have.

Like, you can disarm people with sometimes a bat of an eye. Just the way that you're walking can project a, I'm not in the mood. And even predators, they might look at you and be like, I'm just going to wait for a different one. She told me a story day. She's like, you know, when you get pulled up, by a police officer, this is what you say and they'll let you go.

No, they'll let you go. No, but I told the other day, I said there is an energy that you have, I think, that's an open energy or don't fuck with me energy as a woman. I could be wrong, but I know what you're saying. There's like a look. I'm going to wait for the next one. I think that's men and women. And I think like predators, they pray, right?

And they wait for people. They're looking for easy. They're not looking for you, right? Like they know they're going to wait. So lion's sitting there, right? Nasara. it looks over and it sees this gigantic water buffalo that's shacked shoulders. You know,

and that water buffalo is sitting there with this big ass horns, the size of like our waist, just one horn. And that lion's like, nope. Oh, look at that Impala with a hitching its giddy up. That guy's got a flat tire.

That's going to be a way easier target to go after. One of the tools that I think every single woman needs to understand and spend as much available time as they have on it is situational awareness. If you can an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, if you can prevent putting yourself into a position that where you can be victimized, you know, like just real easy examples. You're like, you're going to the store. I'm going to park towards the front underneath the light. I'm going to put my cell phone in my bag. I'm going to make sure that my favorites are number one, the police. Number two, my husband or my partner. Number three, my brother. Number four.

for my mom so like I can easily very efficiently call somebody for help that will know where I am using things like Life 360 where I know where you are when you're going to those places, being clear and transparent about your schedule. So those things can, I can plan ahead. Planning. If you're going to go somewhere, I get away with a lot, right? Like I'm a gross troll. So I can walk into a dark alley and three thugs are going to be like, fuck no. Not that guy, we're going to die. I will say though, like, I can see how people are intimidated by you, but you're also very warm. Hope so.

So you have both the sides. Well, I think that comes with knowing you're a capable individual, right? And daughters. Yeah. When people come to you and they say they're intimidated or you can feel they're intimidated, is there something that you say or do to make them more comfortable? Yeah, really try to find common ground. Yeah. You know, it's like, you guys have kids tell me about it.

Oh, he's nine-month-old? Fantastic. You know, like, where is she at right now? Like, why isn't she here? Like, I mean, while I was sincere, I was not disingenuous. Like, I wish she was climbing, like, pulling this camera over. Like, that'd be awesome. It's also common ground where at least we found something that we can build from.

Yeah. People get freaked out when they're, you know, how many times has this guy been to war? How many times is this guy, you know, hurt people? Like, a lot of times. It should also make them feel comfortable, though, because you, like because they feel safe. This is probably the most comfortable podcast. I'm not worried about anyone coming here.

I'm not worried about anyone kicking in the door. I'm like, wrong core. Are there micro things women can do? Like, should we be carrying pepper spray or is that a waste of fucking time? Should we be doing little tiny like tools like that curse? Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, little things like I talked about like, you know, like I think everyone's in their phone these days, right? Like they're staring at the phone. And I, we talk with LA's been so crazy this year. And I like one thing I say and I'm not a pro with this. But I'm like, hey, get your head out of the phone because you just don't know someone going to brought it behind you, hit you, like, you know, like, you just never know. And I think, like, this phone is a liability in a lot of ways. It's a tool, but it's also a liability for situational

awareness in my opinion. Absolutely. I mean, you're spot on. And if this is such, if you're losing situational awareness here, just because I put this away, I still need to be able to look and understand what I see, right? And that's a tool that you can develop and that you can teach and that you can learn. So I have a company, Sheepdog Response, and we have a course dedicated to situation awareness. That is just teaching people how, like, we have a bandwidth. Like, think of Wi-Fi. I only have so much amount of bandwidth that I can spend to look out. And if I'm like, Jason Bourne, I'm like, okay, at this altitude, I can run a four-minute mile and I can hold that pace, you know, for 25 minutes. And that guy over there, he's pretty good with his weight. The best place I can find a gun is in that

truck over there. I've memorized every single license plate. Okay, your bandwidth is like now zero, right? So I can't waste my bandwidth on things I don't need to think about. So we teach people how to look out. Like that group of purple-haired ladies that are playing cards at the table having tea, they're not a threat. I'm going to spend zero amount of my brain worry about them. Those little teenage kids, like that 13-year-old freshman and her little junior high friend that are flirting, I have zero worries about them, take them off the plate.

Now I'm really just focusing at people between 15 years old and 40 years old, probably male. So that just erased like 70% 80% of people that I would be spending bandwidth on. So that is all taught and learned skills about how to look out into the world using things like grin, METC, COCA. These are all acronyms in the military. So I went to a 40-hour, special, softsat, special operations, situational awareness technique. 40 hours of just how to look. Just how to look. And what are some of the, like, what are some things that are just like the average person wouldn't think about looking?

looking at. The more that you, this sounds weird, the more you look, the more you see, and the more you see, the more you understand. If you're walking at Target and you see the dad reach down to grab the cranberry because he's gonna duplicate whatever that dude is drinking on the skateboard. As he reaches for it, the little girl goes like this, it's an asshole, right? He beats his kid. The guy that has red face and acne on his back, his wife keeps doing this kind of like quick

checks to make sure that her husband's okay. God, a dude's on steroids and abuses his wife. That young 13-year-old girl that keeps checking the end of the aisle, she's about to steal some makeup, right? The guy that keeps walking down to where the condoms are and trying to figure out how to open that thing, got it. He's trying to, like, but until you put that phone away and you learn how to look, you're never going to see any of those things. And those things are around us all the time 24-7. And those aren't even predators. Those are just regular people living in their lives. Now, you're walking out of the store, and there's that guy that's kind of sitting by the busted light. And he's looking at you and like you as a man, you lock eyes with him for a second.

And his eyes don't break away. That's a predator. And he has been surveying people and he knows how to look and he knows how to identify weakness. Like do you think a hyena is pretty good at picking out the weakest link? For sure. They've been doing it their whole entire life. So you have to teach yourself how to look the way that they look, how to see what they see. Sometimes it's walking a mile on their shoes, but it can be trained. So could we come to this sheep dog class? Can you tell us more about this? Because I want to hear exactly how this works.

So our level one, which is like the basic entry level, we focus on three things. We focus on, we have four A's. The first one's assessment. Assessment is first of ourselves, awareness of ourself, and then awareness of our surroundings. And then after that, we go to assessment. So I'm aware of myself, like how much sleep did I have? How much I've been training? What are my tools?

Do I have a tourniquet? Do I have a gun? Am I aware where I'm supposed to be parked? Do I have a backup key? Is my cell phone charged? Do I have a flashlight in the car? Like all the things, that's just my state of being awareness. Then it's awareness of everything around me.

And the next thing is threat assessment is where I see something that's off. So if I'm in front of a mosque and there's a guy in white prayer robes and he's speaking Arabic, does that sound off? No, that sounds super normal, right? Like, that's a dude at church. Go, bro. I'm happy that you're at church worshiping in any way that you want.

That same guy in front of Disneyland sweaty with a backpack. That caused concern? Understanding where things belong, right? Finding outliers. Seeing like a white guy with a Confederate flag roll up onto a black Baptist church

in Louisiana. It's caused for concern. Guy shouldn't be there, right? So just being able to see the outliers, things that don't belong. So awareness, assessment, action. We spend a third of our time on action. That's kind of fighting how to protect yourself, how to retain a weapon, how to take away a weapon.

And then last is analysis. Is what I did the right thing? What do I need to do next to stay safe? So in a day, the first day you come in, let's say you come in on a Friday evening, you have about a five-hour block of instruction on how to look in the world. We have these acronyms that we're taught in special operations. Koka, MetTC, Grin. And so we try to shape your brain about how to look out in the world.

Then from there, we check all your gear, make sure you're ready to train the next day, kind of give you a safety brief. And then the next day, you show up on mats and you fight. It's fun. You're surrounded by, like, you got a Delta Force guy over here, got a Navy SEAL over here, got a Marsa guy here, got our Army Ranger over there. I got four different professional fighters. all of these guys have black belts and these are your instructors that are just there to hold your hand.

Can you be like me? We have 80 year old women. Okay. With like two time hip replacements. Like at any level, none of these things are like these are not ideas or concepts that are owned by us like freedom and safety. Like nobody should ever live in fear. Like a life lived in fear. Who wants to live that life?

Like walking around like worrying about no. Like once you buy into these ideas, once you buy into the process, it, you don't live in you don't, you're not like this prepper. Like, somebody can come get, get me when I walk out of this door? No, like, all of that goes away and you can just live. You can be free and can be in the moment. And I can be with my kids. I'm not sitting there with my beautiful teenage daughters being like, man, we walk out

to the car, man, I hope somebody doesn't jump us. Like, I've already done all the things to make sure that I can be in the moment with my girls. You know, be like, how is your day? Ah, imagine that. Your boyfriend's a doucheback. I told you. Why do you just listen to dad, you know?

What is it like for your daughters to do? bring a boy home. I want to hear this. I can't wait to hear this. Fortunately, my resume kind of speaks for itself. So I don't have, I mean, I remember going over in like the first dates and the guy's like the dad was sharpening his bowie knife. And I was like, I got it. You are sharpening your fucking knife. Like for real. I don't have to. Because like they know. Yeah. You know, there's, you know, I was thinking as you were talking, there's like, there's two camps though when it comes to people but maybe I'll make the point here

I think there's the people that live in fear and I think a lot of that fear would be alleviated if they did some training and started to feel a little bit more capable and unaware but then I think there's the other people and I touched on this earlier in the episode of people that just don't realize they should be fearful

right like because we've gotten to a place in this country where we're so safe that people don't realize that there's still things to be very scared about like you know and fearful of and I think we've you know we don't worry about a lot of the things that many people in the world worry about.

And so you just think it doesn't exist, but it very much doesn't. If you go through life not being aware that bad things can happen and then they do, it's almost worse because you're like, holy shit. Like you're caught so off guard. Yeah.

Sadly about, I'd say a quarter of the women that come to our courses are formal, I'll say survivors from sexual assault. First, like, I love them. They're so brave and they're so courageous because they had their eyes opened in the most horrific way.

They were living in ignorance and in bliss, and then something happened. And now they can't, you know, go her four books. The first time we had a young lady, the first time that she had stepped outside of her own door was to come to our course in two years. Two years, she stayed in her own apartment, ordering food, working from home. And two years, she shows up at work to our course two years later. And we're doing some self-defense stuff. I grab her by the hair and she just starts shaking, quivering.

and obviously totally triggered to the moment of what happened two years ago and, you know, like, I just grab her, I pull her in and I say, listen, everything's different moving forward. Like, now you get, now you got to vote. You know, what do you have on you right now? She's like, I have a ghost strike knife.

I'm like, find a space in my ribs and put it in there. You know, she's like, it's just boom. And it was freedom. She was free from what had been two years of like pain, suffering. And now she's just like, she's beautiful. I wish I could go specifically, but in the past two years, the metamorphosis into like this loving, caring, outgoing person is this transformation is incredible. You're right, though. You know, you have people that.

I mean, look what happened this year. People like the world started going to a pandemic and people start going crazy and running all over the place and grabbing toilet paper because they don't know. They didn't realize something like this could happen and they didn't realize there was something actually that they could be scared of. Yeah. And we just didn't. And nobody knew what to do. And I'd love to know your thought. Nobody knew what to do.

So they ran and they're grabbing everything off the shelves and toilet paper and like you become the laughing stock of the world. It's like, that's the thing you go for when the world starts hitting the fan. So nothing changed about my life. Like I was informed that's a global pandemic. And I have chickens. I live in the country. I have well. I have solar.

My kids and family. Like there's nothing changed. I did my work. Literally nothing has changed in my life in seven months. one of my neighbors she has she takes care of her mom who has going through chemo so i do their shopping for them and when i go drop off their food i i lysol and wipe down everything that i'm bringing in i'm wearing a mask i bring it in like absolutely i will 100% make sure that you're good and safe my breastfed kids there are like my one-year-old that looks like a bowling ball with legs you know my five-year-old that is

a savage with long hair that's like he looks like he's in the movie last with mohicans i'm dead serious You know, like, he is like always sweaty and maddy hair and his hands. You put a lacrosse stick in that kid's hand, like run for your life because you're about to get murdered or there's going to be an object flying about 200 feet per second. They're fine. Most importantly, they've never lived a single day in fear. They're just living their lives. Nothing's changed. Nor should it. Be strong. Be better. I mean, it's it's it's I, the reason I wanted to make the point is I just think it's like people just it's it's about being aware more than anything and I think of this shared. Yes.

And but if you don't realize that you should be aware and that you need to be prepared, then like, then evil can happen to you and there's, and you're going to be caught off guard. I wanted to talk about one more thing because I was listening to you the other day when I was doing some research and you talked about something that we've never talked about on the show. And we talked about a little earlier about how people cannot have a conversation anymore.

This is going to be a weird tangent. Insurgency, counterinsurgency. You were talking about how other nations that may wish us ill. All they really need to do is point. out that maybe our system doesn't work for it to destabilize it. And you were talking about how it's not that hard to do. So, perfect example. If someone's riding and they burn down an area that's destabilizing that area, but it's

usually an area, like economically, that certain area is devastated for generation. Generation. Like it's not coming back. And it's usually the poorest areas, right? And like, so they're hurting the poorest people. Or, you know, you get to this place where people can't have conversations in this country anymore and people start to question like, hey, does America really work? Does democracy really work? And it's like you start to destabilize a country doing very simple things. And I wanted

you to talk about a little because we've never talked about on this show. And I haven't heard anyone explain it as eloquently as you did. Eloquently. But it was. I was like, I was like, oh shit, like that makes a lot of sense. So all of our enemies. And by enemies, I mean, anybody that doesn't value freedom and ability to live your life the way that you want to live it. Russia, China, Iran, they don't like the way that our country operates. Because it's completely opposed to the way they operate. Right. So it takes very little effort to create an insurgency.

If you're going to have a military force, try and overthrow a country, it takes lots of money. It takes lots of power. It takes lots of missiles and takes lots of aircraft. So if you're China or you're Russia and you want to. destabilize America. The best thing to do is to be really effective with your dollars. In a return of investment, if I'm going to go to a place that is already having issues

from Baltimore to Seattle to Portland and the peaceful protests are occurring, and I can go and I can pay a couple of people to turn that peaceful protest into a riot. All it takes is a little bit of effort. a little push for what is a peaceful protest to turn into something disastrous. And then once that energy and that violence gains momentum, it's really hard to stop. And we have done this all over the world to our enemies.

And they are no doubt doing it here. During the 2016 election, Joe Rogan had, I don't remember this young lady's this name, but she specialized in bot farms. Like how many fake and troll accounts are there. there in comparison to real ones when it comes to hot topic issues, from LGBTQ to BLM to John Trump to Joe Biden. Regardless of the issue, what you found was the most extreme outliers in every single one of these categories were mostly foreign agents with large bot farms and troll accounts.

So if I wanted to mess with Antifa or BLM, right, do I go on there as white guy Louisiana 555? No, like nobody's going to listen to me. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to be like, go black power, you know,

at BLM for life. There's my handle. Now I'm going to go in there. I'm going to find a bunch of people that resonate with the group that I want to eventually undermine and attack. And then I go and I like all of them. And nobody likes affirmation, like extremists. So getting that reaffirmation from a new

person like, oh yeah, amen, I love that you're saying that. Retweet. Fantastic. That's such a great point. Screw Donald Trump. He's absolutely a racist. Now, I just keep building up this community, getting more followers, liking more things, becoming more legitimate. So that, at my leisure, I can just start planting seeds of distrust and attacking the foundation that they view. you know, for the flip, let's say, like, the American Patriot Prayer Group. I'm going to create like a Donald Trump account. I'm going to go in there. I'm going to like all of their pages, you know, like proud boys, sons of liberty,

and every group I possibly can. I'm going there, be like, yeah, this is awesome. And then slowly, I'll be like, one of the founders and writers that scribed most of the Constitution owned slaves. Do you think that's right? I'm struggling this with myself. I'm just asking, what do you guys think? And boom, a seed of discontentist plant.

And I just keep doing it. And they play a long game. Russia has been doing this for decades. Decades. They have been specifically doing this. And at a time, especially in an election year, where we have candidates that are so polarizing, it just makes it so easy for them to come in. And divide. And divide us.

That's all they have to do is push us further to our extremist sides. So we just can't talk and we can't talk. Well, this is the point I wanted you to. make because like, you know, this has been a very contentious year. And I think people are more divided right now than, I mean, there's other times. By design. Yeah. And it, but yes. And I think people don't even realize, like, they don't even realize what's happening, right? And like, if you are an enemy of this country, what better way to start taking down this country? Divide the country. Make the people hate each other. Make them stop talking to each other. Make them start questioning

everything that each other. They can tear down everything that the country stands for. Yes. Do you think the pendulum will swing though the other way? Because sometimes when everything goes so extreme it comes back around. Like, do you think people are going to start to realize that this is what's going on? Yeah, but unfortunately, the pendulum has to swing really far. We're not to like the holy crap, this is really bad. Most people are still like living their lives comfortably because we're in this, this amazing country where, you know, you can work from home and you can, you know, still send your kids to some schools. And I think the pendulum has to swing a little bit further before people realize how far off center we are for it to swing back. I believe in America. I believe in

Americans. And I know that when we really get pushed, nothing unites us like suffering. You know, where we're like, you killed 12 million what? You gasped Jews in Alstwich? Fuck you. Hitler, you and all of your friends, you're all going to die. And off we went. You know, we know what Wright looks like. Sometimes that pendulum has to swing. far enough away for us to remember what right looks like. But 9-11, on 9-12, we're a United Country. And we went and had been at war for 20 years and never again has that happened since then where they have tried. And the thousands of times that they have tried to do that again, we brought the fight to the doorstep. Maybe notice, like, you don't hear a lot about terrorism

anymore. I mean, like... If you were to predict where this country is going in the next two years, with everything you've seen, what would you say? I predict that Americans are going to reach a breaking point. Nobody wants to live in isolation. The only thing that comes out of isolation is a unabomber. Like, why would you want to live in isolation? If you're in isolation, if you're an echo chamber of your own ideas, at some point, you have to like realize you're just hearing your own ideas echoed endlessly in this chamber

that you've created, that you've curated, that you've editorialized for yourself. and yeah, it's like, who wants to live in that? That sounds like insanity to me. That sounds like torture. If you're like, Tim, design purgatory. Like, okay, give me all of my own thoughts and beliefs and stick me in a room or the only thing I hear is my own thoughts and beliefs repeated to me. That sounds like torture to me.

And people are doing that to themselves. So my prediction is we're going to wake up and we're going to remember what freedom looks like, what it tastes like, what it feels like. We're going to look at people that, you know, governors that told you can't buy seeds at the grocery store, that's not an essential item or a governor that's saying you can't run your business. I don't care if your kids starve to death. I don't care if you lose your house. I'm telling you, for the good of people, you can't go back to work. We're going to remember what it means to be an American.

An American has back, has strength, has courage. We'll fight for what's right. Do you think there's an event that gets people talking again? Like, what do you think, what do you think that is? I think a lot of people are like, wait till after the election. And I'm like, I don't think it's going to make as much of a difference as people think. Yeah. And either.

It's not going to be like one day this happens because there's going to be, like, as divided as we are. There's going to still be a side that's pissed regardless of Trump, Biden. There's still, people are still pissed. What is that event to get people back together talking again? I wish I could. I wish it's like a mad. People think there's like a magic wand after election day and we're like back to normal. Joe Biden's president.

Awesome. Where everybody's going to talk to each other? Neat. I want to see that magic trick. You know, Donald Trump's presence, they automatically stopped rioting in Portland. Of course not, right? I think you're totally right.

The event that the catalyst that I see is not one I hope to see in the United States. I don't think, you know, the Titanic, all he had to do was start turning the boat just a little bit. And they would have missed the iceberg. And over time, that big-ass ship would slowly just have turned. away and all the prosperity and all the commerce and all the immigrants and all of the breaking down of regional divides that boat would have changed the world but it didn't hit it hit an iceberg and a bunch of people died but all it took all it would have taken was somebody just to turn the helm just a little bit i think we it's not too late i think we can still unite i still think that we can talk

I still think that anybody that disagrees with me can come and have a cup of coffee with me and talk to me. And I want to hear why. I want to listen to their perspective and try and understand it. And then go fix what that problem is. I think that's so nice to have a cup of coffee with someone and just talk about things. The anger of this year and the energy, just that's what it needs. A cup of coffee. You're amazing.

Thank you so much for taking the time. Where can everyone find you to stalking? your Instagram is fucking incredible. Pimp yourself out. Tim Kennedy MMA for Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. I think I'm just Tim Kennedy on YouTube. I have a pretty cool team that I put stuff up all the time and occasionally I'll put stuff up.

And if you see me sweaty or bloody or overseas, you just know that everything I'm going to be saying is just straight from the horse's mouth. And what about sheepdog if someone wants to participate? Sheepdog response is the company name. That's our website. That's our during the pandemic, when that kicked off, I think we posted 60 workouts that you can do from home with just body weight. You know, like, oh, you can't go to the gym.

Jim's are coolest. No worries. You can still train. Don't. The worst thing you could possibly do is become a sedentary fat person and watch your immunity plummet during a global pandemic. So go exercise and be a healthy person. Sheepard response is a resource for everyone. We do not own the right to freedom and protection and security.

So like we try to give it out to everybody and have them buy in to these ideas of living free. Love it. And is there an Insta handle for sheepdog or is it you? It's sheep dog response. Perfect. Sheep dog response. Michael and I definitely want to come do that. I might kick Michael's ass.

I might learn how to kick Michael's ass. Thank you, Tim, for coming on. Thank you, my pleasure. Wait, don't go. Tell us your favorite part of this episode with Tim on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential. and we will drop into your inbox and send a bunch of you the new skinny confidential pop socket. It is so cute. It's on my phone right now.

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