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Good morning everybody. Friday programming for today is going to be traditional. We're going to do some Q and A. I have some questions today. That two of them are kind of thematic and I think you'll see why when I answer them. A good volume of questions coming in recently, I'm going to do my way to chip away at them. And I also got a suggestion we've been playing around with doing some episodes with just Michael and I. Somebody made the suggestion. Actually not somebody. Multiple people made the suggestion. If I what do we call it? Bolt Action Friday, Negligent Discharge Friday, whatever. It'll end up being talk with Michael in his 20s. I'm in my 40s. A couple people suggested adding my dad. Now I don't know what to call it if there's three generations sitting around the table, but we're going to try that probably next week. So I'll have my dad who's currently on the road probably driving at 30 miles an hour in the left hand lane somewhere from California back here to Montana. I apologize for anybody that he slows on their travels. We'll get him here, assuming he makes it back. Michael and myself, three generations of. I'm not going to say wisdom or knowledge because I have neither of those things. Experience, maybe lack thereof. When you come to Michael, he's only 23 years old, so what can he have? But that's what it's going to end up being, I think next Friday. If we're not able to get it in, then it'll be coming soon. So I appreciate the suggestion from the listeners on that one. We're going to go ahead and get that done. Let's dive into today traditional Q and A. Before we get into that, just give me the chance to pay the bills. That's all I ask. 60 to 90 seconds and we'll be off right back into the show. Today's episode is brought to you by Spartan Forge, the creation of my good friend Bill Thompson. Now I've had him on the show. You can go back through the show and find it. He explains his background in the military, where he came from and also the Spartan Forge app. This thing is ridiculous and I have it up here on my laptop and I hit record so the viewers can see what I'm looking at right here. First, first and foremost, this is designed around the hunting space for sure. But there are so many things that are in this that you will find in other hunting based apps and then there are so many things that you will not as well. I use this and I Am going to use it for hunting. But honestly, I'm using this for aviation even more. There's a very traditional software called Foreflight that any pilot would likely recognize. But I balance back and forth from Foreflight to Spartan Forge, especially for rotary wing. And I'll show you guys exactly why. So the screenshot you guys can see is where I live. And up this top area here, you can select what you want to see on the map. Now, right here I have satellite imagery. And obviously satellite imagery changes depending on when the pass occurs. So there's a good example right there from Sat 1 to Sat 2. I'm going to say this is a different season. Sat 3, it'll change it a little bit. Topo, if you want to, you can get a look just at the topographical breakout of where I live. But here's. Here's how I use this often for a rotary wing. This is an example of the area that I live in. You can see on the west and the east, there's mountain ranges probably. Yeah, I'll. Mountains. I don't know the definition between a hill and a mountain, but there's a lot of foliage on there. And you actually have no idea what you're looking at. If you're looking for something that is either sloped or flat, this lidar button right up here is ridiculous. And this is why I go back and forth between the two. You can obviously start zooming in and you can get a better idea of what it is you are going to be looking at underneath the potential foliage that you're going to be, you know, that could be concealing whatever it may be. If you're looking at trying to make a landing there, turn that back onto the satellite. Another cool thing that they have added is this little button right here, which is your illumination. Where are the shadows going to be? Now this is going to go directly into hunting or I would say the tactical space. Where are the shadows going to be at a certain time of day? Well, I don't know if everybody knows this. I hope that they do. But the sun rises in the east, so look at this. On the right hand side of the screen, you can see shaded where all the shadows are going to be. And this also can kind of tie into aviation as well. What direction are you going to approach from? Where's the light going to be? Where could potentially hidden obstacles be based off of that light? It's a fantastic tool. As you get to midday, I bet you all of these things go away. Yep, there's a little bit of Shadows up in the mountain range there. But as I bet you as we swing across over, we're just looking at the different array of. And you can see now it's shifted to one side. The shadows are now on the eastern side instead of the western side because the sun sets in the west. It's a fantastic tool. It has an AI program that you can use to ask questions about your weapon, hunting, camo setup, all sorts of stuff. It has a tag tag hub where you can stay up to date on hunts and draw odds, all of those things. It's a ridiculous tool. Like I said, based in the world of hunting, but so much more. Spartanforge AI. It is the most valuable app that. That I'm using on my phone, hunting aviation. I use it weekly, if not daily, especially if I'm out there flying. So spartanforge AI get after it. Okay, I got the red smoke gun. Run north and south. West of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, wait, baby, give it to me. I mean it. You're cleared hot. Can't be cleared hot. All right, here we go. We're gonna dive right into the questions. Have three for today, potentially a fourth, depending on how much I run my mouth. I try to keep these somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes. I always tell myself I could do this in 15, and then I look up at the recording device and I'm shocked at how much I run my own mouth. I'm doing what I can. All right, I'm trying to be concise. Bear with me. First two questions are loosely connected. I think you'll see why once we get through them. So here we go. Question one. What does it take to be the best at something? What level of commitment and sacrifice must a person make to be the best? When I say the best, it can be at anything. Sports, Brazilian, jiu jitsu, business, a student, or even the guy who takes pride in being the best in sweeping floors at the end of the day. I think about this. With your experience in your previous occupation, when you were screening for development group, what level of commitment and sacrifice did you have to to take yourself to succeed? Looking back, would you recommend it? Okay, this is a very interesting question, which is why I picked it. I'm going to leave the bottom portion of that, the selection process, and the commitment required to be successful in that for a little bit later, because it doesn't actually have anything to do with being the best. Now, let me start with this. I have never been the best at anything in my life. And sometimes when I talk like that, people will say, well, you know, he's just trying to be humble. Or that is a false humility. And what I'm trying to do is be honest legitimately. If I look back at my life, let's start with where I have probably the most concrete memories. In high school, maybe shortly before I played athletics. Let me tell you who was never at the top of the heap when it came to having athletic gifts. That was me. I weighed 150, was 6 foot tall when I graduated high school, played baseball and water polo. Both of the teams that I was on were average at best when it came to the ranking between other schools in our area. And I was average at best in comparison to my peers. Went into the military, obviously went into SEAL training. And there are outliers in SEAL training. There are people who look like they're carved out of marble. There are people that are capable of doing physical things that I just don't understand. They were truly gifted. Hand, eye coordination, strength, cardio, looks, hair, you know the deal. When I was in third phase, a few weeks from graduating, I was down by the ocean and I was running back up towards where the chow hall was, and an instructor stopped me and he said, what is your name? And I think at the time I was a Seaman Apprentice, which is an E2. And I said, my name is Seaman Apprentice Stumpf. And he said, are you in this class? And I said, yes, I have been from day one. And he just shook his head and walked off. He had no clue who I was, which actually mean meant to me in that moment that I had succeeded because we were a few weeks away from graduating and I was just in the middle, a complete gray rock in the middle of a class that was relatively small. Why was that the case? Because guess what? I never hit their radar. I never did anything great. And I didn't galactically mess up either. I just was in the middle. I get into the community and I could hold my own. Shooting with some people and got my ass handed to me by others on every platform, pistol, rifle, long range, you name it. Tactics. I feel like I had a good understanding of tactics, and I would scratch my head at some of the people that I worked with and their understanding of not only the tactic, but where it came from and its utilization, the modifications that you could make with it. It was unbelievable. Every skill set we were responsible to do, there were people that absolutely ate my lunch. I was never the best at anything. I get out of the military. Skydiving. Again, average. There are people who can do things that I don't understand. And I am sometimes in very narrow windows, able to do things that some other people are not. But nowhere near the best. Jiu Jitsu. Good luck finding who the best person is in Jiu Jitsu. I don't care what your belt is. There's somebody out there who has your number and they're gonna eat your lungs. It's a daily humbling activity. I don't even know what it looks like to be the best. I guess if you're Gordon Ryan or Hodgk Racy and nobody can beat you, I guess that that would be it. So, yeah, I'm neither of those people. Business. Don't have a clue what I'm doing. Trying to figure it out as I go. Leadership. Really no clue what I'm doing. Trying to learn from the mistakes that I have made and the lessons that I have learned from other people. Relationships. Doing the absolute best, but a completely flawed person in every aspect of my life trying to learn from my mistakes. I think you get the point, and I'll stop there. Now, I'm going to tie this back because the second question or the second portion of the question ties directly into the screening process. I'm going to tie this back into my military career. Although I was never the best, the beauty of that world is I got to spend a lot of time with people that I considered, at least in the cohort of people that I knew could see and touch and interact with that were the best. And what that allowed me to do was pay attention and take notes. And there is one consistent thing across every activity that I have talked about, whether it's athletics, even military service, even leadership inside of the military service, or the skill sets inside of the military Jiu jitsu. It directly ties into this. Some of the best. I'm not going to say the best. Some of the best people that I know, again, in my limited orbit, 100% embrace this business. I feel like it's the same relationships. I feel like it might be the same as well. And it is this. The people in any of those sectors that I have seen more often than not outperform their peers had an insatiable focus on fundamentals. They never chase the shiny flashy object. They consistently and constantly go back to. If you were to look at a. I don't have a book in front of me, but a collection of chapters and paragraphs and sentences. All of those things, though, require understanding. The Alphabet and a Mastery of each one of the individual letters and an understanding of how they compare with others. The people in my life who are the best at what they do don't focus on the novel or the book. They focus on the Alphabet and specifically the single letters inside of that Alphabet. And it is boring from the outside. If you were to only focus on their desire to master the fundamentals, you might be bored. But if you only focus on what they are able to do with the mastery of those fundamentals, you're missing how they got to that place. If somebody is able to do something that is awe inspiring for you, or you're on a range with a pistol or a rifle and you are watching somebody shoot at a level that you don't understand and all you can think of is, I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to replicate whatever it is that they're doing. And you chase that shiny object, you're missing how they actually got there. You're missing the probably days, weeks, months, years, likely decades that it took them to get to that place. And if you chase that through an Instagram video or a YouTube tutorial that think that allows you or tricks you into thinking that there is a shortcut, I'm here to tell you right now that is the fastest path that I have seen towards people failing. They try to find a shortcut. They get frustrated when their performance doesn't align with their expectations and eventually they end up giving up. I'll go to, I'll give two examples. Jiu jitsu and shooting the best shooters that I've ever seen. Truly. You see them on the range and you'll, and you'll, watch them and you'll look at the shot timer and what they were able to do and you ask yourself, how in the. Is this person able to do that? Well, I got to spend a lot of time around people that were able to do those things. And God, there was a, there was a range at the east coast command open 365 days a year. You could have ammo in your cages. You could check your weapons out at any time. And there was a log, a paper log that you needed to sign in. And I would go in and I would shoot before work often. And I'd put my name on the log and this particular individual's name, who was one of the best shooters. His name was probably there five out of seven days out of the week. Sometimes seven out of seven. Sometimes I would end up showing up there at the exact same time that this person was There. And they are not in this room doing high speed drills. They're not doing shooting and moving. I would watch this individual practice, I'm not going to say for an hour, but for a time period longer than I would want to. The mechanics of getting your hands into position, to index the weapon in his holster, to pull it out, to join his hands, to present it towards the target, just with a pistol. Same drills with rifles. Dry firing, magazine changes, sight alignment, natural point of aim, manipulating his equipment. And then we'd go to the range and he would fucking destroy everybody else. Well, that's bullshit. He's just, oh, he must be natural, you know, or he's gifted. Let me tell you this right now, being natural and gifted is a real thing. There are people as humans that are better at some things than other. But a natural gift does not outweigh experience and time in the saddle. You might be gifted, but that gift is going to bump up against a situation that you may not know what to do with it if you don't have the experience and time put in leading up to that point. If you can take somebody with a gift and get them to focus on their fundamentals, they are a weapon in every sense of the word. They will be just be able to cut through situations that other people are just, they're smashing their head into the wall. And if you're that person, good on you, because I've never been that person, but I've been very frustrated by that person because I just wish I could do the things that they could do. And even in myself trying to work on the fundamentals, I've never been able to get to the level that some of these people have been able to get to, but it has 100% improved my performance, specifically in shooting. Everybody wants to be out there with the shot timer, racing the shot timer, blasting steel, hearing it just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding and knocking down head plates. The real key to a shorter time period on that shot timer is the fundamentals that lead you to the ability to do that Jiu Jitsu. Some of the best practitioners that I have exposure to, and again, this is my own experience in the ecosystem that I can physically touch. Some of them have flashier games than others, but all of them have an understanding and a mechanical ability to execute fundamentals that is beyond reproach. You cannot build an amazing structure on a foundation that isn't sound. I have a limited amount of time doing Jiu Jitsu, so I can only speak about my personal experience and the experiences of Others who I consider my friends who have been training during the time period that I have the fundamentals of jiu jitsu, you know, base posture, pressure, escapes, frames, all of these things. If you were to say, I'm going to spend a month focusing on my posture or talk to somebody else and say, I am going to spend a month working on my spider guard sweep, taking them overhead to an oma plata, which probably makes no sense, doesn't even really make that much sense to me. I'm just kind of pairing together some flashy terms. And this is. None of this is in my game, by the way. But if you were to ask somebody, which one do you want to focus on for a month? Most people would say, can we do the flashier thing? That is more fun and maybe it's going to look a little bit better on highlight reel. And it might look better on a highlight reel. Until you encounter somebody whose fundamental game is so good that none of your flashy shit works. And that's where the two worlds collide. And I've seen this happen in my limited time. I have done zero research on the Internet for what I would call flashy techniques. I know that they're out there and I have nothing but respect for them. I didn't go down that path and I don't think I'm ever going to. What I try to do is I seek out high quality coaches which I have access to, then I do exactly what my coach says and nothing more. If my coach says, put your hand here and he articulates why, why would I do anything other than focus on making muscle memory, putting my hand there, until you encounter a situation where you need to move your hand somewhere else. That's my theory. I will do exactly what my coach tells me to do and focus on what my coach tells me to focus on and no more, because I need to understand it at a fundamental level. It's also kind of the way I learn. I have seen people who will receive that same information and then they will start to say, well, what if he does this? What if they do this? What if they do that? And before they even have a mastery of the fundamental, they're trying to figure out ways that the information that they have received can lead to other things and. And then they'll spend more time focusing on those other things than that fundamental technique that actually led them to that place in the first place. I am not here to tell anybody how to pursue their journey through life or martial arts. Do whatever you want to do. I'm Just saying that in my experience, those that focus on the fundamentals in the short term often seem to get passed by those that are focusing on the flashy thing. But in the long term, they always pass that person. And I've seen a lot of people who focus on that flashy thing give up once they become frustrated, while that person who they originally passed and maybe got a little bit ahead of starts catching up to them, giving them a really hard time, destroying them and then putting them in the rear view mirror. So you have to ask yourself, which one of those do you want to be? I want to be the person who puts people in the rear view mirror. That takes time and that takes a fundamental approach of focusing on the things that really matter, the basics. Okay, so when screening for development group, what level of commitment and sacrifice did you have to take to. Did you have to take yourself to succeed? Looking back, would you recommend it? The job never suffered first. Everything else suffered. The hardest thing about, if I look back my own personal experience, the hardest thing about my old job was not the things that they asked us to do, it was the time away. It was the strain and impact on relationships, the tactics, techniques and procedures. I'm not going to say that they're easy. They're also not like putting a satellite into geosynchronous orbit. They weren't incredibly difficult. I could legitimately teach anybody the requisite knowledge and skills to do my old job. That's personal opinion, but I truly do believe that. Did we sharpen those skills to a very knife cutting edge? Yes. Could you actually explain those things to just about anybody? You absolutely could. The difficulty was the stress of that screening process. Oftentimes the instructor ratio was one to one. So you have somebody looking directly at you, gauging your performance, which is a bottle of stress. Some people perform better in that stress. Some people come apart. And the fact that you lose an additional 30 to 40% of the people who go through that screening process, or at least during the time period that I did, I think speaks to that people can go back. So it's not like it's the end of your career by any stretch. It's not a negative mark on your career. And to answer the portion as to whether or not I would recommend it depends on your life circumstances and situation. Where are you in life? Would you be giving up something and risking an immense amount by pursuing a pipeline like that, or are you earlier in your life where you have a lot of Runway in front of you and you can risk as much as you want to. So would I recommend it? It's hard to say without talking to the person. Would I do it again if I was given the opportunity, knowing what I know now, If I could go back in time, yes, I would. It was incredibly rewarding. It was enriching. It allowed me to answer the question that you asked based off my ability to be around people that just absolutely did things that I didn't understand. Awe inspiring and inspirational to say the least. Was there a cost associated with that? Yes, there was. But if I could go back in time, I think I'd be able to manage that a little bit better. I just was young and inexperienced in certain aspects of my life and that's kind of how we all are when we're young and inexperienced in certain aspects of our life. The commitment was of time and sacrificing everything but the job. That shouldn't be. That shouldn't be the primary focus in my opinion. For most people, depending on what the job is. This job was a little bit unique and to a degree that is an excuse because I could have balanced it better. 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It's hyperlinked so maui nuivenison.com clearedhot maui is M A U I Newey is N U I In case you don't want to go to the Show Notes Malinui venison.com ClearedHot let's get back into the show. Question number two to give some background context. I am a 28 year old guy whose life over the previous year has been more or less thrown into the metaphorical washing machine on the holy shit cycle. That's a rough cycle. My washing machine of life has that one too. I try to avoid it or at least use a lower temperature water. I went through a breakup with a long tuned girlfriend, was laid off from my job, moved states away from my home in Montana unfortunately. How dare you sir. Went through a career change, started jiu jitsu, tore my pec doing jiu jitsu. That sucks. Kimuras are fun. I know exactly what you're talking about. Hopefully the pec tear wasn't complete and then you have recovered, had surgery a couple months ago on said peck and landed my dream job. All of that being said, I've had a lot of time to think and gain new perspectives on a myriad of things. I began talking to a therapist and it had a very positive impact on me and my understanding of how I think. One thing I've identified in therapy is that I struggle with being good enough in air quotes. The way that I'm looking at it, in fact, I would probably classify it as my single greatest fear in life, not being good enough. You have also, sir, described likely my own fear in life, a combination of that or not being there for the people that I love if I need them or if they need me. Actually both would be the case. But my fear in life is not being there for them should they need me, not being enough for others, my family and friends and myself. And the standard I hold myself to, where I feel that I struggle with this, where I feel that I. Where I feel that I struggle with this. Sometimes the reading is tough. Is that it feels to me like this kind of double edged sword in one sense, feeling like you're never doing or never done achieving that you are continuing to work on yourself and improve yourself to be a better friend, family member and version of yourself as a worthy. As a worthy cause. It's a crucial aspect of to life. However, the dichotomy of this Jocko is very proud of you right now in this moment is that good enough is a moving bar. So this leads to my question for you. Do you think there is such a thing as being good enough? Should somebody ever be completely satisfied with who they are or where they are in life? Or should this be used as a driving factor to improve even if it's never achieved? And how do you balance these two? There's a lot in those short sentences right there and I think people can probably understand why I selected this. It ties in a little bit to the first question about being the best. If you can't be the best, is there a place where good enough is good enough? This question got me thinking about myself quite a bit and where I landed in the way that I think about myself or I talk about myself. And I've talked about this pretty openly on the show. I am my own worst enemy. I am my own worst critic. And I don't think I am unique in that aspect in any way. I think most people are their own worst enemy, their own worst critic. In so many people that I have talked to, when it gets to things like, hey, that self talk that you use for yourself, is it more positive or negative in nature? The crowd of people that use extremely negative self talk is much bigger than those who focus on extremely positive self talk. I fall into the former category, not the latter as well. Point being, I can be my own worst enemy. I can be so much more viciously critical of myself than anybody could ever be. And the reason for that likely is I know my own triggers. I know the things that bother me. I know my own insecurities. So I can weaponize all of those things against myself like an absolute samurai master, because I'm literally weaponizing all of those things internally towards myself, like an idiot. And that is one of the things. Actually, as a little bit of a tangential side note, I talk pretty openly about my and it's not that I have done expansive deep therapy for years. I've talked with therapists and counselors from time to time in my life and has been wildly beneficial. One of the best things in those experiences is talking with somebody and helping create an infrastructure or a pathway or guidelines internally that can help you recognize that negative self talk, the negativity and damage and destruction that can come from that, and interrupt that. Not perfect at it by any stretch, but it did help once I realized and recognized that, hey, the person talking the most shit to you is the guy you see in the mirror. You can probably have some control over that. The fact that I let it go for as long as I have in my life without having that metric of control in place was shocking neither here nor there. Do you think there is such a thing as being good enough? I think that there is a glass ceiling for every human being's potential. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are not the same thing. I understand why equality of outcome seems appealing to people. They want life to be fair. They want the human species to be fair and balanced and for everyone to be equal. And we are not. And that sucks, because that means people, regardless of how hard you work in life, are going to be better than you at some things. And you may be better at some things than other people. If you hit your glass ceiling or you feel like you hit your glass ceiling and arrived at this place where you feel like you're good enough, is that a good thing? In my opinion and the way that I live my life, no, I don't think that acceptance of good enough is enough. And the reason I say that is any time in my life that I have said to myself, all right, I got the job done, whatever goal I was aiming for, whatever it may be, cool. I hit the absolute minimum threshold for what I would consider to be success. Every time that I have said to myself, okay, that's good enough, my effort rapidly diminished, if not disappeared. And if that starts at the very bottom end of what you consider to be successful, how are you ever going to get to the top end? I would rather bounce my face against a glass ceiling. Not at a rapid pace, but at a microscopic pace where even if I arrive at a place that I consider to be successful, I keep working. And again, I'm not sprinting into a wall and smashing my face against it. Even if the effort that I'm putting in is having no measurable impact or difference, I am continuing with the effort because that is the way that I want to live my life. I want to go out clawing and kicking and scratching and holding on and fighting as much as I can. Because to tie back into the first question about people that I've seen and their ability to be the best, they never stop. Good is not good enough. Good enough is not a pit stop for them. Along the way, they just keep putting the work in. I'll use my dad as an example. He's 147 years old, definitely going to die of old age and a combination of dementia probably within the next several days. He is at the gym five days a week. He is not the same man that I knew growing up. Physically, there's no way that he could perform at the levels that he used to. And if I'm being honest, both mentally and physically, he suffers from age or age, which we all do. Life is a fatal condition. I hate to have spoiler alert for anybody, but he refuses to sit on the couch and let gravity and time and age determine what he is capable of doing. So what is he doing? He's fighting as hard as he can. For him, that looks like doing laps around a track. Walking. It looks like going to the gym five days a week. God, I'm sure he is in the locker room like all old men do, for reasons I don't understand, walking around naked with no towel whatsoever in a public locker room at the local gym for anybody that trains there. I'm sorry. I guarantee you my dad is just fucking cruising around. He has enough hair on his body to knit several sweaters. Nobody needs to see it. I apologize for the emotional damage that he has caused you. I know that he is doing that and I don't know why, but he is there putting the work in, doing everything he can to hold on to what he has. And I know him as a person. I know he'll never stop doing that because he wants to squeeze every ounce out of life in the time that he has left. But if you tell yourself, I'm 70, I've achieved everything that I'm going to achieve in my life, time to just sit down and take it easy. I know some people who have done that. I bet you everybody listening does as well. Ask yourself, what does their quality of life look like? What does their life expectancy look like? What does their happiness look like versus the person who at 70, goes, I have actually achieved everything that I want to, but I'm going to find something new. Maybe it's sudoku to pick another example of things that my dad likes. Maybe it is joining a pickleball league. Fill in the blank. They just always want to learn something new. They want to do something new, they want to explore something new, they want to go somewhere, they want to have a new experience. Those people. There's a stark difference between those two people, and if you boil it down is that comes down to one has told himself, this is good enough and I'm not gonna do anymore. The other one has said, this is good enough, but I'm not gonna stop because there is so much value by not being trapped in the handcuffs of telling yourself that what I have done is good enough, so I don't need to do anymore. I wanna be into the latter category. My dad is a great example of that. He legitimately is doing a fraction of what he could do. But I know for a fact, because he's doing the things that he is. He's on the road traveling now. I'm gonna try to get him out hunting in 2025. He would not be able to do those things if he was just sitting in his recliner watching the calendar flip over until he died. Should somebody ever be completely satisfied with who they are or where they are in life? Personal answer to that question. No, I don't think they should. Life should be challenging. Life should be difficult. Life should be painful. Now, I'm not talking about arduous or exhausting pain all the time, but every single thing in my life that I value, whether it's from a relationship with my wife, Leah, my favorite person on Earth, there is struggle associated with that. There is challenge associated with that. And it is the most rewarding relationship I've ever had in my life. The things that we all want to have. Let's say you're a sports car fan. I don't even actually or not a sports car, but just a fancy car fan. I've heard the term Bugatti before. I don't even actually know what it is. If there was 50 cars out in front of me, I might have a wild guess that one is a Bugatti because it looks so different than the other ones. Point being is I know they're expensive. If somebody just gave you a Bugatti, would you value and appreciate it? I'm sure you would. If you struggled and worked your ass off for 10 years to be able to get yourself into a place and you bought yourself a Bugatti, would you value it more? I think so. The things that you struggle and work the hardest for are the ones that you have the most value in or find the most value in. The things that have been given to me for free are often the ones that I care about the least because I didn't have to do anything to get them. There's no struggle, there's no suffering. I think it's important. I think it's essential. I think it's actually part of the human condition. Should this be used as a driving factor to improve even if it is never achieved? Yes, you absolutely should. That is what I think. Personal opinion. How do you balance these two to the best of your ability? Set goals for yourself. If you're living your life by yourself, you have the ability to focus on your life however you want to. If you're living with somebody, if you're a member of a family, sit down and talk about goals, aims, aspirations. Where do you want to be 1 year, 5 year, 10 year plan doesn't mean you have to arrive at those places, but think about it. Talk to the people that you share your life with about what's important to you and where you want to be. Try to get to the end zone together as opposed to growing apart. Life is supposed to be hard, in my opinion, and that's a shitty thing to say because it's not a shitty thing to say. It's a rough realization because I enjoy being comfortable and being lazy just as much as the next person, but I don't enjoy the outcome of doing those things. So for me, there's no way I could ever be good enough in anything that I do in life. And my plan is to kick, scream, scratch and fight for every inch. Even if I'm not getting any farther down the road, I'm still going to try for the rest of my life. And I think that is a better way to live life than just accepting the situation you are in. Question three Completely shifting gears. The Friday Q and A is my Monday cup of coffee. I love starting off the week that way. Why is the Friday Q and A your Monday cup of coffee? You must have a bizarre work schedule. My question is, have you dealt with night sweatshirts? I've been out of the military for 12 years now. Been dealing with high blood pressure and night sweats since about 2017. So that's eight years. I've been dealing with the VA for years about this. They just keep changing my medications. Before it never bothered me but recently married so soaking the bed from sweat is not fun for either of us. I literally lay on towels at times. It's not every night but average three to four times per week. Maybe you have some advice or know some experts who can help. I don't want to keep taking medications that don't seem to help. Fully understand that. Before I say a word, let's clear up the obvious here. I am not a medical doctor. I did watch the TV show House and ER for a little bit. So that is where my medical knowledge and experience come from, of which I have none. That's my point. So I can. I'm going to give you some suggestions. None of this is medical advice. Please check with a doctor, have a primary care physician and maybe this can just hopefully give you some ideas that you could pursue with other professionals. Have you considered that the medications that you're taking maybe for blood pressure or anything else are actually what is causing the night sweats? My sister one time caught for me medication interaction way back in 2005. I was sweating at night but my resting heart rate was also 150 and it felt like my head was actually going to explode. That was due to a drug interaction that was not caught by my treating physician in the military. Not all doctors are created equal. Not all medical facilities are created equal. Doctors are all humans. Humans can make mistakes. I've heard of fantastic doctors and experience in the VA and I've heard of people who their treatment fell short of the expectation that they had. I leave that to me is not about the va. That is about the bell curve of human beings. Get a second opinion if you can. And I would also suggest doing some research on your own on the medications that you are taking. Having experienced that myself of being prescribed things by doctors who I put and we all do, I think an immense amount of trust into because of the crazy amount of knowledge and schooling and and the practice that they have to do before becoming a practicing physician or Residency, I should say you take them at their word. Do a little bit of research on your own, get a second opinion. So that's one aspect of it I would say. Take a holistic view of your life. So 2017, eight years ago, is there anything that shifted around the time period that the night sweats started? I have no experience with this. I mean, I have woken up sweating before, like covered in sweat when I've had a fever from being sick or when I was an idiot and I miscalculated the thermostat where I live and turn the heat on in the middle of the night and woke up feeling like I was dying in the Sahara desert first, you know, the second one was my fault for sure. Can't say I'm responsible for getting sick and having a fever and sweating. The second one, the thermostat, was definitely my fault. Make sure you know what buttons you're pushing. So I digress. What happened back in 2017 that would have potentially caused that? Because if you're able to point to that, there has to be something in your life that shifted. Did you put in here how old you are? You didn't put in here how old you are. Okay, hold on. Been out of the military for 12 years. I have no ide long you were in the military is I'm going to put you at least in your early. Your late 30s to early 40s. That's a hypothesis. You're 18, in the military. I have no long. You did have idea. You did when you were in. But 18, you've been out for 12. So even without your military service, I put you in your 30s, 40s. Okay. The reason I'm thinking about your age is this. You need to go in mar that again. I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to tell you what you need to do. I would suggest that you go get a complete and full workup done on your hormones, your endocrine system via a blood draw, the most expansive blood draw that you can get with as many markers as humanly possible. Not an expert on physiology of humans, my sister actually is delving quite deeply now and starting a new practice. She was spending a lot of time working in hospice. She's kind of shifting to the other side. You know, hospice being the end of life, she's shifting to the other side. But hormonal based medicine and her and I have had some crazy conversations about just the conversations she has had with people. She may potentially treat the symptoms of your body aging as you go through different times. In life. And there's of course drast differences between men and women as well. There's perimenopause, there's menopause, post menopause, all those things on the female side of the house of which my knowledge of any of those things is over. When I say those words. I know what those words are. I have no idea what that experience is. Life, guys, bodies shift as well. Our testosterone goes down. I don't know what you did occupationally. I don't know if you were potentially exposed to tbi, blast injury, all of those things. You have to take an encompassing look at your life. And I would go back to that 2017. What happened then? What can you do about it now? Start with getting an understanding of where your body is right now. Your body baseline. I started TRT in 2025, January of 2024, right after my surgery. I've talked very openly about it. If anybody has any questions about it, I will answer them. I did an entire episode where I broke down every medication prescription I should say that I'm on because the testosterone is about that much of it. And for people who are audio only, I'm making like a quarter of an inch little pinch between my thumb and index finger. My vitamin D was non existent. My cortisol was super high. My diet needed to be adjusted, my sleep needed to be adjusted, my screen time needed to be adjusted. My hydration was dog shit. All of that stuff needed to be adjusted. It's still not magic. I'm still working on moving the stereo needles. Do I feel a little bit better? I do. Am I able to recover faster? Yes. Am I able to train a little bit more? Yes. But I've also made drastic shifts in my lifestyle other than just testosterone. A microscopic amount of testosterone, wildly beneficial in my life. That all started with a blood draw. When I got the results of that blood draw, I remember telling Leah, I remember looking up at him because it was rated between red, yellow and green. Most of my stuff was deeply into the yellow, close to the red, if not in the red. I think I looked up to her and said, I'm dying. I think I might be dying because most of my numbers were so fucked. Lifestyle, occupational exposure, again. Stress, sleep, poor stress, sleep management, poor diet, alcohol, it all ties in. I can't give you precise advice. The only thing I can say is there's many doctors. Get a second opinion at a minimum, get a third opinion. Use the Internet. But also be careful going down crazy ass rabbit holes. Things you find on the Internet. Please bounce them up against a doctor. And again, not all doctors are created equal. Find somebody that is aligned with what's going on with you and their desire to help you through that. You might have to find somebody different than your primary care physician to help you with the blood draw and any hormonal regulation that you may need to. But I can tell you right now, it is 100%, absolutely worth it. So take a very targeted approach. Back up a little bit. Start at 2017. What changed? Could this be relationship stress? Could this be work stress? Could this be family stress? The stressors of life? Again, you're gonna have to answer these things for yourself, but I can guarantee you that this is solvable. Nobody wants to wake up three to four times a night soaked in sweat. I don't think that that's a good indication of your body. Your body is working through something. It is either fighting something, trying to express something, try to express meaning, show you something, or express, push something out of you. The answers are out there. If the doctor you're working with isn't doing it for you, take a more proactive approach. Put your hands on the wheel a little bit more and start driving it down the road. Let them help you, but just take a little bit more positive control. I think you could have real impact, real life changing impact is definitely worth it. Assuming you got a lot more time left in you, a lot more time around the track. May take you a year to solve this. But imagine how much better your life will be in that year or at the end of that year when you have this figured out and you're just humming instead of hiccuping along the way. That's all I got. See everybody on Monday.