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Full Auto Friday - 6/20/2025
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Traditional Q and A to round out the week, answering only the most demanding questions facing our society. Please let me know what you think of the slightly changed format in the comments. Here is what I covered: -Is it a good idea to bang a married...
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Today's show is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play in this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. You guys ready? Because here we go. Should you bang a married guy? How do you know if you're a pussy? Do you have enough time working in your old job to start a side hustle if you wanted to? And how can you best support somebody in palliative care? Let's get into it. Let's go. Okay, I got the red smoke. Gun runs north or south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger Close. Close. Now give it to me. I mean, it cleared. Hot question numero uno. It opens with, I have an ethical question. And I believe the title of the email was I have a moral question. Before I even get into this, let's talk about what I am not. I am not the moral police. If two consenting adults want to live their life in a way that I may not understand or make choices that I may not agree with, I am not here to tell you how to live your life. I'm going to answer this particular email because this person asked it of me. But I do not walk around judging other people. Full transparency and honesty. I do my best to not walk around judging other people. Sometimes I can be a little Judgy McJudgerton, and I think we all can. But I try to recognize that. I try to avoid that and not fall into that trap because. Because I should be as open and susceptible to judgment as anybody else. I do dumb shit from time to time. I make decisions that even I don't understand at points in my life, looking back on them. So it's not really fair for me to judge others. We're all human. We're gonna do some dumb shit throughout our life. I'm not the moral police. But you're asking me and I'm gonna answer you on this one. And I'm gonna answer it through the. Not the lens of judgment. I am going to try to give you some different ways to view this or potentially present this in a manner that maybe you haven't considered. And then from there, live your life. Bon voyage, I believe they say. So here we go. I have an ethical question. I am 29 years old and I got into a relationship with a man in his 40s about a year and a half ago. The only issue is he is married with kids and has not told his family about it yet because his kids are too young to take that information well. He was upfront about this with me when we started dating and I made the choice to continue because to me he is worth it. I understand that I am young, but I act like an old lady and the age difference does not bother me. He is so respectful of me and I can totally trust him and I rarely connect with people or take interest in kids my age. However, lately I have been having anxiety attacks about whether or not this is the right thing to do or if it is too damaging for the other parties involved. But I am so scared that if I leave him I am missing out on a really good thing. There is a lot in that paragraph and there's a couple places that I want to just jump in here, but I'm going to start with this one Today's episode is brought to you by David, the makers of the most delicious protein bar with a simple concept the least calories for the most protein ever. I got a bunch of them in front of me. Their blueberry pie, their salted peanut, peanut butter and peanut butter chocolate chunk. These things are amazingly good. They just sent me a box of their newest the red velvet cake. I made the mistake of leaving that at my house. I don't have any of those to show you because they're gone. My kids ate them and maybe that's the move and maybe that's the best selling point that there is. My kids, who I can't force to eat healthy, actually really enjoyed these bars. That's how good it was. David has the most protein per calorie, so eating 100 calories of David will make you feel more full than eating 100 calories of any other bar. Each one of these bad boys 28 grams of protein for only 150 calories with 0 grams of sugar. They come in six flavors of which I mentioned a few, but don't forget they have a chocolate chip cookie dough cake batter which I'm not a fan of but I just don't eat or like the cake batter flavor. Double Fudge Brownie and like I mentioned, I think it's a limited time Red Velvet cake. Oh get some head over to davidprotein.com and order a sample pack for yourself. That's David protein.com David normal spelling proteinnormalspelling.com or you can just click right in the show notes below. Let's get it Back to the show, you said, I am young, but I act like an old lady. And then in the next sentence you said, I rarely connect with people or take interest in kids my age. I don't often hear people one lap away, one lap around the sun away from being 30 refer to themselves as being a kid. I'm not saying you can't feel that way about yourself, but there are some things in this email where I feel like you are either framing this in the way that is the most beneficial to you or in the softest way to land that. And one of them being I'm just a kid. Again, I don't know where you know, legally we understand that at 18 you become an adult in the eyes of the law. Having two children now that are past that threshold and one daughter who will be at that threshold in another year. And even looking back on myself and pretty much everybody that I know, you. Yeah. In the eyes of the law, you are an adult at 18. I think most parents, except for the wild exception, would agree that at 18 you're still a kid. You have so much life experience yet to gain. You have so many experiences you haven't had. Yeah. And if you fuck up in the eyes of the law, you can be treated like an adult. Are you actually an adult though? Man, I'm not so sure. Add a decade to that though. A decade plus a year. 29. Are you a kid? I'm gonna land my personal opinion on this one. You're not a kid, you're an adult. Perhaps you're a young adult, but you're probably at least through your educational years. Unless you are pursuing a residency or you're a doctor. If you've pursued something that requires a decade of, of additional education, you could have easily gone through associate's, bachelor's, master's, by the time that you're 29, started a career in the workforce, whatever that wanna be, would want it to be. You could, if you had joined the military at 18, be halfway beyond, halfway towards your retirement, which again, military retirement. For anybody out there looking at that, please rephrase that in your mind as the money you're gonna use to find your next job. Unless you are gonna live in a tiny house somewhere in a really cheap place to live, which if you can find a way to do that, that's dope. But money you're going to use until you find your next job. So yeah, you're down the road a little bit. It is interesting to me that you used those two terms in the closeness that you did. And I am going to say they fall into the category of what this whole email sounds like to me. And that is an excuse. Just about everything in this email is an excuse that protects you and this guy that you're banging. Let's work this from the end backwards. I am scared that if I leave him, I am missing out on a really good thing. What really good thing are you missing out on? A dude who is married with kids that is stepping outside of his marriage because he found a woman a decade younger than him. And my hypothesis and suspicion would be he is getting from you what he feels like he is not getting in the relationship with his wife because their life has probably changed. I have no idea how old they are, but let's assume that they got married at your age 29. So they've been together. And you said in his 40s. I have no idea if that's early 40s, late 40s. I'm just going to assume it's 40 for easy math. So 11 years. They've been married for 11 years. They had kids. They have grown together, potentially grown apart. Probably both sides of that equation would make modifications and tweaks to that relationship if they could. Sometimes people are unwilling to do so. Sometimes life gets in the way. You could fill in the litany of reasons and excuses if you want to, but my guess would be this dude man is getting from you exactly what he feels like he is not getting from his wife. And maybe that's more attention, maybe that is more sexual activity. Maybe it is fill in the blank. I have absolutely no idea what it could be. And it sounds like a really good thing for him. If you were to only look at one line in a definition of or a description of this relationship. Look at the things that this relationships provides for me. But you need to ignore everything else. And that being that I'm married, that being that I'm a husband and a father to my children, that being that I'm stepping outside of the the bounds of the relationship that I'm legally in with my wife. You're missing out on a really good thing. Is somebody willing to do those things, A really good thing? And again, I'm not here to judge anybody, but that's a question you should ask yourself. Why do you think that if you continue in this relationship with this person and he is willing to do this with somebody he's been married to and has kids with, why do you think that he wouldn't be willing to do that again with somebody else down the road or do you think that you are a unicorn that you randomly. Two entities collided and there's nobody else in the world that he would consider doing this with and it just happened to be two puzzle pieces that locked into place and no other puzzle pieces would fit with this person. Which one do you think it is? Which one? Do you think it's more likely that you are a unicorn or that you found somebody who is potentially unhappy in their current situation and they are willing to destroy their family for their own personal happiness? I don't know if I would call that a really good thing. Again, no judgment. Food for thought. He has not told his family about it yet because his kids are too young to take that information. Well, that is a steaming heated up foot long sandwich of horseshit right there. At what age do you think that the kids are going to take this information well? At 5, are they necessarily going to understand what is going on? No. Do they have a great ability to process? They don't. At 15, do you think that the kids are going to take it well that their dad is stepping out on their mom and having a relationship where did it go of over a year and a half with somebody who is a decade younger than their dad, outside of the marriage with their mom? Do you think that that's going to go well at 15 even though they have better processing ability? No, it's not going to go any better. If they were 25 and this information came out and one of them was the daughter at 25 and their dad is banging somebody four years older than the daughter, do you think that information is going to process? Well, I'm fascinated to understand at what age do you think these kids are going to be taking the information well now of course there are ways that the dad could deliver this. He could just tell the kids that mom and dad are getting a divorce. He could leave out all of the details of what led up to that divorce. You know, it's just not working. Leaving out. Well, it's not working because for a year and a half I've been dedicating my time, energy and effort into somebody outside of you, the kids and your mom. Because I found something else that was providing for me, something that I thought was missing. And instead of investing in the relationship that I am in, or at least being honest and open and upfront with the person that I was in the relationship with. Yeah, I spent all that time with somebody else and now I'm leaving because of them. Sure. You know, you can deliver the message in any way you want to along that spectrum, I think most people would probably deliver it along the, hey, it's just not working. Because if they were to actually tell the truth, they would be probably pretty heavily judged by the people that they were telling the truth to. But which one, which one's actually real? It's the latter. And again, to go to your last sentence, you're missing out on a really good thing. I don't know. I don't know somebody who is a really good thing that would try to paint this picture with only roses and oh, it's just not working out between mom and I. Yeah, it's not working out between mom and I. You're not trying to make it up or make it work between mom and I. You're spending your time with somebody else outside of our family. How do you think this person should justify the time they're spending away from their kids and spending it with you? How would you explain that to their kids and say, hey, oh, by the way, you know those experiences you may have missed with your dad or the things you wish that your dad had been doing with you and you were wondering where your dad was? He was with me. Can you imagine having to sit down and have that conversation with. Call it a 15 year old because I have no idea how old these people kids are. But let's pick an age where processing ability is actually real. Oh, and by the way, if you are going to stay with this person, if he does end his marriage at some point, do you think that these children are not going to somehow be a part of your life? That you're never going to meet them or have conversations or have questions? How would you explain that? How would you feel about yourself trying to explain that? It's a real tough one. It's a pickle. And for clarity, nobody put you into that pickle. You put yourself into this and don't look to anybody else to try to help you get out of it. When that time and place comes, there is no good time where this, these children are going to take this information. Well, there I would say as somebody who went through a divorce and my children, my oldest was in his young teen years, maybe mid teens, he was 15, so that would be 15, 13, 11. We're the age of my kids. There's no good time. There is just no good time. So telling you that this person is unwilling to do that because it's not the right time is a total excuse. Do you know what he's really saying? I don't want to leave because I don't want to deal with the consequences. What I want to do is have the best of both worlds. I want to pretend on both sides of the equation that I'm doing the right thing. When in reality I think there is a huge question and that is, is he really? If this person wants to change the course of his life, then change the fucking course of your life. Are there any choices in life that are truly easy and consequence free? I don't think so. Is this one potentially full of a lot more social fallout, blowback, personal, professional? Yeah, it really is. Especially as the, you know, the, the drop in the rock and the lake and the waves start to expand? Because let me just tell you, the wife is probably going to tell some people about this. There might be some social circle impact that might overlap into professional impact. And yeah, the guy is going to have to manage that and deal with that because those are the choices that he made that might impact your life as well. Guess who's going to have to deal with that and manage that? You are, because those are the choice that you made as well. I don't think it's your place to tell his wife and kids. Even though there are some people who would say, you know, what you should do because you know about this is you should tell the wife because he is unwilling to do so. Again, that's who. That's a choice that you could make, I think that might implode the entire ecosystem. Again, a choice for you. But the reality is this. The person who needs to be taking the action, deciding which direction they want to go instead of standing with one foot on both sides of the line trying to play perfect husband, parent and also boyfriend, which is total, by the way, all being viewed through the lens of a really good thing that you're worried about missing out on. I'm here to tell you, you know, half of the world's population is men, half the world's population is women. There's plenty of people out here who A, would not enter into the situation to begin with. B, if they found themselves in this situation, they would step up and do at least as much of the right thing that they could. They could own their behavior. They end the relationship with either side of this depending on the path that they wanted to go. But what they wouldn't do is sit there meekly hiding behind this. I don't want to hurt other people's feelings. The kids aren't ready to process pretending to be one thing to one side. Pretending to be one thing to the other side. Yeah, that's not a really good thing. I know I've gotten really long winded about this, you know, and how this, the kids and what should be done. But this is a super fucked up situation. Which leads me to. You've been having panic attacks about whether or not this is the right thing to do. Have you ever had panic attacks about anything else in your life? A decision that you have worried about or thought about this deeply? And if you have, how did you stop having those panic attacks? For me, I don't think I've ever had a panic attack. And my reference for a panic attack is largely what you see in the movies where people collapse on the floor and, you know, they have a hard time breathing. And I've never experienced anything like that. So I don't. I don't clinically know what a panic attack is, but I have definitely had things that have been so difficult for me to work through mentally or emotionally or the combination of a decision point. What am I going to do? I am at a fork in the road and I don't know what to do. Do I go left and continue on? Do I go right and continue on? Because whichever path I go down in that moment, there's not going to be a chance to reverse course. So there is such consequence to the decision I'm about to make. Well, how did I get past that? I got to a place where I took a sounding and depth of who I am and what I believe. And this is not me. Even though there's nothing wrong with this, this is not me. Sitting by a babbling brook, journaling about my inner moral compass and characteristics. This is oftentimes for me, multiple instances of just throughout the random course of a day or drive. It's amazing how much stuff I figure out when I'm driving. Just windshield time, thinking about who I am, what do I want to be, why do I think the things that I do, why do I believe the things that I do? And getting to a place where I arrive at what I believe to be the best decision because of who I am, the next step, making that decision, taking that action, I sleep better the next night and the night after that and the night after that, is it instantaneous? No. But those thoughts, those concerns, if they had their claws into me, the claws start coming out. And when I make those decisions based off of the person that I want to be, the person that I'm trying to be, the best person, the best husband, the best father, I haven't been let down yet, and I haven't been haunted by what I'll call anxiety attacks. Even though I've already described that's maybe perhaps how they manifest itself with me or stress manifests itself with me. Funny how when I make those decisions, the right decision, it goes away. Why haven't your anxiety attacks gone away and why did they show up in the first place? What I'm going to say is probably because you realize what you're doing is super fucked up. If it was just you and a husband and no kids, I think my answer would largely be the same. But at least you wouldn't be impacting children who have no say in any of this. Really, the only person or people that have a say in this are you and the husband. Everybody else is going to be damaged. That is not going to be controllable. But don't for a second think that you didn't cause it or having have a hand in causing this. A lot of people say, oh, it's the husband's fault. True. It's also your fault as well for entering into this because you clearly said you knew the situation that you were getting into before you started. And I will ask you this, what does that say about you? Why were you willing to get into that situation? I'm going to guess it's because of the picture that he painted to you. Let's say you two get into a relationship, you have your own kids, you get married. What would you tell your own daughter if she were in this situation? Would you be proud of a daughter that you were to have if she were making the same choices that you are right now? Would you want your children to follow into the footsteps and the example that you are setting? If the answer to that question is know why are you comfortable doing this? Why do you think that this is such a good thing? Is the damage that you are going to cause at some point in time overshadowed by the good personally that you are going to receive from this? And again, you're having anxiety attacks for a reason. Your body, your subconscious is trying to tell you, hey, something is up here, maybe you should do something about it. And I don't think anything is going to change with the anxiety attacks until you do something about it. I'm not telling you what to do because again, I am not judging you. I am trying to give you different angles to view this from. It's so easy to view this from. I am a lighthouse in the world and I am the only thing that sees out on the horizon. The reality is, take a step to your left or right and the world Looks completely different. Have you considered this from the kid's perspective? Have you considered this from the wife's perspective? Have you considered that the guy you're in the relationship with, who is by the way, in another relationship, that the story he told you, the. The. The way that he treats you, the connection that you think you have, if you considered it's bullshit? Have you considered or at least thought that maybe this dude is in some way shape or form a sociopath and he is just out there navigating life trying to get what he wants from whoever he encounters, regardless of the damage that it does? And I'm not saying that's the case, but have you considered that? Because you should. You're not a victim in this situation. You're a participant. The real victims when I read this are the kids. And you are going to have impact on kids lives that you don't even know. And if it works with you and this dude, you're gonna have to work your way through that at some point in time. And what I would suggest to you is this. Don't lie about it. Tell them the truth. That's going to be ugly up front. They may not like you, they may never come around to liking you, but do you want to live your life having anxiety attacks or do you want to live your life being the best version of yourself possible? Why is this such a good thing to you? Do you really think there's not somebody out there for you that isn't in the situation this dude is? Because there is. The question is, what are you gonna do about it? Again, no moral judgment. Hopefully that illuminated some things that give you food for thought. That is the best that I can do there. Good luck with the choices you make going forward on this one. Just understand they impact more than just your life. Radically shifting gears for question number two. Here we go. I've debated about sending in this question for a long time since discovering your podcast a long while ago. I've appreciated your perspective and thoughts. I do my best, even though I susp. The woman who sent an email for question number one may not feel the same way, but. So here we go. I'm a 43 year old and the chief of an EMS department in an incredible area that's known for beautiful scenery and extreme sports. I'm paid well enough to be comfortable. I'm well respected by our staff and our community. I have a beautiful family with two amazing kids and a complete smoke show of a wife who is very supportive. My question has two parts. One, I am not Happy. While my job is amazing and my team makes a difference in people's lives every day, I am unfulfilled. As you achieved milestones in your life or reached a certain level of comfort, did you find yourself unfulfilled? How did you combat that? I'm going to answer these actually independently, so they don't get blurred. All right, you're not happy. Amazing job, making a difference, but you are unfulfilled. Were you. Has that always been the case or has it shifted to that over time? My guess is that when you first started this job, this EMS job, where you were probably not the chief and worked your way up, that it was incredibly fulfilling for you. And what has happened is you have more experience, you have more time, your optic on what you do has been or has become, and I think this is the case almost always in every profession. There's this idea of what it's going to be. There's this excitement and the path of pursuing that goal. There's getting into that occupation, there's learning the ropes, figuring out that it could be more than you ever thought it could be, and then totally different in areas that you never even imagined that it could be. And then you have a decade on the job and the things that used to excite you, they excite you less. There are less new things that you are encountering. Yes, you're still making a difference. It's a super high impact job. But to you, you, the person who has now more time in the saddle and is more used to these things, it's just having less of an impact. My guess is that's the case. I bet it used to be far more fulfilling and you're getting to a place where it's just less fulfilling. And what I'll say is this. I think that's normal. We get used to the things that we do. The things that once used to blow your hair back in excitement if you do them long enough. I'll use a skydiving as an example before you do your first skydive. This level of incredible excitement and fear and just range of emotions and butterflies and high heart rate and you're probably sweating. And of course I'm describing other people and not myself. In my own experience, skydiving the first time layer onto that. A decade of jumping and maybe even working professionally in the sport and you may not even get a heart rate increase. As you're getting ready to exit a plane in flight with a student strapped to you doing their first tandem, you can feel those things happening to the student on that tandem as they are having a very emotional life experience and you're doing your 14th jump of the day. It's not that the activity has changed. You are just more used to working in that world. And the people will burn out in many occupations because of that. So what you're feeling. I'm not saying you're burnt out, but I think the whole point of this is you get used to what it is that you're doing. It's okay if you found yourself in a place where you're not feeling as fulfilled. I actually think that's kind of normal. And I view that as your opportunity to light a fire somewhere else and explore something else that maybe lights that fire for you. Which will lead me to the second part of your question here. So as I achieve milestones in my life or reach a certain level of comfort, did you find yourself unfulfilled? I'm not going to say unfulfilled, because I don't. I don't even know what that means, a fulfilled life. Does that mean you took every opportunity that came to you, that you threw caution to the wind, that you explored and, you know, you always followed your heart or you had a systematic path or approach? I don't know. I think that depends on the person. So I can't say that I ever became unfulfilled, but I 100% felt this creep of meh into my life in certain areas, and that's okay. What did I do? I found other areas that excited me. And then there's also a way that you can participate with things. And I'll use as an example Jiu Jitsu. I love Jiu Jitsu. This isn't like a treatise on Jiu Jitsu, whether or not people should do it. What I have watched people do is burn out on Jiu Jitsu because they made it their profession. They maybe didn't want to go into the gym or train that day, but they had to because they were being paid to. It became their job to teach other people. And what ended up happening is they lost their overall passion for it because they were forced to participate in it at a level that they didn't really want to. And I've seen those same people hang up their spurs when it came to teaching and then start to only interface for personal reasons. They went to train because they wanted to. They went on a schedule that worked for them. And what happened is, is that it reignited that passion. So a lot of this, it's the activity, but also how you're forced to interface with that. But that gives you a great opportunity to explore things elsewhere. And it's a reminder for me keep the things that I'm passionate about, my passion, not my profession. It would be great if both of those things align. But even then, I have seen it in other people and I have felt it a little bit in myself. You can get to that place of meh and nobody wants to live a meh life. You want to live a life or like, cool, I'm fired up to do this today. So let's get to the second part of your question. So, and the answer though, how did I combat that? I continued to explore outside of those things, but I never. Well, one time I did. Other than that, I never put my ability to provide for my family at risk. Always meet baseline criteria. Money, food, water, shelter, providing for your family, all of those things. It's what you do with that off time that you can find those things that will light that fire under your ass again. So two, I found myself spending a lot of time working, thinking and dreaming about starting my own business. For clarity, when I was younger, I did own my own business, so I understand the insane amount of work that is involved, but I talked myself out of it because I'm only nine years from retirement and I have a bit of the golden handcuff syndrome. That thing's real for sure. How did you decide to start your own thing versus getting a standard job working backwards on this? This was accidental for me. I was in the military and I was highlighting, or not highlighting, what's the term? Moonlighting on the weekends. Working for CrossFit, I didn't have an overarching idea to do this. This is something that kind of figuratively fell into my lap. And I did that for the last seven years of being in the military. Now, there was some military deployments in there and training trips and stuff like that where I wasn't able to. But I was able to work for the military and then layer on additional things. And then when I started working for CrossFit, I had additional skills that I was able to layer on. On top of that, when I was doing the skydiving stuff, I was still able to do part 135 charter flying in the jets. And so I was always from that point forward from the military. I saw the value and utility of not just being in one bucket in tranche there. There are some nightmare scenarios with that and sleepless nights where you're wondering about what you're going to do next and whether or not you're going to be able to navigate it, that's going to be a part of it as well. But since that time, I wish I could say I had a systematic approach to it. That's how I found the value and utility of it. But it seems like you have already arrived at this place where you realize okay, this episode is brought to you by Sundays. If you have a friend in your life that has four legs, a dog, hopefully it's a miniature dachshund, a dachel. I was wearing my tactical dachshund shirt yesterday. People ask me about it. I tell them it's basically a graphical representation of my own dog. But I digress. If you want to get fresh, healthy dog food that is easy to store and serve delivered right to your house, you need to check out Sundays. 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It's not gonna be a blink of an eye, but it's gonna be over before you can believe it. I would say in your situation, stick with what you're doing and highly, highly prioritize any time you have outside of that. And I'm assuming you guys work shifts for ems, so a certain number of days on, a certain number of days off. Even people in the world, the first responder world that I know working on their on shift, they have an immense amount of downtime. Make sure you're spending that being physically, emotionally and equipment wise prepared for your EMS job. Do not let that suffer in any way, shape or form. But if you get your work done and you have idle time, start researching things that you would want to do outside. You have more than enough time to set up a side hustle. You have more than enough time to fuck around and set up multiple side hustles. But you have to prioritize your time to actually doing that again. Don't suffer anything from family wise either. And also involve your wife in this process. Talk to her about, hey, this is where I'm at, but this is what, this is how I feel and this is what I'm thinking about doing with the time that I have on your off shift days. Dude, the world is your oyster on this one. Get a. You know, I'm assuming you have a laptop because you wrote this, even if it's, even if it's on your phone, right? What's the phrase I heard we have access to like 90% of the known information to mankind. Use it. Research different areas that you might have an interest in. Look at how other people, I mean, YouTube is an amazing resource for this. Look at how other people have created their businesses. There's going to be somebody out there on YouTube who is talking you through the exact steps that they took to do probably exactly what it is that you maybe want to do. You know, construction. You did own your own business. Okay, so I don't know where I got construction from. I'm probably overlaying that from my own background. Okay, you've been in business. You know the amount of work. Awesome. You do realize that you could, while working full time as ems, start another business and manage and hire people to work for you. You could 100% develop these parallel tracks and who knows where it could go. If you do that five years from now, when you're four years from retirement, it might be so economically viable, the business you have started on the outside, that you may walk on that retirement or change your relationship with the department, maybe go to a training role or detach a little bit so you still get that retirement and you're still having a positive impact on your community. But now you've stepped over and you're working on your other business. There's a variety of ways that this could work out. Assuming that you take action now to what would be the best analogy here? You know, you're not in the harvesting season yet, but you need to go out there and you need to till the dirt and you need to plant the seeds, then you're going to need to water them. Then you're going to have to hope for sunlight, let it grow and then harvest at the appropriate time, all while not decreasing or diminishing. Your current role that you have, how you feel is totally normal. I think everybody goes through phases of this. I think a lot of people lock themselves into place and they say, I don't know how to. I don't know what to do from here. I don't have the skills to fill in the blank. I don't have the knowledge to fill in the blank. I don't have the experience to fill in the blank. Let me tell you, I don't know how to fucking do anything that I do. I don't know how to own a coffee shop. I had never done a blue sky build where literally sat down with architects from a design phase and they say, okay, what do you want us to build? And you're like, the coffee shop, what do you want it to look like? It's like, pretty cool. I would like it to look really cool. That was my design input. I think we went with modern architecture, really just, you know, precise feedback for them to work with. I don't know how to do any of that. The retail stuff, you know, that we do there, the retail sale, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. I'm figuring it out as we go. This podcast, anybody who's watched this podcast for the year, years that it's been around, it is consistently and constantly changing. I'm still messing with the format. You may have noticed that the format for today's episode is different than last Friday's, and the format for Monday's episode is going to be different from last Monday's. It'll be similar to today. Why am I doing that? Because I am trying to learn and evolve and figure out best practices in the things that I do. I didn't know how to fly a helicopter until a year ago when I started learning how to fly. I never had had ridden a motorcycle before until I learned how to ride a motorcycle. I don't know how to do any of the stuff that I do. And it's not like I'm blindly stumbling my way through life. When I determine that there is something that I want to do or a new path that I want to go down, the first thing I do is I start looking at how other people are doing it. Not because I necessarily want to follow their path, but I want to understand their path. Is it geographically specific? Do you need a certain skill set? Do you need a certain level of education? Do you need a course of some kind that you need to go to? You can find these answers if you are seeking them, not necessarily an easy path to take, but at least you know that the path is out there. People in the first responder world you have again, and this is based off my knowledge of the shift work here locally and the family I have in the service. You have enough time to set something out outside of that and even manage it. Take advantage of that. Take advantage of those nine years you have left, realizing that your baseline is already being met. Being met. Be wildly creative. Be wildly experimental. I'm not going to say be wildly risky because you don't want to risk something that could take away from that baseline. But dude, sky's the limit. If you don't like feeling unfulfilled your term, then get out there, find something that lights that fire under your ass, and then manage and balance those two things. You can totally do it. How you feel, I believe is completely natural. And you know, if you have the symptoms of a cold at this point, you know, you can take some metaphorical aspirin or Sudafed or Dayquil or whatever it is and you can tamp down those systems. System. Systems. That's not the right word. Symptoms. You can tamp down those symptoms until you find something that actually deals with them and you're going to feel totally differently. And honestly, when you find something that lights a fire under your ass outside of the EMS world you're in, I bet what you're going to find is a resurgence of fulfillment in that EMS world as well. The balance of the two is gonna be great for you. So that is my advice and hopefully you can go out there and do that. Last question for today. I had an additional question that I was gonna get into but I've gone long winded as I normally do, just running my mouth, so we're gonna skip it and go to how do you know whether or not you are a I've been a listener of podcast for a few years now and I generally enjoy the insight and guidance you give during your full Auto Friday episodes. There's been something that I've been wrestling with which recently with recently and it feels like I'm starting to lose this mental battle. Not suicidal or anything serious, just feeling overwhelmed and looking for some perspective from someone else, especially a background like yours. I separated from the Navy about 18 months ago and I'm in the process of enlisting in the National Guard and planning to attend SFAs, which I believe is Special Forces Assessment and Selection. I my understanding is this is the beginning of the pipeline to becoming a Green Beret, but I'm starting to doubt my ability to Be aggressive and assertive in the sense that I do not belong in that community and I'm just not cut out for the job lifestyle. I know everyone has their doubts and it's normal to have that sense of fear. And this by no means is stopping me from pursuing my goals. I just feel that there are certain attributes you are born with and others that you are not and can't develop either. I'm going to stop right there for a sec. Certain attributes that you are born with and certain that you are not. I don't think. And you know, Rich Devini and I sat down and he actually has a book called the Attributes. I think he said that there were 29. I don't think that if you were to lay out those 29, anybody is at a zero on any of those attributes. I think it's a sliding scale, like a stereo equalizer. And maybe some people are on a 7 on some of them and some people are down at a 1. I don't think anybody is born like, I just don't have that attribute. I think it's a measurement of where you are in that scale. But I think it is really dangerous to tell yourself that you can't develop whatever it is that you have. People ask me this all the time. Are you born mentally tough or is it something that can be taught? And this is not a question about me. This is just. This is an overall question that they ask. My answer to that is, yes, you are born with some level of mental toughness, but you 100% can improve your mental toughness or resiliency by learning strategies. Again, go back to the conversation I had with Rich. Moving your horizons, how you manage and think about time. Is it a cheat? Maybe. Is it a system? For sure. Does it have an incredible amount of impact? Yes. Can it take wherever you're at in that mental toughness attribute and level you up? Up you 100% can. So I don't care who you are and what you are born with and some of your attributes may be lower. Do not accept the status quo. Don't sit there and say, well, this is how it is when I came out of the box. So this is how it's always going to be. No, fuck that, dude. Get in there and do the work and develop the attributes that you feel that you are weaker at and sharpen and refine the attributes that you feel you are stronger at. It is not a matter a binary of yes or no. It's not. It's where you might have come out of the Box. And how far can you actually push that? Any other attitude, like, other than that is very self limiting. And you're gonna be setting yourself up for failure. So don't accept the status quo. All right, back to the email. It's one thing to train for selection and build yourself up, but something entirely different to prepare for war and the concept of your own death. I'm gonna stop here as well. You are already setting yourself up to make an excuse to not make it through this training pipeline, okay? The job, the pipeline for becoming a Green Beret. And the people that you work and serve with are gonna train you for war. You need to be worried about the selection course right now. You are already loading up. You're quitting by saying, I'm just. I'm not ready to fight war. I'm not. You know, I mean, I'm not in the right headspace. First off, you have to earn your right to be in a place to fight that war in the community that you are taugh talking about up until that point. Shut the up about not being ready to fight war, okay? And I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I have seen this so many times. People will quit and be like, I just. I could. I can't take a life like, yeah, but you just quit on a diving evolution. What are you talking about? And they are projecting into the future and finding an excuse that makes them making that decision in the moment more palatable to them. Them. Your job is to make it through selection. The cadre and the community's job is to train you to execute the job as assigned. Don't make an excuse from one and apply it to your current situation. You are already undermining yourself right now and following down a pathway that I have seen countless people make. They project into the future so they can make a decision that is difficult for them, but it softens the blow. But it's also a lie. The reality is they just wanted to quit. And so what they did is they went to the buffet line and they found the most palatable answer for them and for those that they could tell other people. So I'm telling myself I'm not necessarily afraid of violence, just prefer to avoid it at all costs as it tends to lead to consequences that can be avoided altogether. He had no shit. That's a great strategy to live unless you're in a profession of arms. I wish I could ask you why you left the Navy and then decided to join the National Guard. I have no idea what your job was in The Navy. But it seems like you are 100% purposefully going for a special operations career now in a bar. Avoid violence at all cost. In your personal life. Avoid violence at all costs. But if you go into a profession of arms, if you want to be a Green Beret or a Ranger or any version of special operations, I mean I, if you were here sitting next to me, I would ask you, do you have any fucking idea what these people actually do for a living? Do you understand the core competencies of this job? Like what they are actually designed to do? Because the execution of warfare is a part of that. So yeah, in your personal life you should avoid violence at all costs. But you are for some reason pursuing a career where at least violence of action is doctrinally a part of it. If you are ambushed, what do you need to do other than immediately provide overwhelming fire superiority, maneuver, flank and crush your enemy? Violence in the job that you are getting ready to pursue needs to be met with overwhelming violence, maneuvering and smashing your enemy. I hope that you understand that. Could you avoid that at all costs in that job? I don't think so. Because the enemy has a vote. Now. The world could work into a place where you don't have the opportunity to deploy overseas. And so therefore I guess you could avoid that. But we don't have control over what the world does either. And a lot of people pre 9 11, especially after Vietnam, that was the world that they lived in. Post 9 11. Welcome to the fucking show. You didn't have, you didn't have a say in that. And if you worked in a job like the one you are pursuing, dude, violence on target is a part of the job. Just think yourself through that, please. And having said that, again, at all costs, avoid it in your personal life. Having said that, that you had better be as capable as humanly possible with violence and then never use it. Because if you aren't capable of violence, you are a victim in waiting. I'm sorry, that's the reality. Moving on. I tell myself I'm not necessarily afraid of violence, just prefer to avoid it at all costs as it tends to lead to consequences that can be avoided altogether. I've never been in a fight or punched in the face. That's okay. I played physical sports but was never anything more than average athlete and was never considered the most alpha on any team. Yeah, me neither. You are looking at somebody who meets every criteria of that. I had been punched in the face, I had been in a fight. You're not missing out on anything. It's not that much fun. Super average at sports like dead center of the C, gray between A and F. And yeah, definitely was not the most alpha. Also not the Most physically imposing, 6 foot tall, 150 pounds in my speedo playing high school water polo, which I hated. I hated that. I hated it. Every bit of it. I've quit Jiu Jitsu on two separate occasions just weeks after starting and generally feel uncomfortable in any form of confrontation. Am I focusing too much on these aspects that do not paint a complete picture of myself and letting this get the better of me? Or are these questions valid and am I correct for asking myself and feeling this sense of doubt? I think you are doing a great job of being in check with who you are and listening to what your body is telling you. I think a lot of people, and I'll put myself in this category for many years in my life, was oblivious to who I actually was. Not like I didn't have any idea. But I certainly didn't listen to my inner monologue as much as I try to now. And from the inner monologue, I mean, what do I believe? Who do I want to be? Are my actions aligning with what I say? Are my actions aligning with who I want to be? Am I. When I'm looking at pursuing something, why am I pursuing it? Is this a money thing? Is this a status thing? Is this just something that I think is interesting? Is this just something that I think is cool? I think it is great that you are asking yourself these questions and I'll tell you why. Specifically, in this situation, you are about to enter into a contractual obligation with the United States Government, the National Guard. You need to seriously consider what that looks like if you don't make it into the SFAS pipeline, of which I am not an expert. So anybody out there? There's some great people online who make content, who are specific, like Nate from Valhalla vft. The man was a Green Beret. He could tell you exactly when it comes to the SFAS pipeline, what they're looking for, what you need, this, that or the other. I could talk broadly about it, but there are Green Berets out there. Feel free to digest this. This. Tear me a fucking part if I'm wrong. Give this person advice because I'm doing it broadly from just what I've seen in special operations. It's a good thing that you are having doubt in yourself. I think you should be nervous about going into any selection course or pipeline. Am I prepared enough? Should you be nervous about whether or not you are the right type of person to do that job. Man, I don't know about that. It worries me that you have so much doubt. It worries me that you quit Jiu jitsu on two separate occasions. Not that that matters in anything but just. And depending on the school that you went to, if it was like a fish tank and they just threw you on the mats and the and the experience belts were just having their way with you, that's one thing. But if you went into school twice and they put you through a foundational curriculum and you really only encountered a physical con confrontation in the terms of you weren't able to exert your on somebody else because they were using the appropriate technique and you quit because you didn't like that level of confrontation. I would highly, highly suggest that you spend some time asking yourself why do you want to go down this pipeline? Because the special operations job role and responsibility is going to be full of conflict. Conflict sometimes with other people, sometimes internally. They you're not going to have to get punched into the face, but you are going to be working with people that are going to be relying upon you up to and including relying on them continuing to be alive with your willingness and ability to be violent if you encounter violence. And if you've quit jiu jitsu twice just weeks after starting, which again, I'm assuming you went to a school that had an introductory level of curriculum, if you can, I would put your enlistment on pause so you can get a better understanding of who you are and what it is that you want to do. Because if you don't do that and you wash out of this pipeline, you owe the gov whatever it is, you owe the gov for the National Guard. And you might find yourself really unhappy in the role that they give you. You. Because oftentimes when you go to a military pipeline and they say, hey, this is what I want to do and you get a chance to do that when you're not successful, it comes to the needs of the army as opposed. Excuse me, as opposed to the needs of the individual writing this email. So you might find yourself somewhere doing something that you really don't like for X amount of years where you could have avoided it to begin with. Ask yourself, why'd you leave the Navy? What is it about the army that is so appealing? Why do you want to go down this pipeline? Are you the type of person that could thrive in that environment? I am telling you right now again, never a Green Beret. Conflict is a part of the job. Violence is a part of the job. If you are not comfortable with those two things, take a beat and assess whether or not that's the trajectory that you want to go on with your life. Only you can make that choice. Hopefully that helped. And that's it. I'll see you all Monday. Hi, Zoe Saldana. 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