Andy Stumpf (0:00)

Summer fun goes great with family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com familyfreedom. Up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card. Typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16 128GB8 2,999 eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile. Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean it. You're clear. Hot campaign. Clear that well. Hello everybody. We're back at it again. Normal programming, we discussed this last Friday. Nobody needs to freak out. We're gonna do Q and A. I have three questions in front of me. Very different from each other. Before that, though, there were of course two things that I wanted to bring up and now I'm struggling to only remember one of them. Got it. Okay. T shirts. I need the audience's help on this. I think I've said this many times. Design. The actual ideation of a design from scratch I am not good at. I have relied upon others to help me with this over the years, but people get busy, they move jobs, and the next thing you know, the responsibility is kind of back on your plate. If it were up to me, I would wear completely simple T shirts for the rest of my life. Maybe a little bit of branding, but I honestly don't pay too much attention to branding. The point is this. I'm totally open for suggestions when it comes to the podcast. I would like to make a few more shirts for the tail end of the year, but I honestly don't know what it is that I want to have as a design. So I have a request for the audience. Actually two requests. If you have an idea, please reach out with the suggestion. Put it in the comments, whether it's on YouTube or Spotify or whatever it is. But the additional request with that is just help me make it actionable. If you just say, hey, I'll make a simple shirt. I don't know what to do with that because my idea of simple and yours might be a little bit different. If it's a phrase or something you would like to See on the front, if you could just give me a kernel of something to start with and I'll do my best to take it from there. This episode is brought to you by Sport and Forge. I have talked a lot about this hunting app this last year because I've been using the piss out of it. But it hasn't been hunting season. Right. That's a little bit weird. Well, it might be based in the hunting world, but I'm gonna unpack a bunch of potential use case scenarios for you. If you follow me at all. You know that I've been using this for aviation. I am doing HLZ identification. I'm looking at terrain, I'm looking at slope. I'm using the LIDAR features to see what's underneath the foliage. I'm using the ability to determine where the shadows are in sunlight are going to be so I can plan my approach. Private versus public. I'm uploading documentation that allows me to land on private property, which actually is not that much. It's just landowner permission. In addition to that though, I got. I've become really good friends with Bill Thompson, the founder. He's actually been on the show as well. I highly recommend you check it out. Another use case scenario, law enforcement, first responder use. So again, I mentioned property owner information. You can determine and delineate property owner lines. You can mark things within green and yellow. The imagery updates, they have done cover the vast majority of urban areas. And something I haven't talked about yet is they have a Blue Force Tracker option that allows you to pin photos and you can share with notes. And this is a great option tool for low vis planning ops and area familiarization. The Blue Force Tracker is something definitely tied to what we used to use in the military. So again, this is based in the hunting world. But once you get your hands on this thing, you will realize that it opens up a whole world of possibilities. Head over to spartanforge AI and check it out for yourself. Back to the show. So yeah, that was the first one. Second one, if you follow me on social media, specifically Instagram. Yesterday was a really cool day. I knew that these things were coming. I just didn't know the day that they were gonna show up and what it was. Again, if you follow me on Instagram, I put up, I believe it was a reel. I got the first galley copies of the book I wrote. I've been really open about the fact that I did or was in the process of writing this. The galley copy is not a finished copy. It's supposed to go out to, I believe advanced readers that can provide some feedback or reviews. They sent me six, so this is not something that I can send out to a bunch of people. I will be hopefully getting more. A bunch of people reached out to me though and they said, well, when is the book going to be out and how can I buy it? The book is going to be out in April of 2026. I did not choose that date. It takes a long time to produce and the publisher determined that that would be the best time for a release of this type of book. Which by the way, it's not a sealed book, it's not an autobiography. If I had to describe it as anything, it would be an attempt to hopefully pass on the lessons learned in my own life, largely through my failures. A question I got was when can you buy it? Well, I didn't think the answer of that was gonna be until April. People reached out to me and they said, oh, I just pre ordered it. I'm like, what are you talking about? This is how in tune I am with this process. Well, come to find out it's for sale. I don't know why somebody would wanna pre order this now this many months ahead of April of next year. But I'll put a link down in the show notes. You can go onto Amazon if you put in there into your Google in Andy Stumpf drown proof, which is the name of the book options show up to include the audiobook which we haven't even talked about with the publisher who's gonna read that. So yeah, I guess you could pre order it now I'm not telling you not to. I'm sure the publisher would love it if there were some pre sale books. But dude, that's a long wait. So don't do think about it, don't think about it. It's totally up to you. If you're interested, I'll put the link down below. But just you're not getting anything until April of 2026. So, you know, food forethought. Shall we dive into Q and A? Should we get back onto our regularly scheduled programming? Let's do it. All right, here we go. Question number one. I'm currently serving in an air guard unit as a loadmaster on a C130J Juliet out of Rhode Island. Why did I say Rote, Rhode Island? Rote would be more of a memorization type thing. Rhode island, which you put insert joke here. I don't know why I would insert joke there. That's where I went to fork a Knife school, if you will, when I became an officer. As you may have experienced during your time in the military, fitness culture in the Air Force often feels more like a suggestion than a standard. After being on active duty for two years or for over two years, I've observed that many of my coworkers don't take their fitness seriously enough. While they don't need to train like CrossFit Games athletes, we do fly long missions 14 to 18 hours in environments that are are not exactly low stress. Fortunately, I've noticed a shift in our culture with more individuals prioritizing their fitness than ever before. However, many of the younger troops still tend to overlook this aspect. At this point. I just want them to stay active enough and fit enough to handle our missions. And do you have any tips or strategies from your experience as an NCO or non commissioned officer and as an officer that could help encourage this lifestyle change? I would greatly appreciate any advice that you can share. P.S. i was in your area a few weeks ago and left a squadron patch at the coffee shop. Hopefully you were able to grab it. I was able to get the squadron patch. Thank you for leaving that. For anybody who wants to leave something for me at the store, which I try to I the days I'm in town, I'm at the store. I don't have a set time that I'm there. I come in and out as needed, whether I am meeting somebody there or meeting with our managers. If anybody's at the store and you happen to see me there, feel free to pull me aside and say hello, I'll take a picture with you. I'll sit and have a conversation with you. If I have enough time to do it, don't hesitate to do that. I've had people who's this is how it usually goes. Somebody's wife will come over and say or boy or a girlfriend and say, hey, are you Andy? And my response to that generally is sometimes and it depends on whether or not I'm in trouble or what you're about to say is good because if I'm in trouble, I'll say no, Andy's over there and then I'll walk off. But they will say when I say yes, they'll say my fill in the blank is a huge fan and they don't want to come over and say hi, but we came all the way from Fill in the blank just to see your coffee shop. I'm like, dude, of course go get this person and I'll give you as much time as I have. I am A completely normal person living a completely normal life. But if for whatever reason you find yourself in Montana and you have some connection to the show and we happen to cross paths, absolutely say hello. Like I said, I'll give you as much time as I can. I've sat and I've talked with people for hours before. I enjoy doing it because. And I've said this before many times on the show, it's such a weird medium. You hit upload or process or publish. I don't know where this show goes. I get a lot of feedback from all over the world. But it's cool to get to meet people in person and share a limited amount of time or a lot of time, depending on what the situation is. So please don't hesitate to do that. I know I'm way off track from the question, but that reminded me of it. So, okay. The Air Force fitness culture in the Air Force often feels more like a suggestion than a standard. I don't know. I don't know how true that is. I don't. You're the person in the Air Force and you are saying this, so I'll take you at your word. I think that that shifts over time and I bet you that that shifted over time for most of, well, Marine Corps all. You know, every Marine is a rifleman. I gotta love that mentality where they are at first and foremost a member of a combat arms profession. The army is super close to that as well. The Navy, I could see where they may not necessarily feel that way because perhaps you're on a ship and you're doing multi month deployments and most of your time you're, you know, out on the horizon on blue water. Not that that's not a physically arduous job, but you could probably tell yourself, you know, I'll never find myself directly in harm's way or need to rely on my physical fitness to save my life. And of course, as soon as I say that, I think of all the things that can happen on ships, which is limited to my infinitely small knowledge of what I remember from boot camp. But you know, everything from ships flooding to starting on fire to accidents and emergencies. It's a hundred percent not likely, but possible that you may need to actually rely on your physical fitness to save your own life and the lives of others. But I understand how that can creep a little bit and you can talk yourself into not feeling like it's possible. Air Force may be the same way. But here's what I'll say. I think in the pre 911 era, it was really easy to lie to yourself in that way, which is exactly what it is. You're just lying to yourself and laying the foundation of, well, it hasn't happened in a while, so probably won't happen again. And then I can justify my own complacency and behavior. Then 911 happened. And not everybody found themselves over in those mature theaters of war. But as it were, drug on and ground itself out. And months became years, years became half a decade, half a decade became a decade, decade and a half to two decades. Specifically for Afghanistan, the military, the traditional military units that a lot of people would associate with physical readiness and preparedness and propensity and capability on the battlefield. That direct tie, those elements started getting ground into dust. And I can again only speak from my exposure what I saw in the Navy. But they implemented an IA program, an individual augmentee program that was a way for them to source people from non traditional roles to augment those that were deploying over to those war zones. Now, I was never an ia, so I don't understand directly how that process worked, but I have heard, so this is second or third hand, that it wasn't always a volunteer program, that sometimes it became a voluntold program. And those of you familiar with the military will know exactly what I'm talking about. They'll present it to you as something that you're going to do whether or not you want to or not. And it would just make it a lot easier if you decided that was the best thing for you to do in the interest of your career and trajectory. Not that you had no as an option, but it's better if the yes comes from you than being directed by the military. It's funny how the military works in those ways sometimes. That IA program terminated with not ended, but the execution of that program terminated with people who probably never thought they were going to be in a war zone, being in war zone. And they got pulled from a variety of different occupations all across the military. Do I think that that's going to happen again? I have no idea because I don't have a crystal ball and I can't see into the future. But I know what's happened in the past and I know why they instituted that program. The traditional units were getting stretched thin, they were getting turned into dust. So they had to bring in other people outside of those entities to help fill the gap and make sure the capability still existed. If that were to happen again, I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't do exactly that. Same thing again. Now, are they going to be pulling from C130, which for those of you not familiar with the military is a four propeller aircraft. It, I'm not the Juliet model, I believe is just the capability, but C130s, man, they move equipment, they move personnel. I have traveled all over the world in a hammock in the back of a C130, sleeping on the floor, sleeping on top of pallets. They have the most uncomfortable seats. And again, going back to the people coming to the coffee shop. We have the hallway of the coffee shop to the bathrooms. Looks like a C130 and there's actually jump lights for the bathroom doors. If you lock it, it switches from green to red. There's a little seat motor mockup. It's not a real seat, so please don't sit on it, but it shows. It's the strap seat system that, good luck getting some good sleep on that. I think it's designed to destroy your lumbar curve, which, yep, that checks out. That would be a perfect design for something in the military anyway. Do I think that they're going to pull from people attached to a C130 wing in Rhode Island? No, probably not. But is it possible? Yes, at least. And what I would say for every military member, regardless of the excuses or the rosy background that you want to paint for yourself and what your job is, if you are in the United States military, you are in a profession of arms. I wish all the branches treated it like the Marine Corps and they could work their way backwards. It's based around fighting wars and winning engagements when the military or the United States requires us to do so. And then everything is reverse engineered and planned backwards from there. Does everybody in the Marine Corps end up on the battlefield? No, but they know at the end of the day, if they needed to, they would at least be prepared to do so because every Marine is a rifleman. Now, not everybody's going to do that, right? Not everybody's going to feel that way because they're going to say, nope, it's not going to happen to me. And I get that headspace. I'm not saying I agree with that headspace, but I get it. I know why they can say they can say that. So here's the advice I have for you. Directly. NCO or officer route, in my opinion, the leaders that I worked with and for, and let's say from a physical, I'm going to just dial this down away from anything on the battlefield. Let's just talk about the Importance of being physically capable of doing your job, excelling in your physical capability. Any leader in the world can sit in front of an audience and say, you know what this is? What is the most important to fill in the blank. Organization, unit, team, squad, whatever it is. And that's great. Maybe you could even allocate some time in the schedule. Don't make people come to work earlier, but let's give them the first 90 minutes of their day to PT. Shower up, get in the uniform of the day, do your job. Those are all great. So the leader that does that, that says that that allocates time, and then they never see you in the gym. And then you yourself, as that leader, you're pushing the regs a little bit and not in the right way. The bottom button on your T shirt, the PSI is starting to increase on that. The belt buckle is digging in a little bit. You're running out of excess space in the belt itself. The old uniform is feeling a little bit tight. You are worried when the biannual PT test shows up. And if you think for a second that everybody that works for you is not watching that, whether actively or passively or just realizes that when you say it's the most important thing and then you create time for them to do that, but then you're not there, don't think for a second that they don't realize that there's that disconnect. I am not saying as the leader, you need to be. Where was it? The CrossFit Games athlete. I completely agree that people, if you're a CrossFit Games athlete, train like a CrossFit Games athlete. If you're not, I think you could take a vast majority of the type of activities that they do and tailor to that for what it is you do for a living. But there is a point where that training, lifestyle and protocol would actually start taking away from your job. So you're gonna have to balance that yourself. I'm not saying that the leader needs to be the person out there that looks like they're chiseled out of marble with the 18 pack and 4% body fat. And they win every run and every swim and the first person in the gym and they're lifting more weights and doing the hardest workouts. You don't have to be that person. If you are, that's awesome. But at some point in time, age is going to come for all of us. And there's going to be somebody who is younger, somebody stronger, smarter, more capable in you, more capable than you. And every One of those things that I just listed, and that's okay, you can use that person as your own personal inspiration. But you need to live up to the words that come out of your mouth. What you write down on a piece of paper or you email to your staff, I was just about to say, is not your standard. You can publish your standards, but what you allow in your presence is the actual standard itself. So if you're out of regs, that's the standard that everybody else is holding themself to, regardless of the guidance that you put out as a leader. And people are gonna say, well, that sucks. And the answer is, yeah, it does suck. Because as you get older, you may not want to work out as much. Guess what? Who cares? As you get older, you may have more responsibilities or seniority in rank. You may have other things that make it more difficult for you to set that example again of not crushing everybody, but living up to exactly what you expected of them. You don't have to be the first person in the gym, but you're in there in the gym doing exactly what you expect of your people. You might have more requirements on your time that makes that challenging. So what? Figure it out. Live the standard that you want to see from people. So I have a good example from when I was a BUDS instructor when I went through buds, they're trying to remember, this is who I mean. We're talking the late 90s. Generally, to the best of my memory, there would be an instructor leading the physical training evolution, participating in it with us, meaning usually up on an elevated podium. And then there'd be a variety of other instructors that were essentially walking through and critiquing and grading everybody else's performance and providing remediation when necessary. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's one model. When I went back as a BUZZ instructor, the one thing that I made sure that I did when it came to leading PT is that I did the workouts with the students and I made the other instructors do it too. And I don't know if they enjoyed that very much because I was pretty deep into my CrossFit methodology usage at that point, which was not a traditional type of pt. At buds, I was able to get a lot of those movements actually added into the curriculum. But we would go out to the beach, there's a section of pull up bars and dips and there's a berm that will just destroy you. And you know, we would do workouts, everything, you know, pull ups to a Berm sprint to dips on the bar to back to the pull up bar, a burn sprint, burpees on the other. I mean, you can just, you can get as creative as possible and destroy yourself. But I would mix the instructors in with the students. Why? Because I believe you shouldn't ask somebody to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. And it's okay if other leaders don't agree with that philosophy or they don't feel like they should have to do that. That's your approach. Live with your approach. You get to own the outcome of your approach. Not that my outcome was perfect by any stretch, but to me it was important. Important enough, especially talking about the physical nature of the job, the value of physical conditioning, that I was out there doing the work with the students. I also use it as an excuse to get my PT time in as well. Because again, as an instructor or as you become the LPO leading petty officer, the chief petty officer or the officer in charge or the assistant officer in charge, you might have a variety of other things you need to do. It's like, cool. This is actually a PT evolution out here for an hour and I'm just going to get a workout in as well. Are some of the students going to beat you? Yeah, absolutely. Are there things you could do as an instructor to try to stay ahead of that? Could you cheat? Could you count differently? Yeah, you could. But don't think for a second people don't see that. Don't think for a second that the students I would intentionally pair with the instructor teams and my own team, they count just as well as I do. And it's a. It can bruise your ego. Let's say you're in the middle of a set of pull ups and all the other students are knocking them out in one set. And you need to stop halfway and shake it out and then hop back up. Guess what? You're not the big Billy Badass, the strongest dude out there, tougher than all these students. It's like, cool. I'd rather have the students see that. You know what? I'm gonna do this properly and honestly and accurately into the letter of what was published than cheat or work my way around. It can bruise your ego a little bit, but guess what? Get over it. Your organization will be better for it. And you'll garner more respect from the people that you are working with or that are working for you because they can sit there and watch you, literally watch you live your words. It worked well, if you want to. So again, to answer your question directly. Publish a standard for one. Make sure that people know that indoctrin somewhere. Because if it gets to a place where you have a problem with somebody from a physical nature, you're going to have to go back to doctrine somewhere or a publication somewhere or a standard somewhere if you are going to remediate them against it. If there's going to be a punishment of any kind exist outside of that, live your word. Be the example. Again, you don't have to win, but if you're going to ask somebody to do something, go do it yourself. For you. As somebody who's been in now, what I would do is I would grab as many people as possible and involve them in the workouts with you. Just start creating, try to create a culture, a group culture around working out together. Start slow, maybe solicit feedback from the group to see what they want to be interested in doing and try to combine all that as much as possible. You'd be surprised. There's a lot of camaraderie that can be gained by working out together because camaraderie is largely just suffering with a little bit of laughter sprinkled in, which is exactly what some workouts can be like. But it's important you work in a profession of arms. Don't forget that. Don't let the people forget that who work for you. But what is louder than anybody screaming at the top of their lungs with two bullhorns in their hands, like the crazy dude with the 5G sign that stands just up the road, are actions. I don't care how loud you yell at somebody. If you talk at a normal tone of voice and they see you doing what you are asking them to do, that is so much more powerful. So that is my suggestion. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. I think I've said this before. This is the easiest ad read that I will ever do. Every mattress in my house is a Helix. For years I had a period of time. For three years the only sponsor I had on the show was Black Rifle Coffee and they still are a sponsor to this day. Before that I had a rotating stable of advertisers that I worked with. Helix was one of them. They sent me a mattress during that time period, actually a couple. And I slowly replaced every mattress in my house. Well, during that three year time period I still needed to get a few more mattresses. I didn't have a discount, I didn't have an inroad to them and I just went straight to their website and bought their mattresses. I Just had my family in town, my brother in law, first night making coffee. The next morning he was like, dude, that is the most comfortable mattress I've ever slept on. Who makes it? I was like, yeah, Helix, they are legit. I travel professionally essentially at this point, and there is some misconceptions about traveling if you do it professionally. This luxurious nature of hotels and new scenes and there's a little bit of that. That is true. But I tell you what, the flight that I look forward to the most, I was just on the road with my wife Leah, and as we were traveling home, we both said the same thing. I cannot wait to get back into our own bed because we both sleep amazingly well on our mattress. Guess what kind of mattress it is. It's a Helix. I cannot recommend enough that you head over to helixsleep.com clearedhut and order one of these things. You're gonna be shocked at how fast it shows up and you're gonna be shocked at the size of the box it shows up in. It's very dense. It has the weight of a dying star. Get that sucker into your bedroom before you open it up. Just food for thought right now. 27% off site wide, 27% off of the entire site over@helixsleep.com ClearedHot Go check it out and get yourself some awesome restorative sleep. Back to the show. Question number two. Had to take the sweatshirt off. It's getting a little hot here. I'm 56, a Marine veteran and have been a lawyer for just over 28 years. My problem is that I hate my job and it's literally killing me. If I was to do it all over again, knowing what I know now, after leaving the Marines, I would have been a game warden where I could work outside and make a difference. My job is incredibly stressful, which has taken a toll on me both physically and mentally. Thanks to your podcast, I started therapy about six months ago and it's definitely helping. I am stoked to hear that. That's why I will never stop being a broken record about reaching out for help and finding people who are experts at helping you with regardless of what it is you're going through. So here's where it gets interesting. My mother passed away in May after a two week illness. She had been declining for the past two years, but the end came rather suddenly. In wrapping up her affairs, my brother and I realized that she had left us each a lot, in all uppercase of money. We were shocked. Here's my question. What do I do now? Other than our house, my wife and I are now debt free. I don't think I have enough money to fully retire, but I can certainly look for a less stressful where I don't have to make the kind of money I make now. I've looked at a few things, but nothing feels enticing. I'm too old and physically broken to be a game board. I've looked at other jobs with Fish and Game, but they're almost all science based jobs, which I am not qualified for. I'm at a loss for what to do. I'm also stuck in San Diego for at least a few more years as my wife is her mother's caretaker. Ideally, I'd like to work outside, or at least partly outside. I'd also like to work in a job where I could do some good for the world, one that I could be proud of to tell people what I do for a living. You seem to be pretty damn good about thinking outside of the box. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for me? Uh, well, first, I sorry for the loss of your mom. That is a rough one. I've been through that myself. And don't be surprised if it's a little bit more of a sine wave of emotion dealing with that as opposed to a flat line. It comes back from time to time that I've just learned to kind of just ride the waves as it goes with that I've been open with kind of my headspace with when my mom died and the struggles that I went through. I guess it was in the moment, but I think more so later on when I kind of returned back to a little bit of a more baseline mentality. She died very rapidly after I got back from a long deployment overseas. Okay, here's the biggest thing you have identified your words, not mine. I hate my job. And it is literally killing me. So let's triage this real fast. Step one. That's the bleeder right there, right? You have an arterial bleed that you know is going to kill you if you keep doing it. So what can we do here? We could go in, we could call 91 1. We could throw a tourniquet on this thing. You could go in and get surgery, try to patch it up. So you could stay down the path that you're on until it does actually kill you. Or you could make a change in your life if you have recognized that your job is killing you and you are miserable. And then I'm going to pair that with. You have a sum of money. When people say they get a lot of money. I don't know. To me, a lot of money is like a thousand dollars. To some people. A lot of money is 2 billion. I'd be happy landing, you know, in the middle of those two, somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I'll be okay, right? I'll be all right. If I land there with only a couple hundred mil, God, I would have a fleet of helicopters that would inspire generations. So if anybody has a couple hundred million and wants to invest in that dream, reach out to me. I'll see what I can do. So I don't know exactly how much you have, but I'm going to make some assumptions here. You've been successful at your job. You've been smart with the money that you made before you got the money from your mom. I'll assume that your wife at some point in time had an occupation as well. And all of that is to say is you have the money you got from your mom. You clearly have a house in San Diego, which I know exactly what that can cost per month or in total. You have a buffer, and it seems like you are in a pretty cool place to be. And that is a place where you have choice a lot of people to include myself. And I think this happens to almost everybody at some point in their life. You're in survival mode. You're living in San Diego. Maybe you're making a good salary for San Diego, but San Diego living, it costs. Southern California living, just costs a lot of money. And again, it's not about what you make, it's about what you spend. And I've been there living paycheck to paycheck and literally waiting to go grocery shopping until the next day, because I get paid at midnight that night. I get the struggle. I don't feel like you're in that struggle at this point. And so you have the luxury of being able to take a step back and take a breath. My first suggestion would be this. We've identified where the hemorrhage is. Deal with it directly. If you hate your job and it is killing you and you have the ability to make a choice, make a choice, Stop doing that job immediately. Now, if you didn't have that money and you were living paycheck to paycheck, that's a different story. But that's not where you're at at this point in your life. I also feel like if you've been a successful lawyer and you were a Marine and you've gotten this far in your life, you are the type of person that realizes it's going to work out for you, because you are the type of person that is never going to quit and you will figure out a way to make it work. So even if the situation you're in right now financially, were to change, for whatever reason, you're the type of person that would dig back in and attack the problem head on and figure out a way through it. If you're that type of person, I don't know if there's much in life that can hold you down. Now, don't get me wrong, you're going to go through some high highs and some low lows, and there'll be days, weeks, months, years where you might be in the trenches, but you're going to survive. Okay? And again, you're not in that situation now, but you know that if you got into that situation, you're going to be okay. So put that in your back pocket as well. Quit your job, and instead of trying to dive into something else. My biggest piece of advice for you, because it sounds like you went right from Marine Corps to being a lawyer and probably were grinding it out. Don't try to fill the void of your old job with a new one right away. Give yourself again. I have no idea how much money you received. Give yourself three months if you can. Give yourself six months. Don't try to just start smashing square pegs into round holes or round pegs into square holes right away. Give it some time to breathe. You've been doing your job for so long, and I feel like you've been unhappy with it for a while, that there are a bunch of ideas to you that sound like they would be so much better than what you're doing right now. But at this point, you know, making PB&J sandwiches might sound like a better, more fulfilling job to you than what you're doing right now is not that you would necessarily love that. It's just that you hate what you're doing right now so much. So I would say give yourself an actual buffer from that job and reconnect with yourself a little bit. Don't be in a rush to say, this is my next step, this is my next journey. This is my next mission. How about have your next journey and mission to be spend more time with your wife and support her as she's her mother's caregiver. Reconnect with yourself. Sleep in a little bit, maybe focus for that six months, dude. Just get an awesome routine at a local gym. Or maybe it's not even that go stand up, paddle boarding, go walk on the beach every morning, find a community of people, whatever. Go buy, I mean San Diego, you can fill in your activity, but make sure that it's something that is active, that you're getting physical and mental stimulation from and give yourself six months to just decompress. Now at the end of that six months, here's what I'd recommend. Explore volunteering. Instead of trying to dive into an occupation, look at maybe it's the first responder world, something that wants to have impact. Look at supporting them, not directly, but by volunteering. Look at the opportunities that may exist. I don't know Fish and game in California, I mean, yeah, there's the game wardens, but almost every agency as an example here in Calspud, there's the sheriff's department and then there's the sheriff's posse. And before I go any further and what the posse does, I'm aware that they exist and that's the limit of my knowledge. I think I know what they do, but the reality is I know that there are the sworn officers and there are the posse, which is a volunteer force that augments the local law enforcement. Some of those people do search and rescue, some of those people plus up events. And honestly those are the two things that I know for sure that they do. And I'm not even gonna hypothesize even further than that. It's a volunteer organization. Fire departments, I know that they have volunteer organizations that are peripheral as well. Federal agencies like the Department of Fish and Wildlife. I bet you there are opportunities for you to, without directly attaching yourself because of your age or whatever it may be, or your uncertainty of actual level of interest, go test the waters. Now. Is that going to pay the bills? No, but it seems like you're in a place where you don't have to worry about that right now. Fully retiring to me, like when I say, when I hear people say retiring, I bet you, you and I are similar in this respect. I may, some people may consider me retired at some point in my life, but I'm never going to stop doing stuff because idle time to me, it's not that I don't enjoy it from time to time, but. But I enjoy doing stuff. So a lot of the stuff I do may not make me money, but I'm never just going to be sitting on a recliner watching the San Francisco Giants play baseball. That's not my gym. So being active and being professionally retired, occupation, I think are two very different things. I'll Always be active. The things that I have done over the years as far as deriving income have certainly changed. But I bet if you were to take a break for six months and then give yourself another six months of time to explore volunteering, a paid opportunity will present itself during that time in your interfacing with these organizations or the individuals associated with them. It has been amazing to me. The more head down I was in any particular thing, the less I thought was available to me as an option personally and professionally, the more I started lifting my head, I started seeing the opportunities that were all around me. And there is literally nothing that I do in my life today that I would be doing if I hadn't started lifting my head. And for me, I would say it started in about 2005 when I got I was involved in workplace violence incident at that point. It was the first time I had considered that I wouldn't be able to do that job anymore. And I had to start asking myself, well, what's going to be next? I had not asked myself that question up until that point in my life. So now, because back then I started lifting my head up and looking around and taking an opportunity left and right, the scope of what became available. And I'm not joking when I say this, nothing I am doing today I would be doing if I hadn't have taken that action. There are more opportunities out there that you probably are not even aware of and won't recognize until about that six month time period. You're going to find what your next thing is. If you can accept that you don't know what that's going to be, but that it will show up at some point in time, you can maximize that. Six months of just decompression, reconnection with your wife, supporting her because you might find out she needs a little bit more support than you were able to give with your current job. Could be an amazing experience for the two of you as well. And then just dabble for six months. Go volunteer to help with no expectation. I think you'll be shocked what you may find. That is my advice. That's the suggestion. But first, triage this. You've identified what's killing you. Address that first. That's the 1 meter target. All right. From the 1 meter target, once we knock that down, we'll look at the 5 meter target, then the 10, then the 50, then the 100. So that's what I'd suggest. Question 3. Been a fan of the podcast since 2021 and firstly I have to say thank you for getting me introduced to archery and hunting with your conversations with Dudley. And secondly, your approach to self reflection and honest opinions has helped me reframe many things in my own life. That's awesome. And welcome to the Archery Nightmare Frustration Club. So with all that out of the way, my question is this. How do you deal with negativity? I'm a 32 year old guy who has struggled with overcoming negativity all my life, whether that's aimed outside or internally at myself for flaws or past failures. And even while I have managed to get a much better grip on it and even attending counseling, I tend not intentionally to have a rather pessimistic or sometimes nihilistic outlook on life. And given enough time to myself, I can find the worst in any situation situation. Without getting into too many specifics, AI is one of is one that I have a hard time finding the good in, as this has led to a number of arguments between me and my partner who is pro AI. I recognize I have been a dick during this time and rightfully apologized, but again, I can only see the downsides it has, especially in a time when it's clear corporations won't hesitate to fire workers to increase their bottom line, or the creative fields being flooded with AI generated slope. So to sum up this essay, how do you manage to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the negative aspects of life without falling down the rabbit hole that comes with it? Well, first you've recognized that there's a rabbit hole, so that's awesome, right? And what you give your attention to is going to shape your outlook on life, your outlook on the world, your view, whether it be optimistic, pessimistic, nihilistic. Something's jumped out at me here though, and it said time to myself. I can find the worst in any situation. I believe that it is a good thing that you've identified that, because that's something that you could actually take action on. I would suspect I'm not a counselor, not a therapist. I'm not your counselor or therapist. But if you are having experiences similar to what I've had talking with those people, they might be asking you about these things. And hopefully you have touched on this because what has helped me is an identification of when I am heading down a negative pattern or pathway. I don't know if for me, like if I have too much time. I enjoy time by myself, by the way. I think you need to have a balance of time with yourself and with other people. And having said that, if Covid taught Us anything. I think too much time by yourself is not great. And for some people, too much time with other people and no time by themselves is not great either. So you have to find that balance in and of yourself. But it's easy to spiral when you're only by yourself, especially if you're not controlling how you talk to yourself and the words that you use to yourself. Your thoughts, your speech, your actions. Hopefully you've mentioned this to your counselor or therapist because something they can likely do is walk that backwards and hopefully find for you places where you can interrupt that cycle. Because that's what it is. It's a cycle that you are getting yourself stuck into voluntarily. But you've already identified that it's not good for you. So the question becomes, what are you going to deploy against that? Let's find some tools that prevent you from going down those spirals. Now, I have to make an assumption here, and that assumption is when you get to that place where you can only see negativity, it doesn't positively impact your life. So if that assumption is correct, then let's do everything we can to not arrive at that place. Maybe we can interrupt it just to start with 10% earlier and maybe 20% earlier, 30% earlier, 40% earlier. The next thing you know, you could even maybe recognize it. Well before you, you see this off ramp coming in the distance, you're like, you know what? I'm going to get in the far left hand lane and not even tease myself by getting over into the exit lane. Food for thought. Counselors and therapists can be great, but they can only work with the information that you give them. So if you haven't talked about this, I would highly suggest that you do because it seems to have impact on your life. Let's talk about AI here specifically. I think you bring up some interesting points. Corporations probably are not going to hesitate to fire workers to increase their bottom line. Corporations doing things to increase their bottom line is what corporations have been doing since the inception of corporations. And they, I'm sure they all do it to a different degree and there are some that are better at it than others. But businesses are generally in the business of making more money. Creative fields being flooded with AI generated slop. That's definitely true. Some of it's not that bad. Some of it's wildly entertaining. I like watching mini dachshunds drive motorcycles and motorcycle gangs. It's not a big deal with leather jackets and scarves and goggles. I think that's probably one of the best usages of the Internet that I've ever seen. And people, please feel free to send me those because I deeply enjoy them. It's a new technology. I was having this conversation with my dad two weeks ago, and my hypothesis is, and was during that conversation, that every generation has a moment where they say, well, this new thing is going to destroy everything. And so far that hasn't been the case. Now, is AI different than any of the newer things that have come in the past for other generations? I mean, yeah, probably to a degree, but we are going to figure this out. Is it going to be disruptive? Yeah, I think it's going to be incredibly disruptive. Does that mean it's going to be disruptive with a net negative? That probably depends on your timeline that you would put it against. I don't want to see people losing their jobs. I don't want to see AI stealing from people, their ability to provide for their family. But what if in the adoption of AI, we as either a society or as individuals or as a nation, figure out a different approach that benefits families even more than the traditional nine to five or people are forced to reinvent themselves or figure a way through this disruptive technology? We will get through it. I think it's just a matter of how painful it's going to be. And I am not diminishing that pain. But at the end of that, I think we might end up being more net positive than negative. It's gonna be super disruptive along the way, and I definitely am not looking forward to that journey. But we're going to figure it out as a species. I know that. We're gonna figure it out or we're gonna end up working for robots for our water ration. Not so sure. There's two a lot of options other than those two. Obviously that second option was more largely based on the Terminator series, which I hope does not become a documentary. It stays as a fictional movie. But I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. But I do think inherently, I do think that we are going to find a way through. Now, as far as viewing the world negatively, negativity and evil exists in the world. There's danger in the world. There are people that want to do harm to others in the world, that want to steal from others, that want to hurt others. There's bad things that happen to people in the world. Absolutely. You know, the beauty is, statistically, the odds are in your favor. But I've said this many times, you could talk, you know the odds. I think getting bit by a great white shark are about the same odds as being struck by lightning twice in a day. But if you're out surfing with a buddy and he gets dragged underwater by a great white shark, you're probably not going to serve him well to be like, oh, dude, the odds of that happening are so low because odds don't really matter when you're in the jaws of the shark. So it exists. But what's the benefit to your life by only focusing on the negative aspect? I think you have to have balance without spending an equal amount of time focusing on the positive. It's not a good reflection of the world around you or likely your life. I bet if you were to rack and stack your life in any way that you want to, that you could at least make meaning of, there would be a balance of positive and negative experiences. And maybe in your particular life, you would consider it to be slightly more negative than positive, or maybe slightly more positive than negative. But the point is, you have both. And for me, don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy negative experiences, but I do value them. I do value things, not necessarily in the moment when they don't go my way, but I have come to realize that some of the things in life that I appreciate the most are because of the things in life that happen to me that I appreciate the least. It's, you know, if everything was just a windfall and a downfall for you and everything went your way and you always got what you wanted and there was no struggle or suffering, I don't know if that's actually fulfilling. It sounds good as a fairy tale, but how do you have any level of appreciation for the things you do have when you can't juxtapose them against the things that you don't have or what you had to go through to get them? I mean, just for everybody listening to this, ask yourself this question. Of the physical possessions that you own in life, which ones do you value more? The one that you work, like, set a goal for and worked and just grounded out to be able to achieve, or just something that somebody gave you? Not that something that somebody gave you is invaluable, but which one of those things has more meaning to you? I think for most people it's the previous example, the one that you worked and suffered and struggled the hardest for. So I think there's something there. You have to have a balance of both. Again, I would not ignore the negativity, but I would maybe take a little bit more of a conscious approach to controlling your thoughts. I don't think you need to get crazy with this and do like a spreadsheet or a stopwatch. But I would say, I don't know, spitballing. If you have 10 minutes where you're going on a spiral and thinking about something negative, force yourself for the next 10 minutes, once you get out of that, to think about something positive. Try to at least balance the scales out a little bit. And again, if you haven't talked with your counselor about this, I would highly suggest that you do so. These people are very good at helping you identify danger coming on the horizon so you can avoid it. You know, driving a car down the road, if you're just looking one inch beyond your bumper, you're gonna have a really hard time avoiding potholes because you can't see them coming. If you lift your gaze a little bit and you're looking a couple hundred yards ahead, you're like, oh, probably should move because there's a box in the road. That's way better than smashing into the box and being surprised by whatever comes out of that thing as it gets all over your windshield. You gotta have both positive and negative. Take a more active approach to how you are allocating your attention and therefore your time on each of these things. That would be the best piece of advice that I have for you and hopefully that helps. That's all I have for this week. See y' all next week. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? 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