Left Of Greg 060 Mental training with Jon Macaskill

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Brian, the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you like the video, like it, subscribe to the channel! There's going to be more content down there if you're already a subscriber, and a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and leave them below. Check out our links down below to get a hold of us and to actually find out more places where you can get more information about this. Please like and subscribe, follow us on Facebook at HBPRNA. Remember, all these cases that we discuss and all these discussions that we have are through the lenses of what we call Human Behavior Pattern Recognition and Analysis. So, please like it, share it, tell your friends about it, and I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks.

Alright, so I'll let you do that intro, Greg, and then we'll just go ahead and jump in and get started. That's cool with you?

It's ready.

Alright, Jon, well, appreciate you coming on the show, man. It's great to have you on. We got a bunch of stuff to talk about. I know you've got your own podcast going on and all that. But just to kind of start out right now, you're still active duty, right, in the military, Navy? So, just as a disclaimer as always, the thoughts and views expressed on here are your own, do not represent the Department of Defense, or your unit, or anyone, right? So I always like to put that out there. But right now, you're a Navy SEAL Commander, or Lieutenant Commander, I can't remember.

Commander in the Navy.

A Commander in the Navy. And you're currently on what they call the SkillBridge program. So give us a quick rundown of what that is because that leads into what you're actually doing.

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks, guys, to share a little bit about who I am and what I'm doing, and more importantly, the skills that I'm hoping to bring to some people, and a little bit about SkillBridge. So, yeah, Navy SEAL Commander, wrapping up my career here in August. And through SkillBridge and actually an extension through SOCOM, I've been given the opportunity to work for a civilian organization through the last several months of my military career.

The DoD has a program called DoD SkillBridge, under which each one of the services has their particular requirements. But for most intents and purposes, the idea is if you get your commander, who has to be over (referring to a superior officer) — not a commander in rank, but the commander in position — to approve you working for a civilian organization, and there's not a conflict of interest between that civilian organization and the military, then you can in fact go out and do some work for that. There's some paperwork that has to be filed, but for the most part, it's one of the easiest things I've done in the military as far as bureaucratic red tape. There was hardly any, so I was surprised. I'm doing an internship with a nonprofit called Veterans PATH, and in Veterans PATH, we are introducing vets to mindfulness meditation.

That's awesome. So, let's just jump right into that. We've got other folks on here on that SkillBridge program. I think it's a really cool concept. Finally, the DoD is taking responsibility that we need to set guys up for success, not just boot them out like coming back off that appointment. And two days later, you're thrown out the door, they don't even have all their kit turned in yet.

Absolutely.

Quickly, Jon, coming from a former military, former police background, I can tell you that this is a fantastic thing to learn about, and everybody that we've talked about said that that transition time was well worth it. I can give you an example. Shelley (Shelley Martin, CEO of HBPRNA) and I decided, "Okay, our CEO, who's also a 'copper' (police officer) back in metropolitan Detroit, we decided, 'Okay, we're going to pop yellow smoke, this is the end of our careers. What we're going to do is go out with grace.'" So we had everything that was planned, turned in all gear, everything, and that was our last night on the road. And it was really an emotion-inducing moment.

And so we leave, we have our stuff in the car, we're completely checked out, signed out. And I go, "I got to run back in." I can't remember what it was, but on the second floor I had to go through the DBN (Drug Bureau of Narcotics) and drop something off. So I come by the front desk, and the guy at the front desk goes, "Can I help you there?" You're sitting there thinking, "I sweated for you, I bled for you, I killed for you, I died for you," all these other emotions. And here's this kid that's still on MTO (military training obligation) who has no idea who I am. It's like, behind a velvet rope, pal. And that's crushing, the emotional severity of that laser hitting you. You listen, coppers go to work at an emergency room the minute that they quit their job, being a night guard at the emergency room because they can't do anything else. They don't know what else to do, or they blow their own brains out because they're going, "I was in charge of the world. I was in charge of this AO (area of operations). And inside of this grid square, nothing happened without me." And then all of a sudden you're gone.

So that transition from the military was the same thing when you're talking about ETS (Expiration Term of Service). Brian and I were talking about the other day, talking about ETS. And I got a ringing in my ears from the explosions and stuff. The guy goes, "You still got that ringing in your ears? You're going to be in a couple more days because we got to get that checked out, or you can leave on this bus right now." And we're like, "See ya." So the dichotomous signal that you're getting, you in a position, because you were an enlisted and an officer, and then all of a sudden get kicked out. GEO (General Electric Officer)? They know that they're going to go to General Motors, or they're going to go to some major corporation. They've already got it. What about you? So, I think that's a great approach, Brian, because it scared the hell out of me because there was no net.

That's huge. It's that transition. It sounds like you're already just because of this program you've been with, and with Veterans PATH, you're actually involved in that. So you're doing how it's going to help yourself, right? You get the positions. Alright, so you're in this space, and we'll get into it in detail, about mindfulness. So on that, I always ask, what is your definition of what that is? Because there's a lot of stuff out there, people talking about mindfulness, and there's different buzzwords that come up. There are some people that are really trying to do good, and there are some people that are just jumping on a bandwagon trying to make a buck. You understand? So what is it and what is it that has helped you?

My big thing, and we talked briefly on the phone last week, it was great because you're coming from a Navy SEAL background, so elite unit, type-A personality guys. But at the same time, when we get around those people in those units, there's also a little bit of experimentation, right? Guys are willing to try and do anything if it helps their performance, right? So I think that's where I know where you come from. So getting to that, what your definition is and what it means to you, first of all.

Oh yeah, totally. I mean, we are big-time experimenters. If there's a new supplement out there, or a new type of workout, I guarantee someone's going to try it. Like, "But, doc, no!" Like, "Hey, Bill, what I'm doing." Exactly. Being a team guy was one of the reasons I didn't try it initially, because we kind of, we are these type-A personalities, aggressive. And the stereotype of meditation is that it's for the weak or the weak of mind, one or the other. I sat down with a psychologist because I honestly was struggling with some stress and anxiety of my own, and it was affecting me personally and it was affecting me professionally. And a psychologist recommended that I tried mindfulness and meditation.

First of all, I didn't know what mindfulness was, we'll get into that here in a second, and then meditation. Because I had that stereotype in my mind, I was not prepared to start it, I was not prepared to try it out, even though he was like, "Yeah, it's going to help." It still a stigma was there. But then, when he did lay it out, "Hey, here's the data, here's the science behind it," that's when the team guy in me was like, "Oh yeah, alright, I'll try it. It's going to help me be a better team."

Yeah. Absolutely.

So, I tried it out for a couple weeks, went back to him, didn't think it was working. And he was like, "Well, that's like going to the gym for two weeks and thinking that you got it." So I got I got to eat some humble pie, go back home and try it out again. Tried it out for a couple months, and then I started to see differences in how I was handling things. And people started to notice differences in me and how I was handling things, and how I was performing both at work and at home. And so I started to really embrace it, read all about it, especially where I could, and start to share it with friends and family.

It does get misused quite often. You've got mindfulness, kind of a picture of a Venn diagram, mindfulness and one sort of going bad, meditation and another. And there is a little bit of overlap between the two, but they're not synonymous. Mindfulness is being present in the here and now, or being aware of the present in the here and now, and doing so without any type of judgment. Whereas meditation is setting aside very deliberately setting aside some time to focus on a mantra, focus on your breath, focus on a bodily sensation. And then the overlap between the two: mindfulness-based meditation is setting aside that time to focus on the here and now and being very deliberate about it. So you can eat mindfully and drive mindfully. Then meditation is actually stopping. You can meditate while you sit in a chair, you don't have to be in a lotus position or anything to do that. You can lie down and meditate, but it's still the time that you're setting aside to be very intentional and do that practice.

You said that you started immediately noticing some effects, and then you said other people noticed the effects. So, what specifically, learning this understanding, what specifically did it do for you?

So specifically what it did for me initially, after a couple of months, where I noticed that I was starting to pay attention to the very moment, the here and now, was — and it's kind of a touchy-feely story, but it'll get into a little bit more in a second — but I had a six-month-old daughter at the time, now she's almost three. And I was feeding her at night. When I was feeding her, I was thinking about the next day and kind of having some anxiety about the next day, or I was worried about something that I screwed up the day before, or whatever. And I wasn't paying attention to the little girl that was right there in my hands. And after practicing mindfulness and meditation for a couple of months, when I was feeding my little girl, I realized I was focused on my little girl and nothing else. How special she was at that very moment.

So, I'm sure that's a little touchy-feely story. But where things kind of got better at work is I was far more productive, more focused. I wasn't anxious when somebody brought me something, I was like, "Hey, I need this by such and such a deadline." I was like, "Okay, yeah, I've got it. Boom, I'll take it on." Taking from, taking action. And I was able to do that. I was able to sleep better at night, which once I was sleeping better, I was able to perform better physically, so getting back into the gym. So it really kind of the human performance circle, it really filled out that circle. I was able to perform better in all realms. So, it helped tremendously.

Now we're all about human behavior, but I've got to ask you an emotional content question, first of all, for our viewers and listeners, both of them, that hopefully are off work today and listening to us while they're watching the Game Show Network. The idea is this: people that know Jon, he's from L.A., that Louisiana one. How is it that you were tip of the spear Tier One, and now all of a sudden you switch channels and you're doing goat yoga, granola-eating, patchouli-wearing?

Listen, most of the people that tune into our broadcast, we've got people from everywhere, but a lot of them are coppers, or first responders, or law enforcement, military guys, and a lot of them are from the teams. How is it that you didn't get choked out and have to tap out when you came in? You've got to agree that that's a novel thing, right? I mean, I bet you've got some grief for that.

It's a fair statement. Well, you know, surprisingly, I didn't. I didn't get near the grief that I thought I was going to get. So, and that initially was where I wasn't sharing what I was doing. So I was practicing at home, for lack of a better term, "in secret," "in the closet." And then my performance started to improve, and people saw that I was, you know, I didn't have the black rings under my eyes. People came up to me, they're like, "What are you doing differently?" And at first I was like, "Oh, I'm eating better." And I was, but it was because I was meditating.

And eventually I was like, "Okay, well, I'll tell you, man. I'm meditating." And I was a little embarrassed, quite frankly, initially. And I thought I was going to get laughed out of the room. And all the people that I've told after that were like, "Oh, really? Tell me, how did you get introduced to that? Tell me more about it." The reception was completely different than what I had anticipated. And it goes back to what Brian was talking about, because people are willing to hear about something that is going to help their performance. Once I said, "Hey, it's helped me perform better and feel better," rather than, "Hey, it's just me being me," people were willing to listen and wanted to hear more. And so then the reception has been phenomenal. I'm super happy with the way people are wanting to learn or delve in, hence my being here talking to you guys.

And that goes into, because you kind of mentioned something, you felt it filled that block of your overall human performance. I think people forget about that, especially guys like, "Alright, it's about what's the right food I need, what's the workout I need, what's the training, what drills should I be doing at the range?" And then we come in with the same thing, like, "Hey, we're about cognitive performance. We're going to change cognitive fuel," exactly, "how to literally sense-make and problem-solve faster." You've got to get faster mentally. How often do you do exercise between your ears, right? We always make the joke, everyone wants to go to the range, everyone wants to go lift weights. Alright, what are we doing up here? And that gets into a number of areas, and that's why I like all this when it's approached from a performance perspective. It's not about peace, love, and hair grease, man. It's about truth, it's all about it.

You know, that's the stigma that goes along for so long. One of the things that fed coppers having heart attacks and people from high-stress jobs blowing their brains out was that you had to close the bar. You had to be the last person that was there at off-duty roll call. You were chugging the White Horse bourbon, and everybody was coming up to you and you were lighting it on fire, making smoke rings come out of your ears. You had to be that person. You had to be tougher, stronger, faster, be at the gym the next day, and none of this stuff was bothering you. Get a tattoo inside of your lower lip, and if I pass out, feed me more.

So the idea is that that was so ingrained in everybody, that's the way that you were. And then Hollywood picks up on that, and there's not a chief of police that doesn't have a bottle in their drawer. Every one of the coppers is a misfit, and they lost his old lady because he's just misunderstood. And welcome to the island of misfit toys. We all made those mistakes, and the problem was we were going about trying to feed ourselves wrong, we were doing everything backwards, and nobody was stepping up and saying it. And when somebody did step up and say it, we criticized that person for being weak.

We share a look, I'm a friend. You know, Paladini, my pal Michelle (Michelle Paladini, another HBPRNA team member), she thinks she's so clever for coming up with that, that by God is written somewhere, I believe it, so that's all that matters. But the idea is Marren (Brian Marren) is so cool, and Marren gets her to come on a podcast, and the idea was that I'm scenario, an old soldier, an old copper. The CEO of the company is a female copper, first one to work the road in a dynamic fashion in a bad district on midnight shift and stuff. So we're all ready to crack down that wall and say, "You can't have both. You can't be sitting there and doing the mindfulness training and be out on the road cracking heads and arresting your way out of a situation." And the great thing was, she disabused you right away in the first couple of minutes, she's like, "You're not going to be arresting your way out of this problem. This is a thinking man's game. This is how we do." And it was wonderful, it was a wonderful podcast, a wonderful person.

I started listening to some of your podcasts, and a lot of them are more formulaic, and that's not an insult, but everybody comes on and they've got a script and they want to read their script and they want to promote their book, "Ante Reus: Deliberate Discomfort." We get it. We love the words. The same thing with "Retired." You get what I'm saying? "Petard" (likely referring to a guest or author) and "West" (another potential guest/author), Brian, they're great guys, but they're trying to sell a book. So with you, Jon, the idea that we wanted to come on is like November was Resilience Month. All January, and all... Greg, hold on.

You froze for a second.

Is Jon still there?

Yeah, did he come back? My screen moved for a second. He's back on.

Yeah, so those other guys that they come on podcasts, their primary focus is to sell their book or promote the program, which is great, and we're all for that. But the idea is, the bottom line is, November was our Resilience Month. December and January we devote to suicide intervention and prevention, and we all lost a lot of friends doing that. On Friday, everybody wears red so we remember everybody. Frankly, the calendar gets full, and if we're going to devote our time, we want to have people know when they're on the axis, be able to move off of the bubble, be able to move that bubble forward. And in the way that we've devoted our lives to do that is human performance, human behavior pattern recognition analysis. It's a laser and a flashlight that doesn't just go out, it comes back. You've got to look in the mirror and go, "Hey, am I ready for the day? Am I ready for command?"

You know that as a Commander, you know that you wanted to take every rein and you wanted to do everything wrong, you never wanted to delegate. You want this the entire time, right? So when you were deployed, "Hey, I'm not going to sleep because I have to be there to make those command decisions." How did you slow down enough? I mean, what was it? Because there's no other cataclysmic moments. What happened in your life other than just a baby, which is a great story, I'm crying here with that, but other stuff that comes up? When do you know that you're at that limit? When that...

Yeah.

When was it for you that hit you? "Yeah, I've got to do something, maybe this is the end of any moment."

Yeah. Alright, Brian, before we go, in all honesty, I never got the opportunity to command. I commanded a platoon, I commanded men on the battlefield, but I never commanded the full team. And we'll get real personal real quick here, but the reason that happened was my sister was married to a guy that ended up beating up on her. And I called the guy and basically I was going to tell him, "Man, you lay another hand on my sister and I'm going to hurt you," in not those words. And so he didn't answer because he saw who was calling. So I took it upon myself to send him some texts using some colorful language, telling them basically what I just told you guys. And honestly, I got in a little trouble, I got brought up on electronic harassment charges, and the scale of justice, or whatever it's called, didn't serve the way that I thought it would. And luckily, he's gone, he's out of the picture. But because he had run this law bill and brought me in to be under charges, the Navy got involved, JAG (Judge Advocate General) got involved. And they swallowed my cheeks and took mugshots and treated me like a complete criminal.

Anyway, long story short, that prevented me from leading in command as a Commander. So that was one of the things that I really struggled with. I was pissed, I was. And of course, being stupid, I was pissed at the situation because a lot of things. And that's one of the times that I was actually talking with the psychologist and that's what introduced me to meditation. So in all honesty, if I had gotten a chance to lead a team, I don't know that I would have found this, at least not when I did. The guys who do find it, I mean, I've spoken with several team guys, both on the enlisted side and the officer side, who do embrace meditation. But the fact that they've found it while they were operational is unbelievable, because, as you mentioned, there's just no time. But now that I'm on this side, I am talking to those guys and look, it does help you to become a better operator, it does help you to be a better thinker on the battlefield. People are like, "Well, why would you want to teach this to military folks? It's going to make them come out and kill!" That's, "Well, why would you not?"

Right. Better operators.

Yes, exactly. They don't shoot when they shouldn't have to, right? You can psychologically de-escalate because part of the job you're bringing is that your cup is full. You're going in there and you have to contend with your stuff and the stuff that you're seeing.

Everyone has their way of articulating it. We can go back to Yerkes-Dodson and how performance works, or the OODA loop and different color codes, and all that stuff. But we always like to give everyone — everyone's got a cup, right? You're holding the cup, and maybe because of our experiences in training, your cup is larger than everyone else's. But do we ever walk around with that empty? No, we fill it up with whatever we've got going on in our life. And if it becomes full, it's going to spill over. Something's going to get added in there and it's going to spill over on whatever that situation.

Exactly.

So, I appreciate you sharing that story, man, because I'm getting angry just thinking about that. I get it, man. I had that issue two years ago where I just didn't know I had anger issues. And we were working, I was working so... (pauses, searching for words) ... These big behavioral science folks were awesome people doing this human performance testing out on Camp Pendleton, different training scenarios, doing cortisol tests, and how do you inoculate? How do you do all this? There's really cool stuff, and there were awesome people. And I was one of the people running the teams through the training. So I was that buffer for them, or filter, to be like, "Hey, would this make sense? What does this mean to my back? No. Or they're not going to get it. Or that's not going to get you what you want. Do it this way."

So, a really cool job. And what I would always talk to them about stuff. And one of the things was, I was like, "Yeah, you know, today I have some of those issues came up about anger." Someone's like, "Yeah, the other night, this guy said something, and I just wanted, all I could think about was just caving his face in, and I wanted to console the bar. But I didn't. I took a breath. I walked out. I went home, and just sat on my couch and had some bourbon." And they're like, "Okay, Brian, you have horrible anger issues." I was like, "No, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. I de-escalated. I went home." They're like, "You realize you didn't do anything? That situation did not warrant you getting that angry." It was like, I never looked at it that way. Epiphany moment, like, "Oh, so you're saying I'm the problem."

The obverse of that coin is very simple: conducting interviews with homicide suspects on the street, and somebody will tell you, "These guys aren't going to talk to you. They're the toughest street gang in this AO. You're never going to be able to get anything out of them." And it's the same when you go to every place I've ever been in the world, it's all the same, but everybody's got their story about this nut you're not going to be able to crack. You get them into the room, you let them look at the door, you tell them they've got the key to the city in their pocket, or they're going to jail for the rest of their life. And it's Tommy was there and Billy was there, and everybody tells everything no matter who ran. And the funniest thing about it is, the higher up you go in the organizational chart in the military, in the coppers, they have this facade and they say, "I'm not telling anybody, I am not going to share with you my moments with my children, or with my family, or with my wife." We sit down with them for five minutes, you turn the podcast on, and they're going, "So I buried a guy in the desert."

And the great thing about why, because we feel a kindred spirit in certain groups that we grow into. You go into and we feel like we can share with them, in the first couple of minutes talking to somebody, "Okay, this is safe. I'm now in that safe area, and I can talk about those things." It really feels good to talk about that stuff that you've bottled up your whole career. And you think, "Hey, I'm going to go up in front of the judge and I'm going to wear my blues, I'm going to have a get-out-of-jail-free card, I'm going to do this." And, you know what? Pendulum swings, not so much anymore.

And the other thing is, you're thinking about what you did. What you did was a low-calorie intervention that 20 years ago somebody would have said, "Why didn't you take a two-pound sledgehammer and go visit this guy?" It's just not the way things are anymore. And so all of a sudden, your career's in jeopardy. And, you know what, your career is your career, is being a teacher and being a mentor to other people that are going around the world killing bad guys. It's like we lost sight of that. So when we talk mindfulness, there's no difference between mindfulness and situation awareness. People misuse the term "situational awareness" all the time, thinking that it's some kind of a magic act or parlor trick. It's not. It's being aware of the moment where you are in that environment, whichever environment it is, and then being aware of what other influences are around you. And if you can manage those faster and better than a likely opponent, you win. And that's what it's about. That's why we were so drawn to your story.

And it goes into, I always think, which I love, because it's the same thing, we take it from the performance perspective. That's why when we've done some of the resilience stuff, we've done like suicide prevention stuff, sexual harassment assault prevention programs. We're always like, everyone's like, "Oh great, here we go, I got to sit down and learn about this crap," or whatever. And we're like, "No, it's not about that. It's not about touchy-feely and, hey, be careful of others." It's like, "Look, man, you think faster, get better at it, become a better critical thinker, observe these things before they occur." Just because we're teaching about suicide prevention doesn't mean you can't use that same skillset to go see who the bad guy in the crowd is. They'll lash out or lash in, and you'll pick up on it.

And to get to, because there's a lot of — remember all this stuff, especially if it's going to be instituted in the military anywhere, it has to be studied, poked, prodded, all this stuff. And I get it, and that's good because there should be rigor behind it, right? Our programs and the stuff Greg has written have all been poked and prodded by everyone you could possibly measure, like, "Hey, this thing works." But there's always a disconnect between academia, researchers, and then people, and actual people on the ground at a functional or tactical level.

And it goes back to those behavioral sciences I was working with. It was on Pendleton, it was during like the late fall when the Santa Ana winds pick up that brings us crud. You just, noses run, you're just miserable. I get the sinus infection, so I'm working like that, and I'm popping the Advil Cold & Sinus, you've got to get from the pharmacist, like they're Tic Tacs. I'm taking those like the Emergency Vitamin C things. And one of them, she's like, "Hey, you know those things don't actually work." I go, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Those vitamin C packs, what they say and what it does actually, they think it's more placebo effect." And I go, "So you're telling me I take this and it makes me feel better and I perform better?" And she's like, "Well, no, but it doesn't technically actually work." I go, "But when I take it, it makes me feel better, and therefore I perform better." And she couldn't get past that. I go, "You're never going to understand working with the military if you don't understand that if I think it works, then it works. So if it works for me, then it works."

Not saying that's what mindfulness or anything is, but that's the whole idea behind it. Like, "Look, if this is something that I can learn that transfers anywhere." That's the beauty of it.

Couple that, Brian, with everybody on this broadcast and many of the people listening, you can't come in and say, "Don't run with scissors." We all have been running with scissors since we're 11. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So the idea is, how do I run with scissors without killing you or me in the process? You still have a wicked lot of fun. So the idea is that you've got to be doing that. So how did you, how did you turn this into a business plan? What was your idea? Because there's a plethora of marketers. What separates you? Why do we listen to you? And I know why, I'll tell you my personal story why we were drawn to you. But there's so many out there. What's different about Jon?

Yeah, well, I did not do a business plan. I kind of came up with an idea, "Hey, because people were starting to listen to me as I was teaching them meditation or teaching them about mindfulness, and I was starting to develop my egress plan, if you will, from the military. I was like, 'Okay, well, I can develop a nonprofit that does this.'" Okay, got it. But then when I started to do my research, Veterans PATH already existed. I didn't create Veterans PATH. I fell in on Veterans PATH. It was created by two women out in Berkeley, California, funny enough.

That's a legend, by the way.

Lesa and Chris. They founded it, and they brought it to veterans because they realized veterans were struggling with stress injury, at moral injury, and knew that what they were experts in could help vets. Now neither one of them are vets themselves, they've helped hundreds of vets since they founded the organization, but they're not vets themselves. And last year, Lesa and Chris were looking to basically do a turnover of leadership of the organization. And they wanted a civilian and they wanted a vet. And the civilian is David Drake, he's the Executive Director. And then there's myself as the Deputy Executive Director for Veterans PATH.

And the reason that they wanted a veteran was obviously because we could relate to other veterans. A lot of people can relate, but there's really getting down into the nitty-gritty about what we saw on the battlefield, what we did on the battlefield. That is a part that very few people can relate to unless you've been there yourself. So that is why other team guys are able to listen to me. That's why other combat veterans outside of Naval Special Warfare are able to listen to me, because I have been there and I have done that. And, excuse me, in Naval Special Warfare, we talk about being quiet professionals and not advertising what we do or seeking recognition for our actions. But then there are guys when they get out and they write tons of books and they, you know, they're looking to make a buck off being a team guy, basically. We call it selling a trident.

So in the trailer. Yeah.

And yes, I do have on my LinkedIn different broadcasts, podcasts that I've been on. It does say "Navy SEAL Commander," but I'm not doing it to make a buck. I'm doing it. It's establishing credibility.

It's instability. For the dick-measuring contest every time you walk in, sorry to say, but that's absolutely the truth. But we face it, Brian, it's the same thing. Even though, like, same thing, I've been doing this human behavior stuff with Greg for years. I went to, I got a graduate degree at USC, all that stuff. When we go in front of law enforcement, I go, "Hey, Brian, he's a Marine sniper." Because that other stuff, they don't understand. But I say that I can hate with multiple combat tours, and then using this, they go, "Oh, okay." Like, it's just, it's just that, not to be, "Hey, look how cool I am," or, "Look at all." It's just if, for some people, they need that. Whereas in academia, which is hilarious, because we're always working with all kinds of big-brain folks, if you don't have the degree, they're like, "Well, what have you done?" And that's the only one, "I've written programs that all the programs that you're teaching right now."

You're self-taught, and you're not a PhD, and we are PhDs. You've got to get past that. We have to.

You're so right, to be able to come in that way.

We know a lot of the same people, we ran in a lot of the same areas. And rather, the way that I think about it is quite simply this: I'm impressed anytime that I meet a SEAL or Ranger or a Delta or any of those other guys. "Thanks for your service. You've done the world a great service. Now you come out and you have a company," and generally the company has something to do with your own name. That's all good, too, because there's a recognition and a branding that's got to go with it. But if you can do the skill but you can't transfer the skill, then I'm not impressed, because you're supposed to be able to do the skill. You're supposed to be able to do two one-arm pull-ups and throw the grenades into the room. And so we encounter these guys on the road all the time and they're all in the same space. And we have no competition. There's no competition for what we do because there's only Greg-trained and non-Greg-trained. You might as well, you get what I'm saying?

But the idea is that we run into SEALs and we run into special operators and coppers all the time, and they can talk the talk, but they can't walk the talk. And the idea is, you're not trying to go out there and say, "Look what I've done." You're trying to go out there and say, "You can look at what you can do." And that's what we were so impressed with when we saw you and Paladini and Tom Blake, and a lot of the other people that we run into. They have the ability to sit down and go, "Don't look, when I go into a room, I go, 'I'm nobody. I've never been anywhere and I've never done anything.'" Now, and they love the class. We never, at the beginning of a class, we just start talking, and I tell them at the first break, "If we're not what we sold you, then roll our asses out of here, and we'll refund your money."

The idea is that we're not trying to hype you, we're trying to increase your human performance. Why? Because we're all in this bubble together. And guess what? The way to lock off criminals and terrorists is like, you know it too, because you've been on every military base in the world, we've only been to 53 countries, and everybody's got the same thing: "If you see something, say something." But nobody has the architecture. So what you're doing is you're creating an architecture, not for defense and security, but for being able to harden yourself as a target and harden this cognitively, improve performance, so you don't hang yourself in the flipping basement. And there's a great appeal to that. More law enforcement people are killing themselves than they're being killed by bad guys. People that are coming out of military are doing the same thing. Why? Because when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. This is something, this is something other than drinking in a dingy bar or playing darts with the gutter rats that got you in trouble in the first place. And this is an amazing thing. It's low-calorie, doesn't cost a lot of money. Jon, tell us more about the actual Veterans PATH.

Sure. Yeah, just how it works. PATH, acceptance, transformation, and honor. That's what we want to give: peace, acceptance, transformation, and honor. And we typically do that through teaching either one-day, three-day, or five-day retreats. And those retreats have in the past been in California, around the San Francisco area, down into the Monterey area, Carmel Valley. We've done some in Tennessee. Those are most likely going to go away. We're looking to grow some in Colorado Springs.

Alright, yeah. That's what I'll be moving to when I retire.

I've got a place for you right here, Road Manor West, buddy, right here.

Perfect.

You go behind me.

Perfect. Yeah. And then we've got some retreats planned for in the next coming months here in the Virginia Beach area.

That's great.

So what it costs for the veterans is zero. We are a nonprofit. The only thing that the veterans pay is to get to the retreats, and then we cover the cost of the retreats through fundraising and donations. So listeners are looking to donate...

Yeah, guess out online and take your money. I'll definitely put up the link. I'll tell everybody, call everybody we know.

And so what is the overall vision here? Is it just to kind of grow this to get more involved, to build unity, build that tribe of what you're doing? Because there's a lot who are either looking for something or want to get involved or are involved, and it's like there's so much out there right now that it surprises me every time. More people want to use something to help them now than 10 years ago, or even five years ago. Everyone's kind of getting on board with this. So what is the overall idea here and what do you guys need as an organization?

So, a couple of things. Right now we are currently serving stress-injured and morally-injured veterans. And when I say the word "veterans," I mean people who have hung up the uniform, they're no longer in uniform. We are needing and wanting to change that, and to where we serve that same population but grow, scale to where we can offer it to transitioning service members. Because, as you mentioned, suicide amongst law enforcement officers and suicide amongst the military, that's a problem. Well, it's suicide amongst veterans after they hang up that uniform, the chance of them committing suicide actually goes up. And we believe that it's because of the stress of transition and then the feeling that they have lost a piece of their identity, they've lost their mission, they've lost their purpose when they get out. And we want to build their resilience in that transition phase.

So we are working to do a strategic bit of it, partner with other nonprofits and partner with the VA and with the Transition Assistance Program to bring this to military as they're transitioning. Because if we're talking about working with stress-injured military veterans, we're all, in one way or another, dealing with stress, dealing with anxiety. There are unique stresses and anxieties that come with being a military member, and there's definitely unique ones that come with a transition. And we want to enable them to kind of tap into these tools, give them the proverbial extra tool in the tool bag, that is going to enable them to be more resilient through that process. So what do we need for that? We need money. So if there are people listening, we are online at veteranspath.org/donate, and that's how they can give back, or by listening to the podcast, just hitting support on the podcast. The podcast is named Veterans PATH, and that's just me interviewing alums of our program or high-performing individuals. You get meditation and mindfulness. The intent there is to break down those stigmas that we've talked about through the show.

So you've had some really cool people on Veterans PATH. I listened to the one with Josh, just finished up this weekend. I've got to get in, could you put me in contact with him? So I've got to get in touch with him. Super interesting guy. He and I have a lot of parallels, a lot of random, weird things in life that I'm like, "Oh man, I know exactly what to do." He totally, everything you talked about is like, "Yep, I've made that decision before. Yep, I know this guy's going." But super, super cool stuff on there.

And you're dealing with all, you know, elite performers, we'll put it that way. It's a general term, whatever, elite unit, elite guys, top in their game. And I know I don't want anyone listening to get away from the fact that it's like, "Oh, that's just for these high-performing individuals." I've also seen a lot of people who don't realize that they are very high-performing individuals: folks in law enforcement, first responders, people working in emergency rooms, any high-stress job. If you've been doing it for a while and you have a really good team that you work with, you're actually in that same category. So all of these tools can help you out, or anyone out as well.

And I like how you're focusing on, you know, during that transition time, because that's huge. If you don't have that skillset developed and then you get out and you're trying to figure stuff out, you have nothing to fall back on. So that's always been my biggest thing. I've told people, we've got all kinds of big-brain smart folks who work up in the Pentagon and write reports and white papers and all this stuff. It's all good stuff. And that was my whole thing. I was like, "Look, you need after, if active duty guys or enlisted guys, then maybe there should be, hey, if you're enlisted four or five years, it's actually longer, and you go to a reserve unit on average, that is your year." You're still supporting the mission, and you're learning how to transition out and how to build all these skills and do this, because there needs to be that time. I think it's an investment, obviously, but the payoff in return is you're going to get a lot out of it. Less healthcare costs for veterans, there's all kinds of that you're going to get out of this stuff.

And I think now with different, especially even law enforcement agencies that have wellness programs, that's starting to develop where they're actually getting, like, even it took a long time for the Border Patrol when we worked with them a couple years ago, like, "Hey, we finally got it to where we have an extra hour a day that we're paid for, that we can go to the gym that they built for us." So that's their PTS (physical training schedule) included, because now they're saying, "Oh, well, yeah, we've got to get these guys in really good shape because this is going to beat them up over the years and it's going to be missed days at work, it's healthcare cost, it's going to be this." So this all ties into it. And all this mental performance stuff, it's finally people are talking about it and coming up with the process and how to do it and how to relate it to people. I think it's really awesome what you're doing with it and where it all fits in, which is performance.

It's got to be a paradigm shift, too, though. And Jon, don't think that I passed over that comment that you said, "If anybody is listening," make sure that I really appreciate that. It makes good to homeless guys that have a transistor radio in there, but the idea is that you're talking about a gosh-darn paradigm shift, Brian. You remember back in the JT (Joint Task Force) or North days when the thing was that you were AWOL if you were at the gym? And the idea was we were trying to get people to invest and saying, "Hey, listen, this would really help out if we had this workout here." They're going, "Okay, I'm paying you to work. I'm not paying you to work out." And what they didn't understand is getting the most out of a human being is investing in the human being and investing in them in the long run, not just when they're in the military.

The great thing about like people would say, ASAT training or Combat Hunter or all that other stuff, "Yeah, the throughput. We got to max out at this number, we can't take these extra people." And it's like, "Look, this guy's going to be safer at the 7-Eleven on the way to work when he's getting gas, not just when he's deployed." So if you're investing, you're talking about shifting the investment to the human, the asset that's actually carrying your weapon system into combat, that's actually flying the drones to kill the bad guys. And that shift, I don't think it's fully been realized yet, but I think we're well on our way.

And, you know, the whole reason I still haven't cracked the code on LinkedIn. Marren (Brian Marren) laughs. I mean, I don't understand social media, all these photons moving around and stuff, I understand. But on LinkedIn, everybody's trying to sell something. And no offense, because I'm going to get knocked off of LinkedIn now, but most of it's garbage, most of it's hyperbole, most of it's trash. And when you're talking about, "Hey, listen, I want to get this vet to a better place. I want to bring them out of that closet, out of the darkness, and show them that there's a path that they can contribute to their own wellness." Oh my God, that's an amazing thing! And you just don't see it enough. You sure don't see it on the evening news. I hope we get back to that. And every time that I see something, I don't understand, but there's a little thumbs up hand. I'm hitting the hell out of that thumbs up, trying to endorse anybody that's doing anything for our vets that's useful. And I'll tell you what, I would never give a person a handout, but I'll give you a hand up. And this is what this program is all about. You're allowing people to achieve the greatness that's within them. To me, it's an amazing thing. So thank you for that and all the other stuff that you're doing, and your service to the country. I hope the people, the scales will fall from their eyes and they'll see that.

Well, thanks, brother, I appreciate that. It's great to have people like yourself and programs like this that are out there just for organizations like Veterans PATH. And thank you for your comments and your support for my service. I appreciate that. It's been an honor to serve alongside some of the best men and women this country has to offer. Absolutely, I would never trade it for anything.

So, Jon, what do you typically do? What's your daily routine for your mindfulness? How does it work for you, maybe from, at the beginning when you were just getting into it, and then now where you're at now, because I'm sure that progression is huge over a couple years that you've been doing and really getting into it. So what is your daily routine at it?

So my practice, what I found is, I still use guided meditation because I feel personally that's what I need. Some people are fine with just listening to a bell to start them off and wrap them up. I personally like guided meditation. So I use a series of different apps: I use Insight Timer, I use Calm, I use Headspace, and I use A Mindful. Those apps, I have them sitting on the very front page of my phone. And the reason I have that is if they're sitting anywhere else, and I have all my notifications and everything turned off, if those apps are sitting anywhere else besides the front page, when I go and get my phone in the morning to meditate to those guided meditations, I turn on my phone and there's my email and there's notifications for an email, a social media, and I'll go down those rabbit holes, and before I know it, 30 minutes is burned up. I start rushing through my day.

So I have those apps front page, all my notifications turned off, all those other things — social media, email — several pages in or several folders into my phone. And I sleep with my phone in my kitchen. I have an old-school alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. I wake up, go do my deeds, use the bathroom and everything. And then I go through the kitchen, sit down in my living room, and I'm not very flexible anymore, so I sit in a chair. And I meditate to a guided meditation on one of those apps. And I try to do 15 minutes in the morning, and it's getting me set for the day. And then I try to do 15 minutes sometime after lunch to get me set for the rest of the day.

What I found is meditation actually wakes me up. And if I do it too close to bed, then I'm not jazzed and I can't go to sleep. But if I do it in the afternoon, it wakes me up enough to make it through the day, and I'm relaxed going through that day. And then when I'm done at the end of the day, I can fall asleep. So it actually, it's kind of counterintuitive, but that's how it works for me. Some people meditate to fall asleep, I can't meditate, I'll wake up. But yeah, that's my practice. There are definitely days I modify that, depending on what the day looks like and if I plan for the different contingencies that happen in the morning. Sometimes my kids need something or my dog is jumping around and I can't. But those days that I don't, those are days that I really notice that I'm more frazzled, not paying as much attention, not as focused, and not as productive or creative. So I definitely notice the times that I don't meditate. It took me a while to build up and figure out how it would benefit, but if I take a couple of days off, I notice it pretty quickly. It's just like when you take a couple days off in the gym, you start to get out of shape a lot faster than you get in shape.

For sure, so true.

Yeah, we had to work on this traveling companion thing because traveling was killing us. And the idea is that your life is not your own. You're spending all your time on the road, you're spending it away from your loved ones. And then you go into a high-stress environment surrounded by predatory personnel that are at the top of their games. So you're always on, you're always on the spotlight, there's no time to relax. And the idea is that Brian and I made this, and obviously when Shelley and Martin are with us on the road, we made this pact, "Okay, listen, we're going to take care of each other. We're going to make sure that we're good to each other when we're traveling. We're going to hit the gym, we're going to stay at places that have a gym. We're going to go to Whole Foods and we're going to get some desserts and throw them away, and we're going to fill our Igloo cooler with salads." And the idea is that we're challenging each other all the time. So Parker boy over here is always working out. And even like now in San Diego, his morning routine, get up at four, hit the dumpsters before they're empty. You know, breakfast.

But the idea is that once you balance that, once you start setting your life up that way, the architecture becomes easy to follow. So Shelley, my little drill instructor, CEO of our company, she's switched on all the time. So 4 AM, she's a second pot of coffee, "Let's do this!" Well, that's killing me. So what I've got to do is I've got to find a way to decompress. So I've got the bathroom book, a technical book that I go in and I read a couple of pages whether I wanted to or not. I get down and hit the treadmill. And now I'm reading on the treadmill while I'm listening to a song and doing something. If I don't do that, then I can't function. And I know it sounds bad, but 10 years ago I wasn't doing that at all. It was like, "Hey, don't worry about it. Pop a Rockstar or those damn Rip Its." You remember the Rip Its? You're like, and you're like, at night. But so, I love that you learned to thrive and be who you are, because the problem is that the road becomes you. Your last mission, your mission set becomes you, and you become it. And it's not healthy. It's just not healthy in the long run.

I eat the same way. It's like I have to tell my wife, too, it's like the whole, "Hey man, physician, heal thyself." Like you have to focus on yourself first before you can help anyone else, right? Before you're good. And if you're not good, it's, and I always give the analogy, what do they say in the airplane? If the mask... you put it on yourself first, and then anyone else. Second part of that is, problems don't get easier to solve it 30 times before you get up there. But that goes into a lot of folks who had that military training of like, TCCC (Tactical Combat Casualty Care) of medical stuff. It's like, "Look, man, you've got to take care of yourself and then worry about other people." No, there's like, "Yeah, the suppressive firepower first, and then we're leading people." People don't have that training or understand that concept. But I always do that, and it's like, and I know there's like, I get up early just because I'm up early and I'm going to do it anyway, and that's what's going to happen.

While others are trying to come by frazzled, your cardboard box gets me out. But same thing, it's actually funny how people are like, "Well, you know, you're getting less sleep." It's like, "Yeah, but that extra 15 or 30 minutes, or 45, or an hour you have in the morning for yourself to focus on just you, is far more, it's going to pay off for you greater than it is just lying there and hitting the snooze button or something." Because that's not why. She's like, "How are you so motivated to get up?" I was like, "Whoa, this has nothing to do with motivation, it's all discipline." Thank God I have discipline, because otherwise when your alarm goes off at four...

Exactly.

You don't want to get out of bed. I was like, "No, that's ridiculous. I want to get back under that person." It's just like, why do you every day you do it? It's like, "Yeah, I know, because I have to, because someone's going to kill me if I don't." But I go back to the meditation stuff, I used to try that some four years ago, but it didn't, it was hard for me because at first it was difficult. Then I'm like, "So now it became a challenge. Now I'm like, no, I can do it, I'm going to meditate." It's like, but I was telling you when we talked, I did the Wim Hof breathing stuff, and that will clear your mind and you wake up in the morning and do that, and you're just like, in a moving.

I tried, we talked about like, because we get into like the cold water stuff or cold exposure. And I was like, "Yeah, you asked me if I did." I was like, "Yeah, I try. I go out on the deck and do the Wim Hof breathing exercise, but it's only 48 degrees is the coldest it gets." It's down, man. Oh, the weather. And same thing with the showers, like, "Oh, people take cold showers." It's like, "I try it, it just, it doesn't get very cold out here." But there's a technique and it's more about the process of doing it and getting involved in just taking 10 minutes out to focus on yourself in the morning. And once people see just the benefits of doing that every day, even just for the work week, from Monday through Friday, if you get up 15 minutes early, you pound a bottle of cold water, and then you do a breathing exercise or a meditation exercise, you'd be amazed by the end of the week how different you feel.

Huge.

It's huge, man.

My wife, I love her to death, she is a high-functioning person, a high-performing individual. She can get up 15 minutes before she's out the door, and that's how she wants to say, whatever. I cannot do that. I need a couple of hours before I'm on the road, getting out and doing something. And that entails getting some time in the gym, doing some meditation, maybe doing some journaling, and just clearing my head before the day starts. That miracle morning, I need that before the day starts.

So where do you, and this is the Mobius loop of Greg questions. My thing is, I know who I reach out for when I need help. I need help a lot. I'm a fragile little snowflake. My ego system is like a Fabergé egg, and people have to wear gloves. That's like holding the Stanley Cup, you know? So constantly I'm firing these daggers off at Marren (Brian Marren) no matter where Marren is, and his little ass is on fire running around, it's got to stop. But I'm fully willing and able to leech off of my kids and my wife and my best friends and take, take, take because I need that sometimes. But I'm always there if they need something, okay? Anything that they need, nothing's out of bounds. You always got a place at Road Manor West. I'm always going to be on that phone. And what about you? What about Jon? How do you, how do you weather those tough days because they're not all wavy gravy and Chili Palmer?

Yeah, my wife is my rock for most everything, great. But I have found, I have found that there were times when what I want to share, I have to share with a brother-in-arms. And I really noticed it here since I've been working with Veterans PATH. I love the work that I do, it's still service in another way. So serving, I'm not in uniform. But what I found was, because most of my work when I'm not doing a retreat or working directly with Veterans PATH, I'm working in a workspace. And I mean, that's where this podcast booth is that I'm talking to you guys from. But I'm not part of a team. And I just joined this group, it's The Honor Foundation.

Oh, you're familiar?

Yeah, so I'm going through a PO board (program orientation board) right now with them.

Nice, nice. Yeah, it's great.

And my wife was like, "Why do you need that?" I was like, "Well, I feel like I've lost my brotherhood, and this is a way for me to talk to people who are going through the same process as I am at the same time." And I'm able to talk with them about that. So I guess, Greg, to answer your question, my wife for the most part is who I lean on. But then there's certain things that are unique that I have to share with brothers. And my wife, she's former Navy. She was a physician assistant in the Navy, orthopedic physician assistant. And now she's an orthopedic physician assistant on the outside of the Navy. So when I talked to her about transition, she's like, "Transition was not that hard." (Laughter) A small amount of things I can do, and it involves going to bad places. I'm ready to do something different. So transition is stressful. So I am leaning on, as far as transition, I'm leaning on people who are going through transition, brothers and sisters, who are going through transition simultaneously.

That's awesome. Yeah, I'm familiar with The Honor Foundation, and I know it's also familiar with the 12-step program. But no, The Honor Foundation is doing great stuff, that's really, I know. And that's, we get it, it's finding that, finding the kind of tribe, that group again, is tough. And I've done it. I've been fortunate enough that over the years, I got out of the Marine Corps for a while ago, but then I continued working for the Marine Corps, then I started doing some more contracting, and doing this. And then you go down that rabbit hole and now you're sitting in the country, in the middle, going like, starting a war in another country, going, "How the hell did I get here? What am I doing with my life? I need to, okay, let's pull back the reins here a little bit. What is actually going on? Where is this leading?"

But you do all that stuff, but it's finding that group. And what I was good about forcing myself to do, and it goes back to the, "You know, get comfortable being uncomfortable," is make friends with and be inserting myself into a group that I otherwise wouldn't have, that don't have the same background. And I found, luckily, linked up with guys years ago who owned and ran a CrossFit gym and were competitive athletes or were stunt dudes, and did not have any military background, no family in the military, nothing. But we used that link and I became great friends with them and their family. They have what I call their "normal human beings." So I don't live on the island. I make their toys look at, "Look at all these normals on friend, you know." To be, but like, it was that getting involved. But there always is that, there's, when things get tough for me, or got tough in those certain times, there's just certain things I'm never going to be able to talk to them about or relate to them.

So I always kept that, you know, still working with guys where, you know, like we're all prior military, that you can say and do anything, it's not going to be off-limits. It's never going to be too far. In fact, the goal is to see how far you can take it. So, but I think that balance was important, because if you just stay in the camp of guys who are just talking like, "We're still on the team, we're still doing this," your baseline for what normal society is gets shifted because you still think that's, you have to balance it with something else, otherwise you're just going to be completely nuts in life. That's one way. But yeah, it's finding that, finding that group or the way to fit in is, it's weird. Even out here, I had problems years ago where I was just like, "I don't understand how did normal humans operate?"

We talk about that now. Marren (Brian Marren) imitates a real boy. The behavior runs around in his child's small jacket. Yeah, we try to get him to, we try to get him to have a soul, but we're not there yet, Marren. More years. I've learned a lot doing these podcasts, Greg.

Yeah, from way. And that's...

And to add to the other thing, Jon, the podcast is a new way of reaching out. I know nothing, I know nothing about marketing, I don't know nothing about that. I'm the best in the world at human behavior pattern recognition analysis. The rest of my life is a mess. Thank God Marren (Brian Marren) has got the idea for the podcast. And The Human Behavior Podcast was hilarious. We all laugh, and it's reaching people. I know you're on a lot of podcasts, but I hope in some small way this was different enough that we did, we moved that bubble, we moved the fight forward a little bit and took it to the enemy. And I certainly hope you'll keep in touch with us specifically, since you're coming to Colorado Springs. We're only a few miles away. You know, a couple of miles relative. Our drive through, meet a guy. He's going to ask you three questions. Cornelius 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) trains right here at the airport. You just grab onto the skid. You know what I'm saying? You're chilling and I'll pop smoke. But no, you've got, you've got to come on more because you're fun. I listen to, you're fun to talk to and you bring a lot to the fight. I don't know if we're doing any good, because the two listeners that we got, I had them go and take turns on the phone. "How people, and he thinks people listen to podcasts over there." "How does, how do I listen to it?" "Don't worry, I'm stymied by your own website. I have no idea how to log in." So I get angry and I just go sit in the corner.

Exactly. I sent him a Google Doc to where he can write a blog post, and it's actually going nowhere. It's just never a natural computer. So we call that lessons learned. It really isn't. So, we appreciate Jon. I appreciate you coming on, just talking about everything, man. Your experiences in your own, and different setbacks, and how this stuff helps, because that's what I mean, it's how it's where you learn. You learn in those times. And if you can sit there during those times, "Alright, this is, this is one of those times like this sucks right now. My life is in a difficult spot." So I'm just going to go on and get out of it. If you can get in that area where you know all those times, man, you can push through. And all these skills, especially what you learn in the military, it's not articulated to us very clearly just how much you actually learn. Because our big thing is, you know, there's a difference between education and training. And what you're talking about is a training plan, training changes behavior, right? You can write what you want about working out, but it isn't going to increase your power clean at all. So you've got to get in there and move it. But that training is where it's at. And since your whole military career is just one training event after another, followed by real ones, followed by more training, you pick up so much tacit knowledge in there that I don't think it's been good. We haven't gotten to clearly articulating to veterans getting out, especially, "Look, man, this is how much you know, this is how you utilize those lessons learned, skills transfer," exactly. And I use that just to be a better person in life. I don't mean all that stuff that you learn in boot camp or life lessons. That's it. Like, "Yeah, clean your room means clean your room means keep a good house in order." Yeah, that's it. Exactly. So, that stuff that could be carried forward. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing how it works for you and what you're doing, man. It's awesome.

Hey guys, I really, definitely my face hurts from laughing, so thank you for that because laughter is one of the best medicines out there. Absolutely. Yeah, I got my dose for the day. But yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure, a great time. I think you guys are the first podcast to get the story of my ex-brother-in-law out on the gossip.

And the interesting thing, you don't know this, but Marren (Brian Marren) woke him up and we've got him on our next call in right now. We hang up with you and it's called, "That Bastard Threatened Me!" I'm going to tell you... Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. Thanks everyone for listening. Don't forget, training changes behavior.