L.O.G. 160 Meet Your Friends Cortisol and Dopamine

Good morning, Greg. We are covering a topic that we are sort of, I guess, in the middle of, in the belly of the beast, experiencing, so to speak. So first of all, I guess thank you if you're listening right now and for tuning in. Please share our stuff with any of your friends, any of the episodes that you find interesting.

We had to take a little break because what we’ve been experiencing over the past six weeks is an extremely high op-tempo, which we’re used to. But when you couple the high op-tempo with lengthy trips, it starts to build—not just because there's a lot of time traveling, which means it’s time not getting stuff done, but it’s also just physiological stress on your body, constantly changing time zones, and then having to maintain a lot of output on stuff. So, high energy for days at a time, followed by travel to the next place, do the same thing.

But we wanted to talk about today kind of about adaptability and resilience, but in a manner in which how we address it, because there's a lot of information out there that, although is well-intentioned, is, I would say, inaccurate to poorly articulated, to just plain wrong and stupid. Like, it falls in there somewhere, right? And so, I kind of wanted to discuss that today, and I wanted to throw to you to kind of first start off with what we mean when we talk about adaptability and resilience, and where we're going with this, because this is coming in from not just experiencing it when you're at a high op-tempo or something, but how do we transfer that into a training component, and what does that mean on the outcome of it?

There's a lot of information out there. It's typically, it's typically either described in a clinical sense for the purposes of therapy. That's not what we're really getting into. We talk about it just in terms of performance and then training for the real event, kind of thing. So I guess it's a good way to start framing the discussion, and it's important to everyone listening: we're kind of in the middle of that, right? For ourselves, our company, for us operating. So it's a perfect time for us to talk about it. So I'll throw to you to kind of lay the groundwork and give some definitions from our perspective, I guess.

Yeah, and so let me go clinical for just a few minutes, but remember it's still going to be exciting stuff. So what prompted that is Brian and I, after being on the road for this six-week period, made a couple of minor league errors this past Sunday. But also we've been nipping at each other like little dogs because what happens is that the fact that we have to understand that resilience is our ability to stabilize our equilibrium. And even though every one of us is born with resilience, we're not born with adaptability. So adaptability is a learned trait.

And the good thing that we've learned is that these signals of fatigue, these stress fractures that Brian and I have seen since Sunday, without slowing down, have manifested themselves to the point, like even me stuttering here, that we have to have some recovery time. Because there's not always just bad stress; there's good stress too. But what's happened is we've had to draw a line on the wall and say, "Okay, we're taking Friday and Saturday off, and we're going to go do something completely different before we leave on Sunday for the next trip." Because then we go another three weeks of, you know, I don't want to use the term "balls to the wall" – you know, full out.

I guess I just did. You just did.

But what prompted the discussion, Brian, was a conversation from a young copper that was talking about, "Yeah, you know, we got to sit down and talk about serotonin with the cops." Stop for a minute. Okay, so what got me into this entire industry was reading a book on learned helplessness by Marty Seligman so many years ago. And knowing that Marty was on the right track with his research with animals, and God blessed Marty Seligman, I love him, I think he's a genius, but he was wrong. He had a couple of things in there that I knew from my personal experiences were wrong.

So, let's just categorize a couple of things quickly. So we're talking about neurotransmitters and catecholamines, which are hormones. So we're talking about naturally occurring substances in the body. But just like a high-performance runner, we can build up some of those so they're available when we feel down. And he was talking about serotonin. Serotonin is a hormone that's on board to stabilize moods, so it's not the right one.

Now, he's mixing it up with dopamine. Dopamine and serotonin are both hormones. They both come from tryptophan and tyrosine, which are amino acids that are in our system that are natural, which means they're on board from the time we were born. But they have a completely different function. Serotonin helps me get full sleep and helps me regulate the anxiety when I'm stressed out. Dopamine is my pleasure center, and guess what? It doesn't impact my mood. Dopamine is on board because it drives a response.

So the reason in all of our training, if you've ever tuned in and you hear us talk about dopamine, cortisol—yeah, remember, cortisol is your built-in body's alarm system. It's the single most important stress hormone. So if you know how to feel them, you can't feel serotonin, so don't get that out of your training, right? You see what I'm saying? But you can feel dopamine, Brian.

Oh, yeah.

You can feel cortisol. So the reason that we focus on those two out of, like we could talk about adrenaline and norepinephrine and everything, the reason we choose those two is that, well, let's see how important cortisol is: it builds our immune response. So to go back to your beginning argument about stress inoculation, if you want to inoculate against stress, prepare your body against stress, you have to bring cortisol in.

Yeah. What does that mean? You need to accept and expose yourself to stress. Yes, that's what we do in the training.

So, I just wanted to make that clear because anybody that starts off at serotonin is a person that read a number of books that are out there in the market about help, has no idea that serotonin isn't going to help you get where you need to be.

And you said, and when we talk about some of these things being wrong, this is how I would describe what we mean by that. Tell me if you agree: a lot of great researchers or doctors or studies have been done where they get great information, right? So they create all this data and really explore a subject. But then oftentimes you find out that kind of their conclusions, although they seem intuitive and seem like they make sense, or the conclusion about it, is wrong.

Another example like that: a lot of the stuff we talked about Grossman about great, found some great data originally, stuff about training and, you know, when he goes back to the Civil War fighter who is just jamming wads into his rifle and never actually fired it or didn't fire it properly, never actually killed anyone. And, you know, he says, "Oh, well, this has to do with the human aversion to killing other humans." And we're like, "No, that's a darn shitty training." They didn't have good training back then. They actually thought they were firing the weapon, that's the thing. Like, that wasn't doing it subconsciously or unconsciously going, "I don't want to kill another human being." They literally thought they were doing it.

At the same time, you'll see someone fire a weapon, or they don't—they think they're firing and they're really not. Like, they're going through a motion that now they weren't able to—they didn't get enough training to operate at whatever level of stress that they were at, a level of arousal, to become overwhelmed and just aren't putting—so it was a function of training, because then, you know, as it got better, those a lot of those problems went away.

Spot on. Add to that that over-reliance on external material solutions. For example, of course, fighter pilots losing touch with where the ground is and executing a maneuver and burning into the ground. They were convinced where the horizon was. So therefore, the brain was operating on that information. So those musket balls flying, you're in a kinetic, frenetic situation, you're convinced. And look, if you believe auditory exclusion, then you believe the fact that that guy actually thought he fired his weapon. One has to go with the other.

So, you brought up a great thing: so the human survival trait, like resilience, that's on board to everybody physiologically, psychologically, it's there. So we can survive little failures, little losses, mistakes because the group with which we call it a tribe, the group with which we are embedded in, Brian, has to learn from watching other members of the group. That's why there's the SME (Subject Matter Expert) in the group for hunting, and the kids watch them hunt and then see them dance around the fire, and they learn, "Okay." And so hormones build up to release dopamine, the pleasure center, when they see them going out for the hunt because we know the hunt needs food, that means I'm going to get laid later, it means all these wonderful things. So if we can't be learning, if we don't learn, if we can't be learning—that's a product of Detroit school system right there—by being exposed to the group, then we'll fail or succeed on our own, and that's not good for the group. Do you understand what I'm saying? The outlier that succeeds on its own, "Eureka!" doesn't help the team survive. Well, so therefore, it's suppressed. It's just...

Well, and you just get the actions of cortisol and dopamine at a physiological, psychological, and sociological level, right? So physiologically, I have to, I'm going to get a reaction when I get told I did something wrong within the group. So if we have the group, Greg, we're at the tribe and you tell me, "Hey, you messed this up, and it screwed us up, man!" I get that cortisol response. I know everyone listening right now knows what that feels like: the little, "Oh, man, I did something wrong," in my stomach. So I'm running late physiologically.

And then now psychologically that affects me, "Oh my God, I let down the group. I was late for this meeting, everyone had to stop and wait for me." And everyone in that group sees that. One, they're upset, I'm exciting that they're getting physiological reaction, but they're also learning, right? And those mirror neurons, like you said, they're looking at me going, "I've felt that before." So now they go, "Hey, Brian, we're going to show you how to do this right so that you don't affect us negatively the next time." Now when I get that, that's when the dopamine comes in and I go, "Okay, I did this bad, but my group helped me out, showed me what was right. Good, good." And now I know how. And now, simply because of that, I now want to do it the right way every single time, the way they told me is the way I'm going to do it, because now I get that dopamine again and again and again and again. And the better I do it, the more that I mean, again. So, from those perspectives, is why if you've been to one of our courses, why we take it from those very big buckets: psychological, physiological, sociological, and then we stick to the cortisol dopamine, because it's like the same thing. It's like I need to have that—those two, if we're going to rank the importance of these, especially in what we're talking about, those would be at the top. They'd be equally at the top.

They'd be Hydra first. Exactly. So, having one member of our team or our tribe under stress or feeling anxious is unsustainable because it's going to hurt the entire tribe over time. Yes. So we're either going to kill it in its crib, there's going to be a thing called divorce, they're going to drive that person out, or guess what? They're going to educate him to the level that he needs to be at. So high-functioning teams understand resilience and adaptability are two sides of the same coin.

Now, resilience and adaptability are things that we learn to be better at. So it's just exactly like running or lifting or eating well or anything. If we understand them and we accept—look, if we say, "I'm going to cut stress out of my diet," you're stupid. That can't happen. I don't mean stupid like, I mean clinical stupid, you're a darn idiot, because I read those things online all the time, and they say, "All you got to do is, you know, hang in there, baby."

Well, well, there's the—what you're talking about is the avoidance, and that doesn't help anyone or anything. Like, to say this is how it's counter-intuitive, you know? Well, that's the thing, it's counter-intuitive to how we're wired. So why would you do that? And now we're, I want to real quick because we're already talking about it, is give kind of a quick definition of adaptability in the sense that we're talking about. And I would always, you know, you see I kind of described it as, "Look, everyone has what we call or refer to as like file folders, like experiences." I look at something, "Oh, yeah, I've seen that before," or "Maybe I haven't seen that," or "I was close." Like, we have our own experiences, some more than others, doesn't matter how old you are, what experience you've got some.

And so the idea is, rather than having to learn, let's say I'm going to a new environment, I'm going to a new country, I've never been there before. I can study for days, weeks, months, years all about their history and culture and traditions and what I'm going to see there. And yes, that will inform me. But what if I don't have that time or just, let's say, I just get picked up and plucked into the middle of nowhere? Well, what I have to do in order to be adaptable in that new, novel circumstance, I have to draw on my own experiences and use those as a comparison to what I see. "Okay, this is new, I've never seen buildings built like this before, but I—those are likely stairs because I've seen stairs before. Maybe they aren't up to the same code that I'm at, but I know what that is. This is something that I can experience." So it's when we mean adaptability, it's how do I draw on my own experiences and then conceptualize that in a new, novel environment? How do I draw on that to go, "Ah, this likely means that?" Now I can sense-make, problem solve, because I can't train myself or I can't train you, Greg, for everything you're ever going to see in that new place. It's not possible.

Because, because it's unnecessary. We can't work a thousand years into the future. If God, Buddha, Vishnu, Allah and in our bodies and brains, we're set up for the now. We have to have a future compatibility. In other words, if situations change, if there's global warming, if there's a war, if we can't adapt to that, then our species will never grow and it will never flourish. It's not just survival, it's flourishing. It's making houses, it's building cities and pushing your kids out to do other things. And that's where historically, look, we're doing ourselves a disservice with all these gosh-darn apps, and I'll tell you why. Families that had to live where they had to read to Grandpa or Grandma because Grandpa or Grandma couldn't see anymore. And then Mom would always walk by and say, "See why I told you to eat those carrots? You don't want to lose your vision and end up like Grandpa or Grandma." Now, same thing, okay? Having to chew up the food or having to feed baby food to Grandma and Grandpa when they get very old, and what did Dad do? He turned it into a learning opportunity, didn't he? "Hey, take care of your teeth. That's why we tell you to brush." And Uncle Buck, "Hey, did you really brush, or did you just run the brush under some water? Yeah, because I got a buddy down at the crime lab." Yeah.

But Brian, you wonder where do those live sales and folktales and everything come from? They come from our need to try to explain to the rest of the group how powerful in-group training is. So if we don't—so, so you asked at the beginning, I don't want to go far afield. You asked at the beginning to define adaptability. I'd say scar tissue. Scar tissue is the perfect form of adaptability. The body overcomes whatever initial stress was put on it by building new skin and fighting the infection, and guess what? That scar tissue is actually stronger than the skin around it going forward. So, if you don't have some bad stress that you manage, you will—look, resilience lies dormant. Resilience doesn't come and say, "Today will be resilient." You have to activate it. You get what I'm trying to say? And those of us that learn to activate it more than others, this is not an argument about mindfulness. You know, I'm scratching my head because I still think that a couple of our friends think that the mindfulness alone is the key. It's not. Mindfulness is a huge thing, a huge step towards the awakening and the awareness, the quickening as it will, Highlander. So you understand yourself. Because the kid that talked to us, the young cop, thought that, "Hey, listen, understanding serotonin is going to help you right away." No, it's not. Understanding what you feel like when you're under dopamine's influence or what you feel like when cortisol—when you're sitting there shivering.

I remember a famous police video that isn't shown very much anymore where a copper stops the guy, and the guy's on the ramp to the freeway, everything's wrong with the car, and the cop goes up to the guy, and the guy's just shaking in his seat, and he goes, "Listen, listen, listen, I gotta go to the bathroom. I gotta take a poop right now. Listen, you can arrest me, tow the car, whatever else, but just let me take a poop." That was cortisol, Brian.

Yeah. Stolen car, I've got warrants, I don't want to go back to jail. We've seen it all the time. You know, the fight or flight is—anytime I read about somebody just talking about fight or flight, I say, "Okay, how pedantic. You read one thing, you didn't read a body of work. You didn't read everything that the guy's written or the peer reviews. What you did is you said, 'Okay, fight or flight, I get it.' No, you don't. You don't start it at all." You have to understand, if you understand or tune with your body, your body is constantly sampling the environment and sending you signals that you can use. So then, so, so that these are then leads to how do I use that, right?

And then how do I use that to my advantage? Because that's what, you know, don't come up with something new, use the framework that your body's going to do anyway, right? And the idea is, how do I actually use that in terms of training and what people call like, because you know, this gets into stress inoculation, and there's a lot of folks who've written about that and studied stuff. Yeah, and that was kind of part of the reason, I know when I first met you years ago when I was at the Infantry Immersive Trainer, and the idea was how do you get a Marine's first firefight to be no worse than his last training evolution? And there was a lot of back and forth about how that would work, and the idea is is never about, yes, do you need to—I always, I've given the flashbang example. Okay, if I'm on some sort of team that uses flashbangs, I need to be exposed to that before the first time, because otherwise it's going to—

I'm going to eat it. Yeah, exactly. Feel like being the popcorn.

Go damage that point. But, and you know, people want to make these chaotic training scenarios where it's just mass chaos and I'm going to force you to make decisions. It's like, "Well, I understand, I see what you're doing, I understand your intent behind it, but what a lot of that really is, is just sensory adaptation." Right? I'm all I'm doing is really just, I'm getting you to diminish your sensory response, like the crawling under the machine gun fire. Okay, yes, that's that's not stress inoculation, that's sensory adaptation. Now it is in a sense that is certain stress inoculation that I'm going to get cortisol from that and get a little adrenaline, "Oh my God, this is scary." 50 times later I'm like asleep under it, you know? And I get that, but one, that doesn't help me make better decisions. Now it does in a sense that I won't become overwhelmed during that situation. So, so, so I won't become overwhelmed by events, right? Because I have this exposure, but it doesn't help with critical thinking. It doesn't help with making a better decision. It doesn't help with me literally just doing a better job under that situation because, "Oh, I've been inoculated against stress." It's like, "Well, kind of." Right? Do you get what I'm saying? And because some of that stuff comes from a lot about therapy, treatment, right? Like cognitive behavioral therapies and different stuff, especially for like post-traumatic stress, and that's great for that. But the issue is with, within that context, you already know what the problem is, right? Meaning like, "Okay, here's the issue. You are becoming completely overwhelmed, you're having all these stress reactions to sitting in a restaurant or something." Right? That's not good. How do we address that? How do we fix that? But that's very different than going, "How do I become more adaptable?" Right? Because if it's within a defined given context for the purpose of therapy, it's easier because it's simpler. It's not when it's just, "How do we train for some event that I'm maybe see but it might won't be quite like we do in training but it'll be kind of close and it won't happen exactly like it's just something new and novel. How do I do that?" So that's kind of what we focus on here, right? And so that's what we do in training when we talk human factors. We spend time on that. Why? So let's talk about that very briefly.

So, Brian, you and I met a number of times when you were a subject matter expert at the Infantry Immersive Trainer because I kept rotating in on different studies that I was a part of. And you remember on the Small Unit Decision Making Study, that's where stress inoculation came up, and I'm a staunch advocate that it doesn't work that way. Because, I want to clarify, the reason I'm saying that is because the response they tried to trigger was getting all your stress all at once, and God, Buddha, Vishnu, Allah doesn't want you to get all your stress at once because we crack at a certain point as humans, or there wouldn't be a thing called traumatic stress. So even after the stressful event, we still show those fissures, and sometimes it takes up to two years, and some people never come back, and some people commit suicide.

So what am I trying to say about stress inoculation? If you were going to give somebody a little bit of a disease to let their natural cortisol levels fight it, that makes sense. But if you're giving it all at once and showing the most traumatic thing that you'd ever see in your life, and you're saying that the more I repeat that the better you're going to be, no. All I'm going to do is fidget every time I hear an explosion and I hear a gunfire and everything else. What they were doing is they were trying to ramp it up, and you remember the demonstration I'm talking about where the RPG attack and the small arms attacking them. Okay, so what happens, Brian, is there's threshold violence that your brain starts shutting down to. Like, yes, I tell you, I can't watch these new films that are coming out. There's three at the top of my mind, I'm not going to give them the credit in naming them, that are so horribly violent. The other day you and I got up at three in the morning to make the drive to the airport. Yeah, there was the latest in a movie about Haddonfield, the killer, Jason Voorhees, right? Without—he's the Halloween.

Yeah, I'm thinking about. Yeah.

So it was a Halloween, like the latest version, and everybody, and it was old, even Jason had gray hair, right? They showed so many ways of dying and horror and everything, Brian, after a while, you know, you start to assimilate to those because it's small, subtle changes over time. Your body sees that as reality, it doesn't know the difference. And then you build up this resistance, a tolerance to it, which means that Hollywood goes, doubles their efforts to do the effect. That's not what we're talking about. And just taking a break and saying and sitting with your legs crossed and facing those, that's not enough. You got to go back to G. Gordon Liddy. You got to do the—he was afraid of rats, so he hunted down a rat, he killed it, he cooked it and he ate it. He was afraid of lightning, so he latched himself to a tree in a lightning storm. He was on the right track.

Yeah, he was a little extreme. Exposures are what build the scar, right? But that create the link between adaptability and resilience.

So, but that gets into the training aspect of how do you do that then? Because a lot of times, like I've seen before where people will say, "Hey, you know, if you ever get in this situation, it's going to be the most difficult situation in your life and it's going to affect you for the rest of your career." And you're like, "Well, yeah, it is, you know why? Because you're darn training me to think that way." Like, the idea is the difference.

You even put the idea in my head.

Exactly. That now you've just set me up for failure when you did that. But if I come in like, "Look, this is something that we have to train for. It's unlikely you're going to see it, but at the same time, you know, you're in a profession or in a role where it could happen far more than if you were, you know, working at a bakery. So here's how we—here's, here's the tools we use to handle this situation. Here's some of the key concepts that work no matter what, no matter what situation you're in. But you're going to have to rely on that more here, and here's how you would rely on them. And, you know, after the fact, man, you're going to feel a lot of wild stuff, and you're going to be tired, and then hungry, and then angry, and then what's going on?" "Well, guess what? That's totally normal, and here's how you do it." Like, if you approach it as there's no difference between me getting up on a Sunday morning, you know, walking out, grabbing the paper and reading it and having a cup of coffee, is I almost have to look at it that way. What are the things I need to do? I gotta make sure I put my slippers on. I gotta make sure I'm not naked because now the neighbors can see me when I'm out there. Like, it just—it's just if we—if we keep making the distinction too much between fantasy and reality and training and reality, what it is, then then we lose it. We have to break that down because your brain doesn't need to know the difference. So the idea would be not that you become some cold, emotionless, "I can handle this." It's, "No, it's like, it's whatever this chaotic event didn't affect me as much because—"

Exactly. Because of that training. Exactly because of that rehearsal. So let me, let me throw two quick things in here. One, Friday and Saturday, the reason we're making such a big deal about it is, you're doing it wrong, listener, if you're listening to us right now. I'll show you how to do it right. What you do is you say, "I'm going to go to bed early tonight because I haven't been sleeping well." Yet you lay in bed and think about that project that you took the time off of, where you have your phone next to you and you answer. That's not the same. That's where I am a huge advocate of mindfulness. Yeah, because you have to reduce some stress. You're never going to reduce all the stress in your life, but you have to reduce some stress.

Well, break it down, even I would say, just arousal before you get right.

Right. Or you're going to be tuned on even though you're in a dark room trying to sleep. It's two different standards. Yes. Second thing is fantasy and reality. And I still want to write a good paper with you and I and John D. Tommaso because a lot of these places are doing it wrong, Brian, and nobody's listening. So, folks, I want you to hold by the barrel and by the slide, by the upper part of the frame, not the lower receiver group. I want you to hold a 1911 .45 style weapon. All .45 is built on that original frame. So whether it's a Springfield or any of the weapons, what is that, the Kimber that makes those? I want you to hold it. So here, here's the muzzle. I'm holding the muzzle face down. And so up here would be the trigger, here would be the grip, here would be the magazine. If you look at the bottom of the magazine well on those original weapon systems, you'll see a little channel, a little L-shaped channel that's made, a rectangle that's made out of metal. And what that's called is the lanyard loop. And what goes on that? Look back in your history book if you have an encyclopedia or Funk & Wagnalls. Look at it. If not, I guess go to Google Images and look up what a lanyard is.

Now, Brian, I've got a bunch of Devil Dogs sitting around in a circle. And I take a knee in the group, and I hold my .45 just like that. And I go, "That's called the lanyard loop. And a lanyard was a thing that connected that to your uniform." Some of you remember on guard duty that you had those. And I get some nods. "Yeah." And I say, "The reason that darn thing is there is because one day you're going to get blown the heck up, and all your stuff's going to yard sale, and you're still in the fight, and you're going to have to walk down that lanyard to find your gun and defend yourself." Now, that message right there, if you get where I'm going, and I'm not belaboring the point, but I would act that out while I'm on a knee and everything else. So pay attention to when you're, okay, that alone, Brian, is a valuable lesson. It creates a file folder, and those Marines go, "Holy crap, I didn't know that." I gave him a piece of history, showed him a lanyard, said, "This might happen to you." Or I can have you walk through a door, blow you the heck up, pour pig's blood on you, kick you in the balls a couple of times and say, "Now, grab for your weapon." What I'm trying to tell you is, your brain releases the same electrochemical neurotransmitters in training for putting on a tourniquet. Don't have to go to the morgue and watch somebody bleed out or do it with live tissue samples. Now, if you do that, that's great, as long as that's not where you start. If you want to build up from your rehearsal to the emergency room and then live tissue sample, that's fine. Your brain will assimilate that and get stronger, smarter, and harder to kill. But going to that threshold level, it's no good, Brian. It's just not the most advantageous way because your brain doesn't learn that way, just like your brain doesn't learn anything about resilience in a completely stress-free environment. It's the wrong message.

Well, and I, I think a lot of people have gotten better at that. You know, it's, you know, not just dropping everyone into some chaotic situation. I, I think that's, that's certainly gotten a lot better. The idea is, but with any of that type of training, is that it's only going to be, you're basically training, it's stimulus and response. Like, so you train for something, like you said, putting the tourniquet on, and now I continue to increase the complexity of the scenario or increase the level of arousal on it so that you can do it even under very, very chaotic conditions. Got it. But that doesn't help me think my way out of the situation. And it doesn't help—this is the idea is it goes back to the decision-making under stress. Okay, well, if I haven't trained for the decision that I need to make in that situation, it's unlikely I'm going to think of it when that arousal hits a certain point, right? When, when I start to become overwhelmed or near overwhelmed. So that is the other, not not problem, but it's the limiting factor in any of that stuff. Now, I, both of us will tell anyone, the higher level of training and education you have, the more likely you are to make a better decision just in general. Like, I give the example of, like, you know, if I you, some people are if I become, if I shoot 10,000 rounds a month out of a weapon system, I'm really, really, really good at it, right? So much that I can move so quickly and think faster when I need to use it that I'm less likely to use it than the person who shoots 10,000 rounds in their entire life. You get what I'm saying?

Absolutely.

Because I, I now am so proficient at that, that it becomes an extension of who I am. I don't even have to have a single thought about it. That in fact will allow me where if I just got this thing and you showed me how to use it, and I'm in a chaotic situation, I'm more likely to, to use violence. I'm more likely to increase the level of violence. So I, I don't mean like that.

Let's go like that. Let's go with that for just a second and talk cognitive load. What you just gave is a perfect example of a cognitive load, right? But the problem is that critical thinking doesn't enter into that because there is no such thing as muscle memory. But what you did is you built your muscles up to a level that they were much better and much quicker and much more efficient than the person next to you. But it still won't help you solve calculus, and it still won't help you talk that person down that's in a hostage situation. Now you may be able to outshoot them if it comes to that. Well, you get what I'm trying to say? It's a very small bandwidth that it'll work in. So most training has to be laser-focused on the skill at hand, but we try to use a fundamental attribution error and say, "Because I'm that highly trained with my weapon, I'm safer on the street." That's not necessarily so. So Einstein explained that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Einstein, Einstein had five of the same exact outfits: a shirt, coat, hat, shoes, right? To figure, to to relieve his cognitive load and create recovery time for his brain. So he never had to think what to wear. He just put on clothes and went to work, and that's why he was thinking higher thoughts. So in your own life, if you promote mental recovery time by reducing some of your cognitive load, like by shooting 30,000 rounds a month, let's say, you get what I'm trying to say? What you've done is you've alleviated your brain from tap, rack, bang, the procedures and stuff. So your brain is much more at ease when it comes to those skills. So in that situation, you're likely going to be less anxiety prone or stress driven, but that doesn't mean that you'll be a better husband or father. It doesn't mean that you'll be able to drive better. Right? That's what people think. People think, "I buy a Wilson Combat and I buy the best holster on the market. I practice with it all the time. I'm somehow safer."

And, and again, so because we're getting into, you know, how do I think my way out, we're talking about decisions, right? It might not make me, might not help me make a better decision where in it. And I like how you pointed out, it's kind of like a fundamental attribution error. "Okay, I, I have this level, I must do this." I mean, that's the classic like, "Hey, we got someone from the military to comment on this situation." It's like, "So you were, you were not, you were in a non-leadership role at a tactical level unit. Yes, let's hear your thoughts about Russia and Ukraine." Like, okay, but that's, that's kind of, I think, what you're alluding to and what you're getting at. And so how do we fix that? What does that mean? And, and the idea of the training is like, you can, you can fire all the rounds you want, you can go through all that stuff, and it's cool, and it's fun, and it's exciting. It does help. But it's not, you're not going to be able to—it's not going to give you the outcome you likely think it will because you're not increasing your level of critical thinking, you're increasing your management of physiological arousal. Right? I mean, and then that's it.

You're spot on, spot on. Let's go back to Seligman then, learned helplessness. Read, folks, read, study. Okay, Brian, is it true that Tier One people die in combat? Yes. Okay. So what hecking chance do I have? Yeah, I might as well stay at home and not even practice and not even because the highest trained Green Berets and Black Ops and SEAL people have died in combat, and the guy speaking to me this morning from the Ranger Battalion had people in his own unit that died during the event that he's speaking about and he lived. So, so what chance, if this one guy out of all those highly trained guys is here telling me how he did it, I can't do that. I can't flip that tire. I can't do those rope things. You know what I'm saying? I can't fast rope out of a moving UH-1D onto a roof of a Somali hotel and take—you get where I'm going? Yeah. So, so that's what Seligman moves onto, and I completely believe that, is that there's an amount of arousal that gets to the point of diminishing returns quicker than the arousal that comes in inverted U hypothesis. And what I mean is that's the one that says, "Don't get off the couch. Don't get in a boat. Don't even go to the gym." You see what I'm trying to say? Now what does that reinforce? That resilience is still in that individual, okay? Yet they're never going to become adaptable. So their contribution to the tribe is nil. Do you see what I'm saying? So, so for you to help us move forward as a species, you got to get off the couch. You got to get out there and take a role. You have to.

And to step in and I, I think most of the people listening to this are those people that do that, but the idea would be, how would I put that into the context of training, right? Meaning, how do I reinforce a decision-making process, an adaptability process, really, because that, that's what it is, is how do I take my argument?

But that's what I'm saying.

How do I take that and conceptualize it into, into something that I can do every day? And I think it often becomes people overthink it, where where you and I are the ones that's what I'm talking about, a five-minute discussion before you go outside. I mean, what, what, what do I talk to the, to the insurgent about yesterday to take her to her—she started not just gymnastics but a new program, but, but her like this, like little cheer camp thing they have here, because she loves gymnastics and jumping around and dancing. So she gets to go learn how to do this stuff. So it's like, "Okay, do we have this? Did you fill up with your, you know, did you get your water bottle ready? Okay. Um, you haven't eaten since lunch, are you, are you hungry?" "Well, no." "Well, why don't we eat something now so that you have energy during this and so you're not starving? Okay, that makes sense. Did we have all this? All right. Remember when we get there." So this was a two-minute conversation that she was able to get everything she needed to do, get to the car on time, get dressed on time. I drove her there, dropped her off, and she had a successful outcome. So the idea was of all the chaotic things of getting her from school to here in time and making sure she's changed and making sure she's at the link-up point was alleviated by a quick two-minute conversation. And I use it as a child example because this is a new, novel environment for her. She's only nine, she doesn't have the fluff. So, so now put yourself an adult in whatever situation. Well, you have all this other stuff that you can draw from. So sometimes those quick, "What are we doing now? How are we focusing on this? And, and what and and what can I do about it?" And I, I, we worked that in. We said, "All right, we know in the next few weeks we're going to be slammed and it's going to get to a point that we're going to be at each other's throats or getting short with people. Just it's just that's how humans are. There's nothing we can do." I work a little better, you work out, we eat healthy, we do this stuff, but it doesn't, it doesn't matter that I can change that I change time zones 13 times in a month. My body is like, "Screw you, dude!" Like, you're eventually going to be laying in here. Yesterday was the perfect example. Yesterday was a perfect example because we're making a mess out of stuff that didn't need to be made a mess out of. And, and even the callous worth of doom, I was ready for blood, you know, from, from our partners. And, and it was, "Okay, where's all this coming from?" And, and so we identified that through the use of cortisol and dopamine in our training, and we've now come up with the solution for that. Those are the things that are valuable.

The story you just gave about the little insurgent, I always smile because those are great. Because to this day, Shelly and I still do on-duty roll call. Yep. This morning, Shelly got bit by a wasp three darn times. Okay, so she had to take the Benadryl. We, we, you know, did the wounds. And, and Shelly shot the wasp with her Caspian and then she hunted down the whole family. Okay. Yeah. And, and then through the birds to say, "You knew what the water was up to." Is that that thing, look, it's raining, it's foggy. I know you, you know, you had an odd start to your day. Do you got your head straight? Are you ready to work? Yeah. Lanyard. Folks, "Thin Blue Online." Go to Thin Blue Online, all in one word, and look up the free Kyle Dinkler video that we did. Didn't call it 360. Why am I saying that? Kyle Dinkler never ever said, "Take it up." No. Nobody got a 7-Eleven. What person does that? Hey, you froze.

Yeah, Greg, you got really bad internet connection. How, how far back? Uh, yeah, hang on. It's still on pretty bad delay.

Okay, let me take my screen down and do it. See, I, I thought it was on your side, Brian, because it honestly, you froze a couple times.

No difference. No, hang on one second. Can you, you good now? Can you hear?

You sound loud and clear, buddy.

Okay, yeah, you're good now. So, so I would say go from, yeah, we say go, you, you went through and said, "Hey, go to Thin Blue Online and check out the Dinkler video." Gotta just restart. So just from right now, you just said that and just restart from there, kind of thing.

So there's no copper, Brian, that woke up this morning saying, "Hey, today is the day that I might die. I'm going to go out there on the street and get gunned down and not come home." There's no 7-Eleven clerk or librarian that said that. There's no person walking her kids to school saying, "My kid may get hit by a car at lunch on the playground, and I'll never see him again." And you know what part of resilience, adaptability, and that loop is, we have to consider that resilience is on board, it's part of our brains. So if we also understand to become adaptable and take a knee and go, "Hey, your lunch is in your basket, make sure you're paying attention, look both ways when you cross the street," that's what we're talking about. That's training. That's the long-term training and education strategy that works. And you're going to make your kids, you're going to embolden and make better decisions, and you're going to save them from getting squashed. But at the same time, and I don't mean, and I mean, but you also have to understand, one day you're going to walk out and immediately split, and a comet's coming to the ground, and you're going to take the left instead of a right, and you're going to get killed. Why do we have to do that too? Because if not, then I go back to the example of the most highly trained SWAT team in the world, guy gets killed. What chance do I have? You have to balance that in your brain a little bit every day, Brian, to get smarter and stronger and understand your world. Then you'll be safer. Only that.

Yeah, and like, like you're just saying, like working those little five-minute discussions every day. I mean, that's, I, I, you know, I've talked about it before on here. I have like one thing that I'll focus on for the house with, with me and the girls who work on or do, whether it's, you know, turning on enough lights or picking up things off the floor, or Harper with her darn shoes. Excuse me. You put shoes everywhere. I find a pair of shoes. She's going to watch this, by the way. "How did these even get out here?" So, so it's like, you know, those little things. "Hey, when you take something off, like clothes, just put it, take it off in an area where you can put it away right away." "Oh, okay, I see what you're saying." "Hey, stand here so you can throw those dirty ones right in the hamper." "Oh, I get it." They don't have to go all over the room. But, but, but meaning those, those little things you can reinforce every single day. And I always bring it back to family stuff because it, it's you, this isn't work. It's not only in this situation, "Hey, when you're on the objective." No. "When you're at 7-Eleven, when you're getting your mail from the mailbox." Like, it's, it's everything. And it's that's, that's the actually being the opposite of overwhelming yourself and being hyper vigilant. Look, I know when I walk down to get to the mailbox, it's unlikely I'm going to get into a gunfight. You get what I'm saying? It's, it's highly unlikely. But I'm still using the same skill sets I would as if I was walking into a likely scenario where that was going to happen. And, and that's, that's the whole thing. It allows you to come in and out of that for us, even talking about the performance stuff. Like, we talked about this six weeks ago, "Hey, this is going to get crazy, right? What can we do right now when it's not crazy to mitigate that?" "Okay, in the moment, what can we do?" "You know what? Let's not go slam a bunch of beers and have a big meal tonight because, yep, as much as what did we do? We went to work right now. That sounds great right now. But, but why don't we wait until we're done with this because that's going to screw us for tomorrow," kind of thing. And even though it's not something crazy, it's those little, little things. "Hey, you know what? Let's, let's, let's not leave at that time. We're good. If we leave a half hour later, will that 30 minutes, we will like make us a little bit more, uh, having to move a little faster in the morning?" "Yeah, but right now we need that 30 minutes of downtime." Like, I mean, it's just as long as we use that downtime.

Yes, that's what I mean about recovery, and you're spot on. So if I sit there in the hotel room staring at the clock every minute going, "Okay, 29 minutes ago, Brian," that's not recovery. You know, I, I mean our, our dear boss here in Gunnison, at the City Market, the distant friend of Brian, you know, he's always talking about recovery and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I got to run every day. It's a thing I do. If I don't do it, I feel bad." And, you know, the idea is that I created that situation. My body didn't. My brain created the situation. So training changes behavior. Why? Because over time, if I do, like you said, something about going down to the mailbox, I truly have a risk of going down to the mailbox. Yeah. You might even get a bobcat or something and being involved by a mountain lion. Yeah, think about that. Okay. I made a lot of enemies my entire career. My hecking address is on the gosh-darn mailbox. Right? So people would—so those are things. So I never take that lightly. So when I go down, "Okay, I take precautions when I go down there," right? That's not saying that I'm anxious or scared or any of these other things along with that. That's being smart. You know, I mean, taking extra socks when you go on a hike, that's a good plan. Why? Because when your feet get sweaty and you're moving around and it sucks, you can get a blister. That's what we're talking about. The body is naturally resilient, but you have to train the level of adaptability over—

And, and that goes back to the cortisol dopamine, right? And that's how I we we go how we do it with everything that we do. But it's like people are always asking us like, "Well, how do I do this and how do I work this in, you know, to using what you guys are talking about?" Well, obviously, one, hire us. We'll train you how to do it. But, but if you're just listening to the podcast, we can get you up to speed really quick. Not so much on here, but in person when you pay us. But, but, uh, but the idea is that, you know, thinking of cortisol and dopamine, how am I getting the, how am I rewarding the situation what to, to go right? And how am I getting the quarters of the, "Oh, that's going to hurt, don't do that," without overwhelming either one, right? Because I don't want to give the overwhelming, "This is what you do every time. Look, I did it right, right?" Or, "Hey, this is so overwhelmingly bad." It's just, I, I, I have to work that in, and I want everything, every sort of training scenario, there has to be a way to win it. I have to know how. Now maybe if I did it wrong, I have to go through something again. Great, there's remediation for that stuff. But there has to be a way out, there never can be a, "And this is where you all die," right? Because it's just no, that's, that's, that doesn't in no way does that help.

Let me, let me throw this at you because you're right on the precipice of it anyway. Folks, let's talk about cramming. Cramming works. It works because your short-term memory, which is called your working memory, will remember the stuff just as you go into the test and you take the test and you'll do good. The problem with cramming is the minute you walk out of that test, your brain housing group will say, "I no longer need the information." Dump it immediately. Training fights that. So I'll give you an example: Brian and I just had to go through our renewal for our security clearances. And one of the things is, the folks—I won't say at the U.S. State Department or whatever—they did a great job of putting together a training package where they show you a couple of vignettes, then they prompt you to the correct answer, and then you get the correct answer and you pass the test. That's absolutely amazing, and both of us got our certificate. But I couldn't tell you today any of you learned that, because what happened is they gauged your learning for that moment in time to pass that test, to be a check in the box. It's, it's fine. You're doing a good thing.

You're not still teaching. Certainly a strategy.

Yeah, exactly. So, so what we've been trying to do, and again, I'll throw it to Thin Blue Online, not that it's a sales pitch for them, Brian, but the reason that we're talking to them and going to MILO next week and doing all the stuff that we're doing behind the scenes is exactly because training has to be a lifelong thing where we're influencing how we make better decisions over time, and we don't have to relearn. Why do you think we're talking about institutional memory? So we don't have to relearn every time there's a new person in the tribe. We don't have to go, "Okay, how do we start training the next young insurgent?" And I'm hoping you'll have one soon. But the idea is that, think about that, Brian: training changes behavior. There's no better thing in the world than to influence the rest of your life by making better decisions, by seeking out good training. And, and, you know what? Good training may be expensive, may be harder to find, but, but you're doing yourself a great service.

And, and like your, your phone is training you how to behave. And that's what we mean every day about what we define as training. Like, everything you're doing is training. So you're already doing it anyway. So what's the result you want? Right? I mean, and start with one thing at a time, one thing a day, a little thing, Brian, and you can make the difference. I love the example you used about the mailbox. So later today, when I'm talking to somebody else, I'm going to use that example. "Hey, something as simple as going to check the mail could be a, you know, a death sentence." But it doesn't have to be. Just increase, and don't get to the situation awareness. Folks, stop the over-reliance on that. Look, I had to use those terms 40 years ago to make a point, 30 years ago to make people safe, for 20 years to go to get them ready for combat. That's not the end-all, be-all. That's where you should be all the time. That's homeostasis. And that's exactly when, when that kid was talking about serotonin. Yeah. Okay, now we're talking about your, your homeostasis drug. That's the, "Everything's okay," alarm, Brian. Yeah. "Everything's okay, everything's okay." We're not talking about that at all. We're talking about building your adaptability to the new and novel situations by training now for an event that either it's going to likely occur or is repeating in your life.

The way I, I kind of look at it is, you know, I ask myself, "How do I, how do I apply what I already know to this new, novel experience so that I don't get overwhelmed?" Right? So, so what, what I don't have to repeat behaviors.

But repeating behaviors, it's inefficient and waste calories. So I'll agree with you, but it doesn't have to go to the level of being a survival decision.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm not talking about even a survival situation. Okay, this is something new. Do I have to now get on the Google machine and then get on Amazon and order a bunch of books and sit there researching something for hours, or can I go, "How do I apply what I already knew to this new thing and see if it works?" Because not only does that, that allows me to, I become more confident in building on my own competence, my own experiences, and it also allows me to maybe mitigate having to do a bunch of work and or it allows me to focus on, "You know what? For this situation, Greg, I gotta go learn how to speak Chinese," because, because I don't know how to, you know, I mean, there, I might have to identify there is a new task or new thing I have to learn. "Oh crap, now I know what I need to focus on." You get what I'm saying?

And that's exactly, and the reason I default to survival decisions, Brian, is everything comes down to it. So your survival and your tribe over time is going to result in you learning Mandarin Chinese, then you'll do whatever you want and everything.

And I see what you're saying is that everything, it's a, that's an important reminder. I'm not, we're not talking about life or death situations, we're just saying all of this is already tied to your survival anyway. You can trace it back. Now maybe something might take a little while to get there because there's X amount of steps, or some in these chaotic situations are directly right to survival, right? But the idea is it all comes down to that, whether you're, whether you're being Maslow and your hierarchy of needs that you love so much, Greg, or it's, it's still all tied back to your limbic system. So I get what you mean by you say that, and that's why I try to simplify it as much. Like it's like, it's like the morning routine I have where it's like brushing my teeth, "Hey, someone may try to kill you today." "Hey, I didn't say it's going to happen. I didn't say I'm going to force the situation." It's just a little way for my brain to wake up and flip the light switch on, right? But it's the same.

I've met you, and that's a true statement. Somebody is likely going to try to kill you. That's true. Listen, if we're talking about breeding, why do we watch movies or read books or or try to dress the way a person that's getting more breeding than I am? Because it's adaptations. So, so when I'm trying to talk about adaptability and resilience, it's a survival function. Right? So, yeah, so go down to the root cause. And tomorrow we're talking about, listen, why am I walking in the mall today with my new Sketchers, even though I'm 70 years old, Brian? Because I know that I might have 17 more days or two more years to add on to my life to be with my grandkids. That's what I'm talking about. You can improve your quality of life by training yourself to become more adaptable and promoting the resilience you already have. You already are resilient. You're the one that's not seeking it out and using it.

Agreed. Agreed. It's, and, and that's why I stick with what, what, what do I have available to me right now? As we know, no matter who we're working with, whatever high-speed unit or it's a private company—

We have a couple of low-speed units we work with too.

Yeah, we do, we do. Um, but they likely already have the subject matter expertise and all the answers to 99% of the problems that they'll ever face. And, and so it's, it's just using what you have available. And so I, I think that's a, yeah, you, you.

Final thought from you. Simpletons that are still riding up my coattails and using my stuff, oh Jesus, from 20 or 30 years ago, okay? They either update your game or you got to understand that you're teaching people exactly the wrong direction to go. Was that, was that a challenge for Left of Bang?

To the secret...

Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're going to be on coffee. Unbelievable. You know what I'm talking about. You know I'm calling out right now. Listen, life is to be lived, not to be afraid of. Don't sell stuff through fear. Yeah.

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