Latest / The Junto Podcast / E6: Common Threads: Discipline vs. Motivation

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E6: Common Threads: Discipline vs. Motivation · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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Hello America and welcome to the Junto podcast where we promote the practical
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application of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host Edgar Mills.
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Music.
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All right hello folks and welcome back to the Junto podcast.
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This is episode six and in episode six, I am going to talk about some common threads in daily life.
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Whatever the topic is and whatever things you're out there doing,
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there are some common threads that touch us all.
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Well, such as values or such as priorities or leadership or discipline, all those things.
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They are sprinkled in everything we do throughout life.
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So the first thing I want to talk about is my own difficulty with,
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what's the word I'm looking for?
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Discipline. My own difficulty with discipline.
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Now, fortunately, this week, I'm going to be getting an ankle operation,
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a long needed, long-awaited ankle operation to help me to be able to walk and
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run and do all the things that I need to do that I already do,
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just not at a standard that I need to be doing them at.
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My discipline has waned, partly for feeling sorry for myself and partly from
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being busy and things like that, but it's easy to come up with excuses for things.
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So my discipline has waned And I don't like that I don't like the way it makes me feel.
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Really, even right now, I'm not very happy with myself.
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And is it probably wrong for me to hinge all my bets or hedge all my bets on this ankle surgery?
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Either way, success or not, I need to start doing physical fitness again to
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the max capacity, to my max capacity.
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And that is my That is my confession to you all that I have not been doing fitness to my max capacity.
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At any rate, say a prayer and keep your fingers crossed and hopefully it comes
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out well and then I can get back on it.
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Now, that being said, no matter what the outcome, I'm going to get back on it.
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I have to. I have no option.
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My credibility depends on it.
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I think I'm extremely skilled in shooting guns. And that's what I train people to do.
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But also I have to be able to perform on a mountain, for instance.
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We also do a mountaineer course that I will confess the last one we did,
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I was suffering going up the mountain.
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But more importantly, coming down the mountain, I was suffering.
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And there's not really much to do or say about it. It's just the facts.
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I may have suffered a little less if I were more fit. but that's the way it is.
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So discipline doesn't, unlike motivation, right?
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People, motivation comes and goes, especially my motivation comes and goes.
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What does get me amped up and motivated is hanging around other folks who are
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doing fitness and doing the things that I want to be able to do.
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But even then, you know, as grownups, we all have busy lives and things like that.
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And so that's something I'm looking to try and change.
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I want to put myself around or surround myself with people who are doing the
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things, the bigger, better things than I'm doing.
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So yeah, my job isn't suffering. No, we've been quite busy. Private sessions are blowing up.
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Courses are doing well. Man, I appreciate all the folks that come out.
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And I'm giving you 100% of my marksmanship knowledge.
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And I do, when I run the drills that are movement drills, I put 100% in.
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Now, if I'm not able, if I'm absolutely physically not able,
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I just won't run the drill.
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I won't do it. But when I do run them, I run them at my max capacity for what
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my capacity is right now.
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So my confession of not being disciplined right now doesn't include,
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yes, I am giving you a hundred percent every time. And I, and I promise you that.
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So we're just going to move my a hundred percent metric up higher.
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So discipline and motivation are different. Everybody knows this,
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especially all these training gurus, these fitness gurus, they all know this.
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People pay those folks a lot of money to, to tell them that just show up, get up, go do the thing.
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How it doesn't matter really how you feel about it.
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And that's true. However, feelings cannot be ignored or discounted.
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Self-pity, for instance, is a strong emotion. Some people cave to it easily.
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Some can fight through it.
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Feelings of, you know, I'm overwhelmed with work. That's easy to cave into.
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Being overwhelmed with work is easy to cave into. You have to make time.
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Time management, that's a big deal.
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What comes first is you have to prioritize what's important to you.
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You have to be disciplined to give that priority the time that it deserves on
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your list of priorities.
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And that's it.
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In the business we're in, a lot of times, you know, guys having feelings about
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anything one way or the other is, other than anger, is considered silly or nonexistent.
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I make fun of my wife a lot, who...
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Feels like sometimes that I do not have a single feeling in my body.
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That's not true. When my feelings get hurt, I just don't share that with anybody.
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And that might be one of the downsides of being a dude, you know,
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being the, I don't know, type, I don't know what personality,
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type A personality or whatever, where you don't ever show any emotion at all.
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I'm not saying become an emotional mess either. I'm just saying be in touch with how you feel.
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And if you're feeling bad or not, like not doing the things you need to do,
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defeat that, you know, just figure out how to defeat it and use discipline and
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priorities to carry you through.
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Motivation will come and go, man. Yeah. Motivation will come and go. It's fleeting.
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And the older you get, I feel the less motivated you are to do a lot of things.
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I'm highly motivated to work on my business things, but you can only sit at a computer so much.
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I'm highly motivated to do the courses when they're, when we have the courses,
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but that's only eight hours on the range or four hours depending on the course.
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And then boom, that's it.
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Discipline. That's a common thread in our life. Some of us have it,
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some of us don't, but it's necessary in all the things you do.
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The gym is just one of them. It's just one of the most common, one of the most popular.
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Everyone needs to exercise more. That's, there's no, there's no great revelation there.
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Everyone needs to exercise more, but discipline and eating better is,
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is difficult, especially when you grew up eating junk.
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But nevermind your health and working out, discipline at work,
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you know, especially if you're working for someone else and you find it difficult
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to, to put out, you know, to give a hundred percent.
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Discipline is what makes you do that. And if you can overcome your feelings
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about your boss being an a-hole or just maybe not even noticing the level of effort you put in,
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if you can ignore those things, use your discipline to fight through and just
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do the best job that you can do.
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People notice people notice that's
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a thing that I discounted in my life most of
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my life is that thinking that people didn't
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notice your level of commitment or your level of
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effort and but for
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them to notice when you don't put the effort or commitment in
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they would also have to be noticing
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that you are putting the effort or commitment in so that
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it's a two-way street there that we get sucked into a hole of thinking it's
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a one-way street they they only see when i'm not putting out but they don't
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see what i am putting out well if you put out all the time then you're there's
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no worries there that don't mean they're going to appreciate it but.
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It doesn't mean they're not either. Discipline at work is very important because
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that's being true to yourself as well.
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Now, look, if you don't like who you're working for, do the things you need to do to move on.
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If you need to take a course or get a certification or something like that and
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you've just been putting it off, If you don't like what you're doing and it's
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really having an effect on your life,
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come up with an exit strategy and get out of there and work for some place or
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some person that will give you a little bit of fulfillment or a little bit of
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that outward appreciation if that's what you're looking for.
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Think about that. You don't have to be stuck. stuck we're not always trapped
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in a job because we've been there for a while and we can't find another job
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or something like that you there are so many ways to make yourself valuable,
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now there may seem like there's a ticking clock on that the older you get and
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that may be true especially up into your probably early in well mid 60s or so
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you know you're getting close to that retirement age you may have a whole lot
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of expertise but you know you're rapidly approaching a retirement age.
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So there's all sorts of factors there.
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But especially, man, if you're in your 20s or 30s and you're not happy with
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what you're doing, get happy.
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Go find another job.
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Take the plunge. And if you don't have a whole lot of responsibilities like
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children and things like that, take the plunge and try to start your own business.
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I know plenty of guys that just went and bought a ride more and some yard tools
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and started their own landscaping business.
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And, and of those guys, I know two or three of them that have multiple employees
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and have expanded and have, you know, a fleet of frigging trucks and equipment.
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So you don't have to be a rocket scientist either to start your own business.
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So if it's more important to you to work for yourself than it is someone else.
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Something as simple as cutting grass might be your way out.
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Now, having your own business is not easy by any stretch, but...
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You may prefer that struggle over working for someone else. I know I do. I certainly do.
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To compare and contrast working for myself versus.
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Never mind the military because that's an extreme example, but even doing some
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contracting after the fact when I'd go back to Fort Bragg or go overseas or
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something, my heart absolutely was not in it.
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And then any little ripple, any, anything that was, any obstacle that may have popped up.
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I just, I wasn't, I wasn't there for it.
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Now I gave a hundred percent. Don't get me wrong. But in my mind,
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I was like, okay, this is it. This is the last one. I'm out of here.
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I don't want to work for this person. It doesn't matter how much money you make.
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At some point, the money is just absolutely not the thing.
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I know that's easy to say, believe me, I'm a paycheck to paycheck guy still.
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So my paychecks just come in increments of every time I do sessions and courses
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and stuff like that, instead of on a weekly basis.
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So if you're able to get outside of a routine like that, even,
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I can tell you now, I retired in 2020 and my life has still not been on a standard routine.
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And that's not by design, really. I just, I,
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Sometime I can't, I can't seem to get on a routine. Now I do my courses on the
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same, you know, on the weekends and then the private sessions and things like
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that, those happen throughout the week. And I've set some parameters.
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We don't start shooting before 10 AM, for instance, just because I want to be a good neighbor.
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I have, I haven't given myself any like days off.
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Now there'll be days where I don't have any customers at all,
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but on the weekends or if If I have customers for 20 days in a row,
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then I just have customers for 20 days in a row.
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That doesn't bother me as much as it does my wife, but that's the way I look
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at it. I'm not on a routine.
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If the business comes, I do the business. If it doesn't, I don't.
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My sleep schedule is still not quite, and this ain't a discipline issue,
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I don't think. We go to bed pretty early.
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I just don't get that good of sleep, and then I end up sleeping late.
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And because I'm tossing and turning all night. So I think there's some other
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things beyond discipline that affect that, but I don't know. I don't know.
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Certainly my physical exertion throughout the day will affect that.
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Once I get back on a routine where I can actually move and run and do all the
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things I need to do, I'm hoping that'll help my sleep a lot.
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But, but what is, so what is it in your life? Do you have a discipline issue at all?
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Can you think, are there some days you're just, I'm not going to do, I can't do it.
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Think about that and think about motivation versus discipline.
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What motivates me these days, I can tell you this, is the future of my business.
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I'm always constantly thinking about expanding and getting the bigger land and
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all these things for the range. I'm always thinking about the next Southern
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Ornithological League course because those are so fun to do. I love doing them.
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And the next one, by the way, is in May. It's the three-day land navigation
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course that's coming up.
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More to follow on that. And then what else motivates me is my grandkids.
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So now I have four, and I have two step-grandkids that are eight and nine,
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and then two, one that's four years old and one that's one year old, two boys.
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And they're a mess and they look exactly like everyone else in the family did when they were kids.
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And their personality, watching their little personalities develop and just
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seeing those guys because they live in Rome, thank goodness,
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that motivates the hell out of me.
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But motivation doesn't get you in a gym every single day.
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It doesn't get you on the chores every single day.
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My wife wants me to cut down trees and, and we, we, we got a lot of chore and
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we got a lot of spring cleaning to do around the mills, the,
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the mills homestead here.
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And yeah, I'm not motivated to do it.
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I know it's coming and I know I got to do it and I'm going to do it,
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but man, the motivation, that's a tough one.
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Now, am I being a, am I being soft here? I don't know. You guys tell me discipline versus motivation.
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That's a common thread. I think that's a common thread in a lot a lot of aspects.
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So on a different topic, I just put a blog out, I think yesterday or the day
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before I went to the Georgia Libertarian Party convention this weekend, this past weekend.
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I am a registered libertarian and the people in the Georgia party,
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especially up here in the Northwest.
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Great, great, great humans. I love hanging out with them.
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We see things politically very similarly.
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And what a relief that is to hang around with people who see things in a similar light.
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That don't mean go into an echo chamber, folks. That just means it's nice to
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hang around with people that aren't looking to hem you up if you say the wrong thing.
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The Libertarians. So I had one of my, one of my clients hit me up and said,
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wow, she listened to one of my
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podcasts and I guess I was talking about politics, which I do frequently.
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And she says, yeah, I've always been a conservative, but I didn't really know
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the extent of what went on, you know, with libertarians or what their platform really was.
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Now, yeah, of course, everybody can go on Google and look it up,
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but I hope she follows up on that.
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So looking outside the echo chamber, that's where I'm at.
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This is a common thread throughout life in all the things you do,
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in your click at work or in your click at church.
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For those of you churchgoers, I don't go regularly, and there's no excuse for
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that other than most of my courses happen on Saturday and Sunday.
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Fortunately, my barber is my preacher, so I get a little update here and there.
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But we have been to a church before that was a very kind of swanky.
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It wasn't a mega church, but man, it was a little swanky and cliquish.
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And the older we get, my wife and I, the less we like these little cliques,
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the less we like to, maybe the more judgmental we're becoming.
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Man, that just now hit me. That sucks.
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Yeah, maybe we're a little overly judgmental on these little clicks.
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But you get in an echo chamber where you're passing around like information,
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right? Similar information.
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And it's never being challenged.
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And the information is never being questioned or challenged.
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So you just embed it like it's fact.
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And that just is not always the case. And that's a good thing about the Libertarian
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Party as far as politics goes.
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Now, this blog that I released yesterday or the day before kind of talked about
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even in the Libertarian Party, they're still infighting and they're still people
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with different agendas.
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I think at least the libertarians are a little more civil when it comes to that,
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the differences within the party.
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I think they're a little more civil with that. There are some sort of extremist
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libertarians out there on both sides, which is crazy,
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which is one of the reasons I like it so much is that the platform is pretty basic, right?
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Don't hurt people and don't steal their stuff.
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And, and, and largely it's, the platform is very constitutionally based originalist, I guess,
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or not purist so much, but what
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was in the constitution was in the constitution. What was not, was not.
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Now, before you guys get started on, well, they had slaves and this and that.
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Look, there's amendment, there's an amendment process, right?
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But it's not some activists come and yell up and scream up on the floor of Congress
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and you change a law. There is an amendment process.
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So I think the founders understood deeper than we think that the world changes.
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And I think they made concessions for that with the amendment process.
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So back to the echo chamber and the infighting. I think the infighting,
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the good thing about the Libertarian Party is it's not an echo chamber,
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because if someone disagrees with you on a certain topic, they'll happily say so.
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Because guess what? The Libertarians don't cancel each other.
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You don't get canceled because you say something that crosses the Libertarian
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Party, which is quite the contrary from a leftist perspective.
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If you say something outside of their dogma and you will be ripped,
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you'll be dragged over the coals.
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That being said, look, RFK Jr., he is a diehard liberal,
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but he stepped across party lines, and he has been ripped and slandered because of it.
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And the word rhino in politics, what does that mean?
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That means Republican in name only. When you got Republicans for financial reasons
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or for subversive ideology, who knows why, they call themselves Republicans
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because they can win in a district.
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But then, you know, they vote with the Democrats, you know, maybe half the time or more.
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So you don't have issues like that with libertarians.
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And I love that Simona and Joe Manchin and Manchin and those guys,
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I think, I think Simona might be a libertarian or she might be a Democrat and
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Joe Manchin was a Democrat.
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But I love it that there is that libertarian-esque, the tiebreaker out there, you know, the spoilers.
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There needs to be that in Congress. There needs to be libertarian spoilers in
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Congress to keep the red and blue in check from going nuts, from going insane.
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Because if it's all red, we're going to be full-blown communists in no time.
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If it's all blue, I don't know what's going to happen if we're all blue.
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There's going to be human rights violations, and I guess crony capitalism is
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going to run the world, which it kind of already does anyway.
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So the libertarians are the check that America needs. The two-party system is broken.
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Lobbyists, cronyism, lack of term limits. I've talked about that before.
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The system, the two-party system is broken.
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We need a third party, a strong third party, somebody that can step up and afford
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to run with the establishment.
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And it's tough. I mean, the Libertarian Party has been around since 1972. too.
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I've had Gary Johnson, who was a credible. I thought Joe Jorgensen was credible.
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And then Ron Paul, who I think ran twice. I was wrong about that.
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I said that he ran once, but I think he ran twice overall.
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And again, what a missed opportunity America had there.
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I believe With some strong
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libertarian Policy America would
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see that That that's That's the
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way to go Anyway It's the only Only platform That really makes common sense
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Common sense And all these things you say you want From whatever side you're
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on Unless you're just a big government Person I can't even understand why anyone would be But
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Unless you're just a big government person,
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the Libertarian Party is, there's a space for you.
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I encourage you to go read the blog that I posted on the website.
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It's the latest one up, and it talks about political infighting and bureaucracy
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from a Libertarian with a little L perspective.
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I consider myself a small L Libertarian.
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And I talk a little bit about some of the hot-button issues,
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like transgenderism and stuff.
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But also, let's talk about marriage for a sec, just from a libertarian perspective.
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In my opinion, it's my opinion, and many libertarians share the same thing.
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Why would I need a license to get married?
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Why do I need any state sanction at all? Well, one of the answers is going to
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be so you can file taxes correctly.
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Well, if I didn't have to file taxes, if there was a flat tax or something like
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that, and there was no loopholes, and the government didn't try to pick winners
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and losers, and everybody just paid a flat tax or no income tax whatsoever,
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then why would the government have any stake in it at all?
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If you ask me, I don't care if your two men get married or any transgender,
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or whatever mixture of that, whatever your religious institution is,
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even if it's one where you and your friends go out in the middle of the woods
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around a bonfire and get naked and cut off chicken heads and shit,
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if that's where you want to get married and your shaman ordains and blesses
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off on that marriage or just you hold hands with your partner and look up to
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the heavens and say, hey, we're married, then you're married.
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All this state interference, that's big government putting their fingers in your life.
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So if you like big government, but you have an issue with same-sex marriage
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or something like that, I mean, consider that. Why do you like big government?
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The government's not doing anything to protect anything for you.
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It's only adding obstacles.
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Nobody walmart doesn't have to recognize that i'm
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married washington dc doesn't have
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to recognize that i'm married the tag
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office doesn't need to recognize that i'm married who
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cares it does not matter it genuinely does not matter so why does the government
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make me licensed for it well what if you go to another state well same same
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what if i go to another country same same when you go visit When you go visit
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a foreign land, you don't take your marriage certificate with you, do you?
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You know, you have a spouse that shares your name or you share their name,
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you got rings on your fingers, you know, bam, there you go. It's none of their business either.
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So that's a little brief. I may have taken some liberties there,
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but that's a little brief view of libertarianism in like marriage, for instance.
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You and your spiritual authority. For me, that's God and Christianity, right?
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But not the state of Georgia, even though I had to get a license for it.
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That was a little bit of a rant on that. I apologize. We're talking about common
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threads in life. Well, politics touches all of us.
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Yeah, politics touches everyone. So as much as I hate it, I still feel compelled
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to to understand it a little bit or to try and understand it,
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but not from just what's spoon-fed,
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but really dive in and figure out what means what.
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And that's how I landed on the Libertarian Party to begin with.
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Critical thinking. Critical thinking will get you there. Echo chambers will
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not. Get out of the echo chambers.
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On occasion, so I've taken to listening to more podcasts lately,
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And what I have discovered is that I'm kind of in an echo chamber on the podcast.
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Obviously, you want to listen to what you like, right?
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But on the social medias, I follow some bizarre pages that I completely and
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totally disagree with to get perspective, to find out where they're at, what they're thinking,
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and get some perspective on why they're thinking and what they do.
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And much like extremes on either end, they're usually profoundly flawed in their
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logic, or they're using information that is just outright propaganda and incorrect.
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But when you're in an echo chamber, that makes sense to you to do that.
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So you got to get out of that echo chamber.
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Yep, common threads.
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Discipline versus motivation.
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And then getting outside of the norm, step outside of your box so you can think
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a little more independently and a little more freely with a little more input.
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I don't expect that anyone who goes and sits and listens to a,
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let's say, there are communists. There is a communist party in America.
30:26
I don't suspect if you went to a communist meetup at a local coffee shop that
30:35
you would walk out brainwashed and a communist.
30:39
They may make some good points, but you're just gathering data.
30:45
You're just gathering information so that you can make informed decisions.
30:49
And the same if you go to a young Republicans meeting.
30:55
You're not going to walk out a Nazi, right? You're going to walk out having
31:00
some insight into how they think.
31:03
And you may have a little more understanding of the things that are important to them.
31:09
And then that may change discourse a little bit. It may not change your opinion,
31:14
but it may change the way you interact with these humans in the future.
31:18
So things might interact a little more civilly or more civilized.
31:25
So think about that. Get out of your echo chamber. Look around.
31:29
Talk to some other people.
31:31
Read some other stuff. Not to change your opinion, to inform your opinion. Yeah, that's it.
31:38
What else, man? What else? i wanted
31:41
to put out a podcast because i want to talk to you guys i think
31:44
coming up soon well hopefully next
31:48
week i'm going to get my buddy cory on
31:51
cory he's one of
31:54
the guys who founded the junto club is
32:00
a well he's a father of multiple
32:03
children with a wide range of ages so
32:07
he by default is a busy busy busy man and then he works at a pretty prominent
32:14
company in town in atlanta and he's does big projects and sales and things like
32:20
that so getting that guy here is tough but when he gets here we're going to
32:24
talk a little bit about his passions.
32:27
Which these days pretty much fitness and hiking right he loves to hike and things
32:32
like that but he may not want to talk about it, but we're going to,
32:35
he was a Navy SEAL as well.
32:37
So we're going to talk a little bit about his military career and then talk
32:42
a little bit about, about his, his current life and hobbies and stuff like that.
32:49
He just ran a mid-state mile, I think a couple of months ago or last month,
32:53
which is a big deal that a friend of ours, John Cox and Becca M.F.
32:59
Jones puts on up in Tennessee, Franklin, Tennessee, I think it is.
33:05
So if you're an ultra runner type, you can go up there and check those guys out. Yeah.
33:11
State mile. It's a big deal. So professionally, what's coming up?
33:17
Professionally. Again, I'm
33:20
getting ready to go down with surgery and I'll be down for a few weeks.
33:23
But what's coming up straight away is March, I want to say 22nd is a two-gun
33:29
match, the Liberty or Death two-gun match.
33:33
That's here at the range.
33:35
That's always a good time. Anytime we have a match out here
33:38
it's good it's very competitive but in a
33:42
very friendly way and instead of
33:44
world series think bad news bears you know it's like that it's awesome and there's
33:50
always a couple really good shooters and and then most of the folks are just
33:55
out here really to have a good time a few of the folks are out here trying to
33:59
trying to really hone in and get into some competitive shooting,
34:03
which highly, highly encourage.
34:08
So this is a good place to break in, break into competitive shooting.
34:12
Very low stress, very low stress.
34:15
And we only do four stages because our limited size here, yeah,
34:21
we don't want to be out here all night.
34:22
And so we only do four stages and they're usually skill heavy and we do a lot of moving and shooting.
34:28
There's plenty of space to move around and things like that.
34:31
I mean, don't get me wrong.
34:32
It's not a tiny range, but this is a great place to break into it.
34:36
And then I want to say five April, speaking of competition, is the OSS Challenge,
34:43
OSS, the Green Beret Edition.
34:45
That is also kind of two-gun competition, but it's in a similar aspect of like
34:52
the tactical games or the proving grounds at the sawmill, things like that,
34:57
where there's some physical fitness involved.
35:00
Now, the OSS challenge here in April is going to be a two-man team event.
35:07
There'll be a little moving, a little running and gunning, maybe climbing some
35:11
ropes, things like that.
35:14
It's always a good time. It's very similar to the OSS Mogadishu Mile.
35:19
We are being sponsored by Rome Orthopedic this time, which they always do. God bless them.
35:26
And then Crate Tactical is sponsoring this as well.
35:29
Mike Pearson over at Crate Tactical is a—I say he's the hardest-working man in the business.
35:35
He's everywhere. he takes his trailer and
35:38
he will and he will go set up shop any and
35:42
everywhere there's a shooting tactical type event he
35:46
sent us some knives to give his prizes and his
35:49
business and they and they do uh steel targets primarily create tactical steel
35:53
targets high quality excellent they got like the double texas stars and and
35:59
all sorts of things so check those guys out and we're doing all this kind of
36:05
to spread the word of the Special Forces Foundation,
36:08
who is a non-profit out of Colorado Springs,
36:12
but they help Special Forces families.
36:17
There's various ways that they do that. One notable way is Gold Star Families.
36:22
You know, they have scholarships and grants and things like that for kids wanting
36:28
to go to school and things like that.
36:30
So they are awesome. Give them a look. Special Forces Foundation to see what
36:35
kind of stuff that they really do.
36:37
Let's see what comes up after that. And then we have the Special Mission Skirmish
36:42
is coming up at the end of April.
36:44
We already have a few folks signed up for that, but we need more.
36:47
That's going to be a team-on-team, force-on-force.
36:54
Kind of like a match slash mission, right?
36:58
Each four-man team is going to be given a mission, the same exact mission,
37:02
and then you are going to execute mission on the same exact timeline.
37:08
And there's a planning phase, and then there's execution, right?
37:13
And we're going to, you know, we'll give you some pointers during planning,
37:17
but we're going to let the tactics, we're going to let the tactics uh dictate
37:22
the day we'll see what happens now rules will be briefed on game day obviously
37:27
this isn't airsoft or paintball but we have to make rules that sort of accommodate.
37:36
If you get shot or if you get dead that we have a way to get you back in the
37:41
game i'm not going to have you pay 200 something bucks to come out and get shot
37:45
as soon as you step off and then watch everybody else do the thing.
37:50
So it's going to be a good time. That's going to be full kit.
37:54
And when I say full kit, we have plate carriers and bump helmets,
37:58
but you can bring your own, bring your own kit by all means,
38:02
bring your own AR-15 because we will provide the bolts,
38:06
the UTM bolts, as long
38:09
as it's a standard AR platform so that
38:12
we can shoot UTMs or UTM ammunition
38:16
ultimate training munitions is what that's called
38:19
and we provide the ammo and the magazines and
38:22
the bolts for the ars and then we have a
38:25
few pistols as well so man i can't tell you how much a good time it's going
38:32
to be it's going to be fun and then we're going to do some barbecue after do
38:36
aar and talk about all the no shit there i was moments i think i think you guys
38:43
are going to have a great time.
38:44
I encourage you to, I encourage you to get your own four-man team together,
38:48
but if you can't, you know, we'll pair you up or we'll put you,
38:52
we'll divide the teams up as needed. So that's the end of April.
38:57
And then in May, May, we have a three-day land navigation course coming up.
39:04
And that's the doozy. That's the big one, guys.
39:07
A crew hit me up to try to put that together for them, and then they offered
39:13
me graciously to open it up to other people.
39:16
So there is one day here in Rome that's going to be all classroom,
39:21
and that's all academic map reading things, and we'll be working off one over
39:28
24,000 maps that I provide.
39:32
Southern Ornithological League provides all the maps, compasses,
39:37
protractors, map case, Yes.
39:41
Speeds, all the things you need to be successful.
39:45
Now, you guys will bring a pack because you're going to be out overnight.
39:49
It's probably going to be warm, but you'll need water for sure.
39:53
And you'll need some lickies and chewies and some protein with you as you're out there moving.
39:58
The lanes are 20 mile lanes.
40:02
This course was designed with the Special Forces Star Course in mind.
40:10
So there's a significant amount of movement from point to point,
40:14
and you will not get your point, your next point until you find your first point.
40:21
So the tragedy is you don't get to plot your route.
40:26
You have to just go from point to point, or you don't get to plot your whole
40:32
course. So you can't do the closest one first and then go in a big circle or whatever.
40:38
The trick here to all this is that it's the Talladega National Forest,
40:43
which is some brutal, brutal terrain.
40:47
I mean, when I say Talladega National Forest, I mean near Piedmont, Alabama.
40:51
So it's north of I-20, just west of Georgia, kind of in the southeastern area of Piedmont, Alabama.
41:02
These 20-mile lanes, you have 24 hours to find all these. So what that means
41:09
by default is once we kick off at 10 a.m.
41:12
On Saturday morning, you have until 10 a.m. Sunday morning to find all the points.
41:19
The vast majority of that, yeah, is dark.
41:22
So it's challenging. If you are a brand new.
41:28
So I thought I thought on the last course we did, I thought being a new navigator
41:34
would be fine as long as you paid attention in class. So,
41:38
out that's not 100% the case. So you don't need to be a well-seasoned navigator,
41:45
but you need to pay attention in class.
41:49
And you have the option, this time you'll have the option to pair up in two-man
41:54
teams or take it by yourself. And more to follow on that.
41:59
I think we might still run in two-man teams on that just for safety.
42:03
So think about that. That's a challenge.
42:07
Land navigation, and now full
42:10
disclosure, I wasn't exactly a frontiersman when I was in the military.
42:16
Land navigation came as a chore for me, and I fought through it.
42:21
I think I can navigate now better than I could when I was actually in the Army,
42:27
just because I put more time and thought and all that into it.
42:32
Every man should know how to navigate with a compass and a map,
42:36
or even with just a map or even with just a compass and we'll talk about all
42:42
those techniques and stuff like that in the class it it's a great it's a great
42:47
time and and you'll be challenged you're going to be physically challenged for
42:52
one just moving 20 miles overnight is is a bear,
42:57
moving 20 miles overnight in a very specific direction to a very specific point
43:01
is a is a whole nother thing.
43:04
So it's going to be a great time.
43:07
If you fancy yourself an outdoorsman or if you're a former, you know,
43:11
military guy and you're like, oh man, I haven't done this in X number of years.
43:15
Get out there and give it a go.
43:18
Else would it be good for? I think firemen, I think any public servant,
43:22
I think first responder types, I think, I think land navigation would be awesome.
43:28
Your batteries will likely give out of your GPS or you'll be in a place where
43:33
you just don't have signal and things like that.
43:36
The land nav is an excellent, excellent tool for you to learn how to read, read the earth.
43:43
And over in the Talladega National Forest, and even Rome here,
43:48
no better place to do that because the terrain is so robust.
43:54
It's so well-defined. So you can learn how to terrain associate very, very well.
44:00
And that is very important. Now, unlike the middle of the desert where everything's
44:04
flat, out here in the southeast in the Appalachian area,
44:11
yeah, man, you can terrain associate, and the map is really just there to,
44:17
you know, give you some feel-good confirmation.
44:20
When you come to a certain point, and you're like, yep, we're exactly right here, that feels good.
44:27
And on the other end of that, when you don't know where you're at at all, it feels very bad.
44:32
And we'll talk about ways to figure that out. So May, I want to say May 2,
44:38
3, and 4, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is when that course is going to go off.
44:43
So look that up on twoteamguys.com. That's the number two, teamguys.com,
44:48
and you can get all the information on that.
44:52
Land Navigation, it's one of my favorite courses.
44:54
So with these common threads, we discussed discipline, we discussed motivation,
45:00
And then we start talking a little bit about getting out of your bubble,
45:04
your echo chamber, so you can get different perspectives.
45:08
Do those things. Actively do those things, folks.
45:12
Actively talk to people you may or may not agree with.
45:17
Social media is ate up with videos of, you know,
45:21
people getting in stupid little fights and skirmishes and people arguing and
45:27
activists yelling in people's faces because they they're standing there with
45:31
a sign or wearing a frigging red hat or something.
45:34
We got to get away from that, folks. We got to get away from that.
45:38
Living in your echo chamber is what causes that.
45:41
We got to get away from it. we got to be able to have reasonable conversations
45:46
with each other about things we may or may not disagree with.
45:51
So be disciplined, not motivated. Don't worry about motivation.
45:54
It comes and goes. Be disciplined.
45:57
Have your priorities set. I can't set them for you, but I can tell you for me,
46:01
it's my family and my business.
46:06
Have priorities and then be disciplined in the way you achieve those priorities
46:10
or the way you feed those priorities.
46:13
And then get out of your echo chamber and actively seek out at least data, right?
46:20
At least opinions from other people.
46:24
And don't assume you know what they're going to say or don't assume by the way
46:28
they look that you know exactly how they feel about a given thing.
46:32
And just have common human courtesy and say, well, I disagree.
46:37
It was great talking to you and move on.
46:39
Let's do those things, folks. Let's do those things with each other.
46:43
And then beyond that, hey, I'd love to have your feedback.
46:48
Try and experiment for a week and then give me some feedback on how it went.
46:51
If you caught a black eye because of it, maybe it didn't go so well.
46:55
But look, please follow. Please listen.
46:58
Please listen to the podcast and share them. Please, if you can rate them on
47:03
whatever system you're on, please give them a rating.
47:06
If you think I ramble too much, please let me know. And as always,
47:11
please reach out. I love to get feedback from folks.
47:14
I love to hear about topics that people want to talk about because I'm happy
47:17
to do research and talk about those things.
47:20
And I'm always looking for interesting guests who can come on and tell maybe
47:27
not necessarily a gripping, compelling story about heroism, but just,
47:32
Hey, this is me. This is my life. This is how I do it.
47:35
And it may resonate with some of you. So if you got somebody you think would
47:39
be a great podcast guest, send them my way.
47:43
Even if they disagree with everything I say.
47:46
Other than that folks please check out the websites ospreyshootingsolutions.com,
47:52
twoteamguys.com and the junetopodcast.com for all your shooting and training
47:59
needs other than that folks be good treat each other well let's.
48:05
Music.