Jon Mayo: 0:08
Well, howdy, howdy everyone, and welcome to another thought expedition on the Be Relentless podcast. So, real quick, before we jump in, in case you’ve been under a rock or just happened to miss it, the ULA, my business, is now live and you can gain access to CCU. Stamina performance evolved today, not yesterday, but now. So that’s pretty exciting since, for the last two years and starting, the grit theory we’ve been talking about someday Well, that day was last week, so please go head on over to your universecom and check things out. Now on to the meat and the good stuff of today’s conversation. We explore a couple of topics and fairly rapid but fluid succinction, and it was. It was a very fun conversation, which was nice. It started with overcoming adversities that had occurred in the 12 hours leading up to the conversation and then went into when is there an appropriate time for emotion, the concept of naive stoicism and multiple other ideas around the cultivation of strength, being an asset instead of a liability, and learning to love more deeply as we seek to experience life more fully. The whole conversation stemmed from the quote most people tiptoe through life hoping they make it safely to death by Earl Nightingale. Well, let’s jump on in. Oh and, by the way, you may have noticed that I just told you that CCU stamina performance evolved. You know, the supplement I’ve been talking about for the last two years is available now. So, as you’re listening to this, head on over to the ULA universecom and check out all the cool stuff Kirk and I’ve been building. Look forward to seeing you there. Now let’s get on with the show.

Brandon Seifert: 2:02
Cool man, why are you doing?

Jon Mayo: 2:07
Well, yeah, good morning. It’s a. We’re recording nice and early today, right and right. It’s been a joyous 12 hours of fun filled adversity. This morning I’m feeling my bruised nose. I essentially blew my knee out yesterday, which was super neat, so I did physical therapy already on that this morning. I don’t think any tendons tore, but it’s definitely tender, as can be. And then a couple of roles I applied for that seemed pretty promising and I had connections with the company. I got the rejection emails for overnight so I was like okay, well, I will stay the course on building the ULA and meeting cool people. So I’m excited to jump into a fun conversation and create some value today.

Brandon Seifert: 2:59
So so with the knee was it, was it during?

Jon Mayo: 3:04
your jiu-jitsu or it was. I had a triangle from backtake on gris and I was, I don’t know the. Everything felt very secure, my hip angle, but my my leg that was over his neck, was not locked into my other leg and I was using my shin to apply downward pressure into his neck with my forearm and I think it just created too much lateral torque on the knee joint and it just made like this, like crunching popping sound. That was pretty loud, especially for gris, because his knee, like his ear, was in my knee socket. You really heard it, but like the whole gym heard it and which is troubling, very troubling. Now, what I think happened is our Chad the owner. He recently has torn both of his knees, unfortunately competing, and over the course of a month or two and we were evaluating it I don’t think there’s any full tears, like 99%. Sure that’s not the case. There may be a minor tear but there’s definitely just at a minimum. Like you know, where those bones come together, they definitely twist and like popped out of the grooves they’re in and pop back in, which made for an incredibly unsatisfying experience. So I jumped on the bike this morning, got some time in on it. I’ll probably do that multiple times today, but it was quite interesting.

Brandon Seifert: 4:36
So Wow, is it the housing? Do you think you’re going to be able to start doing something like what Noble was talking about, where it’s like that you can only breathe through your nose to work on technique kind of stuff, but you can still?

Jon Mayo: 4:47
Oh, I do that all the time. Are you saying how? You mean how long time back to that?

Brandon Seifert: 4:54
Right, like I’m assuming that that’s going to be your next transition is going into that first.

Jon Mayo: 4:58
Yeah, more of a flow. You know it’s really hard to tell because so really, and like knees are among the joints, that it’s just difficult to understand what the true damage is. So you know, this morning I expected to be very tender. I was not disappointed. Tomorrow morning, based on it not being that bad, I’m expecting it to be 30% better. So my hope is that my hope, with active recovery every single day in intentional physical therapy, is that by Monday I’m flowing again and then just continue building from there. So but the big tell for me that the indicator I’m really interested in at this point is tomorrow morning waking up, because waking up or like being stagnant for a long time is by the stationery by far when you wrote, like it just locks up. So I’m very curious to see how things feel tomorrow morning. But yeah, hopefully just a few days, maybe a week, to be able to be easing back into it with avoiding movements that do that lateral motion underneath.

Brandon Seifert: 6:07
So Well, everything that you just described sounds horrible in the actual happened, so I hope you have a very quick recovery on that.

Jon Mayo: 6:17
But yeah, thanks, dude. Yeah, it comes with the territory and sometimes, you like, there’s risk in everything, right, and I felt really safe in what I was doing. It wasn’t like he was attacking my legs and I learned a lesson. I learned that I will never do that type of tension again and that angle, and thankfully I think it’s going to be a fairly cheap lesson. But it’s one of those things where it’s like reflecting this morning right on. Okay, this role looks good, but again and I’ve been working with the ULA is growing really quickly and the fact that we have the mission to help people lead better lives right, very simply put, and that everything we do works towards that end. And you know, combine that with some of the conversations I’m having behind the scenes is we’re working on rolling out the ULA affiliate, the waymaker affiliate program, the ULA allies program, which the first is for individuals and the second is for organization leaders, whether it’s a nonprofit business podcast, you name it. The conversations I’m having behind the scenes are very interesting and exciting there. So, like part of me is hopeful that over the next month or two we will realize the fruits of our labor in such a way from the last three and a half years that I’m able to save all time to this. And in the meantime I’m continuing to network for both and building value everywhere I can and I’m trusting that if I’m supposed to work with another team and serve another team, that it will present itself and work out. So that’s just kind of how life is Now. It is possible I just die, but I think that’s unlikely. So it’s you know. Look at the full context. I was laughing this morning just because it’s funny. It’s like, okay, what a great opportunity to have awareness that I’m getting kicked in the stomach right now and that this is just a test and it’s just part of the process and growing. And it’s one of the moments of, you know, because being injured kind of takes you out of your element. Being achy in a couple of different places from, like other minor injuries adds to that, being tired adds to that, and then waking up to emails from the middle of the night. So you know it’s the automated system is like, okay, well, maybe this is kind of, maybe this isn’t that, maybe it’s confirmation. So I know I’m here to create value, not be disappointed and hopeless. So it’s just been a fun morning to reflect and press forward.

Brandon Seifert: 9:01
Well, I think that kind of goes into today’s discussion actually just a little bit, and so this is actually based off of the quote that you gave me a couple couple weeks ago, and it says most people tiptoe through life hoping they make it safely to death by Earl Nightingale, and I think a lot of what you’ve actually just described, even through like your injury and through through this work all can be kind of summarized into are you tiptoeing through life? And, for clarification, I don’t agree fully with that quote. I don’t believe that people are tiptoeing through life hoping to make it safely to death. I don’t think most people even are really thinking about the death side. They’re just kind of tiptoeing just to be safe. But, like I said, I don’t think people are tiptoeing and also thinking about the mortality until it’s too late or it’s forced upon them. But the premise of hey, you’re taking these signs and you’re just going with it and you’re just continuing life, hey, you just screw it up your knee, you know all these different things. You’re smiling, telling me that you just messed up your knee and you’re like well, is what it is. I signed up for this but it’s not going to slow me down, because this is what I enjoy, and so I think that that’s actually a really good correlation and I wanted to know your actual thoughts because you initially posed that quote to me on what you think about that.

Jon Mayo: 10:45
Yeah, I didn’t look at it from the perspective and I was laughing when you said I was smiling because it’s 5.20 in the morning right now. So it’s like a lot’s happened by 5.20, which is the gift. I have a lunch appointment. I’ve kind of been lamenting it and then I was like that’s stupid. There’s so much opportunity in doing this. So I was able to fix that attitude and then I was looking at the clock while you were jumping on and I was like, oh my goodness, I have over five hours of value that I get to create, that I get to build, that I get to do things. Before that happens, that’s almost a work day and that’s before my lunch appointment. So it’s just, it’s beautiful, kirk, and just a slight detour as I work towards your question Kirk and I do not have the same work schedule. I do the mornings, he does the evenings, so like he thrives at night once his family goes to bed and stuff like that. So he works till like midnight. So we get the same hours. He’s a night owl on the morning, whatever. But it’s just, it’s beautiful because when you’re willing to commit yourself to the time in which everyone else is asleep, the world opens up and there’s some loose correlation to that and what I think of this quote. So a lot of people I don’t know it appears that a lot of people feel they don’t have time to do the things they want to pursue, in the same way that there’s, like, these mental constructs people walk through life with. I walk through, everyone does right. There’s no subject to that and, like, one of the goals that I have as an individual is to become aware of them as much as possible. So when I heard this, when I heard the quote that you know is given to me as an encouragement for the time I’m working through right now between provision, right, and just like the ships are burned and I’m pressing forward, that quote was given as I can encourage right, because it was like you’re not tiptoeing, was kind of the what my buddy was saying and I didn’t think about it from the context of what you shared, that you disagree because you don’t think most people think about it. I would second that I don’t think that people think about the room mortality, because if they did, I think they would live differently. That being said, I think that’s the point of the quote is to slap you in the face, right, Right and say like hey, what the hell are you being careful for? You’re going to die no matter what. Like there is absolutely the juxtaposition and balance. There’s the beautiful tension between you’re stupid enough, you’ll die very, very soon. If you do dumb things, you will die very, very soon, but at the same time, you can’t live forever if you’re careful. So working aggressively in the tension between those two realities, I think, is the beautiful opportunity presented by a quote like that. And if you’re intentional and making decisions that are carefully thought through to the best of your ability, researched, discussed with people you trust to provide additional counsel and input, meditate, pray. If you’re a person of faith all those things and you feel a sense of peace to do something that may seem wild, why would you not jump? Why would you not fight? Why would you not build? Why would you not create? Why would you not live? Why would you not love? You know walking? Yeah, very simply, I remember and I couldn’t find it. But there’s this idea I heard where it’s like I don’t want to go quietly to the grave, I want to hit the ground, slide and roll into the casket partially on fire and bang that. You know like I want to live this life with intense passion and meteoric speed and heat. And that’s the beauty of the juxtaposition, because when I read it I was like yeah, dang straight, I’m not going quietly into that dark night. But I imagine others feel differently if they see a quote like that right, and that’s kind of where I’m sitting on that thought process of like yeah, dang straight, we’re going to die, that’s not avoidable. Like, you will die, it may be today, I may die today, we don’t know. So that is not an excuse to be irresponsible, but it is an absolute reason and catalyst to seize hold of the reins and press forward Right.

Brandon Seifert: 15:35
And that reminds me of two different things. One that I was intentionally kind of lead us, trying to lead us towards, but the way that you phrase that led me towards a book by Michael Singer, and I am going to very, very loosely kind of quoted. But it basically talks about how we that there is no guarantee in life. The only guarantee, of course, is death, and therefore people die doing every single thing that most people are doing every single day. So people have died sitting at their desk having a Zoom conversation, waking up in their sleep, talking to their loved ones. So there is no guaranteed moment for us on this earth. So why aren’t we looking at it through the lens of? Why am I not cherishing that moment? Why am I so sucked up into the conversations that don’t really matter instead of spending time doing the things that I love? So I’ll try to find the actual quote and maybe put it in the description, but it’s all going along the whole memento more remember you will die, kind of concept. And so go ahead.

Jon Mayo: 17:02
I was just going to say the memento more and then it’s like I’m not even going to say it in Latin, but the remember you will die, so live is the part that very few people talk about, the second part of the quote. So it’s like remember you will die, so remember to live. And yeah, spot on.

Brandon Seifert: 17:23
The other part that this kind of leads me towards is a long time ago, even when I was as I like to phrase it I was asleep, a sleep through life. I was kind of walking through it as a zombie. I was watching this YouTube video and I’m going to quote it because I’m going to heavily steal from this video because I’ve recently found it again just because of this quote and it’s by a creator called Z Frank or Z Frank I don’t know how he meant for that to be pronounced, but the video in question is called the time you have in jelly beans, and this guy is normally a very silly guy, but he made a few kind of test the water kind of videos and it was all about trying to find profound questions and provide it to a different audience that’s not normally thinking about those things. Therefore, I found it because I was watching all of his stupid content and, as a quick quote or a quick mention, he pulled all of this data from the A T us or American Time you Survey, which is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I just wanted to quickly break down some of this just because I think it puts into perspective how little time we have doing the things that we enjoy doing throughout the day, or at least our time on earth. So so, real quick. This is data collected from the age of 15 onward to the end of the average lifespan and, like, average lifespan is 79 years, so we’re looking at the 64 years post being 15. And that’s just due to labor restriction data. That can crap, but it says, on average, we will be asleep for 8477 days, which is equal to 23.22 years. We’ll be in the process of eating, drinking, preparing our food, for a total of 1635 days, which is 4.48 years. We’ll be at work, hopefully doing something that we’re satisfied doing, for a total of 3202 days, which is 8.77 years. And we’ll be commuting, just traveling, going to work, going to shopping, whatever for a total of 1099 days, which is 3.101 years. Sorry, most people, the average person, will watch television in some form or fashion, be it Netflix, disney Plus, all that kind of stuff or actual television for a total of 2,676 days, which is 7.33 years. Sorry.

Jon Mayo: 20:27
And, frankly, I think the points made right. Right, the number of things that go in. I can’t remember who said this, but there’s a sentiment around a million deaths as a statistic, one death as a tragedy. And like, looking at all the years that we’re spending like seven years watching TV on average as an American, what can you build with seven years? What can you create, what can you accomplish, what can you do with seven years? And like, how do we bring the vagueness of thousands of days or 20 years or what have you, to a poignant, catalyzing thought, right, and what immediately comes to mind is Jesse Itzler, who’s an entrepreneur. I think his wife started Spanx. He, like, asked Goggins to come live with him for a month and like, back in the day, but he presented this idea of like, let’s say you’re at an age where your parents are likely to live another 20 years. You don’t have 20 years with them. How many times do you see them? A year? You see them once a year, once every other year. Okay, you have 10 to 20 times, that’s it. How many like you have kids? You may have 18 summers, right, and it like. I think it’s a very powerful way to just flip the script no, you don’t have time. You don’t have the next 20 years. You have. However many times you’re intentional enough to make a deliberate action to enjoy that experience and maybe because of that thought, you determine to invest more time and have more opportunities. Double it from 20 to 40 times that you get to your parents right, you work to add more value to those summers.

Brandon Seifert: 22:14
But, yeah, and times, like you’re saying, it’s all about taking the conscious moment. So, like after I add up all of those different things that I was going through, the time remaining to spend enjoying life you know, laughing, swimming, going on hikes, talking, being with the people that you love is only 7.51 years, unless you start reclaiming that time that you’re doing elsewhere. You know that’s not a long time in the span of 64 years. And so how much time are we wasting, like you said, by watching television or spending at a job that we hate? You know why are we going through this life without a true conscious effort to enjoy the time we’re spending here? Or at least then I don’t know if joy is necessarily the full aim, but doing something that has meaning in your life, you know.

Jon Mayo: 23:16
I think you just hit on it. I don’t think we can sustain happiness or joy by pursuing it. I personally believe that it’s more of a byproduct of pursuing significance, which is why I advocate for that so heavily, even in my book. Right, and when you’re pursuing something of meaning, everything begins to be imbued with beauty. Like driving I don’t remember, but it’s yours that you’re commuting right, that time can be redeemed through so many fashions. Maybe you allow yourself the pleasure of music, but not in a means where you’re just like automated going through the motions. But there’s so much opportunity to learn and invest in conversation through podcasts and audio books. You can make phone calls now you know if you’re using a train or something you can do, facetime. So, like there’s, there’s so much that can be accomplished during that. There’s so much that can be enjoyed and experienced even in commuting. Right, cooking chores I work, I like to cook with my family. If I’m like, if I’m available during the time that Emil’s being prepared, let’s make that a family moment. Let’s put on music. Let’s be together. Right, chores, sons, come work with me. Right, let’s talk while we do this. You know so there’s all these things that you can create purpose, significance and value in the mundane. If you look and seek to do so, which is beautiful because you can reclaim so much of that time that there’s no working around, you have to eat, you must travel, like there’s things that just need done but they don’t have to just be lost. And then the TV one. Sometimes you know it is cool to watch a show with a friend or family or for yourself, and that’s a pleasure and that’s fine. But one of the things I’ve noticed is if there’s a chart of like how much TV watched per different type of lifestyle. I know that now I’m maybe around an hour or two a week and that’s all. Watching shows with the kids or with Lindsay as part of like a family time opportunity to hang back because we’ve been going hard all day, right, and compared to two to three hours a day before you know. So it’s like what we pursue shifts, what we value and what we value we pursue. So you get a hack, the cycle, and then you get to be fed by the cycle and you begin to see what you’re looking for everywhere, right, like, if I ask you like, hey, how many red cars are there today? You probably drive past red cars all the time. But today, as you drive, you’re going to see more red cars because you’re consciously or subconsciously, I just plugged you, so you’re welcome. You’re going to see a bunch of red cars today, you know. But, like going, the two core things that are kind of standing out to me in this exploration that we’re enjoying is one, time is limited, right, and if we’re not careful we’re going to spend decades of our life doing mundane things without thinking about it and that’s gone. And on the other hand, you know, it originated with like, why tip toe through life? Why not take risk? Why not try to live more vibrantly? And I stumbled across an idea yesterday that was actually fascinating to me because it connected with someone whose perception of stoicism was reflected in the term and the idea was presented. It was called naive stoicism and it was essentially making the premise that these guys had done the study that those who practice naive stoicism are actually have negative health benefit, like, have negative health consequences due to not understanding the actual teachings right, and conversely, those who do study and understand stoicism on a larger whole seem to have health benefits. And so what the heck is naive stoicism versus stoicism? What the heck is stoicism, right. Stoicism, in nutshell, is focused on what you can control and let go of the rest. In a nutshell, right, that like that’s the high 50,000 for view. Naive stoicism is essentially the concept of I must be emotionless, right, I must be unmoved, so I’m going to just walk through life and stuff that crap. And which is like a hilarious disparity. And it was interesting to see that someone had taken the time to study this. And I agree with the title that it is naive, it is foolish, like if you actually study the philosophy and principles of stoicism, it becomes very clear very swiftly that the entire premise of the obstacles, the way, is by experiencing, facing and pressing into the very things that seem to be a burden in the way or painful right, and in pressing in, in experiencing, in overcoming, in walking through, you gain the capacity to handle it in a way that perhaps is more life giving, more, more strong, more beneficial right. So like the simple juxtaposition is like we must love, care, give and connect. Well, those are all emotion-based, vulnerable expressions of self that can cause extraordinary pain. If you’re trying to stuff all your emotions and be just stoic in the sense of this naive form, then those things are going to be absent to you. At the same time, if you don’t care about stoicism and you’re just going through the motions, not really thinking about what’s going on, maybe doing that tip-toned through life analogy, you may avoid connection with others, you may avoid loving deeply, you may avoid a pet because you just lost a pet. You just had to put your dog down, so now you don’t want another one because it hurts so bad. Well, yeah, tragedy, loss and pain are the requirements of love. It’s just a matter of when. And walking through farm life with my sons, we’ve cried a lot as we’ve lost animals, as we’ve had to put animals down, as we’ve processed animals because they’ve served their purpose. We felt that emotion, we walked through it, we communicate and talk about it and then we honor, appreciate and remember the joy of the life that we got to experience, even if it was very short. And that’s the juxtaposition. And some people would rather live in the gray shadows of a loveless, connectionless existence because they’re so afraid of pain and they’re so pain-adverse that that’s their preference. I fundamentally disagree with that and I would much rather love deeply and experience that joy, even if it’s for a short season, and then, like who says that the pain of loss is bad, like why it’s a direct indicator of how deeply you loved. And though I don’t want that pain and I don’t want that loss, in the same way that I can’t choose that I’ll live today like that, I’ll be alive when tonight comes, I can’t choose when that which I love will be taken for me, and I would rather walk through the grief of loss of a friend, loved one, capability, what have you? But have experienced it than not. And I think that there’s even beauty in that pain, because in that remembrance it can be an experience of gratitude that washes over you and that can be let in, processed and let out. And there’s this equippy phase when it comes to grief, where it’s like let it in, let it last, let it let it out Okay, there’s another L word I’m forgetting, but let it loose, but like. It’s this concept of like let it wash over you, experience it deeply and then, as it goes away and as it fades over time, it may flare up from time to time, but as it fades over time, continue living, continue moving on and find the next thing to love, and love it deeply. And all those things like. Love is connection, the awareness from the quote you bought. Is awareness, it’s connection with a relationship of time and reality, right. All these things, very easily and without trying to force something into a whole like a square peg, into a round hole, come to consciousness, awareness and intentional action. Right, and what do we do with that?

Brandon Seifert: 32:06
Right. That reminds me in the I don’t know how tore up it was, but during our time together we had a buddy that went to. He was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident and we all showed up at the hospital and there was a. There was a moment of everyone was very worried, it was very chaotic at a moment and you put on this this different, what the naive person would say, stoic personality about that. You know that stoic version of you that just kind of like straightened up and you became the guy who just figured out what other people needed. And, like I said, that’s the very naive way of looking at that. Because you did that out of love, because you decided to say these people are hurting, how do I best serve them in this moment? And I can, I can love them in this moment and I could be totally off on this. But that’s my perception of what happened in that, because you definitely took charge of the situation in major others that were grieving, like this gentleman’s wife was, her needs were met, conversations were had that needed to be had and also conversations that didn’t need to be had at that moment were stopped in a active protecting her as well as those around her, am I pretty far off from that, because it seemed like it was a very stoic moment in nature. But I’m sure that it was full of compassion and that that whole claim of naive stoicism could very easily be interpreted by what I could consider the true nature of stoicism and it’s what can I control and how does that serve those around me? And I can always process and think about things in the background, but what is, what can I actually do in this moment to ensure love is presented?

Jon Mayo: 34:26
Well, first, that’s a very generous perspective and description. So thank you, the. I think there’s just a time for emotion. I’m not sure it’s so black and white, right, but there are moments where it’s un unhelpful to be emotional. There are moments where you, I do think that there’s immense value in hitting the go switch If I’m in a firefight, if I’m in April, if a car is on fire, a kid is hurt, a kid’s lost, a buddy’s hurt, missing, john Doe we don’t even know if it’s him going through that experience, right, me being emotional is the least helpful thing that I could possibly allow myself in that time. So there is this concept of like the immovable rock that presses into the storm, right, which is the attractive piece that then the rest of the context is missing, which creates naïve stosism. But there is power to having strength enough to say it’s go time. In a go time I’m becoming a conduit of action towards this desired objective Period. That’s what I am here. The rest will be processed later. And that’s the piece that’s missing in naïve stosism concept that we’re discussing. The rest must be processed deeply later. When Eric was lost for two hours in the woods and search and rescue is getting pulled together and we’re pulling in more and more community and everything else that was going on right. There were probably six or seven times that emotion welled up so powerfully that, like I had to choke this up in my throat, I envision terrible things happening as I round different bends, trees and areas. Right the second that emotion started well up. I literally said fuck off to that emotional response. I’m human. I couldn’t help the fact that it was well enough, but I could help the fact that the time is not now. Later I’d say go f off later, not now. I need to be an asset right now. I need to be searching. Right now. I need to be making intelligent decisions and coordinating resources and communicating effectively and being incredibly conscious of every move I’m making now and projecting over the next however many hours until my child is found right. There’s no room for me to feel those emotions right there. There’s no room for me to become erratic and make poor decisions or run myself ragged because of the fear or the pain of what’s being experienced. In the same way like when our buddy was in that situation, there would have been no value in me being panicked. There’d have been no value in all of that. It just would have produced nothing positive. So I think that there’s this shade of gray where it’s like well, when do I do this thing? And there are, I think, rarer moments and it ties into our last conversation, even with meditate where you work. I think there’s rare moments where you just need to be a conduit of action and intelligent thought to the best chair ability and communicate well, and then there’s times where you can think while you’re working and then there’s times where you just need to think and across this spectrum, we have this thing with our buddy. I just needed to act, I just needed to take care of things. So I hit that go switch. When my son was lost, I hit the go switch. And guess what, when he was found and I confirmed that he was found alive and that he was well, and I saw him, I saw I grabbed that kid, I scooped him up and I, freaking soft. For over two hours I was running in the back country trying to find this guy, wondering what the heck I was going to state I was going to find him in because him and his brothers had peeled off and happens like that. We didn’t even know if we had our buddy, the time to process the emotion of that just lose a friend, of telling his wife, hey, I think this happened, you know, was the time for emotion there. No strength was needed and I’m grateful that strength was perceived. That is a gift and a blessing to me. But there’s a time for emotion in all of this, right. The time to grieve loss is not when those around you are melting in the grief, but actions required, right? Maybe had he passed, for example, and we got through the initial contact and stuff there may have been a time later that day or the next day or a week later we’re just sitting and weeping with someone would have been the appropriate response, right? And that’s kind of my thought process. Through it it’s like, yeah, how can I be, how can I be of the most, of the greatest service and the most value to getting through the ambiguity, fear and potential for destruction that we’re currently facing. And I do think that’s an act of love. I’d agree with that, because at that moment you’re allowing yourself to become a servant to the best possible outcome in a terrible circumstance, and I do that because I seek to love. I can’t accept in full the generous description that you gave of in the moment I was thinking how do I love these people? In the moment I was thinking how do we navigate this with as little damage as possible and escape with our lives, and as calmly as possible, providing as much security as possible. And then it grew from there. But that’s just me being honest on what was going through my mind. But I do think that it was in many ways fueled by love and care for that human being and their family and those things. Just in the moment it was problem solving time. Does that make sense? Like where are we at?

Brandon Seifert: 40:42
Yeah, no, I mean, totally makes sense. And I don’t. I think it was misperceived like how I meant that it’s not like you’re actively thinking, oh, I’m going to love these people by doing this at this moment. It’s a prerequisite in my mind to love in that moment by being willing to step outside of everything that you’re doing and going through and feeling yourself to be able to turn on that very conscious moment in yourself to be that person of action. Because if you did not care, if you were this naive, stoic person, you could have just turned it all off, you could have not cared. And I think that’s the biggest difference between this whole concept of naive stoicism versus just stoicism, and that’s the. Everything is fueled by emotion. It’s just how do you process that in the best possible way is the way I have always viewed stoicism. Interesting thought is, after we went through that with our buddy, that was my first time really noticing or watching that type of stoicism in practice. And so when my grandfather died last year In that very same kind of scenario, I almost tried to mimic that In my own way, trying to do that for my loved ones who were going through it my mom and her sisters that were crying because they just lost their father, my brother who was going through it, because he lost someone that he spent a lot more time with than I did. I did cry, I did spend the time to grieve. I mean, I told my grandfather goodbye over the phone as he was breathing his last breaths. But when we all got together I understood that the best way I can, I can’t do anything to stop this moment from already happening. But what I can do is I can take action and take away the unnecessary choices from those around me so they don’t have an extra burden of trying to think through things as they are going through this process themselves. I tried to take as much as I could for them to have as easy of a time, and then I processed after I was already gone and I went back home. I’ve never seen that kind of level of like stoicism in my life, and so once I saw that you went through that, I tried to mimic it as best as I could because I saw the implications and I saw how well it works in that moment and I’m going to get better at that kind of thing over time. I can’t say I did it perfect and I know I’ve definitely messed up, but I had also been talked to after saying hey, I appreciate you doing these things because on that moment I couldn’t. So just quick kind of like relation and I thought it was very interesting that me putting those two together now at this moment, like I didn’t realize I was doing that at that time, once again that kind of mimicking you, yeah, sorry, yeah, super humbling man.

Jon Mayo: 44:27
So thank you and thank you’s like a word I don’t like in this context, but I’m lost for a better word. I’m grateful, I’m humbled. The beauty of what you did is you saw a need and you sought to fill it right, and you didn’t shortchange the process either. In the moment you saw the need, you saw that you could be a source of comfort by removing additional burden to a situation that was already breaking those around you, and you determined to the best of your ability to hit that switch and fill that need. And then you had the maturity still to process that. Like you said later when you had the, when you realize, okay, there’s no other needs to meet, it’s time to do this right. Like the, the responsibility is advocated, I’m free from it, so now I can tend to this right. And, yes, like we must be intentional and sometimes forcing those moments if we’re in a prolonged stage of crisis where it’s like, okay, I’m now going through something for months on end, I have to make an intentional pause, tactical or long to process and tend to myself so that I don’t burn out right. But putting that aside, beautifully done, and what we’re talking about here is definitively a lifelong skill that will never be perfected. I refuse to believe, or I just can’t imagine what being perfectly in tune with fulfilling needs, processing, with self being what’s needed for the situation perfectly is ever the case. So it’s one of those ideals to pursue, and thank God, because what a beautiful thing to pursue. Right, you were able to love your family, you were able to lead your family, you’re able to comfort your family through that time by stepping up and then you insured, you grieved and processed and healed in our healing likely. Beautiful, right. That is the thing. And what’s beautiful is, I think, that men are prized for their strength and strength is the desire I think you know. Just to run down the thought, I think that moms want strong sons, sisters want strong brothers, wives want strong husbands, children want strong fathers, and that creates pressure, and strength, on one hand, could be perverted in the same way that stosism could be, whereas strength means like your, I don’t know some poor social experiment of masculinity where you don’t have emotion, you’re aggressive and uncaring and like all these things right, like you’re destructive, what have you? But on the other hand, I like strength is to love, strength is to feel deeply, strength is to care, strength is to evaluate and act, and because it takes strength to do what you did, it took strength for you to be in that situation. So, okay, I’m seeing that this is happening. I’m also wounded by the situation. I’m going to tend to my family. Boom, that took strength and you stepped up and you fulfilled needs. And then it took further strength to not drink away or stuff away the pain of that loss. Later, when you have the ability to, and that’s where it’s like well, what do you cultivate? Why train hard? Why wake up early? Or do you know why intentionally cultivate discipline and grit and CISU? Well, because I will definitely revert to my lowest level of self when the shit hits the fan. So if I can make my day more challenging by subjecting myself by my own hand to pain and trial, then perhaps I’ll be more ready to step into the gap when, when stuff gets real, and from standing in the gap, I can shield and beckon forward those whom I’m protecting while pressing forward and through the situation. And what a honorable and admirable ideal to pursue. Thank you for listening to another episode of Thought Expeditions on the Be Relentless podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show and found value in it, please pay it forward. You can do that by sharing it with someone who you think may find value in it as well, or leaving us a five star review wherever you’re listening to this. If you want to learn more about the work on the Be Relentless podcast, the book or CISU stamina and all of the other cool things that we are doing in the ULA universe, go ahead and head on over to ULAUniversecom and subscribe. Otherwise, thank you from the Be Relentless team and have a great day.