Jon Mayo: 0:08
Well, howdy dowdy everyone, and welcome to another thought expedition on the Be Relentless podcast. Today we explore a topic that’s really close to home, because it involved my child being bit in the face by a dog, and that situation, plus reflection on a couple other instances, such as one of my other sons getting lost in the woods, which we discussed a while back, caused me to reflect on two questions. One, how might we each of us prepare ourselves such that we are an asset, as opposed to a liability, when tragedy strikes? And the second question is how might we prepare our children for the world instead of simply protect them from it? From those two conversations, brandon and I have one heaven of a conversation Before jumping right in some very, very exciting news. If you’ve been a fence sitter and thinking about trying CCU stamina, but have not been ready to just send it, we have two exciting things to share with you. First, you can now get a sample pack of CCU stamina for free, just patient, and you can also buy a bottle with our send it guarantee, and all we ask is that you try for five days and if you don’t love it, we will give all of your money back if you request that refund within 21. So, with our send it guarantee and our sample packs, if you’ve been thinking about trying CCU stamina, the time is now use, be relentless at checkout to help support this show and we will continue to work to bring high value, impactful conversation to you. Let’s jump on it All right, buddy.

Brandon Seifert: 1:56
So as far as I understand, there’s a couple things that you wanted to actually kind of explore. So take it away, yeah.

Jon Mayo: 2:05
I’m interested to hear your thoughts from my call the other day, but we can do that offline or later on. The topic that was front and center I’ve been chewing on it’s been around creating in oneself the ability to be an asset, someone who’s capable of affecting positive change in the desired outcome in a tragedy based scenario, versus being a liability in that same scenario. And what does that look like and what spurred that up is in the last 90 days have been fairly contested in our home. So when we were doing the adventure day and we allowed the boys to go a few hundred meters ahead of us and Eric got lost and that turned into a two hour search party, right, and that was like a slow burn tragedy for our family until he was discovered Lightweight things like comparably lightweight experiences recently would be, you know, nathaniel, jeremiah fighting and Nathaniel splitting his head open a little bit, just the skin nothing too serious but not good, right, and our response to that. And then one of the dogs going missing and just like the procedures to finding that dog, right. And then most recently in like not good was, gabe was bitten the face by a friend’s dog and thank God his eye wasn’t damaged permanently and he didn’t lose it, but it was not a good kind of required 10 stitches and it’s been a bit of an ugly situation, but it was much better than it could have been, given that it happened and there’s a lot of ownership, and how could this have been prevented as well? Right, so there’s a whole, a whole mess of things here and really what I want to focus on is the through line of the gold that can be created in the twofold question of how might we be assets and not liabilities when tragedy strikes. Right, how might we be the most capable human beings? That question I pursue largely in the waymaker movement. Right, how do we create waymakers? How do we be waymakers? Is the language that I used to define that. And then the second element of it is how do we prepare our children for the road in the world, as opposed to try to safeguard them from it and, real quick, just to provide critical context for that. This is a spectrum the younger the child is, the more protection. Right, as the child ages, the more my approaches and my wife’s is to lift the protection in a manner that’s appropriate to test and push the child to cultivate the skills to better navigate life. The goal is not to screw that tension up but to allow adequate pressure for the child to be forced to grow and grow, and growth is uncomfortable. So our sentiment in the Mayo home is that we would rather have children who are assets and who are prepared for the challenges that life will have, because life’s going to happen regardless of our wishes and our best intent and anything that we try to do, and when it does, it’s going to be on them and up to them for their response and they will pay the burden and the price of their response, regardless of our hopes and aspirations. And there’s an interesting juxtaposition between Eric getting lost in the woods and Gabriel being bit, and there’s a lot to unpack there. But that is the topic in a nutshell.

Brandon Seifert: 6:12
So, going along this spectrum, with this most recent incident with the dog, how does one, or how have you gone through this teaching process of what happened, the aftermath, what is the steps that led to and the steps after the incident that we can potentially pull some of that value from?

Jon Mayo: 6:48
To do this concisely will be the trick. So please, please, jump in if you have a question form so that we can keep it more as an exploration instead of a monologue. I’d really appreciate that, of course. Okay, so two things to lay the premise. If everything has an opportunity cost, right. Like I can go to the gym or to the party tonight, well, if I go to the gym, then the opportunity I’m getting is greater health. Right, if I go to the party, I get some socialization. So there’s that. Right, what helps me today? What helps me long term? On the same thing, if you ask the same question, which regret am I willing to live with? Well, this works in the short term and the long term. So tomorrow morning, when you wake up, will you regret more have gone going? Would you regret more going to the gym, in reflection, or going to the party? I’m not saying what’s right. Depends on the circumstances, I think, and I’m not interested in getting into that in this moment but I think it provides an interesting way of looking at the duality of every decision. Right, there’s both an opportunity cost and a regret acceptance in everything we do, and I didn’t come up with that. I’m borrowing this from conversation I heard between Chris Williamson, alex Hermosi, but really like the duality of that and that comes from a study with mice and cats and cheese and all this other stuff. So fun stuff there. But why does that duality matter? Lindsay and I weren’t sleeping when we were at our friend’s house, right, we were familiar with the dog breed and they’re typically not good companion dogs. They’re a type of livestock dog and given that I was watching him for the first three hours very closely and when the incident happened he was five feet away from me laying down calm. So, based on what I knew and what I was observing and everything else, I made the calculated decision to accept that risk, which in hindsight I regret. Right, but running the analysis a few hundred times over the last couple of weeks, I don’t know, with what I knew, then, walking through the situation, that I would have changed my response. So I didn’t see a logical fallacy in my decision to not allow the dog near the kids. Right, which is important in the aftermath, right, did I make a mistake? Well, knowing what I know now I just won’t have those types of breeds or the things that I know like that near my children, because that’s not their place. They have a beautiful place in this world and it’s not amongst a bunch of people fellowshiping. So it’s like hindsight is 20-20,. Lesson learned I can’t identify what I did wrong, and the reason I think that’s important to share is it goes back to despite your best efforts and military, we say you can have perfect planning, but the enemy has a vote, right? Mike Tyson says you have a plan to get hit in the face, right? So just to lay the foundation of I don’t think that there was negligence involved. I think there was minor calculated risk that went extraordinarily wrong and, thank God, not far worse. So that lays the foundation for how we can unpack this event right. It happened before the second bite could occur, because typically when a dog bites, it’s like a snap, snap, snap. Before the second bite could occur, I’d slammed it. I had, though, feeling like I was frozen in time and couldn’t get to my son. I kind of lost consciousness for just enough time to have what feels like transported between the dog and my son, having lifted him and putting him behind me and having slammed the dogs head into the ground and simultaneously Lindsay, who was on five feet of the other side sitting on a sitting at the table, had grabbed it, had done the same thing but grabbed the dog’s back legs and ripped it back. So we were both close enough and attentive enough to have saved the one bite, multiple bites, and finishing it with one right, which I have on ending gratitude for as well. And then every person that was there was a combat veteran, aside from Lindsay and myself, and I think that was important because everyone was conditioned in that room specifically for a much better response to chaos. They were conditioned for chaos. So when this happened, everyone just sprung into action without a word, and every word that was uttered was strictly operationally necessary to resolve the situation and care for what had happened, which is another point of extraordinary gratitude. And no one lost their mind. I was close to going into kind of just kill mode. Frankly, I was there when the guys helped snap me out of it and that was a very fast sequence of events. And I was back in operational mode and we responded to the need at hand, which was in line with my priorities, which was not in line with my emotions. My priorities were one protect my son. Two get him to help he needs. Three ensure the rest of my family is safe. Four get them home swiftly and safely. Five fuel your emotions later and do what is necessary for second, third, fourth order effects later and I am grateful in the analysis that that’s what I did. That took a lot of cultivation. And then the final point on the cultivation, we were less prepared when Eric was lost. The other boys were playing and were like well, isn’t he with you? They had advocated the responsibility and you’ve trained them for years that if they go out of our site, the four of them stick together. That was a beautiful training opportunity. They won’t do that again, right. The other thing is we have been working as a family, specifically over the last six to 12 months on when bad things happen, slow down the situation, and we’ve been training intentionally through conversation, exploration. We’ve been training through bumps and bruises right Breathe through your nose, exhale and even like there’s a hurricane warning. The other month or two ago and Lindsay and I were out at this time and we had to call the house and it was son we answered the phone Deep breath, gather your brothers and the dogs, go to the basement. Do not come out till we’re home. Bring the phone with you. Deep breath, yes, sir, there’s a tornado warning. Do as we said. We’ll be there soon. We were a few minutes out. There’s no argument, there’s no why’s in that situation, I heard him take the deep breath and he acted right Well. I’m so grateful and I share this, because having cultivated that response and us having done a number of things was significantly helpful, because there’s a lot of other kids at this event and they were all running around screaming throughout the entire thing and they didn’t stop, and then they were obnoxiously curious and in the way and needed removed. My children were different in this instance. I was gay, was obviously angry and, as we talked to later, his primary emotion was scared, right, fear, and that was a very fair response, but very swiftly. As Gabriel, take a deep breath. You must take control of yourself and respond to this situation calmly so that we can help you breathe, and it’s one thing to say that, it’s another thing when an eight year old does it. He proceeded to calmly breathe in through his nose and squeeze a hand for the next 90 minutes to two hours as his face was stitched up and put back together. When I told his brothers, who were playing in, being rambunctious boys, gabriel was just hurt. They immediately stopped playing, straightened up. I watched them take a breath through the nose and my oldest said what is it you need? I said, for you guys to stay together, stay away from the dogs and not get hurt. They did that for the next two hours and then we went home and gave healing. Very well, we have secured resolution and the friends we were with have exercised extraordinary ownership. So there’s aside from everyone having very hard feelings about what happened, there’s no bad blood between any of the human counterparts, which is, frankly, miraculous. So that’s it in a nutshell.

Brandon Seifert: 16:42
First off, I’m glad that he’s okay. I’m glad that friendships were salvaged, no bad blood, and also I’m glad that they’ve had the amount of preparation and training that has been given to them over this time, because I know a lot of adults that can’t do that. I’m just now learning this kind of stuff, you know. So for them to be able to start putting into practice these calming, conscious efforts to do what is necessary in the moment and handle their emotions, that is a extraordinary thing. So that’s amazing. What was the? So it’s been what? Two weeks since this has happened, right, yes, just about what is the longer emotions about this? Any nightmares? Any further trauma? That is still being explored. Was it kind of just that situation ended and over the course of a couple days, it kind of resolved itself outside of physical injury, or is there something ongoing?

Jon Mayo: 18:12
No, there’s definitely something ongoing. I’m still intentionally training Eric in the woods right, reintroducing him to Matt. He’s not afraid to go anymore. He was at first but he’s growing out of that. And in the same way, there’s a lot of emotions still being worked through on this one. This one was the same amount of the same amount of horror, but in a very condensed timeframe and, unfortunately, with longer lasting effects. Physically, I do think that, thankfully, his face will not bear a visible scar or if there is a scar, which there likely will be, it will be extraordinarily minor by the time this is all healed. And that’s because he was stitched up very well and we’re going to be very invested in his care to help that, because it runs right midway down the nose, up following the nose curve and into the eyebrow, just missing the tear duct in the eye. So it’s pretty significant, yeah, and then he got scraped up other places, but absolutely so. One of the things that was exciting is that night in bed. Obviously there’s exhaustion, and that very night he was able to express the primary thing that he was feeling is fear, and that was in maturity and of itself. Right that we got past the anger into the primary emotion, right, lindsay felt fine that night. I felt fine that night. That was obviously us both in go mode. No, he is right now recovering. She’s now feeling the fatigue of that experience and walking through it Because obviously there’s care for days that we’ve been providing and everything else. So we’re still healing as a family but we will heal. And for Gabe, that turned into around day two rage. He wants to kill the dog and I told him I do too. That’s a fair feeling and we’ve been working through that. And what’s happened with the dog and everything else is irrelevant for the audience in the show. I won’t share any real world events post the event because I don’t think it’s necessary. But focusing on his emotion right, rage, injustice, anger Having replayed the situation, he didn’t misbehave or do anything. He shouldn’t have around the dog. He was being very respectful, right. So it’s like the injustice of being hurt when you’ve done nothing wrong is real, right. Having pain and the freedom to move and play as a child is wrong, right. He is feeling, I think, the appropriate anger and rage. That rage has bubbled down into anger and I think it will fade away to wisdom because of how we’re handling it. Bunzee and I will continue to heal from it. Three days later I laid down to bed thinking everything was good. I had 10. And I got burned up by rage. I hadn’t been too angry to that point because I was so focused on care and then getting through the infection period to kind of like cleaner waters, and a few days later antibiotics were fully in the system we’re good. And then when I laid down that night, I was overcome with rage and I had to work through that for three hours before it cooled off enough for me to be back to somewhat of normalcy, right. So there’s and I share all that to be there’s processing, and I saw my buddy recently and he they’re absolutely heartbroken and continuing to exercise extraordinary ownership and support. But one of the things he expressed is this just heartbreak over the sentiment that Gabriel is going to carry this for the rest of his life with him and it’s going to be this thing and he’ll have a scar and all these other things. And thank God the scar is not going to be too terrible based on our estimations, right. But I disagreed. I disagree with him, and I asked Gabriel later what he thought and I said hey, gabe, how do you think this is going to affect you a year from now, and he’s like it won’t. And I said okay, so you you’re not concerned about being afraid of large dogs, or like you’re not feeling anything like that. You know, just trying to ask questions, like truly understand what he’s thinking. He’s like no, he’s like I’m not interested in repeating that, like this is literally the conversation. He’s like I don’t want to do that again, I’m going to be far more cautious. I was, I wasn’t doing anything in the first place, but I’m going to be more cautious from this. He’s like I’m going to be more careful is what he said specifically. But why would I be afraid of large dogs or not continue to love them? And that was really exciting, because that’s the other element of this. There’s one how you respond to the situation. And then there’s two how do you heal and how do you catalog and process the situation Right. And I agree with him. I think that a month from now, this will be something he’s making jokes about, and that’s because we’re going to thoroughly invest every ounce of energy necessary to process every emotion, every thought that comes up, so that it doesn’t fester inside and instead is released. You know, there’s this fun saying with grief and it’s let it in, let it last, let it fade. And in our home right now the aperture is wide open on processing this traumatic event. Let it in, let it last, let it fade. We’ve let it in, we’re letting it last and I think it is a few. We’re very soon from it beginning to fade and then it will fade away and that’s going to be how we live, because we will not punish ourselves with the perpetuation of that pain and causing it to create a significant scar that Mars our ability to live Right and that’s a choice you’ve made as a family. So I would say we’re past the 60% point on processing as a family and I’d say Gabe is probably close, but we still have some work to do.

Brandon Seifert: 24:54
So one thing that I just love about this and let me first state I don’t love anything if that this situation happened but the understanding that children are so adaptable. I had a not nearly a severe moment like this in my childhood and I just mind was just straight negligence. I just wasn’t responsible with my own actions as a young child. But I got attacked by a dog and that was just because I didn’t respect that animal. But a month later I had a few nightmares about it. But after a month I was like no, screw, screw that I love dogs, I’m gonna continue to follow a passion of loving animals. And I moved on and it sounds like he’s heading down that same trajectory in a much quicker, healthier manner than I did, because I didn’t have that social that that group community support building me up again. So for that to show the adaptability in a healthy processing which I love that you and Lindsay are, so I’m sure the rest of the family are helping that processing as much as necessary. But you’re also not, as far as I could tell, lingering on it, because there’s almost another side of that where it’s like you could try to over process that and then that thing that he’s willing to make into a smaller deal and be like, yeah, this sucks, I don’t want to do it again. That could. That could blow up if it’s looked at in the wrong way as well, or like if it’s made too big of a deal. So have you noticed that you have to somewhat balance that act, or is it just it’s kind of flowing naturally in this instance?

Jon Mayo: 26:50
No, I’d add, natural is a weird. Flowing naturally is a weird concept. I think the more we practice intentionality, the more natural that type of response becomes. So we’ve been very intentional not to overinflate it either. And how that’s played out is that night all the brothers, right, wanted to make sure Gabe was okay, and when it was bedtime they all wanted to sit with him for a bit, and then the youngest went to bed and the oldest came back out and wanted to sit with him for longer. So we let that happen, right, because this affected them as well. It affected all of us. And the next day we actually allowed the boys to not go to school because they wanted to care for their brother. They all expressed that and it was clear it was earnest and they crushed their work. So it was a non-issue. We got their work, they crushed it, they stayed and took care of the brother. We did a very intentional lunch that day where we made it clear that any of them at any moment was able to bring this up and we would explore it together If they were feeling any emotion about it, if they had any questions, if they had any thoughts, if they had any bad dreams that we want to talk about it. That did spur about a 30 minute conversation. Then the conversation left it and we did not bring it back. It has come up from them in different ways over the last, over the first week, and then it really faded away. And then, aside from when we’re tending Gabe’s face and like his bandages, it doesn’t really come up from Gabe either, with the exception of when I was asking him the questions yesterday after talking to my friend, right, because it made me curious oh, is this something he’s going to cling on to, kind of like I need to work with Eric more deliberately to get back on the horse so he’s not afraid of the woods, right, he’s doing really well, but he’s not all the way there. And how much of that type of work is going to be required for Gabe? And there’s much less, surprisingly, and that’s because he in part is incredibly passionate about animals and wildlife, so there’s a lot of like that natural love as well, pulling him forward, with the exception of this one dog who he’s ready to have ended, or that has been his feeling, regardless of the circumstances. So, yes, to answer your question shortly, we’ve been intentional not to keep stirring it up unnecessarily, as well as allowing the conversation to occur, right, and the reason I think this topic it’s like it would be. This isn’t like the end all be all, this isn’t the end of the world to explore this, right, but it’s an opportunity to look at something and extract gold from the situation, and that is why I think it’s worth a thought expedition is because there’s a lot of questions, right, and there’s a lot of analysis and there’s a lot of things that could have been, and there instead is precisely what did happen and given that’s like well, how can value, how can lemonade lemons be turned to lemonade, right? How can value be extracted from this in such a way that it may make our lives better and help someone else’s life to be better from a situation that we’d never wish would happen? Hate happened. We’re intentional to work to not to have happened, and now we’ll have significantly more stringent contingencies to in place, parameters in place to ensure it does not happen, right.

Brandon Seifert: 30:45
Yeah, I say that just to contextualize what we’re discussing, right what are some key takeaways that both you and Lindsay have learned from this experience? Or with the understanding that you said that you’re about 60 percent fully done with processing this is there. Is there any value that has been gained further than the monitoring of these types of dogs? Of course, that’s. That’s very surface level. What is your back in thoughts on one? I think you all have processed it and you’ve gone through it and you’ve decided that the course that had followed the incident was the correct one and that not really anyone was at fault. It was just I don’t want to say it was just luck at the draw kind of thing. But you know that when you have a large herding dog, that is more likely to happen. But what is the, the afterthoughts from two weeks later that you’re still wrestling with right now or have wrestled in our coming to peace with?

Jon Mayo: 32:05
so our friends have been providing a lot of care and have been very apologetic. But I learned that my friends, specifically the man, the male in the situation had a very authentic, genuine conversation with Gabriel and which he, without anything weird, apologized and owned the situation. Not just I’m sorry, but owned it and asked for forgiveness. And Gabriel chose to forgive him and he cried. I didn’t learn that till yesterday either. It happened the day before just there’s a time lapse when I learned that I felt a huge weight lifted off and the anger that I was still wrestling with began to release. So at this point, as an individual, I say 68%. As a family, because I just know there’s going to be residuals and I want to tend to my bride right, because I just don’t have enough of a welfare check to know where she’s at entirely. And then I just have a feeling, right, that things will continue to spur up for a while, sporadically need handled. So I think that in sharing that, there’s just such immense value in owning things with the concept of extreme ownership, right, even if we thought we did what was appropriate, can you own it? And what is the value in that right? Where does the responsibility lie? So I think there’s such immense freedom and value in those actions and that helped me a lot because it removed any residual feelings fair or not of injustice or things like that. Because in those types of situations in the moment, if it was like my dog in the moment, I would have shot it right, I would have drug it outside, it would have been done and then I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else getting hurt while I tend to the situation. So, being in someone else’s house, a lot of other men handled the situation so I could tend to the kids. But not having that resolute action left an open sentence in my head right, which I don’t think like. I think is a different way of answering your question. But there’s such immense value in his actions and what it meant for Gabriel, what it meant for, I hope, him and what it meant for me and our family right, that was huge, as has been all the support and care and my phenomenal things that I’ve been doing since and the decisions they’ve made to resolve the situation and everything else. So as far as other key takeaways, gratitude is the only thing that comes to mind at this moment. We are so incredibly grateful it wasn’t worse than it was. It wasn’t any of the 10,000 other what-ifs that we were close enough to act, that we were sober-minded enough to act, that we hadn’t degraded our capabilities despite having a pleasant time. You know that we’ve been intentional and in the conditioning so that we were able to respond and heal in the manner that we are right. And, yeah, there’s an immense amount of gratitude that we’re taking with us because it could have been so much worse, and we’ll definitely apply the lessons learned in observations to further mitigate these types of things from happening, while maximizing this opportunity to help prepare our sons for the world and ensure that we are better prepared to be assets as their parents and us collectively as a family. You know, one other takeaway that did just pop into my mind that I kind of chewed on lightly I think we should be careful and once again, this is a tension and a judgment call to live within but I think we should be careful to underestimate the capabilities of our children, because around five is when we’ve developed not like from the start, but we’ve developed, having had multiple kids, conversations on situational awareness and responsiveness to these types of things, and when they’re young, we respond to them getting like like boobies differently, the most right Because we realize that they’ll mirror our response. So we’ve been working with them. But there’s kids older than my oldest there who were far less helpful and I think it’s I don’t know why, but I think globally, like universally, looking at this, to unspecified from my friend’s house if you don’t demand and expect a standard and you don’t intentionally cultivate a skill set, then as human beings, holistically, we will fall to our lowest level of preparation when, when kinetic situations occur. So it was kind of a confirmation to have been intentional in equipping them as we have and we will be double-looned down on that and as a healthy response and with renewed vigor because it made the situation so much better than it could have been Right and in that I’m encouraged to engage with them more fullheartedly in an appropriate context, to treat them as sovereign young individuals with free agency who have a choice and can create and contribute value and be an asset when bad things are happening, and to contextualize that into the right scope that’s appropriate for their ages and their development and everything else is. I say just because I feel it’s necessary to restate, but to not underestimate how much they can rise to the situation and that has been a huge takeaway, because we’re so coddled with the creature comforts that our society provides us to forget that a hundred years ago Jeremiah could be hurting 50 heads of cattle by himself across the prairies. And there’s, that’s real, like there’s a fun book series we’ve read as a family called Little Bridges. That is based on the author’s real life and at nine, if I’m not mistaken, he may have been 10 or 11. He was actually for the day’s pay because his father died, was hurting a head of a cattle, so by himself. So it’s like, wow, man, these guys are so capable and how much more capable could they be if I engage with them in conversation and in questioning and in everything else, as if that’s them right. And then there’s that constant tension of what’s too much, what’s too little, everything else, and that’s part of the dance that we will get to do together. But yeah, that those two takeaways, gratitude, and let’s not underestimate them. And I do think something begins to shift tremendously after five, in far more so after seven. Like I think things begin to shift after five, but something about once they’re seven, in my experience and for my temperament, parenting becomes so much more cool. So, like once the twins are seven and which were so close to it’s. Just every day is getting better. As a parent I was I love my children, I’ve loved their childhood or I’ve worked to do well at doing that. But we’re entering the season where I’m like, yes, I have little human beings to interact with and we get to shape one another and we do shape one another and I get to be responsible for that cultivation and I’m responsible to allow them to shape me so that we can grow together Right, and that’s really cool.

Brandon Seifert: 41:02
Yeah, man, that’s, that’s, that’s. I do not have kids, and that is something that I actually was talking to my buddy yesterday about and the, the duty you have to cultivate that person into becoming someone that can live and think and be emotionally stable. That’s a sacred thing. But one thing I did want to touch on is the, the lessons that can be taught Even further down the road because they are still pretty young. Have you have you thought about those? Or I’m assuming that you’ve continued different teachings from the woods Experience and just like you’re gonna potentially teach further on about this experience when they have grown up a little bit further? The two that I were initially thinking of was you know how sacred life is. You know we don’t know what’s gonna happen from one moment to the next, so we should be cherishing life. And the next is Moving on from experiences In the sense of what’s actually worth demanding your time and what should you process and let go of In multiple different facets. But I mean, have you have you thought about the lifelong lessons that could be taught as they grow up through the next couple years from this?

Jon Mayo: 42:41
Yes, but not in like some. There’s a curriculum, my colleagues, that wish thing put together way Like on the move in front. I hate the dog, that’s fair. Feel that, right, let’s work through that Through. On the third, fourth day I had the vacuum. Okay, you’re allowing this to now bleed into an unhealthy response and other areas of the life. And there is the check on son. Is this still the required response? And if you still feel that way, well, we can work through that. But it’s not the record response, the record response for the freaking vacuum. So you need to chill that and figure that out, right. So there’s a kind of like DAP, stop, right. So there’s. There’s the motivation on both ends. We talk about the value of life and that we are mortal and we will die. Actually, very often in our home, having chickens and pigs and livestock for a while has really helped with that, especially when they were younger, especially initially, because there’s death all around us all the time, right, predators or, you know, processing the animals for food they became very accustomed with. Oh, my goodness, right, these things are mortal and when we slaughter, we get, you know, we talk about gratitude and everything. I big and think that we are more, and every time we deal with this we should reflect on the precious gift that life is, because we could be gone and, and Some may be like, oh no, we shouldn’t talk about death. And, sir you know, choose you right. This is America. But I’ve observed a lot of fruit from that with them, and my approach is To cultivate an awareness in the situation that, when opportunities strike, to seize them to the best of my ability and I’m sure I miss thousands of them, but to be better at that, right. So you know, there’s intentional things I want to do as they age that will put me in a higher frequency scenario, to be able to have those types of moments with them right. And, and what I mean by that is like, if we go backpacking, that’s a lot of time to talk and explore Right, physically and philosophically. So I want to take them hunting and backpacking when they’re older. You know, just recently, just last weekend, lindsay and Jeremiah were at the homecoming game and I was taking the others home because they don’t want to go watch football, and I Really don’t like watching football at all, or really any sport. So I was a guess, let’s go home. And I’m driving home, I’m like, well, I don’t want tonight to be a waste. So we ended up being a fire pit and s’mores and that’s cool. We’ve done that before. Typically it’s very tedious as a dad’s like, oh, kids are eating s’mores, and then it’s not like, regardless, okay, here we go and then put them down to bed and it’s a yeah and it is what it is. But instead that night I said, do you guys want to listen to the story? And they said yeah. So I found this really cool parable On YouTube and we listened to it and have like a 20 minute conversation after and I was so impressed by their Comprehension and retention and the way that we were able to explore it and that each one of them Brought something different to how they perceived it and like we all hone that thing together, I was like holy crap. I was like, do you guys want to listen to something else? And they’re like and like, talk about it. And they’re like, yeah. So Like two hours we we Well, for the first hours like s’mores and sunset and fun and music, but then for an hour we listened to that parable and then for the next 30 minutes we and talked about, and then for the the second half that hour we listened to Like a YouTube collection of stoic quotes, like stoic, stoic thoughts, and Would pause it when any of them wanted to pause it and we’d explore what they were thinking on from like the last you know, essentially parable or thought, but they’d hurt and I was. It was like one of the best nights in my life and it just lit this fire in my mind of like, okay, they’re at the age where we can begin to do these things, which is why I’m so excited about this time. Right, and so my approach to it is how can I cultivate more of these experiences so we have more of these opportunities? Right, life will provide some. There’s other things, but can I be aware of the circumstances that require a good response to help bring forth value like we’re talking about? And then, outside of that, can I cultivate more of these experiences so that there’s more value that we’re creating as a family, so that our life is richer and so that we’re better equipped for everything else and so that we’re better equipped for everything else? And that’s actually last night. I was like man. I really I was. I Told. One of my sons said I loved so much our fire pit. We should do it more and there’s just such a hunger for it. So we’re gonna be more intentional on doing that. And it’s interesting because the experience has changed. It’s not a burden like it used to be, where it’s like I have the responsibility to make the fire of the responsibility to Clean the kids after I have the responsibility to put them to bed, it’s more of a. Now we can make the fire together. Actually they make it, and then we get to engage in genuinely interesting conversation and Then they’ll jump the shower and go to bed. So like just the equations changing and with it the landscape and with it the beauty. And in that context, yeah, I’m looking at how many of these situations can I create before they leave my home, which is a new question, because really until more recently, it’s been Keep the tiny humans from unaliving themselves In the. That’s still a factor, but it’s. There’s many more dynamics now.

Brandon Seifert: 48:33
Yeah, well, you’re able to start lifting this veil and it’s so Interesting to see these, these tiny humans, become courageous leaders in different aspects, and the fact that you’re saying that you are building this fire and you’re you’re having these dialogues with these, these kids, that you wouldn’t have been able to. Not really, I feel like a lot of this is pretty recent and correct me if I’m wrong on that, but now you’re beginning to See the cultivation and time that you, you both have spent into those kids and you’re starting to see their personalities more and the Like said that, the leadership that they are willing to say all right, this bad thing happened, what do you need me to do? That is such a cool moment to me, like that, that they would just say what do you require To make this okay? And then you say it and it’s done. I Don’t know that. That’s what’s kind of really sticking out at me is how how could one try to lead their children more towards that, because I don’t think it’s necessarily like a single thing that was done that has cultivated this mature, courageous leadership. But what are? Is there anything that you attribute specifically towards growth or growing that in your children as they’re young?

Jon Mayo: 50:16
I think that work on yourself is what I think. So like two things. First, not to the situation’s painting, a true representation of these circumstances. But I don’t want this overly ideal like this overly ideal picture painted of. Like this is how it always is in the home. No, last night Jeremiah and I were fighting over him eating his broccoli and our kids are pretty good at eating vegetables but he’s eating like we’re fighting over eating the broccoli and I’m like he’s like I’m not gonna finish this. And he was like I will. I was like bet, you’re not gonna finish that, I’m gonna try to send it. And he sent it. So I responded and we were wrestling about and we turned like an angry situation into a fun one, but like we’re fighting over him eating his bloody broccoli, right. So there is plenty of chaos, mischief and mayhem in our home, Just to just like reality check. Yeah, shouldn’t figured out, and it certainly ain’t perfect in the male house. So, just as a breath of fresh air, this is for everyone and we go through our hell. But looking at this one situation right, there’s so much gratitude for everything we’re talking about I feel like that was an incredibly necessary just have yacht to just flavor the pot with. So let me see, as far as cultivating it, though one I think it starts with working on yourself and working in concentric circles. Outward, Dave, I’ve determined how to live my life and how to pursue better, doing that which has affected me a lot, which has affected my relationship with my bride and has affected her, which is in us. Doing that has and she was doing that in her own way before right. So just to paint the correct context, and then us doing that together and us continuing to do that together has set a norm for our children, right. So, as we continue to work on ourselves and we continue to be intentional in our interactions with one another, it creates the culture and social fabric that is in our home. That sets what’s normal for our kids. So a lot of it for a long time has been us simply living how we intend to live and making normal what we think should be the standard, and kind of like planting seeds, hoping that they’ll grow, you know, and we’re gonna continue doing that. And then, outside of that, I’m gonna continue working on myself. I’m gonna continue to grow to be a better man so that I can be a better husband, so that I can be a better father so that I can be a better leader. And you know better, know myself so I can know the world better, lead myself so I can lead the world. Those concepts I truly believe it starts there. And then working to be as aware and intentional in each moment as possible, and then working to cultivate moments that have a higher frequency probability of allowing those types of things to occur Is really what I think. It is what it comes down to, and it’s so bloody simple and I think that is so painful because we want it to be sexy or more, but it’s almost like a more complex idea is more welcome, because it I don’t know, maybe it feels like there’s more progress or something. I don’t really know, but I think it’s really simple Be who you want them to be, not what you want them to say, and then work to cultivate a virtuous life in which you are growing consistently with your family, your friends, your community, everything else, and I think that’s what does that. I think that is the response to well, how would I do this? How am I gonna do this? As I continue, as we work to figure this out, as we work to not screw up our kids to the best of our ability. As we work to live life to the best of our ability, it is to be genuine, authentic and incredibly intentional and to think about what we’ve done and where we’re going, and then to do the best we can to live in the moment, which is no small feat. All right, and that is the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you found value in today’s episode, please pay it forward. You can do that by liking and following the show, liking and following us on social media or sharing this episode with someone you care about. All of these things help more than I can put into words, and each action taken to help us spread the word is greatly appreciated. So, once again, from all of us here at the ULA and Be Relentless podcast, thank you for joining us in the journey as we seek to lead maximized lives. Music.