I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silver Core Podcast.
Silver Core has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge
necessary to be confident and proficient in the outdoors for over 20 years, and
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What a beautiful studio.
Thank you.
Yeah, it was a, uh, it's been a bit of work and it's still a work in progress,
but, uh, It's a little different from the last time you were here.
Hey, yeah.
It was equally as nice, but it just, you can tell.
There is, uh, some serious step up that occurred here, , little by little,
little, it's a, it's a learning process.
Yeah.
So if you don't recognize the voice yet, I'm sitting down
with Seb Lavoie once again.
He's been on the Silver Core podcast a couple of times now, and we
were both really excited talking about being on this podcast.
Again, we're both pushing ourselves in similar ways, in some ways that are maybe
a little bit different, and we thought there's gonna be some value in us at least
talking about this between the two of us.
And if at the end of this episode, we feel that the value is there for you,
that'll be why you're listening to it.
Seb, welcome back to the Silver Core podcast, . I like that if you, if you
like what you hear, you get to hear it.
Otherwise, it just never happened.
That's the beauty about being able to edit and, uh, take care of these things.
Now, before we get rolling too far, I do have to thank you for the geography and
geopolitical lessons that you provided me.
I'm looking, I'm like, man, you know, it's been winter for a while.
It's pretty cold.
I want to go someplace warm.
Haiti's got some cheap prices.
Who do I know who's been to Haiti?
, Seb, what's Haiti like?
Yeah, , it's an incredible, uh, tourist destination at the moment.
A situation in Haiti is, I would say, well, catastrophic
from a humanitarian standpoint.
That that is a fact and that is a U.N , essentially statement,
not a Seb Lavoie statement.
Mm-hmm.
, um, the, I mean, if I was to put it in a nutshell, we have, what we have is a
poor brains.
The capital of Haiti is controlled almost entirely by gangs.
We're looking at 60 to, depending where you look, there's statements
of 60 to 75% in gang controls.
We are talking about armed gangs, and we are talking about heavily armed gangs
with leaders from, you know, former military leaders that are now mm-hmm.
leading those gangs that have, you know, tactics, techniques and procedures.
And they're imposing their wills in the populations, the, you know,
rape levels, the, the abduction levels has been over 1500 abduction.
In, in a year span of locals for ransom and, and, and a ton of ransom money put
back into the gangs, which in terms, you know, evidently escalates the violence.
There is a pandemic, a cholera as, as if they didn't have enough going on.
They have a, a, a major pandemic, which is also affecting people
and a unprecedented percent rate.
They've had, and I can't remember what the numbers are, but
astronomical amount of deaths.
I think it's 10,000, something like that over the last two years.
So there I am with my finger hovering over the , clicking enter button
thinking, oh man, price looks so good.
And man, it looks beautiful from the brochures.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Quick heads up because clearly, um, I haven't been tracking the news
on that one and there is clearly a reason why it was so affordable.
Um, but we've, uh, we've planned something different.
Mm-hmm.
, but.
You know, we're talking the other day about, well, a number of things.
And one of the things was, uh, talking about our struggles or posting our
struggles because you've got a real superman, larger than life persona.
You're fit, you've got quite the background.
You're, um, very outspoken, very intelligent public speaker, and people
will often take a look at somebody such as yourself as having all of the answers.
And I did a, uh, I was talking with Mark Kenyon and he's got a popular
podcast called Wired to Hunt, and he's on Netflix, on meat eater.
And he says, you know, I, I, I know the formula.
I know the formula to growing on social media and it's, you can
put out this sort of superhuman.
Um, I'm always out there doing the hardcore stuff, never fail, kind of
persona, he says, but it just wasn't me.
And I found that when I started posting some of my failures without
complaining about them, some of my struggles and solutions that I
was looking towards, it massively increased my relatability, my exposure.
Um, and that was, I I thought that was kind of a neat thing, cuz quite
often it, people are very afraid to talk about their failures.
And on the other side, some people will just jump right into it and it
just becomes them and it's a constant gripe fest and it's gonna be a
difficult thing to kind of balance.
But what were your thoughts on that?
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting from a sort of scholarly standpoint, you
know, I would love to look into was the fact that he posted about his struggles.
Directly correlated or, or a direct cause of his social media
growing or simply being in line with who he is and being himself.
Mm-hmm.
, you know, cuz those, those two things are, are evidently we're trying to put the best
foot forward as we are posting on social media and that's, Something that's natural
and we're trying to be positive also.
So you're not trying to, you know, go down those, those negative drains necessarily.
But I would be, I would be curious to see if just him making the
decisions of being real and being him could have had that impact.
Or if it's truly the fact that, or maybe it's a combination of both and
it's likely that that's the case.
Mm.
Right, right.
Like it's a combination of him actually coming out into himself
and, and being the person that he is, the incredible person that he is.
And, and also it brought some rela, some relatability mm-hmm.
and humans.
There's some really interesting things that happen when we start
seeing people that we look up to, especially struggle with certain
things and address those things.
It, it gives us not only a roadmap to how it can be addressed in
our own lives, but it also shows us that they're human mm-hmm.
and they're experiencing the same struggles that we have.
That we, that we, that we have.
And so it's no longer about being a victim, it's about.
Okay.
There, there are other people out there that experience the things that I'm going
through and what are they actually doing for, you know, remedying those situations.
And if those people are people that you just so happen to be looking up to.
And I, I, I don't really like the look up kind of thing because I
mean, evidently somebody can, can be looked up to in a certain area
and necessarily not in another one.
Sure.
You know, based on how they're acting or based on mm-hmm.
but we were talking about a snippet Right.
Exactly.
Of, of the image.
Right.
Who do you look up to?
Lots of people.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I, I take the good out of everyone.
I look up to you a lot.
Like I look up to you, I look up to Sean Taylor, I look up to, to
everybody who, who does, who goes out there and does something positive and
does it on account of the collective.
If that's even, you know, something that we can, and it is certainly something that
we can look at that the collective Yeah.
Yes.
Mean, absolutely.
Yeah.
So anybody, anybody who steps up.
Anybody who's pushing themselves outside their comfort zone, anybody
who's seeking excellence, personal excellence, and anybody who's not only
seeking personal excellence, but also brings people along the way with them.
We know a lot.
We know a lot of high achievers.
Yes.
How many people did they help achieve success?
That is a critical piece for me.
It's not what you know, it's who you know has often been said in the past.
And if it's the who you know, who is it that you're surrounding yourself with?
And I find those, and we've talked about this before in the
podcast, you know, it's come up.
People say, well, I've gotta work on me first.
And they give the airplane analogy.
You've gotta get the mask on yourself before you can help others.
And I find people get so tunnel visioned in this idea that they have to be
perfect before they can help others.
That they overlooked the reality that once you make yourself of service to others,
and you're able to recognize, hey, you can assist the right people out there.
Do better, you'll do better.
Mm-hmm.
, and you'll feel better and you'll get so much more back out of that than you ever
would by constantly working on yourself just in your own little echo chamber.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
And I can make a metaphorical connection with a variety of different things,
whe whether it be firearms straining or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or martial
arts, or whatever the case may be.
I've never, I've never once wanted to be an instructor in teaching others.
Mm-hmm.
, not because I didn't care to teach others, but because I was wanting this,
the one thing that I wanted it to be.
A hobby without turning into a job because I, I have a tendency to do that.
Yes.
So I was, I was, and I Sure, sure I did.
Right.
I, I did.
Anyways, yeah.
In the end, um, having a martial arts studios, but at the end of the day,
as a, say, a purple belt, I, I had a, a bunch of years behind me on the
mats, and I had never taught anything, and I had no interest of doing so.
I fell into it by accident when somebody that was leading a class in a
law enforcement context departed, and they asked me if I could run a class
for them, and they loved that class.
Mm-hmm.
. So I continued doing it, but what I quickly found out is
that I was unable before.
I started teaching, I was unable to break down specifically what made the
mechanisms that I employed to make myself successful in certain situations.
When I started articulating everything that I was doing along the way, it started
reinforcing those, those very things that I was doing subconsciously, and it
allowed me to actually regain control and be able to replicate those movements.
Mm-hmm.
, right?
So I was able to not only affect the movement in a certain set of
circumstances, but I was able to create the circumstances that led to having
the ability to conduct that movement.
There are that old saying, those who can do those who can't teach.
Mm-hmm.
, and I've heard a variation on that, which is those who can do those who understand.
Teach.
Mm-hmm.
, and I know it one, one fellow and would rib me his running
Silver Core in his as a school.
And he says, oh, you know, those who can't do those, who can't teach.
And he took over a very successful business and ran it into the ground.
And I said, no, no.
I thought it was those who can't do those who, uh, understand teach those who can't
run successful businesses into the ground
That's, he never said it again after that.
But it was, uh, that teaching part is something that needs to be balanced as
well, because I don't think somebody can be the, the always teacher
without also being the always student.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, being an, being an astute learner is, is is paramount in, in being, in
optimizing the way you teach mm-hmm.
to begin with, but also optimizing the way you conduct yourself.
Because if you end up believing your own hype and, and, and if people are,
especially if, if the hype is, is real and has some basis of foundation, you
know, which is real and you may, you, you, the predisposition to actually
start believing it becomes incre increased, you know, substantially.
Mm-hmm.
. And so it, it not only helps you develop as in whatever field of endeavor
you're in and continue to get better pursuit that, that constant pursuit of
excellence, but that constant learning, continuous learning, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
, but also the other piece which is keep your feet right on the
ground where they should be
right, because otherwise you start to lose perspective.
And I, I remember I did a, uh, a, a police pistol instructor course with
Vancouver Police at the Tactical Training Center a number of years ago
when the, uh, lead instructor on that was, um, staff Sergeant Mark Horsley.
Mark Horsley's been on the podcast in the past, and he's was successful in shooting
the FBI Possible when he was down at Quantico, not because, and they name the
FBI possible because it's not necessarily impossible, , there is a possibility
someone can shoot that one clean.
And he did and he got the award for it.
But I remember there is, uh, two things that really kind of stuck out to
me from an instructor's standpoint.
Number one was, so often you go on courses and they're basically
just student courses and they're geared kind of towards instructors.
And at the end of it, the instructor has to prove that they're at X level
and then they, they'll pass or not.
He says, no, I want to choose people who've already proven that they can, they
can operate at a certain ability and we're gonna push you so hard through this one.
It'll be a learning process for you.
And I remember there's one drill, he's, we're getting back from
the target a little bit and, um, everyone's feeling pretty hot and
says, okay, go into your support hand.
Okay, pistol and support.
Hand put around to the target.
And everyone, you know, tries ask, make sure dead center.
You say, okay, put the next hole in that hole.
Right?
And there's a struggle cuz that's difficult.
One-handed support, hand putting into the same hole.
I was successful on that one.
I was the only one who was successful, probably by fluke.
But, um, the, uh, Reason for that drill wasn't to show off or
see how well someone could do.
It's like people who are brand new to this skill are gonna be nervous,
they're gonna have difficulties, they're not gonna be that good at it.
And it's to re-familiarize somebody who's been out of that learning states
for so long, what it's kind of like to fail and struggle at, at a new skill.
And I thought that was kind of interesting.
Yeah, I, I mean that's a very, very common concept in, in, in military
special operation, for example, or even in police special operation.
I mean, there's only one way to continue to grow and that's to be uncomfortable.
I mean, comfort is where growth goes to die, and we know that.
And it sounds like a back of a t-shirt, . And the reason why it sounds like a back
of a t-shirt is because it should be.
Right?
That's a fact.
Right?
And so, and so how do you do that?
You know, you really have to start challenging the status quo.
And that's, that begins, uh, internally.
One of the really interesting.
Conversation to be had with, with pushing ourselves outside a comfort
zone is that if you get too comfortable controlling the parameters out around
how you push yourself outside of comfort, you actually replicating comfortable
behavior in uncomfortable circumstances.
Right?
So you have to be really careful because if, if for you being in a, in a, in ice
water at four o'clock in the morning for an hour is comfortable, then you know
how, how, how it is theoretically an uncomfortable thing that you are doing.
No, you're just showing off, but you are, you're uncomfortable in it.
So right.
In order for you to be uncomfortable again, you're gonna need to do
something that's categor or, or at least drastically different or
longer or whatever the case may be.
So what is outside your comfort zone that you've been pushing yourself recently?
I am back to school pal after 20 years.
Yeah.
In uh, in higher learnings in a.
Quite the, the difficult program.
And um, and I'm loving every second of it.
And it's been, you know, learning to write from an academic standpoint.
And it wasn't so much the writing cuz I spent 20 years report writing and
doing things and, and writing business cases and those types of things.
So the writing itself was in the issue.
What was the issue is learning the processes surrounding academic
papers and how to even study again and how to read documents again.
Cuz I've been reading 600 pages of documents a week.
Right.
And so that's a book every week on various subjects, but now you're
just not reading to read and not that I I ever read just to read.
Sure.
But I generally read to, to grasp a concept out of whatever I'm reading.
Right.
But in this case, now I need to have the ability to retain and
refer to later down the line in, in, in writing academic papers.
Right.
In that recall.
Now that's, you know, the school thing.
Mm-hmm.
, that would be a challenge.
You know, I did college and university and only made it so far to get
the credits I needed to apply in the places that I wanted to apply.
And school is never a thing for me.
I don't know what it was like for you, but I know, yeah, it's really interesting.
I mean, it depends which, which.
Sort of segment of my life we are talking about, you know?
Mm-hmm.
. Cause I mean, I think, I don't think that schooling was ever
outside the realm of my abilities.
I think the problem was me being my own biggest enemy by, you know, letting my
focus float away by being focused on other things, by caring more about other things.
And, and so, but every time I actually applied myself to
school, I did well in school.
Mm-hmm.
, I mean, it can be argued that anytime I applied myself properly
to anything, I mean, you, you, you have to have a degree of success.
Even if that degree of success is measurable only against yourself
and to somebody else's opinion, may not be what it needs to be, but
it has to be in relation to you.
And so for me, it was all about.
Not completing the program and having the, the, the intent know, knowledge and, and,
and experience that will come out of that.
It was about how do I complete this program and become the person that
is capable of having the very tough conversation in the various areas
of this field of endeavor and do so with some confidence and some,
and some actual backings, you know?
Right.
You know, what you were talking about kind of deal.
Well, speaking about, talking about, you've been doing some,
some pretty prestigious talks here.
You've been keynote speaker at some places.
Is that just piece of cake for you?
Are you just uh, naturally born public speaker?
What , tell me about this cuz they rank that as number one fear for a
lot of people is, is public speaking.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
I have a very interesting relationship with public speaking.
I mean, I.
When I was, when I was younger, much younger, and I think we may
have spoke about that before.
I mean, I got some severe beatings in group settings, , mm-hmm.
. Okay.
And so I always, there was always a, there was always something there that was Mm.
Lingering, so to speak.
And, and, and, and, and, and it brought a certain amount of stress to, to
public speaking, but also as, as a, as the only visible minority to, to,
to, to, to grow in a certain area.
I had to learn to use speech and, and, and, and jokes and, and,
and have the ability to connect with people in a verbal sense.
Mm-hmm.
to be able to survive really.
I mean, it became a survival ment uh, mechanism for me as a youth and so
there was the two, those two piece pieces are not mu mutually exclusive.
Right.
They kind of, they kinda, they kinda balanced each other out, so to speak.
And so over the years it became less about natural propensity and what kind of
work was I putting in to be ready mm-hmm.
So then I took the emotions out of that essentially and treated it
as a, as a mathematical equation.
Like how am I gonna make myself better?
No different than what Abraham Lincoln did, for example.
I'm not comparing myself to Abe Lincoln , but you, you were talking about somebody
that was a very shaky speaker mm-hmm.
That had a lot of challenges, including stuttering and different things.
And next thing you know is delivered some of the, some of the most compelling
speeches ever to be delivered, ever to be heard, you know, in, in the
history of humanity, at least recorded.
. So you're feeling that the proper prior planning, which prevents
piss poor performance, right?
Mm-hmm.
, mm-hmm.
, the, uh, kind of does away with those nerves, or are you still
feeling that when you're in there?
Yeah, I still, I still feel them.
For me, it's there, there's a few things that really help me and,
and I have a tendency to go blank.
I, I've done that a few times where I will hit the floor and go blank, completely.
Like, I don't remember why I'm there.
What am I supposed to talk about?
? I've done that.
, I've done that, and it's funny for me.
Anyways, all of a sudden blank.
And all of a sudden you just hear this boom, sort of like, hold on a second.
And it's almost like an out of body experience.
And you're like looking at yourself
I got a way that I work with that.
How do you work with that?
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
So for me, when it happens, the biggest predicator of where the rest
of this lecture is going to go is my ability to control my premature panic.
Hmm.
Because when it happens, it's the most panicking feeling.
Mm-hmm.
, you can possibly feel like you're standing in front of a room of 3, 4, 500 people
expecting big things because they heard about you before, or some of their friends
heard you speak, or whatever the case may be, and next thing you know, you go blank.
The panic that it induces is, is.
Unmatched.
Mm-hmm.
, like, it's, it's, it's very real.
And so for me, it's all about premature panic.
How am I gonna control the premature panic factor?
There is no timeline.
When you get to the front of the room, there is no timeline at which
you are expected to start speaking.
Mm-hmm.
, right?
Mm-hmm.
. And so for me, it, it, that's exactly my coping mechanism.
It's, if this happens to me, I will stand there and breathe and start
talking about something until whatever it is that I'm supposed to talk about.
Percolates.
Mm-hmm.
. And I'm going to maintain my cool, calm, and collected demeanor and just
have that conversation, initiate the conversation, initiate a bit of bonding.
And once I'm getting a bit of positive return, I will, I will ease off.
My stress level will go down.
And, and, and then I will start flowing again, right?
Mm-hmm.
, what do you do?
Well, I, I remember one in particular.
I was asked to speak at the, uh, I was up in Whistler.
They put me up up there and I was at a, um, uh, private security event.
What was it?
P I A B C.
I think.
I'm like, what?
I don't know why they want me up here, but there's certain
things they want me to talk on.
Sure.
Not a problem.
I can do that.
And I get up there and I started talking.
I was a part of a panel and all of a sudden, bang completely blank.
And I look around and the difference was I'd already
started talking and I went blank.
And I look at me and people start looking at me.
And when you're talking about that anxiety, that panic, I
found the best possible thing that you can do is not fight it.
Mm-hmm.
not fight that panic, not fight that feeling.
Cuz the more you fight it, the more it builds on itself.
And if you could just say, huh, this is interesting.
And you just explore it as it happens.
And when you say there's no time limit, You know what they asked me to be here.
I was talking about something.
They can wait a minute or so while I collect my thoughts.
Um, another thing I've done in the past as well is just call it right
out in the table . And I just said, have you guys ever had an experience
where you were on a train and it just crashed and went right off?
I'm experiencing that right now and it'll get a laugh out of everyone.
Out of everybody and said, you know what?
The overwhelming feeling I'm having right now is, and I'll talk it through,
but I'm gonna push through and I'll just tell 'em that I'm gonna push through.
We're gonna get ourselves back on track.
Will you guys give me that, that, that, uh, patience and maybe
crack a couple jokes in between?
And next thing I know we're back on track.
Mm-hmm.
, I, I remember one job interview I did and it was a group interview.
First one I did in a group and it was for a job I really wanted, I was
doing promotions for, uh, Corona Beer at the time and you get to travel
around and you get a Corona Jeep and they give you an expense account.
And I was like, think 20 years old and like, ah, this is what I want.
And.
, they had a jug of water on the table and I figured, oh, I'll
start pouring people some water.
And there's, I don't know, 12 people at the table.
And then the three bosses that were doing the interviewing, the first thing
I did was spill that jug over everybody
Oh God.
Like, ah, what do you guys think of me so far ? And everyone starts laughing.
I ended up getting the job , and they said it was because of that
little thing there, but it could have gone completely differently.
Of course.
Yeah.
It's, um, it's really interesting and one of the things that I, I think I was able
to, to, to get out of this as well, to prevent it from reoccurring in the future
is to have a framework around my talk.
So what I do now, which I didn't do before and didn't prefer to do
before is to have a few slides.
Mm.
And a lot of the speakers, have had slides.
I didn't have any slides and I was kinda winging it going off the
cuffs, which is something that I generally I'm, I'm pretty good at.
Right.
And it always pays dividend.
In this case, it actually worked out, but it increased my stress
to a bit of an unimaginable level.
So I was like, okay, you know what, next time we won't be trying this.
Mm-hmm.
, because I may not be as lucky.
I may not have the ability to, to regain my composure so easily.
Mm-hmm.
. And so how can I logistically facilitate success in addition to having the
backup plan, which is, there's no rush for you to speak mm-hmm.
like there isn't, so don't start.
You know, spewing your mouth, uh, just, just start talking about something
and then go down, go down a road and, and it doesn't matter where it
takes you, but also if you have the logistical help that you need, you're
less likely to have that happen.
Now what's interesting with this is from a stress perspective, a stress management
perspective, if you are prepared and you have a slide, a few slides, you are
likely to lessen your stress level enough that you don't even experience this.
And so that's great.
So preemptively I could have, you know, I could have prevented that, right?
Theoretically.
I mean, I can't prove it now cause I haven't done
it , but , you know, it, I've.
Heard that, uh, anxiety, panic attacks are some of the worst things
that people tend to experience from a psychological perspective.
And they feel like they're dying.
And when I mentioned before that I will just say, huh, this is interesting.
I'm not gonna try and stop and I'll explore it.
Apparently that's a common tool also used for panic attacks.
And they say, where do you feel?
What does it feel like?
Are you, does it feel like you can't breathe?
Does it feel like your heart's beaten?
Does it feel tight in your chest?
Right.
How far does that feeling extend to?
Is it extend larger than you at some point?
Where does it feel like it's diminishing?
And you explore those little diminishing areas.
What, without trying to stop what's actually happening?
Mm-hmm.
. And a byproduct of that is your brain will start figuring itself out.
Maybe I'm not in danger.
Maybe I actually know what I'm talking about.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, I thought that was an interesting little piece of information
that was, uh, uh, relayed to me.
I was going to sort of bring into the conversation a urban myth or a rural
myth in this case where an, an indigenous person told a, a grandson, you know,
the, the about the wolf you feed.
So if, if there's good and bad in, there's a bad wolf and a good wolf in
each of us, which one prevails in the end?
And it's the one you feed, right?
And so I always like this saying in relation to dealing
with anxiety or dealing with.
Doubts and uncertainty and those types of things, the things that are hovering
above us as, as humans consistently.
But one of the, one of the conversation I had, a very insightful conversation
I had with a pro professional mixed martial artist and a, and a champion
with numerous title defense defenses was How do you, and, and so if somebody
had told me that that person had the ability to absolutely look exactly the
same on Sunday afternoon on a stroll in the bush versus entering the cage
to lock them, you know, lock themselves in there with somebody trained to
essentially hurt them for 12 weeks, right?
And, and, and did so with absolutely no issues.
And so I asked him, I said, is it that you don't have any fear at all or don't
have any anxiety or, or apprehension, or how do you manage to be the person that
you are when you go inside the cage?
Which evidently led to his successful reign as a champion and everything.
And he said, he said this, he said, imagine that you enter the cage
and there is four wolves in there.
All your doubts and insecurities and anxiety and potential
outcomes are all in this cage.
I make eye contact with them.
I acknowledge their presence and I feed them evenly.
Not, one over the other.
And so,
his rationale for saying that was, what is a starving wolf doing?
It actually is worse.
It, it comes back swinging.
And so his thing was you need to acknowledge and metaphorically
applicable evidently.
Sure.
But I, I thought it was the stuff of genius in, in terms of I like that.
Yeah.
I've never, I've, you know, I've heard the first one.
Mm-hmm.
, I've never heard the second one.
Mm-hmm.
. I think there's a lot of value to that as well, because, . It's like
saying, don't think of pink elephants.
Mm-hmm.
, well, what are you thinking of?
Right.
And the more effort you put into not wanting to feed a certain thing, the more
it becomes something to contend with.
Sure.
Absolutely.
And it's, no, it's no different than anything else.
I mean, if we wanna make a very simple correlation with sleeping, for example,
the last thing you are going to do if you are trying to sleep is sleep.
That is a fact, right?
Like, so what do you do?
You flank your brain.
You, you go, you start thinking about other things.
You start considering other things you start.
And if there's, if there are things that are really truly impacting your
sleep, uh, regime as a result of like the stress that it creates or whatever,
evidently you wanna stay away from those things and try to go into other
areas where you can do some exploration.
But if you focus on sleeping, you are absolutely not sleeping.
And that is a fact.
And sleep is such a huge part of your mental wellbeing.
Of course it is.
I mean, uh, you and I have both been talking on the collective mm-hmm.
. And they talk about all things under the sun, the topics thrown
at you, you need to go into it.
And mental health was, uh, an overriding sort of topic that seems to
be, uh, discussed on the collective.
And if anyone listened to this, hasn't heard of that yet, I'm gonna
put links to it in the, uh, the description and they can check it out.
But the formula seems pretty straightforward in theory, and
that's have some form of purpose.
And if you don't know what your purpose is, take a look at what your purpose isn't
and see if you can weed it out that way.
Um, get some exercise.
Go for a walk.
Right?
Just get outside, get some exercise.
Uh, eat well.
Limit your, um, limit substance abuse.
And that could be caffeine, nicotine, drugs, alcohol, uh, technology.
People are addicted to their phones and social media.
And you kind of marry those things together and it will
lead to a healthier lifestyle.
And that's, um, I don't know where I was going with all of that, but Well,
it, you're, no, you're absolutely right.
And, and what we as humans tend to do is to address wellness
is and is in his one silo.
You know, the wellness, right?
The wellness silo.
Not understanding or not comprehending the fact.
, this is all interconnected.
Mm-hmm.
, there is no dissociation going on here.
You know, like if I'm, if I'm, the, the humans on a, on an emotional
standpoint are like pullies.
You know, you pull on one, you pull on one side, something
gives like it, it goes like this.
Mm-hmm.
, it's not.
And so in order to keep things in balance, we need to be in balance.
And how do we, how do we do that?
We need to address every single impactful aspect of our lives as we,
or as many of them as we possibly can.
Mm-hmm.
to maximize our wellness overall.
So the wellness become, becomes a symptomology of doing the things
correctly in these other areas.
Not how do I pursue wellness?
Pursue meaning, pursue excellence, pursue fulfillment.
Mm-hmm.
, pursue purpose, pursue and have the right relationship and, and, and, and,
and be physically where you need to be.
Where you, where you, where you ought to be, where you owe yourself to be.
Mm-hmm.
to, you know, eat the food that nourishes you, go out in the
outdoors and connect with nature.
Disconnect from the city.
Like all of those things contribute hugely to the wellness paradigm.
And we, we'd need a paradigm shift.
I mean, there's no question.
Yeah.
They call it urban anxiety.
Right.
Pe people cooped up in the urban anxiety.
Um, and we were talking before the show, people saying, well,
it's all easy for you to say Seb.
I mean, it's easy for you to go to the gym.
It's easy for you to say these things.
I would argue perhaps the inverse on that is true.
Maybe it's not quite as easy because you've pushed so hard and it's
become something that's now a more difficult routine to, uh, to keep.
Or you've injured yourself in certain areas, but you're gonna go anyways, or you
can make those justifications to yourself.
I've already been to the gym x amount of times this week.
I, I guess I can afford to, you know, not do it today.
Um, what would you say to somebody who says, this is easy for you Seb?
. Well, first of all, thank you very much for taking everything I've ever
stood for, you know, and the, and the discipline that I self-imposed mm-hmm.
to, to be, to be where I went and to have the, a certain level of
success in the field of endeavor or my chosen field of endeavor, but also
that's not affecting my performance in life, but it's affecting yours.
Mm-hmm.
, because now you are, you're, you're, you're essentially addressing the
problem with a victim mentality.
Yes.
And people don't like to hear that, but if you are a victim, you are, you cannot
regain control over a certain situation.
If you are a victim, then external factors control and dictate where this goes.
Mm-hmm.
when in reality you have a great deal of control over this.
And so if you realize I just exposed the shortcoming, I know I can do
better here, and you take ownership of it and you regain control,
everything is within your purview.
Mm-hmm.
what.
The, the ne the nefarious sort of path that we can get into is getting addicted
to the fact that our inadequacies are creating a certain amount of
stress in a neurological sense.
Mm-hmm.
, and if I have a legitimate reason as to why I didn't do certain things, I
remove some, some of the stressors from my neurological system, which makes me
temporarily feel better about myself.
Mm-hmm.
and justifies the reason why I'm living the way I am.
The problem with that is that involuntary, the, this voluntary exposure that you
could benefit from is not occurring and so therefore you can rest assured it.
At some point you will get involuntarily exposed, and when you
do, it will not be on your own terms.
Mm-hmm.
, it will be on life's terms and you may not like the terms I really . I like the
thought process that I see becoming more and more prevalent and it's one of these
things, is it becoming more prevalent in society or is it something that I'm seeing
more and more in the same way that if you get a new vehicle and all of a sudden you
see that new vehicle all over the road.
Right.
But there's a British comedian, and I think he's been kind of doing the rounds
on social media and YouTube, and he was, um, in a, I don't, I think it was
a school debate system and they asked him to speak and essentially the crux
of his point that he put across and he put it across as most Brits do in a very
eloquent way, was one of the greatest travesties of our current culture and
our current kinda woke mentality is this victim mentality and the feeling
that people do not have the ability.
To make change in their own lives.
There's always a reason for it.
It's because of systemic racism.
It's because of, um, gender or, uh, your socioeconomic role in
society, whatever it might be.
There's a reason, and that removes the impetus from the individual, from
feeling that they have any sort of power over making change to themselves.
And that pendulum swing seems, I see it happening more and more, and it's
something that you preach loud and clear, is we all have the power to affect the
change that we want to see in our life.
I'm, I like that.
Yeah.
I, I think part of this paradigm shift has been some key figures
that I've had some success.
And so anybody who operated in a field where there's nobody to look,
look at when you fail a already.
understood those concepts mm-hmm.
and apply those concepts to their own lives.
The majority of those people are no longer in combat.
Mm-hmm.
, right.
So now we have, what we have is we have a wealth of knowledge that just ex filled
from Afghanistan and Iraq and I and I, you know, they're not the only ones.
Obviously there's, there's people in non-combat world, there's people
that are non-military that adhered and, and, and, and, and, uh, had
this as a foundational basis.
But I think what we are seeing is the Jocko Willink and the, the, uh,
David Goggins and all those guys, you know, having books that are
successful and explaining how they achieve a certain level of success
and, and, and at the forefront of this is often the killing the victim.
Mm.
Right.
But it's no news to anybody who spent any time in those fields.
Mm-hmm.
, when you have the luxury of being a victim is when this gets dangerous.
So, You run mental health walks, and when I say you run, it's something that
you've championed and you've put forward, but there's others that are helping out
and others who are attending as well.
And I think the, I if I'm not mistaken, there's, uh, other mental health walks
that are happening that were, uh, inspired by what you've been doing, but there are
so many different causes in the world and that a person can get attached to.
Typically somebody will champion something that speaks personally to
them or that they've been affected by in some way, shape or form.
Can you tell me a little bit about the impetus for these mental health walks
and what you've seen, the effects of it, and where you see it going in the future?
Yeah, I mean, one of the, one of the best ways for, for myself, and I'm, I'm, I'm
not going to impose this on everybody else because not everybody has the same coping
mechanisms, but for me, a lot of the.
Stress relief and a lot of the sort of, I don't wanna say venting, but,
um, a lot of the, a lot of the time that, okay, so I spent my entire
career dealing with critical incidents.
Yes.
Right.
My entire career.
An entire career.
And, and I was j i I wasn't only dealing with them from an internal
perspective as a person involved in those critical incidents, but also as
a, as a perspective of, of a leader.
So if, even if it wasn't me, the people that say worked for me that
were asked to go back over and over and over in critical incidents.
And so there was a, there was a, an absolute.
Absolutely critical piece here, which was, how am I going to help my people
to go to come to work, go to work, continue going to work, continue
addressing the types of calls that we are dealing with, continue doing the
things that we do, and remain healthy.
Are they family units remaining healthy?
How's their kids remaining healthy?
All those things.
So, so, so mental wellness was at the forefront of how we conducted business.
And we didn't have a choice in that matter.
Like we didn't mm-hmm.
if we didn't mm-hmm.
We would've, we would've fallen apart.
Fallen apart at the seams.
And so then there's two ways you can look at this.
What can my organization do to make things better?
What can this other person, or that person, or which
program can do, which for who?
And.
, what am I actually doing?
Mm-hmm.
, now take, take all of the external factors out of the out of the way.
Have I optimize what I can be doing on my own?
And if I can, and if I have optimized it now, where do I go next to get some
additional help from the external world?
Mm-hmm.
. Whereas for me, it's always the same.
How can I make things better?
It isn't gonna be perfect.
If you are waiting for the perfect plan, you might as well never start anything.
Mm-hmm.
because it doesn't work that way.
That's why some people love the saying, you know, jump out of an airplane and
build a parachute on the way down.
, as long as you have the right components.
Sure.
. Yeah.
But, and that was a very, and for me it was very, very therapeutic to go
out in nature, connect with nature.
In fact, it still, it still is a strongly impacting of my behaviors
last week, for example, like, I'm not somebody that's overly prone to
anxiety, but I do, I, I am, you know, human and I, and I experience anxiety
and sometimes more than others.
And especially if I'm embarking on a journey that has a lot of unknowns
such as school right now, and some of the, the work I had to, I have
to push out those types of things in addition to my, you know, financial
situation, which is self-generated Sure.
Unlike before, when a paycheck was coming regularly.
Those types of things.
So the stress can really, can really impact you.
And last week I woke up one of those days I was in Washington, a Mount Rainier in
a little cabin in the woods with my dogs.
And I just loved every, every minute of it.
But one morning I woke up and I was.
very anxious for whatever reason.
And I, I, I didn't exactly put my finger on what those re reasons were,
and it were, and I think it's probably compounding issues that, you know, a lot.
I, I had a lot of stuff going on.
Mm-hmm.
, a lot of things was, um, was in need of me to be addressing, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
. And so anyways, I acknowledged a feeling.
I told my girl, my girlfriend, I said, look, I, it's weird.
This morning I have this anxiety, you know, which I normally don't really have.
Right?
Let's go out in nature.
Let's go connect, let's go do some training with the dogs and see
where, see, see where it takes us.
And she's like, absolutely.
So we went out to waterfalls and I spent a day exploring this amazing waterfall.
Took my dog there.
We did all kinds of work together.
We took some shots, we had some great conversations.
And I came out of there a completely different human.
Yes.
Like completely different.
We are talking a full hundred percent recharge, ready to take
on the world, not just, I feel better than I did this morning.
Mm-hmm.
. And so the problem is trying to convince people that the simplest things are
often the things that can help you the most is like the most difficult task.
Mm-hmm.
, because everybody thinks there there has to be a complex roadmap to, to dealing.
With issues.
Otherwise, if it wasn't the case, why isn't anybody else doing it?
Right.
Or a magic pill or, or Precisely.
Right.
Precisely.
And so and so for me is there, the question came, is there anything I can be
doing to help the collective based on my skills, knowledge, and abilities and years
of experience in managing mental wellness?
And can this something be effectively implemented without, you know,
logistical support, financial backing and all those things?
And is there something that can be done?
And the answer is absolutely it can.
And we did.
And it is working.
You know, can I pre present an empirical, an empirically.
Database or data analysis?
No, I can't show you a, a, a data analysis, but I can tell you with
all the people that have part participated in the walks that have
been coming regularly and the impact that it, that it has on their lives.
So one of the danger of database analysis is that if you don't have that,
you automatically lose credibility, which isn't always the case at all.
Totally Not like, you can call it anecdotal if you want, but if, if,
if 200, 300, 600 people show up for walks regularly, you know, at at
there's getting outta it and they're coming back and, and feeding you the
feedback loop is always the same.
Mm-hmm.
And the consistency that you're able to establish within those
anecdotal accounts is undeniable.
And, and, and that's precisely what happened.
It's been undeniable.
I hear back from people who've been on these walks.
Uh, a friend of mine lost his father and dealing with his own things, but he
says, you know, those walks were hugely.
A huge step for him in being able to, um, center himself.
And I think a part of that is just the community that you're surrounding
yourself with and the ability for you to recognize that it's okay to
be feeling these certain things.
Not everything's gonna be picture perfect, like what, what is shown in
some Instagram or social media posts?
And there's others out here who are taking steps to being better themselves
and they wanna see me be better as well.
I think that that community aspect of what you've been building exceeds just being
outdoors and commuting with nature and then that's a huge part, being outdoors
and commuting with nature, but that community that you're building, where do
you see next steps for that community?
Yeah.
It, it's a, it's a very interesting question.
I, so there's the part of me that's dreaming about certain things that's
dreaming in a, in a, in a realistic way to perhaps some of the initiatives that I
would love to see implemented by myself.
Mm-hmm.
over the course of my lifetime, amongst those things is a trauma center for
first responders is, you know, uh, equin therapy for, again, for first responders.
And in fact, I don't think I'd be, I'd be, you know, Denying anybody.
But anyways, for, for the sake of the conversation, you know, it's, it's, my
target audience would be first responders.
Mm-hmm.
, the, the people that are put through certain difficult situations and asked
to go back over and over and over and over again because they're, the,
the, the rates of occupational stress injury, the rates of, of, of lives
that are destroyed by the constant exposure is absolutely catastrophic.
And the reaction from the either veterans affair or is, is obviously
not in line with what it should be for what we ask these people to do.
And so, if you're a veteran that's spent.
Went overseas and, and, and did work on account of the collective for
something that you were asked to do.
An extremely difficult, something that most people couldn't fathom.
You return to your country only to be suggested made, which has been the
case here in Canada, is absolutely, absolutely preposterous and it's
absolutely unacceptable as a society.
Mm-hmm.
, it can never happen.
Mm-hmm.
it's really strange that it is being suggested.
It is happening and it's a testament to, I, I guess, the way people think
about things currently or those who are running the programs are thinking
about things and it's the wrong way.
Um, when we talk about surrounding ourselves with positive people, we
were talking off air prior about, uh, I think you said there's a
study about millionaires and they hang around with, uh, they tend to
have a disproportionate number of millionaire friends compared to others.
I, so growing up, I went through a number of different schools and a
number of different high schools.
I went to a couple of private schools in there.
So I got a chance to see what the posh private school life was like, what the
um, uh, public school system was like.
Like I was in the worst rated school for British Columbia at one
point, and the one thing that I
was left with is not necessarily that a private school's gonna be
offering a better education, cuz some of the public schools offer
just fantastic education programs.
It's not necessary that they're gonna have better access to equipment or resources.
They likely might just based on the, uh, the affluent
individuals who are drawn to it.
But the one thing that it seems to do is it surrounds people with other
people who come from backgrounds of success if they're able to
afford that sort of lifestyle.
And it kind of just ingrains into them the expectation of success in themselves.
And I found those sort of connections and those sort of,
um, expectations that somebody can develop at a, at a younger age.
And it doesn't have to be young.
They can be old when they start changing the expectations for themselves
makes a world of a difference in the outcome of a person's future.
. Yeah, absolutely it does.
And compounded with that is the observation that, like the direct
observation of the success mechanisms being enacted by the people that
you're surrounded with, right?
If you actually get to not only be around successful people, but you
get to see them react to situation and interact with life mm-hmm.
, and that teaches you things.
Mm-hmm.
, it teaches you things, it teaches you perspective, it teaches you,
uh, having a positive outlook.
It teaches you about yourself.
It teaches you about some of your shortcomings.
It just teaches you everything you need to know to be successful.
And so the problem with that is you can also surround
yourself with the wrong group.
And there's two, there's areas that are problematic in there that A: you're
either at the top of the heap, and if you're at the top of the heap, guess what?
You're going nowhere.
That's right.
, as they, as they often say, if you're at the top of the heap and you're surrounded
by people that are quote unquote lower than you, and I just mean, yep.
From a whatever, whatever measure of success you self-imposed, then.
You're not growing out of that at all.
You're not challenging yourself.
You're not.
And so we're back to the comfort zone as right, as, as previously, as previously
discussed, you must be king of the losers.
Exactly.
Right.
Exa, and some people do.
Mm-hmm.
. . Right.
And, and thank God for them.
So the other people can go to the top.
Right.
Probably hopefully the right people.
But, um, but yeah, it's, it's really interesting.
It, it gives you, and I think one of the traps of being, of, of being a
human being is to think that whatever it is that we are facing is unique.
Hmm.
There is no way.
It's the case.
It isn't the case at all.
Like, I can, I can sit here all day and speak about how horrible my life was and
how much adversity I faced and everything.
There's always, and it's not about invalidating some of the adversity that I
went through those types and acknowledging it is fine, but it's important to have a
realistic perspective and to realize that.
, there's people out there that have it 10 times, a hundred, a thousand,
a million times worse than you, and they still are able to do some of the
things that you probably should do.
Mm-hmm.
. And so assu, and again, that sort of speaks to killing the the victim.
Right?
Like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm taking ownership of this.
It's like, listen, yeah, my life was difficult.
Whatever the case may be, this is the prospect I was dealt with.
There's nothing I could have done to change, and it's in the past,
there's nothing I can do to change it.
Mm-hmm.
. But what I can do is regain control of where I'm going and how I'm
doing it, and who I surround myself with as I'm proceeding towards.
And that perspective, that change in perspective that people can
get, I think is hugely important.
Coming from a difficult background and everyone's gonna have
difficulties of one type or another.
Their difficulties should never be measured against somebody else cuz
people are gonna have different, uh, mental makeup, um, personality
types, life experiences that will make them think that there's gonna
be a different outcome or cause different levels of possible anxiety.
But that the perspective on your, um, uh, on, on the difficulties that
somebody may encounter to look back and say, you know what, yeah, it was
tough, but look it, here I am now.
And I wouldn't change that for anything because if I change those things and I
didn't have those difficulties thrown at me, would I be where I am now?
And if I didn't have those low moments, would I really be able to
compare what a high moment feels like?
And I think that's, you know, there's a, um, when we did our last podcast together,
do you remember what I titled it?
Probably not, but I, I, I think it was, uh, the plugging
Away will win you the day.
Yes, yes.
Do you know why I titled it that?
So that was the overriding thing sense that I get from you.
And it's based on a poem by Robert Williams service, the Bard of the Yukon.
I don't know if people know this one.
Do you want to hear it?
Yes, I would love to.
. We'll see.
We'll, we'll see if I can . So, uh, Robert Service wrote a poem called
The Quitter, and he goes, if I can remember this, it goes when you're
lost in the wild and you're scared as a child, and death looks you bang in
the eye when you're sore is a boil.
It's according to Hoyle de cock your revolver and die.
But the coat of a man says, fight all you can.
And self disillusion is barred in hunger and whoa, it's so easy to blow.
It's a hell served for breakfast.
That's hard.
, you're sick of the game.
Well, that's a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
You've had a raw deal.
I know.
Don't squeal.
Buck up.
Do your damnedest and fight.
It's a plugging away that'll win you the day.
Don't be a piker old part.
Just draw your grit.
It's so easy to quit.
It's a hell served for breakfast that's hard.
I think I repeated that part there.
But it goes on to say you are, it's easy to cry that you're beaten and die.
It's easy to crawfish and crawl, but to fight into fight when
all hopes outta sight, why?
That's the best game of them all.
And though you come out of each grueling bout of broken and beaten and scarred.
Just have one more try.
It's dead easy to die.
It's a keeping on living.
That's hard.
Wow.
I can't believe I remember that one actually.
That's, I, I can't, I can't remember it either.
, in fact, is there a prompter behind me?
I know some prompter , but that was, that was the overriding
sense that I got from you.
And I thought, you know, that just kind of stuck in the back of my head
and that's why I named the, uh, the podcast episode that I love that.
And, and, and it has a such a visceral and, and so powerful sort
of repercussion, or it can mm-hmm.
have to have that kind of mentality.
I mean, every.
Interaction with adversity from anybody's, anybody's perspective is for the world
to see and the world is watching.
Hmm.
And the people around you, and I'm talking about the people
that are actually meaningful.
You know, your kids, your spouse, your, your friends, the people that
have importance in your life and their contr contributors to your life.
When they are faced with their own version of adversity, those reactions
from the people that they either look up to or love or, or care for, or
whatever the case may be, is massive.
Mm-hmm.
, what kind of service is this?
Mm-hmm.
on, on account of the collective to actually demonstrate.
The proper behaviors.
Once, once the, you, the, you know, what hits the oscillator, and
this is, and, and, and it's easy.
Mm-hmm.
to speak to theoretical approach, to problem solving certain things.
It's, it's easy to have, you know, quote quotes made on the back of a,
or put on the back of t-shirts mm-hmm.
that, that you can just regurgitate all day on the social mm-hmm.
But at the end of the day, when you are face-to-face with adversity, how, how
you react will dictate how other people react to adversity when they face it.
So it is a social responsibility.
It's not just an individual pursuit.
Mm-hmm.
. And I love that.
I love that.
So I've got a question, , you don't have to answer this.
Yeah.
Why did you move on from the RCMP mm-hmm.
. ? Well, it's a multi-layered answer.
So let's start with why I joined in the first place.
I joined to be on the emergency response team.
I joined to become a team leader on the emergency response team.
That is all, mm-hmm.
. That's all I ever joined the force for.
Mm-hmm.
, that's all I ever wanted to be.
That's all I ever wanted to do.
Once I achieved this and I stayed in the, in the position for a long time
and I started feeling like perhaps I should start looking at other things
on account of, it was taking a massive toll on me to upkeep everything
that ne needed to be up kept, and in addition to my command level things.
So we're talking about hands and feet skills, and we're
talking about command level.
knowledge, skills, and experience, and have a, across a broad range
of domain to be setting the tone, so to speak, gets you very tired.
And I was at that point where I was starting to be really exhausted.
Mm-hmm.
. So there was, there was an opportunity for me to move on to
another position, and I moved to another position outside the team.
That opportunity was one of the best decisions I ever made.
And I think to a, to a, well, I would say, the hypothesis is that it, it helped
me, this move, actually my la my latest move helped me make the decision or have
the courage to make the decision that I knew was right for me, which was I
no longer want to go back to the team because I've, that ship has sailed.
I've done what I wanted to do, I've achieved what I wanted to do and more.
There is nothing for me to gain.
and where do I go next?
And if the answer is, I was never in for anything else in the first place and
now I'm looking at the prospect of going backwards in the myth of Oracle Sense,
if I was to return to the team, which I was set to do, I just simply decided, no,
actually I have enough skills, knowledge, and abilities to make it on my own.
I want to go out and explore the, the world outside of institutionalization.
I don't want to be, cuz I was institutionalized, of course
for for decades, of course.
And so I wanted to see the world through a different lens, through different lenses.
Not just a single lens.
But I and I, when I started school, I started looking at the same problems
that I've been looking at for decades.
From an academic standpoint or from.
, uh, an historian standpoint from a, a, whatever the case may be.
Mm-hmm.
and I started seeing like, look man, like there is other viewpoints
that have value that are valid.
And I think you can get caught up in that loop where you think that your lens is
the end all be all, and that is the lens by which everybody should view the world.
That's not how this works.
And that's not how we become, become better.
So I knew that I could contribute something to the world if I was brave
enough, so to speak, to go out on my own and explore the world and look at
it through a different lens so that I could marry up some of the differences
and bridge the gap instead of polarizing.
That is extremely powerful.
Did you recognize that there were other ways to look at it, that.
while you're in there and did you have a sort of a guiding light as to what
you felt your next step would be, or did you just step out of the plane and start
making the parachute on your way down?
I've, I've always been extremely self-aware and also very inquisitive.
And so I knew that there ought to be something more to this.
It, it ought to be that there's an, there's an inherent bias in what it
is that I'm doing and how will I know if I'm a subconsciously biased in a
certain set of circumstances, and how can I expose this and how can I add
to the arsenal and by having different lenses that I can look at the world
through and how can I bring my lens through an academic world, for example.
I mean, we are, we're in our cohort in university right now, and
when somebody goes on about some utopian idea of how you counter.
Terrorism or, or, or how you affect an hostage rescue or
whatever the case may be.
I'm able to bring an operational reality mm-hmm.
, so I bring the lens of operational reality to people that have been for,
in some cases, lifelong academics.
Mm-hmm.
and the, the society that separates his scholars and his warriors.
Sure.
Right.
And, and so for me it's, it's, it's now becoming something where I know I have
something to contribute by way of my skills, knowledge, and experience over
the course of the decades that I was involved in this, in this pursuit mm-hmm.
but also now I'm able to see the other side of things and bridge that gap.
And so I think as I was bridging the gap with the commanding officer of the
division as the sergeant major responsible to make sure that we understood what the
troops were going through and to make sure that the troops understood what
the commanding officer's office and the executive leadership was dealing with.
I've done that now, extrapolated on a higher level, which is, you know, with
other humans, basically and, and, and, and in another field of endeavor.
But same, same, no change.
I just want to bring, I just wanna marry up things.
I'm for unity.
I want unity.
I do not want decisiveness.
And there's only one way to achieve that.
And that's to be able to be in other people's shoes.
Mm.
You can't achieve that if you stay in your boots and anchor
yourself to your positions.
You need to explore.
Do you recognize anything that you're doing right now that
you need to push harder on?
Is there something that you're looking at that maybe is a bit outside
your comfort zone, but you realize you're gonna have to dig into it?
And again, this isn't something that has to be talked about here,
but I'm just generally curious.
Mm-hmm.
. Because I might have a difficult time answering a question like that here.
Yeah, it's,
yeah.
It's, it's, for me, I think most of my discomfort comes from things that I have
to do in order to cement the business in a, in a position where I no longer
have to worry about where my next sort of financial gain is going to come from.
And, and, and I'm not, and I'm not speaking in terms of
necessarily, um, I, I don't need to be richer or anything like that.
That is not what I'm after.
Yeah.
But a certain amount of financial freedom that prevents me from having
to ever consider going backwards, which is going back to what I know,
going back to the field that I'm, so, I add tools to the toolbox so that
I'm, so that I am able to move on to go and, and, and take other pursuit.
Maybe be a professor in university.
I would love to do that.
And it's, it's already been floated by me.
So eventually it, that might be in the, in the, you know, in the, and
that would be pretty cool in, in the cards, but also, guess what?
I am no longer limiting myself to a single course of action.
Mm-hmm.
because it needs to be run concurrently.
If we want life to be successful, I can't, for the life of me do all
the things that I want to do in life if I do them back to back.
Mm-hmm.
, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so and so.
Right now, I'm at a point in my life where I want to get and maximize and optimize.
My life experience.
Mm-hmm.
, like, what have I done?
What have I, what have I achieved?
What have I pursued?
What have I learned?
What have I, I want to God, if I could get all the knowledge,
like, you know, the matrix style.
Sure.
When you get it injected, straight into your brain.
I would love that.
And so I'm at a, I'm at a point in my life where I want to optimize
and maximize the learnings.
I want to optimize and maximize my performance in
all kinds of various fields.
And I want to be as open minded as I possibly can on my way to doing that.
Mm-hmm.
or achieving that, and I'll never achieve it.
We, we all know that, but it's, it's a pursuit that matters, right.
At the end of the day.
And so it's all about not missing out.
I have a, I have a very, very strong fear of missing out when it comes to life.
The fomo.
Yeah.
But it's like FOMO of how can I optimize this life experience, you know?
Well, there's two ways that you can, you can look at that, right.
Whether that be the life experience, whether that be financials, whatever
it might be, you either make more or do more, or you accept being
happy with less and either way will lead you to that same spot.
That's a difficult conundrum for a striver though, to say, I know I'm
capable of so much more and I know what I can do can affect other people and it
can help them in a very positive way.
But I think I'm just gonna sit back and be happy with less that that's oftentimes
looked at in a negative way by those who strive, but maybe it shouldn't be.
No May.
Maybe those who are, um, maybe that example of being happy with a
less is something that's gonna be helping other people around you.
Hey, at the end of the day, it's about being you.
You do what works for you, you, you, you discount what doesn't work for you
or, or, I, I'd say you vet carefully what you perceive is of no use to you,
so that you may still take something out of it and continue going on in
whatever path is, you know, meaningful and satisfying and purposeful to you.
Mm-hmm.
, I, we've had this conversation before where people are, it's so polarized
that if somebody is brilliant mm-hmm.
and says one thing that doesn't jive with your values or whatever, now that
person is fully discounted, right?
Mm-hmm.
, I, I don't listen to him because he's, he's, he's said that one thing I hated.
Yeah, exactly.
And so for me is, , even if you're, and, and it's funny you should
mention that, because I was in a guest speaking appearance in Alberta during
a massive townhouses realty Yeah.
Meeting hundreds of people and beautiful meeting and, uh, incredible leadership
from the, from the people at townhouses.
But, um, anyways, I ended up, um, there was a lot of emphasis
on financial gains, right?
So, you know, if you want to be a, a six figure earner, a seven figure
earner, whatever, you know mm-hmm.
like, hey, I sure there was, there was some pretty astronomical numbers
being, being, being tossed around that I, that I'm actually, you know,
not really a part of at the moment.
But what was really interesting is I stepped up in front of the panel
at some point and I told the crowd something that surprised them.
Being a million dollar earner may not be your version of success.
Right.
Period.
Mm-hmm.
. And if that's the case, don't let other people's meaning of success dictate
how you should think and feel about what you feel is successful, perhaps
because there is a cost to any of this.
And if you are going to be a million dollar earner, you are
likely to have an obsession.
And if you have an obsession, there are, there are things that are gonna
have to be put on the back burner because there's only 24 hours in a day.
Mm-hmm.
. And those things can be your family, friends, relationships,
whatever the case may be.
And it may not.
Mm-hmm.
. But at the end of the day, you have to do what means something
to you and you have to do.
, something that you have set forth for yourself, not what other
people are evaluating success by.
Mm-hmm.
, I mean, if that was the case, anybody who isn't making a ton of money would be, you
know, by, by a lot of people's standards.
Mm-hmm.
would be essentially, they would negate their entire existence on account of
they never reach a certain financial freedom or whatever the case may be.
Right.
Which is completely preposterous and also so short-sighted that it's
almost, you know, a self licking ice cone, ice cream cone as ice cone thing
described , you know, the, there is a certain amount of money the people
have studied that have looked at it and said, yeah, money actually does.
By happiness, I'm sure it can up to a certain level.
Right.
Like you need, if you're not getting food mm-hmm.
, if you don't have a roof over your head, if there's certain things, if you
can't get back and forth to your work, you're not gonna be very happy and it is
gonna be a downward spiral from there.
So at a certain point, when all of those basic needs are met, the.
addition of money does not have the same exponential.
Mm-hmm.
, uh, benefits towards a person's happiness that many people would place on it.
In fact, it can have the inverse effect of making them more and more
miserable or amplifying the negative things that are in somebody's life.
And, you know, I think most people, the biggest thing that a rich person
can have would be to be rich in time.
Essentially, financial freedom.
To be able to choose what you wish to be able to do with your time, I
think is the epitome of being rich.
I am a hundred percent on board with this hypothesis.
I, you know, yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
How if, if the, if the financial situation.
is in line with the goals of how I want to leave my life in a meaning, in
a meaningful way, and, and, and how I want to explore and how I want to be out
in the world and doing certain things.
And it's really interesting because again, because there's so many people
with victim mentalities, when they're looking at people that are financially
successful, there's always a, a nefarious reason why that's the case.
And.
The fact is I have met some of the most financial, financially secured
people and they have done more in the financial standpoint in terms of generous
donation and whatever the case may be.
And yes, you know, there are tax breaks, but that's not what we are talking about.
We are talking about people that invested an incredible amount of
money that they don't owe anybody.
Mm-hmm.
on account of helping the collective.
So some of the, some of the most selfless and caring people I have seen utilize
their financial means to help others.
And so it's really easy to sort of lump people in the same, in the same
category on account of the things that we didn't achieve ourselves
and see ourselves as victim.
Or we can say, if I was where I need to be in a financial sense,
could I be even more effective in proliferating whatever goodness it
is on account of the collective.
And for me, this is always a a focal point.
Mm-hmm.
and, and we can have a million conversations and I will
always come back to that.
Mm-hmm.
, what are you doing for others?
And, and if you can't answer that start, where did that drive to do for others?
Where did that come from?
Did you realize at a young age that your happiness is dependent or co-dependent
on another person's happiness?
Yeah.
It, I wouldn't say that it's my dependent, that my happiness is co-dependent.
I would say that, I would say that, um, I've always been in positions where I
was on a wrong end of certain situations and, and there was never anybody to help.
And when there, and when there wasn't.
And so I'm talking about being a youth here.
Sure.
I'm talking about being, you know, in a, in an environment that wasn't conducive
to being the person I was at the time.
I wish I was that person.
And, and, and, and some of the challenges that came along with that
and some of the exposure to either violence or whatever the case may be.
Mm-hmm.
, but it was.
Uh, daily operation and for me, it, it was always about is there anything
I can do to help somebody else?
And once you have gained, once you have tasted what it feels like to truly and
viscerally help somebody in life, in whatever field, in whatever way that you
are capable of, there is not a single feeling in the world that beats that.
Mm-hmm.
, there isn't a single feeling in the world, a feeling of success
that beats having made a positive impact on other people's lives.
And I, I don't care.
I, I, I kind of don't really care how you look at it.
You need to experience it.
You kind of need to experience it to feel what it feels like.
And then, and then after you're, you know, it's almost, it's almost.
Uh, you are going to wanna proliferate that.
Mm-hmm.
, you are going to wanna replicate that.
You are going to want, and so is some of it self-serving?
Absolutely.
It is.
There's no, I would be, should be sitting here, disingenuously telling
everybody I'm not doing this for, for me it should be, it's a part, it's a,
it's a big part of who I'm doing it for.
I, I am doing it for me.
I want to feel good about my contribution to the world.
It doesn't need, I don't need to le le leave a legacy that speaks my name.
Mm-hmm.
, I do not mm-hmm.
. But what I need to do is to leave a quiet legacy that
continues proliferating goodness.
And, and, and I don't need to take credit for it.
I just need it to continue.
And that's something that for me, provides my life.
Meaning.
Mm-hmm.
a uh, I think there's a lot of value to recognizing what it does for you or the,
for the person who's helping others.
because you know, oftentimes you hear someone say, oh, I keep
helping other people, and they keep taking advantage of me.
Well, if you're coming back and saying that they're taking advantage of
you, it's probably because you had an expectation out of that interaction
that isn't now being fulfilled.
But if you can recognize that your expectation is simply that you get
enjoyment out, the fact that you can help others, and it's up to you to be
able to choose those people who you wish to help or not, what they do with
it afterwards is entirely up to them.
If they want to throw it right back in your face and you feel
like you're being taken advantage of, well maybe you're not helping.
Maybe you're not doing these things for the reasons that you
actually think you're doing it for.
. Yeah, precisely.
I mean, that's, that's a constant dichotomy and it's, and it's seems to
be rampant and people are very quick to point out on how many humans disappointed
them and whatever, and it's like, yeah.
Humans will disappoint.
Yeah.
That is an absolute fact.
And you can get, if you get guaranteed of one thing in this life
is that humans will disappoint you.
Mm-hmm.
. But will you disappoint you?
Mm-hmm.
, I'm not here to change your world.
I'm just, I'm just here to make sure the world doesn't change me.
And that's a very different perspective on things.
Right.
That should be on your t-shirt, , . We're starting a t-shirt, a t-shirt line.
I actually went out, I think I mentioned it to you before when I
was a teenager, I had, uh, this idea.
They had these no fear t-shirts everyone was wearing mm-hmm.
. I was like, they should make one that says no, your limits N O your limits.
Like you have no limits.
. Anyways, my kids are like, dad, you know, you could just go on
like Zazzle and make your own.
So I went ahead and I made my damn t-shirt.
But, uh, uh, yeah, I think maybe, uh, people listening, you wanna
see one of those on a t-shirt?
You let us know.
We can make it happen.
, we'll do a collaborate, co collaborated, uh, project between
Raven Strategic and Silver Core.
Absolutely.
new t-shirt lines like Harley Davidson are the most successful
t-shirt company out there, right?
? Uh, yeah.
It's, it's, and this is man, people, humans are hurting, hurting.
Like, I think we are vastly underestimated how much humans are hurting.
Vastly underestimate.
On what level do you think?
Um, I mean from a, from a.
Just a a meaning of life standpoint, just from a emotional and mental standpoint.
Just from like, we are, it, it, it's completely insane.
And, and who isn't?
People that are consistently fraught with adversity, people that are
consistently confronted by it.
I was in Haiti, as you mentioned, as you alluded to earlier, not on
a personal vacation with my family.
With your family?
Yes.
And my, and my, and my, and my, uh, in the cheap seats?
Pomeranian Fru-Fru . But, um, but I was in Haiti doing some work, and I
had a conversation, a very insightful conversation with some of the people I
was, I was working with and asked, I, I've spoke to mental wellness and suicide,
and the conversation inherently went a little weird as people were looking at me
going, why are people killing themselves?
So I'm thinking, okay, there's a few reasons why these guys would
be completely oblivious to this.
It's either they're, they're messing with me mm-hmm.
, or it's taboo to the point where they don't want to talk about
it, or they're privileged and they haven't been exposed to it.
Right.
So I, so I, which one is it?
So I started doing some research on, um, some of the sites, the peer reviewed sites
where we have a lot of academic material.
And I started reading and I found that Haiti actually has a 7% per
hundred per, uh, a hundred thousand people lower suicide rate than in
America, than in the States and Canada.
Interesting.
And I'm like, okay, let me, let, let me, let me get this straight into my head . So
what we have here, and by the time I was done in Haiti, I've spoken to people to 18
year old that have spent hours with dead bodies in front of their house that have,
that have seen all kinds of violence, proliferated against civilians, that
have seen all kinds of deaths and murder and, you know, whatever the case may be.
And yet have no concept of why would someone even consider
taking their own lives.
And we take this and, and bring it over America now, and we have the most
comfortable lifestyle we've ever had.
We minimize the amount of adversity that we encounter on a daily.
And in fact, most of our lives are without adversity for the most part, and our
suicide rates are skyrocketing, right?
People don't have that adversity.
They don't know how to deal with it.
Eade Shapen would say out of suffering have emerged as strongest souls.
The most massive characters are seared with scars.
Absolutely.
And that would speak to that.
That is so interesting.
Yeah.
So it was a very, it was a very, it was a very telling, um, you
know, consequentially speaking.
Now, how does this, and so what I do with this information is, okay, well
we're not changing the way we live in North America and this isn't going to
happen, so this is unrealistic, but how is this now applicable to my own
life and how do, how can I look at how I conduct business on account of
having that in the back of my mind?
So I'll give you an example of this, as parents do, I'm no different
trying to prevent my kids sometimes from experiencing some of the things
that made me the person I am today.
Mm-hmm.
. And to a certain extent there is value in that because I am lucky
to have turned out the way I have.
Mm-hmm.
, it's not just.
It's not just that what I experience is what I experience in, in, in, in
an amalgamation of, of Countess other factors that made me successful in
that, in, in that, you know mm-hmm.
in that, um, endeavor.
But had I been of different temperament, had I had different social experiences,
it, it could have went the other way.
Mm-hmm.
, and so I digress.
But what I was going on with this is essentially if I remove all the
adversity to my kids in my kids' life, what kind of tools am I giving them?
It's just, and that's helicopter style Parenting is very common here in the west.
Very common lawn moin.
Were you going front and you take care of all the problems before they even go up?
Sure.
And I, and I, and, and this to me was an sort of an exploratory tour into.
How are these people so resilient and how and how can they keep a positive
outlook on account of the circumstances?
And I don't get me wrong.
I'm there for, you know, a week, 10 days, and then I'm out.
Mm-hmm.
if everything goes well.
Mm-hmm.
, which evidently it did cuz I'm here . But, but, uh, but it had
me question, question everything.
The way I conduct business with my kids to make sure that I'm not overprotecting
them that, but also that I'm evidently not, uh, endangering them, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
Willing willfully anyways.
And um, yeah.
Remember a friend of mine in high school, he looks at me and
says, man, you're so lucky, Trav.
I said, well, why's that?
Well look at all these issues you've had.
Look at these problems.
Look at this adversity you've had.
He says, you know, My parents are well off and I've never had any
problems in my entire life, and I'm resentful towards my parents.
I'm like, are you kidding me?
You're resentful that you've been provided, like they've looked at
what would be optimal for you, and they've provided everything they
think you can, but yet doesn't matter where you come from.
It seems people will look back and look for reasons to be resentful, and
he would try and seek out adversity in some weird ways just so that he can
have a little bit more life experience.
Maybe.
In one way, he recognized the fact that there is value to, there is value
in, in suffering, there is value in pain, there's value to adversity.
Um, and at that point I looked at him and said, man, you're stupid . I
mean, you've, you've got everything.
You've got it all set up.
Why are you so upset?
Um, who knows?
Maybe there's a, uh, , maybe there's a lesson there somewhere
in a, in a happy medium between those two thought processes.
Yeah.
There's, there's no, there's no arguing that it has to be a measured approach.
I mean, there is a cost to benefit ratio and, and, and there is
no known algorithm for this.
And I'm sure it can be quantified and it's difficult, but if I look at, for
example, the group that I was with in Haiti yes, the resilience was up, but
also the meaning of life was lower.
Mm-hmm.
, right?
And so, and so there's, there is a cost associated with this, and
you can't discount that cost.
Mm-hmm.
. But what we do know is we are talking about an extreme here.
Mm-hmm.
, we're talking about an, an extreme to another extreme.
Right.
And so, generally, as it normally the case, the best
place to be is generally mm-hmm.
in a, in the middle somewhere in a measured approach.
And so, but it's good, I mean, having, having and being exposed, to that
kind of, that kind of circumstance and, and, and experience it sort of
firsthand, you know, like just being in country on the ground mm-hmm.
and, and actually having to be mindful that things can
go majorly sideways, quickly.
And having contingencies to deal with that and whatever brings a dose of
reality, reality back into my life and drag me outta my comfortable lifestyle.
But it also, having the interaction with the locals and having the conversations
also shows me that there is value in this, which we already know anyways.
Mm-hmm.
. And so now is how do I maximize and optimize the experience by
bringing this back to my country?
And how can I, how does this impact future speaking engagement, future
coaching, engagement, future parenting?
Mm-hmm.
Ventures.
Mm-hmm.
, et cetera.
You know, . And that's interesting, the constant thought process of how
we use this for growth, how we can use this for financial growth, for personal
freedom, for surrounding ourselves with people that are gonna be positive
influences and assist us in that endeavor.
You know, I, I keep kind of going back to that other thing that we're talking
about, about financial freedom, giving you the freedom of time and, you know,
I, I grew up, oh, almost all of my clothing was hand me downs, um, from
other people's older kids, my toys, uh, Jimmy Hull with say on most of my toys,
Bob Hu ll he was head of the, uh, J I B C Police Academy for quite some time.
But, uh, came from a very different mindset and relationship with, uh,
money and time and what I valued.
And when I figured I'm gonna start my own business, I had all of these
goals and expectations for what I felt were gonna be measures of
success wi within that business.
And I very, very quickly realized that I don't care about money.
And that relationship with money of not caring really allowed me to earn
money because I wasn't chasing it.
And if I'm chasing something, I'm always gonna be behind it.
And it's like rockerfeller, when a reporter wants asked him,
look at how much money you have.
Like, when's it enough?
How much, how much more do you need to make?
He's said, just $1 more, right?
Always just $1 more.
So I took a different approach and I, at a very early age, looked
at what my value structure is and what I hope to be able to achieve.
Hasn't been easy.
. But I'll tell you that the money aspect of it tends to figure itself out.
If you are working hard towards something you believe in, it's not work anymore.
And if you're bringing value to others, which you very evidently are
doing, that will see itself through your hard work and through the value
you're bringing, the money just comes.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
Provided that there is an actual plan in place that's viable and you know,
to, to, to to go along with, to go along with those amazing qualities.
Oh, your, your plan . You got a good plan, . Yeah.
No, it's, I'm telling you, man, for me right now, if, if hypothetical world.
I'm totally financially free and I don't have to work a day in my life.
I would be traveling the world incessantly.
Yeah.
Incessantly.
Like I want to go and train everywhere.
I want to go to Iceland and spend three months there.
I want to go, I love to go to Iceland.
I know.
I'm, I'm so going.
Yeah.
That or that is a fact.
As soon as I graduate from my program, my current program here, I will be heading
off ReykjavÃ­k oh, I, I, and I want to go in all the other areas, the less
known areas and, and and, and there's, there's so much beauty and power and,
and, and oh man, all over the world.
And I want, I don't want to miss, miss out on any of it.
So , I just want to, I just want to get, get doing that and continue
to, you know, proliferate goodness, but do it around the world.
Is there anything else that we should be chatting about?
I think we've talked about, uh, we've, we've weathered one power outage.
Um, talked about a fair gamut of things here.
Anything else we should be?
Hmm.
What have you And I have, is there anything we've been discussing , well,
we got some future plans, but I'm, I'm, I tend to hold those closer to my chest
because they, um, for two reasons.
I, number one, if it doesn't pan out quite the way, you don't want
to turn around and look like you're just blowing a lot of hot air.
But the other one is there's a dopamine release apparently when
you pre-talk about your plans.
Yep.
And it gives you that artificial feeling of accomplishment,
which I've come to recognize.
Mm-hmm.
. So I will talk about it after I've done it.
We've got there, you've got some pretty cool plans that you're looking at
and I think there's a couple things we can, uh, work together on to be
able to help other people out there.
Mm-hmm.
and I'm really excited about that.
Um, . But aside from those ones, I think if people want to, uh,
they can tune in, they can follow.
We'll put links to your social, we'll put links to your company
so they know where to find you.
If people, if you're looking for a keynote speaker at an event mm-hmm.
, I can't think of anybody better than yourself to be speaking with
such life experience and such, uh, a powerful message to be sharing.
I mean, even just, uh, that one that you were doing before, you were the
last speaker on that one, I believe.
Mm-hmm.
. Yeah.
Tired audience.
Tired crew.
Everyone's like, all right, so we got one more keynote speaker.
And you've got the ability to, I mean, you should have been, maybe
there's a reason why they put you last cuz they knew that you'd be able to
get everyone just absolutely amped.
Mm-hmm.
. So if you're looking for someone to, uh, share a life of, uh, wisdom
built the hard way, there's gonna be links in the, uh, description here.
I think, I think we've covered a, a fair gamut.
Yeah, absolutely.
I, I don't want to stick around just to hear the sound of my voice, but
I love having conversations with you and I'm glad we did it again.
Likewise, likewise Seb.
Thank you very much.
You are welcome.