Your Internal Baseline

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior
Podcast.
In today's episode, we'reflipping the lens inward.
You've heard us talk aboutreading the world around you,
the external baseline, but whatabout reading yourself?
Your internal baseline iseverything that shapes how you
see, think, and react underpressure.
It's your experiences, yourbeliefs, your stress, your
limits.
And if you don't know where youare internally, you can't make

(00:22):
sense of what's happeningexternally.
So today, Greg and I break downhow to check your own
calibration and why thequestion, where do I think I am
and where am I actually mightjust change the way you see the
world.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed the episode,and don't forget to check out
our Patreon channel foradditional content and
subscriber-only episodes.
If you enjoyed the podcast,please consider leaving us a

(00:43):
review and more importantly,sharing it with a friend.
Thank you for your time, andremember, training changes
behavior.
All right, we're gonna go aheadand get started, Greg.
Hello, everyone, and thank youfor tuning back in to the Human
Behavior Podcast.
So if you joined us last week orheard the previous episode, you
remember we kind of did a deepdeep dive into the external

(01:05):
baseline and baseline plusanomaly was decision and all
about the observable worldaround us.
So the patterns, behaviors,environmental cues that tell us
when something's off, right?
So today what we're gonna do iswe're flipping that perspective
inward.
So we're talking about yourinternal baseline.
And the, you know, thisepisode's gonna be, I guess
we're it's gonna get personal ina sense, right?

(01:27):
Because when it comes to humanperformance, decision making,
sense making under pressure, thebiggest variable isn't the
environment or the threat.
It's you.
It's your perception of whereyou are mentally and emotionally
versus where you actually arementally and emotionally or
physically and cognitively,right?

(01:48):
So the concept of the internalbaseline is simple but powerful.
It's the sum of everythinginside you that shapes how you
perceive, interpret, and respondto the world.
So that's you know, your pastexperiences, your training, your
values, beliefs, the policiesand procedures you operate
under, and most importantly, thelimits of your cognitive
performance, which there'scertain limits for everyone, uh,

(02:10):
especially when we get to inextremis or or you know very
complex situations where there'san element of danger that that
even limits our performance.
And this is regardless of whatyour intellect, your training,
your experience is, all humanbeings operate under the same
conditions when it comes to someof the things we're talking
about today.

(02:30):
So when we teach this in class,like we kind of we we go into
depth with it and really explainthe concepts, but the the big
thing is we kind of boil it downto one question, and it's where
do I think I am and where am Iat actually?
So, like where where is there adisconnect here between where I
think I'm at and where I'mreally at?

(02:50):
And this question is somethingthat can, I mean, save your
life, your career, and maybesometimes just your sanity as
well.
But we got a lot to jump intohere today.
And Greg, I want to start offwith defining the internal
baseline.
So before I kind of throw to youfor that, I'll give sort of like
some working definitions, somekey components, and I'll let you
kind of really get into thedetails here.

(03:12):
But uh working definition, Iguess, of defining an internal
baseline would be it's just thesum of all of the internal
factors that shape how youperceive, interpret, and respond
to the world.
So some of the key components ofthose internal factors are your
past experiences, your training,your conditioning, your own

(03:34):
personal values and beliefs,societal norms, policies and
procedures, cognitive limits,like there's all of these
things, we'll call them for lackof a better term, that are that
are that are happening, youknow, mostly, mostly
unconsciously, that you areunaware of unless you sit back
and reflect on it.
But you're if you're trying tomake a tough decision

(03:56):
re-assituation, you can't dothat and reflect on it sort of
at the same time, right?
But these things are happeningin the background.
We sort of take them forgranted.
We don't think about them, wedon't really fully know how they
influence how we perceive theworld.
And so the core question, like Isaid, is where do I think I am
and where am I actually?
So that's kind of just the basicworking definition.
Greg, I'll I'll I'll pass it offto you to go into this kind of

(04:19):
internal and external baselineand and and what we mean by it.

SPEAKER_00 (04:22):
Yeah, so I I'll start at an unconventional
point.
People that listen to us uhwould know that if they do a
little bit of moticama researchinto coppers, that a lot of the
coppers they know are married ordating medical field folks,
doctors, emergency roomparamedics, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 (04:40):
Other other cops.

SPEAKER_00 (04:41):
Yeah, other cops.
And and they wonder, okay, whyis that?
And it's because you have noidea what an internal and
external baseline demands of youuntil you're in a profession
where it's constantly beingasked of you.
So other like, like for example,and and and it sounds silly, but
if you're a talking head on thenews, you're reading a prompter.

(05:01):
Unless you're a quiz showcontestant, you know, and you
have a variety of, you know,it's jeopardy that's up on the
board.
Uh, you you're not tasked withthose things.
And a comper generally drivingaround on the day on foot
patrol, this or that, isanswering radio runs, is seeing
what's uh happening out thewindshield, is worrying about
their bills and all that otherstuff that's going on.
And you're going, yeah, that's alot more like my life.

(05:22):
Yeah, not really.
And that's why the ER stuffcomes in, is because lives hang
in the balance.
Rarely is a person that works asa florist or or a farmer, you
know, in touch with the life anddepth of the people around.
So that's what I'm trying to sayvery simply is frame it the
right way, and then you'llunderstand why Brian's core

(05:42):
question is so essential.
Where do I think I am and wheream I actually?
We're not talking aboutdaydream.
We're talking about you underbeing underwhelmed by your
environment.
There's a Gregism.
And and when you'reunderwhelmed, you can stop short
and get somebody killed.
Or you can do what this copperdid the other night, the the
California copper in the theturn lane and kills a kid on a

(06:04):
skateboard because he doesn'tanticipate the likelihood.
That's an internal baseline.
Fail with an external baselinevividly exposed.
So to get to Brian's questionabout that, when you establish a
baseline, you set a standard.
It's a fixed reference point,and you have to have one for
future comparison.
And everything you do, whetherit's business or or standing up

(06:25):
and walking through your life,and almost everything you do in
your life is on impulse power.
The old, the old uh, what wasthat Star Trek, you know,
Scotty, you know, give me morepower.
And that's true whether it's aninternal or external baseline.
So we we talked about anexternal, but things you see and
experience.
The problem is that when you tryto build a robust baseline, you
really have to work for it andand you can't exclude stuff.

(06:48):
So you get a lot of chaff withyour wheat.
And what do I mean by that?
I mean your brain is like avacuum.
It's picking up stuffautonomically and and and
whether you want to pick it upor not.
Have you ever tried a vacuum andall of a sudden you go, oh crap,
there's that you know,commencement ring or whatever,
and it goes right up into thebag with all the other stuff?
Well, you didn't intend ongetting that, did you?
When you're moving through yourenvironment, your brain is

(07:11):
taking all of these baselineelements and it's constantly
creating and updating thebaseline whether you want it to
or not.
So what does that mean?
Well, it's a continual survivalfunction, right?

SPEAKER_03 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah.
And let me just I uh cut you offright there, Greg, because
that's that's perfect.
And you the way you brought upis that it this is something
that's happening autonomically,whether you recognize it or not.
Exactly.
And and and so it's it's gonnait's gonna happen.
And if you're not aware of itand you're not influencing,
you're not understanding it,you're gonna be caught behind.
So and just to just to hit that,you you'll appreciate this

(07:42):
because uh we got some feedbackon our last episode, and you
know, someone in the commentsjust go like, oh, th thanks
already knew this, or somethinglike that.
And and which is even funnierbecause then I had a couple
people reach out who are verymuch very, very good at what
they do, and they were like, Ohman, I really appreciate you

(08:02):
guys really just going back intothe fundamentals and the basics
and looking at what a baselineis like.
We still, even though we knowthat's the most important thing,
skip right over it and we goright to these things.
So it's like here's a here's atop-tier operator person saying
this was awesome, and then somejackass who's like, Oh, thanks.
I already knew that.
It's like, no, what we're sayingis no, you don't.
Like, you take it for granted.

(08:23):
So and you just hit on that.
So I just wanted to input thatthought to cut you off.

SPEAKER_00 (08:26):
Because no, no, and you didn't.
You you just exemplifiedsomething that that we try to
say in every class and everyperson that we meet.
The continuous functions of thebrain are all geared towards
your survival in an environment.
And because you can't alwayspredict the environment, there's
a couple of edges and seams andgaps, right?
And and so the the mastercreator, God, Buddha, Vishnu,

(08:50):
Allah, whoever you believe in,understood that there had to be
room for you to learn as youwent.
And that's why the internalbaseline, when compared to the
external baseline, demonstratesanomalies or incongruence.
There's your warning signal.
Okay, how do I get a warningsignal?
Well, I can get a warning signalfrom temperature, from the
outside touching something hotor cold, or from my hum

(09:11):
hypothalamus getting hot orcold.
You see?
So, so environment teaches me toteach myself that these things
are important.
So, so we jokingly go back to toto ooh, a piece of candy or the
breadcrumbs that you're finding,you know.
The idea is that, you know,where are you going?
But where did you intend to go?

(09:31):
And how did you calculate theknown and the unknown to come up
with uh the idea of a futurepoint?
And that's all depending on abaseline.
And and that sounds really roughuntil you take a yellow pad and
put those three things on.
Here's my known, here's myunknown, the nebulous spot in
between those two things.
And what helps me get there?

(09:52):
The baseline environment.
Because the baseline is made upof everything.
A baseline is made up of financeand temperature and weather and
people and vehicles and eventsand all of these wonderful
things that create that robustfidelity-filled baseline.
Well, why does it have to befidelity-filled?
Because if not, then what you'relooking at is a tabula rasa and

(10:12):
you're skinning your knees asyou're working through an
environment.
What does that mean?
So you got a big white sheet andyou're going, oh, okay, I'm
going to stand up.
Fuck, I don't have balance.
You fall down.
Then all of a sudden you standup again and you hit the ceiling
and go, shit, I don't havegravity.
You get what I'm trying to say?
So all of those things that wetake for granted are in our
internal baseline.
Then they're compared constantlyas I move through a baseline

(10:35):
with not only the other internalfactors, the unknowns, but with
the knowns of my externalbaseline.
And that's how I navigatethings.
I I combine those thingstogether to create a reality.
And so your question stillstands there.
I'm not trying to make thisobtuse.
I'm trying to say, where do youthink you are?
And where are you actually?

(10:56):
Because the difference betweenthose two things can be the
difference between life anddeath.

SPEAKER_03 (11:00):
And every time you say, I don't want to be obtuse,
I think that family guy episodewhere you sit there and he's
going to be sitting there likeobtuse.
I'm acute.
Like sorry.
But so well, that gets in thedata about your brain combining
patterns and different sourcesof data into consolidated
baseline, right?
So this is what you're talkingabout.
And you're you're kind oftalking about how a computer,

(11:21):
you know, obviously it's builtvery similarly because it's
built by humans, and they cameup with this based on what do
you think?
You know, the okay, well, thisis how something learns, this is
how it now it can do certainautomatic and autonomic
functions very easily.
But then as you're saying, whichyou know, now everyone even
talking about like AI and allthis stuff, and it's going to be
general.
Well, it can't sense make.
Sorry, humans can sense make,but the the the this this you

(11:43):
know, uh, your your chat GPTcan't.
It's giving you, you know, uhit's it's basing everything on
probability and math, which isgenerally correct in a general
circumstance, but it can'tcreate, in a sense, that the way
humans make and humans sensemake.
But that comes from all thesedifferent internal factors and
how they affect the output.

(12:03):
So you have this rigid operatingsystem, however, that and that
that's gonna happen, but you caninfluence it consciously, in a
sense, is what you're saying.
Like I have all this stuff goingon inside me that I like I can't
control how what the hormonesare that my body makes and if
there's more testosterone ormore estrogen.
I can't control any of that, butI can influence the factors and

(12:26):
I can recognize some of thosethings, right?
And and know how it how itaffects my interpretation or
perception of the world.
Is that kind of what you mean bythat?

SPEAKER_00 (12:34):
Spot on.
And so let's back that thatflashlight off of the target
just a little bit so it's widerrather than laser focus.
So what Brian just gave you,too, is the definition of the
data.
So if we talk about three thingsthat are going to influence your
baseline specifically in thisepisode, your internal baseline,
you have that data, your braincombining patterns and and other

(12:55):
incoming information so that youcan refine your baseline, assess
where you are, and process thenew incoming data to see if
there's danger or opportunity.
Okay, so then you have tools.
You have those things, thoseenvironmentals that you use to
move through your baseline.
So a car could be a tool, butit's a rudimentary tool.
A bino, a pair of binoculars orspotting scope, is a better tool

(13:18):
because it enhances things.
And hearing aid enhances yourhearing.
So those tools help me getdisparate information and throw
it into my data set.
Because if I don't have uh adatabase, then I don't have a
baseline for comparison.
And then the final thing is theactors, the actors on the stage,
people, events, and vehicles.

(13:38):
I've said that my entire career.
So you're populating theenvironment using artifacts and
evidence.
And people are always asking,okay, artifacts and evidence,
why do you make that difference?
Because fucking evidence is alegal standard.
It's something you're testifyingto.
Artifacts are all of thosepieces that are laying around.
So the artifact would be the,hey, look at shell casing, and
the evidence would be, hey, wematch the extractor mark to that

(14:00):
shell casing, to that suspect,to that handgun at that time in
that place.
So the granularity is necessaryfor survival.
So, like I talked about heat andcold earlier, well, colors
matter too.
That's why we have the basiccolors, Roy G.
Biv, but that's why we have thefull color palette, and we can
add and subtract from them tomake any color.
But you know what?

(14:20):
You can still see in black andwhite, hence the gosh name
thermal or or the NVG, green andwhite, right?
So the idea is the constantsense making is your internal
baseline looking for danger oropportunity or patterns in your
environment.
Why patterns?
Because patterns is the easynon-caloric lift.
You're doing patterns all thetime because you don't get up

(14:41):
this morning and go, where thehell am I?
Okay.
You get up and you know thatyou're likely, well, Maren,
there have been some nights withan old-fashioned that that I've
done that, right?
But what happens is it's notgroundhog day.
You don't wake up in acompletely foreign environment
constantly.
Right.
You wake up and you go, here'smy cane, here are my shoes,
here's uh, you know, where I'mgonna get breakfast.

(15:02):
That person that's in thekitchen right now, that's one of
my kids.
I recognize them.
Those things that we take forgranted, Brian, are hugely
important because they're afunction of that data set.
And if we had an incomplete dataset, we would be walking through
our environment petrified, orlike that kid in uh what is
that, 50 First Dates.
You remember that uh that actor,that 10 second howl or whatever

(15:24):
they call it?

SPEAKER_03 (15:24):
I had I had a moment like that when I came in from a
trip, and so it was real late atnight and everyone's asleep.
So I went to bed and thensomething woke me up you know
early in the morning, and then Igot up and was walking around,
and then there was a kid in thehouse, and I'm like, that's not
my kid.

SPEAKER_02 (15:40):
That's great.
Insurgent was having asleepover, but I was literally
like, huh?
Who are you who are you?
That's my phone.
But I did the am I in the righthouse?
That's what did I come into?

SPEAKER_00 (15:50):
You open the door and look at the numbers real
quick.
That's so funny.
But but you get what I'm tryingto say.
So, so look, we don'tunderstand.
Like, like we look at a phoneand and we look at it and we go,
oh my God, look at what asupercomputer was in the 60s
compared to your phone now,okay?
And microprocessors and all thatother stuff.
We don't understand that we takefor granted what our brain is

(16:12):
doing constantly.
I'm too hot and I'm too cold.
Do you know how vague thatseems, but how important those
standards are?
I'm too close, I'm too far away,okay, I'm going too fast, I'm
going too slow.
All of those things fall intoone of those.
They're either part of the dataset, they're part of the tools
that we use in our environment,or they're part of the set

(16:32):
dressing, the, the, the objectsthat that we come into contact
with.
And we only attend to them whenthey're foreign, when they're
when they're different, whenthey're contrary, when they're
anomalous, when they're you knowunorthodox.
All of those other things meltaway and blend in from pattern
recognition.
And so the analysis only comeson when it's a new thing in my

(16:54):
environment.
And the best trigger that youhave is your internal baseline.
So if your internal baseline issaying something is wrong here,
that's where you got to take thetime and distance get behind
cover and analyze what you'reinto.

SPEAKER_03 (17:06):
So so yeah, let's uh kind of jump into sort of why
the internal baseline mattersand why we're even talking about
this.
Because you you actually broughtup a good example with the
there's this is an analogy in asense that we could use for a
lot of different things, but youbrought up the visible light uh
visible light spectrum, RiggyBiv and ruins with that red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, andthey go violet, right?

(17:27):
But but right now there'sthere's things there's there's
other light there, right?
Like before red, infrared, andultraviolet that we can't see
with the naked eye, but itdoesn't mean it doesn't exist,
right?
Just because I see somethingdoesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And this is like a lot of thethings that we can name or see
or feel like when it comes tothe internal baseline and things

(17:47):
that are affecting you.
If I I can I can, you know, I II heat up and start sweating,
and I can recognize those thingsthat my heart rate picks up or
my hands are shaking or I'mgetting nervous.
Those are those are things I canexperience and and and perceive
and understand.
But like that's scratching thesurface in a sense of what the
what's underneath here.

(18:08):
So so let's get into kind oflike why this internal baseline
matters.
Because we we start there, likeI said at the beginning, it is
it's not the externalenvironment, it's not what's
happening in the situation.
A lot of that may be completelyout of your control, but but it
starts with you and internally,because although there are

(18:28):
mostly autonomic functions andvery primitive things that are
happening, you can control youto a certain extent, even to the
point your autonomic nervoussystem, which is everything that
you know your mostly your youknow your breathing, your
respiration, all that stuff,like your heart rate, you just
by doing a breathing exercise,you can influence your autonomic

(18:49):
nervous system.
So, so meaning you have somecontrol, a little bit of agency
over that, what happens.
So, and and and it's importantto understand this internal
baseline because the internalbaseline matters because we make
sense-making errors, right, whenwhen when our internal baseline
is off.
So we can misread someone'sintent.
We can be overconfident in asituation or underconfident in a

(19:12):
situation that we don't need tobe.
We can get fixated on thingsthat aren't don't matter or
don't matter as much as we thinkwe are, or the wrong thing to
fixate on.
And and then of course you canget that sort of you know, uh
emotional hijack, what we wouldcall like kind of the
overwhelmed by events orovercome by emotion.
And so your internal baselinealso it shifts as you get to

(19:34):
that point of being overwhelmedby events, right?
It shifts like the it startshere, everything's normal, but
then you what you want to avoidis obviously that leap to oh my
god, now I'm reacting toeverything, I'm overwhelmed.
But you're on you're if youthink of like sedentary on a
couch, sitting on a wall, nowthink, oh my god, something just
jumped out and scared me.
That's a that's like a continuumthere that you're going up and

(19:57):
down, like, and you if you don'tknow where you're at on that
timeline, it's easier to becomeoverwhelmed.
So like it's it's a it's aparallel to the external
baseline.
So just like we measure externalshifts.
Oh man, that's a man, thatdoesn't smell right.
I don't typically smell thathere.
Or wait, I've never seen a cargo that way down that street.

(20:18):
Like we we we can measure thoseto detect threats.
We can measure these internalshifts to detect like cognitive
drift, to to detect where you'reat, right?
To detect maybe I'm off on thisthing, not because of the thing
that's in the environment,because of something inside of
me.
So can you kind of like explaina little bit of that?

SPEAKER_00 (20:37):
Yeah, so you went you you you went deep without
even thinking that you went deepwhen when you started saying
like like the things you cancontrol, like breathing
exercises are great, but I wouldsay dumb it down for for Greg to
speak, because I'm not a brightperson.
So I do understand this.
I do understand that by readingand exposing myself to certain

(21:00):
things, external things, that Iimprove my internal baseline.
So I don't sleep much, so Iwatch a lot of Turner Classic
and I tape a lot of films, tape,yeah, what a term, so I can
watch them later when nothingelse is on, because I can't
stand commercials and most ofthe Pablum that comes out of
Hollywood is horrible.
So the other night there was aHitchcock film on The Man Who

(21:22):
Knew Too Much, the Jimmy Stewartversion, not the 1930s earlier
version.
And uh in it, they were eating,I believe it was Morocco, I
might be wrong on that.
And the guy was showing themculturally how to eat.
You can only use the the twofingers and the thumb from your
right hand.
It's a group.
You don't have utensils and allthat other stuff.
And I compared that to earlierin the evening, still not

(21:43):
sleeping, when I watched TheWind in the Lion with Sean
Connery, and he was trying toteach Candace Bergen how to eat
in the same environment.
And then all of a sudden itplayed in.
Then I was there and I had acultural attache that said,
Yeah, well, back in the day whenthere wasn't a lot of paper and
trees around, you know, we hadto wipe our ass with our left
hand and then rub it off in thesand.
So our right hand was the onethat we maintained clean for

(22:05):
food.
But that was so long ago thatnobody even does that, but it's
stuck around.
So what does that mean?
So that means that I was exposedto all of these things
externally that then built arobust file folder for a
cultural no-no inside of myinternal baseline.
So now I figure things out.
I sense made why those thingswere important just from a

(22:27):
couple of these culturalreferences.
And guess what?
Now in my mind, culture iscontext.
So if I get into that situation,I can use that.
Well, if you don't do that, ifyou're not exposed, if you're
not pinballing around youruniverse, you're not going to be
exposed to those.
And therefore, you're going tohave a less robust comparison.
And a less robust comparisonmeans that I undervalue you, and

(22:50):
then I go, yeah, well, that'snot that important.
Just pick it up and fucking moveon when I'm not understanding
that that washing machine box atthe side of the road is your
home.
That that shopping cart I'mpushing with all of your worldly
possessions in it are going toget you to stab me in the neck.
You see where I mean, Brian?
How how something seeminglyinnocuous in your environment

(23:11):
becomes the single mostimportant thing, but you didn't
know it because your internalbaseline didn't trigger you to
danger warning, Will Robinson,something is in, you know, in
progress here.

SPEAKER_03 (23:21):
So so how does that shift?
Like how does your how like howdoes your internal baseline
shift?
We'll say, you know, as youapproach that point of being
overwhelmed by events, that OBwhere where you're you're doing
that.
And and and we I know we'vewe've talked about it in every
episode for people maybe new,like we say overwhelmed by
events, don't think of like, ohmy god, you're crashing out,

(23:43):
you're bawling.
Like overwhelmed by events meansthere's just so much anytime
you've like repeated somethingsomeone said, even though you
heard it clearly, or you've justsaid, like, wait, what, what,
what was that?
It means you're justoverwhelmed.
You're you're so you're you'renot attending to the things in
your environment, and then thesethings become overwhelming,
you're not processing anything.
So I just it's not alwaysseemingly catastrophic.

(24:04):
Like if you're if you're drivinga hundred miles an hour and
you're trying to text someone atthe same time and do you're OBE,
your your brain cannot processinformation that quickly, even
though you might be have aresting heart rate of 30 beats a
minute at while you're doingthat, like you're cognitively
you are you're OBE.
So can you explain just kind oflike how that shifts?

SPEAKER_00 (24:24):
And that's a great question again.
So so look, we're the ones thatinvented the term OBE, so we get
to say what it means.
And it means two things it meansoverwhelmed by events or
overcome by emotion.
Why do we make that distinction?
Because sometimes the eventswhirling around you are too fast
for your onboard processingsystems to address, which means
that the item went too fast, soI didn't get a clear look at it.

(24:47):
When I was doing the flip, myvertigo got the best of me and I
wasn't able to balance well.
So I missed the license platelast number.
Okay, that that's things thatwere out of my control.
Or overcome by emotion, which,you know, like PTS is a perfect
example, or or I just broke upwith somebody and then I bumped
into somebody in the hallway.
I'm thinking on one thing, butnow this other thing is in

(25:07):
progress and I'm overreacting orunderreacting because of the
earlier emotional fixation,right?
So so what happens is you don'tknow when you're approaching
event horizon.
And I use words when I can'tfully uh grasp something.
So look up event horizon.
It's one of those things whereyou know there's a black hole
without evidence of a black holebecause all of a sudden light
can't come out, right?

(25:28):
Yeah.
And and so that's exactly what asituation is where it's gonna be
about to turn kinetic on yourass.
And what happens is that is youdon't know you're approaching
it.
So all of a sudden, now it'sjust the the trigger is there,
all the situations are going on.
I I should have predicted whatwas going on, and guess what?
Now it's in progress.
Here it comes, I can't controlit.

(25:49):
So I should be fighting, but myfeet are like lead.
I I I should be talking to you,but instead I'm punching you or
on your chest choking you, andI'm wondering how I got there.
So so my my trip into theunknown starts with my internal
baseline reading things in myenvironment.
And if it reads patterns andnormalcy, I'm gonna be fine.

(26:11):
If it reads anger or anxiety,things are changing, and I
better be on top of thosethings.
But most of the time whathappens is we like give you a
perfect example that justhappened in Gunnison.
So they closed the roads inGunnison because at three
o'clock on October 30th, thekids were all gonna celebrate
downtown and go around and getcandy in their their costumes.

(26:32):
So they closed Main Street forthree blocks.
Now, Brian, I've never seenthese orange and white,
eight-foot-tall by probablyeight-foot wide panels that they
use, reflective panels, thencones, and a sign saying Main
Street close.
And it went curb to curb.
So you can tell Gunnison isdoing good.
They went out and bought thebest of the best, right?
I couldn't walk through that.

(26:54):
So the light is changing, and Isee the light changing, and I'm
gonna make a right turn becauseI cannot go forward on Main
Street.
And I see a woman in a Subaruthat's right under the
intersection, still trying to godown Main Street.
So her car, she's literallytouching the barricade with her
car because she's going, Well,wait a minute, I've done this my
entire life.
What is this new thing?
Why is it closed?

(27:14):
And now the light changes.
So now guess what?
The cross traffic is going, hey,I got the green light.
She's in the middle of theintersection trying to back up.
And finally I had to get out andstart directing traffic.
And it was so stupid becauseeverybody anticipated, based on
the pattern, that this was goingto be ending up the same way
that when the light's green, yougo.
And guess what?

(27:34):
This woman was trapped.
She had no idea what to do atthe time because she didn't have
a file folder for what is thisnuanced thing standing in front
of me, Brian.

SPEAKER_03 (27:43):
That's such a great example of what we mean by OBE.
She's so overcome by thisnovelty in her environment.
She literally freezes anddoesn't know what to do.
And is like, but but I it'sstill still trying to justify
like, no, I always go downthere.

SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
But I'm basing it on my my old OODA loop, Brian.
Do you see what I'm saying?
I'm looking at it.
Oh my God.
And so now my question hereagain is where was she?
But where did she think she was?
There's your comparison insideof that funnel.
But the most important thing, ifyou're an operator out there, I
want you to think about this.
Could she have gotten somebodyother than herself injured or

(28:21):
killed?
Well, of course she could have.
That was going to be acatastrophic accident waiting to
happen.
And so I'm laying on the horngoing, hold on, hold on a
minute.
And she's looking at me like, ohmy God, this is my threat.
No, the threat is you.
You didn't anticipate that youwould become the threat to all
these people.
So I had to de-escalate thesituation and get calm minds and

(28:42):
go, hey, wait a minute.
We might, you know, be waitingthis gosh damn full cycle of the
light, but we have to solve thisproblem.
So now one of the intangibles.
People in that process that wereoutside of the Subaru had their
kids in the car, and where didthey want to go?
They wanted to get the mainstreet.
Hey, it's almost three o'clock.
So now we have a temporalelement, Brian, and that's

(29:02):
counting down.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
I'm back to the Hitchcock film,right?
Hitchcock did his best film byscaring the shit out of you, not
with special effects, but byhaving in a closet there was a
bomb ticking away, and you'rethe only one that knew at home.
Nobody else on the screen knew.
You get it?

SPEAKER_03 (29:18):
We we we watched the remake of uh what's the one with
Vince Fallen does it with uh AnnHaish, the the Hitchcock um, oh
my god, Bates Motel.
Oh, Psycho.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I haven't seen a remake, but theoriginal was.
It was great because it wasfunny because even the insurgent
was like getting scared becauseyou know Michaeli's like, well,
is it okay for her to watch?
I was like, I was like, Yeah,the it's not like some gory

(29:40):
movies.
Like, I've never seen it before.
I was like, You haven't?
And they were terrified, and itwas so different than anything
that's been ever out with horrorfilms or that because I was
like, Yeah, it's a suspense.
You're captured in it.
Like you're like, oh my god,this is and you don't have to
show it.
Don't open that door, turn onthat light.
You know, that that was that wasa great one.
But uh, so it just reminded meof that.
But you you know.

(30:00):
So if we're talking about thisinternal baseline and what we
the goal of why we bring this upto is because you know you can
be the best at seeing everythingand doing it.
And if that's your job is justto watch the environment and
report, okay, cool.
Like you don't really need toworry about this as much.
You still do on how you drawreasonable conclusions.
But meaning when you're involvedin it, what's happening

(30:22):
internally is greatly affectingthat.
So when we want to build afunctional self-awareness tool.
So a functional self-awarenesstool is just this it's
understanding that internalbaseline.
And so that's why we ask thequestion where do I think I am
versus where am I actually at?
Right.
That's like your functionalcognitive pause button because
there are different cues andthey may come across differently

(30:45):
based on who you are and whatthe situation is.
But there's like, you know,physiological ones, there's
cognitive ones, there'semotional ones that you're kind
of these cues that maybe it'ssome feedback from the
environment, but like that, Idon't I I don't feel right.
Well, do you not feel rightbecause of something going on or
because you because you you atesome really at a really bad
place the other night?
You know what I mean?
Like, what what is the reasonfor why you don't feel that way?

(31:06):
What is it?
Is it lack of sleep?
Is it lack of proper nutrition?
Is it you're hungover, you'rewhatever?
Like, because those are thethings that that are affecting
it.
So but I what I what I'm whatI'll ask you to do is have some
like what are some real worldexamples of like of that and and
and how they can affect you andlike almost when you had like a
lack of a functionalself-awareness tool experiences

(31:29):
from you.

SPEAKER_00 (31:29):
So let's do a shout out to Walt Settlmeyer and uh
Darcy Lutzinger back when he wasuh EMT before he was a copper.

SPEAKER_03 (31:36):
And uh Okay, so real quick, I know you're gonna talk
about Darcy and and and Walt,but like did you want to talk
about tie-in from earlierconversation?
You made an old-fashioned joke.
So I just texted Walt the othernight because he had sent me a
bottle of bourbon a long timeago, and I just I it just went
with the collection that peoplehave given me, and I never
opened it, and I just did, and Imade an old-fashioned with it,

(31:57):
and I sent it and was like, heyman, this stuff's really good.
Oh, that's so cool.
That's funny that you justbrought that up.

SPEAKER_00 (32:02):
But anyway, so so these these are people that we
talk to uh often or respecttheir work.
And the idea is that Walt'sentire career was based on how
about now?
So, okay, do you feel better orworse than when I first showed
up as an EMT?
Okay, how about now?
Five minutes later, it's stilltightness in chest or is it
eased up?
What's the so what you're doingis you're measuring things

(32:23):
against a baseline.
You're contrasting those thingsagainst the knowns and the
unknowns, and then the baselinebecomes a deciding factor.
Hey, this person needs oxygen,they're getting worse.
We have to transport right away.
So you do that autonomically allthe time, and you don't slow
down enough to make acomparison.
So I'll give you a cop example.
So you get these streaks asbeing a cop, like I was death

(32:44):
car one time, you know, whereevery call that came out was
unattended death, unattendeddeath.
Are you?

SPEAKER_03 (32:50):
Are you legally allowed to say that now?

SPEAKER_00 (32:51):
Yeah, I think now I think time is going by because I
didn't cause most of those.
And uh, so all of a suddenyou're showing up on a scene,
you got to write the report, yougot to do all the stuff.
And then the next call comes outand it's like, here's a you
know, I I I'm begging for aright because I've been hit so
many times with the left.
So on this day, it was the okay,listen, first call, leaf blower
guy was cutting his grass and heblew the cut grass out of the

(33:13):
neighbor's lawn.
And that neighbor, he wasthrough, and he's in my face
going, This cannot stand.
This is enough.
I want this to happen.
You know, all these unreasonabledemands.
And the next door neighbor'sgoing, dude, it's a leaf blower.
It's grass, it'll be gone in anhour, right?
Okay, so you're doing that one,and the very next call that goes
out is an in progress.
And what happened is the sameidentical situation happened.

(33:36):
But the neighbor walked out intothe neighbor's garden with a
seven millimeter REM mag andfired one shot upstairs into the
kitchen where the guy wasstanding testing the al dente
pasta, and it hit him right inhis filtrum, Brian.
Just, you know, uh red misteffect all over the house and
everything.
And then that guy walked back tohis house, sat down, and was
having lunch.

(33:56):
And so I'm talking to the guy,and it's like, hey, I told him,
I told him, I told him not toleave, you know, the leaf blower
when I'm sleeping and not topush it on my ground.
And he never never listened tome, you know, because he was a
factory worker, right?
Okay, so now I'm leaving all ofthat in custody here, evidence
and all that other stuff, butI'm on call until I get the call

(34:17):
and it's like, okay, we gotanother neighbor trouble.
Now, this is my third neighbortrouble in a row, and it all has
to do with a nice day outsidewhere people were mowing the
lawn.
So I have no fucking idea whatI'm going into on the third one.
Do I draw my gun and haveeverybody go throw them?
Brian, is it nothing simple andtell the guys, hey, should I
even bring up that?
Look, uh, people die over callslike this.

(34:38):
Do you do you understand?
So my world was spinning left toright, and I was rolling front
to back.
And so now I have to use mytools.
Now I have to use my Hobermanand go, okay, hold on a second.
How am I perceiving theinformation as I'm rolling up?
Then I got to say, okay, whatare the pre-event indications
that I'm seeing?
Two people out there talking,nobody's carrying a weapon.

(34:59):
I got to go through that overand over because I'll contrast
that with an alarm call.
Every copper that's that'slistening right now has been on
alarm calls.
And you go on alarm calls somany times they make you stupid.
So now all of a sudden, on thatalarm call where you're walking
around, you see a broken window.
And now you're going but deadgut because it's a burglary.
And guess what?
You haven't had a burglary in 75alarm calls.

(35:21):
Or you see a person standing,that shadow ninja, and you see
him move back as you're comingaround checking the building.
And now all of a sudden you shityourself a little bit because
you're going, oh man, there'sgoing to be a foot chase, a
shootout, what's going on here?
Is it a drug deal?
Is it an armed robbery?
Is it a uh kidnapping?
And and so few jobs in theworld, other than military and
cop work and and like I said,first line, first responders

(35:45):
have those type of choices thatare coming at you at full speed
all the time.
And then the back-to-backnecessity.
There's very few people at acall center that have to go
through that range of emotions.

SPEAKER_03 (35:57):
I and so I I I'll push back a little bit on that.
I get where you're coming from,but and yes, the the frequency
of it, but but even theday-to-day stuff, because you
actually just gave the theexample of the guy shooting his
neighbor over the leaves.
Like, okay, that's a guy whoseinternal baseline is so off and
is so overwhelmed with whateverelse is going on in their life.

(36:18):
Well, you picture yourself as aneighbor going, like, yeah,
dude, I'll be done in 10minutes.
What's the big deal?
He he never he completely missedit because he didn't see it for
what this person was because hedidn't know all of that stuff.
And it's the classic, like theeveryone likes the movie the the
what was it, Falling Down,Michael Douglas, right?
Where he goes in and it's like10:30, he tries to order
breakfast, and like, oh, itdoesn't serve breakfast after
10, and it's like 1001.

(36:39):
And like that's what starts hiswhole like, you know, now he now
he's off doing stuff.
And well, one, if you'reidentifying with that character,
you need to fix your internalbaseline.

SPEAKER_02 (36:47):
Exactly.
So tell something right now.

SPEAKER_03 (36:50):
Everyone loves to do that, but like it means you're
the problem, probably not therest of society.
But that's a separateconversation.
But it but again, these areexamples of like, oh, that's
that when we like we say we'vesaid it plenty of times on the
podcast, too.
Like, when someone's cup isfull, like you don't know that
this person's cup is full, andnow you just rear-ended them on
accident or or bumped into themor whatever, and and that's it.

(37:12):
Now, now they they're going onthat killing spree, and you just
happen to be the person thatthis when their cup spills over,
you're just happened to get wethere because you're standing
next to it.
So that's a that's a that's agood example.
I didn't mean to like push back,like I just meant like
experience.
Let me add one too.
Part of that, part of that doestwo things.
Remember, it does two things,right?
That experience you say of doingthat.
So like you're talking aboutyour decades of law and ex law

(37:34):
enforcement experience.
It helps you and hinders you atthe same time, right?
And and and like so, yeah, youget better at picking up on
things, you get faster atreading this, but then like you
said, like you you you almostget a little dumber too.
I I don't know if you're gonnashare this.
I remember you were calling astory about a potential
break-in, and it was thejanitor, and you said, Oh my
god.

SPEAKER_00 (37:53):
So so that well and and let me let me uh give you
that one.
But but let me make sure thatyou understand what I meant
completely by the early one ifyou're a listener.
Yeah.
What happens is you're drivingtoo fast on that road, and your
headlines, headlights aren'tshining far enough down the

(38:14):
road, so things are coming atyou too quickly, and you're
basing your experience level onit and going, Don't worry, I can
handle this new speed of theevents around me.
And you can't because you'regoing to reach apogee.
You're gonna reach a point whereyou can no longer defend
yourself.
And so then the things comingtoo fast are gonna make you make
mistakes.

(38:34):
So you gotta slow down.
You gotta give yourself the giftof time and distance.
You have to, as Brian would putit, recalibrate between those
calls.
Because if not, what happens isthe more routine those calls
become, the dumber and moreendangered you get.
So Brian's talking aboutSchofield Elementary School.
Alarm goes off.
The only time the alarm was goodat Schofield Elementary was an
airplane took off from theDetroit Metro airport and

(38:57):
crashed into SchofieldElementary.
That alarm was worth going to.
It was a very interesting thingin the middle of the night, a
lot of people dead, a lot ofstuff glowing for miles around,
right?
But on this night, it wasprobably the seventh alarm
because of the wind or whateverelse at Schofield.
And now it's 2:30, 3 o'clock inthe morning.
It's that, you know, nobody'sup, nobody's around, only bad

(39:18):
guys or coppers are out there.
And we get the alarm.
And the other call is going,hey, I'll be right over.
And I'm like, nah, it's theseventh call.
Whenever you say no, don't showup or hey, dispatch, where's my
record?
You know you're screwed becauseyou know they're going to show
up and you sound like an idiot.
So I'm walking around theexternal and I look inside and I
see a dude.
And so I shine my flashlight onthe dude, and the dude is
literally sweeping the floor.

(39:39):
He's sweeping up, and he givesme the sign with his right hand
and points one, like, give me aminute.
Give me a minute.
And I tap on the glass and hegives me the sign again, just
give me a minute, and goesaround the corner.
So I'm waiting, I'm waiting.
Finally, a cover car comes upand they go, What are you
waiting for?
I go, I'm waiting for thefucking janitor.
He's going around to open thedoor.
And the guy goes, Hey, it's 2 30in the morning.

(40:00):
There's no janitor working atthis school.
And we go around and the windowsare flogged out, and here's the
computers are set up.
And you know what it was?
Run to run to run.
I underestimated.
I didn't know where I was in myfunnel, Brian.
And all of a sudden I wasoverwhelmed by events.
I and you know what?
In that instance, bad guy gotaway.
And of course, we ultimatelycaught him uh for the the sake

(40:22):
of the story.
We caught him.
Yeah.
Uh but the the reality of thesituation is that could have
ended poorly for me, right?
Yeah.
And so it's those mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 (40:30):
That guy right now is listening to this podcast,
laughing his name.
You never got me.

SPEAKER_00 (40:38):
And they're all fucking smoking meth.
And he's going, that was me,kids.
And the kids go, Who are you?
Right?

SPEAKER_03 (40:44):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (40:44):
Exactly.
So but the idea.
Exactly.
Your earlier call.
I don't know this girl.
So the the thing is that anytime that you do that, so so now
we read a great one on LinkedInthe other day where the guy was
saying, Hey, my son kept hiscomposure.
Hey, he just walked in a gasstation, grabbed a Snickers bar,
turned around to walk out, andthe place is getting robbed.
And the dad is thanking, youknow, that everything went well.

(41:07):
Well, what do you think he waslike?
You think he was a littleoverwhelmed by events?
How many times you walk in, youget gas, you pay, you're going
back out, or hey, my cardreader, or I need the receipt
for number three.
You get what I'm saying?
And the guy's going, no, this isa gun.
And you're going, yeah, I stillneed the receipt for number
three.
And they're going, give up thecheese, and you're not there
because you're not sure what'sgoing on.
Brian, that dissimilarity inyour environment, that that that

(41:30):
situation is screaming to you.
And unless you're in touch withyour internal baseline and you
take it out for a ride once in awhile, you're you're going to be
stupid.

SPEAKER_03 (41:39):
So that that's that, yeah.
And and so let's talk abouttaking it out for a ride every
once in a while and some toolsto recalibrate, right?
Okay.
So so let's jump into that, likeuh and how we approach it.
And I I've got some like we wantto slow down our thinking loop
in a sense, right?
We're always talking about timeand distance, and I don't care
what the situation is, right?

(42:00):
I will argue with anyone whosays, Yeah, but sometimes you
don't have the time.

SPEAKER_02 (42:03):
And I'm like, you said who is clocked.

SPEAKER_03 (42:07):
Always do.
Yeah.
Who's controlling the time,who's controlling the narrative,
right?
Right, right.
So we can the and there'sdifferent tools out there that
I've seen, and we can talk aboutsome of these, but but like like
there's different methods we'veseen, like I even brought it up,
like the breathing and ways todo that and stop, or some people
have like uh well, even likeSILS from the military stop,
look, listen, smell.
That's the idea you're supposedto stop, look, listen, smell,

(42:28):
wait, right?
You know, that's different whenyou're doing like, all right,
we're doing a covert insert, andyou just got dropped off by a
hilo, and you you literally laythere for an hour and you don't
move.
And you just you you baselinethe environment, make sure those
birds start chirping orwhatever, like you know, you
there's no one else there.
But but that's that that reset.
And I've learned like I'velearned some great like

(42:49):
breathing ones a long time ago.
They talk about the boxbreathing, they call it tactical
breathing, whatever.
And those are great.
But what I realized, what Ilearned from doing those,
because I implemented them,where the power wasn't in that
method or that tool.
The power was what you weredoing cognitively, like what how
it reframed the situation.

(43:10):
Because I've seen people go,like, hey, when I get like this,
I pull out my lucky whatever,and I look at it and I put it
away.
And it's like, okay, or somepeople, or or I talk about like
before I would ever step out onanywhere, whatever mission,
whatever patrol before we'reever about to leave, because
sometimes you know it's a maddash to get things going and
you're finishing up planning anddropping stuff in and getting

(43:31):
everything together, and it'slike, all right, ready to go.
I always stopped, closed myeyes, you know, after I loaded
my weapon, you know, touch mymags, touch my pistol, secondary
mags, you know, where's myradio?
Turn a kit, got it, first aidkit, boom.
I would I would yeah, all that.
So I would uh I would close myeyes and do that mentally.
And what that did for me waslike, now I know I'm now I'm

(43:51):
going to do the thing.
Now I'm cognitively engaged.
And so so I'm actually theperson where it's like, okay, if
you come up with something andyou think that works and it
works, it might be total junkscience.
It's like when my wife's like,oh, what's going on, or I'm
feeling all this, oh, you know,it's Mercury is in retrograde,
and I'm like, oh my god, I wantto punch myself in the head, but

(44:12):
like that's so dumb.
But you know what?
If that works for her as afunctional self-awareness tool
to recalibrate, then fucking useit.
Go, go, go, go to the go, youknow, hey, read, read the whole,
read your horoscope for the day.
If that's what gets you to tothink better and to do better
and perform better and recognizecertain things, then it's fine.
It's so junk, but but if itworks, it's not.

(44:34):
Like it's your junk.
Ultimately, this is why we callit functional tool to
recalibrate.
So, so I'll let you sorry, I'lllet you know.

SPEAKER_00 (44:40):
Oh, no, so I'm reaching into my yeah, I'm
reaching into my right handpocket right now while we're
talking.
And anybody that can see us,that's my stack of ID and credit
cards, and that totem on the topis our Lord and Savior.
Why?
Because when I bring that out ofmy pocket, I can't.
Me from the long hair.
It really does.
It looks like Jared Leto.
But the idea is that that wasgiven to me so many years ago,

(45:02):
and I've kept it all theseyears, and when I see it, that
recalibrates me.
That with the first twoquestions, I go, do I have the
time and do I have the distance?
And and when I do that, the giftof time and distance is so
important.
The the way those uh ideas cameup.
I remember the very first time,like like some idiot wrote about
proximics yesterday.
Yeah, welcome to the party.

(45:23):
There's some of us have beenusing proximics for a hundred
years.
You know what I mean?
So one of the things thatteaching a long time ago and
airline that shall remainnameless, how to do the the
martial arts moves that wouldsave their lives in an instant,
in an incident before 9-11.
And the problem was they'rethinking.
And what do I mean by theirthinking?

(45:44):
So what I did is I measured outthe size of an airline bathroom.
I measured out the size of thedistance between the seats and
the aisle, and I measured thatwith that cart that comes up and
down.
And and this was a lot of workback then because you couldn't
just look it up on the internetor have AI do it.
And I taped all that stuff outand had the you know MRE boxes
metaphorically stacked up andsaid, now do your spinning hook

(46:06):
kick.
Okay, do me a favor, do thatKodagashi on the inside with the
flip and the takedown.
And the people go, Well, wecan't.
And it's like, yeah, so you needto recalibrate.
You need to go back to thatinternal baseline and adjust
some shit.
And when did that happen again,Brian?
Happened a couple of days agowhen the guy was stabbing all
those people on the train, andand and the experts wrote in,

(46:26):
well, when somebody's stabbingon a train, the first thing you
need to do is increase yourdistance to give you more time
to react.
Okay, well, do you think you'renew to this?
Do you you get what I'm tryingto say?
So the idea, Brian, is that youcan have a positive reaction
feedback loop, a negativereaction feedback loop, or a
neutral one.
And you know what neutral is?
Neutral is what most people do.

(46:47):
They stand there until they'rebowled over by the bad guy, the
car, cut by the edge weapon, ordo whatever else.
So if you don't rehearse in asituation for a situation that's
going to be creative, it's goingto be interesting, then you're
not doing yourself a service.
All the flipping tires andclimbing the rope in the world,
all the tactical reloads and allthat other stuff are going to be

(47:09):
challenged when you all of asudden turn a corner and there's
somebody in your living room.
And we don't recreate thosethings.
And that's why when we are goingto these companies that had all
this great technology, Brian, tocreate these uh scenarios on the
screen that you go through overand over.
Hey, I didn't leave that lighton.
Nobody wants to do thatscenario.
Okay, we want to do thatscenario.
Why?
Because all of a sudden pullingup in your driveway and seeing a

(47:30):
light that you didn't anticipateto be on on your own could be
the difference between life anddeath.
And we discount that.
That's what we're talking aboutinternal baseline.

SPEAKER_03 (47:39):
Yeah, and and and this is all about time and
distance.
And part of the reasons why wewant to name these things or
name anything, part of thereason why we use a specific
lexicon and a language.
One, it provides a commonoperating language, right?
So I say something and I tellyou, Greg, and in that

(48:00):
information exchange orcommunication, you implicitly
understand what that is, right?
Because now you may have yourown idea, but but it gets it's a
meme.
It gets the idea across in avery, very short burst
transmission.
And so this sort of cognitivelabeling that we're talking
about, right?
It like naming the emotions.

(48:21):
When you do that, you you'reyou're re-engaging your
prefrontal cortex.
And your prefrontal cortex isthe first thing that gets shut
down in any of these situations.
And the more and the c moreoverwhelmed you get, the closer
you get to that bang, the closeryou get to being OBE, the less
and less prefrontal cortex youhave.
We can all sit around, you know,on the couch, have the

(48:42):
old-fashioned thanks, WaltSetemar, I forgot to mention it.
Forgot to mention that when Ibrought him up.
But we can talk about all thisstuff all day long and be in our
prefrontal cortex.
But you're I I heard a great oneby this professor.
I want to share more of hiswork, but I don't want people to
get the wrong idea, so I'm gonnaframe it correctly.
But he he said like theprefrontal cortex is very, very

(49:05):
expensive.
And I was like, Oh, that's agood way to look at it.
Meaning it costs a lot to engageit, to maintain it, to
continually operate there.
It costs a lot of calories.
Well, you know that's notexpensive, you know it's cheap,
your freaking limbic system andyour amygdala taking over.
So, what I can do in the mypoint of bringing this stuff up
is this this cognitive labelingand giving names to emotions or

(49:28):
feelings or perceptions, right?
That now re-engages myprefrontal cortex to go, oh
well, I've had those experiencesbefore, or this could also be
this.
It kind of it like restarts acritical thinking process that
otherwise would have gone outthe window.
Like, does that kind of makemake sense on why we do that?

SPEAKER_00 (49:47):
Absolutely.
So the the idea of you againstthe world is language is a new
thing to humans, but languagehas my least favorite thing.
It's it's become uber importantover time and and goober and
gunnocide uber important.
But the idea is that we misuseit.

(50:08):
So you can use cognitivelabeling and you can use uh
naming emotions to recalibrate.
What you're doing is you'recreating with that totem, with
that process, you're creating uharmor against the unknown.
You're creating the cross or thethe uh you know against a
vampire, the garlic against thethe the werewolf or whatever it
is.
But just like those stories,when you read the original

(50:29):
Frankenstein, Frankenstein's thedoctor, not the monster.
And Frankenstein was anintelligent being that that you
know uh knew what he wanted todo and was on a voyager.
Yeah, yeah, self-discovery.
And and what happens is overtime now is the brains, the
zombie, you know, we we changewhat it is.
So that that change inlinguistic framework creates us

(50:50):
creating a word to build thehypothesis.
And I'm guilty of this.
I build words all the time tomean something.
Everyone is.
But the problem is when you dothat and then you start buying
into your own shit, then it canbecome dangerous.
So if you do that and believe inyour own stuff, Dunning Krueger,
gosh damn, imposter syndrome,all the other, you know, yeah,

(51:12):
exactly.
If you do that and you'rebelieving and it's stoicism,
then you know, good on you ifthat's going to help you survive
the day.
But the idea is the stuff thattruly matters in your
environment has always beenaround.
So those are the things that youshould have as your grounding
element.
Gravity is a grounding element.
When you get up and you don'thave gravity, you hit the
ceiling.
When you get up and you don'thave balance, you fall into the

(51:34):
couch.
So those are the type of thingsthat we're talking about
building in your internalbaseline, so you know
something's wrong.
When I go in and I'm talkinglawn chairs and the person's
talking orangings, oranges,something is wrong.
That incongruence means thatthere's danger or opportunity,
which is it?
And if you don't slow down then,then you're going to be too far
past that that that that eventhorizon to hit the brakes,

(51:57):
Brian.
And that's what we're talkingabout.
We're talking about if you're ina life and death encounter and
almost everything is when you'rea first responder, a soldier,
DOJ, DOD, and and all of asudden you like like what is the
thinking that I'm going to stopyou from arresting somebody by
ramming your police car when I'mjust a a citizen watching what's

(52:20):
going on.
Do you not think of the thegravity and the magnitude of all
of those things that are goingon?
So you right now are going,where's he going with this?
I'm telling you that all you'rethinking about is driving to
work, but you don't understandthat there's a high speed
pursuit at the next intersectionthat you'd never planned on.
Okay.
You didn't understand that thearmed robbery bailed out a mile

(52:41):
from your kid's school orchurch, and those two guys are
escaping the cops, and they'relooking at that open door and
thinking that's where I'm goingto go.
So these games where you updateyour internal baseline based on
new and incoming information orplay games with yourself to
anticipate that are crucial tosurvival in today's environment
because things are going so muchmore fast.

(53:02):
Before, when I went out of thecave to pick the berries, I had
to worry, am I going to get anapple or a snake to eat for
lunch today?
And I only had to worry aboutthe the warthog and the gosh
damn cougar or that one crazyguy from the next village.
Now look at how many things wehave to worry about, Brian.
So you have to recalibrate notonly internally for you, but
internally for your environment.

SPEAKER_03 (53:23):
Well, they didn't have the crazy guy from the next
village back then.
They just killed them in thecrib.
They just said Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (53:28):
Exactly.
Something's wrong with that guy.

SPEAKER_03 (53:33):
So yeah, they were absolutely.
Oh, turns out they just have uhepilepsy.
They're not, you know, possessedby the devil.

SPEAKER_00 (53:39):
But uh so dissonance is is so important to you
because if you don'tcontinuously update your
baseline, you're gonna fallpretty much.

SPEAKER_03 (53:46):
This is what I what I'm gonna hit on because we're
talking about like, okay, we'reat the point, like some some
tools to recalibrate, and wetalked about you know different
different methods, you know,like you even showed your
picture that you carry with you,or it's a thing on your visor or
whatever.
Can I explain explain sort ofhow I can re-ant reorient
myself, right?
Because that's what we'retalking about.
It's an orienting exercise in asense.

(54:07):
Reorient my internal baseline.
Can I do that using where I'mat, using external what I see
going on, right?
So cuc because like you know,you become down and in, you're
focused on what you're doing.
Can I can I look at externalobservations to help sort of
like re-anchor my internalbaseline?

SPEAKER_00 (54:24):
So I'll give you, I'll give you a perfect example
of one of those.
So every once in a while we runinto people that forgot the
origin story of Combat Hunter orhow some of this stuff worked
and who the best at creatingscenarios were.
And and one happened not toolong ago where somebody was
using the term death sled andbaby sled.
And I go, hey, that's great.
I go, do you know where thatcame from?
And they were going, no, Idon't.

(54:44):
And I was like, well, we createdthat.
Death sled came from all thecalls that we went on where
people showed up in mountaintowns and rented a vehicle and
drove too fast for conditionsand died in that vehicle.
So the death sled was alwaysassociated with bad stuff.
So we picked that up when wewere training for Iraq and
Afghanistan, the vehicle thatwas carrying the insurgents
became the death sled and thebaby sled.

(55:04):
Well, the baby sled is a smallerversion of the death sled, and
it was another rental vehicle.
And they go, Well, wait aminute, what are you talking
about?
Brian, if you come to my townand you fly into Gunnison
Airport, the airplane feels thesame, the gravity feels the
same, the leaves fall off of thetrees the same, the people speak
the same language you do, butyou're gonna go to the Hertz or

(55:25):
the budget or whatever counterAvis that you're gonna get your
car and you're gonna drive away.
And all of a sudden, as you'reheading up to Crested Butte to
go skiing, all these whitecrystals are gonna start falling
down and the temperature isgonna change drastically.
And guess what?
Your ratio of brake fate, youruh distance, stopping distance
is gonna decrease.
Your ability to navigate usingpower steering is gonna change.

(55:48):
Your tires now become the mostimportant thing in the friction
content of the ground and theroad you're driving on.
And how many people that you'veseen rent cars?
Brian, you and I, when we rent acar, we take photos all the way
around.
Next thing that we do is we gounder the hood.
We're looking at the fluidlevels, all that other stuff.
I've never seen another personat a rental place do that other
than people that we work withall the time.

(56:09):
So now that kid that landed inGunnison or at another mountain
town that's very similar, nowthey're driving past their
headlights again.
They're driving past theirconditions.
And you know what they need todo?
They need to pull over and getout that totem.
They need to take a look and go,where am I right now?
Where do I think I am?
And is that chasm, is that gapbig enough that I'm going to

(56:29):
drive too fast for conditions,or I'm I'm gonna get too close
to that vehicle in front of meand I'm gonna create a crash.
And if not for you, then for allthose other people that aren't
paying attention too.
You don't want to turn your yourgosh damn rental vehicle into
the death sled.
And I've seen it happen so manytimes, we created a name for it.
So think of how serious thatbecomes.
And right now, somebody'slistening and we hit something

(56:50):
in their mind and they're going,oh my God, I see that with
blank.
I see that with cooking.
I see that with, you know,leaving a product in the pantry
too long and now it's turnedinto cyanide or whatever.
I don't know shit about cooking.
I know a lot about eating, butthere's a certain environmental
things that if you don't takecare of them, your blood
pressure is another one.
There's an internal baseline onthem.
If you don't take care of that,Brian, you could die from that,

(57:12):
right?
So the idea is you have to dothose assessments.
We don't come with a warninglight like a cart.
And and we have to measure thosespecifically when we get into
high stress, low feedback loopenvironments.
And in extremists, we get verylittle feedback.
Because we're running a gun andwe're thinking past our

(57:32):
headlights again.

SPEAKER_03 (57:34):
Yeah, and and and and that's why I bring up even
those kind of military examplesof like the stop, look, listen,
smell.
So like the reorientation iskind of simple.
It's like that taking that's tothat minute or that second or
whatever to go, all right, wherewhere where am I right now?
What are what am I doing here?
Like, what's going on?
What's really happening?
And you're looking around,because that's helped me where

(57:54):
I'm like, oh, I'm just I we wedid I forget where we were.
I think it was when we were downin Mexico or something.
Like, like like almost likefainted in that remember that
shopping mall originalsexercises in Mexico City was
fun.
That's where it was.
Like, and I was like, it's likestanding up and like almost like
fainted, and I'm like, God, whatis wrong with me?
Like, there's somethingseriously wrong.
And then I'm like, it's twoo'clock in the afternoon.

(58:15):
We I have not eaten yet today.
We've been on our feet all dayand talking and moving, jet lag,
jet lag this, like every and I'mlike, oh my god, like my yeah,
my internal baseline was so likeI had to, all right.
Well, I'm gonna go run, eat, gograb a quick, you know, taco
over here and then grab acoffee, and I know I'll be back
to you.
But without that, I was justlike immediately going, like,

(58:38):
what's going on?
There's something up, you know.
But but it's just you can youcan look at the external things
to to recalibrate yourselfinternally to say, okay, I'm
coming in a little hot rightnow, or maybe I need a little
glass of water, or I need tochill the F out, or I need a
little bit of time and distancejust by that.
So the and this is why we kindof broke up the these concepts
into two different podcasts, andwe get into very uh obviously a

(58:59):
lot of detail in class.
But the point is like they'rethey they're they go hand in
glove, right?
And some sometimes it's the OJglove though.
You know, if the if the duck ifthe glove don't fit, you know,
you you must apply, right?
Yes.
So but but it that the so the sothey go hand in hand and and
they they apply across manydifferent contexts, right?

(59:20):
So there's this sort ofinternal, external loop of like
this awareness, adjustment, makesome observation, and then
feedback.
And so that's why we we when wecreate these sort of terms or
names or things or or process oror or breathing exercise,
whatever it is, that's you'rewhat you're also doing is
creating a feedback loop.

(59:41):
You you're actually informingyou're you're placing a point
down and saying, okay, fromhere, I'm gonna measure, and
then okay, now from here, andthat's that's what you're doing
with that.
And that's that alone, thatprocess, whatever it is that you
do.
You know, there's some peoplelike, oh, I go outside and I do
you know 15 push ups as fast asI can.
I can.
Like, okay, whatever it is.

(01:00:01):
If it's 10, if it's 100, if it'szero, some people, hey, I'm
gonna go out and smoke acigarette.
It's like, okay, and then I'mgonna come back in.
You know, it's like, okay, maybethat's not healthy, but you're
cognitively doing the samething, right?

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:13):
You're you're recentering and you have to.
So let me give you two quickthings that can get in your way.
One, being a douchebag.
So if you're a fuckingdouchebag, then what happens is
you're going into a situationand trying to solve other
people's problems for themwithout looking at your own.
And I'll give you an example ofthat Tennessee plane crash.

(01:00:35):
So, how many videos now have youseen about the Tennessee plane
crash?
Okay, it's up to 13 dead.
Okay.
Somebody said 19, but I haven'tconfirmed.
So let me tell you this if yousaw that and immediately got on
your social media and startedsaying, well, this is what it
was.
And then seven new videos camein yesterday and five more

(01:00:57):
today, and now you see what itreally is, you feel like a
douchebag, right?
Well, that's what your life islike.
That's when you're shortcuttingthe internal process.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:07):
That's the problem, is those people don't feel
stupid when that happens.
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:13):
And I agree.
But what I'm trying to say islearn from other people's
stupidity.
So what you have to do is whenyou see that, what you need to
do is go, do I need to takecover right now?
Do I need to slow my roll?
Do I need to take a look at thisand ask somebody else where I am
and what's going on?
Because if you don't, you'regoing to get over involved.
And when you do, that's OBE.
I'll give you the secondexample.

(01:01:33):
There's a video that I sawyesterday, and it shows a guy
going to an ATM.
He's in shorts and flip-flop, soyou know he's getting robbed.
And there's nobody standingaround until he starts getting
this stuff out in the dark atwhat looks like a bus station.
You know what I'm saying?
And now all of a sudden a coupleof guys come up and take his
backpack, take his money, and hedecides to fight back.
And two turn into six, andeverybody's beating his ass

(01:01:55):
down.
And guess what happens?
Everybody writes in, well, if hewould have had a weapon, if he
would have had a weapon, theywould have stolen it, stuck it
up his ass, and killed him.
If he would have done anything,you know what he needed to do?
He needed to say, Where am I?
Okay, where do I think I am andwhat's the difference?
Then he would have said, it'snighttime.
I'm in flip-flops.
I had a couple of drinks, I'mgoing to an ATM in the place I

(01:02:16):
don't know in a high crime area.
Do you understand what I'mtrying to say?
Your internal baseline isspecifically designed as a
comparison tool.
And if you choose not to use it,or if you're OBE and you're
deliberately not using it, butyou don't know it, then you're
gonna die.
You're gonna be in a trick bag.
You can avoid that by thinkingthrough the situation before

(01:02:37):
they happen.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:38):
Yeah, and you know, you're when your body releases
or when you feel those differentemotions, what it doesn't matter
whatever it is, it'd be fear oranger or intent.
Technic technically, uh, it hasbeen measured that you're that
that takes your body releasesthat, and in 90 seconds it it
dissipates.
Meaning everything past that isbecause you're now thinking

(01:03:00):
about it and reigniting thatlike it it it's it's 90 seconds,
and that's it.
And then like so I use that withthe with the terrorist little
guy, he's two years old, so hehas obviously very little
control of his emotions.
Plus, he's my son, so he haseven less control of his
emotions.
So he's really got the cards areare stacked, but what I'm
saying.
They're tarot cards, right?

(01:03:20):
Right, right.
Yeah, so so but same thing.
It's like so if he crashes outand he and he throws a tantrum,
I do I'm not gonna even respondfor over a minute.
Like it's just like cool, flowyourself on the ground, and I'm
like, yeah, that sucks, huh man?
I know I hate getting angry, andI hate when I don't get to get
eat more goldfish, but you metyour limit for the day.
So let's uh go play with trucksover here.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:41):
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:42):
Like, you know, it's like it's over.
And so it it if you think aboutit that way, we're kind of the
same as the humans.
But the the one of the the bigone of the biggest reasons why
we always talk about these kindof things is that humans are
just horrible judges of ourcognitive performance.
I mean, we are really, reallybad at it, and everyone is.

(01:04:03):
We're we we get overconfidentwith with things that we think
we're good at.
Our emotional reasoning and andself-deception, uh one, it's
it's it's a survival mechanism.
So it's there.
Like it's it's easier to blameothers, it's easier to lash out,
it's easier to be angry at thisnational level politicians, even
though I don't know a singlecity council member's name or
state rep's name, right in myown backyard, because I can look

(01:04:25):
over there and see that they'rethe problem.
We don't ever want to look inthat mirror.
And it's it's it's hard.
It's it's really, really, reallydifficult to.
And so when I see people do it,even if it's something small,
like when you see it in course,and like, oh man, yeah, I should
have seen it this way.
And I'm like, hey man, like thisreflection exercise you're doing
right now, yeah, you're you'realready at a level of of
self-awareness that most peoplearen't at because we don't want

(01:04:46):
to do that.
So just understanding thedifferent factors and labeling
them and knowing how tointeract, like that is for me,
like that is if you can do that,then whatever way you want to
deal with that, or you want toimprove, or you want to talk to
someone, or take the self-help,or you like Greg goes to goat
yoga and whatever, sits it, sitsin the drum circle naked with
everyone.
That's fine.

(01:05:06):
I I'm all good with it.
You know, it's just uh the it'sthe it's the cognitive process
that's the important part.

SPEAKER_00 (01:05:11):
So I I would tell you this.
Yeah, I would tell you you justneed to slow down.
You when you're a little kid,take a look at being a little
kid.
You run everywhere, and that'sfun and it's wonderful.
But all of your scars whenyou're a little kid are on your
head.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Because you're leading with yourhead, but you're not leading
with your thoughts.
So the idea is just, you know,you keep thinking, hit that

(01:05:34):
boop, whoop, whoop, whoop, getthrough that traffic faster
because you got to be that firston the scene.
And the next thing you know,it's a gosh damn homicide and
you've videoed your own you knowdemise.
I'm not saying think slowly.
I'm not canumin.
I'm saying that what you have todo is you have to move more
slowly through your environmentso your cognition catches up

(01:05:55):
with your ass.
And and once you get those twothings calibrated, you can move
quite quickly.
The the best in the world.
Watch the Olympics one time andsee what it really looks like,
you know?
That's what we're talking about.
That was you're foolingyourself.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:09):
Well, that that's a great example.
Like where I don't I forget somecomedian or people made the joke
before where like they said inevery Olympic event they should
have like one person.
So you got the competitors,right?
All the top people fromdifferent nations, right?
Then you should have just onelike random person who
volunteers to go.
Yeah, because to show to showlike just how fast or just how

(01:06:30):
amazing they are, or just likelike that, that's what you need,
but you're watching it againstthese ten people.
So it's just the ten greatestpeople on the face of the earth
right now.
So the the you know, I mean, youcan't you can't compare that,
but you can that so thecomparisons are like, oh, he was
a quarter second or he was justthis.
But if you did it against aregular person, you'd be like,
oh my god, dude, just orders ofmagnitude.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:48):
So they'll be here tomorrow.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:50):
So so big big takeaways, obviously, you know,
you you can't you can't controlthe chaos and the environment
around you.
You can you can influence it,but you can't control it, you
don't have to, but because youyou have to focus on is all
right, how do I control mycalibration?
How do I control this internalbaseline and get better at that?
Because that's gonna help mewith everything that I do.
And so I always like bring itback to the question and and

(01:07:13):
just challenge anyone listening,you know, to do that.
Well, where do I think I am?
Where am I at actually?
And and and that's where I canstart to well, typically I'm
that I go back to my your normalbase on, well, how do I
typically feel at this time ofday?
What usually happens after I eatthat giant burrito or what the
you know, it doesn't matter whatit is.
You can you can you're justyou're asking those questions

(01:07:34):
and it gets you better, it getsme better at having
conversations with my wife, withthe kids, and just in general,
it's like okay, where where arewe all at right now?
Let's take the temperature ofthe room, let's take an internal
temperature and figure it outfrom there.
And I know too for for for otherfolks, I think I think we'll do
for for Patreon follow-up onthis one.
Uh, we'll kind of do it I'llcall it like when when internal
and external baselines collide,like when those things go wrong.

(01:07:57):
But Greg, I'll any any closingremarks from you?

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:01):
You you said it and it was veiled.
Uh so I'll I'll just bring it upagain.
Listen, uh, where do you youthink you are and where are you
really?
And the chasm in between it isthe measurement of how bad
you're gonna get fucked.
The second one is well, youcan't control the chaos of the
situation occurring around you.
You can control you.
So if you control you, thenthat's something esteemed.
That's something that you canaspire to, and that's a really

(01:08:24):
good thing.
Because if you sit there walkingaround going, I have to change
it, change every one of theseassholes around me because I
hate them, you're never gonna dothat, and that's gonna be a lot
of hate in your life.
But if you sit there and go,wait a minute, I can slow my
role, I can lower my voice, Ican de-escalate the situation
from my perspective.
Brian, you got such a a muchbetter chance of living to an
old age and telling kids storiesaround a campfire.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:46):
Yeah.
And they'll be your kids, notlike you're uh Many times.

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:49):
Many times they will.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:51):
Many times.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:52):
Right.
I I met we appreciate everyonefor listening in.
Always reach out to us, youknow, if you have any questions.
Obviously, we got a lot more onthe Patreon site.
Go check out the DistinguishedSavage podcast as well.
Shout out to Walt.
Appreciate the bourbon.
Please please send more if youwant.
Um we always you can alwaysreach out to us too at the human
behavior podcast at gmail.com.

(01:09:13):
Uh, we do appreciate everyone.
If you enjoy it, just share itwith a friend, send it to
someone that helps us outimmensely, and we've been
getting some great feedback.
So uh thank you so much fortuning in.
And don't forget that trainingchanges behavior.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Breakfast Club

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Your Internal Baseline

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Breakfast Club

All Episodes

Your Internal Baseline

Stuff You Should Know