Ep. 141: Blown Up, Broken Down, and Rebuilt: Chance Burles’ Incredible Transformation Beyond Trauma

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Travis Bader (00:09):
Show me your friends, and I'll show you who you are.
That's a saying that's stuckwith me for a long time.
The importance of communitycannot be overstated.
In fact, there's an 80 year study Done byHarvard, where they looked at people from
all different backgrounds and beliefs.
And they found that the number onepredictor of happiness in their

(00:32):
lives was strong social connections.
The people that you surround yourselfwith and the depths of those relationships
have a lasting impact on your life.
And it's not just ourconnection with others.
It directly influences howwe connect with ourselves.
And with the natural world around us.

(00:52):
Today, I'm sitting down with mygood friend, Chance Burrells.
After suffering both physical andpsychological trauma from an IED explosion
that occurred underneath his vehicle,he's been on a long road to recovery.
In our conversation, Chance shares howbecoming more mindful of his mental and
emotional state has not only just helpedhim heal, but it's helped him connect with
nature and be a more successful hunter.

(01:14):
He talks about how being truly present andin tune with your surroundings Can have a
direct impact on the animals around you.
It's a fascinating insight on howyour energy and your emotions can have
an influence on your natural world.
If you enjoy what you hear today,you've got to check out The Collective.
It's a podcast at Chance cofounded with Sean Taylor.

(01:36):
And I should probablyrefine that a little bit.
Cause it's not just a podcast.
It's a place where hard charging menand women will come together to tackle
big issues and try to better themselvesAnd those around them, I put a link in
the bio for you to check that one out.
If you want to deepen your connectionwith nature and build your skills
in the outdoors, make sure tocheck out the Silvercore club.

(01:57):
Now, without further ado,let's get on with the podcast.
Today's guest is an ex combatengineer who has dedicated his
post military career to supportingfellow veterans through the power of
shared experience and storytelling.
Alongside former JTF2 sniper, Sean Taylor,he embarked on an ambitious mission
to produce one high quality podcastevery single day for an entire year.

(02:19):
Featuring dynamic and drivenprofessionals together, they aim
to inspire, inform, and ignite thespirit of perseverance and success
in the veteran community and beyond.
Welcome to the Silvercorepodcast, Chance Burrells.

Chance Burles (02:33):
And my pleasure being here.
That's a beautiful intro.
I really liked that.
I might have to steal it from you.

Well, I'm not going to lie.
AI did help a little bit on that one.
I typed it up, got it looking how Iwanted and then pumped it into a AI.
I said, can you make me sound better?

Better.
That's the beautiful part about AI.
I've used it a few times now for,for the collective and it really
helps just, you know, crystallizesome of the words you want to use.
And it has a much larger vocabularyrange than most people do.
So you get that.
You know, it uses words likebombastic and things like that, you
know, like, it's like, all right,

cool.
It makes me sound better.
I'm down with it.
Bombastic.
Yeah.
I think it was Scrooge McDuckwho, uh, there was the first
time I heard about that one.
I think it was Bombastium was theelement that he created and it was
like ice cream with like any differentflavor that he could use it for.
Bombastic.
Yes.

Bringing it back to the eighties cartoons.
I

love

it.

Oh, this was a comic book.
It's like, Oh,

even older.

I love it.
You've made the road trip all the waydown to beautiful British Columbia.
And I'm betting, can't wait to leave.
A hundred percent.
Get out of

the city.
Super excited to get out of here.
But, uh, we're, we'vegot another few days.
We've got some more people I got tolink up with and the family and I are
going to go do some really cool things.
Like we're going to go see the,uh, the anthropology museum at UBC.
It's supposed to be really cool.
We're going to hit a Fort Stanley as well.
It's supposed to be really cool as well.
We're really just here asa, Exploration or anything.

(04:00):
And yeah.

And you're just exploring why you don't live in the big city.
A hundred percent.

Yep.
This is exactly why, youknow, as soon as we hit BC.
Everything kind of changed the,uh, you know, the drivers changed
the way the roads work changed, howpeople interact with you changes.
And then as soon as you hit the city,everything changes from there too.
We got past Chilliwack and then we spentan hour and a half of traffic on the, uh,
on the one, just coming into the city.

(04:26):
And we're like, this is awesome.

I just got back from Nova Scotia, spent a
couple of weeks over there.
It was in Toronto and thenback to BC and I tell ya.
It's even in there, in the big smokeof Nova Scotia, it's a lot more laid
back than what it's like over here.
And it's got me wondering whyI live in the lower mainland.

It's, it's, it's beautiful.
It's low maintenance in general.
Um, I think like weather wise and stuff,which is why I think a lot of people
are drawn here, but my wife and I werechatting about it too, when we were down
at the beach and I was looking around,I'm like, man, nobody seems to care.
About anybody else at all.

(05:09):
Everyone's in their own little worlddoing their own little thing without
any regard for, you know, other people'sspace or time or like, it just, I saw,
I don't know how many near misses withbicycles and people just like shrug it
off like, yeah, and like off they go.

You know, I read, and I'm just playing around with our audio
a little bit as we're talking here.
But I read a study about road rage, and itsaid that it is directly correlated to the
size of the city or town that you live in.
And over a certain size, you don't.

(05:51):
De what's the word you depersonalize.
A hundred percent dehumanize.
Dehumanize basically instead of,Oh, that's Gladys driving down.
She's probably sleeping, or maybe she'shad a couple of drinks or whatever it is.
Right.
It's why that, why didthat person do that to me?

(06:11):
Completely different person.
I'm going to get them back.
I'm going to run them over.
They must've done that to me on purpose.
A hundred percent.

And it's very, it's.
Self centric as well.
I mean, when you think about thelarger, the larger city that you're
in, the more the population increases,the less community you have, the less.
People you actually know, and so thentherefore your, your mind becomes that

(06:37):
much more closed to yourself, right?
Then it becomes, well, thatguy obviously did it to me.
How dare that person, whoever theyare, you know, versus You know,
when I'm driving around SherwoodPark, it's a pretty small town.
It's, you know, it'spretty relaxed atmosphere.
That's why we moved there.
Everything is within walking distance.
We wave at people.

(06:58):
We, I know my neighbors, I have acommunity and, you know, uh, even people
I don't know when I was doing the Nijmegenmarch a little while ago, I was walking
around and people would be like, I sawyou this morning with your pack on.
Have you, you're still walking that thing?
And I'm like, yep, yeah.
And they're like, what do you do?
And like engage in aconversation immediately.

It's funny you bring up community because that's something
that's, uh, that I think a lot ofpeople can really benefit from.
And whether they live in a very remotearea and they don't really have much of a
community around them, or quite often whatI find, they live in a very built up area
and it's difficult to find your people.

(07:37):
Yes.
It's difficult to find that communityof people that are there to help you,
to help support you, that want tosee nothing from you other than for
you to be the best that you can be.
Yeah.
And that kind of bringsus to the collective.
A hundred percent.
Tell me about the

collective.
Oh man.
The collective has been a, it'sbeen a passion project, but it's
also been a, some massive stressfactor in my life at the same time.
So Sean came to me, um, November,December, uh, not last, 2022.

(08:12):
And he was like, you know, I've beenlooking at the veteran community.
We need to do something.
Are you in?
And I was like, well, yeah, Ilike, I, I'm absolutely, I've
been an advocate for years.
I'm doing my own podcast.
Yeah.
How can I help?
What are we, what are, what's the plan?
And he goes, well, I'm going to pusha pace that you're not quite used to.
And, uh, you know, are you,are you good to keep up?

(08:36):
I said, well, I do my best.
Let's get after it.
And so he was like, okay, well,we're going to do a podcast
today for the whole year.
And I was, you know, having donemany podcasts, so it's like, whoa.
How, like, what are we to talk about?
We're like, what are we, he'slike, we'll figure it out.
So we started January one andyou know, first, first guest we

(08:58):
had on with you and, uh, it was.
That's right.
You were the man right off the bat.
And, and it, so it, it becamewhat it is in my belief
through you initially, because.
Right after that conversation,you engaged us and said, well,
you know, what is the value?
What is it that you're trying toprovide to the world with that?

(09:18):
And I had to stop and think about it.
And Sean and I thoughtabout it for a while.
And eventually we came to the factthat it is about the community.
It's about bringing people togetherto a central location where we can all
discuss, we can talk, we can engage,we can think, we can develop ideas,
we can throw stuff off of each other.
We can, all of these great things that,that Most people don't have, they don't

(09:43):
have an opportunity to do that, especiallywith the caliber of people that we knew.
And then it kind of blossomed from thereand the community has built itself.
Like I would ask on a regular basis, I'veasked you a couple of times, you know, who
do you think would be good for the show?
And I think you've asked me and manyother people have asked me too, it'd
be, well, what are you looking for?
I'm like, are they cool?

(10:04):
Can they hold a conversation?

Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are two verydifferent things too, right?
You can have the coolest people outthere that are just doing their thing,
but they have a difficult time whenthe microphone's in front of them.

Yes.

So finding that special person who can relay that is, um,
And that's a learned skill because Iwould say, I am that former person.
I am the person who has a difficulttime when the microphone's in front
and I swear to God, every single time,the best conversation happens before
we press record and after we pressrecord, the conversation that you

(10:37):
and I had before we pressed record.
I think a lot of people could geta ton of value out of, but I'm
just, I'm not at that point yet.

Well, and we're, we're going to get there.
Don't worry.
I took some notes.
So we're going to get back to it,but, and I think this, this comes
from the fact that, you know, it'shard to be natural when you have
unnatural things in front of you, right?
The microphone wasn't pointed at me whenwe were talking, it wasn't pointed at you.
It was still in the room.

(11:07):
And we had like, we weren't all miked up.
We didn't have the headset on and stuff,but it was just a natural conversation.
We started talking about this andthen I brought up that and then
you brought up this and then it becreated its own, um, direction and
we weren't trying to control it.
But the moment you put somethingunnatural in front of you, then
there's a level of control.
I think in our own minds that wehave to kind of, we try to let, well,

(11:29):
I, you know, the audio and then youstart processing things all at once.
And then it becomes very difficult tofind that natural flow, which is reps.

If it wasn't so highly unethical, pressing record
and then afterwards saying, okay,everyone, let's sign off on here.
Are you happy with what we said?
Blah, blah, blah.
If you don't, we can, we can mix it.
That would make for a pretty interestingshow because the amount of like.
Every single time I have aconversation with somebody on the

(11:58):
Silvercore podcast, and even onthe collective, when we wrap up.
The green room is killer, man.
It's killer.
That's when, that's when storiesstart flying, got X, SAS, SBS, special
forces folks, just telling storiesthat would just light up the internet.

(12:20):
If, if they were able to go

out.
I think that's part ofit too, is the awareness.
Of the fact that you're,you are being recorded.
Right.
And it is like, this isgoing to go out to the world.
So there's for many people, and I knowfrom the many podcasts I've done now, um,
there, there's a level of reservation.

(12:42):
Sure.
Whenever there's a recordinghappening and I made it my personal
mission to completely remove that.
I just, didn't matter what,I'm open to talking about
it, hit me, whatever you got.
But do you want that removed?
I do.
Yeah, I think that is a, uh, Ithink it's a key proponent in
being able to build a communityof people that truly benefit you.

(13:07):
Because if you are holding somethingback, if you're, if you're not a hundred
percent honest with the people thatyou have in your circle, how are you a
hundred percent honest with yourself?

I think there's a difference between being a hundred percent honest
with the people in your circle and airingeverything for the internet, airing
everything for people to hear, becausea hundred percent honest with the people
in your circle, give them everything youhave expect, give them 110, expect 40%.

(13:39):
Cause guaranteed they've, they'll feellike they're giving a hundred and 10.
It's from your own personal perspective.
It's always feels like you're given more.
Yeah.
But do you want, andthat's the difficult part.
Like what I show my kidsthrough social media.
No, I'm not going to share that part.
There's parts of my life that I'm goingto make sure are kept away because you
want to protect them and you want toprotect certain parts of yourself from

(14:03):
those who would wish to do you harm.

Absolutely.
For sure.
And there's.
And I'm going to caveat this in the factthat yes, this is for the internet and I
know we're recording it and I know, I knowwe're going to be in, uh, putting this out
into the world, but for this conversation,I want to give you anything that you
have, uh, that you are interested in.
I'm not going to sit here and verballydiarrhea all of my life out to you.

(14:29):
Cause there's no value in that becauseit's just mass information, but in no
way, am I going to hold anything back.
If you're asking me about, youknow, a time in Afghanistan,
that was really rough.
I will tell you those issues, those thingsthat are rough for me, because I've seen
what happens when you don't, and I've toldthe story in the collective many times,

(14:51):
but my grandfather, World War II vet,also a combat engineer, um, he thought
himself a coward for 70 plus years basedoff of one incident that he never talked
about until I got home from Afghanistan.
And it was very simple.
He was working on a railroad in France,trying to rebuild one that had been

(15:12):
bombed out before the allies took it over.
They called for volunteersto go up to the front.
He did not raise his hand.
He's already in a war zone.
He's already doing a job.

Didn't raise his

hand.
Didn't raise his hand.
Coward.
70 years of self destruction.
That he was a cowardfor that one incident.
Never talked about with anybody.
Not once.
And like, how did that manifestitself throughout his life?
Oh, if so, my, my mom would tellme stories about her getting.

(15:47):
Belted, like the big, thick, uh,leather belts for doing stuff wrong.
Um, he would have rage incidences.
Um, he would never allow himself tobelieve that he was worth what he was.
And he would constantly be seeking moreknowledge and trying to learn more.
Like he got his pilot's license.

(16:07):
He was building himselfa plane in his garage.
Like he was an electrician.
He was a mechanic.
He was like, he had all of these skills.
Would never put himself out to the worldwith the fact that he had those skills.
Mm hmm.
You know, he ran a small shop fora little while that, uh, him and
his, my grandmother would, theyowned a shop in Shonovan and,
uh, Saskatchewan for many years.

(16:29):
And then eventually they justsold it and then they moved in.
He worked for, for as anelectrician for a while.
Like he would always take theback seat because he totally
believed that he did not have thevalue or the courage to stand up.
And do the thing, even thoughhe volunteered for the war, he
volunteered for a hazardous duty interms of being a combat engineer,

(16:50):
you're dealing with explosives andhike, uh, you know, construction of
big structures and stuff like that.
Easy to get taken out pretty fastthat, that one decision and the
fact that he did not talk about it.
Affected everything elsehe made in his life.

Worth is such a funny thing, isn't it?
A hundred percent.
I mean, what is worth when you, when youlook at it, like, what is something worth?
Well, I've got a pencil in my hand here isworth, I don't know what a pencils go for.
Right.
But Oh, hold on a second.
It's a Stadler.
It's got some branding on it.
So it's got a white eraser,not a pink eraser on it.

(17:28):
I mean, that's, that's probablyworth a little bit more cause it's
got some fancy branding on it.
It's still a pencil, still likeevery, how is one thing going
to be worth more than the other?
And so many people will placetheir worth on external factors.
Yeah.
On what they feel other peoplethink that they are worth.
A hundred percent.

(17:48):
And many of these people arehanging around the wrong people,
myself included, yourself included.
I mean, in the past, lookingat these different things, that

was the first thing we said, when you walked in, you're
like, what do you want to talk about?
I'm like, you know, one of the things Istruggle with is my own self worth and
a lot of it, you know, we, we went intoit forehand of like family and all this
other stuff, but it really comes back tothe fact of what value are you adding?
So let's use this pencil for an example.
This pencil on its own is worth, you know,the wood and the tin and the rubber and

(18:22):
the graphite that it is comprised of.
But what is it capable of?
Well, it depends on whosehands you put it in.
Exactly.
And what are, what does that inthe further in the, like, if you
expand that into the next realm,like the fact that you and I are
sitting here taking notes and whatwe write down is what we speak about.
And the information that we'regiving out to the world is then

(18:44):
taken upon by those people.
We can.
Literally change the world with thispencil, because this expands into the
ideas that come out of my head thatexpands into what we engage in terms
of conversation that expands into whatpeople hear on a regular basis when
they listen to the podcast that caninspire the next person, which goes
back to the collective, which is why wegot it started because we just needed

(19:08):
a place that the ideas could flow.
They could be challenged.
They could be accepted.
They could be.
Engaged upon so that, that value couldjust be multiplied and expanded and
developed on, and then engaged again, andthen rebrought in that thought of from a

(19:29):
different angle and so on and so forth.
So like, yeah, this pencil byitself is worth what, 15 cents, but
what it can produce is priceless.

Okay.
So my head's going in a bunch ofdifferent, different areas on this one.
Um, and,
You know, and maybe it's something forafter the show as well, but, uh, a boots
on the ground portion of the collective.
Have you put much thought into that?
Yeah, we have.
We've talked about it a lot.
Because there's an action piece in there.

(19:59):
In your own example that you give hereabout the pencil, the pencil without
action, exertion without action, right?
Or, um, ideas without exertion, withouteffort are basically meaningless.
Um, having an, an actionable piece onthere, I think would be an interesting
piece of the puzzle to really get into.

(20:20):
Grow the collective andbring everybody into it.

Well, that's one of the other things I wrote down here.
That's really difficultfor me to self promotion.
That's what it comes down to.
It's like, again, my own personalworth, what I value myself as
integrates itself into the collective.
So how I promote the collective, howI engage in it, how I actually run
the show is very I minimize myself inorder to highlight the conversation.

(20:49):
I, I try to step aside personallyto moderate the conversation
and pass it around to the otherpeople that we have on the show.
But we do that specifically because thehighlight of the show is the conversation.
It's not me.
It's not Sean.
It's not the, you know, ourstories, our backgrounds.
It is the conversation.
We want that to be thekey proponent of it.

(21:10):
But the, to your point, the physicalaspect of it, the community is.
What the collective, it'sthe people that are engaging.
So it, that's a very toughsubject of creating a boots
on the ground kind of deal.
And we've talked about it a lot.
Sean and I have, uh, come up with lotsof ideas about, you know, possibly

(21:31):
a speaking event or maybe, uh, youknow, a live action engagement where
I could like run a show up on a stageand have people in the audience that
could actually ask questions physicallyand be there and like, take it all in.
And then.
Engage people or even smaller things likegoing out to a cabin in the woods with
15 people and just sitting down to reallydiscussing some of the issues that we

(21:53):
all struggle with, that kind of thing.
So that's a tough one.
We've, we've talked about a lot aboutit, try to figure out what to do.
And the other thing is, Sean isvery specific that the first one
has to knock it out of the park.
We cannot, at this pointwhere we are right now, same
thing with the shirts, right?
Like.
We had to make a shirt that wasgoing to be outstanding, be taken

(22:17):
on by every single person thatlooked at it and was like, yes.

So I disagree.

Yeah, I know.
You know, it's funny.
We've had that conversationtoo, but hit me.
What do you, what part did you, so I

disagree.
Um, okay.
A few different things.
I I've told you about the, uh, the valueof Story of the rifle in the past, the
rifle work I did with, uh, had a guy comein looking for some rifle work done, did
so much work on this thing, gave him aabsolutely silly little cheap price tag.

(22:48):
He walks out.
Okay, great.
Like, what?
He didn't say he liked it.
He didn't say,
yeah,
came back the next week, wantedme to do the exact same thing in a
different caliber on a different rifle.
Parker has a cut crown thread, right?
Headspace to specifications withina few thousandths of an inch.
And I'm like, forget this guy'staking advantage of me now.
I'm going to charge right.

(23:08):
And so I charged him not even aterrible amount, but just kind of what
the blue book median line would say.
And he left and he came backwith white gloves on and he
said, this, this is quality work.
I did the exact same thing.
I just charged him more.
And that's always stuck in my mindwhen it comes down to, to worth.

(23:28):
Um, it's when you say we've gotto knock it out of the park, it's
got to be just stellar becausewe're at this certain point, right?
Uh, you know, the story of the,uh, the pottery class, you That
would be where my head goes.
So a teacher says, okay, class, thishalf of the class, you have to make the

(23:51):
perfect pot, spend the entire semester,read it, learn it, make it perfect.
The other half of the class, makeas many as you want, go nuts, right?
Make 10 a day if you want, right?
Throw them out.
Just keep going.
At the end of the semester, theclass that was allowed to repeat.

(24:12):
Repeatedly make, destroy, learn,make, destroy, learn, go through
it, had a far superior pot thanthe ones that were tasked was
just making that one perfect pot.
I would say start small and just do it.
Because if you, from my perspective,if it's going to be perfect and

(24:34):
it's going to go to the door.
Uh, that's a bottleneckdone is better than perfect.
And if I'm sitting there tryingto make this perfect thing and
then hot, it's not perfect.
Okay.
Next week, next week, next week.
Whereas if, and a person weboth know has reached out and he
says, I can get this auditorium.
I can get this thing set up.
Let's do something.
Right.
So I said, okay, now I'mwaiting for him to do it.

(24:57):
And if he's listening, he knows who he is.
Yeah.
Um, but done's better than perfect.
And if, if the.
If our own sense of self worth isthe same as my second rifle that I
put out, if I just say, I'm worth it,you guys will get value and you'll
get value because I care about you.

(25:18):
I care about what I'm doing.
And I want to give you 110percent of what I have.
They will see that valueand they'll get it too.
Yeah.
Ah, that would be my approach to it.

I, I.
I agree with you.
And I think that the, uh, I thinkthe challenge at least is that for
me, and I can't speak for Sean hereon this one, but for me, I really
want it to be, well, I know it'sgoing to be successful regardless.
Like that's not a question.
Depends

on how you measure success,

right?
And that's what I, so my measureof success is that are people
going to gain from being there?
Obviously I don't want them to showup and us just kind of sit around and
hang out and shoot the shit and belike, you know, it's a great time, but
I want to, I want to put on a show.
I want to make people think I wantto create an environment that we can

(26:07):
have deep, thoughtful, meaningfulconversations without the trappings
of, you know, everything else, allof the, uh, all the other stuff.
So I guess more than, more than anything,I want it to be truly valuable for the
people that show up, especially if peopleare going to be spending money, because

(26:30):
I, I do not want anybody walking awayfrom a collective event thinking that
they wasted their money, or wasted theirtime, or wasted any of that, because it
really should be a value added project.
Project cross the board,
but you're right.
We do need to get it.
And we did it with the collective anyway.
I mean, the first episodes wehad out there were not great.

(26:54):
It took a lot of reps toreally hammer those out.
And it wasn't, we hit our stride probablymid June after 120, 140 episodes,
something that we really hit our stride.
And then we, you know, we hadthe men's mental health month.
30 days of talking aboutmen's mental health stuff.
Yeah, and like from everything from youknow, sexual dysfunction and pornography

(27:19):
to worth we talked about to You knowcommunity to fatherhood to like we
we talked about as much as we could.

Mm hmm.

It was a great month But after that, we were like, okay, we need
to dial this back a little bit becauseit was getting It was becoming a struggle
to have those conversations, right?
then We hit our stride from there.
We just went to town.
We found the right people tohave the right conversations.
We started engaging the public.
We started engaging the, the,the, the social media community

(27:50):
to get ideas and get concepts.
And what is it that you guys want to hear?
Like, As much as I can putout ideas I can come up with.
I'm not the end all be allsay all about information.

So, uh, that brings, so we're talking about worth my second
thought on this whole worth thing, if wetake the rifle analogy and okay, we're
going to, we're valued at this and peoplewill see that it's kind of like iPhone
is an iPhone really worth that much morethan another phone that can probably
have a faster processor and all therest, but they say, no, we're worth it.

(28:23):
We integrate, we do all thisstuff and, you And that's part
of their value proposition.
But the other side as well, when you say,I want people to leave and have something
worthwhile, it's your audience too.
So if you have the wrong audience,if you've got the wrong people
that you're attracting to you.

(28:44):
You're.
Always going to have this sense that,uh, either my, my worth is inflated
or my worth is deflated dependingon your, your type of audience.
And I've given, I've talked aboutin the past, before I started this
podcast, I had been on one friendasked me to be on their podcast.
And that was kind of neat.
We had a couple of beers and then just alittle recorder in the center and actually

(29:04):
recorded in the next room over here.
And I was like, man, thatwas, that's kind of fun.
I enjoyed that.
Right.
Good.
Yeah.
And I'd never listened to a podcast,save one that I'd seen live.
And that was a presentfrom my wife for Christmas.
And she says, okay, Trav gotthis wicked present for you.
We're going to go see meat eater,perform a live podcast in Seattle.

(29:26):
That'd be cool.
And I said, what's meat eater.
And I said, I don't listen to podcasts.
Why, why would I want to go see apodcast and sit down and watch these
people who have no clue who they are.
And.
I wasn't the right audience.
So I sat down and I, you know, there'sa meet and greet ahead of time.
There's a handful of us.

(29:47):
I meet with Steve and Janice andthe whole crew there, or going
back and forth, actually made somefriends off of that one, which is,
which is, I think the biggest valueoff of that is the connections
and the friendships that you make.
Um, but I watch a podcast.
I'm like, okay, like, like I wasnot the target market for that one.
Yeah.

(30:07):
Uh, so, but people beside meleft and right that were, they
were just beside themselves.
They said, this is fantastic.
Oh, this is one of the best episodeswe've heard and they're going into it.
And I'm like, okay.
So I think that would be the second partfor like the collective ensuring that
you prime and set up the right people.
The right audience that will be thereand guaranteed they're going to be,

(30:31):
they're going to be leaving with value.
It's similar to that thing recently,the, the event that, uh, suction put on.

Oh yeah.
Yeah.
That was a

fun

one.
The night to inspire.
Yeah.
I wish I could have madeit out there for that one.
That was, uh, thatlooked like a great time.
I, I really like the idea of.
Passing on knowledge is one of the reasonswhy I like teaching so much is that I love
watching people get these I call them ahamoments where they you know, they garner
the concept not just the informationand you can see it They just oh Right.

(31:02):
That's why okay that and theneverything else makes sense and
then they're they're Progressionjust kind of skyrockets from there.
Those moments for me are gold.
I just love watching that happen.
And you see it in speaking events whenpeople are kind of, you know, nodding,
nodding, nodding, and then they go.
Uh, and like you made aconnection right there.

(31:23):
Okay, cool.
I'd like, I see you in the third row.
Okay, let's hit it up.
Um, when I was doing the walk forveterans, the same thing, I would
see people come out and they'dkind of be a little wary initially,
and then start to kind of get alittle closer to certain groups.
And then they'd hear a story and be like,Oh, I know that guy I was on tour with.
Like, Oh, okay.
And then the connection would happen.
And it'd be like, yes, yes, dothat more and stuff like that.

(31:47):
Um, And that's what I really wantto have for people, especially
so anything that we do with thecollective boots on the ground style,
that's what I'm gonna be looking for.
And you're right.
It comes down to the community.
We got to get the right people in theseats that are there for that purpose
to engage in that kind of conversation.
Cause it's, but as you know, Imean, you, you know, You, uh, plan

(32:11):
events and all kinds of things.
You plan hunts and you haveclasses and all those things.
That is not an easy task tocreate that kind of thing.
So.

No, but you have a framework of people who've
gone down that road before, whocan, uh, who you can lean into.
So when did you first kind of come tothe realization that, um, you would like
to have a better sense of self worthand have you had your aha moment yet?

I've had a number of aha moments.
Uh, initially the first, thevery first one, Was I had just
gotten out of the military.
I had a five month old sonand he did not respond well
to master corporals very well.
And that's who I was at the time.
I was a recruit instructor.

(32:56):
I was a hundred percent knife, hand ready,do this and expect people to just go.
Um, and I walked into the room at onepoint in time and my son was just like
playing with toys or something like that.
And the moment I walked into theroom, he flinched just like a,

And

in that moment, I was like, okay, this is not working.
I need to, I need to do better.
Something's wrong here.
So I started going to therapy.
I started researching therapy.
I started researchingpost traumatic stress.
I started researching all thethings that I was dealing with
instead of just kind of accepting.

(33:32):
What the military hadoffered me at the end of it.
And that's the big thing was whenI got out of the military, they
were like, okay, we'll go seethe OSI clinic here in Edmonton.
They'll get, they'll hook youup with a doc, have a good life.

With a dog or a doc?

A doc.
Sorry.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, I

thought it was like a support dog or something.

Um, and so I started seeing him and I just expected
that he would know what to do.
So I.
And so he spent a year there and Ijust got worse every F every time I saw
him, I'd get worse and I'd get worse.
And there was at one point I realizedthat I would see him on like a Thursday

(34:12):
and then I'd be just emotionally wreckedFriday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday would
come around and I'd, I'd have like maybea couple hours of just, okay, relief.
And then later that night I'd realize, OhGod, I gotta go see him again on Thursday.
And then Tuesday, Wednesday became this.
Just anxiety of like, Oh, Fred,now I've got to go back there.

(34:33):
And like, so I was just jackedup six days of the week.
What kind of doctor?
He was a psychologist.
Do you know what kind of, uh, modality?
He really went into what he wanted us towork on was exposure therapy directly.
So it was like, it's like talk,talk, uh, therapy, but he just had me
repeat the same story over and overand over and over and over and again.

(34:55):
And it just,

how'd you find that?

It was, it was horrific.
It was horrific because at theend of the session, it'd be like,
Oh, okay, well, our time's up.
And I would just be like,
and he'd be like, are you okay?
And I'm like, yep, I'm fine.
Let me at like, justget, get me out of here.
And, uh, it was, it was horrific.
And it took a friend of mine andI, again, I had no knowledge.

(35:19):
Or wherewithal to go, man, this, thisisn't, this can't be right, right?
Uh, and if I was talking to a friendof mine, uh, another vet and he was,
he was like, man, how's the docs going?
And I'm like, Oh God, I gottago see him in like three days.
And I just, I hate his gutsand I don't want to be there.
And I, it took, one of the things thatclicked in my head was it took him, uh,

(35:42):
he could not remember the name of my son.
And And I saw him every weekand I talked about my son every
week because he was one of my

trickers Yeah, let's show us how much he cares

and he just like every time he'd be like, so your
son, um, and he would check hisnotes Arden yeah Arden, I'd be like,

yeah

So that was bad.
Anyways, so I talked to my friendand he was like, oh man, you should
just go see somebody else I'm like,I can't that's who they sent me to
He's like no, no, dude, dude, you'relike You don't have to see the guide.
Like you can just go see anybody you want.
If they're blue cross covered,like you're good to go, go
look, go find somebody else.
And I was like, Oh, Oh, Oh, okay.

(36:26):
Uh, so brilliant advice, by the way.
A hundred percent.
It is.
And I've told hundreds ofveterans, the same thing.
How many doctors did you see beforeyou found one that clicked with you?
One, just one more.
Yeah.
The, the next one I sawwas, is still my doc.
And well, the key is, is that I went, Idid a deep dive on what it is I wanted.

(36:47):
What did you want?
I wanted a trauma specialist that hasexperience with veterans and PTSD.
And, and I was going through the listof modalities was a equine therapist.
And I was like, Equines.
I grew up on a ranch.
It's like, yeah, I fricking love horses.
Absolutely.
Let's do this.
And I didn't know what it was.
And then I think my first, my Fafter my first session with her,

(37:13):
um, I just, I walked out of thereand I was like, calm and I was like,
we've just talked about some prettyrough stuff and I'm like relaxed and
I'm pretty good.
And then the next time Isaw her, Again, same thing.
I walked out of there going,this is very different.

(37:34):
I feel pretty good right now.
Um, and then we went out to thehorses and we started working with
horses and man, I just huge leaps.
Yeah.
In my own recovery, just workingwith horses, because they are
mirrors to your emotional state.
So at any point in time, if youare agitated or if you start

(37:55):
going down the rabbit hole andyou start feeling all the feelings
again of that particular incident,they make you aware very quickly.

Do you fake it with a horse?
No.
Okay.
I haven't spent much time.

Zero, none at all.
It, one of the interesting thingswas, I walked into a session with
them at one point and it's, youknow, it's a horse pasture, right?
And there's horses out, they're wild.
There's running around in the pasture.
And, uh, when you walk in, they'regoing to feel your energy immediately.
Interesting.
Long before you even get intothe paddock, they're going to

(38:26):
know what you're, you're feeling.
Because for a horse in the wild, they'reprey animals, they get predated upon,
so they have to be aware constantlyof their surroundings and whether or
not that particular, um, entity that'swalking up on them is dangerous or not.
Right.
And that's one of the things thatlike, when you walk into an area and

(38:47):
you're agitated and you're, you'retrying to either suppress something or
you're trying to engage in something,or like if you're hunting, I mean,
you've had the jitters, right?
And you know what it's like when you'resitting there on the rifle and your
hands start to shake and the adrenalinestarted to pump and you're like, Never,

never, never happened to me.
What are you talking about?

So that feeling, prey animals can pick up on.
Right.
And if you can't be calm withinyour own body in that moment.
That's where you see deer or somethinglike that will be completely,
you'll be absolutely quiet.
You'll start, the adrenaline will start tocome up and they'll go like this, right.

(39:24):
It's them picking up on that energy.

Nikki van Schendel.
She was, uh, the show alone, I thinkit was 61 days that she survived.
I think it was 61 days before shewas medically RTU'd and she said, she
was on the podcast here in the past.
Whenever she goes into the woods, shewas told this little trick and she

(39:48):
says, it's really silly and it soundsgoofy, but she does it all the time.
And she goes out into the woods.
She says, hello, forest.
It's me, Nicky.
I'm here.
And she introduces herself to the forest.
And she says, the energy that she has, ifshe comes out of the city and goes into
the forest, all the little brown birds arechirping, all the squirrels are chirping.

(40:09):
And about three days later, everythingyou notice starts to calm down around you.
By introducing herself to theforest, she's able to very quickly.
Assimilate, she says her energy andthe forest energy and, and it sounds
true, frou, airy, fairy, but there'ssomething to it and I do it and I practice
it and there is something to that.

(40:31):
And I noticed that when I'm out in thewoods, not around horses, but if I want to
see the animals, I got to check my head.
I got a gut check and Iessentially send out the vibe.
Yeah.

That's it.
You, you become 100%.
Yeah.
Um, in the moment that, then thatis, you know, true mindfulness is you
check your, like you said, you checkyour brain, you check your mind, you
check your soul, you check all yourthings like, okay, how am I doing?
Okay.
I'm pretty good.
All right.
Let's go chill out.
And you just become a pattern part of thepattern versus when you were looking for

(41:09):
animals, you are looking for something,you're not going to see anything.
And if you do see something, it's going tobe four or five kilometers down that way.
And it's just going todisappear over a ridge.
And you're going to.

Yeah.
Right.
Had a, uh, older German fellow andwas a moose hunting with a group
of friends and, uh, weren't havingmuch success in the early days
trying to learn what we're doing.
And this guy comes up, he was like,What you're doing wrong is you're
trying to find a moose to shoot it.

(41:41):
I'm like, what do you mean?
It's like, don't thinkabout shooting a moose.
Think happy thoughts.
And everyone thought this was funny.
And then next day got a moose, right?
But it was, and then I got asked thisa fluke and this guy swears by it.
And he lives by it.
You don't go out there trying tofind the animal, you go out there

(42:02):
enjoying yourself and the animalswill present themselves to you.

Yep.
I mean, I've been hunting for years too.
And it's the exact same thing.
Anytime I go out and I'm, ifI'm anxious or I'm looking hard
for something, I rarely see it.
Or if I do see it, it'll be sofar away that it's beyond reach.
Right.
They're like, Oh, that'snot going to happen today.
Um, but it's the same thing whenwe're, when I was dealing with the
horses, when I was doing my therapyis if I walked in, they're going like,

(42:29):
okay, I'm going to fix this problem.
They would be off on theother side of the pasture.
Like I would never evenget close to them because.
They were just not going todeal with me in that manner.
It, because it becomes basically whenyou're working with horses and you're
calm, you become part of the herd.
So they just kind of accept youas part of the group and they walk

(42:50):
in and amongst like in and aroundyou as they would other horses.
And if you are, if you're reallyagitated or, you know, I was working
with a particular horses, Beautiful,uh, he's a big saddle bread and he's
got a giant white cross on his headand his name is Dante and I thought
it was fantastic and, uh, love it.

(43:11):
Uh, absolutely beautiful horse, but hewas, he was the herd boss and if you
came in there with a negative mindset,he was going to engage you immediately.
So there were lots of times I'dwalk in there kind of agitated
or pissed off or, you know.
I have something in my head and hewould walk up and he would like step
on my toe, or he would bite my elbowor he would like lean into me so that

(43:35):
I would have to move or push him awayor something to engage me in my body.
Bring me back to this moment ratherthan being, you know, years ago in
Afghanistan, that kind of stuff.
So I cannot state how much equinetherapy got me to where I was.
And that was one of the huge leaps wasjust work with the horses until you're,

(43:55):
you know, At peace inside the herd.

So I, I, there's something I've toyed around with a bit in my head
and I think that, you know, Number one,for most people that have problems out
there, they don't actually have problems.
Right.
Uh, the problems are more what manifestsor that they look at it cause they
haven't looked at it in the right way.
They haven't, uh, you know,what does Shakespeare say?

(44:22):
There's neither good nor bad,but thinking makes it so right.
And sometimes all a person needs is justthat little bit different perspective.
Yes.
They feel really bad because they'rerunning away from their problems.
And someone says, hold on a second.
Are you running away from your problems?
Are you running towardssomething more desirable?
And then click that little frame and like,Hell yeah, I'm going to go full force and

(44:43):
run towards that more desirable thing.
So I think for a lot of people, theproblems, if they look at it and say,
what I'm feeling right now is a naturalby product of sort of my life experiences
and the way that I, my body and minddeals with it and how I go through it.
And rather trying to fight it,maybe explore it, and then.

(45:05):
You see somebody else around yourselfin the community of different people
who can accept and maybe help youframe it in a more positive way.
But then there's, so I'm, I'm a littletorn because I truly do believe that for a
lot of things, it's just, there is a snap.
Sometimes it takes, it's like people say,Oh, Travis, you're really successful.
It's like, just happened overnight.

(45:26):
Oh yeah.
I mean, 12 years ago, 12 yearsof work for an overnight success.
Right.
Um, and, and maybe that's it.
You've got to try all these differentpaths and you've got to look in these
things and you have to, You have to,I guess, fully visualize, understand,
and then commit to make it work.
So I do believe there's that snap moment,but there's also the whole concept of, uh,

(45:51):
repetitive patterns to make it a habit.
And like, when you say you're stillseeing the same person, you're
still doing the equine therapy.
You know, the right path,you know, the area to go, but
you're still doing these things.
Cause you can see that there's work.

100 percent and I would say more so than just work,
but there is consistent benefit.
And that's, I think that's the key isthat a lot of people, a lot of people
I know that struggle with therapyor they struggle with, um, their own
issues or they, you know, Oh, that'stoo woo woo for me or whatever.
I actually got a buddy of mine whowas like, man, you're looking great.

(46:29):
I, you know, we hadn'tseen each other in years.
He's like, you know,what have you been doing?
And I'm like, Oh, equine therapy, man.
And you got to like, go see some horses.
And he's like, I'm allergic to horses.
I'm like, don't go see horses.
It is a, you know, a particularlane or a particular modality.
If you find something that youactually get benefit out of.

Yeah.

Yeah.
Keep going.
Like, absolutely.
There are going to be hard times.
There were times that I was workingthe horses that nothing seemed to
work, but I knew that if I kept workingwith the horses, I would see benefit.
Sure.
Same thing with jujitsu, right?
There are times that Itry a technique that.
It doesn't make any sense.
And my body doesn't seem to work.
And I don't know why Ican't get to that position.

(47:12):
And this, I just like, itdidn't, I don't like it.
Okay.
Well, I'll come back to it in sixmonths, you know, after I get some
more work and I can maybe look atit from a different angle or get to
hear from there, or maybe, maybe justthe route that I'm taking is wrong.
Yeah.
Maybe I need to back up, dothree more steps off the left and
then come at it from the right.
Like who knows?

(47:33):
Okay.

I think for doing something physical in nature, like jujitsu and
trying to find that right move, uh,trying to improve yourself mentally,
physically, what, whatever the newskill is, that mindset shift is massive.
And you have, you actuallyhave to believe it.
It's not okay.
Just to lie to yourselfand say, oh, I can do this.

(47:55):
And then you, you totally can'tbecause your body knows your
mind knows, and you're justsitting there lying to yourself.
Something I've never, I don't think I'veever told anyone this, definitely not
on the podcast, but, uh, I didn't knowhow to say my asses until I was in grade
11.
So I went, uh, for about, well,whatever that time period is, I ended

(48:17):
up going through a bunch of schools,like I kicked out of a bunch of them.
And I was going into anew school for grade 11.
And I said, there's no way.
I want to go into this newschool and I can't say my asses.
I could fake them prettygood unless I smiled.
So I learned never smile.
Right?
It's second, I smiled and come outand I had people, I'd saw so many

(48:39):
different people and they're like, oh,it's cause you need braces or you got
a gap in your teeth or whatever it is.
And I was given the choice as a kid, youcan get braces, or you can get a bike.
And I said, I want a bike.
I got neither, but, um, anyways, um, Ilearned my asses in one day and it took

(49:01):
two weeks of just kind of consciouslythinking about it and practicing in order
to kind of make it a bit of a habit.
And it was.
But I did that on my summer breakbetween grade 10 and grade 11.
I saw a woman out at the Surrey MemorialHospital in their speech therapy clinic.
And she came in and she says, try this.

(49:23):
And I tried it and I came back the nextday and she says, well, we can do one more
day if you want, but I don't think youneed to, you just need to practice now.
And I tried so hard all the wayup into that point of always
practicing, always trying, And Ithink a lot of things are like that.
I think if you're having a physical,um, challenges, things that you're

(49:45):
trying to do in jujitsu, all of asudden you have to find that right way.
When people say practice makesperfect, that's completely wrong.
Practice makes what?
Progress.
Practice makes permanent.
Permanent.
Sure.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Practice makes perfect.
There you go.
So you actually have topractice the thing properly.
And.
When you said you saw one moreperson, you may have that aha moment.

(50:07):
Your friend says, go see somebody else.
I think that's something that a lotof people could use because they go in
and they say, I talked to the doctor.
They say, I got these problems.
I've been working on it.
It's not working.
Yeah.
Because everyone's different andtheir approach or their, they can say
the exact same thing that somebodyelse can say, but that somebody else

(50:28):
connects with you and it makes it work.

That connection is key.
And I've told many, many people.
Many people this that say theystruggle with therapy and I'm like,
how many therapists have you seen?
And they're like one.
I'm like, okay, go see another one.
But I've talked to people whohave been like, I've seen 16.
Yeah, and you're like, okay, go seesomebody else and just keep having, like,
if, if therapy is the realm that youwant to go down, keep hitting that realm.

(50:52):
Until you find what you need tofind, if, you know, I, I hear this a
lot too, and it drives me nuts whenpeople are all like, Oh, the gym is
my therapy or the range is my therapy.
And I'm like, no, that'sa bandaid for the issue.
You're not actuallydealing with the issue.
You're just.
You're going to the gym, you're notactually doing anything you're, you're,
you know, it's a mindful moment andyet there's lots that can be done in

(51:14):
there and same thing with jujitsu andsame thing with all these other things.
Great.
Keep doing those things.
But if you want to actually explore whatthe issue is, I mean, we, you and I sat
down, we had this great conversationbefore we got recording family issues
and you know, self worth and where doyou, where do you think that comes from?
And perhaps what about this?
And I wonder, and it's thosemoments of curiosity of.

(51:35):
You know, I, I took the time to thinkabout the issue that I was having with
my sister and then by doing that, thatopened the door to the next realm of,
oh, well, where did that come from?
Oh, well, it came from these actions.
Oh, well, those actions started with this.
Oh, okay.
And you just did itback to the core of it.
And you go, oh, that's so, you know,the issues with my own self worth

(51:59):
come from the fact that I always wasthe fall guy growing up as a kid.
And because of that, I put myselfinto a position to be the fall guy
on a regular basis, so I would alwaysbe the dude that took the brunt of
whatever was coming down the pipebecause that was going to happen anyway.
So may as well just putmyself in the door anyway.

(52:21):
Right?
That's one of the reasons why Iwanted to be a machine gunner,
as we were saying earlier.
They're always in theworst position anyway.
That's where all therounds go to anyway, right?
If, if people are going to shoot at me.
I'm going to be the guyeverybody shoots at, because then
everybody else can do their job.

And you were telling me before that you'd mentally role play.
So you're prepared when it goes wrong.
Here's what I'm going to do.
Not if it goes wrong, when it goes wrong.
And so much of that mindset, I findwe will create our own destiny.
We will create our own futurewhen this happens, guess what?
It's going to happen.

(52:56):
So if we have the power to be ableto do that, why don't we input a.
When it goes right, here's some,I'm going to steal from your old
podcast, old tools from the toolboxthat I can put in just in case.
So I can understand and get myself backon that track for when it goes right.
Yes.

Yeah.
That's one thing thatI, that's a great line.
I'm going to steal it too.
Um, that's one thing Ididn't do for many years.
I never looked at whatwas going to go right.
I always wondered why I wasn't doing it.
You know, why am I not gettingpromoted when these other
guys are getting promoted?
Why are these getting guys getting coursesand I'm not versus why am I not putting
myself in a position to be promoted?

(53:35):
Why am I not?
Acting in a way that's going to getme on this course, I just kind of
expected things were either goingto come to me or they weren't.
And at no point did I take themindset of, if I work towards
that, then I'll get there.
Yeah.
I just was always like, well, if Iwork towards that, I'm going to get
thrown in a frigging in the bin anyway.

(53:56):
So what's the point of working?
It's going to, it's eithergoing to show up or it's not.
And that was, that was a huge leap forme later on in my life after I was out
of the military and so on and so forth.
Where I got to the point that I could,I knew that I could succeed if I
worked towards success, rather thanI'm going to put the work in and fail.

(54:20):
And that's, that's where I'm going to sitversus I put the work in and I just keep
putting the work in because I know thatat the end of that success will show up.
Yeah.
So like, you know, I always wantedto be, I wanted to be a jumper.
I wanted to go airborne.
I was like, yeah, throw me out of a plane.
This could be great.
Huh?
But I never did any work.
I never put myself in a positionto, um, to be that guy that when the

(54:44):
unit goes, Hey, we got some, we gotsome slots on the next jump course.
Who would you recommend?
My name was not on that list becauseI didn't put the work in to do that.
I like, I could have, I couldhave started reading them pams.
I could have started doingpull ups in the hallway.
Like I could have put myself in aposition to succeed in that moment.

But did you actually want that?
I mean, there's, there's a, themindset of, Hey, that'd be cool.
That's what I want.
And then there's a reality of, Oh my God,I'm going to be jumping into airplanes.
I'm going to be a hard charger.
I just look at all thiswork that goes in there.
Yeah.
I want the end result, butmaybe I don't want that.
Uh, I like the idea of it,but not the actuality of it.

(55:25):
And maybe that's not a bad thing.
If you can realize that if youdon't actually like the actuality
of it, maybe we just find out theactuality of something that we do like

and where

you are

suited.
I wanted to be a hard charger.
Like that's the, that's the thing Ireally wanted to do the job when I,
especially, it's one of the reasons whyI volunteered for the engineers was, I
was Um, in Afghanistan, they're goingto be in the worst possible position.
Right.
Let's hit it.
Right.
Um, but to your point, I had noidea what it took to get there.

(56:00):
I just knew that I wanted to get tothis end result and I just kind of
expected that I'm in, I'm in line.
I'll eventually get there without any realthought as to what it took to get there.
So I was, it was very, I mean, Igot offered my dive course and,
They were like, Hey man, youwant to go on the dive prelim?

(56:20):
And I was like, no, I wantto be a jumper, not a diver.
Had I had some forethought, Iwould've, you know, understood that
by completing the dive course, I wouldbe a shoo in for the jump course.
So
it's a, uh, it, yeah, it's personal.
It's learned experience.
Unfortunately for a lot of us, we have to.

(56:42):
Yeah.
To your point though, you know,
I think, had I known, had, had I eitherhad a, you know, some leadership that
actually sat me down and was like, man,you have, you have the skill, you have
the capability, you have the, uh, themindset for it, but the physicality
portion, this is what you need to do.
You need to be able to do that.

(57:03):
You did it.
Uh, you'd like, give me some,a little bit of direction.
Unfortunately, the, theengineer regiment was not, uh,

So the few kinds of people that I've met in my life that
seem to be really successful in, inlife and be able to achieve these goals
that they're looking for are eithera, the ones that have others around
them that have succeeded, and theycan see that path forward and they
can talk with it and they Understand.
And that's, you know, not necessarilynepotistic, but it provides a framework

(57:35):
that, you know, if one man can do anothercan do it's like a, the miracle mile.
Yes.
Okay.
So for those who are listeninghere, who, who ran it?
It was Roger Bannister and there's Landry.
Was it?
Uh, I can't remember.
Somebody will correct me on here.
We got a statue down in Vancouver, the twoof them doing a, so Roger Bannister ran a

(57:58):
mile in under four minutes prior to that.
Everyone thought the fourminute mile was impossible.
However, after the four minute mile, Ithink there was seven other people who
ran it the next year, and then it waslike 60 something the year after, and now
everyone runs a mile under four minutes.
What happened?
What's changed?

(58:19):
All that changed was peopleknew it was now possible.
And so the people I found do well arethe ones who know it's possible based
on the structure, the people around themthat have done it and they've associated
and they say, Hey, you can do it.
I can do it too.
Right.
Or the people that just blindly knowthat I'm going to do what happened.

Yeah, right.

And they're so pigheaded and stubborn and they push
it forward and they just consumeanything they want and around.
Now that's a difficult path becauseyou're going to make a lot of mistakes.
And when you finally get there,I mean, it'll be hard earned.
You'll look back, did theends justify the means?
I mean, I look at that in business.

(59:03):
I mean, I've done things.
I remember our first bookkeeper,Trav, you can't afford a bookkeeper.
I'm like, yeah, but I needsomeone to help me with this.
I need to understand what's going on.
I'm going to hire a receptionist,Trav, you can't, you can't
afford to have a receptionist.
Right.
But I did it anyways.
And by the, I said, okay, firstreceptionist, tell you what, come

(59:25):
on for a few hours a day, a coupleof days a week, we'll do this.
Right.
And by the end of the first week was like,okay, when can you come on full time?
I didn't realize how muchbusiness I was actually missing
by not having these pieces.
I always know I will achievewhat I'm putting my head towards.
However.
When I get to the end result andlook back, maybe there's a much

(59:47):
smarter way I could have got here.
Did the ends justify the means.
And so sometimes there's gotta bea gut check and a recalibration.
Am I moving towards the right area?
Am I doing this in the right way?
Yeah.
This is where I see the biggest valueof the collective, because you humanize
people who would otherwise be, uh,sort of, it would be illusory for

(01:00:12):
a lot of people to think, I'm justgoing to pick up the phone or I'm
going to talk with, uh, Delta forestoperator or Greenberry, so and so.
Right.
Yeah.
Um, or people who've been successful inbusiness or people who've done things
that are extraordinary in their own life.
And then you talk to themand you realize, Holy crow.
They're just like me.
They've had the same sort of background.

(01:00:33):
They've had the same sort of things.
They just took a, a left one.
Maybe I took a right.
And that's where I think if peoplehaven't tuned into the collective or
listened to it, have would, should, andthey pick up some really good value.
And I got to wonder out of all theepisodes that you've done, you've
probably had some Interesting storiesfrom listeners who's come up and say, you

(01:00:59):
know what, because of this, this happened.
And I was hoping maybe you could talkabout a few of those sort of powerful
stories, either from guests who've beenon, who've really impacted the, uh, the
direction of the collective or peoplein the audience who said, you know
what, this has really made a difference.

(01:01:20):
Do you have any of thosejust to put you on the spot?

Chance Burles (01:01:23):
So many, uh, it's actually hard to, to narrow it down to one or
two, but, um, for, for guests, uh, thecoolest thing that I've seen in terms
of for guests been on is the amount ofcollaboration that's happened afterwards.
So like, we talked about the greenroom, you know, after we shut down the
recording and everyone's sitting aroundtalking and, and then it's like, Oh, you

(01:01:43):
know, Oh, you're in, you're out here.
Oh, I'm out here.
Oh, okay.
Well, you know, I have this, uh,business opportunity in that area.
You mind if I check it out?
Can we talk like, and then it just,the, The guests themselves start
working towards the collectivein and of themselves, right?
They start creating a community andthey start working together and there
have been, uh, I'd say at least a dozencollaborations between guests, businesses,

(01:02:06):
and things like that, that have been onthe collective that would never have met
had I not scheduled them on the same day.
Interesting.
So there's that.
And then.
The, for the, you know, thelisteners, the people that are
watching, I've had so many messages.
I couldn't even tell you.
It was like, man, this particularepisode got me out of my rut.
I'm now running.

(01:02:27):
I'm now active.
I'm eating right.
I'm doing this.
I started jujitsu.
I joined the military,joined the police force.
Like, I could, I couldn't tell youhow many of those I've had where
people have completely Changed theirlife from listening to a episode.

Travis Bader (01:02:42):
They've kicked off the Dorito bag slippers.

A hundred percent.
They've kicked off the Dorito bagslippers, which I still got to
make a shirt or maybe some slipperswith Dorito bags that people
can kick off or something, but.

They actually do make Dorito bag slippers.

Oh, okay.
I got to get some of those.

Or at least Dorito slippers.
Yeah,

I'm going to have to get some, cause those are, uh,
Those would be perfect for the show.
But, uh, the, in terms of powerfulstories, honestly, the biggest one is
for me and my own personal growth fromthe collective has been exponential.
Just like I went from tryingto help out who I could to.

(01:03:17):
Actively seeking out differentways to change the world.
Like there was, I got tools fortoolbox started because I saw a hole.
Yeah.
I saw, you know, a bunch ofpeople who were struggling.
I saw people who had informationand they weren't connecting.
So how do I do that?
I get the podcast together, youknow, well, let me interview you.
And what tools do you usefor, you know, keep your.

(01:03:40):
Your mindset and your selfworth and all that stuff.
Sure.
That's great.
But I was kinda, it was like a hobbyand you know, I would talk to this
guy and maybe that guy, and you know,I'd reach out to certain people, but
I wouldn't reach out to other people.
Why?
A lot of it was worth, a lot of itcame down to like, who's going to,
this guy, isn't going to talk to me.
Like, there's no way.
And then through the collective, Iwas constantly in need of guests.

(01:04:03):
, that was one of the big ones.
Just like I had to have guests everyday for, you know, a whole year.
So I was just spamming people.
Like it was just like that.
I,

Instagram dm, TikTok, dm, bam,

dm, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram Messenger, email.
And I just out to whoever I, and itwould take me, you know, five, six
minutes to kind of scroll throughsomeone's Instagram and be like,
yeah, oh yeah, they're pretty cool.
Send 'em a message.
And what are you looking for?
Again, looking for, youknow, cool and capability.
So someone that has had a life.

(01:04:36):
That is full.
They've done a bunch of different things.
And, um, and isn't self righteousin there, in the way that they
were presenting themselves online.
So that was the big one was my, my instantturnoff was the moment I saw somebody who
was all like, I'm so frigging awesome.
Come take my class, buy my book,buy my book, blah, blah, blah.

(01:04:59):
Versus the people that I really like are.
Oh yeah.
I got a book out.
Just came out a couple of weeks ago.
I really appreciate anyfeedback you guys had sent me.

Cool.

Yeah.
Those are the building of the elite.

Yes.
Have you seen that book?
Of course you have.
Yes.
I mean, it's a Bible, right?
It is.
Yeah.
Craig Weller.
And it's just humblewith massive information.
A

hundred percent.
And we've had Craig on a number of times.
We've had Jonathan on a number of times.
Freaking awesome dudes, super relaxed.
And they, again, they'resimilar type of people.
They just want more information.
Yeah.
How do we gain more information?
Well, we start talking to people.
How do we talk to people?
I put them in a room togetherand then See what happens.
And I think we've had over, so last Idid the mass, we were over 700 guests

(01:05:45):
total, or we're over 400 episodestotal, um, in terms of unique guests,
because obviously we've had, sorry, howmany 400, uh, 400 episodes we're over.
Yeah.
We're over 700 guests total.
But again, those are likerepeated, but in terms of unique
guests, we're over 200 as well.

(01:06:07):
So like.
I've been hammering the internetwith just trying to get new, and
I'm still looking for new people.
Right.
So I'm constantly bringingnew people onto the gold mine.
And then we use that as kind ofa, uh, kind of a tryout, you know,
see if the person's all right.
And then they come on the collectivefor the longer form podcast.
But it is a, um, the, the growthin myself and like, Broadcasting,

(01:06:30):
like being able to speak clearlyand concisely, um, being humble in a
conversation, not having to be heard.
That was a big one for methat I had to get over with.
I, I really struggled with like, I'd sitin a conversation with a bunch of people
and I'd have to make my opinion known.
Like people have toknow what I have to say.
And then I'm like, no, they don't.
Cool.
Like if the conversation isflowing, let the conversation flow.

(01:06:53):
Don't, I don't need to be in there.
Just.
Um, so those two, and then like, uh,my own self worth of the fact of the
collective is it's, this is a big deal.
This is a professional production.
This is, I'm a professional podcaster.
Like this is a key to who Iam as a person at this point.

(01:07:14):
And, People need to be involved.
So get out there, get talkingto people, engage people.
And like, when we first started,somebody asked me, Oh, what do you do?
And I'm like, I'm, you know, exmilitary and kind of run a little
podcast off the side, right?
And now people ask me what I do.
And I'm like, Oh, I gotthis, I'm a podcaster.
I got this wicked show.
It's called the collective.
We talk to these peopleand like, we're like,

That's awesome.
You know, people ask me what I do.
I've never said podcaster.
I've never once said that.
I usually say, well, as littleas little as possible, right?

But this is a, is an interesting point is that earlier we asked
you, you kind of, I mean, uh, almost a,I wouldn't say throwaway comment, but,
you know, you'd say, oh, well, you don'twant to burn bridges or you don't want
to blow up bridges or anything like that.
But in my mind, especially comingfrom an engineer background, sure.
If you need to blow a bridge,blow it up, get rid of it.

(01:08:07):
You can build a new one.

Yeah.
We were talking about relationshipsand a mindset of like, do I
have to blow up this bridge?
Do I have to, like, you, you want,Go through life, maybe, maybe I just
don't go over that bridge or, oryeah, but there are times you need
to absolutely detonate that bridge.

And in your own mind too, like in your own person, if you,
if you don't remove that section ofyour life, even for just a little bit.
You'll never know what it'slike to live without it.
So like, you know, I quit smoking.
I've basically quit drinking.
I've done a bunch of like, I'm working outmore often, I'm doing all these things,
but had I kept the piece of me that waslike, ah, you know, just kind of relax on

(01:08:50):
the couch and chill out for a little bit.

Tell me about quitting drinking and the why.

So that was an interesting one.
Um, There was a point in time I, Iwas in the fridge and I went to go
for a beer that was in the fridge andI wasn't a super heavy drinker, but
I would have a drink or two a night.
And my doc always says thatmakes me a heavy drinker, but

how did you, are we counting beers too?
Yeah, well, I guess like, geez,

but I, you know, I would enjoy, Yeah.
A drink with dinner.
Sure.
Or with lunch.
Yeah.
You know, but I, I never consideredmyself like, oh man, I need a drink.
Yeah.
And yeah, I went to the fridge oneday and there, I was out of beer and
I was like, oh man, I need to go tothe store and get some more beer.
Hmm.
And in that moment I waslike, do I, do I need to?

Hmm.
I

don't think I need to.
You know what?
I'm going to try.
And so I just stopped drinking for, Ithink it was like two, three months.
Yeah.
And then just right off thebat, I was just like, oh, okay.
So I don't actually need to drink.

Hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Hmm.

Okay.
Well, that makes sense.
And so I, but at that point I was like,I'm still going to go buy some beer.
Cause I do enjoy the flavorand I enjoy having it.
And then, uh, Sean and I were talkingat one point in time and he was
like, you know, I, he has a rule.
He gives himself six drinks,six ounces, six drinks a year.

Yeah.
Period.
I want him to remember his day.

Yeah.
And that's, you know, there's,you, you start locking those in
and it made me think of like,why was I drinking to begin with?
Uh, and it was more of a, just causeeverybody else was drinking and you
came eventually became a habit thatI just was drinking and my boys used
to laugh about it and they'd be like,uh, they'd fight over who could run
to the fridge to get me a beer first.

(01:10:34):
Kind of thing.
Like,

it's like, why am

I doing this?
Like, and I'm wasting money onalcohol that I, and at the, at that
time I wasn't even recognizing.
What I was doing, it was just so rotethat I would have a beer with dinner.
Um, and now I've taken theattitude of make it worth it.
So, you know, if I'm going to go outwith some friends that I haven't seen in

(01:10:59):
15 years and we're going to sit aroundand, you know, swap old war stories or
whatever, or we're going to get into adeep philosophical discussion, you know,
make that drink worth it, pick one.
That's like, that's gonna,you're really going to enjoy.
And you're really going to like,it's going to mark the occasion.

I've heard doctors talk about how there is absolutely no.
Benefit to alcohol, there's only downside.
And I've heard others say,well, hold on a second.
There is that social side and there is,there is a benefit and you're a social
group and the gatherings and it's, uh,that whole moderation, of course, is key.
I, you know, I thought, well,maybe I'll stop drinking.

(01:11:38):
Give it a year, see, see what happens.
Right.
And I said today, I wanted to seewhat I do for my cognitive function.
And I also noticed that like I wasn'ta heavy drinker, but you know, have
a couple drinks and my head wasn'tin the happiest place the next day.
I was maybe a little bit more short.
And that was the biggest thing that Ifound that alcohol can do is it robs
you, it robs you of your time, it robsyou of your patience, at least for me.

(01:12:01):
And, uh, so I gave it a year, actually,I think it was closer to two years and
I was like, well, I kind of like maybea glass of wine with a, uh, with a steak
or, so introduced a little bit hereand there, but it's an interesting one.
I think if people are having, uh,difficulties and a lot of people
who've listened to the collective orpeople who are looking for something,

(01:12:24):
looking for help, looking for answers.
And I got to say, if you can startcutting that piece of the puzzle out, the
alcohol, substances, whatever it might be.
And if that substance is evenlike your phone scrolling, doom
scrolling, social media, limit thosesubstances, get out and move, right.
Get a bit of exercise, even if it's justgoing for a walk, sleep, get some proper

(01:12:46):
sleep and have some form of purpose,something you're doing things for.
Holy crow.
The number of people that I'veseen just turn their lives around.
By keeping those vitalfour things in their mind.
It's,

it's, it's beautiful.
And it goes to the point, you know,sometimes you gotta blow that bridge up.
And sometimes you got to like,sometimes you just got to say, I'm
not going to drink for a year, I'mnot going to drink for two years.
Just completely remove it from your life.
Boom.
Bridge is gone.
Okay, cool.
After a while you can build a footbridgeor you can put a little carabiner line
across like whatever you need to do.

And I like it.
Cause you'd never know what itwould be like without that bridge.
Exactly.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
And you brought something up.
One of the biggest values from thecollective is the relationships.
So, you know, everyone's lookingfor the secret to success, and I've
said this before, and people havetold me, Travis, it's not personal.
It's just business.
And I said, bullshit.

(01:13:40):
Yeah.
Everything about business is personal.
It's created based off of relationships.
These relationshipstake time to establish.
They're based on trust.
You hurt that trust.
You hurt that relationship.
You hurt that business.
Yep.
And I would say that so much of whatI've done in, in life and, and in

(01:14:03):
business is just based off of thosepersonal relationships, making sure if
you said you're going to do something,you do it, even if it hurts you, maybe
next time, I won't say I'm going todo that, but that relationship key, I
think is one of the, um, uh, the other.
Huge aspects to the collective thatpeople who actually go out and engage,

(01:14:24):
because there's a lot of people wholisten and who watch, and I'm sure
they get something out of it, butthere's those people who engage.
And I've watched it from the sidelines.
I've been on a few episodes.
I see it happening.
I've watched these people's arcs and,you know, I like to pay attention.
I like to watch human behaviorand I've watched their social
media and the arcs that people areactively out there engaging and

(01:14:48):
how much better their lives are.
Not the next day, not even a monthlater, but that progressively little
bit that they go in, that success is anaccumulation of Of small habits over time.
Yeah.

And it, I mean, all these things are learned behaviors.
Everything that we do isa learned behavior, right?
Every negative aspect of our life,every negative coping mechanism,
everything, it's a learned behaviorfrom some sort of stimulus from prior.
So if you can learn how to dosomething negatively, you can learn
how to do something positively.

(01:15:22):
And that's part of the community isthat I, I was talking to my wife about
this actually on the way here, it justkind of sparked was the fact that for
the, for the average veteran or firstresponder or something like that, by
being a service modality, a lot of timeswhat we do is we put ourselves in the
back seat, we make sure that, you know,other people get taken care of constantly.

(01:15:42):
Yep, and by doing that, it creates thisalmost this habit when it basically
does become a habit to learn behaviorof that when, when other people are
struggling, I need to take a step back.
So you start to learnthat if I'm struggling.

(01:16:02):
I don't want other people to haveto take a step back to put me on
that pedestal, put me forward.
So I'm going to start restrictingmyself and you start to slowly
work away from that community.
You start to slowly siphon yourself awayfrom the isolate and you just isolate
a little bit more and you start to getin your little box and then you, you
know, it becomes smaller and smaller.
And by doing that again, you're insideyour own head in a negative filled box.

Is that isolation something you've struggled with?
Oh

yeah, for many years, many years.
Are you still struggling with that?
Less so now.
Um, my wife actually told me when wewere dating that, uh, she was like,
you know, you're a social butterfly.
And I was like,

what?

No, no, I, I hate people.
But at the time.
You're just a butterfly.
I hated myself.
That was the big issue was that I didn't,I didn't want myself to get out there.
Why?
Okay.
Um, mostly just through the factthat I knew how messed up I was.
I knew how angry I was.
I knew how all of the issues that Iwas dealing with was going to put extra

(01:17:02):
weight on anybody else that I engaged in.

So what would

you do?
Well, what I did wasstart working on myself.
I don't know.

What would you do in the time as opposed to going out?

Oh, instead of doing that, I would.
I would come back into the house.
I wouldn't go out.
I would, uh, as soon as then it went fromthe house, it went to the basement and
then from the basement, it went into,usually went into my gun locker because
that becomes a security thing, right?
I try to like become, uh, uh, like alittle fortress with it and myself,
like, you know, I can't let anybody in.
Everybody's got to stay out.

(01:17:31):
And.
It again, working with horsesand dealing with my doctor and
engaging in the veteran community.
That's what started to draw me out.
That's what started to bring meout to the world of like, Oh,
well, first off, I'm not alone.
I'm not the only person thatare dealing with the struggles.
I'm not the only person that is,uh, going through this stuff.

(01:17:52):
Um, one of the things I like to sayis we are unique, but not special.
And that is like our experiences don'tmake us special or the difficulties that
we go through doesn't make us special.
To everybody else around us,we are still unique people.
We have unique experiences.
Sure.
But we're not special.

(01:18:12):
At no point does any one person'sissues make them more special than
anybody else, but we are different.
So that's something I had to getin my own head was the fact that
we are unique, but not special.

So this isolating behavior and why I wanted you to kind of paint
a little bit of a picture of what itlooked like is so other people, some
people might not even recognize it.
Yeah.
They're like, Oh, I just, you know, goingto go down and clean my guns or I'm going
to the shop for a while and be away fromeverybody or plug in front of a screen or

yes.

Um, what do you, do you ever, do you notice that coming on?
Is that something that you seek?
Okay.
What does that look like?

So usually that, uh, I, my biggest issues are crowds.
That was one of the biggest thingsI don't like crowds and it's, and
it's not even so much the crowd,because if I'm on stage or if I am.
Like when I was doing the walkfor veterans, we'd have hundreds
of people in front of me.
I have no problem with thatif they're in front of me.

(01:19:08):
But if I'm in the crowd, thatjust drives me absolutely nuts.
I can't, there's too many thingsfor me to, I'm just like, uh,
hyper aware of all the movement andall the sound and all the things.
And the fact that I can't hear very wellmeans that I'm down one of my senses.
So everything else has to, like,I start moving around really hard.
It's.
Challenging, but what'll happenis I start to get really agitated

(01:19:34):
and then I become very direct.
This is what I need to have happen.
We're going to go here.
I'm going to add, I'm like,I'm leaving and I'm out.
Um, and in those instances nowI can actually see it happening.
And now I'm like, okay.
I can start feeling it.
I'm like, okay, I'm startingto get agitated and I'll look
at my wife or whoever I'm with.
I'll be like, okay, you know what?
I'm not feeling great right now.

(01:19:55):
Can we step off the edges and, youknow, towards a wall or whatever.
And, and then I'll run through somevery basic things, stuff that I used
to have to do with the horses, breathe.
That's a big one.
Box breathe.
Breathe.
Box breathing is great.
Um, the, I think it wasHubern was talking about, uh.

(01:20:16):
What is it?
The neurological sighor something like that.
The big deep breath in and then thesecond one, uh, doing those is a good one.
But again, it was just getin touch with your body.
Recognize that you're not breathing.
Recognize that my back is likejacked straight up and not, um,

(01:20:37):
I'm not relaxed.
Okay.
Where's my shoulders at?
Okay.
You know, relax everything.
Just let myself, let it all go.
Be in this moment.
Are you in danger right now?
No, I'm not in danger right now.
Okay.
Is what is the like, this isone thing my doctor did for me.
What is the likelihood ofdanger happening right now?

(01:20:59):
And then you have to kind oflike process that information.
It was like, well, Imean, it's pretty low.

That's a real male thing too.
Analytical, right?
Just rather than going with thefeelings and how do you feel, it's an
interesting approach for the doctorto make, okay, think it through.

And well, cause my, my biggest issues were like, well,
there's, you know, could be an IDthere could be a dude with a knife.
There could be a dude, like,there's so many things that a
crowd that you can't control andlike control was a big one for me.
So the fact that I couldn'tcontrol the crowd from the inside.
Made me agitated, so I tried to removemyself from the crowd and then I would

(01:21:38):
remove myself from Basically my own lifeand then I would ruin myself for my family
and then I wrote and so you can see wherethat starts to go downhill So if I can
gauge it ahead of time now, that's whereI got caught in my doc used to inject
that where she'd be Okay, so you're ina crowd you're starting to get agitated.
What's your first thought?
I'm like, well somebody's got a weapon.

(01:21:59):
Okay Well, what's thelikelihood of that happening?
And you start running the math in yourhead and you're like, well, I mean,
pretty damn low, pretty low we're inCanada, you know, you're in, you know,
uh, say like, let's say Calgary andthe stampede or something like that.
Okay.
What's the likelihood of somebodyhaving a weapon pretty low when you talk
about crime stats and all these otherthings, you get into all that stuff.

(01:22:21):
But, um, the likelihood ofit happening is pretty low.
Okay, good.
So you you've, what's the percentage,let's give yourself a percentage.
Well, it's like a 2 percent level ofan attack happening in this moment.
Is it possible?
Sure.
Yeah, it's possible, butit's not very likely.
So, you know, you bring that right backdown you go, okay Well, so if that's

(01:22:44):
the if that's taken care of then whatwhat's bothering you at that point?
Oh, well, it could be this could bethat it could and then you just start
to run through those Analytically, okayThe likelihood of this happening is
low Likelihood of this happening is lowlikelihood of this happening is low and
by doing that again, you're just gettinginside your body You're getting inside

(01:23:05):
your head, you're allowing yourself toprocess the information that's happening.
Being a bit more present.
Be a bit more present and let itall, and then you can kind of re
engage in, or just hang it whereyou are, you know, hang it on the
peripheral for a bit and just watch.
I see what happens.

You, you've read that Harvard study, that 80 year study.
80 year study on Harvard, onhappiness, and they looked at different
ethnicities, genders, people fromdifferent socioeconomic backgrounds
and track them over 80 years.
What's the number one predictor ofhappiness across the board, across

(01:23:45):
all different groups, community,strong, social connections.

We are gregarious by nature as humans.
That's why horses workso well with humans.
Actually is the fact thathorses are gregarious by nature.
They require a social structure in orderto, like, if you put a horse alone in
a paddock by itself, it'll go crazy.
It'll just like, it will literallystart, it starts chewing at the fences
and it starts running for gates andit start, like it does things that

(01:24:12):
are not natural horse behavior.
What happens when you puta human alone in a box?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the same thing, right?
They don't tend to do well.
Exactly.
And so.
Absolutely.
It's all about community.
It's all about understanding that youare biologically driven to be in a group.

(01:24:34):
And I mean, there's outliers.
There are people that are You know,they prefer solidly look, Sean, right.
He's a pretty solo dude.
You think so?
He likes the community, but helikes to do it on his, on his terms.

Sure.
You know, but that's okay.
That's still, there's still, I mean,there's going to be different people
in different roles and it's likeyou're saying, if you're up on stage,
you're around the group, it's okay.
Right.
You're, you're sitting in the, uh, group.
Auditorium with everyone jostlingaround, around you, maybe not as great.

And, but some people love it.
My, again, my wife and I weretalking about in van, right?
People move to van to Toronto, to NewYork, to LA, because they want that vibe.
They want that, like that noise that.
They feel a comfort.
They feel a comfort in there, right?
Because they're surrounded by people.

Yeah.
Well, you kind of, it's.
I wonder, so when you're talkingbefore about like going to the
ranges, my therapy going, there's aforced presence, let's say surfing.
Hey, that's great therapy.
Hey, rock climbing, but youhave to be in the moment.
I have to think about where my nexthand hold's going to be, where I'm
going to set my protection or howI'm going to tie into the next anchor

(01:25:43):
and otherwise there's consequences.
You're done with that.
You're out.
You're out.
You still got that underlying thing.
You just had a littlebit of an escape from it.

Yeah.

Um, people who love to be in built up areas, you've just turned
that noise up and everything else thatwas going on is sort of masked by this
radio being turned up to full blast.
And, you know, I'd find it,I'd go out in the woods.
And I'd have so much work going on,stress, different things happening.

(01:26:13):
And my head's running and I'mhaving arguments in my head.
And the next thing I know I'm talkingout loud, there's nobody around me.
I'm having a full on argument.
And it's like.
That doesn't happen in the city.
I just feel the energy, but you've nowgot this opportunity to decompress.
And I think it's another sort of, uh,protectionistic sort of masking thing

(01:26:35):
that people, a lot of people can't beoutside of that, lest they're alone
with themselves and their own thoughts.

That's the tough part.
And, uh, I stated earlier when my wifeand I were walking around, it was like,
everybody here is, they're surroundedby people, but they're all alone.
Yes.
Right.
And it's just.
No one has the community, you know, we'restaying in my brother in law's apartment.
And yeah, it's a massive apartment.
There's 15 floors on it and there's,you know, people all over those seven or

(01:27:04):
eight rooms, a floor, that kind of thing.
Like it's, do

they know everyone's name?

No, right.
And the fact that, you know, there'swalls in between the balconies,
so you can't see each other.
And like, it, it creates this anonymityThat, you know, when I first sat down,
I started talking about, or when wefirst got here and I was like, man, it's
just this, this pressure of constantnoise and things are always happening.

(01:27:29):
It dehumanizes people.
Yes, it does.
Because who knows what that person is.
But again, back in my community,Sherwood Park, like I know my neighbors,
I know both sides of my neighbors.
I know the neighbors across the street.
I know the people by sight that livefour or five houses down that way.
I know it.
Like, it's not so much thatI think you need to be.
You know, like, intimately knowingof all the people around you.

(01:27:52):
You don't need that.
But, you know, if you walk out yourhouse and you see your neighbor across
the street and you, Hey, how's it going?
Nice to see you.
Have a good day.
Like little things like that.

Have you heard of rat park?
Yes.
Okay.
So interesting.
I think it's from North Van actually, Ibelieve I reached out a year or so ago.
Maybe I should reach outagain and talk to the guy.
Um, I think he's, Ithink he's still there.
He put forward this hypothesis about, um,Uh, addiction, and he came up with this

(01:28:25):
harm control strategy and it was basedon, they said, you know, if you give a rat
a water bottle and one laced with, let'ssay a stimulant, cocaine or whatever.
Inevitably that rat will just getaddicted to the drugs and they'll die.
And it's all they want more,more, more, more, more.

(01:28:46):
And he says, well, what if wedon't just lock this rat away by
itself in a small case with cagewith these two different options?
What if we take these rat andthey put them in Big place.
And we put other rats in there thatit can play with and we have tunnels
that can go through and it's got awhole bunch of things that can do and
by and large from a study, they foundthat his words, some rats like to

(01:29:10):
party, but not to the point of death.
The majority wouldn't touchthe laced water bottle.
And I know it's come under, uh, some Peerreview and people looking back and forth
and, and having different thoughts on it.
But that concept was used fora harm reduction strategy.

(01:29:31):
I think there's a lot to be said forensuring that people have enough space and
are properly integrated and socialized.
And when you start getting intothe big cities, I, you know, I, I.
Not that I've spent a ton of time outin the country, but I'm sure even in the
country, there's going to be differentsocial norms and ways that people

(01:29:52):
socialize, which might not, uh, mightnot jive, which can cause isolation.

Well, I mean, it used to be, you know,
where would people congregate?
Their church, church,um, the Legion, right.
The dance hall, those places that,you know, yeah, you'd go off and
work and you'd be in your family.
And like, when I go down to the ranch,the nearest neighbor is like 20 minutes
down the road, like it's not close, right.

(01:30:17):
You got to, and it's a gravel roadand they're in the middle of the road.
Um, we'll have to take you outthere at some point, we'll go
get you an elk or something.
Cause it is.
That'd be amazing.
Um, beautiful out there.

Figure if you can pee in your front yard and not have
to worry about annoying anybody.
Exactly.
You're good to go.
You're doing

pretty good.
But those, the people there, they,how they congregate is through sports,
through religion, through community,through all these things, right?
Because you have to have thatcongregation point at some point, uh,
Southern Alberta, where the ranch is.
Yeah.
You know, the wind is wind is driven.
People Matt literallymad just from the wind.

(01:30:51):
Really?
It's there's wind, you know,signs on the side of the road.
They're all like, uh, that'll giveyou accurate readings of the wind
for truckers because it'll knocktrucks over vehicles off the road.
And there's a lot of times I'vebeen driving where you're like,
Pinned into the wind and like,you can feel it as you're driving.
Just try to hold against it.

You just need mountains

Yeah, it's like a hundred and twenty hundred and fifty
kilometer an hour winds like justripping through that Valley Wow and
But that the community iswhat brings people back.
It's when people are off on their ownout in the bush with nobody else I
mean, that's one of the reasons whythe show alone got created, right?
It's like look at people what happenswhen they're in the bush by themselves

(01:31:33):
See what happens and then you gotthose boys There were people that
were, you made it like a day, two days.
Yeah.
You

know what the number one, uh, the number one enemy to
these people in the show alone is.
I see it time and again,it's all in their head.
And they'll remember watchinga guy, he made a beautiful
shelter, he had everything set up.
He's got some food, he got it all right.
And he did all this inlike a couple of days.
He's okay.
I did my part.
I'm going to go home.
Yeah, I'm done.

(01:31:59):
Yeah.
I want to be with my family.
And that's, that's good.
Good for him.
I mean, I, I support that.
It'd be nice if he figured thatout before going on the show that,
that he values his family to thepoint where he doesn't want to be.
Missing out on their lives for ashort period of time, whatever it is.
But, um, I can't fault a person for that.

That's one of the things that, uh, you know, I,
as I said, rats, uh, for the ratpark are gregarious by nature.
They have a social structure, humans,gregarious horses, like look at a lot
of the mammals actually across the boardand throughout the planet are naturally.
Community driven.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everything comes, cometogether for survival, right?
The trick is, and I think this iswhat I've learned the most from The

(01:32:42):
Collective, is the fact that thequality of your community matters.
Mm.
Like to such a high degree.
So when I was in high school before Ijoined the military as a bit of a stoner
I was hanging around with the wrong crowdAnd I made a very distinct decision.
I was actually I was dealing pot.

(01:33:02):
I was doing all kinds of thingsI went to my dealer at one point.
I put in a large orderand she looked at me.
It was like, you know Youbasically order what I order.
So maybe you shouldjust talk to my dealer.
And, uh, you can justskip me as a middleman.
And I was like, well,okay, who's your dealer?
And he was like, she was like,oh, he's one of the health angels.
And I was like, sure.

(01:33:22):
Nope.
Just flat out.
No, I'm done.

Yeah.

I'm not getting engaged in that, but my life would be very
different had I engaged in that, like,if I had just been like, oh yeah, sure.
No problem.
I'd like.
Like that, that would be.
Think of the bag wheels you could get.
Right.
Make a lot of money.
I definitely would probably have abike at a patch and like, uh, at that
point in time in my life, that wasn't,that could have been a very easy
decision to go down a very bad road.

(01:33:50):
Yeah.
And the quality of the peoplethat I was hanging around
with were not quality people.

Mm.

Then I was like, okay, I can't do that anymore.
And I got a phone call from my brotherwho was in South Korea at the time.
And he was teaching English and doingTaekwondo and all kinds of stuff.
And he asked me, he was like, well,are you going to go join the army?
I was like, well, you know,maybe I'd always kind of kept
it in like my back pocket.
It was like, I'd wanted to, sinceI was little, but, and I was
like, yeah, maybe, I don't know.

(01:34:17):
And he's like, well,what's holding you back?
And I'm like, Good question.
Nothing.
And he's like, well then go fucking do it.
Yeah.
Okay.
And the next day I went down to therecruiting office and I started the
process and went like, and that again,same kind of decision of like, he made
me, he asked the right question at theright time, which made me realize that

(01:34:39):
where I was was not where I wanted to be.
And that's the power of having the rightgroup and the right people around you.
Exactly.
Like he could have just sloughedit off and like, yeah, sure.
You know, go get a job or whatever.
It's that the quality of the community.
And so now the collective is I amsurrounded by quality people, quality
people that want nothing but the bestfor me and my family and are going

(01:35:02):
to push me to degrees that I'm notcomfortable with, but they're doing it.
And I know they're doing itfor what they see as my best.
It's all out of love.
Yeah.
And.
At, if I get to a point where I'm like,no, screw off, I'm not doing that.
They'll be like, okay, cool.
And move on.
Right.
It's, it's that quality ofcommunity and it comes back to

here.
Yeah.
I'm going to put links inthe bio to the collective.
Um, social media, website, all the rest.
You guys are on YouTube, you gotyour YouTube channel, podcast comes
through now too, which is nice.
That's a good one.
Is there anything that we haven't talkedabout that we should talk about, or
should we keep it for a future one?

That's a tough one.
I mean, we were going to get intoself promotion, but we never really
got into that one, but I think that'sa whole podcast in and of itself.
We did a little bit.
I mean, I've touched on

it.
Yeah.
About self promotioncomes under self worth.
Right.
Yeah.
So, I mean, we didn't talk abouttactics or ways to self promote.
And I think for those who have adifficult time self promoting, and
I'm one of them, I mean, I don'twant to stand up on the mountaintop
and say, Hey, I'm awesome at this.
Right.
Come over here.
It's like that Sports Illustrated curse.
You've heard of that?
Yep.

(01:36:15):
Okay.
You're on the cover.
You've heard of everything.
Damn it.
I've been around.
I've talked to a lot of people.
You're, um, You're on the cover ofthe sports illustrated magazine and
people say, well, that's a curse.
Right.
Well, I mean, you're atthe top of your game.
That's why you're on the cover ofthe sports illustrated magazine.
You kind of only haveone place to go is down.
You brag yourself up to such a huge point.

(01:36:37):
Where do you got to go?
So for those that have a difficulttime self promoting, I think
surrounding themselves with otherpeople who can promote them.
Is a very important thing.
Yes.

And interestingly enough, there's also the same thing
happens with the, uh, EA curse.
Back in the day, uh, with video games,when EA was putting out their, you know,
the NHL and the NBA, uh, every singletime that person was on the cover,
they had a crap year the next year.

Yeah.
Cause where, where else can they go?
They can maintain or they can go down.
So if you're going to promote yourself asif you're the sports illustrated cover,
it's kind of a recipe for, for failure.
Yeah.
Um, from my perspective, and Imean, there is an art form for
people to be able to self promote.
And I think a big part of thatcomes into self worth where

(01:37:29):
you're not actually bragging.
You're just making honest statements.
And I think the Dutch are reallygood about that too, right?
They can say some veryblunt, honest things.
Um, how does this dress make me look?
Well, it makes you look fat.
Okay, thanks.
I'll put something else on.
Yeah, right.
And it's okay.
Well, that's, they're not dancingaround it, they're very blunt,

(01:37:51):
very pragmatic to the point.
Well, you know, I'm kind of the best.
Yeah.
I mean, like if you, if you look atme in the industry and there's so
and so here and so, and so there,but what I do, I'm, I'm the best.
Right.
And they can put it out in a certain way.
North America, our culture, itdoesn't, uh, it doesn't jive with
that sort of, um, just brutal honesty.

Now that would be a podcast and a half in terms of
why the Western world has gottento a point that we cannot, we
can't be honest with each other.

You dance around issues and have little platitudes and niceties.
And yeah,

and it's all, again, it's all about behavior, right?
Yeah.
Passive aggressiveness drives meabsolutely nuts, but, um, yeah.
To your point in terms of thecollective and the community and
the, uh, the capacity for growth.
I think that I think that'sthe key is that that's what
makes the community great.
Everybody in it wants to be better.

(01:38:45):
It doesn't matter where you are, doesn'tmatter where you come from, doesn't matter
who or what you've done in your life.
Every single person that's apart of it wants to be better.

So what I'm going to do here is lean into my first statement, which
is surround yourself with other peoplewho can help promote for you by showing
through their actions what they've donewell, like it's all great if they want to
post it up on social media and post thenext thing and have other people around.
I think the real value comes from themactually implementing the advice and the

(01:39:14):
tips and tricks and different things thatthey see implementing that in their own
life and other people will be like, Hey.
You used to be down here.
Now you're over here.
What are you doing?
Right.
That's where I see the value.
Not so much in posting andreposting, which is fantastic,
but in actually taking those nextsteps and implementing the things.
So I'm going to put the challenge out.

(01:39:34):
People who listen to thispodcast, you find value, please.
Share that with others.
A lot of people that listen to thispodcast have listened to the collective
because I've mentioned in the past,share what you see, engage with
others on the collective through here,throughout each other and, and share

(01:39:55):
that essentially, uh, share it throughyour actions by all means, show us
what, what, uh, what it means to you.
I, I put that ask out, if they'vemade it this far into this podcast,
we made it to the end, yet.
We will know because you'llsee people doing that.

Well, you know, I think what you're asking for is for people
to be the community that they want.
Just be the community and you can,it's very simple, but not easy.
And it comes down to daily actions.
How are you going to present yourself?
How are you going to engage your,how are you going to engage?
Your best self that says on a mug, do your

best.
Do your best.
Nothing in my life I've evergotten has ever come easy.
Do your best.
That's it.
That was the, uh, the mug you gave me.
Yeah.
Chance.
Thank you so much for beingon the Silver Pearl podcast.
Really appreciate getting to meetyou in person and I'm looking
forward to the next time we record.

Maybe we'll see if I ever make it back to Vancouver.

I'll come up to your place

you get on the road.
That'll be awesome.
Ready?

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