: Welcome to the aggressive life. You know what's aggressive? What's aggressive is doing something you haven't done and just doing things that are different, not necessarily to be different, but just because you need different or you think different will bring about a different result. Doing the same thing incrementally better never changes your game. It may make your life a little more smooth, but it never changes things. So we're always tweaking with what our. episodes look like, with what Dirt and I have planned here, and just keeping it fresh and trying to find the magical thing. We posted on Instagram, hey, how about some Q&A? Let's try a Q&A episode. We haven't done that for a while. I don't even know if we've ever done that entirely, Dirt? Yeah, we have. But it's been a number of months, maybe even a year. Yeah, it's been a while. Oh, so it's not that innovative then. It's only been a number of months. Well, we've done maybe two of them before. All right. Well, it actually gives me the opportunity to talk. That's right. Because we tell guests come in, okay, if you got stuff you want to ask Brian, you want to talk with him, it's great. No one ever does. I'm just acting like Mike Wallace or Barbara Walters, whoever it is, just asking questions, and they're all wonderful to do good stuff, but I don't get to talk much, which I like to talk. It's my podcast. It's got your name on it. Yeah, it does have my name on it. So these are some of the episodes where if you want to hear my take on things, you get to hear my take on things. And it's going to be the things that you have asked for. These are your questions, yours alone. I have not seen them yet. Dirt has them listed out for me here on a couple of sheets of paper. Too much work for me to go through and read these and answer them. So, Derek, this rises and falls on your wise choosing of the questions. What's the questions? Give me one, see what you got. All right, here we go. First question, what is an aggressive action I can infuse into a season of life that needs a nudge? Well, it depends. I like that we're asking this question, and it does mean doing something different, something different that will actually challenge you and wrap your mind up and maybe even make you a little bit nervous. When I say something different, I'm not talking about, you always go to rated R movies. You're going to go to rated G movie. I'm talking about if you always go to movies, maybe you need to go to the theater buy a $100 ticket instead of a $12.75 ticket, or whatever it is these days. Maybe it's this weekend you're going to try something different, something new. When we're stuck, it's not going to be finding a different television program or finding another thing that we like doing. It's going to be something different. I find for me, I get unstuck or I stand stuck when I'm in things that are stimulating me, which means I have to be in learning mode. Like, there's something about learning mode. Most people, when they leave formal education, they never learn anything new. You know? That's right. They never take a class at a community college. They never learn scuba diving, have to go to an instructor. They never go to a seminar. They never pick up a new hobby. They just keep doing the same old thing, same old thing. And I think that's probably why younger people so oftentimes are so much more stimulating to be around us because they're learning newer things because they're environments where you have to learn new things. And as we age, we just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. So you've got to try something new. I've been really into hunting recently. And the reason I'm into hunting is because it's new. You know? Like I figured out the adventure motorcycle thing. Not that is. Not that I'm God's gift to adventure motorcycling. There's plenty of riders who are better than me. But I had to figure it out. I figured out the systems, what my pack systems are, what kind of road I like to do, basic riding techniques. I mean, how to get your tracks on your GPS, how do you do all that stuff, right? And I needed something fresh. And so now actually, I don't know if you noticed, I'm considering a different form of hunting. Oh, tell me more. Oh yeah, so you know, I've shot things with a rifle a few times. That's been fine and good. Shot things with a crossbow, specifically deer in Ohio. Shot things with a rifle, specifically an elk, only one. I wish I had more. One elk in Idaho and a nil guy, massive elk-like creature down in Texas. What I've not shot anything with is an actual compound bow. So I have been really seriously thinking about this fall doing my first bow hunt. Because what you can do. is you can call Elkin because they're so horny. Really, they're horny, horny. And they're looking for anything to fight that might take away the lady they want to take to bed. I'm trying to think what to take to bed, whatever it is. Or they hear grunts and they think it's a fine lady they want to go mate with. And so when you do these calls, they are so crazy and freak that if you've got good camo, they'll come 20 yards away from you. Oh, wow. 20 yards, they'll come to you. Which you only get that during bow season when they're in quote unquote the rut. When I'm rifle season, they're hunkered down. You just gotta hope that you come upon them. So I'm not so much driven to have more meat in my freezer. I'm more like, oh, I got something new to learn. A new skill. Right, if I do it, I get to go outside of my backyard and every night come home and just start. Pelton arrows in the shooting block and all that stuff. So I think find something that's new. Is it a class you're going to take? Is it you're going to restore something, something you have to watch a bunch of YouTube videos about to find? That's my response. That's great. Next question, can you be aggressive and patient? Yes. I should more emphatically say, yes, of course you can, yes, of course. I say it slowly. Because there's a fine line between patience and passivity. You know, there's, there's in the Bible, the comes up again and again and again, wait on the Lord, wait on the Lord. To wait on the Lord means to exhibit patience for him to do something that you can't do. Right? So yes, we've got it. We've got it. And there are certain things that you will never be able to strong arm. But then there's things that you shouldn't probably be patient about, you should probably be more forceful about, like for instance, let's say I was 25 and I wanted to get married someday. And no one's asking me out. Some people would be patient and wait in the Lord and just pray and ask God to bring somebody around. And that's really good. Do that. I would say, though, if you're 25 and you're feeling like you want that, or 30 or 35, whatever it is, be patient. Keep praying. And go someplace where people of the opposite sex are and ask people out. And I do mean women asking men out. All right. A lot of men are scaredy cats. A lot of men are scaredy cats, good, good dudes. They're just a little timid for whatever reason. And a guy being asked out by a woman, like, hey, can we do XYZ? It might surprise a lot of guys, but I think about every guy who's going to take you up on it. So doing those kind of things, don't just be patient. Just look for ways to push it forward as well. That's great. If you could bring any dead person onto your podcast, you could bring them back from the dead to have an hour conversation with you. Who would you want that to be? And you can't say Jesus. Come on, you can't say Jesus. Jesus is always the answer. And He's not dead. How about that? He's always the answer. And He's not the, oh, I like that. Oh, I like that, dirt, dirt. You're such an Orthodox Christian. You are. Gosh, that's good. The first person that pops on my mind right now is Abraham Lincoln. I'm Abraham Lincoln. OK, tell me why. I think he's the greatest president in our country's history. I think it's mind blowing how he lost, I think it was 11 elections before he got to Congress. And then he was like the 11th choice for his party's primary representative. Because. Wow. Just all the way they do those is voting, and this person got this person's coalition, this and that. And then what he did to stiffen himself with the Civil War, with a very clear vision how to keep the country together. He wasn't trying to crush the people who were defecting. He was trying to keep the country together. And how he led through that while having a horrible, a horrible situation at home. losing children, a wife who's just off her rocker and overspent and had certain mental illness issues, if not demonic issues. And how he kept at that all together and how he kept the country going forward, I would just love to ask, what do you do? How did you think about this? How did you think about that? The slights to him were crazy. the characters, like what you take on Grant. I mean, Grant was one of the most unbelievable things. A little quick backstory. I've done quite a bit of reading on American history and the Civil War. Grant became the leader of the Union forces only because general after general who looked good and had the right pedigree wouldn't actually press the fight. It wouldn't push it. In fact, they were downright disrespectful. George McLellan was the first initial commander, and he had all the pedigree. He looked great. Everything was perfect on him. And he would totally blow off Abraham Lincoln. He wouldn't answer his letters. He wouldn't answer his telegrams. So Lincoln goes down to the battlefield where he's staying, and he parks himself inside of his parlor, the entry And the general comes in the back door, and he sees his horse coming up. And McClellan's servant, basically, comes down and tells the president of the United States that he's tied up. He won't be able to see until tomorrow. Wow. Wow is right. Wow. What did he do? He stayed. Yeah, he did. He stayed. And he had some pithy remark about that, but it was basically the leadership lesson of how to be humble and just endure. The guy was humble and endured over and over again. And he endured people who had issues. Grant had issues. He drank too much. Actually, the reports of that are he was drinking way, way too much before he became commander. He kept it pretty much in control once he was commander of the forces for the Union Army. And he had some people come to him. I think they were with the temperance movement, and they were complaining of his use of alcohol. And he said, what does he drink? And he said, well, find out what he drinks, and then let me know, because I'm going to give it to all my other generals, because I finally found somebody who will fight. And if this is the guy who will take the fight to the enemy, I'm quoting now, take the fight to the enemy, I want to buy that for everybody else. America is where it is today because of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, we're still together because of Abraham. With all of our problems, with all of our issues. And that was the other thing. Gosh, Lincoln's passion to fight for the African. It wasn't the African-American then, it was the African. That vision was passed down to Grant. And the job Grant had when he became president to try to reign the South in and keep racism at bay and their violation of laws was crazy. So I think every angle I look at Abraham Lincoln, I am just stunned and I scratch my head and I go, how did that guy do that? Yeah. He would stick out like a sore thumb now, right? Oh yeah. The guy would, he would split fence posts with an ax, like a single hit on an ax, right? He said to have freakish, Freakish strength, like if you got in a wrestling match with him, which he would do wrestling stuff before he actually got in elected office, you had no chance. He was freakishly strong, wiry, smart. He was witty. Really, really an impressive guy. I was just thinking, like trying to hold the country together. When I look at both sides of the aisle, they just want to crush the other side. Yeah, yeah. And it's like Lincoln is just so different from that. He was. He was a statesman who had a vision for the future of the country. Our leaders today. They'll say they have a vision for the future of the country, but it always entails meeting their own needs and the needs of their constituents. It's not the country. He was about the country. This kind of a follow-up question, who are some people that you hold up in your life that you follow, like an exemplar for you to follow, to even imitate maybe? Well, one of them recently died, Tim Keller. He was arguably the most influential or at least respected pastor of our time, wrote a number of books. I spent a very little time with Tim. When I say very little, I probably spent, well. three minutes with him on one occasion. And then on another occasion, we spent a couple days on a bus together. And I spoke with him, him and his wife, after you taught Lib and I did on that one. So I didn't know him really, really well. But he's just impressive, man. He died recently. And there's very few people who finish well. So I would call myself a follower of him, not exactly of his theology. Not exactly what I would say his theology. There's like nothing I would ever disagree with that Tim actually has ever written on or probably even preached on. But he's a reformed theologian, a Calvinist. And I used to be one of those. I do still sometimes wake up on the side of the bed of kind of believing that theology. For those of you who are not versed in these terms, which you shouldn't be, this is called the aggressive life. It's not called the theological life. Reformed theology is tied into the theologians and thinkers that were around at the Protestant Reformation, which is really when there was a break from the Catholic Church. And a new church started, which was really under the auspices of Luther, who never really wanted to start a new church, started Protestant wing of Christendom. He wanted to reform some of the practices of the Catholic Church. So reformed theology is those early folks in the 1500s, 1600s, their beliefs, which tend to weigh on the predestination aspect of things as far as how salvation happens. That's Calvinism. Calvin had the five points of Calvinism. What does it mean to really understand how salvation happens? T, total depravity, U, unmerited favor, L, there's a limited atonement. Everybody doesn't get the blessing of Jesus' death. Only those who go to heaven. I, Irresistible Grace, when God comes to you, you can't resist it. And P, Perseverance of the Saints, if you truly have Christ, you will never abandon him. That's Calvinism. Some days right now, I'm a five point. Some days, I'm a three point. So I don't identify with all that Tim didn't talk about. But his consistency and his. level headedness and his godliness and not getting caught up in all the stuff that he could have got caught up in is really impressive. So I would call myself a follower of him even though he's dead. A couple other ones, I'll tell you the type of people who are influencing me these days, I'm not sure I call myself followers of them. I'm really impressed with the thoughts of Scott Galloway. The Thinking of Scott Galloway, professor at NYU, had a number of business startups he sold. He's kind of a tech guru on various corporations, has a number of really successful podcasts. We share really different world views. He's not a believer. I think he's an agnostic. Maybe an atheist. I think he's an agnostic. He would define himself as left of center. I am certainly right of center. We could debate how far right of center. But there's some differences there. And I find the guy when he talks very enlightening, very helpful, especially as he talks as a college professor about the plight of young males and the things that he's experiencing, the thing he's saying. He's actually acting like a father figure to a generation of younger men who an at-far father figure. He's pretty impressive. And his take on many things in the world are things that I would not agree with initially in first blush. But because I listen to his podcast or him, I'm like, now that I heard you talk about that for 10 minutes, if I don't think like you, at least I can understand why someone like you would think that. So it's fun for me to sort of follow him in some ways, if you will. There's two. Great. I want to follow up on that. What do you see as the plight of young males? What do you, what do you notice from, cause you're around guys, you're a voice to men. What do you see, uh, going wrong or what, what can we improve upon? I think the modern man is in no man's land. And that's the worst place to be. No man's land as defined as in World War I, that place between the bunkers, that place where there isn't any safety, that place where you're only supposed to be while you travel from one side of the field with a band-aid to the other side of the field. There's a. There's tipping that's happening in America right now. And men are the ones on the teeter-tawter, this specific one I'm talking about. It used to be that, and I'll just state it the way it is. I won't make a statement of whether it's right or wrong or whatever. It used to be that men had the prime jobs, the prime opportunities. Men still have a disproportionate amount of influence in the boardroom. in the C-suite, those sort of things. The amount of tech funding that goes to startups who are white males is higher than others. And there's a bunch of things going on there. But that's the unusual ones. OK, let's not think about the men who are in C-suites, the men who are in a series B round for their startup. Let's not think about the men who have landed in a stable six figure that has a progression to it, where they can see themselves going up. Those guys generally are OK. They're probably not OK emotionally. They're probably not OK relationally. They're still susceptible to being four times more likely to have suicide than women, three times more likely to have a mental illness than women, two times more likely to have an alcohol abuse related instance than women. On the whole, they look a bit more patched up. But they're the minority of men. The rest of men are in no man's land, where we've gone from being as men in control, society is wired for you, society revolves around you, which is not good, not good, just where most men have been, to being now where society and culture dismisses you and isn't wired for you. who went from a place where the only people who did graduate school was men, because they're the only ones who would be able to take advantage of those jobs. My wife, my wife, excuse my mother, no Freudian slip there. Believe me. My mother was a valedictorian at her college, brilliant. And she grew up in an era where she couldn't do anything with it. And she told me this. Her three options were you could be a nurse, you can be a school teacher, or you can be a church organist. Those are your three options. And she chose church organist and teaching and Christian education director in a church. Christian education as in like the children. So that's what she was. Christian education director and organist, both of them, right? because opportunities weren't available. To where it is now, 70% of everybody in grad school is feminine, is a woman, is female. That means men are going to be missing out on the highest paying jobs. That means men are not going to be the sole breadwinner. They're not going to be the. primary breadwinner. What does that look like? We haven't seen with them. There's nothing that says you can't be a stay-at-home dad. There's nothing that says you can't be a secondary income earner. Nothing that says that at all. But you haven't been equipped with how to live that way. You haven't seen your dad or your grandfather operate that way. You're having to deal with things that no one else has dealt with before. And you're dealing with these things when we haven't figured out how to support you. with cultural safety nets. Women, fortunately, can get a relational fix by having coffee with somebody, hanging out. They get into conversations pretty quickly and pretty easily, much more so than a man. Men historically have been able to bond over softball, the Elks Club, softball league, bowling leagues. All these things that are no more, men have no third place to bond. But how do we cope with this? How do we handle with it? And then many of the things as men that we do, just the fact that we do them, it's labeled toxic masculinity. People see me driving a four-wheel drive pickup truck. and know that I have guns and I use them. They go toxic masculinity. Really? Because I don't want to get stuck on overlanding in mud and I want to have four wheel drive. And because I actually have a freezer for about 200 pounds of meat in my freezer, I feed myself and that's a big reason I have guns. I'm toxic? I'm toxic masculinity? We don't even know what a man is anymore. And men get caught up in the buzzsaw and we're afraid to say something. We're afraid to not to say something. If we say this, we've said it wrong. We don't say this, we should have said that. And where's our life going? And we're not measuring up to this expectation. And I'm supposed to be an emotional male. And I'm supposed to have all the emotions and all of them together. And the pressures on men of what to do is, you know, worked up. And by the way, Women have pressures, I could go all along, all the pressures away. I've got two daughters, I'm all in that, but the question was about the men. The men, by the way, the men are the ones who are doing the mass shootings. The men are the ones who are doing the suicides. The men are the ones who are storming the Capitol. I look at that thing from January 6th. And all of those things are signs that these men doing these things are not rooted and they're in peril. And I think our culture has done a really good job raising awareness for all the ills that are happening in our culture, all the injustices that are happening in our culture, and I don't bemoan any of them. But what I'm saying is our compassion. has to be a bottomless pit of compassion where other people get to be in our compassion bowl as well. And I think people need to put men in there. I can still have compassion for all the classical cases of people who have been received unjust things and have had a hard time. Great. But can we just, at the same time, have compassion for a generation of people with penises? who every social indicator seems to say they're not well. We need to have compassion for that group of people. I do anyway. Yeah, totally. This is just me talking to you right now. But that idea of no man's land, I don't know if that is from you or for Scott or whoever, that's freaking great. That's me. That's great. That's one thing he hasn't said. Yeah, take that Scott Galloway. Yes, Scott Galloway. Thank you, finished that out. So. As we're a no man, eventually, eventually our culture is going to shift. And I mean this positively now. A lot of times, we have our culture shifts. We don't like that. Eventually, things are going to settle down, and we're going to get new cultural expectations for what a man is, new learnings for how you operate as a dual income dad or a stay at home dad. And here's another one. In no man's land, I think there's going to be a return, a return to the trades. I think men are going to start to see, damn, I can earn six figures being a great electrician. I can earn six figures being a bricklayer. And no woman's ever going to take that job away from me because they don't want them. Yeah. You know? It's a freaking hard job. Right. Well, it's all just something that, for whatever reason, women tend to not sign up for. They could, but they tend to not. And some of those jobs, maybe the average man is more equipped for it because he's got a skeletal structure that can deal with laying bricks because he's got a larger skeletal structure. I think that that's part of what's going to be interesting in the future is men are going to realize. There are more and more men are going to have a hard time competing in the classroom. And that starts, by the way, way early on when men's brains are not forming as fast as women's brains are, which is why increasing numbers of parents, I had this conversation with my kids and their kids, my grandkids, are you going to hold your kids back, make them go to first grade a year later? Because that gives their brain the ability to catch up in sixth grade, seventh grade, so they're even with the girls. We do catch up eventually, but by the time our neurology catches up with women's, we've already felt like losers. We feel like we can't compete because the girls are better than us. And everything in the classroom is really for girls, for women. And this has been well theorized. I don't think I'm giving anything unique here. In an age when. Just about every school teacher I know is a woman. You want people to act the way you act, which you want girls to act the way you act. And you have a boy who's just a spaz, you don't know how to deal with that. And you come down on him. That's what happened with me in fourth grade with Miss Derby. Awful person. Awful person Miss Derby was. And then I found out what Mrs. Derby was. And I found out from my mom that she found that was the story that a lot of little boys had a hard time with her because they weren't as good as her girls and she only had daughters. And so I just lost interest in education. Fourth grade, I can't please this woman. I can't keep up with all these people. It was kind of from then from then on out, right? From then from then on out. Stay with me. I didn't actually recover until I got to seminary. And then I recovered from that and started telling myself new things. But back to no man's land, I think eventually there's going to be a return to the trades. And men are going to figure out they're uniquely gifted for that and able to do that. And the price is going to skyrocket, utterly skyrocket, because fewer and fewer people can do those jobs and want to do the jobs. So while the other people who excel in the boardroom or elsewhere, great excel there. Because you're going to have to excel there because you're going to have to pay people who do basic electrical work and drywalling work a lot more than ever before because those guys are going to command a large penny. I think we're migrating to those things. But right now is the no man's land. We don't understand how to act, how to behave. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I gave AG1 a try because I was feeling a bit sluggish, not confident I was getting all the nutrients that I felt that I needed. And I thought maybe this is an easy solution. So I drink AG1 in the morning. I love doing the morning. I do it on an empty stomach. It forces me to get 12 ounces of water into my system. I love. doing something proactive and aggressive to make me feel better and at least give me peace of mind. AG1 is designed with this kind of ease in mind so you can live healthier and better without having to complicate your routine. Each scoop has 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food sourced ingredients of the highest quality. If you want to take ownership of your health, try AG1. and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. So go to drinkag1.com slash aggressive life. That's drinkag1.com slash aggressive life to take control of your health. Check it out. That got really serious. Let's do some fun questions. Okay. Favorite campfire meal. OK, if it's an easy meal, it is mountain house dehydrated chili mac and cheese. Chili mac and cheese, it's freaking great. And the next level is buy yourself a little bag of Fritos. And when you boil your water, you put it in, you seal it for like 11 minutes, you open it back up, stir it up, and it is amazing. You could serve that to guests and let them not see it coming out of a bag. And they go, oh, wow, this is really good. And then what you do, before every bite, you take like three Fritos and you just drop them in the bag. And then that way, you get a spoonful and you have texture. You have crunch along with it. So that's the easiest for that meal. And then I think my other favorite one is my breakfast meal if I'm actually cooking, cooking called Alpo. Elpo, like from the dog, dog food, Elpo. So you take your eggs and you scramble your eggs. And if I know I'm going camping, I or Lib will pre-do this stuff. You can do it over a camp stove. We'll pre-do the potatoes. We'll pre-do sausage. Or we can do them there as well. But it's easier to pre-do them, put them in the freezer, put them in the cooler or whatever. Do the eggs in one skillet. In the other skillet, heat up or cook the sausage and the potatoes. Get them going, get them going, get them going, so and so. Once they're good and before the scrambled eggs are too, too well done, then you combine it all together. You scoop them together. And then you come in with the bam. Then you come in with chopped up mushrooms, chopped up onion. chopped up cilantro, chopped up tomato. You put that in there because you want it fresh, you want the crunch, and you stir it up real fast. And then you sprinkle over the top of the whole thing. You sprinkle cheese, cheddar cheese, and then you turn it off, take it off the fire. And you serve it up, and it's amazing. It sounds great. Yep. Haven't heard about the Jeep recently. How's the Jeep restoration going? Where are you at? It's going well from the standpoint of giving me something to do. I mentioned earlier about trying something new. I've never fully restored a vehicle from the frame up before. I've done a lot of mechanical stuffs. But this thing, first time I've ever taken a body off of an automobile frame, first time I've ever ground down an automotive frame and welded it and sealed it, taken an engine out of a car and actually rebuilt it. I've taken an engine out of a car before and replaced it with another junkyard engine. But I've never actually taken an engine apart and cracked apart all that stuff. So it's doing what I wanted to do. It's to try something new, to find something new, to learn new things. And I've been stimulated with this. They say that with all timers, there's two things that you can do to stave off all timers. And I can't remember this is, this might be Peter Atiyah, who said this one is exercise, you gotta exercise. I mean, it just sounds like the answer to everything, but the data is pretty clear. If you're exercising, not like taking a walk around the thing, no, I'm talking like exerting yourself and feeling soreness, sweating, panting, those kinds of workouts, if you're doing that on a regular basis, it actually puts off Alzheimer's and dementia and ALS. not Lou Gehrig's disease, but those things. Really, really crazy. So the other thing is learning new things. And not like, oh, I'm going to do Sudoku, but something where you're actually having to focus and do different things. So I'm loving that. And here's what I'm not loving. I'm not loving how long it's taking. I started off thinking, oh, gosh, I've been going about 14, 15 months. I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to be done with this thing in six months, because the beginning stages are really Fast. Now it's really slowed down. It's really slowed down. It took me three months to figure out how to get my engine running. I just couldn't get it running. I had to find some 76-year-old guy, because these old carburetors, it's hard finding anybody who works on them. I couldn't find somebody to pay. I was going to tow the vehicle there, pay them to clean my house. Couldn't even find a guy to do that. No. They don't know carburetors anymore. I found some 76-year-old guy who could figure out all my stuff. And here's what I keep thinking about. What's nice about the Jeep is it's a reminder that the most difficult job is the job of man, and that is the people job. The most difficult thing to work on is people. I'm working on an inanimate object. And the nice thing is no matter what goes wrong, there's always a fix. A bolt breaks off in the wrong place. That's going to be a pain in the ass, but there's a fix. The engine doesn't run. There is a, there's always, it's an inanimate object. It's just a matter of finding the right knowledge, the right tool, and the right amount of money. And it can be solved. People are not that way. It's, it's like, here's the knowledge, here it is. You're gonna do this and here's what you should do. You should do this and here's some money, take a vacation, here's more money. Like, people like, you just. It's excruciating work. Thankfully, this Jeep, it's not re-breaking itself. It's still worn out from 1978. We're like that as people. We just get worn out. And you got to go in the garage. And you got to get re-tooled. I'm hoping that the rest of life might be sort of a garage stop for many of us, a place from getting re-tooled. We all need that. And working with people, we just keep jumping off the lift. We just keep shaking off the new paint. We resist somebody putting their hands on us. We don't want someone telling us what to do. And that's why very few of us make any advances in going down the road of life. Yeah, this is closely related to that. Someone asks, what tips do you have for getting re-energized this summer? I'm feeling very drained, but I don't have a lot of paid days off from work. Well, I had some really good answers until I said, I don't have a lot of paid days off from work. My heart goes out to you. And I would just use that as a reminder to all of you who do have paid days off of work, shame on you if you're not using them. Your employer may be thankful in the short term if you're leaving vacation days on the table. But if your employer is a wise person who understands the long arc of productivity, he or she will be pressing you to use up all those babies, all those puppies, because it's only when we're getting re-tooled that we've become productive. I remember Keith Crutcher. We should probably have him on here. Have you ever met Keith? No, I don't think so. Keith used to be with the National Institute of Health, neuroscientist who was studying Alzheimer's, which ironically, his wife died of. Mm. Alzheimer's not too long ago. Yeah, horrible. Keith used to run the lab. And he told me that the hardest working people in the lab were the least productive in the lab. I said, why is that? And he said, well, you've got to shut the circuits down. It's interesting. What do you mean? Well, when you're working, doing whatever your job, the brain chemistry is operating the same way the whole time. You're getting a rut in your thinking. That's literally what's happening. The neurochemicals, the synaptic connections, you're getting a rut in your thinking. So the longer you're working, the longer you're doing the same thing, the less open you are to breakthrough thinking. It's when we jump into a different mental track that breakthrough comes. So he said, people spend a long time, they're there, but the ones who have the true breakthroughs are the ones who work 40 hours and take their time off. Because they jump, so that's awesome. So what I would say, if you've got limited time off, I would say. If you want to spend a day binging everything on Netflix to get caught up, I think that's fine. But I would make sure that you find something to do that you don't normally do. That's where the restoration is going to be. Is that go rent a cabin that's on a lake and read all day? Is that even? You're going to go and take a two-day community college course, which might sound completely antithetical. Wait, of course. You've got to do something that you don't normally do to get restored, something. Beyond just taking a day and blowing off or doing something like that, I would really, really caution against simply blowing off and sticking around the house. I think that can be good for a very short period of time, maybe necessary if you're utterly completely exhausted. But to truly get to another place, you gotta put yourself in an environment that's stimulating to you. Great. We're gonna do a couple family questions, a couple of faith questions. First family, what parenting tips do you have around adult children? Thinking specifically boundaries, money, their mistakes. How do you handle that when your kids are grown up? Well, the truth is that you are always your kid's parents. You always are. As has been said many times by now, you're only as happy as your least happiest child. What we have to remember is being a parent, there's four distinct phases. And it's in the handoff of these phases that problems happen. The first phase is the nurse phase. It's when you're just feeding your kid and you're changing diapers. It's that. The next part of the phase is the king or queen phase. That's when your kid has got to see you as the ultimate authority. And they do it simply because you say to do it. If you know more than them, why would you hurt your kids by not just telling them what to do? You know more than them. Tell them what to do and make them learn how to listen and do what you say. The next phase is the coach phase. And again, the handoff is where people don't do. Many people don't hand off the next phase after nurse. They want to keep cuddling on their kids forever, and they just protect them, helicopter them. A lot of people just want to be an authoritarian for the rest of their life. and their parents and their kids end up hating them. You got to be a coach, giving them a responsibility, allowing them to make decisions on their own. You still backstop them. You might still give them a little coaching, but you're letting them decide who they're going to date. You're letting them decide what they're going to do with the money they earn from their allowance or from their job. You're coaching them along, but you're giving them parameters. And the final one is friend. It's where you're building towards. where they are on your same level, or at least that's how the communication goes. They may not still be in your same level because you still got maybe a couple of decades more of wisdom built up. But you got to be playing for this as a friend. So I'm friends with all my kids. And as a friend, I have helped friends of mine. by buying them things. I've helped friends of mine by getting them through a difficult spot. That's what a friend does. But I don't feel it's my responsibility to save my friend financially. They made their bed. They got a sleep in it to a degree. I can have compassion on them. I can have mercy on them. But they've made some decisions, and they've got to make some decisions. I may step in, but their comfort and welfare and well-being is not my responsibility as a friend. I love my brother as myself, but their financial problems are not my problems. When it comes to our kids, if you're going through this process and you see these and you live your life this way, you'll get to the final phase and it'll never be an issue. It's never been an issue for my kids. My kids have been. never come to me looking for money, asking for money. They've learned how to live within their means, live within their budget. I've never had to rescue my kids financially. I've got my youngest daughter is the least earner in our family. She's a school teacher. And she's married to somebody who's on staff at a church doing video. Those are two pretty low paying jobs. But you know, they're not coming to me in crisis. because they've been raised well. They've been- You moved them through all four stages. I moved her through all the four stages and his dad, his parents, moved him through all four stages, right? So I think we gotta start recognizing if we're having this again and again and again, we've at least gotta just recognize something went wrong along the line. We're gonna have to step, go back there to figure that out. Now, my kids know that they have a backstop. I mean, they know it. They know that if the fit hits the shan, that dad's going to be there for them. And that's fine. I own that. I'm not going to let on my watch anything catastrophic happen to them. They know that. But they've also learned, because I've coached them, taken the process. Like, your life is your life. Your problems are not my problems. I'm not here to solve your problems. Now, that also means, too, though, that as a father I want to bless my kids. So I'm surprised quite frankly, how much money I'm spending on my kids right now. I'm really shocked by it, Dirt. I just thought in my mind at the end of the day, I was just like, shake of all my hands, done, done. But I'm fine like, no, every time we take the family out to eat, I'm buying. I'm thankful to buy. I'm in prime income earning years. I'm an empty nester. I just want to do it. I'm buying. I like that. There's some day where I won't be able to buy. I don't buy all the time, because sometimes they want to buy, but my assumption is I'm doing that. I'm taking them. We've got a fun summer vacation we're taking, and I'm going to buy the rental. We're going to do the same thing over Christmas. Two days, it'll be two grand for all of our family and grandkids. Actually, I'm going to do that. So I do those things because I can, but I do those things. Really, because I want to buy my kids' presence. Totally. P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E, not presence, presence. You got to pay to play. If you want to play with your family, you're going to have to pay some money. Just like with friendships, we talk about how many times we talk about this. If you want friends, it's going to take you having a hobby together that's causing money or whatever. So I don't know. taking too long to answer all of your questions. I think that's super helpful. And I actually have a follow-up. Someone asked about how to deal with aging parents. And I wonder, do you move through the stages backward? Are you moving from friend to coach to king queen to like nurse as your parents get older and can't take care of themselves? Or like, how do you think about that? Now we're getting personal. This is really tough. We've got one set of parents that is for whatever reason, mentally and physically, pretty much the same way they were 20 years ago. And we've got another set of parents who are not as well, not well. And those ones we're having to parent more in the sense that we're having to drive them, we have to drive them all the places they go. or having to say, oh, you can't do that. No, you can't have somebody come to the front door and just pay them to do work in your house because you need to get estimates. They're ripping you off. You just can't. No, no, you can't. You can't watch something on the TV that caters to your age and just go buy it because you think it's going to help you. No, stop. I haven't, we haven't figured out it's tough. It's really, really tough. I mean, there's some ways that you're kinging them or you're saying, no, you're not going to drive. We are taking your keys because we want to protect you from the guilt of killing somebody. You just had an accident that was your fault and someone could have died. And it wasn't the first one. So there's some times where you're kinging them. And then there's times when you're nursing them. because they just can't do it. You're, I've got to, you know, these folks come over to my house, I've got to be their back stock going up and down three steps because they physically can't go up three steps without grabbing onto things and holding things off. So in many ways, I feel like I'm nursing. And at the same time, you're, you want to be their friends. You still can laugh together. Coach, so I think as your parents age, what happens is you're, You're toggling between all four of those things all the time. I don't think you ever get purely in one. Yeah, OK. And I don't know how to do it. I'm just living out of figuring out as we go. And it's really tough. And it really sucks. It's awful. And I don't mean it's awful. I don't mean it's awful because you don't want to do it. It's awful because there aren't easy answers. And it's awful because. Their life, and I'm talking about both sets of parents, their life is what their life is, and there's no longer learning from your mistakes. That's an owie, right? Like, when I make mistakes, I can learn, because I've got runway now, next time I'm not going to do that. Okay, next time, whew, next paycheck I get, I'm going to make sure I save this much, or versus that, because I learned that. You get to, there's no more runway. You don't learn from your stakes anymore, you're done. Like, sorry, your income learning years are done. You can't learn from however you did or didn't do financial, it's over, it's done. You're not getting another job, it's done with it. Okay, maybe you should have gone over here at this specific age. You didn't go that specific age, you didn't go there. The window is closed, you're done. You can't go back and think that. And now you have to live with the choices you're in. You don't learn from your choices. Does that make sense? You don't learn from your mistakes. It's awful. So therefore that's what makes you really frustrated is you can't say, no, look, no, next time. There's no next time. It's just one difficult thing after another difficult thing. And it just doesn't end until, unfortunately, the Lord calls them home and they go to heaven. It's just a cavalcade of less than ideal circumstances. with some faith questions. I was going to say lightning round, but these are not lightning round questions. But if you can give us some quick hits on it before we go. First one, do the gospels actually quote Jesus verbatim despite being the fact they were written many years after he died and rose? Yes. Yes, they do quote him verbatim. We have to remember when we play that telephone game tag of start on the one beginning of class and whisper, and the next person whispers, and then by the time it gets then to the end, it's totally different. You have to remember, that's because we don't live in an oral transmission culture. Ancient cultures lived by oral transmission. It's what happened. And as people are telling those stories, there were others there to fact check it. those gospels that line up really, really well in terms of what Jesus says. And oftentimes when it's not quoted exactly right, it's because he said one thing one place and another thing another place. Like there's a sermon on the mount and there's also a sermon on the plane. Gave the same material, just tweaked it a little bit different. So we can debate whether or not Jesus should have said what he said, but in terms of ancient documentary evidence and how we determine whether or not something is trustworthy, If we can't trust the Gospels, you can trust nothing. You can't trust Homer, the Iliad, Odyssey, nothing. So yes, you can be very confident of that. What are your thoughts about tithing service? Like giving my time away or my effort when money is tight and I feel I can't tithe money? I think that's great to tithe your service. I don't think it ever is a substitute for tithing your money. Everybody could live on 90% less of what they make because people say 10% pay cuts all the time. They lose their jobs all the time. So this is not about take all your money and give it away. This is about the next money that comes into your account. Can we just acknowledge that God gave you that? By the way, this is a very strict Christian biblical understanding. We've gone into a Bible podcast, which is fine. It is who I am. It's Aggressive Life with Brian Tome. I'm a kind of a Bible guy. I'm like a piece of sausage. And then when you cut me, it's going to come out Bible. It is. So I think tithing your time is a great idea, even though it's nowhere in the Bible. I think it's a principle. Fine. If you want to tithe your time to work out, I think that's fine too. But not as a substitute. Your next amount of money comes your way. I believe it came from God. And God has invested in you. And it's pretty crazy that an investor only wants a one-time 10% payback. for a short lifetime of disbelief seems excessive to me. What do you think? Man, I don't know if I'll lose my clergy card here. I'm more flexible these days on the duration of hell. I'm more flexible on it. Do you think it may not last forever? Maybe. I think it does last forever, but I'm more flexible. Maybe it doesn't last forever in understanding some of the arguments. So one is annihilationism, that you're just annihilated. Your soul is stamped out, and that's your hell. beliefs that it'll be a certain time and then it's over. So I think if someone wants to believe that, I think you'd probably find some verses in the Bible to maybe deduct that from or deduce that from. But what I also come down to is to remember, if someone's in hell, specifically, this is probably an American who's writing this who has the awareness and understanding of enough of the gospel. to not want the gospel, the good news that Jesus laid down his life so you don't have to lay down your life for eternity. If you want to live any way you want, which includes not living under the lordship of Jesus Christ, why do you think you'd want that in the afterlife? If you don't want Jesus now, why do you think you'd want Jesus in the afterlife? The hell is just giving you what you've already chosen. You had to. You had a long, long time to make your choice. And so God is giving you what you want. Is he sending you to hell? Well, I guess you could say sending you to hell, at least he's rejecting you from heaven, I guess, but really it's on you. It's called the aggressive life, not the passive life. Oh, why did God send me there? Oh, why did I? You chose that. You wanted that. You wanted your life there, whatever way you wanted. And you didn't want to be under the teaching of Jesus. And you didn't want him to be your sacrifice. You wanted to work it out in your own. And level the scales or whatever your worldview is. I don't want to crack on whatever your worldview is. I'm just saying if you have a hard time with this, why would you have a hard time with this? Just give your life to Christ. Last two, how do you stay connected to God throughout the work day and the busyness of life? What are things that you do specifically to help you connect with God? I like to listen to podcasts. I mentioned Scott Galloway before. That's where I've been turned on him recently. Got some really good stuff out there, but I don't listen to Scott on my drive in to work. Him or any of his stuff, he's on podcasts. He makes me think, but he doesn't put me in a worshipful frame of mind. So I'm coming to work. I wanna listen to worship music. I just go to Spotify and I put on some playlist, best live worship songs. I don't like Christian cheesy music. I don't like it. I don't know what they put on Christian radio. Like the clue phone's ringing. It's for you. No one likes it. You know, if you want to put your Christian worship music on there, maybe, but you know, so that's one thing I do. I say, I'm going to get my mind in the right place when I'm driving into work. This is after I've had some time with God in the morning. I have a Bible reading plan this year, which has long times I've had a... strict Bible reading plan. So I'm doing that in the morning, which has been good, versus, I'm just gonna read this right now or that right there. And then throughout the day, once I do those things, I've got myself in the flow. No matter what I'm doing during the day, even if it's a businessy kind of thing, like dealing with our budget of Crossroads, I'm then able to do, is what the Bible says, pray at all times without ceasing. I'm able to invite God into the thoughts that I have, invite Him into the meetings I have, pray under my breath, acknowledge Him in my mind as I'm dealing with a conundrum. That's what it means to walk with Him and abide in Him. Last one, what is the most aggressive thing you felt God pushing you to do recently? All right, this is, gosh, this sounds like I'm pulling the weenie card. It sounds like I'm just saying something to make myself look good. Let me unpack it a little bit. Like, hey, like, what's, in one of the job interviews you give to somebody, what's one problem you're working on? Well. I just work too hard. I can't turn off the work. Oh wow, really, really open it up. That's, whew, that's wow, okay, good. I am taking some significant time off. I'm be off for about seven, eight weeks. And it's really aggressive. And I'm really struggling with it right now. Last year, I took many weeks off. And it was obvious. I was just worn slap out. I was doing damage to myself and others around me because I was just biting and on the edge and just not well. It was obvious. I gotta get out of here, because if I don't get out of here, I'm gonna do something that could be scandal-oriented, because I am on the edge. I'm about to do something really stupid. Pick your scandal, it could be. This is when people do stuff like this. So it was always, dude, gotta get out of here. This time, as I head out, I'm feeling really good. Like, I like to go out. Like, I'm tired, I'm straining. At the finish line, the very end, I go over, oh, it's good. Oh, so good. I just barely made it across the finish line. I feel like I'm on top of my game right now. I've got more energy now, or at least as much energy now as I did in September. So it's causing me to think, maybe I shouldn't go. Maybe I'm being a slacker. Maybe I'm and I'm remembering that the Bible has mandated times of Sabbath, jubilee year, holidays. There's nothing that says every summer a pastor should take off several weeks in a row. But it's been a good rhythm for me. And when I didn't do it the last few years, it had nearly catastrophic consequences. So quite frankly, Dirt, it's a real aggressive move to leave right now and be committed to be out of the office. Because I think there's going to be some dividends and payoffs. I'm not going away right now to recover from a crappy year. I'm going away because I'm hoping God unlocks something in me. and gives me some insight that I wouldn't be able to have if I was just going about my normal day to day. So I think that's it. And I say that tenuously and sensibly because I know most people can't do what I'm doing and I'm very aware of that and it's a unique situation. Great. Are there any questions you're looking at that you wish we talked about? Yeah, I'm looking at here right now. I think it did pretty good. Yeah, I'm pretty good here. Here's a question. No one asked this, but it'd be a good question. Who are some of your dream guests for the aggressive life? That'd be fun. I should ask you that, Dirk. Ask you a question for a change. Oh, you're gonna ask me that? Yeah, you are. Who dream guests from your standpoint. And they have to be alive, obviously. They do, unfortunately. Malcolm Gladwell? I don't know. The way you feel about Scott Galloway, maybe I feel about Malcolm Gladwell. Dude's just brilliant. I take Malcolm Gladwell. He connects dots like he sees things no one else sees. Just from a fun perspective, I would love to have Chris Pratt on. I think he's hilarious. Love Guardians of the Galaxy. Love Parks and Rec. Have you seen the most recent Guardians of the Galaxy? I haven't seen the most recent one, but the other two were great. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Chris Hemsworth, I don't know, I'm not on a Marvel thing now, but he's Thor and his whole thing on Limitless on Disney. I've heard that's great. Yeah, it's great. You? Who are people you would want to have on? Well, you mentioned one already. In fact, I'd like you to work on that while I'm gone. Galway? Yeah, I mean, he likes to expand his base. And I don't know if he's ever actually talked to a real-life Christian. Yeah, that'd be great. He might not have, honestly. We're gonna try to run him down. A real-life Christian. Yeah. He's a very, he likes new ideas and new experiences. So we should put it out there and tell them, we've had Matthew McConaughey on and astronauts on and we're not just someone doing something out of a basement. So I think that's one. Another one is, we talked about this one, I'll say it again, Louis CK. Yeah, we did try to get Louis CK. We did. And? He didn't return our email, but. Okay. his website literally said, don't send me emails because I won't return them. But that's the only way you could reach. I mean, there's no, I don't, I can't send him a pigeon. So somebody in the aggressive life, or knows a publicist or knows somebody that's, that's an elite comic that might know him. I've, I've heard some of his things of how he approached this job, but I think it's fascinating. And if you get this to him, I'm not going to ask him about masturbating in public. I'm not. This is a safe place. Yeah, this is a safe place. Enough people are asking about that, wondering about that. The aggressive life doesn't mean you always have to aggressive and ask the most annoying thing. I'm not going to ask him. If he wants to talk about it, I'm always up for talking about jacking off. It's fine. If he wants that, I'll talk about it. But no, I'm fascinated with, he talks about how to build an audience and how to play to your core audience and not play to the naysayers of the masses. I think that will be. Fascinating. So he's another one. And then I would like Hugh Jackman. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hugh Jackman. And from the standpoint of, you know, he's, I'll give you two, Hugh Jackman and Marky Mark Wahlberg. Oh yeah, both would be great. Both of them. I'd like to appreciate both those guys. And they're in an industry that is generally, genuinely hostile to people of faith. And they found a way to thrive and be who they are and crank out great work and all that stuff. So they'd be fun. Yeah, totally. We gotta find them. All right, Dirt, hey, this is fun. This is fun. We should do this again. I guess I can tell you we should do this again because you do actually work for me. I do take my notes from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am kinda your boss. So we'll be doing this again. But masterful, masterful doing of the questions. I've liked that a lot. So it's been great. So I don't know, friends, if there's been something here that has been helpful to you. Dirk talked about fathering. and how I do with my kids, I'll just let the cat out of the bag. Some days I come on to the aggressive life and I feel like I'm going to be your friend. And I'm going to use stupid language and tell stupid jokes like friends would around a campfire. And some days I come on here and I want to be your coach. I want to say, come on, chop chop, get in the game, do XYZ. And you know that. You know when those episodes are. And some days I want to come here, I just want to be your father. I want to be a father figure that gives you some wisdom, gives you some appreciation, gives you some love, even though we may not actually meet and interact with one another, I at least want to be a voice that gives a fatherly tone to certain things. And it has helped you as much as I can from far away. So which other of those I've been today or in the past year, just let you know it's really good having the Aggressive Life family. It's not something I'd take for granted. You could be listening to a lot of other things, doing a lot of other things. And thanks for being part of the fam. Appreciate you. So hey, have a great, great aggressive summer. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. Pre-orders for my new books, a repackaged edition of the Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man tactical guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps. Get this show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.