: Welcome to the Aggressive Life. It's summer. Summertime. It's time for sunshine, the pool, cold beers. It's good, even healthy. To drop it down a gear in summer, I do. I drop it down a gear significantly. I'm taking off a long, long time this summer. I took off a long, long time last summer. And I'm doing it because I want to be a healthier, more aggressive me. Next year. The last three years, as you know, in the aggressive life have been really difficult for me. Not the last year, but before the last period, it had been very difficult for me. And I look back and I realize one of the reasons that has been very difficult for me is I had gotten away from taking a regular rhythm of a long, long break in the summer. I had done that for a long time. And then the last several years I'd gotten away from it. I actually went passive. I could have said, well, I stayed aggressive. I kept working all through the summer. I was just more manic. I was more busy. The aggressive move was, gosh, I don't think I can be gone, but I need to be gone. I need to step away. And I stepped away. And it led to one of my greatest years in my life, the last year. The thing I lead has been on a total growth tear. Lib and I are marriage has been utterly phenomenal. probably our best, no, I would say it's our best year of marriage in our 35 years. I've welcomed grandkids into my life, new grandkids this last year. I've had some of my greatest adventures taken place. It's been a banner great year and it only happened, I'm convinced, because I took a long extended break off this last summer and now is the time I'm gonna do it again. I'm not gonna. I'm not going to do the passive thing, which is to do what everybody else does and just take a week or two in the summer. By the way, if you're blessed to be able to take a week or two, awesome. Well done. I recognize that one of the blessings of my job or my life is I can dictate how much time I take off. And the board of Crossroads supports that. So my situation necessarily is your situation. But I have not done the things that I could do, which is take several weeks off in a row. and hurt me and hurt people around me. I'm not going to make that passive mistake again. I'm going to be aggressive. I'm going to keep doing so. I'm doing it again this year, which means, which means I got a bunch of weeks of content have got to be filled up. That's the means. And so I pre-record these things. I've gotten these ready during the month of July. We're bringing you some of my favorite live speak engagements from the past year, including a deep dive and what it means to be a protector, which was recorded live in Iowa. We're going to talk about, or I'm going to talk about how to learn to hear from God for yourself. This is a talk that I gave to 3,000 students, high school students. And I'm going to preview a bunch of new content I'm really excited about, which are these six primal identities that make up our spiritual identity. I recorded this around a campfire, so we're going to make that a podcast. So basically, we're scraping back. A bunch of things I've done and putting on the podcast, I don't think you're going to be lacking for me. I don't think you're going to be lacking for inspiration. In fact, I think you might be even more inspired this summer. Then in August, we're going to jump into a special five-week series we're calling Five Marks of Summer. We're going to celebrate the release of a new edition of the Five Marks for Man, which is a book that I wrote a number of years ago, which just continues to sell and sell and sell. And so therefore, the publishers are saying, hey, we need to update this in a new edition. I said, Absolutely, I'm all in on that. So that thing is going to come out as well as a brand new tactical guide that's designed to grow the marks of a man in your life. If you're a man, I know that Aggressive Life, by the way, is not the masculine life. This is not a man podcast. People keep thinking it is. Look at my guest list. I have men and women. This is not a man podcast. Now, I am a man. I am a man, and I do speak with a masculine tongue. And I'm very. sensitive to the plight of men. So it's understandable people might think that this is a man podcast. But no, this is all people who want to be aggressive podcasts. And actually, truth be told, don't tell my publisher I said this, but actually, the five marks of a man are equally applicable to a woman. But we're going to have a fresh look at these five marks. You can. pre-order, by the way, the new edition of the Five Marks for Man and the Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide, which is new content on Amazon right now. Look for the Navy Blue and Army Green covers. But I've got something special for you right now over on Spotify. You can now search for the Aggressive Life Adventure playlist. And there are 10 of our favorite episodes. They're curated together all around the theme of adventure. Because if summer is for anything, it's for getting out of your house and into an adventure. You got a road trip coming up, you got a long plane ride, you got a long day of outdoor work, got you covered, I got it. Cue up this playlist and let it stir up your thirst for adventure. I think you're gonna find inspiration for your conversations because we're gonna have conversations. on that playlist with an Arctic Explorer, with a legit sunken treasure hunter, with an outdoor survival expert, with all sorts of folks. And just to whet your appetite, here's a little preview of what you'll find in that playlist. Remember, search the Aggressive Life Adventure playlist on Spotify. Next week, we'll jump into week one of live talks for July. We'll see you then. So he said, you know, come hell or high water, you get down there and bring me my treasure. I had to sleep inside a dead carcass of a bear once. Oh, come on, you did not. You slept inside of a dead carcass bear. I had to. Oh, you are the dream guest for me. And we throw grown adults on giant steel tricycles called drift trikes, if you want to Google that. Big wheels, basically. Like a big wheel, yeah, like a big wheel made of steel for an adult, and we throw them down a hill with no brakes. And they could steer, but it's a drift trike. So if they try to steer, they immediately wreck. So they basically just get hurled down a hill over giant ramps while children and other people throw water balloons at them. It's amazing. It is amazing. So it's a lot of fun. You can save our life. You can save our life right now because none of us know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Correct. And that's the plan, right? Really, that's my mission, is to make sure there's fewer of those horrifying survival stories out there. I don't want them. I want people to come back safe and healthy. And even if things go wrong, to be like, whoo, that was a fun adventure. But here I am, right? That's what I'm really looking for. It's like one of the most impressive stories of survival. And certainly when I was out there pulling my sled across Antarctica, facing 60, 70 foot, or 60, 70. minus wind chill and minus four degree temperatures. And I was pulling a 375 pound sled, but I did often think of shafts. The thing I wanna talk about, you've been to space three times. Can you take us back like to the first time? Were you thinking to yourself, oh, this is gonna be crazy. I don't know what this is gonna be like. Did you have like utter pit in your stomach? Was it butterflies? What was it like the first time? First time, second time, and third time were all the same. I was terrified. A picture of get on your boat and go to the other side of the world. do something, have an adventure. All the stories in the Bible that are heroic for us, they're all weird people doing weird things. They're adventures. 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 the 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.