7 Ways to ERASE Trauma Without Therapy or Medication

Your brain is a supercomputer. It is the most powerful machine that will ever operate. People don't really understand the mechanics of mental health. They think it's all in your head, but it's actually physical neural connections. When we have these traumatic experiences, it damages the way we see things. Now, here's the crazy thing. When you can name the emotion that you're feeling, it reduces the effect by 50%. And then if we can reframe it, we start to heal. Your brain can't tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So when you're thinking about something, your brain is actually reliving it. But if the emergency is only happening in your brain, that threat never leaves. That's what we know as an anxiety attack or panic attack. How do you stop that? Okay, here's a tip. This is something super easy. What it is, Bradley, back again with another episode of Dropping Bombs today in the studio. Folks, I got a real treat for you. U.S. Marine Special Operations Leader changed to Marine First Anglico. Yes, First Anglico. Operator. Aaron Sergeant Q Quinonez. How do you say that? Quinonez. Quinonez. Don't look at it. If you look at it, it'll throw you off. Quinonez. I did a thing. It was what would you do on television. It was John Quinonez. Yes. Quinonez. Same name. I couldn't pronounce that one either. What's happening? That's why everybody just calls me Q. It just makes it easier. Is it Sergeant Q? Yeah. So in the Marine Corps, you go by your last name and nobody can say it. And so it just became Q. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was a sergeant. So Sergeant Q. When I got back into working with veterans and in the nonprofit space, everybody knew me as Sergeant Q. So it just kind of stuck. I branded it and it just kind of took on a life of its own. Yeah, so guys, if you guys don't know who he is, you can follow him on Instagram at sergeant.q underscore, sergeant.q underscore. Entrepreneur for sure. Went from homeless to a massive janitorial company. Now speaking on stages all over, helping people get through trauma basically. Yeah, everybody experiences trauma at some point in their life. It could be from their childhood. It could be from a car accident, a bad breakup, the death of a loved one. And that affects all of us a little bit differently in different degrees. But if we don't heal from that, it can be an anchor that just holds us back for the rest of our lives. What kind of anchor? Like, in other words, what are some how would someone self-diagnose and be like, well, shit, maybe there's some trauma? Because a guy like me, if you could say, have you ever been through any trauma? My first instinct is no, not really. Yeah, and that's what I hear that from a lot of people until we start to investigate negative patterns they have in their life. And so, Brad, you're a very successful guy. You've done a lot of work in this space, but most people haven't invested that much time and energy into it. And so they continue to repeat these negative cycles in their life. They continue to lose their job, lose relationships, and blame everybody else because they're living in that victim mentality. or they're constantly triggered by anyone and everything around them. And that's part of that unhealed trauma in their life. And so trauma, what it does, we have these neural connections in our brain. And when we experience trauma, adrenaline and cortisol get coated on those and it becomes very sticky. And those neural synapses, they shrink down. And so they don't allow for you to process information rationally because it's that fear that drives the amygdala, which is our fight, flight, and freeze. So when you watch YouTube and you see people out there behaving badly, we have this overreaction. It's because something happened that triggered a past experience in their life, which caused them to have that over-emotional reaction. And it's usually people behaving badly. So I teach people that in your brain, you have what's called an ACC, an interior cingulate cortex that allows you to pause for a minute, establish what is true and what is not in that moment make a different decision and have a better reaction now isn't that a military thing called a loop or something yeah so you can call it that we do like an after actions report typically in the moment people can't they can't complete that loop but there's a word for it i remember hearing we there you can call it the OODA loop where it is. It's a decision-making process for when you're in the field and you have to make a decision right away. Yeah, teach that real quick. Because again, a lot of people don't understand that there's an art and science behind making decisions. And in my belief, your whole life is an aggregation of your decisions. I try to tell people all the time, dude, go look in the mirror because that's the person that can make you rich. That's the person that'll keep you broke. That's the person holding you back. That's the person that'll set you free. And it boils down to decisions. So talk about how do you make major decisions like on the battlefield? And you're definitely a war veteran. Thank you for your service, by the way. You're welcome. And I'm sure you've been in situations. I want to talk about you overcoming homelessness and starting a big ass company from basically from the street. Because again, people are filled with excuses. I don't have a place to live. You expect me to build a company? You did. So I want to get into that. But first, talk about OODA loops. Well, let's talk about how the brain processes information. And so the brain processes information. If you have an experience, doesn't matter what it is, you have what's called an automatic thought that happens. You can't control that automatic thought. When that thought happens, your brain registers it and you get a feeling inside of you. And that feeling and that thought and that experience, Your subconscious mind wants to take that information and file it somewhere. Where else have you had this experience before? And it takes it and does that. Now, if it's trauma related, then it puts it with that trauma. The amygdala kicks in, gives you adrenaline and cortisol, and then you have that negative reaction. But if you pause for a moment, that's all it is, just a pause. Just take a breath and pause and discern for a moment what is actually happening and what is not. because your body is responding to something that's in the past. What if that pause causes you to get punched in the face or die? That pause is only a split second. You're not there for minutes. You're just pausing because when you make the next decision, you're deciding what is actually a real threat and what is not. Fourth of July, fireworks cause people who struggle with PTSD to have an overreaction because immediately the brain thinks that's incoming fire. But if they can pause for a moment say no, this is the fourth of july i'm in america i'm safe It takes just a second to do Then what they've done is they've accessed their hippocampus which is All of the storehouse of their memory and they've started to create a rational thought process with their cognitive part of their brain And that helps them make a better decision on what to do next. Where did you learn this stuff? It's a great question reading the bible so when i was struggling with mental health i found i found the lord and i started to read the bible and at the same time i'm studying neuroscience and i was like this is telling me the exact same thing so i created this little plan for myself to overcome trauma isn't that crazy though it is and so people like well how is that true here's a great example jesus says it's better to give than to receive well that's that i would agree right everybody agrees with that But here's how it breaks down on the neuroscience level. When you are helping other people, your brain releases four main chemicals you need to have a healthy brain, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. And so when you make it part of your lifestyle, how you live is to help other people. You're getting the four neurochemicals your brain needs to be healthy. So when I feel down, when I feel depressed, when I feel the imposter syndrome kicking in, I go look for somebody I can go help. Even if it's just on social media to bump up their post a little bit or to offer some support or send them an encouraging message. That's what I try to do. And that helps me immediately because my brain automatically fires off those neurochemicals that I need. When you say imposter syndrome, why do you think that people get that? That's a great question. And so it's something that everybody deals with at some point. Sure. We all have dealt with that. Yeah. We compare ourselves to other people. I should be farther along. Nobody's going to believe this story because it seems out of this world to go from homeless to multimillionaire. Or who am I? Who am I to do this or to speak on this? See, I got over that by just saying, screw it. I mean, I don't know if I had a method that I could teach because I'll get up on a stage. People pay me a good chunk of change to go talk. And I say, what do you want me to talk about? And they're like, you know, anything you want. So I'm like, okay. So I figure it out when I walk out there. People are just amazed that when I walk out on that stage, I don't have a speech. I don't have anything rehearsed. I just talk. And they're like constantly speakers, like paid speakers are like, dude, how do you do that? Aren't you worried that this will happen and that's happened? And I'm like the opposite. I can screw up a speech. I can't screw up talking. Right. So good point. But I had imposter syndrome to think in the beginning. I'm like, well, who am I? What am I? I don't want to claim like I know everything. If I knew everything, I'd be a billionaire. So I don't know anything. So then I just thought to myself, here's how I did it. I just thought to myself, is there anybody in this room, anybody, that's likely not below me physically, but like in other words, they're behind me. well, sure, I know that guy's not doing as well as me and neither is that guy. And that's what calms me because I start to talk to those people. And then I start to be more confident and I kind of lose that imposter syndrome because I know I can help those people. So without knowing that's what I was doing, you just put a label on it. Yeah, that's exactly what you did. It's a small little daily discipline that you do that your life is very disciplined. and so when you look at all those small daily disciplines that you do that builds that acc that interior cingulate cortex that pause button that i talked about so when you go on stage everybody else is worried you go on stage you're not because you're paused and you already created a neural pathway in your brain to be able to talk directly to those people who need your help and not worry about the others yeah and so in your brain you have people say oh i get stuck in this rut and if you've ever driven on a dirt road which from oregon i'm sure you've driven on a dirt roads and you have ruts that happen in the road and you can't get out of those. I mean, you can kind of pop out of the rut, but eventually you're going to fall right back into it. So people are always trying to get out of the rut. What they need to do is build a new road, build a new neural pathway that allows you to be successful, which is exactly what you just did on stage. And anybody who's listening, that's a million dollars right there, dropping that bomb on everybody that you just gave them about how you do that. You speak to the people who need their help and you don't worry about the rest of them. Yeah, because before, dude, what was giving me imposter syndrome was, well, who the fuck am I? Like there's probably people in here that are going to doubt what I'm saying and shoot holes in it. And so I didn't ever want to come across like I'm telling someone way ahead of me how to run their business or how to do something. So and it would make me nervous to the point where like I don't even want to talk. And that to me is imposter syndrome. them. Like, who am I? I'm an imposter. I shouldn't be here. So then I just thought, is there anybody in this room that's doing worse than me? And there's always someone. So I'm like, yes, there probably is. And I focus on that. Let me just help one person, not the whole audience. And if someone doesn't like what I'm saying, that's their business because I speak from the heart and I say to myself, this is what I believe. And it is what I believe. And it turns out, you know, I keep getting booked for speaking. So apparently someone's liking it. You're getting booked for speaking a lot. What do you speak on this mental health? On resilience. And so what I try to do is people don't really understand the mechanics of mental health. They think it's all in your head, but it's actually physical neural connections. So it's not just in your head, emotions inside of your head. So it's like having a broken leg and then just saying, I'm just going to walk it off. You could, it would heal, but it's not going to heal right. It's going to cause you problems the rest of your life. It's going to cause you pain. And it's going to limit your ability to do other things. So what is traumatic for people? Cheated on? It could be. Yeah. So it depends on... Car crashes? It really depends on your childhood, right? Like the more intense your childhood was, the more resilient you tend to build up. But people who lived a very easy life, then everything seems hard to them. And so what I tell people they have to do to build that ACC, there's two things. One, you can intentionally do hard things like the ice bath is where I try to start everybody. You get in that cold water for three to five minutes every single day. You're going to build some resilience very quickly. You think? Oh, 100%. Yeah, I've studied the my it's called the myelin inside of your brain. So how your brain works, you have inside you have your hippocampus and your amygdala. And everybody thinks that trauma is stored in the hippocampus, which is where all your memories are. But it's not. It's actually stored inside the amygdala, which controls your fight, flight, and freeze response. That's the reptilian. That's the reptilian brain. Exactly right. Survival is mainly what it is for, yeah? That's the only thing that it does. Its only job is to preserve life. So it will do anything to preserve your life. so when a thought or when an incident happens that triggers a thought feeling an emotion that touches that trauma in your life it fires off the amygdala people get shaky they get tunnel vision they can't think clearly and so they make bad mistakes when we look at suicide i believe that all the research that i've done on it the people who in their life don't actually want to die. They just don't know how to make it through and process through those next few moments. Because when you're in that lower form of thinking, the reptilian brain, you have very limited capacity. And so you don't have good decision-making skills, long-term planning, or the ability to overcome impulses. We know that suicide's an impulse because everybody who survived an attempt, they say the same two things. Number one, I regret my attempt. And number two, I just didn't see another way at the time. It's because the brain's malfunctioning. Yeah. And anytime we have any sort of trauma in our life, that's a malfunction that happens in the brain. And so that neural connection that used to run that path, it becomes a rut. And people want to avoid pain and seek pleasure. And so when there's painful things in their past, they want to avoid people, places, and things that remind them of that. Should they go towards those? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And most people aren't willing to do that. And that's how I overcome my trauma being homeless. I was homeless as a kid. Was that traumatic? At the time it wasn't because I didn't understand it. Because I was homeless once. As I look back on it, I was like, oh, that's why I was doing those things. That's what I want to do. That's why I'm like glad you're here so I can like make it a therapy session. Because I'm doing fine, but I know I could have done way better than I've done. And I look and say, like, it's hard for me to take compliments as far as success goes, because everyone walks around here and says, man, geez, they look at my social media and they're like, gee, dude, you're famous. And it's like, not really, first of all. Second of all, I'm looking at how far I could have went, how far I could have been. And I just keep looking at the that perspective, which isn't right. it might be traumatic or trauma-based. Yes. And I just don't realize it. Well, get me through it so I can freaking accelerate. So you're already doing well. So let me tell you a story. Comparatively. Yeah. But not necessarily. But you could be doing better. I could be doing thousands. I could have been a billionaire already, bro. So here's one of the things that I looked at. Homelessness. I didn't realize how much that was affecting me until my church was going to go down to Mexico and build a home for a homeless family. And they invited me to come. And my immediate response was, no way. I do not want to do that. And I didn't even really understand why. I just pushed back like, I'm not doing that. I don't want to leave the country. I don't want to go work with homeless people. No way. And I didn't understand why until now. Well, until I started healing from it. The reason is because working with homeless people reminded me of being homeless. And I didn't even register that on a conscious level. That was happening on a subconscious level where my brain was saying, no, that's dangerous. We don't want any part of that. And so it was causing that really negative reaction. That's like me with anything illegal. Yeah. Yeah. Like, don't talk to me about illegal shit. I don't want to do anything that would put me in a jail cell. Right. Yeah. Because, dude, like I don't. Freedom is my number one value. In other words I would rather be broke and free than rich and locked up That right So to me that probably a traumatic thing that happened when I was locked up for a minute Absolutely It was like wait a minute dude And now anybody says anything where it's like not even a big thing. No, no, no, no, no. So I don't want to heal from that. Well, part of that is good. Those are what's called guardrails because it's not impacting your life negatively. So those are guardrails that you put in. And so think about it this way. When you're driving on a road, where do they put guardrails? Not on a straight stretch, but on dangerous areas. Well, do you think, do you think, um, cause to me, I just always thought it was ethics and integrity, like younger, I didn't really have ethics or integrity. I'd lie. I'd fricking steal. I'd fricking, you know, scam, if that's what you want to call it, which is lying and stealing, you know, but, but, but dude, I like if I could get away with it, I would. And it didn't bother me at all. Then when I turned 18, I realized different consequences. Well, that straightened me up a little bit. But, but I mean, at the end of the day, I just thought over time I learned ethics and morals and, and you know, how to be in integratists. What do you think happened? So I'll finish the Mexico story and it'll explain it. So I went to – I felt the Lord calling me to go. So I did it. I was very uncomfortable. I didn't want to go, but I felt called to go. So I'm the guy who does hard things, and so I was like, okay, I'm going to push through this. It kicked up a lot of my post-traumatic stress going down there, building that house. Because the – not only was it the homelessness, but I'm in an impoverished country that you can smell raw sewage and burning trash every day. it's a very desolate area very similar to where i was in iraq and so a lot of those little triggers kept popping up for me but i went and i helped these people i built a home for them with my church and that's when i started getting dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins i felt so much better and i didn't understand why so i went back and i started researching why do i feel better when i'm doing these things so not only was i good things not only was i getting those chemicals But I was also facing that homelessness demon face on where I wasn't avoiding it anymore. So I read a great book by Greg Jantz, and he talks about the power of positive thinking. Basically, what you say to yourself matters. It's huge. It's huge. And so when I would, my fear was I'd become homeless again, and I could do anything I can to not be homeless. I don't even worry about that anymore because I've built so many homes for homeless people. I've done so much homeless outreach, so much homeless advocacy that I have faced that and I've overcome what's called a negative bias. So you have a negative bias to losing your freedom, which is good. That's a guardrail. But a lot of people have these negative biases built up in their brain and they don't even understand why. It's why they're making money over making money over relationships, over asking for help. I see so many people miss an opportunity because it looks like work and so they don't want to do it they don't want to ask the question and because they'll be embarrassed especially where you're from right it's like if somebody came to you and said hey Brad could you help me with this you either you will or you won't but they don't lose anything by asking they lose nothing by asking you for help and that's what I try and teach people is that fear is what's holding you back. And that fear is typically tied to something that happened in your past. Now in our, in our brain, the negative bias is a seven to one. So if you and I have a negative experience together, it's going to take us five to seven positive experiences just to get to neutral because the brain weighs a negative experience seven times heavier than a positive one. It's designed to keep us alive. So that way, if we go do something and it's stupid and we get hurt, the brain says, We don't want to do that again. That hurts. And it keeps us alive. So part of it is overcoming the negative bias. So I had a big negative bias around working with or talking about homelessness because it was, I didn't realize how traumatic it was until I started doing this research into neuroscience. Are you planning on getting like a doctorate's degree or? No, absolutely not. So a lot of people ask me that. I have no formal education. I have a high school diploma, but I read all these research studies. I study it myself. I study scripture. And I hold my own in those rooms. I've worked with professors at colleges who've certified my work that I do in the veteran community. I've worked with whole mental health departments out of hospital systems, helping them understand the suicidal ideologies and what drives people. And I've been in those rooms, and I have no formal education. I think that's a good thing because they're nothing against those guys, but it's very indoctrination. It's very much like this is the rule book and this is all we do. And I color outside those lines all the time. I bring in scripture and historical documentation into neuroscience, which gives me a more well-rounded worldview. Number one. Also gives you a hell of an advantage. So I was going to say, number two, it allows me to connect with people on a real level instead of these professors who are great, But they grew up with lives that look totally different than mine did. When it comes to growing up in the drug trade, being homeless, having to go to combat, having to get in shootouts here in the U.S., most of those Ivy League people in those professions have never had that experience that I've had, that you've had. And so it's hard for them to relate to us. That's why there's this huge chasm, and I'm able to fill that vacuum with the knowledge that I bring. What do you think the top three things someone can do to release trauma and start heading in the right direction if they don't realize they have any? Because, again, if you were asking me, Brad, what's been traumatic in your life? My answer would be nothing really. For some reason, I might be suppressing it as trauma or maybe it's stoicism. My dad always told me, you better stop crying or I'm going to give you something to cry about. So we'd like stop crying because otherwise he'd take off his belt and give us something to cry about. Was that traumatic? Get my ass smacked with the belt? I guess it depends on the level. Not abuse. Yeah, I think corporal punishment is okay because pain is a perfect teacher. But I think where it comes into where it could be damaging is the suppression of feelings. That's where it becomes dangerous. And I see this in law enforcement and in first responders a lot where guys deal with these things their whole career and they're like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine until the moment that they retire. And that 18 months after retirement is the most dangerous time for any first responder. That's when they get into alcohol-related incidences or suicide. Why do you think that is? Because they've been repressing all of those experiences. You think? All of those years. Would you swear on that? Yeah, I'd swear on it. Because if someone asked me, I would say probably because they lost structure. Because they went 20 years with do this, do this, here's the rules, here's the chain of command, this is what it is, structure. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, you're done, and it's like zero structure. And sometimes people don't know what to do. And like when you get out of prison and you've been in there 15, 20 years, they call it institutionalized. And now you don't know what to do. So you end up back in prison. Why? Because your mind essentially wants structure and they didn't know how to find structure outside of prison. So they found their way back so they could get that structure, even though it wasn't a very freeing structure. So I would say it was like structure. You think it's because of repressed feelings? So structure is part of it, right? Because that structure is what kept those feelings down because they're mission driven. They have the structure that will cause them to, I've got to get up. I've got to do these things. I've got to go out and protect society. And so that is the structure that keeps them driving forward, which that system allows them to repress those feelings. So when they get out and they're retired, when that structure is there, that's the dam that's not holding the water back anymore. And all of those thoughts, feelings, and emotions come flooding out. And trauma is sticky. So once they start thinking about one, it leads right into the next, the next, the next, the next. And we call that rumination, where they start ruminating on these negative experiences they had. They get into that lower form of thinking. The amygdala takes over because now they're dealing with anxiety and cortisol, flooding their system. And in that lower form of thinking, they lose impulse control. And when they lose impulse control, that is when they commit suicide because they have access to lethal means. Typically, they have firearms. A lot of first responders are big two-way guys. And so they have firearms and alcohol around. And those things lower inhibitions and give easy access to lethal means. And so when you don't deal with the trauma that you've experienced, it just stacks up over time. Here's a great example. You ever seen the show Hoarders? Yeah. Okay. So Hoarders, people didn't, they weren't born that way. They had some experiences and they started collecting things as a way to cope with whatever loss they had. And eventually it starts filling a closet and then it fills a bedroom and then it fills the whole house. And it prevents people from coming and experiencing a relationship with that person. We do the same thing with emotions. We call it emotional hoarding, where people have had all these negative experiences and they don't ever clean them out. So it makes it really difficult to be in relationship with that person because they have so much of this emotional baggage that they haven't dealt with. It's preventing them from going and doing things. For me, I loved going to concerts with my daughter. and for about a decade I couldn't do it because I hadn't dealt with the trauma that I experienced every time I was there I was looking for threats all the time threat assessment threat assessment threat assessment it would just wear me out once I was able to process through those things my daughter and I go to tons of concerts now all the time but I had to process through that cool it down so that way I could you know live the life that I wanted to live so how do you process so there's two two things you have to two things you have to do first basically you have to build a foundation number one is nothing i teach anybody is going to be helpful if they don't understand how to have a routine and i say the first thing i teach people is how to have a morning routine and an evening routine and if you can book in those two parts of your day everything else becomes so much easier in the morning you start a routine and it helps you build dopamine which is your motivation chemical. People say, I got to be motivated to do this. No, no, no. You've got to build dopamine and that gives you motivation. So accomplishing a series of goals in the morning, small goals builds dopamine. It teaches your brain to see dopamine through accomplishing goals instead of through distraction on your phone, tick tock, all of those things, which give you dopamine. And then at the end of the night, you need to cool your brain down from everything that you've experienced during the day. So the last 30 minutes, no electronics. I have some breathing exercises. I do some stretching exercises that I do before I go to bed. And then I say my prayers and I'm out. So what happens is a lot of times people are watching TikTok all the way up until the moment that they go to bed. And so their brain is still spinning for the next 45 minutes to an hour trying to shut down. So they have disturbed sleep. They wake up in the middle of night. They grab their phone. They're checking it. They're doom scrolling in the middle of the night. All of that is destroying your mental health. Business owners, listen up. If your business needs more money, and it will, banks aren't built to move quick. They make you fill out a ton of paperwork, wait for a decision, and by that time, the opportunity is passed. So if you want bank rates without bank delays, you need to check out Cardiff. Cardiff's been helping businesses get same-day funding for over 20 years. We're talking up to $500,000 approved and funded quicker and easier than big banks. You can apply online in under two minutes and get funded as fast as the same day. So whether you need quick money to bridge a gap or do more marketing, get some equipment or hire more people, I'm telling you, apply today at Cardiff.co forward slash Brad. Stop letting slow money cost you opportunities that move fast. There's no impact on your personal credit. So apply now at Cardiff.co forward slash Brad. Subject to approval, terms and rates vary. Cardiff, borrow better. So helping them understand a morning routine. And then the second part is what's called sleep hygiene. So in your brain during the day, you and I are thinking, processing, creating businesses, building relationships. Our brain is firing off little synapses, little tiny electrodes you're firing off in your brain. It creates a waste product. That waste product builds up. And so at the end of the day, when you get home and your wife is like, hey, what do you want for dinner? I don't even care. I don't want to make another decision. What that does is because you have cognitive overload and there's too much of that material in your brain. So when you go to sleep, your cerebral spinal fluid flushes that out. You have a janitor inside of your brain and that janitor washes all of those toxins out. So in the morning, when you wake up, you feel refreshed and you can actually process. They did a study on people that have disturbed sleep. And when they wake up in the morning, they had them do a cognitive test and they scored the same as if people who were legally DUI. So these studies are out there that show if your sleep cycle is off, it's going to affect the rest of your day. And so if you can control the first part and the last part of your day and control your sleep, that's the foundation. If I can get people to control the foundation, then I can teach them the next things how to process. Otherwise I can teach them, but they're not going to have great success because they don't have the discipline to do it every day. Well, I'll challenge anyone that thinks someone doesn't have the discipline. Now, I know what you're saying, and I would agree in theory, but I have a big saying when it comes to discipline, and I say that discipline is a choice because it really is. It's a choice. You don't find it. You don't develop it. You don't buy it. You don't acquire it. You already have it. you just, you're just choosing not to use it. Cause again, I mean, if I stabbed you in the neck, you know, and you didn't have discipline, you wouldn't go to the hospital. Yep. So when something's important and prioritized, you'll always have discipline. So you always have it. The question is, is why aren't you choosing to use it? And I think if, if people could figure out that everyone would be successful because I think discipline is the backbone. It's the spine of success. You have to be disciplined. And you are. That's the whole thing. Everyone listening to this, you have discipline. You're not choosing it. Like you want to lose weight. And then the next day, well, you know, maybe I don't have discipline. No, that's a choice. You made a choice to eat that, to not do that, whatever the case is. Those are just choices that you chose, right? So if you'd have chose to go to the gym, they'd say you had discipline, but did you, or did you just make the right choice? I agree. And that's the doing the hard things. Who do you want to be? I want to be the guy who does hard things. Going to the gym is the hard thing. Well, it's the right thing. It is. See, and that's the whole thing. It's like, people don't realize like these little choices that you're making throughout the day add up to your life. So if you, if I see someone homeless, buddy, it's their choice to be homeless. And people always want to argue with me. You don't understand, Brad. I went through some hard times and I went through this and I went through that. I know. But if you go back to the very source of it all, you made a choice at some point in time that wasn't the right choice. Or maybe it was the easy choice, you know, because I've been there. I know for a fact. And fortunately, I looked in the mirror one day and it could have been God. But I said, there's the problem. looking back at me. I'm making the wrong choices. I'm responsible. No one makes my choices. If I was in jail, I put myself in jail. It wasn't the cops. It wasn't the person that knocked me off. It wasn't none of that. It was me. And I think that's the point in my life where I got rid of victim mentality. And victim mentality is one of the biggest, I think detriments a person can have that perspective. And to me, that's just a perspective. Like who, who's to blame? Like people are blaming the president. People are blaming every president. It doesn't matter which is the president. There's always someone to blame. They're blaming their wives. They're blaming their kids. They're blaming. They blaming You don blame people So you got any hacks to get people to stop the victim mentality The biggest part is you hit on it Personal accountability. You have to realize everybody has to realize is you are 50% of every single problem that you experience and you can't control the other 50% only yours. And so if you look at that, if you have a negative interaction with somebody, you lose a job. It's like, okay, maybe your boss was a jerk. Great. But what did, What did you contribute to that problem? And being introspective, which means looking at yourself, say, what can I do better to not have that ever happen again? And if you can do that in your life and you make that part of your lifestyle is that I'm going to be personally accountable for everything that happens to me, even though there are circumstances outside of our control. I had the same thing happen to me. I had a guy who worked for me who embezzled half a million dollars out of my company and almost bankrupt me. and I could have just blamed him, but I had to look at it and say, what could I have done better? I could have watched him closer. I knew this guy had poor moral character. He was cheating on his wife. He was cheating on his taxes and he was getting DUIs. So why was I surprised when he started embezzling money for me? That's who he was. That was his character. It was my fault putting him in that position of power and not keeping closer tabs on him. And so I had to look at that and I rebuilt my business after that to what it is now. But I could have just quit. I could have just thrown in the towel, got a job working for the post office, which would have been really easy for me to do. But I had a decision. Who do I want to be? I want to be the guy who does hard things. So I rebuilt my company to where it is. I got over 150 employees now. And at the time, I think I had 40. And I rebuilt it bigger and better. Now, here's the other part of it. Taking personal accountability and responsibility, you can't lose compassion for people either. You have to keep that compassion alive. Otherwise, you become somebody who nobody wants to be around. Skeptical, paranoid. paranoid yeah and one of the things that that happened to me uh that guy he ended up passing away drug overdose a few years ago he still owed me a half a million dollars well i never was able to collect any money because he just ran from it the whole time but there was a lien on a house that he bought so he forged documents saying that i had forgiven the debt got a loan from a bank got a second loan from a bank and started this business it was just a scam well his wife comes to me a few weeks after he passed away and asked, I'm so sorry. The lawyers and the investigators showed me everything. You were right. This guy had done all the things that you had said and you have a lien on the house. If you forgive the debt, then I still have to pay back the first and second mortgage. Me and my kids are going to walk away with like $35,000 to try and restart. Would you be willing to do that? Now, if I had just been a cynical jerk I wouldn't even take in the meeting with her. But I knew before she ever stepped in my office, that's what I had to do. Because I read the Bible every single day. And I try and walk it out as much as I can. Well, then you have to forgive. I have to forgive. Because if you don't forgive, you're not forgiven. Did you know that? Yeah, I know it. See, I didn't know that. Yeah, I know it. That's crazy right there. That should make the whole world a better place just right there. You're absolutely right. And here's the second part of that. It is very, very explicit in the Bible. It tells us that we as Christians have to take care of the widows and the orphans. That's a requirement. So forgiveness wasn't enough because I could forgive her and not necessarily forgive the debt or say, hey, I want my chunk and then I'll forgive the interest. There's a lot of different things I could have done, but we forgave the whole thing because God calls us to take care of the widows and the orphans, which is what she was. She was a widow and her kids were orphans. So it's a direct command, according to my faith, that I have to care for them. And I had the capability to do it. And so we did. We'd already moved on. We'd already built our business. Half a million dollars. I mean, that'd be nice to put in my bank account. But what would the cost be to my character if I did that? Yeah. Or your eternal life. Cause I'm wondering what, at some point, I think we're all going to be judged by what we did. Um, I got a million questions because again, I'm trying to help people that may be in a situation where they feel stuck, they feel hopeless. Cause that would suck. Like even if everything just crashed around me, I know that there's opportunity everywhere. I don't know how I evolved, which is funny because your program's called Evolve Pathway. But I don't know how I evolved to the point where I see problems as opportunities. I wake up grateful every day just because I get the day. I'm pretty stable mentally, which is good. But then again, I'm also very fortunate and lucky. I'm wondering, is that because I do that? Yes, 100%. Everything starts – your brain is a supercomputer. It is the most powerful machine that will ever operate is these three pounds of meat in between our brain. Now, the problem with when we have these traumatic experiences, it damages the way we see things. So I'm like you now where every problem, I don't see it as a problem. I see it as an opportunity. Where other people see the problem, I'm like, how can I fix this and then use it for good? now in 1990 they built the hubble telescope and they launched it up into space and it's supposed to be taking these amazing photos that everybody can see our galaxy and crystal clear and all these cool images well the images started coming back but they were blurry and they found out really quickly that one of the lenses was actually damaged so they spent three years and 1.5 billion dollars which would be about three billion dollars today to fix it once they fixed it it came back with some of the most incredible images and we saw our galaxy and the earth in ways that we had never seen it before and it was amazing in our life sometimes our lens that we see the world gets damaged by trauma and if we don't take the time and energy to fix it we're always going to see a distorted view of this world. But once we can fix those trauma, the damage from trauma to those lenses in our life, we see the world through a whole new lens, just like you do, just like I do. We don't see those problems anymore. We see them as opportunities to grow, opportunities to build. Well, that's because that's what they are. They are. But most people don't see it that way because something from their past is distorting the view of their future. Well, I want to shift gears only because it's easier said than done. In other words, folks reach out to them if you're sitting there thinking you're loving this conversation and it's resonating and you're like, how do I, how do I just reach out to him and DM him? This is what he does. He helps people. And he also runs a company, and I want to get to that because ultimately you're homeless and you ended up creating a company, multiple, but one is a janitorial company, has over 150 employees now, one of the biggest privately held in the Northwest. And you started it homeless. Yeah, living in my car. Yeah, so explain how you did that. So I'll back up just a few months prior to me even starting the company. and I was working one of my favorite jobs ever. I was selling cars and I was setting records and my team, and then I became a sales manager. My team's setting records, not just in the Northwest, but nationally for this company. But you weren't homeless. No, no, no. So this is before I was homeless and I was working, doing great. There was a home invasion robbery that happened. To you? To me. And so a gunfight ensued. I survived. The guy didn't. that kicked up all that trauma that I hadn't dealt with from combat. And so within a matter of months, I'm terminated from my job. My girlfriend leaves me and I'm living on the streets. And I thought, because you protected your home. How did I get here? Yeah. But I wasn't, I became too difficult to work with at the job. It's not because I got fired, not because I couldn't do the job, but because nobody wanted to work with me. Nobody wanted to be around me. I was short tempered. I was yelling at people. I was having those over-emotional reactions that I had discussed. And so it caused me to lose my job, lose my girlfriend, and then eventually lose my home. And so I was driving around the streets of the Pacific Northwest on the 4th of July, and I was just looking for a quiet place to end my life. And I drove into this vacant parking lot next to this three-story brick building, and I figured this is just contemplating the last few moments of my life. and I rolled down the window so I could feel the breeze come across my face. And I heard these kids playing outside. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. And I thought, okay, I'm going to wait till these kids take off because I don't want them to have to find me. And so I remember sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting. And then the voice is faded. The next thing I remember is waking up. When I woke up, I was shook because I didn't know where those thoughts were coming from of ending my life. And I didn't know if they were going to come back again. so i immediately started researching the brain a few days later i got invited to go to church and i was like no thanks it's not for me i don't want to do that but i woke up in my car that sunday and i thought what the heck let me go check out this church thing so i start driving to the address they gave me now this is before gps this is 17 almost 18 years ago so i'm using the old thomas guide you familiar with the thomas guide a map basically the book of maps right and so i drive to location and I drive right back into that same parking lot that I was in just a few days before. It was a small private school, Renton Christian Schools in Renton, Washington. And there's a small little church that would meet in the gymnasium of that church or in that school. I mean, I tell you what, Brad, I drove in there. I was shook. I was like, wait, did I die? And I'm living some weird groundhog's day. Like I see all these people going in. Like, is that it for me? I go through those doors and it's, you know, game over, roll credits. And I went in and I listened to Pastor Troy speak for the very first time. And he talked about feeling lost and alone and without hope. And I thought, this guy's reading my mail. So I gave my life to the Lord and I thought, okay, everything's going to be good now, but nothing changed for me. But I kept going back because something was there. I start studying the Bible with these guys. At the same time, I'm studying these medical journals. And that's how I found out that all these conditions that we're dealing with today aren't new. There's stuff that's been written about in scripture for thousands of years. And modern neuroscience just gives us a better way to explain it. And so that's how I help people is I use these ancient texts with modern neuroscience and I give them small daily tasks to help them build resilience. I like the word resilience because, again, some guys won't go if it's any other word. Yeah. But resilience, I always think, you know, you either have it or you don't. Do you think it can be developed? Oh, 100%. So resilience is – it's that part of the brain. It's that myelin that is created. That's where the ACC, the anterior cingulate cortex. They did studies on the ACC and they found guys who are professional athletes and guys who are in the military have a very big part of that brain, the anterior cingulate cortex. It's because they constantly do hard things. So remember in the beginning, we talked about the two things you can do. Number one is do hard things. And number two is to have a daily routine. Those are the two ways you can build your ACC, which is resilience. So if your routine is doing hard things, that's even better. You're just, yeah. Then it becomes a force multiplier right there, right? Yeah. So you get out of this church. At what point did you start a business and why janitorial? So I was still, I was going to church, still living in my car. and I needed a way to make some money. And so I'd been a bouncer at a club before. I didn't really want to do that. I needed something where I could kind of be away from people. So I knew people in the cleaning industry and they would sub, I got a business license and some equipment and they would just used equipment, cost me a couple hundred bucks. And they would subcontract me these little jobs that they didn't want to do. And at first it was just floor care. That's all we did was hard floors and carpets. And I got really, really good at it. So much so that within nine months, I got invited to do a bid walk for full service janitorial for this huge medical company. And I won. And I won because I had been in their emergency rooms managing chaos, scrubbing these floors that nobody else could do, solving problems that nobody else knew how to solve. And I didn't know how to solve them either. But I figured I'd get in there and try. And I'd figure it out on the way. And I did. And I got really, really, really good at floor care, which led into full service janitorial. So my first hiring was like 30 people. And I'm hitting different Starbuckses trying to hire people as fast as I can, get them trained up, show them the buildings. And that just took off because I started to solve problems for people. I didn't look at it as I'm cleaning toilets in the middle of the night. I looked at it as I'm trying to help these people solve a problem. The problem is this place is dirty and it needs to be clean because we need to do infection control. And so that's the problem. Cleaning wasn't the problem. It was helping them solve the infectious disease control. Jeff, did you have a problem finding people willing to clean? In the beginning, yes. In the beginning, it was very, very difficult because nobody says, I want to be a janitor when I grow up. A lot of people think that it's beneath them. The national turnover rate for janitorial is 300%. Now, over time, I've taken these same things that I teach on stage, and I've been teaching them in my business for the last 15 years, teaching my employees to become more resilient. And so they stay longer. My turnover rate, 67%, far less than the national average. And I don't even recruit anymore because my employees recruit their friends and family to come work for us. And it's very similar to the culture you have here, Brad. I talk to your people and I ask them, so what's the best thing about it? Oh, it's the culture. Every single one of them said the same thing. And there's connection points between your staff and other people, friends or family that work here too. So you're doing the same thing that I've been doing, creating that culture. That's why people stay. And that's what's helped me grow and scale to where I am. So what is a Marine First Anglico operator? So in Anglico, it's the Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company. so it's a it's a small group we work with a lot of the other special forces groups we call in all the air artillery mortars do all the medevacs so i try to explain it like this when you're watching cnn and or fox news and you have the reporter on a balcony and you watch bombs dropping in the background there's a guy like me with a radio pair of binoculars telling them exactly where to put that those munitions so i got a really cool job in the marine corps mainly because i asked for it I went through my basic training, then my marine combat training, and then I went to my primary MOS school. And I was talking to one of the sergeants one day. He's like, hey, are you afraid of jumping out of airplanes, Q? No, not at all. So you want to try out for First Anglico? Yeah, what's that? But it was asking the questions about what he did and the unit he was from and what the fleet was about, asking questions that started that conversation. And that's where I learned and I got into Anglico. to be able to be one of those forward observers. It's probably one of the coolest jobs in the Marine Corps is this small little unit. It started in Vietnam. It was called subunit one. And subunit one was just a small little offshoot that did all fire control on all fire bases. And we got so good at it that they developed it into what is Anglico now. And we're the only JTAC certified. We're certified for JTAC and we're certified for all munitions. So anything that comes shipped ashore, so naval gunfire, any aircrafts, we're using drones now, artillery, mortars. And when they get space lasers, I'm sure we'll be firing those things too. Do you have any trauma from that, like knowing full well you're about to blow up a whole neighborhood? You don't think about it at the time. You don't think about that. You're really thinking about I'm not trying to kill these people. I'm trying to keep these people alive. And that's really the mindset you have. It's not until later that you think about those things and it starts to negatively affect you. Why do you think the combat vets come back with post-traumatic stress disorder? Here's the theory that I have. You see this in every single war. In the Revolutionary War, they called it soldier's heart. And it's because when you're under trauma for a very long time, more and more of those synapses are coded. And it reduces your capabilities. It reduces the options that your brain has to make good decisions. And that's really what post-traumatic stress is. So here's the difference. There's post-traumatic stress, which everybody experiences. If you get in a car accident you may feel a little uneasy And then you have PTSD which is the disorder which means it affects your daily life negatively They done studies on this with police officers When they get into a bad accident, their patrol routes will change to avoid that intersection. They're doing it on a subconscious level. They're not even thinking about it, but you can watch the patrol routes change based on where that traumatic event happened. And so it's the same thing, guys, coming back, we were over there. We experienced all these things, but there hasn't been a good system to help us process that information out. Why don't you go get your program certified and fricking mandated by the government? I've worked on that and we're trying it. I work a lot in the veteran space, in the veteran community. And so I have contracts with like the Cherokee and the Choctaw helping second, third largest Native American nation in the country. And so I'm helping them with their veterans program. There's some veterans programs in Washington that I'm helping with, uh, bring this to like route step and a few different organizations. The problem that you have sometimes in the nonprofit space, and I had a nonprofit for a long time is there's a lot of stiff competition for funding. So a lot, there's not a lot of collaboration with nonprofits just because they're trying to protect their funding. And I get it. So when I took it from the nonprofit space to a for-profit space, it's a lot easier. So I'm just now launching into those areas, working with nonprofits, working with companies, working with community organizations to be able to bring these lessons to them. And you have all these lessons in full interactive courseware to where someone can go through it on demand, test them, track them. Absolutely. I've been speaking on stage for the last three years with this. And I just got to the point where I was at capacity. So I had to find a better system. So yeah, we have a system now. Thank you to Lightspeed that will help us be able to deliver this easier. So now when I speak on stage, I can leave that demographic. I can leave that organization. I can leave that company with tools that people can access at their leisure. One of the issues I was having when companies would want me to come in, we couldn't always get everybody in the room at the same time. So some people aren't there, they miss segments, they miss things. And I realized I needed a better way, a better system. And so when I looked at all the different systems out there, I knew it had to be gamified because we have to build dopamine in the brain to help people complete whatever task. And so with the gamified system, it helps people do that. There's badges and streak scores and it's gamified, which helps people build the dopamine they need to be able to complete the task, which builds resilience in their brain. It's kind of the same way that when you go to the gym, when you're working out, you're breaking down those muscles and you're building them back stronger. And that's kind of what we do in the brain, where we're breaking down those negative neural connections that you have, and we're helping you build a better pathway so you have more options available to you other than like anger and depression. Like there's a whole other range of emotions. You feel angry, but why? Where is that anger coming from? Is it disappointment? Is it fear? There's one that I don't understand. If any of my kids get hurt, like if I say, you know, stop running or, you know, don't do this, don't do that. And then they don't stop and then they get hurt. Instead of like being concerned that they're hurt, I get almost enraged. And I'm wondering why do I, because it takes over. So if there's any traumatic shit in my life, it's probably tied to that. And that's why I do it because like, I'm not, I'm not concerned that they feel bad. I'm not concerned that they're actually hurt. I'm pissed and I'm pissed to a, to an enraged pissed. And I have to catch myself sometimes because like I'm adding to their trauma. They just got hurt and now dad's pissed. So why do you think that happens? I'm going to ask you and we're going to figure it out right now. So what's the automatic thought that happens when you, when, so if you can close your eyes And you can remember the last time one of your kids, that situation happened and they got hurt. What's the autumn? What's the automatic thought that happens that pops up that they didn't listen if they didn't listen. Okay. Well, yeah, because like had they listened, that wouldn't have happened. Right. So when I say, don't do that, don't do that. And they keep doing it and then they get hurt. I get pissed almost like I let them down. Like I'm their protector. No, none of my children have ever broke bones or anything crazy. Thank God. But I get pissed And the first thing in my head is Well I don't know Because I get pissed, pissed And it's based on they didn't listen You said yeah they didn't listen So that's the automatic thought, they didn't listen And so what feelings, no don't name the emotion But what does that feel like in your body What's that feeling that comes up, how does that feel Feels Angry So that's a name for it Give me a sensation, what's the sensation feel like I can't even describe it. Enraged. So when I get angry, I feel hot, like physically hot. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I feel physically hot. I can feel – I can now understand it. I feel scared. Yep. You feel a little nauseous maybe? Almost like I robbed a bank and the cops are at the door, like anxiety. But it's mostly anger. So that's adrenaline that's coursing through your veins. That's what you're feeling. adrenaline, which is what is causing that little, that fear. It's, it's adrenaline that's kicking in. And so you're going into fight or flight mode. And then your cortisol is helping you get, is creating tunnel vision. That's why it's hard for you to name anything other than anger, because your brain is not giving you any more options, but you could feel disappointed. You could feel worried. You could feel scared. You said scared, right? Once we investigate it a little bit more. Now you have more words to be able to explain what that, what you're feeling. Because I don't want them hurt. Now here's the crazy thing. When the, when you can name the emotion that you're feeling, it reduces the effect by 50%, 50%. I was at a, I was at a hockey game, youth hockey game. I have season tickets. I love watching it. A few weeks ago, my daughter and I there and a kid takes a hard hit, crumples. The refs try and shake him. They call the trainers out. Trainers run out on the ice. They roll the kid over, check his pulse. They check his breathing. They don't find either. So immediately he starts doing CPR and the other guy's calling 911. The kid was technically dead at that point and they'd use CPR to bring him back. in that moment i was gone i wasn't even there the minute i saw them doing cpr i was 20 years away and several thousand miles in iraq watching one of my gunnies get cpr for the first time because he got electrocuted by a bolt of lightning and we had a medevac amount of there and then the next second i was standing in my living room as i'm watching the police give cpr to the guy who just broke into my house. And then I'm right back in my chair. So all of that happened in an instant because the automatic thought was this kid died. What else in my life has been like that? And it brought up all those other thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And it happened so quick that I didn't even recognize it until I drove home and I said, okay, Aaliyah, you and I have to talk about this because this is what, and then I had to walk myself through that. an after actions report or my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And she did the same. She told me about when she was traveling overseas, doing some outreach ministry, and one of her friends had a seizure on the plane and it brought back that fear and those thoughts, feelings, emotions. And if we don't process it and name it, then that trauma bubble just kind of grows. So when we can name the emotion, it reduces it by 30 to 50% when we just name the emotion. And then if we can reframe it, we start to heal. What is Qactual? What's the app? Qactual is an app I developed several years ago, right before COVID 2019. And it's a suicide prevention app. It went through a clinical study and showed a 90% reduction to readmittance to the emergency room for suicidal ideations and it's built off of realizing that people have reduced cognitive functioning so that's why they took the 1-800 suicide number and a couple years ago they changed it to 988 because people weren't using it because they can't remember the number but just call 911 well you can now well yeah you could call 911 but most people wouldn't but if you're trying to commit suicide why would you call anybody exactly right exactly right you you don't you start to feel like you have suicidal ideations you call like, hey, I don't, I'm feeling some kind of way. I don't understand it. I need help. That's why they call 988. Well, the app that we created is based off of the squad, the fire team from the Marine Corps. It's four guys. I download it, three of my friends download it. And it's just a chat app at the base form. Now, when somebody is struggling with their mental health and they start having suicidal ideations, they can't think about who to call or what to say. So they don't have to do that anymore. They just have to push one button on their phone. cue actual cue actual push one button on their phone it sends an alert to those friends and those friends are able to now contact that individual and start chatting with them at the same time it starts what's called a cognitive reconditioning program most people know it as a grounding technique and it asks them a series of questions that i didn't design therapists have been using it for a decade to bring back that rational thought process to get people out of that subconscious lower form of lizard brain thinking into a more conscious state where they can make better decisions and we have to get them out of that. Otherwise they'll act on the impulses that they're having. Good app. It's been, it's been a lifesaver. So last question, what can the bomb squad do for Sergeant Q? What can, what can, what can they do to support you, help you? You know, I think having better discussions about mental health with your friends and family, you know, I do, I put out a lot of content, a lot of free content. Uh, I have a lot of coursework And a lot of times I hear from people just like I hear from you. So it's not uncommon where they say, well, I'm okay. So I don't really need this. Perfect. You have to look at this like CPR and first aid. You don't learn this stuff for yourself. You learn it for other people. Along the way, it helps you too. But when you learn to see the signs and symptoms when somebody might be struggling, when your friends, your family, and then you know, a lot of times people don't know what to say. How do I say it? What do I say? I don't want to do something wrong. Well, now you'll be armed with the education to be able to help that person. And you look at this as CPR because if somebody has a cardiac event, you don't just give them CPR and send them back to the bench to go play. No, you send them to the emergency room and they get the professional medical treatment that they need. It's the same thing when somebody's struggling with suicidal ideations or any mental health condition. Do you think anxiety is a mental health thing? Absolutely. So here's what anxiety is. anxiety is that adrenaline to hit your body. So here's the thing. But what if you're just sitting there watching TV and all of a sudden you get a panic attack? Like what's happening in your head? I'm going to explain it. This is cool. I love this story. Your brain can't tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So when you're thinking about something, your brain is actually reliving it. So when I'm on stage and I'm telling some of the stories from my life, I'm not telling the story, but I'm reliving it. My body is experiencing it again. There's a great book called The Body Keeps the Score. Now, if a bear, let's say a bear came in here. Immediately, adrenaline and cortisol would fire off and stay until that threat was eliminated. Either we kill the bear or we get out of here. Then the brain says, okay, I don't need adrenaline and I don't need cortisol. I can turn these things off and we go back to normal. but if the emergency is only happening in your brain then the brain never that that threat never leaves and so that adrenaline and cortisol keeps pumping through your veins that's what we know as an anxiety attack or panic attack how do you stop that okay here's a tip this is something super easy sour candy sour candy will stop it immediately and here's why in your brain you have two systems, you have your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It's like the gas and the brake for your body. And so your parasympathetic nervous system is us right now, drinking water, hanging out, chatting, normal. Your sympathetic nervous system is your fight, flight, and freeze response when the amygdala fires off. Has one job, keep you alive. So when that threat is happening only in your mind, your body's acting as if it is a real threat. Like you feel like you're going to die and you don't know why. Because something in your environment triggered that response, something from your past that brain said, oh, I saw this thing. I experienced this thing and it reminds me of a traumatic event in my past. And so it doesn't tell the conscious mind. It doesn't need to. It just wants to preserve life. So it fires off those chemicals. Now, here's what happens when you take a sour candy and you could really use anything, but sour is the best because when you put that sour candy in your mouth, you're introducing a new emergency into the body, which is citric acid burning your tongue. When the citric acid burns your tongue, it activates your salivatory glands to flood the mouth and neutralize the acid. Now, your salivatory glands are directly connected to your parasympathetic nervous system, which lives in the back of your neck, 90% of it. And that's your relaxed state of mind. And so when the salivatory glands get activated, it turns that on and it helps you come back into that rational state of mind. Now, here's something else that typically happens. And anybody who has dealt with anxiety like I have, you feel like you have to evacuate your bowels like right now. Like I got to go to the bathroom right now. And I felt like my body was betraying me until I researched it and found out it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Because if there was a real threat, a bear came in here. Number one, it's going to want me to lighten the load. Number two, if I do receive an injury and I've evacuated my bowels, then there's less chance of an infection. And number three, nothing really wants to eat something covered in crap. So my body is doing exactly what it's supposed to to keep me alive. And so if you're dealing with anxiety and you have those digestive issues, it's your body not betraying you but trying to keep you alive. And that sour candy, when that saliva goes down into your stomach, it reactivates your digestive system, preventing that evacuation from happening. So it's almost like things. Yeah, it's almost like that's why people get scared shitless or something happens and they shit their pants. Yeah, absolutely. It's that's how you feel, right? That's that's what happens. And now I understand how the body mechanics work, the brain and the body connection. And that's why I teach people small little things like this that can help them in their daily lives. Well, my daughter, for some reason, starting to tell me my heart, it feels like I can't breathe. And we took her and she's fine. And the doctor just said, that's just adrenaline. And, you know, she's changing. She's 12 now. Her hormones are changing. I want to figure out how to get her because she panics. And I'm like, well, what is happening here? because she's not like doing anything or thinking of anything or watching anything. But I'm going to try the sour candy. Yeah, you'll be amazed. You'll be amazed how fast that works. Folks, you follow this dude at sergeant dot Q underscore. If you want to reach out to him, hit him in the DMS. Evolve Pathway is the website. If you guys want to go through some of this, some of these courses, just reach out to him or go to evolve pathway dot com. You got a book or anything? So I've got my book Healing Through Service. It's the warrior's guidebook to overcoming trauma. And everything that I teach is based off of that book and the curriculum that I've developed over the last 10 years. Yes. Go get the book, folks. And if you guys are interested in putting this in your business, because apparently it makes your employees more resilient. It's not always about trauma and mental health. Sometimes it's about productivity and kicking ass. Here's the other thing you just mentioned, right? Like you may not be struggling, but somebody in your family is. And that definitely affects you being able to perform at your best here because your thoughts are with them instead of on your work and what you're doing here. And so a lot of times the stuff that I'm teaching and like the technology, people want that for their friends or their family because that affects if one part of the family is struggling, it affects everybody in the family. Yeah, certainly does. I always say people don't have business problems. They got personal problems at their business. I appreciate you coming in keep doing the good work my friend Yahshua loves ya and that's his name by the way folks you know where to reach him until next time keep it real Thank you.