252: You Are Groaning, and You Should Stop.

In this episode, Nole and Kevin tackle a seemingly small but significant habit: subconscious groaning and complaining. Inspired by a clip from Jocko Willink's camp, the hosts realize that those small sounds—like groaning when you stand up or sighing when the tones drop—are forms of negative self-talk and a passive concession to "letting the old man in."

The conversation digs into how this mindset affects your performance as a first responder and your daily life, the stoic philosophy of Sisu, and the eternal balance between adapting to age and outright surrender. Plus, they introduce their new, raw video live streams!

Big thank you to My Epic and Facedown Records for the use of their song "Hail" in our podcast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2RZThURTU&ab_channel=FacedownRecords

Send Nole an email: nolerltw@gmail.com

Join the Telegram group: https://t.me/+pSg4QvG4e681MzYx

Sign up for a class at The Fire Up Program!
https://www.fireupprogram.com/programs

MyZone facility code for The Fire You Carry: CALIFUS001

Get $60 off a MZ-Switch Heart Rate Monitor!
https://buy.myzone.org/?lang=enUS&voucher=CALIFUS001-60

The Fire Up Progam video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I__ErPW46Ec&t=12s&ab_channel=FireUpProgram

The Fire You Carry Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/thefireyoucarry/

Donate to The Fire Up Program.
https://www.fireupprogram.com/donate

The Fire Up Program Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/fireup_program/

Kevin's Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/kevinpwelsh/?hl=en

Nole's Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/nolelilley/?hl=en

Transcript

Nole (00:14.21)
You are listening to the fire. You carry podcast. Today's episode was live streamed on YouTube. No one watched it, but we did it. We have been told time and time again that we need to put out some sort of a video version of the podcast and we are finally going to start doing that. It is not high production. It is not fancy. is not edited, but it will begin to exist.

YouTube so if you're interested in that you can head over to the fire you carries YouTube page and under the live tab it's there This episode but the video of Kevin looking at his computer screen and me looking at mine talking to one another It's very exciting At any rate, thank you for listening Enjoy

Nole (01:19.15)
Magistical part of it that I didn't think of in our conversation was that if we go live now on Thursday Yes, I will do the normal audio and put up the normal audio podcast on Monday But that does mean that if people want to watch it on YouTube, they get it early, which is a big deal But I didn't think about that initially so

The early subscribers,

Kevin (01:42.674)
Welcome back to the Fire You Carry podcast. Noel is repping the flag behind us and I have TFYC shirt on. Let's go. The Fire You Carry. Hey, we're trying something new. We're going live on the YouTubes. anyways, that's what we're doing.

People have been clamoring for us to do this for a good two years. Too many names to mention, but our good friend Rich Zuniga has been honest about this really since the inception of the podcast. through some other people encouraging us, my own brother Edward and others, we're giving it a shot. So we're just going to do our thing. We're going to record our episode right now, but it's streaming live, which is a new experience for us. So.

So bear with us.

So real quick before we started, your ringtone came on and I don't know if you can do that again or maybe it was a text message thread, but it always makes me super happy. And it's funny thing because it comes from the Robin Hood, the cartoon Robin Hood. And this always makes me super happy when I hear this.

see if I can get it to play.

Kevin (02:52.724)
I... you remember when... there it is, put it up to the mic.

Can you hear that? It's pretty loud.

you

Kevin (03:03.886)
Somehow there was like a cowboy chicken that would narrate to this song and he'd play some sort of mandolin during it. It's amazing.

That song, I think it's called Not a Nottingham. It's a really good song. It's kind of sad. And believe it or not, many years ago, the band Mumford and Sons did cover of it. love it. It exists on some live thing on YouTube somewhere, but it's good. It is good. And that ringtone I've been using for probably a decade. And I originally chose it because it was unique. And so I would always know if it was my phone ringing. And now I cannot.

I cannot not use it because. Yeah, and people hear it. Yes, literally yesterday I was working with the captain and my phone rang and he is, is that the Robin Hood movie? And yeah, people love it.

That's your signature sound.

Kevin (03:56.29)
That's great. It's funny. Remember you used to have to pay for ringtones? yeah. Well, I've been trying to avoid ringtones for probably 10 years though. I'm on silent. Right? Like that's not a thing. I don't want any more disturbances.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's often muted. It is often muted. And in order to get it on the phone way back in the day, I actually went and, and ripped it. Yeah, I did that and then added it to the phone. So I didn't pay for it because it wasn't available. You couldn't buy it. actually went and looked for it. So when you couldn't do that, I pirated it and it's still the original file that I created. However, long ago,

off of some

Kevin (04:33.676)
great now you can't get rid of it. So it's Christmas time we've talking about don't letting the old man in last episode about the 4x48 and ran 48 miles with some savages but then some some comments came up and you had an idea today.

Now I'll keep it.

Nole (04:51.374)
Yeah, man. So I was randomly listening to, I was scrolling through my YouTube feed, which I do far too much of actually have a timer limit on my YouTube app to keep myself from just endlessly doom scrolling YouTube. But I saw a clip of Jaco and it was like his, I guess he's got an extra podcast called the underground or something like his own normal podcast isn't enough. So he's got some extra thing called the cave of pain. I don't know what it's called. Anyway, it was a clip from that. So it was, it was still Jaco.

And he was talking to his boy, echo Charles, the guy with the biceps, you know, you know, the guy. Yeah. And they were answering a question from a listener and the guy's question was basically I'm old. think the dude said he was 45 and how do I hang with the younger guys that I work with? I think he was in law enforcement and that part of the conversation was interesting enough, but at the very end of the clip, echo Charles started talking about his perspective.

And he didn't use the term on not letting the old man in, but that's what he was talking about. And essentially what he said was he hears in his jujitsu gym all the time, the guys who are the old guys talking about how, yeah, well I'm pretty good for an old guy and that type of language. And he also mentioned just this idea that he catches himself groaning when he gets up from a sitting position or off the ground doing the old man like, Oh,

and how he was actively trying to fight against that, that tendency, because he didn't want to let that weakness in. And so that tiny little bit of a conversation started this thought process. And then we dumped it into our, our little group that we have going on with some of the other fire you carry guys. And yeah, man, I just wanted to talk about that because it hit me right between the eyes, especially the groaning part. don't yet talk about how I'm the old guy.

But I do that, I actively did it today.

Kevin (06:49.55)
There's thousands of memes about this, you know, the guy sitting down Getting up. I'm pretty guilty of it. I like I'm Good on echo Charles to have the self-awareness. don't I think we do it subconsciously

Yeah, that's a thing.

Nole (07:06.479)
yeah, it's absolutely subconscious.

But once I heard him talk about it, I immediately knew I have to stop doing that.

Dude, yes. It's almost like self-talk, right? And there's a lot of woo-woo stuff out there, you know what mean? Like the secret and all these things that, you know, people listen to where it's like, hey, you can manifest this and manifest that. I do think that there, I think a lot of that is nonsense, but I do think that having positive self-talk or removing these negative type of things are absolutely beneficial because

Yeah, right.

Kevin (07:47.34)
You can choose joy or you can choose depression. Like I feel like that's sometimes a choice, right? And yes, I have been periods of depression and so have other people. But but also you can kind of fake it till you make it like right. You can say how many we were just talking about these absolute warriors and savages that just don't complain. They just put their shoes on. They go run. That's part of it. You know they're hurting. They just don't say anything. They suck it up and they go do it. And that's that kind of that stoic stoicism.

that I think as men we kind of respect, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's a weird area where there is definitely a tendency in kind of the the world that we're in where you can take that too far, you know, you can you can go into the manifesting stuff and do all that. But I think mindset and that shift in your mindset is really powerful. And we've talked about it a lot before in the context of doing something hard like the four by four by 48, where you have that moment where you decide I'm not going to quit.

And it doesn't make it easier. doesn't change anything really physically, but mentally it does change everything because you've removed that option from the table. And I think the resistance and the realization that when I go to climb in the fire engine or when I get up from sitting on the couch and I go, and you know, because my legs are sore or my back hurts or whatever, subconsciously I'm acknowledging that.

I'm saying, yeah, I'm hurting. I'm sore and not doing it doesn't make it not true, but I feel like it removes a little bit of that power that it has over me, that conscious moment of saying, no, you know what? Yeah, I'm sore, but who cares? I can get up off this couch all day. It's the, it's the captain America meme. I can do this all day. Right. It's silly to complain about something like that, but we all naturally do it. And I don't know. I don't know if I'm just a little bit mental with this kind of stuff, but

Nole (09:49.014)
I mean, like I said, as soon as I heard him say that, I thought I have got to eliminate that from my life.

Immediately, I thought the same thing, but I take it into two different contexts. So there's home life and there's work life, right? In work life, I notice, you know, working on a squad, being a paramedic, you get interrupted quite often when you're trying to do something that you want to do. Let's say it's just even lunch and we get a nice hot lunch and then ding, chest pain. And you go, and yes, I will get up, walk with a perv, so I don't typically try to dilly dally.

And then you get to the rig and you go on the call. But could I just put my fork down and just go to the call and not grunt and not complain because that's setting a precedent for this call. Like, I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. There's something more important than your emergency. And that's not really what we're called to do. Our job is going on these calls. And I think sometimes I forget because we're doing all this rad stuff with red people and we get to work out and breathe and do the ice bath and sauna and

You know all those things we have a lot of camaraderie at our station. And I'll go. Because I'm interrupted. Like in the morning if we're doing Wim Hof breathing on I don't need to do that. That's my job. Get up, shut your mouth, stop grunting, go to the call.

Yeah, that's a perfect example actually of how that mindset shift even affects the outcome of where you're going and what you're going to do when you're at the station and the fire tones go off and you're at the station where the guys start throwing chairs all over the place and sprinting to the rig and falling over each other and throwing on their gear as fast as possible. We've talked about this before. Those are the guys that show up on the fire ground and they're spun up and their brains are moving so fast. Their bodies are moving so fast that they're going to miss stuff.

Nole (11:39.02)
And they're going to be less effective than if they'd stayed calm. I mean, it's proven, right? These, these studies have been done not in the fire world, but in the military world. It's that whole adage slow, smooth, smooth, as fast. But if you get up for that same thing and you calmly with a purpose, move to the rig, calmly put your gear on, you get on the rig the same amount of time that the guy who's apparently rushing does. I've tested that hundreds of times and I always make it on the rig.

often before the guy who's rushing. But then when you get to the call, whatever it is, you're in a better state of mind because you've chosen to look at it differently. You might be excited about it. It might be a little bit scary. He's not the right word. Nobody gets afraid going to a structure fire, but, you know what I mean, but keeping yourself cool, calm and collected. And that's just a more advanced version of, you know,

not complaining, but the complaint is the part of it where when it's a medical call, if we go into that, and I've done this, I was, I was guilty of this yesterday, got a medical call, looked at the thing, went, man, really? And complained in my brain, not verbally, but I was just like, not happy about going on the call because I was in the middle of something. And then that's my attitude on the call. Now, of course I delivered wonderful service to the citizens. did my job, but, but inside I'm just

annoyed and that's my job, right? So that's the wrong way to go about it. It's just that little bit of a shift and that takes consciousness, right? That takes being aware of it, which is why I think something like this and that little clip is helpful.

Yeah, it reminds me, we had early on in the podcast, this had to be three or four years ago, is the great Ed Wilson, who is one of my favorite paramedics and fireman on the job. And he was talking about how he's always worked busy station. He's always been at 41s and Willowbrook, Compton area. He's been all over the place, but he's always worked busy spots. And he, when he'd go there, he would try to get early on, he would get super frustrated because he would come to work with expectations of he was going to get his oil changed.

Kevin (13:45.174)
or he's going to rotate his tires or he's going to do something that would save him time at home. Right. And then he's getting pissed off. He's getting pissed off at work because inevitably you're getting interrupted by call after call after call. And then he's out there at two in the morning, trying to finish the rotation of the tires, you know, so he can, and he's completely going home, pissed off. He's pissed off at work. It's not working somewhere along the line. forget what timeframe it is. Maybe 10, 15 years into his career.

He stopped having expectations or trying to do stuff at work. And it's almost like being present. And when I'm at work, I'm at work. He's like, I'm just sitting in the chair and talking to the boys waiting for the next call. And it changed his mindset completely that he's like, I was happy to go on calls. I was totally happy to go. I wasn't getting irritated. This is my job, right? And I kind of liked that to say, Hey, we kind of do that on both sides at home. Maybe I'm doing something for work and then at work I'm doing something for home.

And like neither work out because I'm getting torn in three different directions and I'm getting pissed off. It's about kind of just being present and saying, Hey, God has you here for a reason today. Why don't you just try to be present.

I like that perspective a lot. That was a great episode. That's an old one. You guys should go back and listen to it. I'm not going to tell you what number it is because I don't, I don't know what number it is, but it's back there. It's back in the back catalog.

This was a, this is a thing though, right? Because like I hit people know I had neck surgery three years ago and to this day it's a, it's a challenge, right? I have to have like this special pillow cube and create this fortress to sleep on my side so that my neck's aligned and it doesn't work. Right. So every morning I wake up, it feels like you got hit by a semi truck. And the first thing I do is and I roll into bed and I have to do some stretches and I read the Bible and I pray and I meditate. And by the time like,

Kevin (15:31.776)
I warm up a little bit, I'm good to go and I'm like my normal jovial self. But I do have to choose like in the morning to be like, okay, is this going to set the tone? Am I going to be a grumpy pants and just complain that I'm super stiff or are you going to just shut up and do something about it? You know?

We were talking in the group about this idea kind of

just getting some perspective on whether or not this would be something we should record as an episode. And our buddy Randy was talking about going up a flight of stairs. And Randy, I hope you don't mind that I share this, but he shared that he was going up a flight of stairs at work and he caught himself after the conversation we had about talking about the groaning and kind of being the old man, he caught himself using the handrail and he consciously went, I don't need to use the handrail. What am I doing? And just walked up the stairs.

which is so small and seemingly insignificant. But if we're talking about not letting the old man in, like those are the type of things that, that we just do and don't think about, but do we have to do them? Is there, is there value in not doing them? And as I thought about that was, I I was preparing for this dude. I went to a different place that I, I kind of struggle with even talking about this. Cause I don't know that I have a really

a good answer or a tie in for this, but what it made me think of and not because of Randy and the stairs, but because I started going down this old man road, thinking about being an old guy, it made me think about the amount of times I've been on calls, medical calls, where there was an elderly person, man or a woman who had fallen down and somewhere in the conversation it comes up that they have a walker that they're supposed to use, but they don't use it.

Nole (17:20.129)
And we always, and usually there's family around and they usually are accusing, say you, they never use their Walker. And we always say, you need to use the Walker. And I had this light bulb moment as I started thinking about this going, if I'm that old guy and I'm let's say 96 years old, right? I'd probably make it that far. But if I'm that old guy and my doc's like, yeah, you should probably use a Walker. You're getting a little unstable. What do you think I'm going to be doing?

trying to use the stairs with no wa-

I'm going to be trying to use the stairs with no walker, no handrail because I'm not going to want to give up. so respect to those people. Now they still need to use their walker because we don't want them to fall and break a hip. But, but at the same time, like I respect that, that desire to keep that independence, that desire to just keep the old man out, even when you are actually officially undisputed, the old man, there's still an aspect of that. And obviously that's way in the advanced in the future. don't think we have anybody listening this 96.

No, but it's a delicate balance because even for me at 46 post neck surgery that I'm dramatically different than I was pre neck surgery. And because of that, can't really, I, you know, I used to do powerlifting competed in powerlifting meet. I used to love the jack heavy weight for my size and I would squat three days a week and I would deadlift twice a week. And I do a lot of that, but the compression on my neck with cervical disc replacement doesn't work anymore. Right. So

It was a very hard transition and our friend, Captain Mike Kenobi, same thing. He was injured and he couldn't do his jujitsu for a year. And he realized mentally and spiritually, he had to do a lot of soul searching because the tool that we had that we used was the one of the main and only tools we used. I do think that there's a level of acceptance as we age to say that maybe, just maybe we are not going to sign up for

Kevin (19:12.942)
100 meter sprint competition or max effort back squat or whatever as we age I think there is something good or maybe Relatively good to say hey I'm not letting the old man in but this isn't wise to continue to do this if it means I'm gonna be in a wheelchair at 50

Right, right. We have to be realistic. Yeah, I think that's fair. That makes sense. I just don't want to go ahead.

No, go ahead. I just talked to my buddy, Joe Flahaven. He's captain in Glendale. One of my best, he's one of my best friends, but his dad is my hero. His big Joe Flahaven. He's a waterman up in San Francisco and he has the record for swimming the Alcatraz Golden Gate Swans. He surfed. This dude is almost 90. He's 89 years old. He gets up at 4 a.m. and swims a mile, half a mile out in the San Francisco Bay in Speedos. And that water is frigid.

and swim half a mile back. he called Joe up and his son, said, Hey, can you buy me a snorkel and send it to me? And he's like, what are you doing? You're 90 years old. what are you doing? So he's an open water swimmer and an accomplished, an accomplished open water swimmer. But at 90, he's saying he can't really rotate and get his breath. He's not going to stop swimming.

you

Kevin (20:38.67)
He just needs a snorkel so that he can just kind of keep cruising And I'm like, okay respect but insane I get it but that's not And it's funny cuz when you talk to him his wife who's like 88 She's like tell him not to go swimming anymore. Tell him to get out of the water They're gonna find him dead and he's like, I hope they do

It

Nole (20:49.41)
Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Nole (21:02.914)
Right. Yeah, totally. You got to respect that. You got to respect that. Yeah, that makes sense. So do we. You got to adapt.

Adapt? So you're you're not, you're letting, not letting the old man in saying I'm going to give up swimming, but you're adapting.

Yeah. Because the reality is that there are certain things that as we age, we're not going to be able to continue to do like we were 20, right? That we can't deny that. And we can't, we can't mental toughness our way out of that stuff. So yeah, you definitely have to adapt. I think a lot of this comes down to also kind of the way we talk either verbally or self-talk, which you mentioned at the beginning, but how do we, if we're not going to be the guy who is making excuses. So

in a, in a made up scenario, say I'm working out at the station and I've got a couple of brand new young 20 year old fireman and we've got to work out together. And if I don't want to be the guy that's like using the phrase I'm well, you know, I'm the old guy and making excuses for the fact that my performance isn't going to be up to the standards of these two 20 year olds, then what do do instead? Do we just, do we just stay quiet about it and just let it be what it is?

Is using that language an excuse? we making excuses for what we see as shortcomings? Like, what is that? Or is it even just a cultural thing where once you get to a certain age, you kind of just talk like that because that's what you've seen. That's what you've heard.

Kevin (22:31.02)
Well, there's literally examples of, think, kind of the way it should be. even we had James Reyes on our show twice, actually recently. Was it this year? It was this year, I think. I go back. He's a EOD Marine and did contracting afterwards. But you can imagine an EOD world deployed multiple times. He was blown up by an IED and he's had six back surgeries. And now if you he would never know, you would never know.

I see him out there grinding every day. He follows a program like programming from one of those, that's like hero water, one of those things that he follows. forget what it was, but what he doesn't do, he doesn't participate in some of the nonsense, like crazy stuff that you and I would create in the afternoon. He does his program in his workout and he's a complete savage, but what he's figured out is that he does his mobility work. He does his workout and he does his post mobility workout.

that that is it. That's good. It keeps him fit. He's fitter than almost everybody. He keeps in shape is not but he's not participating in like if you had 15 20 year olds going, hey, we're going to sprint and flip these tires and do this thing. He's like, I'm good. The shenanigans that I love and usually I like to try to create because it's a fun camaraderie. I love competition kind of things. But he doesn't do it. So for me, that to me is like the example. He is my age and he's he's got a program. It works for him.

The shenanigans.

Kevin (23:57.91)
He doesn't deviate and I also respect, I really respect that. Even though I want to always be in the mix with the top dogs, even though I probably absolutely should not be.

Yeah, that's a tough thing. And I guess what that takes is some humility. Totally.

and some intelligence to realize, you know, it's time to modify, right? You can't just like what you're talking about with the neck injuries and all that stuff. You can't, there's certain things you can't do. There's plenty that you still can, or you can still stay and be a savage, but we got to be smart about it. So I think, go ahead.

No, you know what? He kind of reminds me of is the you and I were both early CrossFit games fans. And yeah, CrossFit fans. The Finnish savage Miko Saylo kind of change CrossFit because the time they were the hardest workouts that you could possibly do and nobody like somebody did Fran, you would lay down in a heap of on your back, breathing crazy in a heap of your own sweat.

when it was right.

Kevin (24:58.986)
And he stopped at me and everyone said, how come you don't lay down? You're not as tired as they are. And what did he say?

can't remember the term.

But it was something like the Finnish word for in nature. That's what a dog or an animal does in defeat. Right. And I forget the Isis or maybe something like that.

or his defeat.

Hold on, we gotta look this up, dude.

Kevin (25:21.516)
I love that because do you do you remember when he we saw some sort of youtuber interview with him and we would always lay down and defeat because that's what CrossFitters did.

Yeah, you wanted to make the sweat angel on the ground. proved you worked hard.

And we didn't have my zones, but we knew we were tacking out and redlining our heart rate and we would lay down in defeat. And he said that and you and I never laid down ever again.

meaning of the word Sisu, it's a Finnish word. It just means a deep and tenacious form of courage, determination, grit, and perseverance, especially in the face of adversity. That's what the word means. But his message was exactly what you stated that laying on your back, was, you were defeated. You had been defeated by the workout and he refused to be defeated. dude, you're right. Since we watched that and listened to that,

I'm not going to say never because that is probably not true, but I don't lay on my back after workouts.

Kevin (26:20.922)
We always used to right and I I'm kind of hoping I'm gonna credit I did have a cup of mud water before we started and I'm telling you there's a little bit of nootropic benefit somehow in my brain I remembered see suit from 2008 Remember that ever again, but anyways, yeah

That's good, that's good.

What's that coffee mug? What's going on with that coffee mug? Does it have some sort of extra appendage on the side of it? I thought there was like a pipe coming out of the side of your cup. Some sort of weird straw situation. Sorry.

Your wife thinks that's my pen.

Kevin (26:53.154)
That kind of falls in line, right? Like, hey, if Echo Charles says we don't grunt, I think it's probably a good thing that this it's it's a not it's a let's try not to grunt. I also think it's kind of like, look at me. I do it with my kids. help me up, baby. Help me up. right. And I get in. But also that turns into me grabbing her and tickling her or wrestling her or something like that. It's kind of like, I don't know. How do you explain that? But

So there could be good things, but it is an intention seeking type of, know, like you want people to know, even though we're doing it subconsciously, that you're in the room.

Yeah. And that you're hurting, which is so fascinating, but it is definitely something. I mean, we do it audibly. So there is an aspect of that. That means we want other people to know. think some of it's subconscious too. I think there's a lot going on there. It's incredibly interesting. It's going to be fun to see.

how long it takes to train yourself to not, you know?

it's going to be how do you I mean but now that you're aware of it I think we're going to be it's like buying the red Subaru you're going to see nothing but red.

Nole (28:07.118)
You're going to see them all over the place. Yeah. I'm going to know I do it all the time. It's going to be like trying to stop cursing, which a bunch of our friends are currently engaging and attempting to do that. It's hard. takes time because we've trained ourselves into that, but I think it's going to be fun. think that little bit of extra consciousness on that one thing then will lead to something that we're always trying to do, which is to find other hard things that we don't want to do and go do them. And then look at it from the perspective of, I go do that hard thing and not complain about it?

or be quiet about it.

Yeah. And I mean, we're in a new every where we go and we are in this space. This guy's talking about mental health, PTSD and all that stuff. And one of the main things is, is to make, it, just awareness or, what do you call it? Comfortable that the guys can talk about their thing. This kind of goes into line of the old school way of saying you're hurting, but you don't say anything. Right. And so it's good.

Right. And that's that stoic thing. But you think about those world war two vets that came back, they had shell shock. They just didn't say anything and they just went to work and they were saying, grandpa was just always kind of angry and didn't really talk too much. knew he saw the worst things in the world and he didn't say much. so then, you know, we fast forward to now and we're like, we, everybody wants to talk about it and then we're once and it's good, but we lose a little bit of that.

I think as a man, always respect that quiet Mandalorian stoic.

Nole (29:44.138)
Hmm. Yeah, that's much tougher because we've definitely I think swung way too far in the opposite direction culturally where if you're online, you see people sharing about everything right to to an extreme which is too much. Right. That kind of stuff. That's too far. And then yeah, the guys from the greatest generation that you're talking about, they didn't do enough. So finding that middle ground with that emotional side of it is definitely that's a thing because

As men, are definitely times I feel like, especially as husbands and fathers, where there might be burdens that we just need to bear quietly because that's just our job. But it doesn't mean that we should be doing that with everything, right? Because we can't carry all that stuff quietly. Some of that stuff needs to be shared with the wife. Some of it, when your kids are old enough, needs to be shared with the kids. A lot of it needs to be shared with your brothers, right? Your friends. So finding that balance, I think it's probably pretty, well, this is interesting.

I was about to say, I think it's probably pretty obvious that you shouldn't do any of that on social media. And as I'm saying that, I'm thinking Kevin and I are on a podcast right now and we've been doing this for five years and that's exactly what do. Now we don't talk about everything, but we talk about a lot. The balance, the balance.

But it's so. Yeah, but I'm always a fan of Tim Ferriss, who has just an enormous podcast, wrote the four hour workweek, the four hour body. But he lived in Japan and spent a lot of time studying the samurai and all that kind of thing. And he talks often about the samurai immediately after the most horrendous bat. And they're they're battling with swords. There's blood all over them. They would immediately go and do calligraphy or that Japanese type of calligraphy art.

No.

Kevin (31:27.342)
explore their creative side and kind of like wind down after just slicing people's heads off. But it's that balance of the dangerous man, whatever it is, and like a weak man is not a good, what is that whole thing? How do you say it?

man, I didn't have any mud water. is.

I'm going to screw it up. Yeah. A dangerous man. A week. I'd have to look it up.

So Jordan Peterson quote that we've said on here before, essentially that we have, you have that danger under control. It's the Dave Thibaults of the world who could absolutely kill you with his bare hands. He's a high level black belt in jiu jitsu, but he absolutely does not have it. He has a calmness about him because he's comfortable in the eye of the storm. He's comfortable in a fight and he's trained this for 20 years. He could kill you, but he chooses not to choose violence.

Nole (32:33.166)
We need that guy

Echo Charles.

Just sit there. Yeah, Jamie. Jamie, look this up. A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control. That's why I couldn't remember it. I don't talk like Jordan Peterson. He sounds way more intelligent. He's Canadian.

That's it.

Kevin (32:55.636)
from the north Canadian.

Now we've deviated far from grunting from the grunting from the chair, but I think it falls into the line. I'm saying, could you be a stoic and not grunt in the chair or not complain about when the bell goes off? Could you just get up and do your job? Right. And then when you're called to do, let's say a significant job, we have to cut a hole on a burning building. Like the ego works there, right? The E you want to be confident, strong, aggressive, kick some ass on this roof. Right. And then.

Hopefully you're able to know how to switch your hat around backwards and we've we've learned tools on how to do breath work down regulation so that when you go home You're now balanced where you're not the savage cutting holes that doesn't work in the kitchen with your wife and kids And that is the eternal battle for I think for first responders. I think law enforcement even has it Dramatically worse than us. Yeah, they're 10 or 12 hour shifts

and doing that in the same day or a night shift or a morning shift, they're going into war and then they have to go home. Like at least we have a 24 hour shift where it's sun up to sun down and the next day and I have a long commute home, there's some time in between where I can transfer into being what my wife and kids need.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that heartily.

Nole (34:23.938)
So we're going to stop.

Okay, but I have one last question. You okay, we're stopping groaning. Everybody out there join us in the ending old man groaning. Charles, where this is new to the live stream, but Noel has the serial killer Noel Hunter Lily three word thing capitalized. I just said,

done groaning.

Nole (34:34.797)
Thanks, Echo Trill.

Nole (34:44.449)
Yeah, all caps. As soon as we started recording, I noticed that. And I thought that's really bold and large and overwhelming and distracting. I'm going to switch it to just my first name because that looks ridiculous. But it'll live forever. This video is going to be on the internet now and we can't take it down.

I like whenever like there was serial killers or something they always that made three names

They all have three names, yeah. Your name is fantastic. you also could be like a folk singer, right? Totally. Or like country music.

A guy that plays music with no drums.

Yeah, they have often three names. Yes, of course. That's a Donnie Butler ism right there. Miss you DB.

Kevin (35:25.954)
Yeah, we do. All right. Well, we've deviated, but I think this is a good thinking. If you're an open water swimmer and you're 90 years old, get a snorkel.

Invest in a snorkel. Keep going.

I don't think Big Joe, don't thinking back, I spent time with the man. I don't think he grunts too often getting out. He just goes and does his thing. He doesn't that water he when he surfs, he can't you know how hard it is to get a wetsuit on. Oh, OK, you're not a wetsuit. It's extremely difficult to put a wetsuit on. Then add if you're 88 years old and you had two hip replacements, wetsuits are out.

I he doesn't.

Nole (35:53.39)
He Put one on.

Kevin (36:05.39)
So this dude, when I told him like eight years ago that we've been doing ice work, we've been going in cold water, we're doing this. He's like, yeah, cool story, bro. We've been doing that since the fifties, you know? Can't get in a wetsuit. he's like,

Yeah. Just getting in the water. Surf's cold. Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. I do know what it's like to put a sock on after you get out of the shower and you got to go on a call. I know about that. It's probably exactly the same. It's difficult.

That's why one day we're going to the slippery sock. Yeah. And it's going to be some sort of first responders sock. I don't know what the material it is, but you can get right out of the shower or the ice bath or the sauna because we do all three of these things on duty and you can just whoop.

Right on. Right on. It's called the slippery the material is, the material will be found like five years down the road after it's created to cause cancer, because that's how that kind of stuff always works. But it'll be glorious in those five years, because you'll be able to put your sock on.

Yes. And this is recently, I'm just going to add this to the last part of the episode. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, you may have heard her of her. does studies on everything. She was looking at those forever chemicals, the PFSAs or PSFAs or whatever they're called. You know what is fascinating? So you know the paper station cups and you get them at Costco, you get them at whatever it has the plastic lid.

Nole (37:21.87)
Yeah, yeah, the perphasis.

Nole (37:31.551)
Yeah, that's a go-kart.

It's a paper cup, but it's actually lined with plastic. because it's not paper, it's lined with plastic and that plastic forever chemicals are released by hot water or coffee. So for decades, I have been putting the station. get a to go cup. You always have these cool like, you know, stainless steel mugs and stuff, but I like the to go cup. You just get it. You toss it, whatever. Apparently I've been poisoning myself for years.

That's terrible, dude. I use the to go cups too. And sometimes I'll even make a cup of coffee in the to go cup and I'm not going anywhere because it cools off faster. Yes. Paper cup. Cause I do have a Yeti steel cup that I've had for a long time, but the coffee never cools off. You can't drink it. So I will often use those cups because the coffee cools off immediately.

I want to it right now. Yeah, right. And then for me on the squad, like I have a, if I have a mug and it looks like this, I can't bring this on the squad. needed to go. How do you want to call in the morning without coffee?

It's not possible. It's impossible.

Nole (38:43.458)
Well, thank you for jumping on board. This has been fun. We have promised certain people that we will continue to do video versions of these. So if you like it, like and subscribe, like and subscribe. That's what people say. Leave us some comments.

And if you're anybody in the AI world, help change the face there. So, cause we got, we, we got faces for radio, you know, we make a lot.

Like a filter you want to filter? I definitely I need to I need to work on my lighting because it looks like I look pale. I look like Jim Gaffigan right now.

Well, Docs are coming in hard, so.

I will be curious to hear if this solves the problem that, you know, if this satisfies Edward and this is like what he wants. We'll see.

Kevin (39:28.094)
the Bruce is amazing. whatever we can do to help. This has been the Fire You Carry Podcast.

Nole (39:46.014)
As we begin to delve into this attempt at having episodes up on YouTube that involve video, we clearly don't know what we're doing. So if you have any expertise in that area, suggestions, equipment, ideas, anything like that, we'd love to talk to you about it. So reach out to us and thank you to all of you who have pushed us in that direction.

It was honestly hard for me to click go live. I didn't want to do it, but I did it and we're going to keep the momentum going. We're to keep doing that as much as possible. So if that's something you enjoy, like and subscribe, like and subscribe and comment and share. You just got to do all the things. We'll see you next week.

Nole (41:11.564)
You are listening to the Fire You Carry podcast. today's episode, Kevin and I are talking about becoming old men.

Nole (41:20.216)
Not really. We're actually having a conversation on how to not groan like an old man when you get up from the sofa.

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds.

Thank you for listening enjoy and then we need the button so I can just play the music right here

Stop.