Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Here are seven steps to making life changing choices. The first thing is the national debt is just. I mean, it's not ticking. Oh, it's just the clock's ticking. It's not a tick. It's like turbo spinning. Sometimes the world seems like it's just absolutely out of control.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Truth.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: And certainly out of my control or out of your control, thinking about it, especially, even just with the weather right now, everything just seems to be out of our hands. What are we going to do about that?
That's the question. Welcome to Duster Mud podcast, episode 32.
We have our new t shirts on, guys.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: In case you guys didn't pick up on that.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Today we just want to dive in a little bit to when things are out of control and they're out of. We feel like they're out of our hands. We do have choices. Those choices can lead to maybe greater freedom whenever we're feeling as if we are in a bit of a bondage.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: A couple of years ago. About three years ago.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Three years ago this week.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it was MLK weekend and we took some time and went on a trip. We did to come out here and come look for property because you were feeling a little what?
[00:01:22] Speaker C: I was feeling dissatisfied, I think, with where I was. It was like you're talking about maybe a little bit out of control. Just not real sure I am where I want to be anymore, or I'm not sure that I want to be where I am anymore, doing what I'm.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Doing anymore, not sure that I want.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: To be doing what I'm doing anymore. And we had been discussing the possibility of having land and wanting at least 100 acres and just decided to, hey, let's take a trip. See what we can see.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So we did. And we took a trip and came out to the midwest and started looking for land. Found the land, closed on the property. It moved really fast. And the next thing you know, we were making choices that we didn't know we were going to be making that soon. Because you came home about two weeks later after making the offer on the property and said, I'm done. And we weren't really necessarily ready at that point to be done with that particular career and to retire from the air force then. And we went through a process of decision making.
We had to quickly do some research.
What I say to you, run the numbers.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: Run the numbers.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Can we live on that? Can we put ourselves in a financial situation to where we can?
What's it going to mean if we do.
And we had to really start getting down to brass tax, literally.
And we came up with the fact that, yes, we can, let's do it. And we're going to make some sacrifices. Things are going to change. But those sacrifices might be worth the freedom because you don't want to be doing what you were doing anymore.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: And the more I've been banging it around in my head about freedom, sometimes freedom doesn't always look like things are rosy. Sometimes freedom looks like sacrifice because the paychecks might go down, but our mindset and our heart and what we're doing might be so elevated and come to a new place to where the sacrifice isn't even hardly felt right.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: So it brings us to the, we had to decide what we were going to do, and we did.
But a lot of changes have happened.
You don't work for defense anymore.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: No.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: No, we work for all these animals now. Oh, my gosh.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah. We were talking to someone on the phone the other day who was very much considering an entire career change and going through the process of making those choices. And what do you do?
What are the steps that somebody would take to make a big leap on a choice like that?
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I think step one, or what we came up with at least, was step one is self reflection. And I think that's probably ongoing. If you have a choice that is imminent, you have probably been doing some self reflection. You have come to a place that there is now a choice. And so some self reflection on how did I get here? What is the choice, I believe is important at this point. If you can actually label the choice, I think that's a good thing. Not just a, I'm not really happy or I don't like where I am or what I'm doing, actually do some self reflection and come up with what is the choice here? And maybe even give it a name for us, this whole thing, the choice was retiring from the air force.
That was really the name of our choice. Are we ready? Are we going to do this? Are we going to retire?
And we talked a lot about that and really reflecting on the choice.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:25] Speaker C: I think what we came up with as the second step is research and information gathering.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Well, bring me the numbers. Let's run the numbers.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And as we really started looking at maybe it's time, then at that point, the research really started.
Can we financially do this? Can we physically do this? Can we mentally do this?
There was a lot of gathering information.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: What is it really going to take and are we willing? I think the third thing is risk assessment. So after we run the numbers and we come up with, okay, this is what it is. You have to determine for yourself and for your family.
Is it worth it?
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Can we do it? I don't want to do this anymore. There are a lot of people leaving, say, certain states.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: So willing and ready to get out of their suburbia life or whatever the case is, to go and just hook to their camper and leave.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:45] Speaker C: They did a risk assessment and determined.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: It was worth it.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: It was worth it.
So that's the third step, is do a risk assessment and determine whether or not it's worth it.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: What are the sacrifices going to be?
[00:07:59] Speaker C: Step four is maybe seek some advice, mentorship, talk to somebody, make sure that you haven't built yourself a sandcastle in the sky that you're wanting to move into.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: You don't want to put yourself or your family into harm's way over.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: You want to make a good decision.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: Maybe chat with somebody, just to make sure that what you've come up with is actually something that's realistic, viable.
Step five, then, is plan and prepare. Planning and preparation.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Start writing it down.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: I think that's very important.
One of the things that I started doing very early on in our air force career was keeping a Notebook. And it was just our permanent change of station, our pcs notebook. And, man, I would dump information in there, and I just carried around, and it seemed like the further along in the career I got, it went from a little one inch binder to a three inch binder because I learned how much information it takes to make a big choice, a big life choice for us. For me, it took a lot of information. And so I would use clear sleeve paper sleeves and a three ring binder and just piles and piles of information as we planned and prepared for a move. So even for this retirement, I think I had two or three binders as one career ended and a new career.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Started, my own binders.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Yeah, we really did gather a lot of information and plan.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah. But we wrote down our plan, too. Write down your plan. Write down your goal. Write down with your significant other, your family, get together, and write down, this is where we're going, everybody getting on board. This is where we're going, and this is what we're going to be doing. And this is what it's going to take from everybody.
Because if you're planning an entire career change, you're going to have to swing over here, back to student and not the expert on something, your whole mindset, your whole, everything is going to change. And if you do that, that's amazing. You just need a team around you. You need support. You all have to support one another because you may go through financial troubles, you may have to start pinching pennies real tight because you're leaving a lucrative career and you're going to go do something completely else. And we don't know how much money it's going to cost.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And all of the things, but if we're not a team, it's not going to go well.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: So really make sure you write it down and everybody's on board with your goals.
[00:11:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Thinking through this, I think this is a time to bounce back and forth between your risk assessment and your planning preparation.
Go back to the information that you found as you were doing your risk assessment and really use that as a way to help you plan.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Right.
Because, well, what are you going to do when you don't have the same health insurance? What are you going to do when x, y or z comes along? You need to plan, assess, plan, assess. And I don't think that goes away, especially when you're in the middle of actually making the thing happen.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: The next step, step number six is take the leap.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Do it, do it, do it.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: So I think, people, it is so natural to get stuck in the planning and preparation stage.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: The plan is never quite good enough. And we would talk about, especially.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Analysis paralysis.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Analysis paralysis.
I'm a military planner.
That is an actual thing. I'm trained at that. Even just for a daily sortie in a fighter squadron or what's happening today.
It's funny, I asked our second daughter, who is in a fighter squadron now, she was complaining about the amount of time that she had been given in order to prepare for one of her upgrade rides. And I sort of poked and needled at her a little bit and asking, well, how much time would you like?
[00:12:58] Speaker A: All of it.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: The answer is all of it. I said it was a common joke. Was that how long is it going to take you to plan for this mission? About five minutes longer than I have always.
No matter what the time allotted was, it's going to take just a little bit longer to plan for it.
I think that it's very common to get stuck in that planning and preparation stage.
I'm just not quite sure yet.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Bank account is not quite big enough.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: I can't quite do it yet.
And so I think that the take the leap step, that's the big step.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:46] Speaker C: And I think that's the most important.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Step, because you can plan all day long while you're still sitting back there on number one in your self reflection, wishing you was doing something else.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Take the leap for us, this whole career change, this whole thing, these steps, all the way through taking the leap. So from step one to step six, I would say step one started about a week before we made this trip, as we started really thinking we might want to do something else. So that would have been the first week of January in 21 was really when we started saying, we're afraid to do this.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: There's six and a half something.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Like I say, the self reflection started by the second week of January. We had an offer on this place in on this property.
We closed on the property. Within a week of closing on the property, I said, I'm finished.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it went pretty fast.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: And from there, we really started doing the risk assessment and talking to some folks and starting the plan and preparation.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: By April, I had dropped my papers, applied for retirement. Yeah, applied for retirement.
By June, you didn't work anymore. We lived on the property.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Right. So six months later, literally, it was to the weekend. Six months later.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: We were here.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: Action. Really action. Do it once you have come up with a plan, right. The risk assessment says, yes, I can do this. Here's a plan. Not a perfect plan.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: No, you're not going to get to perfect because you need all the time to make that happen. Right. Just like the sorty planning.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: But that's where I really feel like that's where people get stuck, is in that trying to find the perfect plan and just never quite getting there. It's never quite good enough. The plan just never quite is there.
And so the action never actually gets done. The choice never gets made.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: And there are a million excuses to not execute change. There are a million excuses to not execute change. But if change is the thing that is going to unbind your hands and give you what you have determined, more freedom through the choice that you're making, one excuse after another excuse after another excuse will keep you shackled to the thing that you don't want to be shackled to.
So we can make choices. Choices. What is your choice? Whether it is man, it doesn't have to just be about career, though. No, it can be choices about our dietary choices. We've been talking about keto for quite a while now. And just to switch gears, because the world, you just turn on the news and it just drives you to man. Things feel so out of control to me. I don't have any control over who's going to run the country next.
I don't have any control over that. I don't have any control of how cold it is outside.
I don't even have any control over what the food industry says is good or is bad or whatever and they decide to put in the grocery stores. I don't have any control over that either.
But I do get to make choices.
And through action, we can liberate ourselves from hopelessness.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: You can actually have a feeling of freedom.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:10] Speaker C: By making a choice.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yes.
I can feel free from the junk food aisle when I walk over there and go buy some meat.
Look what I just didn't do.
[00:18:33] Speaker C: One of the biggest benefits that we've talked about with keto is being free.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: From hunger and cravings.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Just that choice of how we eat gave us freedom from hunger and cravings.
So I agree with you that the choices often lead to freedom.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Personal freedom. Personal freedom.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: And then step seven is to adapt and grow. So once you've made the choice, that doesn't mean that everything is over.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: No. Because your house might get messy.
[00:19:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And there's the adaptation and the growth on what's okay.
[00:19:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
For me, I'm not advising senior leaders on what the nation should do as far as our defense strategies go.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: You just have to watch it.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: I just have to watch.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: And it's not always fun to watch. No, certainly not right now.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: I can't affect the strategy.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: No.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: I can't affect our next acquisition purchases.
No.
Adaptation isn't always just do things differently. It's also in your thoughts being okay with the choice, because you do have to change your thinking.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yes.
When you take off a uniform and you no longer identify, that's no longer your identity wrapped up in the uniform.
You got to find it somewhere else. And that's because of a choice.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: But at the same time, it's a little liberating because look at your facial hair, right.
That you get to have however long you want. You proved that two years ago.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: So freedom through action is. Is huge to me. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Continue to complain about it?
Whatever. The thing is, whether it's the debt. Can we just talk about that for a second?
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: A trillion and a quarter. The national debt is just. I mean, it's not ticking. Oh, it's just the clock's ticking. It's not a tick. It's like turbo spinning. Personal debt is kind of doing the same thing. It's reflecting the national debt, but we feel so out of control about the national debt while we continue to just Swipey, Swipey.
Instead of doing the hard thing and saying no.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: So there's a choice in which you can find personal freedom. You don't have to choose to be in debt, right? You can make a choice and through that choice, find freedom.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:03] Speaker C: You can find freedom from debt.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: And it is liberating.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: And sometimes finding freedom in that might lead to being able to make other choices.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: So action.
Do something. Do. Just do something.
There we go.
I better step it back.
Here are seven steps to making life changing choices.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: The first thing is self reflection.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: The second thing is research and information gathering.
[00:22:45] Speaker C: Third, assess the risk.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Number four, find yourself a mentor and get some advice.
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Fifth step is plan and prepare.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Number six, do it. Take the leap.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Finally, adapt and grow once you've made the decision.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: And until next time, bye.
