FULL TRANSCRIPT

 

Stephen Mehling:

In times of crisis. It’s that habit pattern that that is going to carry you through. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, and the disciplined individual, they’re going to be willing to stand up and say when things aren’t right and take action to make them right.

Brad Singletary:

Want respect. Be consistent. Boy, that really commands a lot of respect when people know that you can be counted on.

Jimmy Durbin:

There’s a series of actions and I need to take those actions regardless of how I feel. You know, when I ran my life on my feelings it doesn’t work out so well.

Stephen Mehling:

When I was a pilot of a helicopter crew, even though I wasn’t the rescue swimmer in the back of the aircraft, it was going to have to jump out into the water, you know, to pick someone up or the hoist operator. We knew what everyone else was going to do in certain situations because that’s the way it was trained.

Stephen Mehling:

And we really emphasized that you got to practice the way you’re going to play the game. That’s true in the military. It’s true in sports. And it’s true in life.

Intro:

If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better, you are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong. You are a leader. You are a force for good. Gentlemen, You are the alpha. And this is the Alpha Quorum.

Brad Singletary:

Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum of show. Brad Singletary here. You guys, I’m pretty excited about our guest today who I’m going to introduce here in just a few moments. But our topic tonight is discipline. I’m joined also by Jimmie Durbin, LCSW, w. I don’t think we talked about that in the most recent show where you just recently I don’t know how not recently.

Brad Singletary:

It’s been several months last year, sometimes fully licensed at the highest level in his profession, clinical, social worker.

Jimmy Durbin:

Alcohol and drug clinical, too.

Brad Singletary:

Oh, you got that as well. Okay. So he’s got all kind of letters behind his name and he is working in private practice so would you say.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah.

Jimmy Durbin:

Do mostly trauma, you know, certified with EMDR and most not most just a large chunk just human and sex trafficking victims from that.

Brad Singletary:

Jimmy’s done a lot with the drug courts. He’s done all kinds of different programs. I remember having a talk with him one time asking him to just settle down with all of his little volunteer things that he’s doing. And then I asked him to volunteer for my stuff over here. So I was a little bit hypocrite, I guess So I’m super excited about this guest today.

Brad Singletary:

So this man is the father of one of my friends and a colleague of mine who’s a therapist here in Las Vegas. And he’s a retired Coast Guard rear admiral, currently living in Las Vegas. Prior to his retirement in 2015, he served as the director of Joint Interagency Task Force South and Key West, Florida, where he directed an international, interagency and Multi-Service Coalition effort to combat illicit trafficking throughout a 42 million square mile joint operating area in the Western Hemisphere.

Brad Singletary:

His previous flag assignments included Commander, Coast Guard Force Readiness Command, Director of Operations, Coast Guard, Atlantic Area and Commander Coast Guard, 14th District. He was a career aviator with 17 years of operational flying experience on the East Coast, West Coast and Gulf Coast. He had Air Station command tours in Houston, Texas, and Miami, Florida, where he directed fixed and rotary wing aircraft operations throughout the Southeast.

Brad Singletary:

United States and the Caribbean, including oversight of the Coast Guard Support Detachment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Between aviation assignments he served nine years in program oversight and personnel management duties in Washington, D.C., including service as the Chief of Officer, Personnel Management, Deputy Chief of aviation forces and Shipboard Helicopter Platform Manager. During these assignments, he directed the shipboard testing of the H.H. 60 J Helicopter aboard.

Brad Singletary:

Coast Guard cutters participated in the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces and was presented the DOT Secretary’s Team Award for his leadership of the Aviation Resource Modeling Team. He received his commission in 1980 following graduation from the Coast Guard Academy. His first assignment was as a deck watch officer and as the operations officer aboard CDC sweet gum.

Brad Singletary:

Following his tour afloat he attended flight training in Pensacola Florida in 1982 and was designated as a Coast Guard aviator in 1983. He holds a bachelor of science degree with high honors in mathematics from the United States Coast Guard Academy and a Master of Science degree in management from the University of Maryland He has attended the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Pacific Islands Forum in Kansas.

Brad Singletary:

Earlier. His military awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal to Legions of Merit for Meritorious Service Medals with operational device, two Air Medals, two Coast Guard Commendation Medals with operational device, the nine 11 medal, and numerous other team, unit and individual awards. He and his wife have been married for 41 years and they have two married adult children and three grandchildren.

Brad Singletary:

Gentlemen, I’m so pleased to welcome to the Alpha Quorum Show, retired Rear Admiral Stephen Maler. Dude, I have. I feel so weird to even say dude, admiral, it’s.

Stephen Mehling:

Just this. It’s okay, Brad.

Brad Singletary:

Man, this is so impressive to be here. I’m so thankful for the service.

Stephen Mehling:

Yes.

Brad Singletary:

I. I’m so glad to have you here. Like, I. I don’t think you are the oldest guest that we’ve had. I guess my dad was on the show, and he’s so he’s 30 years older than me. So he’ll be like 77 this year. No, you’re not. You’re nowhere near there. But you’ve been retired since 20, 15. And I was talking to Admiral here about having this show the week before the Super Bowl.

Brad Singletary:

So I was thinking, all right, the playoff game this week, next week is the Super Bowl. So maybe we can do it, you know, this Sunday. And he says, hey Brad, it’s the Pro Bowl.

Stephen Mehling:

And it’s in Vegas.

Brad Singletary:

And I thought, you know what? You’re either enjoying your retirement very well or you’re a huge football fan. That’d be all about the Pro Bowl. So I love that you’re a football fan and and love your service to our country. I’ve done a little research on the Coast Guard, and it’s fascinating. A high school football team mate of mine went to the Coast Guard Academy.

Brad Singletary:

And as far as I know, he’s maybe still a helicopter pilot, so. Coast Guard stuff, man. Just briefly talk about how that’s maybe different or unique in general compared to other branches of the military. I’ve done some research and you have all these. I had to look at what a cutter is.

Stephen Mehling:

Well, a cutter is just a name for a big ship, you know? You know, it could be you know, most of our large cutters are about the size of Navy frigates, you know, and you know, the Coast Guard, the most unique thing about the Coast Guard is that we are not only just military, which we are where we’re a part of the armed forces of the United States at all times, but we’re also law enforcement.

Stephen Mehling:

And that’s really what the big hook is. And the reason that we’re law enforcement is because our roots go back to 1790, and that’s to the revenue cutter service. And it was Alexander Hamilton, who was secretary of the Treasury. So we started off in the Treasury Department, not in the in the War Department, which is now the Defense Department.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah, that’s so fast.

Brad Singletary:

And in 17, 19. I mean, that’s one of the earliest forms of any military type presence. Right? I mean, wasn’t isn’t the one of the longest standing at least that in terms of the maritime stuff.

Stephen Mehling:

We are the longest continuously serving armed force in the United States. Obviously the Marine Corps and the Navy and the Army were around during the revolution. Right. But after the war of Independence, they were all disbanded. You know, there was still there were still militia, which is I guess the the predecessor to the National Guard. But there wasn’t anything.

Stephen Mehling:

And that’s why we were the United States was getting kind of abused by pirates and from other countries And that’s why Alexander Hamilton said, you know, hey, we need something in order to be able to collect their tariffs and protect our goods and do those kinds of things. And so the revenue cutter service was formed.

Brad Singletary:

That’s amazing. So, Rear Admiral, that is as far as that’s like two star general, isn’t that right? Yeah, that’s it. Yeah.

Stephen Mehling:

The equivalent would be a major general. Yes.

Brad Singletary:

I mean, it’s just exciting to me that that part is just very exciting. I, I feel like I missed something I wanted to serve in the military. My uncle was a major in the Marine Corps, and I always, as a kid, probably from like 12 to maybe 14 or 15, I really thought that’s, that’s something that I wanted to do.

Brad Singletary:

I kind of aspired to go into the Naval Academy, but I was, had none of the.

Jimmy Durbin:

Liked the discipline. Yes.

Stephen Mehling:

Exactly. It was my.

Brad Singletary:

Problem. I lacked the discipline. And so when I was looking at guest for this topic, I just thought, here’s someone who since I mean 19 if you were commissioned in 1980.

Stephen Mehling:

1976 I went to the academy.

Brad Singletary:

The United States Coast Guard Academy. That’s what New Jersey.

Stephen Mehling:

No it’s in New London, Connecticut, Connecticut. But you know, ironically you mentioned the Naval Academy. I grew up on the seven river outside of Annapolis, which is the river that the Naval Academy is on. And I had an appointment to the Naval Academy.

Brad Singletary:

Oh wow.

Stephen Mehling:

And then I was an alternate to the Coast Guard Academy. That’s how difficult the Coast Guard Academy was to get into searching that.

Brad Singletary:

Yes.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah. I mean, the only school at the time that I went to the Coast Guard Academy that was more selective than the Coast Guard Academy was the Juilliard School of Music.

Brad Singletary:

Oh, my God.

Stephen Mehling:

That was the only one. And so, yeah, I had a principal appointment to the Naval Academy and was getting ready to go to Annapolis. And then I my alternate status changed to a to a primary appointment. And so I had to turn the Navy down and go to New London. But then I went to flight school with the Navy at Pensacola.

Stephen Mehling:

And, you know, the rest is history.

Brad Singletary:

So there’s a lot of mixing with these other branches. It seems like. So just to be accepted into the Coast Guard Academy, I think I, I researched today. It’s like a 12 or 13% admission rate or something like that compared to the applicants. 13%. And average ordinary ignoramuses like myself aren’t even applying. So high level people are applying to the Coast Guard Academy.

Brad Singletary:

And of those 87% aren’t getting there. I never admitted. I mean that’s pretty cool. And then so your degree, I think it was high honors in mathematics.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah. And, and after graduation, I never used it.

Brad Singletary:

Well, that I’m sure the whole thing just takes a lot of discipline. So as I was looking for looking at guests for this show, I just know that your career uh, you’ve been retired now since 20. 15. So, what, almost seven years now. And the only way that I believe a person can do anything like this is to have a high level of discipline.

Brad Singletary:

So I just wanted to pick your brain. You know, we’re not trying to sell guys on the military or the Coast Guard, but just. I think, you know, some things about discipline, and I think you can help the men who listen to our show. By the way, I want to thank you for your support of of what we’re doing here.

Brad Singletary:

You’ve listened to a number of our shows and have even admiral here has contributed to our Betterment scholarship fund where when men are beginning their careers in some trade or need some tool, we’ve got a little pot of we just have some gift cards. Basically, these are like visa gift card type things. And the admiral here made some a pretty sizable one of the largest contributions to that.

Brad Singletary:

And we bought some things like a saw for a welder. There’s a special saw that you cut metal. We helped a guy get some testing materials for his professional licensing exam and there may be some others. And I can’t remember what those were, but so appreciate your involvement with with this with this group. You know, this we have a Facebook group for those who who are familiar and just really looking forward to what we may learn from you today, sir.

Brad Singletary:

So let’s start with mindset. You know, if a person wants to be discipline lind, what is different about the mindset of the man who wants to be disciplined?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, I think from a for my perspective, discipline is about structure. One of the guys I worked with actually, you know, served I wouldn’t say served under, but Admiral Bill McRaven, he was the commander of Special Ops Command when I was at Joint Interagency Task Force Staff. And he gave a speech He’s a he’s a UT graduate. One of my kids lives in Texas.

Stephen Mehling:

So hook em horns you know he in in 2014 he went to he went to UT and spoke as the commencement speaker. And he he gave a talk that says if you want to change the world, make your bed and it talks about a number of other things. But it basically goes back to when he was going through SEAL training in Coronado.

Stephen Mehling:

And the same thing would apply to most most aspects of the military. But there are certain things that you have to regularly do within the military. And the reason that it’s set up that way is so it provides you some discipline. And you know, sometimes it’s road items, some times it’s, you know, how you wear your uniform, how you shine your shoes, different techniques, tactics, techniques and procedures.

Stephen Mehling:

But there’s certain things that go on, and it provides you a structure that gives you that personal discipline. I would like to like to think that, you know, it’s kind of made up of of four things. And the four things that I think about when I think a discipline is a determination, a compassion and honor and a courage and determination, you know, is, you know, no matter how many mistakes you make or how slow your progress you’re still getting further ahead than most other people that aren’t even trying, you know, and that’s kind of that’s that structure aspect to it.

Stephen Mehling:

Compassion certainly discipline means to me, you know, you got it. You got to take care of not only yourself, but you got to take care of your team members. You got to take care of others as you’re going along. I think you have to have a foundation to where you’re coming from. And I think of that as kind of honor.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, you have a strong moral compass you know, the old the old saying is is, you know, if you’re still you know, if you if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll stand for for everything. You got to have something you know, some kind of a foundation. And the last portion of that is, you know, courage. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy.

Stephen Mehling:

And the disciplined individual, whether it be in sports or whether it be in, you know, in the military or whether it be in life, they’re going to be willing to stand up and say when things aren’t right and take action to make them right. And I think that’s important.

Brad Singletary:

You had determination. What was the second one?

Jimmy Durbin:

Compassion.

Brad Singletary:

Passion. That’s an interesting one. The third was honor, honor. And then courage. And compassion is interesting because when I when I walked into the room tonight, the admiral asked me about how I am doing and that that had to do with, you know, some personal situation that I’m dealing with that’s been a little bit difficult. But here’s a man who’s been all over the world as a commander, as a person in charge of these huge operations.

Brad Singletary:

By the way, this joint task thing I want to maybe hit that again somewhere because that this joint interagency I think that’s a pretty big deal. I want to highlight that a little bit more. But anyway, this guy has been in charge of major major things and has all kinds of awards, medals, all these accolades and accomplishments. And one of the interesting things that I happen to know about this man is his compassion.

Brad Singletary:

And I mentioned earlier that his daughter’s a licensed clinical social worker as well. And maybe she gets some of that from from you, too. So interesting that compassion goes into is connected to discipline. Jimi, what do you think of that compassion being a an element here? The admiral is talking about with discipline, compassion and discipline, how they go together.

Jimmy Durbin:

I mean, he’s we’re all human, right? We all want to be seen and heard and known. And I like that you know, the ingredients for discipline. But the compassion piece it’s at the empathy. You know, as well you can lead from the front or lead from behind. And I think when you have a leader who can meet you where you’re at and can bring you into it, bring me into existence, I’ll talk in first person I’m interested in that.

Jimmy Durbin:

You know, I’m interested in in what you do and how you’re doing it and will want to follow you from that piece. You know, the other if I’m leading from the front and I’m shouting orders and then there’s behavior stuff that I’m trying to do as far as that discipline. But I like that compassion piece that the other is the courage piece for me.

Jimmy Durbin:

I go right to vulnerability. So what underpins courage is vulnerability. And then I thought, well, how does that relate to the military? But if I’m showing up and standing up and I’m leading into battle, whatever that looks like on whatever front, the vulnerability pieces that I’m I’m protecting something that I love and stand for that moral agency. And ultimately they can get hurt various degrees.

Jimmy Durbin:

And so there’s the vulnerability piece for me.

Brad Singletary:

Yeah, the courage is just showing up. I mean, the courage is I’m sure that there have been some dangerous things that you’ve been involved with, Admiral. Some things that I can’t imagine. It’s a little scary to be. I grew up in Florida and I spent a lot of time on boats and men, the water itself, that is a scary element.

Brad Singletary:

In the in this on this earth. I tell you, I’ve on a small, small scale, nothing like what I think you’ve seen, I’m sure. But the water itself is a place that can be scary.

Stephen Mehling:

Our our colleagues in the other services used to joke with us is that we’ll fly when nobody else will. Because, you know, there used to be a saying and, you know, I’m not a proponent of this and the organization isn’t a proponent of this anymore. But when I first started off in the early, you know, in the in the seventies, with the coastguard, there was the saying was, you have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.

Stephen Mehling:

We don’t believe that anymore. If we every we want everybody to come back. So don’t you know, don’t you know, get me wrong in that regard. But, you know, we go out in some especially in the aviation field, you know, try try flying, try flying in hurricanes when everybody else is grounded, you know, but we you know, we go out and we do that.

Stephen Mehling:

We do it on a regular basis.

Brad Singletary:

Well, so determination, compassion.

Stephen Mehling:

Honor, honor, courage.

Brad Singletary:

That’s great. Yeah.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, one other thing I might want to, you know, might want to add with that. Sure. You know, it’s kind of geared toward discipline and it’s repetition. Okay. And I you know, I’m a kind of a fan of Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins, I think, said it best. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.

Stephen Mehling:

And it’s that consistency that turns, processes, professional activities into something that’s rote and just part of your ethos. And to me, that’s discipline as well. It’s like I’m fortunate. I’ve never had, you know, a drug or alcohol problem, but I know that, you know, folks that have, you know, they have you know, their process that they follow every day, you know, in order to, you know, get them through that day and to and to keep them sober, to keep them, you know, drug or alcohol free.

Stephen Mehling:

And one day leads to the next day leads to the next day. And it’s and it’s that repetition that discipline, so to speak, that that gets them to where they need to be and to make the, you know, the extraordinary activity of staying sober or staying drug free. Part of the norm.

Brad Singletary:

I saw an advertisement. I think it may have been like Gold’s Gym or something to talked about want respect, be consistent. And I thought about that in a couple of places, like think about a church or a gym or something like that. You know, people new people show up all the time. Maybe people aren’t that friendly to the guy who’s on his first day in the gym or his first day in the church or his first day in the book club or whatever he belongs to.

Brad Singletary:

But when you are a consistent boy, that really commands a lot of respect when people know that your can be counted on. And Jimmy, you talk a lot about a series of habits and things that you do. I wonder, since the admiral mentioned something like that here.

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah, that was beautiful. Thank you for that, Admiral, because I I personally believe that I needed to find a series of actions that I could take on a daily basis, regardless of how I felt to get and stay in recovery, spirituality, work on my marriage, you know, be a good husband, be a good father. Like there’s a there’s a series of actions.

Jimmy Durbin:

And I need to take those actions regardless of how I feel. You know, when I ran my life on my feelings, it doesn’t work out so well. So those aside and so I love that because I’ve been thinking about this all week is kind of preparing, like where is the crossover to from military to recovery from from the military you know, into just a normal guy’s life.

Jimmy Durbin:

And so I appreciate it. Yeah. You saying that.

Stephen Mehling:

I think later on, you know, we may talk a little bit more about this, but, you know, when you when you talk about that that day to day activity in your life. But it’s also from my perspective, Dave, important that in times of crisis, it’s it’s that habit pattern that absolutely. That it’s going to carry you through. And in the military, that’s very important.

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s a brilliant point. Same thing in recovery. You know, like I need to do my series of actions and run through that. And whether it means my morning routine and making my bed and brush my teeth and showering and eating and doing those things into just finding the meetings knowing where I’m going, building my try to having community of men, knowing who is a foxhole buddy that can sit with me and work through things with me.

Jimmy Durbin:

But I need to do all that when I’m not in crisis so that when that floor drops off or there’s a a bottom or a blip, I already know what to do. Like it’s just rote.

Brad Singletary:

I was fascinated to as I’m reading a little bit about the Coast Guard, the motto or what do they call that? The little the little Latin slogan.

Stephen Mehling:

Semper Paratus Always ready.

Brad Singletary:

Semper.

Stephen Mehling:

Always.

Brad Singletary:

Prepared, always ready. I mean, that’s cool. That’s cool. What you’re what you’re what you guys are saying that sometimes the preparation and the discipline way ahead of time that’s necessary. When the shit hits the fan, you’re prepared because you’ve done these routines, these consistent things, you’ve been disciplined you know, when you go through the divorce, you’re in recovery.

Brad Singletary:

Now you’re going through a divorce. You can stay sober because you you have this series of actions you get into some, you know, conflict situation or some scary mission or operation, but you can handle that because of all the discipline that you’ve been doing. In all the training thus far. Why is discipline such an important part of the military culture, military, law enforcement, a lot of those types of programs you mentioned Coast Guard is really both of those.

Brad Singletary:

Why is discipline such an important piece?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, I started off, you know, obviously at the Academy and then aboard ship. But the majority of my career I spent being in aviation and in aviation, whether it be military aviation or in commercial aviation, there’s a set of procedures. There’s whether it be emergency procedures or checklists for just normal start or for engine shutdown, you’re going to have these procedures.

Stephen Mehling:

And there and, you know, we used to not joke about it, but we used to say that, you know, quite honestly, especially when it came to emergency procedures, a lot of those things are written in blood the reason those steps are there in those procedures is because someone didn’t have that step in that procedure. And as a result of that, they didn’t get out of it.

Stephen Mehling:

When I was thinking about this, you know, this podcast, I thought a little bit about that and thought about Captain Sullenberger you know, old Sully. Sully, yeah. Sully Sullenberger, the U.S. Air flight that went into the Hudson River when he had that that supposedly impossible goal to have double engine failure he actually broke checklist. And had he not broke checklist, they would not have survived because the first thing he did, you know, in addition to, you know, getting the the first officer trying to, you know, start running through the checklists, turn it, you know, turn in toward where can they where can they get to and realizing they couldn’t get back to LaGuardia, they could make

Stephen Mehling:

it over to Teterboro. They were going to end up having to land in the Hudson. He turned his API on and the APA and aviation in an aircraft is an auxiliary power unit. And what that does is that gives you power to your hydraulics when your engine shut down. And if he hadn’t had power to his hydraulics, he would have never been able to safely land that aircraft.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, so that’s you know, that’s part of that having a process to go through, knowing what systems are, how they work, not just treating it well. The checklist says to do X or the procedure says to do Y, you know, and and and people not even realizing why it is they’re doing what they’re doing. I see that a lot even in, you know, out in out in the community here in Las Vegas, you can go to a store and, you know, people will punch a button on on a cash register or a screen or whatever it might be.

Stephen Mehling:

And they really don’t know what it is. They’re in a why it is they’re doing what they’re doing. They just know that they’ve been told to do it that way. You know, so disciplines important. Absolutely. No question about it. But you also have to know why it is you’re doing what it is you’re doing and what what the impact is of of those actions.

Brad Singletary:

Wow. That’s fascinating to kind of have a big picture view of things. I did some training the author or authors of the book The Oz principal, I think it was called They Came and they did some training on accountability. And they talked about most companies. Most organizations have no idea the the the staff have no idea what they’re doing.

Brad Singletary:

They don’t even know what the goals are and what the objectives are. And and so those are some great points So what kind of routines help military personnel develop, maintain discipline? You talked about, you know, making your bed and there’s a whole series of things. But from the beginning, I mean, maybe go back to your days in the academy or what is the daily?

Brad Singletary:

What are the daily? What are the daily things that matter? Uh, you mentioned even dress and hygiene and all that. What was some specifics?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, the the first thing that’s going to happen in any military structure, we’ve probably all seen movies you know, that have someone that’s, you know, going, going through, you know, whether it be Parris Island with the Marine Corps or some other, you know, some other kind of boot camp, you know, Hacksaw Ridge, you know, showed, you know, showed it during World War Two, you know, boot camp.

Stephen Mehling:

And I think it was a Mississippi. You know, it’s important in the military structure. What they’ll do is they actually break you down. They get rid of all hopefully all your bad habits. They get everybody operating from the same level of activity, the same level of of, you know, of cognizance. You know, they’re all thinking the same way.

Stephen Mehling:

And then they start building, you back up. And the reason they build you back up that way is because they really want to emphasize, you know, that no man is an island. You know, that that you absolute lee in the military depend on your teammates, on your you know, whether it’s here, the members of your squad, the member of your aircraft, you know, your aircraft crew, the member, your ship whatever it might be.

Stephen Mehling:

Everyone plays an integral role, just the same as you know, as you know, Brad, I’m a I’m a big Golden Knights fan. Right. You know, and.

Jimmy Durbin:

The Knights go.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah, you know, hockey is a big thing for me. And there is absolutely no way except for maybe in a shootout when it’s one on one against the goalie that you’re going to win the game by yourself. It’s a team sport. This isn’t golf where, you know, you have the discipline of, you know, hitting hundreds of thousands of golf balls and sinking, you know, probably just as many putts on the practice green, you know, and certainly that takes a lot of discipline, too.

Stephen Mehling:

But in the military, it’s it’s not individual discipline. It’s team discipline. And it’s important to have everybody thinking to some extent. I mean, obviously, we’re not all robots. Right. You know, but but to a certain extent, you know, thinking the same way. I flew both helicopters and airplanes when I was a pilot of a helicopter crew. Even though I wasn’t the rescue swimmer in the back of the aircraft, it was going to have to jump out into the water, you know, to pick someone up or the hoist operator or, you know, whether I was the pilot or the copilot at that at that point in time, we knew what everyone else was going to do in

Stephen Mehling:

certain situations. Because that’s the way it was trained. And we really emphasized that you got to practice the way you’re going to play the game. That’s true in the military. It’s true in sports and it’s true in life.

Jimmy Durbin:

So you mentioned boot camp. So how does boot camp connect to discipline? Right. So it’s a breaking down here because here’s what I’m hearing you say. I got to know my strengths and my weaknesses. Like I need to get down just to the basics. And whether it’s in boot camp, you know, I need to in order to be disciplined, know what my strengths are and know what my weaknesses are so that I can just take an honest inventory and know what what stock is.

Jimmy Durbin:

I imagine that’s the same with boot camp, like breaking a man down and finding out where his strengths weaknesses are.

Stephen Mehling:

I think so. Sure. I think it’s important in a boot camp does a number of things. Certainly it it’s going to get you physically in shape, you know, whether it be, you know, boot camp in the enlisted ranks or whether it be officer candidate school or academy, whatever it might be, you’re essentially your assessing source, but it’s going to get you physically.

Stephen Mehling:

But even more important than that, and you know, I mentioned earlier on in our discussion about Bill McRaven is talk when when you go through buds, which is the early portion of SEAL training and you know, there’s been Coast Guard members that have gone through SEAL training, as well as Navy and Marine Corps members it’s not the biggest, the baddest that it’s going to get through the program because it’s that mental aspect that gets you through the tough times.

Stephen Mehling:

And it’s that mental discipline that the military tries to instill in its members to be able to get them through the tough times. The certainly there’s going to be times where a platoon commander or a company commander is going to have to give an order that’s going to put people in harm’s way. And you have to realize, you know, that somebody, you know, might not come back from that, but it’s important that they will respond because it may ultimately result in the greater good because they’ll be able to successfully accomplish the mission, even though there might be some casualties by taking action X but if they didn’t carry out that action, there might be significantly greater

Stephen Mehling:

a significantly greater number of casualties that go along. Now, the military certainly has one other piece, and it’s a little bit different than some civilian life. And that’s the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ is kind of like our law book. It’s it’s the the the rules that we follow, the punishment, so to speak, for not following those rules.

Stephen Mehling:

And it’s much more maybe I should say it’s much less forgiving than the civilian legal system because it carries things all the way down to the level of I give you an order and you fit and I’m in a position of authority and you fail to follow that order. There are direct consequences for that. Or could be direct consequences for that.

Stephen Mehling:

That could range from, you know, limited amount of taking away of your liberty up to and including, you know, in a combat situation, you know, someone runs away, you know, under fire. I mean, that could be a capital offense. It’s so it’s you know, it’s pretty far reaching.

Brad Singletary:

What are some of the failures of the typical man in terms of discipline? And both you guys chime in on this. What are some of the typical failures of the average guy that if he adopted some of the military type of thinking in his world could help him? One of the things that I think I see in myself and the men that I work with is things even like when you wake up in how you go to sleep, I mean, control and discipline is there’s value in everything.

Brad Singletary:

I remember talking to a Navy SEAL one time and he talked about the need to control his bowels. And I thought.

Stephen Mehling:

Or not or not kill that mosquito you know, when you have to keep absolute silence in a. Yeah. Like in an ambush. Yeah.

Brad Singletary:

I mean, and I thought and of course, the my Freudian training kind of came to it like, yeah, you get to control your bowels, you know, he he decides when he goes to the bathroom. And I thought, that makes a lot of sense. You got it. You got to decide if it’s time to if it’s time to poop or get off the pot or else control.

Stephen Mehling:

Yes, the obviously.

Brad Singletary:

But then I remember even from like Stephen Covey, you know, he talked about you want to be disciplined, wake up at the same time every single day.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah.

Brad Singletary:

And I think he actually mentioned or his example was that he gets up at five 55 every day. So from beginning of the day to the end of the day throughout a person’s tenure, I guess you call it in a service type organization or military, what kinds of things we talking about? Uniform grooming, their scheduling, what kinds of routines help these personnel develop discipline?

Stephen Mehling:

You know, when I think about it, I kind of break it down again into into four areas and the four air areas. I think about his personal self-control and structure. Okay. And we talked a little bit about structure earlier on. But and you mentioned with the controlling your battles, with the personal self-control, I think a fiscal discipline.

Brad Singletary:

Okay.

Stephen Mehling:

Sure. And in the civilian world, a lot of times, you know, people will know, for lack of a better term, carpe diem, live for the day. Right. You know, they aren’t really disciplined enough to plan for the future. Emotional discipline. And I describe that as, you know, it’s all about me ism. It’s not about a greater good. And you know, quite honestly, in my opinion, I think we have a bit of a problem with that as a society.

Stephen Mehling:

Yes. You know, because a lot of it is it’s all about me. It’s really not about the, you know, the greater good and sacrificing a little bit. And and I think we all, as men can try to, you know, lead the tribe or lead the family in order to to make them realize, especially our kids and our grandkids, you know, to think a little bit outside themselves.

Stephen Mehling:

And I think think a little bit about the greater good. The last thing I think about is procrastination, you know, in the military doesn’t really let you procrastinate, you know, because there are, you know, especially like in boot camp or the academy or something like that, there are formations, there are, you know, checks that you will be here at this time.

Stephen Mehling:

And you will do this and you will do this other thing. When I was in flight school, there was a kind of a cross between procrastination and fiscal. There was an organization that was talking about trying to make service members a bit more fiscally responsible. And one of the things that people always say is, you know, I will really, would really like to do that, but I never seem to get around to it.

Stephen Mehling:

And so, you know, we went to this this dinner and we got a presentation and then we you know, we actually went off and had the dinner. And when we came back on everyone’s seat, there was a little round circular wood coin and written on it was t o i t so that everybody got around to it. Got around to it.

Brad Singletary:

Oh, that’s awesome. You know, talking about the fiscal discipline, I think I read that one of the there’s a lot of reasons why I like Coast Guard Academy is so difficult, but one of the things they do as different from others may be is they do a credit check. They check like literally that’s you know, that maybe is an indicator of your sense of like discipline.

Brad Singletary:

And, you know, you can at least nowadays I mean I guess you went 45 years ago or whatever.

Stephen Mehling:

Well they they actually do that as part of any kind of a security oh a security clearance back. Oh okay. Yeah. You know they want to make sure that you’re that you’re not in a situation where you could be leveraged, uh, against, uh, classified material or sensitive information. So there’s, you know, you know, just the same reason is if you’ve got a really bad credit score, um, your car insurance might be higher because you’re, you’re statistically you, you are more of a risk and so that’s why they look at those things along with lots of other things.

Brad Singletary:

And when I think about, you know, the uniformity and so forth when it comes to military stuff, think about what it looks like when you see what I see, though, you know, if I have ever seen like those red helicopters or these I guess they’re called cutters you know, if you see the red and white, you know, use or if you in any from any branch, you see someone, any kind of display or any presence of any, you know, military law enforcement is the same.

Brad Singletary:

There is I don’t care who you are. If you see that there is automatic respect because there’s probably some fear because you know that these folks can get you know, they they and I think the reason for some of that respect is, you know, that they are disciplined. You know, that these are highly trained professionals, highly trained warriors, highly trained officers, highly trained technicians, highly trained, and that they are very, very disciplined.

Brad Singletary:

So does that make sense? There’s a respect for that. And I think it’s because of the disciplined it’s all of the equipment is shiny. Everyone is dressed well, everyone is look sharp. They have they understand their equipment there’s so much discipline. I think that’s what makes us in are from little boys. My five my six year old, he’s telling me every day he talks about he’s going to be in the Army is going to be in the Army as well.

Brad Singletary:

He’s terrified of that. But I’m like, oh, my goodness, this is great. Look, he’s got all these little soldiers and he plays with them every single day. And he and he talks about, you know, how old do I have to be just at random times. And I’m proud of this. I’m like, yes, he wants to do he wants to serve.

Brad Singletary:

But I think something that he craves is discipline anyway. I’m just so fascinated by the culture of discipline that shows up in our military. So what kind of discipline might the average guy be lacking? Ordinary dude, our average listener is a 38 to 45 year old dad, you know, and he’s working and he has a decent income and he’s a really solid guy in most ways.

Brad Singletary:

But how’s the average guy lacking in discipline, would you say?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, some guys aren’t okay. Yeah, some you know, I’ve some of some of the most disciplined people I’ve met, you know, not be not people that we’re in the military. I mean, but, you know, just like any other community or like any community, there’s going to be people that are more disciplined and some other people that are a little bit less disciplined.

Stephen Mehling:

By and large, I, I think it comes back to structure. You know, I think it’s, you know, you know, I, I used to say to people, you know, when I was, you know, coming up through the military, you either have a plan or you’re part of somebody else’s home. And if you, if you have a plan and whether that plan be for how are you going to be successful, a business successful in the military, financially successful if it’s your plan, you know, that it’s going to be focused toward your success, whether or not you have a plan or not, you’re going to be part of somebody’s plan.

Stephen Mehling:

And if it’s somebody else’s plan, it may not necessarily be to your best interest. It might not get you where you want to be career wise or financially or emotionally. In a you know, in a marriage, you know, two guys go after the same girl if he’s got a plan. And you don’t just you may never even get off, you know, get a get away from home.

Stephen Mehling:

Plate, you know, before you strike out. You know, meanwhile, he said, you know, he’s you know, he’s he’s on the bases and and and scoring big.

Brad Singletary:

Wow. That’s great. What’s your plan? I mean, that is a good indicator about our level of discipline. Is first, is there even a is or even a plan? Jimi, what do you think? What how do most guys fail at discipline or what do you see the typical guy that once maybe listening to this show where do they have deficiencies when it comes to discipline.

Jimmy Durbin:

Well, I think as we you know, I like the structure piece. I’m a process guy. I think I learned that just growing up emotionally in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, those those 12 steps. So I think the first thing for me is to know my strengths and weaknesses right that I remove any temptation. So whatever my obstacle is, whatever it is I want to work on, and I need that discipline, I need to know what my strengths are, know what my weaknesses are, remove any obstacles.

Jimmy Durbin:

Um, so whether that’s if I’m trying to not do tobacco or alcohol or some other thing or not drink sodas, you know, it’s I won’t have my home like I set myself up for success.

Jimmy Durbin:

Then I agree. I have clear goals and a plan. And I lived a large chunk of my life not having a plan and just floating and not being reliable, you know, which makes me think about Brené Brown and her breathing acronym Boundaries is ah, is reliability. To me, reliability and, and discipline are connected. If I want to have a be in a meaningful relationship with whoever in my life.

Jimmy Durbin:

Part of that is that I have trust. So if I need to establish trust and the anatomy of trust is these boundaries, liabilities, accountability, the vault, integrity, nonjudgmental and generosity that I need to have, I need to be able to show up and do I have a plan and do I am I reliable and accountable to that plan.

Jimmy Durbin:

Um.

Brad Singletary:

If there’s no plan, you’re going to crash. If there’s no plan, you’re going to get lost. You’re going to, you’re going to fail in some way if you don’t even have a direction.

Jimmy Durbin:

I mean, I’m okay. Even if I’m a part of someone else’s plan, it’s when there is no there is no plan, I, I get myself in trouble.

Brad Singletary:

That’s it. That’s a cool thing. When I think about military stuff, if you see a helicopter or a jet or a boat in the water, they’re going somewhere. This they’re not just running around. This is there is a purpose even if it’s training, hopefully when we see that it’s only just training and not some crazy thing going on, but there’s a reason for there being in the sky.

Brad Singletary:

There’s a reason, right? There’s never not a purpose.

Jimmy Durbin:

What’s the difference between someone who actually makes it through boot camp and someone who doesn’t as it relates to discipline?

Stephen Mehling:

Now, the majority of the time, it’s all all psychological. Yeah. You know, people people that have the will to get to survive, the will to get through will get through people that give up. You know, and quite honestly, a lot of times the different branches of the service and certainly different specialty programs within the services, you know, are looking just for that.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, it’s especially noticeable in, you know, the high, extremely high performing specialties. Aviation is one, something like SEAL training is another, you know, Green Berets in the Army, those kinds of things. The Special Force Force Warriors, they’re looking for people that are going to in SEALs ring the bell. Then they’re and they’re going to tap out. And generally it has to do with the psychological aspect.

Stephen Mehling:

Very rarely is it the physiological. I mean, if you get hurt and you can’t complete the training generally they’ll they’ll retreads. Yeah. They’ll send you back through and you and you can go do it again. But psychologically, you just say, no, I’m not doing that anymore. And you go do something else.

Jimmy Durbin:

When an individual is operating at a high level psychologically.

Stephen Mehling:

Right.

Jimmy Durbin:

The tendency C is to numb or volume down the emotional piece is that true?

Stephen Mehling:

Maybe that’s I don’t I, I don’t know that I would agree with. Okay. I think, you know, if they’re, if they’re operating at a at a high level, you know, they may curb their emotions, but I think their emotions are always there because that’s part of their, their psyche, that’s part of the psychological piece aside, I don’t know that you know, they they they don’t have that that emotional intelligence, so to speak.

Jimmy Durbin:

And and you feel like there’s different tasks to do for the emotional discipline as well as the physical or psychological discipline or is that the same task, same actions across all three?

Stephen Mehling:

I personally think it’s the same. Okay. I don’t I don’t I don’t really I wouldn’t really differentiate it. It, you know, others might, but but for me and that may just be part of, you know, who I am. I mean, it’s always I’ve always been you know, focused. I use I use the analogy that goes all the way back.

Stephen Mehling:

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie White Christmas, you know, with the Bing Crosby, but at the very, you know, early portion of of the movie, they’re talking about the general who’s, you know, been hurt. And he’s he’s going home. And later on in the movie, you know, you see him, they make a comment about we ate, then he ate we slept, then he slept, and then no one slept for four days, you know, and that was kind of the joke is they went through in the movie.

Stephen Mehling:

But the idea being is, you know, part and parcel of leadership is you got to take care of your people. And I think people that have that emotional intelligence as part of their ethos, who they are, I think tend to fare better because, you know, whether it be in the military or whether it be out in business, you know, good leaders are good leaders and good leaders take care of their people.

Stephen Mehling:

Because, you know, I was talking to somebody just the other day that their organization was having significant retention problems, you know, and the truth about, you know, management and leadership and business is people don’t leave bad jobs they leave bad bosses. You know, and and it’s those bad bosses that don’t take care of their people that, you know, that give them no incentive to leave because, you know, people will stick around through the tough times and get those bad jobs to become better jobs if they’ve got a good boss, if they’ve got good leadership, that’s, you know, that’s giving them the knowledge, skills, resources, training, etc. that they need in order to be able to be

Stephen Mehling:

successful in the future.

Jimmy Durbin:

So if some someone’s operating a high level and wants to level up your suggestions that relates to discipline would be to what, how how do we help that guy level up like as far as what he’s doing? Any suggestions or thoughts? I mean, I think about the different levels. Like if I’m in boot camp, but now I want to become a Navy SEAL.

Jimmy Durbin:

Both are going to have some discipline, but it seems like someone’s going to have to level up. And so for the audience that’s out there, that’s pretty disciplined, you know, like they’re how do we how do they level up? Like, what can they grasp from your lived experience and your wisdom of if this is way up, here’s how you level up.

Jimmy Durbin:

And then the other one is someone who doesn’t have any discipline. Where do they start? Like what? What are your suggestions? And I like your framework. You know, those four things. I was just curious as to like, I’m pretty disciplined, you know, I but I can always level up. I there’s mediocre in my life.

Stephen Mehling:

I would think, you know, from my perspective, what what I tend to look at is those four things key among them. Certainly is structure. You know, so how do how do I do things? When do I do things in a in a you know, and I guess maybe it’s the math major in me in a logical reasoned fashion in order to accomplish a certain set of goals that I’m looking for.

Stephen Mehling:

And if you’re completely on, you know, undisciplined and, you know, you start off by, you know, and baby steps, Brad and I have had this you know, had a discussion before, you know, Dave Ramsey fiscal discipline you know, it’s like Dave Ramsey, you know, his whole philosophy is built around the baby steps. And you start step one and you don’t do step two until you’re finished.

Stephen Mehling:

Step one, you don’t do step seven until you’ve done step six. And the reason that that it’s done that way is to provide you that structure. And it forces that discipline upon you in order to ultimately be successful.

Jimmy Durbin:

I love that. That’s I mean, whenever you’re and steps and numbers, I always have a smile on my face. It’s to me, the ultimate and the best example of cognitive behavioral therapy changed my thinking to change my behavior. That structure, you know, that the Dave Ramsey, the 12 Steps, Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous of just like, here’s how I, I need to create some discipline you know, for me, it’s at my bottom.

Jimmy Durbin:

I didn’t trust my word I’m not going to use today I would use so there’s this constant implosion of not me not trusting my word. Right. And so I think of Don Miguel and the four agreements and be impeccable with my word and that’s where I need to start. And so at the very beginning for me, it was I’m going to throw trash in the trash can put the shopping cart away and stand in line and and do those three things.

Jimmy Durbin:

And then once I did that over a month, I could start to begin to possibly trust my word that if I said something, I would do it.

Brad Singletary:

That totally makes sense. I think you’re all this is coming together for me. I’m learning from you guys about how to level up. And part of it is do the things that you already know you should do and do them well. Ed Millett, who’s a speaker in a, you know, influencer type, he talks about you got to keep promises to yourself.

Brad Singletary:

And if it’s putting the shopping cart away or waking up at the same time, brush your damn teeth in the morning, whatever thing that there is. Some say how you do anything is how you do everything. Others have argued that that’s not true or that that’s that can create a problem psychologically. But maybe there’s some truth to that.

Brad Singletary:

I have a client who they’re working on this couple. They’re hoarders. I mean, like the TV show. And one of the things that I’ve asked them to do is to clean out their.

Stephen Mehling:

Car.

Brad Singletary:

Because that’s a, you know, that’s 12 square feet compared to their large home that’s filled with things. And so starting small, taking the step by step. I think those things would would help to in just having a an objective or a goal I always you know, I know there’s a whole bunch of definitions of goal, objective strategy, whatever, but to to know where it is you’re headed.

Brad Singletary:

And I think I love what you mentioned earlier, Admiral, about the procedures and some of the checklists and some of those things are written in blood. Meaning meaning we know what doesn’t work. We know where you get into problems. Think about the 12 step program. And the reason I’m in the same I’m in AA myself and nowhere near along the way that like Jimmy has done with it.

Brad Singletary:

But the amount of time he’s had in but I hear people say don’t get ahead of yourself, do the first part and do it well and just take take the steps that are necessary. And that’s one way I think that’s one way to level up and and to get moving. I wanted to go back to what you were saying too about the emotional thing I’m picturing like, I don’t know, a helicopter pilot in a hurricane.

Brad Singletary:

And so, yes, you have your what did you call it, your structure or your, you know, the procedural steps and all those things. But, man, there’s got to be some being tuned in to your emotion. You got to be, I guess, aware of fear. You have to understand your frustration level. That’s a gauge, too. I tell guys all the time, read your gauges.

Brad Singletary:

You know, scale zero to ten. How upset are you right now? And so how does that kind of training go into with pilots or commanding a ship or whatever? Like, how do you how do how do you people with these high level responsibilities do not just procedural tasks, but also check in with how they’re feeling? As a great question you asked Jimmy.

Stephen Mehling:

Well, I think I guess probably the easiest way to answer that is kind of use an example many years ago, I was involved in a a rescue. It was a medevac rescue of someone who had been working in the forests in Oregon. And anyone who knows anything about, you know, forestry, a choker chain had slipped and a huge log had rolled them.

Stephen Mehling:

Oh, boy. And so they were in really bad shape. And the trip by land to get them back to the hospital was going to take hours because of where they were back in the woods by helicopter. If we could get to them, it was going to take less than 15 minutes from the time we actually got them aboard to get them back.

Stephen Mehling:

The only problem was, is the whole side of the mountain was covered in fog but we responded and we found an area near the top, the top of the area where they were logging that was open and you know, I put down one, you know, I put my crewman down and put him in the vehicles, could hear where we were through the fog and got back to you know, they sent one vehicle back to us and I put my my crewman in the vehicle and sent him down to the location of where the mishap had taken place.

Stephen Mehling:

And and he communicated by radio, you know, if we can get there, can we do anything? Can we get him out? And he said, yeah, absolutely. And we knew that, you know, there was a side of a mountain. And we could actually once we got the guy on board, we could actually go up into the fog away from the side of the mountain.

Stephen Mehling:

And it was an open area because we knew that what the terrain looked like, you know, under normal conditions. And so we went there and we got him. And the way we did it was we actually hover taxied following the tail lights of the pickup truck through the fog, through the, you know, the 200 foot fir trees just slightly above them, getting on scene and we eventually picked up the the injured person, got him on board, got him to the hospital, the hop from the hospital back to where our air station was, was probably 5 minutes.

Stephen Mehling:

Once he was at the hospital, we went to the air station, even though we were the crew on duty. I sent my crew home and I walked in to the operations officer and I said to the operations officer, I’ve just sent my crew home. I’m going home. We need to be relieved. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. At the time, as the as the mission was going on, you don’t let those kinds of things, you know, get to, you know, impact the mission because you go on training, you know, this is, you know, how to do X, Y, and Z, and you execute X, Y, and Z in a safe fashion.

Stephen Mehling:

And you kind of compartmentalize that emotion. But once the emotional situation was over, they weren’t going to be any good to the unit for the rest of the day until they got to decompress. I wasn’t going to be any good to the unit for the rest of the day. And so I got to decompress and having good bosses, my boss knew that, you know what?

Stephen Mehling:

He just looked at me and he said, go home. You know, I’ve got it. You know, you know, whether it’s going to be me that flies the next time the you know, the alarm goes off or somebody, you know, I get get another crew. And it was during the daytime at this point. So there were other crews available.

Stephen Mehling:

But he realized and he was a good boss, too. So you know, good leadership skills. And so so we went home. But but yeah, you you do have that emotion that creeps in. But, you know, in, in the in the throes of battle, so to speak, you compartmentalize an awful lot of that. And it’s usually after the fact and you see that a lot.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, even nowadays, as guys who have been, you know, over during Iraqi freedom, Enduring Freedom, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, Vietnam, etc., etc., you know, where they’ve you know, they during the throes of battle, executed the mission, did their job. But now a lot of those guys are are and some of them even today, you know, the Vietnam vets, some of them today are still struggling with, you know, PTSD because of things they did and things they, you know, they saw and things they had to do in order to execute the mission.

Stephen Mehling:

But at the time, they they they did their job. They did it well. And they compartmentalize that emotion in order to accomplish the greater good, I guess, for lack of a better time.

Jimmy Durbin:

So in that example, where someone is still struggling with, as you said, the PTSD versus the scenario that you gave with your story and and your realization and sending people home and kind of decompressing. So am I assuming the first example they just didn’t get the time wasn’t created, the system wasn’t there in order to metabolize that energy out of their body versus what you’ve you know, that’s that’s a really healthy system.

Jimmy Durbin:

So where I go is if I’m not in that cycle, if I don’t have that structure in my life, if I hold it in as a man and it’s still compartmentalized, and I don’t have access to all of my emotions because I’m still compartmentalized, how how can self-discipline help that individual?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, we actually formalized it in the Coast Guard. We uh, we took advantage of of some of the systems that the academics had developed. And a lot of it was geared toward fire. Firemen, paramedics, etc. And we use critical incident stress management. And, you know, we would send some of our own members off to system training and we would do debriefings and defuzing us depending upon the level of the critical incident, to make sure that our people did stay healthy.

Stephen Mehling:

Because if you don’t take care of your people who are your greatest resource, you know, when you when you need to accomplish a mission, they’re not going to be there because they’re going to have those kinds of stress induced issues Mm hmm.

Brad Singletary:

A lot of that, from what I understand, to the critical incident, stress debriefings, ah, stress. What was the other system that the critical incident stress management?

Stephen Mehling:

Management.

Brad Singletary:

A lot of that has to do with description of the events. It has to do with talking. Tell me what happened. What were you thinking? How did you feel and coming back to a plan of, like, self-care and, and, and really and that’s in 30 seconds. That’s what I know about that stuff, is that it’s basically I take it out of the compartmentalized place and describe what’s happened to you and how you’ve experienced it.

Brad Singletary:

Put some form to it, put some structure in some words and a description into the thing, and then talk about how it affects you emotionally. And then let’s, you know, bring it back up to the plan. Now, how do you take care of yourself from here? And so I love. That’s great. That’s great. I didn’t know that you did that.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah, a lot. A lot of times a lot of times the individual doesn’t even realize it’s happening. I just recently a friend of mine’s daughter and she’s 18 years old I think now she doesn’t have her driver’s license. She finally got her learner’s permit, but she’s really been hesitant about getting a driver’s license. And it wasn’t until she was in a a college psych class.

Stephen Mehling:

She’s in a psych class now. That one of the questions that the the instructor asks, is anyone ever seen a human brain? And she raised her hand. She was the only person in the class. It raised her hand. Her parents weren’t aware. No one was aware. But the reason that she had seen a human brain is she had witnessed an automobile accident and the person had been severely injured, obviously killed.

Stephen Mehling:

But she had seen parts of human remains. She human brain tissue, you know, on the on the asphalt. And she had so compartmentalized that that she didn’t talk to anyone about it, but it was keeping her from wanting to be a driver because she had she had experienced that or seen what the impact of doing the wrong thing in a car could could result in.

Brad Singletary:

Wow. That’s fascinating. It’s interesting where our discussion has gone a little bit tonight. Talking about some of the feelings. You know, discipline really does have a lot to do with behavior and steps and movements. And procedures, rituals. But we’ve talked a lot about I guess you get to social workers and the father of a social worker.

Stephen Mehling:

We’re going to talk about feeling and feelings here.

Brad Singletary:

So that’s so important. I mean, when you and the discipline, when you talk about the training in these difficult situations, people are able to perform them because of their consistency. So they’re handling the emotion. When you’re on the side of the mountain, in the fog, rescuing a person in need, you’re able to do that because of the continuous training, the consistency, your discipline.

Brad Singletary:

And then afterward we do the self-care and we’re knocking off and we’re going home for the day and whatever we need to do to process those feelings. I wanted to go to some a couple some more specific things. We’ve been kind of talking in generalities, but in our read nine, we talk about the, the the step of discipline or the characteristic discipline.

Brad Singletary:

The idea is that the man lives a life of self-control. And so I want to talk about ways that things that have been helpful for you to master your time, your money, your environment, your mood, your actions and your results. And maybe we may not even need to talk about results because if we handle all those other things, is life.

Jimmy Durbin:

As a result?

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah. The amazing human. Yes, life is the result.

Brad Singletary:

But so in for both of you. But I guess you’ve lived a little longer than both of us here, Admiral. What has helped you to become the master of your time? And if any of these you don’t feel like you are the master of that, that’s okay, too, because you’re human.

Stephen Mehling:

But why don’t know that. I don’t know that anyone has ever the master of any of these things. I mean, we’re all you know, we’re all just doing the best we can to continue to move forward and, you know, continuous improvement. You know, that’s kind of the nature of, you know, when I when I was doing total quality management, you know, that’s, you know, the whole idea was, you know, if if it’s not broke, you might want to break it and make it better.

Stephen Mehling:

You know? But the whole idea of, you know, of, you know, continually improving a process when I was thinking about this because, you know, we got a little bit of a heads up of what you might ask us, you know, and I’ve already used my big bullet for time. And that’s you either have a plan or you’re part of somebody else’s.

Stephen Mehling:

I mean, I think it’s really important that you have a plan of what you’re going to do. You set goals for yourself. You set intermediate steps or goals in order to accomplish that. You know, time management is is a goal. You know, that is you know, that is how you get things done. You don’t you know, you don’t waste, you know, opportunity is and by not wasting opportunities, that certainly is is valuable.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, time. It’s like, you know, you know, we three being here tonight you know, having this discussion, you know, if nothing were ever, ever to come out of it, it really would just be a waste of time. So I, I find it very valuable. And that’s one of the reasons why I was more than willing to come in and, you know, sit here with you guys tonight was, you know, because this will go out and hopefully the the limited insights that I can provide, you know, can prove beneficial to somebody else down the road.

Brad Singletary:

Well, talking about time, you know, the map of your time, I guess, is your calendar or your schedule. I joked earlier about how Admiral Hair was you know, we tried to get him going and says, yep, nope, can’t do it. Then I have we’re cruisin to the Bahamas or.

Stephen Mehling:

We can we can’t do that.

Brad Singletary:

We have we have this trip planned or. Oh, no. And as we look at dates, we’ve been working at this for 90 days. We’ve been trying to do this. And and then he said, Oh, the Pro Bowl. And still that to me is he has a flight plan for his time. He knows what he’s doing pretty much on any given day.

Brad Singletary:

He knows when he plays golf, when he has dinner with his friends, when he’s going on a date with his wife, when the grandkids are in town. And what, you know, he so to be in control, to be the pilot of your time means I guess that you have a schedule. You’re saying we have a plan or otherwise you’re part of someone else’s.

Brad Singletary:

So I love that you go to your phone and you know what’s going on and you put it there. Maybe maybe the missus puts things in there, too.

Stephen Mehling:

We share a calendar okay. But we share.

Brad Singletary:

So there’s communication. There’s write it down. There is compare it to what is going on. If it’s just the if if you it if there isn’t something written down, I just I’m feeling the value of use a calendar use schedule, put something in that block of time. I bet we could ask you what you’re doing on a typical, you know, any day of the week and there’s some structure to it for you.

Brad Singletary:

You work out in the mornings or. Sure. Afternoon.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah I’m a morning workout person.

Brad Singletary:

Work out in the mornings. You know what days you have your you’ve talked about some dinner groups and some friends that you would get together share on certain intervals. And you know when those are and I don’t know if these are like Coast Guard friends or people that, you know from other parts of your life. But there’s a kind of a schedule.

Stephen Mehling:

Sure. Goes back to college days you know at the academy I believe coach Dennis is now long since passed away but he was the swimming coach at the academy but one of the things he also did was he taught the diving class and one of the things that they teach every scuba diver is plan your dove and dove your plan.

Stephen Mehling:

And if you plan your dove and dove your plan, you will never have an issue. But if you don’t plan your dove or if you don’t dove your plan, that’s how people get killed. They end up getting the bends, nitrogen narcosis or something else happens to them. And so I think that’s part of the scheduling and time management.

Stephen Mehling:

And, you know, maybe, yeah, coincidentally, I picked that up from Charlie Dennis. God, you know, God rest his soul, you know, when I was, you know, in in his dove, you know, in a scuba diving class, you know, 50 years ago.

Brad Singletary:

Wow.

Brad Singletary:

I am. I’m just learning so much here, you guys. This is, this is one of my favorite conversations ever. What about money? You know, you’re a retired person. You’re doing well. You’re traveling all over the world. You’re you know, some things about money. And just behaviorally, I don’t know. Jimmy, both of you how can a man being in charge be the master of his money?

Jimmy Durbin:

Oh, go ahead, Admiral.

Stephen Mehling:

Oh, yeah. Well, I mentioned Dave Ramsey earlier. I’ve been a Dave Ramsey fan since probably the early nineties, listening. You know, listening to, you know, recordings of his of his broadcast. I’m a, you know, a true believer, but I’m also a true believer in something. Remember, I mentioned earlier about the round to it. Get around.

Brad Singletary:

To it. Yeah.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, and the story that goes behind the round to it is a story that was told called The Richest Man, The Richest Man in Babylon. And the story of the richest man man in Babylon is if you want to be the richest man in Babylon, remember that a 10th of all you earn is yours to keep him.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, now we you know, we talk about earning things we talk about tithing to churches for those of us that are, you know, associated with, you know, religious organizations, etc. But if you think about a 10th of all you earn, you know, you earn $100, you take $10, you put it put it away, you know, and eventually, you know, whether it be a mutual fund, start off with a savings account, you know, however you want to do it.

Stephen Mehling:

But if you start off early and remember that a 10th of all you earn is yours to keep you will be the richest man in Babylon. Because, you know, as Dave Ramsey likes to say, if you live like no one else, you’ll then be able to live like no one else.

Brad Singletary:

Right. That’s a sizable amount. If you think about whoever you are listening to this show, think about what your monthly income is or your annual salary and what you bring home. Imagine what 10% of that would be compounded over the next 30 years of your life. Yeah, it’s probably going to you’re going to do well for yourself. And I think that’s one of those areas and I’m this is why this topic.

Brad Singletary:

I’m not teaching anything. I’m just asking the questions. But I think this is one of the areas where men struggle the most is I don’t know. I guess some percentage of guys are good with their management of their resources, but so many are just blowing money on things that are just unnecessary to completely just frivolous spending. And it’s, you know, and then they’re in trouble later in life when they really have nothing.

Brad Singletary:

I’ve seen that so many times, even in my own family and, and friends that I know that. And it’s difficult to do but 10% while the richest man about one. That’s a book.

Stephen Mehling:

Yes. I yeah. I think I think it’s a I don’t know whether it’s a book or, you know, a pamphlet or a parable. But but it’s out there in publication. The richest man in Babylon, a 10th of all your own is yours, too, Coop.

Brad Singletary:

How about you, Jimmy? Thoughts on being a master of money. You make it you’re making it big time in the world of social workers.

Stephen Mehling:

Social workers are rolling.

Brad Singletary:

In the dough. I tell you that.

Jimmy Durbin:

Self-discipline means I pay myself first. Um, you know, I. Part of what fueled my addiction for a decade was I just had the financial wherewithal and so I. I blew through that and then stalled to support my habit. And the financial. So it’s the same thing, right? I think Brad, like, whether it’s finances or emotions or psychological, physical emotional, mental, intellectual, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Jimmy Durbin:

And so I think across the board, at least for me, it’s that asking for help a piece is admitting that this is a weakness, that I actually ask another man, you know, can you help me with this? Leveling of my ego and my pride and so I know through recovery and working those steps and having a discipline through that process that, A, it’s all it’s always okay for me to take a self-assessment and just take an inventory and not from a right or wrong, good or bad or shame or anything other than just this is what is is and I needed and wanted to learn more about my finances this year.

Jimmy Durbin:

And so I just got done taking a four week course with my wife to help restructure and just kind of clarify. And I don’t have any emotion today, you know, as a 54 year old man asking for help. But my 30 year old self would have never I got to I’ll figure it out. I’m too much put on me.

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah I’m just going to ego pride and and it, it works so much better for me whenever I’m willing just to kind of humble myself and ask for help.

Brad Singletary:

You mentioned vulnerability. We talked about courage before. And nowadays are the generations our age, I guess, and younger are. It’s easier for men to talk about their situations, their feelings. I do. Some men’s groups have for men’s groups and people told me that was dumb to start that because men will talk. Well, yes, they will. But when I think about exposure and vulnerability and stuff like that, I picture one of these days, maybe I’m going to do this in my groups or guys who need this kind of thing in particular to say, pull up your pull up your bank statement bring it, you want it, you want to grow, show what you’re doing, you want to

Brad Singletary:

be better, you know you want to lose weight will get on the scale and show it to your trainer. You you want you want to do better financially. You’re not making ends meet. You still live with your mom and dad. You’re 40 years old. Let’s look at what you do with what you do. Have. And boy, I think that would be I think a man would rather stand naked in front of other men than he would to show his show, his financial situation.

Brad Singletary:

But I love what we’re talking about is you have to be willing to, whether it’s Dave Ramsey or Suzy Orman or whoever the hell. I mean, there’s a million programs, but attach yourself to some wisdom somewhere and let people into your situation. I was at a place after my divorce. I was at a point where I was single dad.

Brad Singletary:

I was working two jobs. I had my my kids five days a week. I couldn’t pay my electric bill. And so I went to my I went to my church and I said, hey, I’m in a bad situation. I can’t pay my electric bill. You know, I’ve paid tithes my whole life. Is there something that is there some help I could get?

Brad Singletary:

And they said, well, sure, let’s just go over your budget. Let’s see what you’re spending your money on. And so it was a very humbling process, but it was the most one of the most important things that I’ve ever done is to say, here’s my last 30 days. You know, my bank this is my bank record for the last 30 days.

Brad Singletary:

And this person was actually happened to be worked in accounting and they helped me see where I was really making some dumb decisions with with my money. Let’s talk about environment. I picture that both of your homes are I can just tell I don’t know how I know this, but they’re beautifully maintained. Your vehicles are clean. What is the importance of mains painting being the master of your environment, which to me means your stuff.

Brad Singletary:

Talk about discipline and the power of maintaining your environment. What is a what is the deck of a cutter look like?

Stephen Mehling:

Oh, very squared away.

Brad Singletary:

Yes, squared away.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, and this goes, if you want to change the world, make your bed, you know, and you know, that kind of a thing. But, you know, when I was thinking environment, I was kind of thinking of something a little bit different and maybe environment. Yeah. Maybe it’s, you know, not the physical environment, but, you know, I was thinking that more of the environment of association oh.

Brad Singletary:

And like friendships and things.

Stephen Mehling:

Well, well, you know, and if you go back and you look at a lot of the studies and things, people will tend to turn out to be like the people with whom they associate. So if you want to be successful in business, associate with people who are successful in business. If you want to be sober.

Brad Singletary:

Better know some sober folks.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, associate with sober folks don’t associate with people that are, you know, going to the bar every day. Drug addictions, the same way it applies in sports relationships, just about anything, you know, that you will turn out to be like the people that you associate with. So when you were talking about leveling up level up, your friends that’s great.

Brad Singletary:

I never even so I wrote this read 92 or three years ago and just stayed about to be the master of your environment. And to me, it was the physical. I, we just we just leveled Admiral here, leveled me up right now to help me understand that this is about the energy that you allow into your circle and the and the people, the influences.

Brad Singletary:

That’s, that’s amazing. Yes.

Jimmy Durbin:

We can remove obstacles you know, remove the temptations. So I yeah, I appreciate that because I go to what is my environment you know, I do I work with people that hear voices and there’s a 15 to 20% of the general population of people hear voices and most of us work in concert with our voice. The research is only one to 2% come in contact with psychiatric intervention now whether you call that voice conscience or God or spirit or, you know, whatever label you want to use, I just know that unless I have a series of actions and I have the discipline to think about my intellect, my spiritual ness, my emotional like those environments as

Jimmy Durbin:

well. When I’m not disciplined, it’s because there’s a lot of static and noise upstairs. The committee in my head is really loud and so the what discipline do I have to to address that? So environments, I think of all that intellectual, mental, spiritual all emotional and my physical.

Brad Singletary:

You blow my mind on this because I, I literally maybe I just don’t understand the English language, but what I pictured for me environment was your stuff. You know, if you’re driving around in your vehicle and there’s 16, you know, cheeseburger wrappers and you can’t, you know, you get your clothes are stained up every time you get in your own vehicle or your home is so chaotic that you can’t ever find anything.

Brad Singletary:

That’s what I thought of about environment. But I think it’s so much more than just that the deck is clean and the and everything is squared away. That’s a term that’s it that’s important to you really. Do they really say that?

Stephen Mehling:

Absolutely.

Brad Singletary:

Squared away means.

Stephen Mehling:

Square squared away means there’s a place for everything and everything’s in its place okay?

Brad Singletary:

So everything can be squared away, including our, our environment, the atmosphere that we allow, the atmosphere, the places we go, people, places and things. Right. Jimmy?

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah, very cool. And again, I fall back into what is the, what process, what steps what’s the structure, right? And if for me, it’s not about having a balance in all those areas, it’s creating harmony, right? I’m not going to be I’m not perfect in all those areas, but I have a process as part of my self-discipline to take an inventory of all those areas that we just talked about where my strengths were, my weaknesses, where do I need to level up?

Jimmy Durbin:

How can I play what I’m currently doing, those transferable skills into other areas where I feel like I do need to level up, but that takes having a plan, right? And having daily habits and creating an action series of actions. Regardless of how I feel like it, it’s all connected.

Brad Singletary:

That’s something that I was fascinated by when I got into AA was the some of the ritual, you know, like the on awakening is one of the little readings. It’s about a half a page or a paragraph or two about an awakening you go through and you kind of have this little prayer. And then and then upon retiring, you go through this these steps.

Brad Singletary:

Have I, you know, harmed anyone? Have I said things that I regret or I need to, you know, have a hurt someone or whatever? So there is in all of everything from military operations to the the alcoholic who’s trying to get his life in order, discipline is a core issue here. Just one more, maybe two more here. Things I want to talk about.

Brad Singletary:

What about mood? We could probably have a whole show on how to master your mood. But I’m curious, maybe specifically you hear, Admiral, about gosh, I guess you’ve probably gone through all kinds of things. I mean, you’ve moved around the country.

Stephen Mehling:

19.00

Brad Singletary:

Times, 19 times. You’ve moved you’ve had you’ve got children, grandchildren. You’ve been married for how many years? 41 41 years.

Stephen Mehling:

Three 42.

Brad Singletary:

This summer you’re one of what, a couple dozen of these rear admirals. You know, your, your role is your high level leader. How in the world does a man master his mood?

Stephen Mehling:

Well, I kind of combined, you know, when when we talked about time, money, environment, the other three were mood actions and results, okay. And I kind of combined them when I when I was thinking about.

Brad Singletary:

Them and lead actions and results.

Stephen Mehling:

Mood actions and results. And the first thing I thought about is I’ve always tried to live by the axiom of what some people commonly call the serenity prayer. Oh, yes. You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Brad Singletary:

Yes, sir.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, and I’ve found that for me, that kind of gives me inner peace because, you know, there’s going to be some things you just can’t change and you then have to make a decision either to move on or to accept things the way they are, because you’re never going to be out. It’s outside of your ability to control.

Stephen Mehling:

It might be because of a higher power and might be because of the environment whatever it might be. But also along that line, you know that the last piece of it, the wisdom to know the difference. One of the things that I’ve been a very strong proponent of in talking with my subordinates throughout the years and I was in the military, I was in uniform for 39 years on active duty for 35 and during, during that period of time, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, the wisdom to know the difference and the way I think about it is knowledge is what you get from going to school, reading a book and living your life and making

Stephen Mehling:

mistakes you know, and learning from, you know, the school of hard knocks, so to speak. Wisdom is learning from other people’s mistakes. And I want people to be wise. I don’t want them to have to duplicate those, you know, those same lessons that somebody else has already experienced. And that’s why I think, you know, the Alpha Quorum and these podcasts are so important to guys out there is because it gives them an opportunity, whether it be for me, or Jimmy or you or any of your other guests to garner that wisdom so that they don’t then have to go out and make those same mistakes in order to get the knowledge Wow.

Brad Singletary:

That’s great. So mood actions, results, you’re seeing those is connected. It has to do with what you can control, what you don’t control. I think I would say for sure for me, mood and I guess actions often follow feelings for me. I as I work with people in like mental health, I see two things getting in the way of mood.

Brad Singletary:

Sometimes mood is affected by physiology you know, if you’re hungry. I love the Snickers commercial. Remember those. If you’re not, you get hangry. Can be you know, you got to you got to take a dump and or you’re hungry. Sometimes it’s physiological, but sometimes it’s a matter of what you expect, what you’re demanding of the world and of people and of yourself.

Brad Singletary:

And then after the thing happens, after the triggering occurs, it’s how you interpret what happens. What does this mean about me and what does this say about this person or our relationship that gets into trouble? Jimmy Mood, how do you how does a man master his mood and maybe actions and.

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah, I mean, I like I appreciate what both of you said. I, I love the Serenity Prayer. There’s also some inherent things that are built into that, right? That I have a higher power, some faith, something I lean into in the absence of factual intellectual information. And that’s a that takes work, you know, having spirituality I need to define what spirituality is for me and Brad needs to define what spirituality is for Brad.

Jimmy Durbin:

And the admiral needs to define what spirituality is for him. And I’m of the school that I don’t think anyone should tell anyone what spirituality is, how it’s connected, to how one gets disconnected and how one gets reconnected. And that’s your work. That’s the man’s work. We can guide and we can coach and we can counsel. We can get curious and ask questions and explore and mentor and all those wonderful things, which is why the three of us are here tonight.

Jimmy Durbin:

And so in that mood, in hitting the pause button, you know, in the self evaluation of how I’m feeling, having body awareness sensations, noticing feelings, being able to identify. Like there’s a lot of information just in that construct of you know, finding a series of actions and or God grant me the serenity. And so all of those things take self-discipline, all of those things need to be seen brought into awareness, understood, written down imagery of like, what does an individual, what do you as a man want in your life?

Jimmy Durbin:

And finding those actions, you know, the I love what the admiral said as far as determination compassion, honor, courage and repetition. You know, for me, that’s living in steps ten, 11 and 12 continue to take a personal inventory when I’m wrong, promptly admit it. That encapsulates determination and having compassion right. The empathy piece. Step 11 continue to improve my conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation, seeking for his will and the knowledge to carry that out.

Jimmy Durbin:

That takes honor, it takes courage, it takes termination, you know, and then repetition and repetition. Absolutely. And and and then step 12, having had a spiritual awakening, right? That’s the gift. That’s the promise. And I would even frame it with discipline. That’s that is the promise. That’s what you’re hearing from us tonight, is finding those series of actions, finding what makes you tick, what gets you up, and being dedicated to that.

Jimmy Durbin:

The promises you’ll have, the spiritual awakening, you’ll realize the goal, you’ll overcome the task, you’ll get to the top of the mountain, as a result of the self-discipline, in this case, these 12 steps. And then the second part and share this message with others right and I think that’s where Admiral I just appreciate a one you as a man who’s willing and knows his emotions and can articulate your feelings and structured in the military and being of service to our country.

Jimmy Durbin:

And protecting, I stand on your shoulders, you know, as a younger man, as someone else who wants to teach men, is committed to that. Thank you. It’s it it’s refreshing. Like it brings me hope right in and to see you dedicated and to come down and share your experience and how you connect the dots what a gift and what it gives.

Jimmy Durbin:

So thank you.

Stephen Mehling:

I appreciate that. And I’m a firm believer that we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us and I think it’s very, very important for four guys who have lived their lives or a portion of their lives, you know, to share those experiences. So that, you know, other people can be wise, too.

Jimmy Durbin:

So I have a question for you. If you could write a letter to yourself, 30 years younger so you have you know, you’re 60, you have all this wisdom and knowledge. And if you could write or tell yourself you know, what you’ve learned over the last year at the age of 30 would be what probably relationships.

Stephen Mehling:

Because remember, I was in the military in uniform for 39 years. And one of the big things about the military is there’s a hierarchy and there’s orders and there’s tact, there’s, you know, there’s doctrine, there’s tactics, techniques, procedures, you know, etc. etc. That doesn’t apply when you’re outside the military. So from a relationship standpoint, it’s real important that you know how to separate yourself from the military work environment and you know the relationship environment.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, outside of the military that that’s the biggest thing that that I’ve learned, you know, in the seven years that I’ve been retired is that, you know, there’s there’s there’s a difference. And, you know, anybody who’s ever come home who’s who’s in a relationship and tried to direct their significant other. Right, you know, to do something well, quickly learn that doesn’t work.

Brad Singletary:

Mrs. Bailey probably has some stories for us on that stuff. I remember talking Mike talking about that at one time that, you know, work is always used. Most work situations are pretty binary. I think probably with the military stuff, it’s it is a yes or no on or off black and white. That’s it. And though structure and order and I’m above you and you’re beneath me.

Brad Singletary:

And this is the the order of operations and there’s no questioning.

Jimmy Durbin:

Yeah.

Brad Singletary:

And that you can’t it can’t operate that way when you’re talking about your children or your, you know, your wife, your significant other. That’s great that you’ve you pointed that out because so much of this we’re it’s a tough discipline. We’re talking about toughness in a way. And Jimmy said, what would you do? 30 years, you know, what would you talk about?

Brad Singletary:

And you’re you’re really talking about tenderness. So you got to be tough.

Jimmy Durbin:

Compassion, peace.

Brad Singletary:

Commanding a ship when you’re commanding an operation it’s international stuff going on and you are at home. You can’t be tough that way. It’s not the same kind of tough and the tenderness maybe is what I’m kind of hearing you say.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah, well, even and even at work, you know, even even in a military structure, it is absolutely incumbent on the senior to to solicit feedback and comment from the subordinate because if the best the best leaders will do that you know and another adage I like to use a lot is if everybody’s thinking the same thing, somebody is not thinking, you know, you get into that group, that kind of thing.

Stephen Mehling:

And and it’s very easy to get there if you’re in that insulated environment where everybody you know, oh, yes, sir, oh, yes, ma’am, whatever it might be in the structure because they’re afraid to get feedback or, you know, someone’s not willing to say, you know, and that idea is really stupid.

Brad Singletary:

Stinks.

Stephen Mehling:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really dumb idea. But, you know, you do that in a in a collaborative way, but also in the military, you realize that. Okay. And I used to tell this to my to my folks all the time. If you give me good information, I’ll give you a good decision. If you give me a bad information, I’ll give you a bad decision.

Stephen Mehling:

But if a decision needs to be made because of the exigent circumstances of the time, I will give you a decision because that’s the worst thing you can do is the people just out there hanging.

Brad Singletary:

So I want to wrap this up, but I guess I have 11 last question. And as I have worked on my style here, I guess in and in like hosting these shows, what I want to do is look at the opposite side of things at the end and what is the side effect, what are some problems that come with being highly disciplined?

Brad Singletary:

So maybe there’s a man who wants to get himself to the gym and get a structure and get his life in order and manage his money and budget everything and and handle his business and get be squared away in every aspect, even spirituality. That was fascinating, by the way, when you said Jimmy, when you said spirituality requires work, you can’t just be a hippie and feel good.

Brad Singletary:

You got to do some things.

Jimmy Durbin:

That can that can be part of it.

Stephen Mehling:

Jimmy needed to be Jimmy the hippie in the early but.

Brad Singletary:

But all this takes work. What are these side effects? What is the what are the dangers of being too structured to too rigid.

Stephen Mehling:

From my perspective, I think if you’re too structured and too rigid and not willing to accept feedback and input, you miss opportunities now. And that certainly applies in business. It absolutely applies when you’re talking about money and in the military. Yeah. I mean, there’s you know, there’s uh, if you develop a battle plan, you know, there’s the plan and then there’s what they call branches and sequels to the plan.

Stephen Mehling:

You know, all these branches to come off and, you know, the sequel and, and the folks will tell you that, you know, in a, in a combat situation, all plans are valid until the first shots fired, you know, and then, you know, they kind of the original plan a lot of times will go out the window and you’re already into branches and sequels.

Stephen Mehling:

So you have to be disciplined. Yes. But you have to be flexible at the same time as well.

Brad Singletary:

Be able to pivot and change drastically, change your change the course of wherever you’re headed. Maybe that needs to change. So I really appreciate you being here. I just this has been fascinating and we I’ve enjoyed it. You know, I just we want to increase the quality of our of our guests. And, you know, you’re pretty much up there.

Brad Singletary:

You’re helping us level up, just your expertize, your experience, your maturity, what you’ve taught here. And I love when you mentioned this as an opportunity for men to learn from, learn wisdom from others, to hear what some things that work and that don’t work. Appreciate you being here, Jimmy.

Stephen Mehling:

Any words? Yeah.

Jimmy Durbin:

No, just yeah. Just to thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I really appreciate, you know, what I kind of said earlier, so.

Brad Singletary:

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. All right, you guys. Until next time. No excuses, Alpha.

Outro:

Gentlemen, you are the Alpha, and this is the Alpha Quorum.

 

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