L.O.G. 165 Broken Like Me

All right, well, thank you for joining us, Joseph Reed. I appreciate you coming on the show today. We've been in contact for a little while, so first of all, thank you for coming on to The Human Behavior Podcast.

Yeah, it's a total honor to be here, guys. It's a great honor.

Well, thank you. Stop it, because now we can stop recording. Just print that. Yes, yes, you've done what we need. Print it. So, everyone just kind of heard like a real brief intro of you, and I kind of want to first let's start with, why are you on this podcast? I guess, how did you end up here? Because you're another Arena introduction, but I'll let you kind of explain that connection.

Yeah, so I don't know if I have a really great answer for that. I did an Arena podcast, and something about my story – and I honestly have no idea what, other than I was in law enforcement, and I work with law enforcement – that made my story stick out to her to be able to share it with you. And she's just doing fantastic things right now herself. And yeah, it's, you know, an Arena thing, and for me, it's a God thing, just how my story began in law enforcement back in '96, and what has become of that limited experience is pretty freaking amazing.

Yeah, so and that's kind of I'd love to kind of you you went there, so let's start right there. I know you had like sort of a brief brief time in law enforcement back, like you said, in '96. And let me add to that, 10-96 is the code for a nutcase, a mental case, just so you know, Joe. So, everything you say after this point is going to be absolutely wonderful, and take your notes, right? 10-96. So, that was that was a few years ago, in 1996, but then you've kind of sort of come full circle on that, in a sense that you actually work with some law enforcement and first responders and folks in that area. I guess it encompasses some more people, but that will give it that general definition. And then, you know, you're doing that now, which probably you didn't think that would be happening. So, you kind of explain to us what it is, how that happened from 1996 to now, what you have going on in a one-hour episode here. We'll just knock that out real quick.

Sure, out there.

Yeah, you had me at hello.

Yeah, so '94 I graduated from high school, and I'm like, "What's the best way to pick up chicks? I want to put on a badge and uniform, and I'm going to get girlfriends and all this stuff." But, you know, and why that was such a big deal for me is I grew up in a conservative home in Taylor, Michigan, east side of Michigan. And just Christian school, church four times a week, and I just had this passion to help people. So, I thought, "You know what better place to be than in law enforcement to have that platform to help people?" So, I go through Henry Ford Community College, I graduate with my Associate's in Law Enforcement, go to a now a defunct Flint Police Academy, and graduate 11-97. Shortly thereafter, I get hired for like three days by Flushing Township, a little township just outside of Flint. And they heard that Grand Rapids wanted to hire me, and they were all going to hire me part-time, so they're like, "This is a much better deal for you." And I've never heard of Grand Rapids. Like, I'm in Detroit, you know, that's the world, that's the center of Michigan over there. So, I get over here, I take a test with 2,000 applicants. They select 11 of us, and I am the only one that's fresh out of academy. We got officers from Detroit, Saginaw, some other like St. Joe's, and I'm the newbie. And I got brought in, and what I tell officers now is, I think I was a police officer for a week. I worked for Grand Rapids Police Department for a month, but I'm pretty sure I kind of was a cop for a week. And that's a great segue into this kind of relating to officers and the mental health journey that I've been on, and the mental health journey that I hope to encourage our first responders to be on as well. That's the nutshell of it.

No, no, that was there's a pretty good flash-to-bang explanation there. You nailed that in just like a minute or two. That was really good. I'm sorry, Greg, I know you probably won't.

No, no, so I'm writing down the ironic things. First of all, the guy's name is Andy Serkis. So, folks, look up Andy Serkis, a doppelgänger Joe, again a compliment. His stuff is really good. And the funny thing was, as soon as you started talking, Joe, I was thinking of The Andy Griffith Show with Ernest T. Bass. He wanted to get his girlfriend, Romina, so what does he do? He decides that he has to have a uniform together. So, listen, that's wonderful. What was it like, realizing that now you had made one of the hardest decisions in your life, and it wasn't going the direction that you had planned? What did that feel like?

Which which part are you referring?

Well, think about it. If you're you're just coming out of high school, you've got all of this head of steam built up, you get into the police academy, you're graduating out ahead of other people, and now all of a sudden, you're sitting there with the badge and the gun.

Yeah, and maybe it's not exactly what you thought it was going to be at that point, right? Yeah, I didn't get to help old ladies across the street, or play ball with the kids on the midnight shift in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's not the opportunity I was afforded. It was shortly after that when I traveled to Kosovo. And I spent a couple of weeks in Kosovo, in Pristina, Mitrovica. And it was K-4 was there, they were just cleaning up everything. And they still had issues. There was a bombing of a hotel about two miles from where we were staying. And I just remember seeing, after coming off the trauma of pouring my life into law enforcement and wanting to only do that, and my wife being all on board. You know, when she married me, she said, "There's only two people she's not going to marry: a pastor and a police officer." And I end up being both at some point in our marriage. So, that'll teach her to say what she's not and is going to do.

So, coming out of law enforcement, you know, I was my wife was devastated, she was heartbroken, we were stuck in a community we didn't know anybody. I get an opportunity to travel to Kosovo to do what I wanted to do in law enforcement, and just help kids and be a role model. Excuse me. And to see the devastation of a war-torn nation like that, with winter happening. This is August of 2001. We all know what happened in September 2001. George Bush is flying into Kosovo, in the capital, as we're leaving the capital of Kosovo. And that just tore me apart, the fact that the devastation was so thorough is only what I can think of. And the winters out there are horrible, and I couldn't do nothing about it. Me and my my privileged white, middle-class guy self, I just couldn't do anything. And I came back wrecked, and ended up in the hospital for two weeks after the fact of that. You know, the the police experience, then Kosovo, and then right right into the hospital. I knew that safe space to land, to kind of regroup.

Yeah, I know that that's that's a lot. So, at that time, kind of like put us in your head, you know, where you're at back then, you know what I mean? What what do you mean you say like, "Dude, I ended up in the hospital?" Like, this was so overwhelming, I'm assuming everything that you saw. But like, you know, what what was it about? I mean, because, you know, I I loved your kind of you you hit on two deep things when you said, "Oh, I want to become a cop because, you know, hey, I want to wear a uniform and pick up chicks." Okay, so that's one. That's total normal, like, way of guy thinking at that age. Like, "Hey, how do I impress a girl?" You know what I mean? But, you know, you immediately followed that with, you know, "Hey, I I and I wanted to help people." So, you obviously, probably from your upbringing, until you had this, you know, this call to service, serve others in some way. And you're also just like a normal dude at that age who's thinking like, "Hey, I want to impress some chicks." But that's like so many people, whether that's guy or girls or whatever, like that, there's a lot of people that that think that, and then can become disillusioned or have different traumatic experiences or things happen. So, so really, to come from that, you know, you go and you're doing this service, you know, in Kosovo, and then you become overwhelmed. So, kind of, you know, explain like, how how does that happen, or how did it work for you? What was it about it?

Yeah, it was just this I was standing on a I remember standing on a slab of cement where a house used to be, where a family of I think was six or eight kids they had, and they were just living in tents. And I looked across the street, and, you know, all the windows are blown out from the house across the street, and there's kids looking at me from there, and they're just their clothes are tattered, and there's tanks driving down the street. And I'm just like, "This is like way out of my like, how do you how does somebody with a passion to help even start with something like this?" So, I come home from that experience just completely like like questioning my faith, and wondering, "What the eff am I doing? What what can I possibly do to to make any dent in this this insane world that we live in?" And I came home, and I just started to journal, and I started to internalize the struggle I had, and I was doing a lot of just trying to convince myself to end my life. I drew a lot of graphic suicide pictures of myself that my wife ended up finding a few months later, and she's like, "I got home from FedEx, where I worked. I started working there in '98. And she's like, 'Nope, this isn't going to keep going. I'm going to get rid of your gun, and you're going to the hospital tonight. And if you don't go willingly, I'm going to have the cops come and take you.'" And that was the, you know, this is something mental illness is something I've been dealing with in second grade. We didn't know back in 1982-83 that it was a mental illness. You know, it was something to pray about, something to kind of muscle through, you know? And it came to a head, and my wife was like, "It's it's not going any further than this." And, you know, when I when I went in the first first one in the hospital, before they drugged the daylights out of me, I just tried to help people. I was trying to be the the the usher, the assistant, and all of that stuff. I had all my college textbooks with me so I could do some studying. And it wasn't until they knocked me flat on my butt with a bunch of clowning pins and necks packs, I don't remember all the fun stuff, where I literally lost seven days of my life. I don't remember from being in there to some of the trauma, the PTSD I resulted from some of the things that happened in the hospital, that made me never want to go back.

So so let's talk about that for a minute. A lot in in I'm an avid reader, and a couple of the the the books I go back to over and over: Tawapu, Taya, Piglet. These are good books to to ground me when I'm not right. So, I would give this episode, based on those books, what I call the Tigger warning. And then for any of our readers or listeners, the trigger warning, because you said you grew up with mental health issues, and clearly they latched on and followed you all the way till today, right? And when we take a look and see you, as a disciplined scientist, it's obvious that you're an emoter, because you wear your emotions on your sleeve just like I do, and that comes with a huge toll on your emotional intelligence, because you see people for what they could be, you see situations for what they might be, if, you know, just everybody else could see things like you could, everything would be okay. If you understood, you know, that listen, people just see it through my eyes. You're almost there, you could make this work, all these things that I could help you prop up, hand me that two-by-four, you know, get that bucket, and we'll chip in. And, you know, time and time and time again, people and the world disappoint me. So, instead of coming in grumbly and shitty and unhappy at work or at play, what I do is, I eat all that emotion. I I carry it with me every single day like like Jacob Marley, you know, in in the Dickensian novel Scrooge, and I drag it behind me silently the whole time. So, that's a lot of hate, death, and fear to bear on one human being. How did you, and I think I I know the answer, but how did you finally come to grips with looking at another human – because we're both broken humans, matter of fact, everybody on this call is a broken human, that's the one thing when when you talk about being broken, we all get it. How did you find that one human that you could look in the eye and go, "Look, I'm not coping well with this, something has to happen?" Do you remember that epiphany moment? When was that? And because I think that'll help other people understand, look, you're not out there in orbit somewhere so different from the rest of us, we all have these feelings, right? It's just with some of us, they manifest themselves in a different way. So, is that a clear enough question, Joe? I want to make sure I don't say.

Yeah, sure.

Who was that person? How how did that happen?

Yeah, sure. So, I would love to say that person was my wife, right? Who confronted me. I'd love to say it was my best friend, Nathan Beals, who was our worship pastor, who died due to mental illness, that really kind of catapulted me forward. But honestly, it was me, like, looking in the mirror saying, finally admitting to myself and looking myself in the eye and saying, "Hey, you got issues, and you need to take steps." Because I think oftentimes in my story, in my internal dialogue, I don't trust myself. I don't believe that the solutions that I think might work are actually worth a damn. But then I just like, "You know, who else am I going to trust if I can't trust me?" Right? So, I took this principle of Jesus that he talked about, one of the greatest commandments, "Love your neighbor as yourself," where Jesus sets the bar for our capacity to love others by how well we love ourselves. And, you know, I spent a lot of time praying, I spent a lot of time thinking about that, and how much I want to love other people, and be present with those people. And I got to remind myself that I'm limited by the by the way and the the effort that I give in taking care and loving and caring for myself. So, it really did come down to, and I feel extremely I feel a tinge of guilt for saying it was me, because I'm dealing with this self-ego thing right now, it's part of my mental health struggle. But but I think it comes to realization where when we can be honest with ourselves that there is a struggle, like that's one of the first steps in the right direction. And that how do you get to somewhere if you if you can't even admit where you are?

That's a that's a huge point. I mean, you guys, you brought up some really several good points there, but, you know, what you're talking about is knowing where where you're at right then and there, right? So, so, you know, you were able to come to a pretty quick realization after this one trip. Let's say not a quick realization, but it was, let's say, some triggering moment or or something that brought a lot of things to the surface that were already there. And and I say it that way because, you know, you look at look at everything over just in the United States the last couple years with with COVID and supply chain issues and all these other things that happen, and, you know, these lockdowns and mandates and this and that, but, you know, and everyone's having a difficult time dealing with it, and I think it's because all of those issues were already there. We just never had any pressure applied to us at such a scale as this, right? Where everywhere we turned, we had to deal with it. Then all this this huge political rhetoric going on in our country where everyone is at a point where they're fed up, they're just fed up. You know what I mean? They're like, "I've had enough." That was we we like to use the term, "The glass is full." Man, that's not good, especially if you already have some other underlying condition. So, that's hard enough for for someone who's, let's say, clinically normal or or has the ability to deal with this. But then you've had all of these other experiences or some other underlying conditions, it gets that much harder. And and so for you to, yeah, I don't think I don't think it's an ego thing to say, "Well, I came to this realization myself." I I'd say, you know, that's it it has to happen for for everyone in some way. So, sometimes it might take an event or a person stepping in, but but it has to happen with you realizing that that has to go, "Holy crap, where am I at right now? I didn't even realize how far down the rabbit hole I had traveled. I didn't realize how far off center I was. I had no idea where I was at," because we lack perspective in our daily lives. You know, and if you don't sit around and talk, because especially like Greg and I'll get, you know, because we get so intense about some of the work that we do and things that we have going on, and man, like, we're like so close to like all of these, like, I don't even know, like half a dozen big things happening. And when you're clawing at it, clawing at it, clawing at it, we're like, "You know, God, we could have done that better!" Start beating. And it takes Shelley, our CEO, to go, "You know, hey, don't forget to celebrate the small wins." And we have to sit there, like, just we did last week, and and have a meal and go, "Holy crap, we're in Bogotá, Colombia right now, doing what we love. Our second time in a month!" Yeah, the second time in a month, which is just amazing. We just lose the fact that because we're so used to doing it and getting them, we're like, "Dude, someone has flown us to Bogotá, Colombia to talk and to hear what we think and and see how we approach things!" Like, "Holy crap, that's really really effing incredible!" But five minutes before that, we're both stressed out, and we're, you know, "MF that guy," and writing notes on this, "We've got to change this and make sure we do this." So, I want to when you say that like, "Hey, it's kind of work on an ego thing," well, look, as we say, you know, all humans have have an ego system on board, right? We we think we're the smartest, or we think we're the best, we think we know what we're doing, "Hey, we got this." And then in the opposite direction, no matter what happens to us, it's always the worst thing in the world, it's never happened to anyone before in the history of humans. So, we have that very self-centered view for survival purposes, right? We're hardwired that way, it needs to happen. But, you know, coming to that realization is is a is a big deal, and that's all about perspective, right? Or I think it's about perspective and gaining that perspective to be able to try and, you know, take take a step outside of where you're at and look at it, you know, in in the clear light of day. It's really difficult to do, and like you said, it's a struggle. It's something not, "Oh, I see, now I got it." It's, "No, I see where I need to improve, and now I get to work for the rest of my life to try and improve it." I mean, that's the the I mean, do you kind of see it the same way? I know you describe it a little bit differently, so I'd love to hear kind of your description of what that's like.

Yeah, you just said an awful lot. I'm sorry. I have, you know, a couple things that come to my mind is just the artist's perspective and taking a step back. But I think it was really important, and as even as I demonstrated here just a second ago, and you brought up so eloquently, is that feelings lie. And I think feelings are, you know, the things that you tell yourself about yourself quite often are just BS. And until you can, and this is why I think therapy is so great, because it helps you, because what are you doing in therapy? You're really just talking to yourself, right? You're just paying somebody so you can talk to yourself, and it's just expensive. But but I think it creates a a safe space to do that, and training to do that, and to be kind to yourself. Because I one thing I noticed quite frequently right now is, you know, I'm just coaching myself all day long out loud, like, "Hey, Joe, just take it easy here." And if we can, because a lot of times the internal voice is what I call internal voice is ugly, sarcastic, and just rude, and it just beats the crap out of you. But if I can if I can counter that internal voice with my external, conscious, cognitive voice, and say, "Screw you, I'm worth it," then that has much more of an impact because, number one, I'm being intentional. Number two, it involves both my my lips, my words that that come from, you know, the right or left side of my brain, to hit impacting my ears, so I'm hearing it too. And I'm just demonstrating healthy living. I I do want to touch on one other thing too, because like, how do you when you're in the middle of that place where your feelings are lying to you, like, how do you get through that? And that's that's why I wrote my book. That's my book is all about Broken Like Me. So, the way I picture it is if you're in an emotional crisis, it's like you're in a monsoon storm thing going on. You're you're traveling down the road, and imagine like you imagine driving down the road, you got your your Mercedes or whatever you drive, Greg, it's a Porsche, you know, some kind of rocket ship. And, you know, you you hit that storm, and you got to let your foot off the accelerator. And if you run out of gas or your foot's off the accelerator, you're only going to go so far until you're stuck in that storm, and you can go no further. But what I've tried to do, and what I continue to do really on a day-to-day basis, because it really is a day-to-day fight, because the I think the the small steps are the big steps. The small steps, the small things we do are really the big deal. But I try to bring people along in that journey with me that can, well, first of all, try to build up enough momentum by making good decisions when I'm not in that storm: seeing a therapist, taking my medications, eating healthy, going to the gym. So that when I hit that storm of emotion, that I'm at a good pace. But then there are things that I know I can't make it always if you're by myself. So, I have my friends that come along and they jump out of the car and they start to push that vehicle. You know, there are things that I do that will carry me the rest of the way through the storm, the rest the west, maybe I'm hanging westbound, the rest of the way through that storm, so that when I get through there, I'm all damp and I'm wet and I'm flustered, but I see what happened, and I'm encouraged by the people that helped carry me through that. Like, "Footprints in the Sand," Jesus carrying somebody. You know, but but, you know, I've got these these things like my journal and my my the way I do friendship, and a scale I created to help me be able to communicate with my friends so that I could tell them, "Hey, maybe you don't realize this, but I'm in an emotional storm. I need you to get out of the vehicle and help me."

Yeah, that's um, so this can all of this kind of lead you because you you started talking about so let's just jump into it right now is is is your book and kind of how to manage and do all this stuff. You know, like you said, I like how you put it, "You know, the little steps are the big that's the big steps." You know, that's what you have to focus on is, you know, we forget about that sometimes. It's literally focusing on the little things because that those little things add up to really really big things. But you you you wrote the book and, you know, one it's called it's called Broken Like Me: An Insider's Toolkit for Mending Broken People. So, love the title, Broken Like Me. Greg and I use the term broken, you know, we're all a bunch of broken human beings. We use that talking about ourselves and all people. Everyone has their stress fractures or things. I don't care who you are, everyone's got something no matter how well you're doing. But then you call it, you know, an insider's toolkit for mending broken people. Well, I like the idea of a toolkit because it sounds like, "Hey, it's got a bunch of stuff that I can literally use to fix something." So, so what what do you what are your one? I I I know I have an idea what your goal is with the book. You probably just want to, you know, help someone save one person's life, whatever. But what were those things that are in the toolkit that you find so important? You can either pick one thing from the toolkit you talk about in the book and expand on that, or or a whole bunch of stuff. But I kind of want to throw it to you for for what really really worked best for you or you've seen work best.

Yeah, see all the things that I didn't that I wrote about in my book were things that I just did to survive for the last 15 years. They were not something I ever wanted to put out there for the world to see. I wasn't in a place with the proper support to be able to put myself out there like that. But it wasn't until the suicide of my my best friend that I kind of got this call to to do this thing. And what I've been doing for a long time is three things, and I'll talk about the the last two of the three things first, and that's first was journaling. And that's just creating a space, whether, you know, you know, I write in journals, people can do video or audio journaling. But really what this is, cognitive processing: how am I thinking about what I'm thinking about? And that has a huge effect on on my capacity to be a dad, to be a husband, to be a worker, to be safe, you know, to be aware of, you know, like like Brian, you talk about all the time like when you wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror and you say, "Somebody might try to kill you today." You know, it's it's this idea that, you know, think about what you're thinking about, and then, you know, kind of judge those thoughts in a way. It's like, should I discard them, or should I keep them? So, journaling is a great place, a safe space to to challenge different concepts that I have because I think we all kind of come in in this world, we all kind of have prejudices, whether it's related to somebody's gender, sexual orientation, their weight, their hair, or lack thereof. It's when something makes somebody different than ourselves, we categorize them, and we put them into a a bucket that's either higher or lower than us, whatever whatever. But a journal is a safe place to say, "You know what, I do think this way, but it doesn't affect or impact how I treat people, and it's not a way that I want to be." And it just helps me think through a lot of the the twisted feelings that I have that are not true, and I can put it out there, and a lot of times, I can just like be my own therapist in my journal and say, "This is what I'm thinking, but this is what I want to think about this." So, that's been they referred to a journal. And there's been tons of scientific studies, specifically at the University of Iowa has done some really great research in how it's affected tennis players, how it's affected people with like finances and all that other stuff. It's just it's fantastic. And a keystone habit is just a really foundational habit that other great habits can be built on. And so that's been huge for me. I've got I've got like 25 journals here back to my right where, you know, standing from 2004. I remember this fat this last February 22nd, I remember the date, and I was thinking, "Huh, I wonder what how how back because I don't journal every day. I just journal when I feel like it." And there's a wonderful chapter in my book about rules for journaling. It's three pages of nothing, blankness. But it's it's a great principle like, "Hey, it is what you make it." And I remember going back to look in February 22nd, I was like, "I wonder how far back on February 22nd I can go back and see what I said." 2004. I go back, and I had this problem in my journal that I don't have any recollection of, and it's like, "Wow, where did that go? And how encouraging is that to say that thing that was such a big deal to me back in 2004 doesn't even register an ounce in in my my stress sphere?" Hugely. So, that's encouraging. And and and journaling is a great place to encourage yourself and and to think about ways to encourage and be a better part of your community.

The other thing that's really powerful is the way I do friendship, and I can't spend a lot of time talking about this, but I've created like like an onion has layers, I've created layers of friendships that specifically for my for my my best friends, there is an intentional way, a covenant of sorts, that I make every Thanksgiving with a with a group of people that, that so there's an understanding of what they can expect from me and what I can expect from them. I never forced them into it, I just invite them into it. And if they're willing and they have the time, it simplifies life so much. So, like when you have, I mean, people that are listening to this podcast, and you guys, the stresses in your in your job, whether related to past experience or current experience, you know, it's a lot already. But the knowing having to deal with like, "Who do I buy gifts for? Who do I call when my tire breaks? You know, my my tire goes flat?" You know, all this stuff, like I've taken the the the guessing game out of that. I I have a layer of friendships that I know where to turn. They expect me to go to these friends, what I call intentional best friends. There's 130 pages about it, because there's not a whole lot of books out there to talk about friendship, and let's be honest, guys, this this especially people in our community are listening right now, we really need to do friendship well, because nothing else will really matter very much if you don't have that community support. I would say that friendship is the most foundational part of everything that I do because they hold me accountable to all the things that are really important, which takes me to the first tool, which is my mental health scale. And what this is is this is a really simple, stupid simple, like butt ugly simple, stupid way to communicate with professionals, loved ones, to say, "This is where I am and this is what I need," by saying one thing. And what you'll find is if even right now you're listening to this, if you Google mental health scales, you're going to find a variety of things. But one of the first five things you'll find is what I call the positive one scale, which is, you know, one is really great and ten is bad, or the positive ten scale, ten is really great and one is bad. And my son in the same sitting at a hospital was given both scales on two different sheets of paper as we're talking about possibly having them put in the hospital. And like, how when you're in the middle of that storm and you're just trying to get through that storm, how do you communicate with the people you love or whether the professional law enforcement or whatever EMS, doesn't matter, and say, "This is what I need, this is where I'm at, this is what I need." And the fact that we don't have a universal language to say that, that's that's that's pretty bad on our part. We, you know, there's a there was a Mars mission that happened, I think it was 2006, where Lockheed Martin made the system so that it it communicated in the metric system, and NASA was using the imperial system, so they send the information over, you know, to land to orbit Mars in the imperial system, the orbiter interprets the metric system, six million dollars down the drain, it crashes on Mars. You know, and we're telling how often are we doing that right now to ourselves where we can't it's just hard for us in general to to open up and tell people how we feel. But we make it so much more difficult when we're all speaking a different language. And and I try to simplify that.

No, and is that so, does that have to do with your the the your Joe scale?

Yeah, I I wanted to make it sound more efficient, more efficiently, so so I call it the universal mental health scale.

And right, but we could get that there, but that's the thing is like that to me, if you're going like, if someone walks up and goes, "Hey, here's the universal mental health scale," I'm going to be like, "All right, I'm already like, what's going on here?" Like, "Hey, dude, I'm going to teach you the Joe scale." I'm like, "All right, I don't know whose Joe guy is, but I can relate to him." You know what I mean? That's great. I'll take that to heart.

So, I I've got like a a page of notes. This is all Joe notes, just so you know. So, that goes with your Joe scale. So, I'm going to dive into it real fast, because you said some stuff that is just amazing. And first of all, I need everybody to listen to make sure that you order the book, and you check out the website, and you read up on Joseph Reed, basically, because he's one of the most resilient human beings you'll ever meet. Why? Because nobody on the face of the planet has tried to kill himself more than Joe has over the years, or thought about suicide daily like Joe has, and he's still there, and he's still punching and kicking and scratching, and he's still there at the end of the phone to help you, or at the end of email to help you. So, remember, resilience starts here. Second, you said something about perspective, which is amazing, and you talked about stepping back with the art. So, I'm a huge Seurat fan. And and I'd like to to do the Ferris Bueller, and start with my nose right on the canvas, and to take a step back, and then take a step back, and then that pointillism starts catching up to you, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I missed all of this!" Almost all of our life is like that dream catcher, where we're so busy going in different directions, we never take that step back and go, "What a beautiful dream catcher." So, I love that you bring that up because that coupled with what Brian said about us standing at the 13th floor of a hotel in Bogotá between some really high-pressure meetings, and taking a look out, remembering who we're here for and what it is that we're doing, that's hugely important. I also would add Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about what you talk about with having the toolkit already on board. Yeah.

And then real real quickly, one, I I love that you add the in your blogs, the other thing on on the on the website, folks, and Brian will list all the links to the website. There's a lot of blogs on there, and you'll associate with a bunch of them. I don't I don't understand blogs really, but but I understood the the one that I deep-dived into, which, and I'm paraphrasing now because I don't have it in front of me, and it was, "Look, I can't cure you and me. I'm so messed up right now that that I I can't take care of both of us." And that's why Brian and I are enablers, and and also best friends, is because we identify in each other our weaknesses, and we constantly bring it up, which goes to my final point, of that note taken is your scale. So, I'll tell you this, Shelley, our CEO, we're on the West Coast, and a horrific injury occurs. Shelley falls for about 11 feet and tears her elbow and dislocates her shoulder, all all in like nanoseconds. So, it's probably one of the most painful injuries that you can imagine if you know what I'm talking about. Folks on this call do. We get to the emergency room, and because it's California, there's four people in the little treatment room where Shelley is, separated only by these little flimsy curtains. So, three of the people that are in there are in there for like a splinter, a stomach ache, and they stub their toe. Shelley's in there with all this going black and blue, and her eyes rolling around in her head. And so the same doctor goes to each one of the four people with this little scale with smiley faces. And the very first one with the splinter, "Where are you?" "It's an eight." "It's an eight, Doc." The very second person with the stubbed toe, "Where is it?" "It's a nine, Doc." The very third person with the stomach ache, "Oh my gosh, it's a ten." Gets to Shelley who is having a hard time breathing because there's so much pain, and they're making me sign this form that, "Look, we've got to put her out and it might kill her," right, to get all this stuff back together. They look at Shelley, and she bites her lip, and she points it to two, and she goes, "I don't know, two or three? Two." I'm like, "Okay," and I laughed my ass off. Now, that's the first part of the scale. Second part of that is, Shelley was involved in an on-duty fatal shooting, and so they made it mandatory, it wasn't mandatory, but they made it mandatory back then, right around that same time that you had to seek mental health and counseling and go to a therapist before you got back on the road. And so I had to drive Shelley to St. Clair Shores, that was the closest place that had the therapy. They gave Shelley a scale, and she came outside in tears. And I've seen Shelley cry twice, and we've been married 40 years, okay? The thing was that the scale that they had, "Did you lose a baby? Did you have an abortion? Are you on heroin? This, that, the other. Did you, you know, get beaten up by your husband or significant other? Are you now on the tether program?" She's got to fill this out before she even sees the therapist. You know what that feels a lot like? That feels a lot like getting judged, right? So, listen, if you're in my head and I have these horrific auditory hallucinations, I get in a really bad place sometimes, and I need help getting out, and I'm screaming for help, and sometimes there's nobody around here to listen. Last thing I want is somebody to shove this this this this pseudo-scientific list of of potential anomalous behavior in my face, that certainly doesn't help. So, I know about Tacoma cocktail, I know all about Thorazine and all the different stuff they can zap you with, and and the "be nice chair" that they strap you down into. It's got to be hard to get up and walk across the street and say, "I need therapy," or go to the emergency room and, "I I need help." So, that long preamble was, what motivates you? Because there's a lot of opportunities that I missed where I should have gone, and and now I kick myself thinking, "I could have been further further ahead," right? So, how do you know when you're getting manic? How do you know, what would you suggest to somebody else to to be that warning to go and get help? Because I'll tell you folks, the very first thing on on your site is the most amazing thing in the world: on the left it says, "I'm the one having trouble," I'm paraphrasing again, on the right it says, "I know somebody having trouble," and right between the two is, "Hey, if you need help, dial 911." Okay? And I sat there looking, not knowing which button to click. You know? And that was just doing the research for the show. So, so how do you cope with that, Joe? How do you how do you know when it's time?

Yeah, I got a couple stories to kind of answer that question. I had a friend that traveled to Ireland this last month, and ended up getting a knee infection. And his wife is a therapist, he was traveling with a nurse, and something about the way that the infection traveled through his body, he ended up in psychosis. And the only thing he could say to his wife, because they didn't know what was going on, is, "Hey, tell Joe I'm at a negative seven." Now, when you read my book, this will make a lot more sense to you. But she knew right away, because that's all he could say that made any sense. Everything else was just gobbledegook. When she said when he said that, he's like, "Oh, we got to get to the hospital now." So, there's this thing called a crisis number. And as I approach that crisis number, there are coping skills. And and it's to the left of the scale. So, if I'm, you know, the scale is negative 10 to 10. It's stupid simple. Zero is the, "I don't know how I'm doing." If you're feeling negative, guess what? You're on the negative side of the scale. It's just a matter to what degree. And a lot of us have different tolerances for different things. So, I don't my crisis number may be different than yours. But as I approach that crisis number, then then I know there are certain things I have to implement in my life to be able to move myself in the right direction. But there's also that manic number, which really takes a ton of emotional intelligence, which which is why it's so important that when you're doing well, it's important to to do more things for yourself that will help yourself be better. So, yeah, when I when I when I, and this is what's faulty about other scales too, because there's not a whole lot of room to feel good. Most of the scales are like, "Yeah, you're feeling bad at seven and below, but you got these three numbers that's really good." Well, for me, a lot of times manic, being manic, feels really really great, and I want to do all this stuff. And it's and it's not until I realize that I'm I'm sitting there reflecting and doing that that cognitive work in my head, that mindfulness, where I can say, "You know what, am I being rational? Am I approaching that manic number, or am I just really in a good mood?" And I think a lot of times when people post approach mania, they start to tank right away just because the fear of approaching mania. And what I encourage people to do is like, "No, don't don't be afraid of that. Like, grasp those feelings, enjoy those feelings." But there's this concept that's called coping ahead. If you think you're going to approach something and you think you're going to run across something that's difficult, what are you going to do when that happens? If there's a storm that may be coming, what are you going to do when that storm hits? And think about all the different scenarios. And I know you guys talk about tactics all the time, you you address scenario-based training all the time, and just bring that home to what is more important. Like literally, and one of the phrases I use with officers when I do the training is, "If you don't take care of you, this is the only phrase I use with officers, if you don't take care of you, you can't take care of me." And I need you. And imagine who that "me" is in your life. It's your partner. Yes, it's it's it could be me, but it could be your wife and your children. It could be, you know, an organization that you're a part of that really depends on you. And you're not going to be worth a grain of salt if you're not taking care of you, and and knowing how to communicate, and and knowing knowing where you're at and what you need, which is really what the scale is all about, and be able to communicate those needs. It's just something I've learned over 20 years. Like, just like I use this scale to describe my wife's cooking. If it's, you know, my crisis number for my wife's cooking, if it's a negative six, I got to go to the hospital, right? It's a bad meal, it's that bad. You know, and just using this in every walk of life, you know, it's it's it's something that when you use it for one thing, you use for all the other things, and it becomes, you know, it becomes easy to use. And that's how my friend when he was in in psychosis, they thought he was going to die. He wasn't going to die, but it was just really bad. He ended up staying in Ireland for three weeks. All expense, well, no expense paid, at the hospital. It was awful, right?

Yeah, so how did you get into or or maybe did it just come naturally like how did you end up then starting to talk to like on the law enforcement, first responder side? Because you were, you know, yeah, you had that sort of background for like you said, like a week, but then yeah, fast forward all that experience. Yeah, fast forward, you know, 15 years later or however long it was before you started talking, like how did you end up there? Because it seems like you resonated with that community a little bit more. Now, it can't be because of something you did obviously like on the job or something with law enforcement experiences, all of this other experience really. Um, so we can do you know what it is? Do you even know? Do you think it's, you know, what what was that?

Sure. You're it's it's it's God's sense of humor. I I I I talk about officers all the time about how I I don't I firmly believe that God doesn't waste anything. Anything in your past, anything you've been through, is an opportunity to go to and help somebody else. And and I when I started Broken People, which is my my international organization, I wanted to partner with another organization because I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Like, I didn't want to be like, there's so much competition in non-profits out there, and I just feel like that's just just idiotic, you know? Let's support each other. So, I got in touch with National Alliance on Mental Illness. I got in touch with with one here in Kent County, and I said, "Hey, what what can I do to help? How can my organization partner with your organization just to make things better?" And it just came about that there was, you know, they do this they're part of the CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) training, you know, they show up for those things, and there's this new training program here where I connected with the director of the Police Academy at Grand Valley State University where they're just trying to do some de-escalation and training for in the most emotional crisis with the recruits in the police academy as well as in-service officers. In fact, I'm going to Gaylord, Northern Michigan next week to do the same kind of training. And when they invited me, they had no idea what they were going to get. They had no idea that I had any police experience, and I was frightened. Like, it was kind of like, "Oh, they would make them talk to police officers about my struggle." Well, how can I not bring up the fact that I used to be a police officer? And I tell you I I I as I lead up to this explanation that I used to be a police officer, I pop up a picture of my wife and me and my daughter, who was a baby at the time, and I talked about all these struggles of different people, of of people in my group, about broken people, like trichotillomania, which is a hair-pulling disorder. A person in my group used to think that their wife was an alien, you know, that that she was out to kill him. And I go through this long list of struggles, and then I say, "Hey, by the way, this is all about me." And then I and I pop up a picture of me as a law enforcement officer, you know, my day and my I got sworn in. And then it starts to resonate on them with a whole another level. Like, I see their jaw drop, and I I see them like refocus on me in a different way. And yeah, it's God's sense of humor. And the fact that they keep calling me back, I think is because the one of the feedback surveys that they did, the training wasn't going very well, the two-day training that they do. And one of the surveys said, "Joe saved the training," because they were just so, you know, you get a lot of seasoned officers, I think, and they get into situations and they're like, "Oh, we know this stuff." And you know, it's not until they come something, you know, bring something in there and rattle the cage a little bit and kind of bring it home where I make it about them and that's about me, that it really starts to have an impact. And I think my first speech at Grand Valley like that that caught everybody off guard. And the other thing is too, people from my community donate books to police officers. So, when I go to present to police officers, I ask for people all over the country, "Hey, would you be willing to, you know, submit some money and donated a book to a police officer?" And when I walked in there tonight with a box full of my books, and with a message from from somebody that that wanted to to send them a little message of encouragement in a culture and in a in the culture that that law enforcement is right now where there's a lot of, it's a tough it's a tough space to be. Yeah, and to to know that there's somebody like them that used to be in their shoes for a week, but mind you, I knew a little bit, I went through a lot of training, and to be able to be so vulnerable and to give them a space to be vulnerable, it's I somehow that's resonating with them. And, you know what, as long as they keep inviting me, I'm going to keep showing up.

Well, and that's the ultimate when you go to groups like that. I mean, we're the same way with, you know, anytime it's like law enforcement, military, or some professional group kind of at the edge of something in a very, you know, it they'll be the first ones to not call you back. They'll be the first group of people that go, "Hey, thank you," and then you'll never hear from them again. So, I think the fact that they're they're calling back means exactly what you just explained is you're touching on something that they're all getting and seeing. And I think, you know, that like you said, that that day in day out, and then now I got to see this when I come home from work on the news of, you know, how effed up the police are, and "Let's defund this," and, you know, you you think back to like yourself when, hey, you're some kid who said, "Hey, I want to go help people, and I want to look cool on a uniform, and I want to do this good for my community." And then now you fast forward years later, and this is where you're at. It's like, yeah, because it's happened so slowly over time, it's like you you brought up, you you don't realize where you're at. I mean, you know, and you talk about mental health and going to therapy, and that that can mean a lot of different things to people, but in, you know, until they start making it mandatory in those professions, you know, because then it just it gets rid of the stigma, because there's no, "Oh, so-and-so went and saw, you know, and is having issues." It's like, "Well, no, we all have to go," so there's no getting around it until, you know, I think it's going to be tough because what does it take? It takes someone to make an individual choice on themselves to go, "Man, look at look at where where I'm at." So, you know, I know you and and then even on our show sometimes, Greg and I, we always share different stories or different experiences and and just to get it out there, because, you know, someone someone, like we said, with these podcasts, one, if you're still listening or 50 minutes into this conversation, it means it resonated with you too, because the the when we talk about some of these issues on the show, yeah, they get like the least amount of listens out of other shows, but they also still get, you know, a higher rate of feedback than because of profound feedback.

I would agree. I really appreciate that this resonated in me. This is why.

Like, rather than just a, "That was a really cool episode, and I learned this." As it was just more like, "No, I get it." So, obviously, obviously everyone out there gets it in some way or or the the overwhelming majority, but we're still kind of not quite able to be as open and honest as as we can be. And I think kind of like you talked about earlier, like a lot of people don't know how to communicate it, especially guys. Like, I was the worst. I I, you know, communication to me has been a long long process to learn and continues every day, especially with with the house full of girls that I have here, and, you know, just like things like the nine-year-old, she comes out. We just have one, but it's a household of girls, it's got my wife, the the nine-year-old insurgent, and the dog are all girls. So, it's like, but like the little one comes out with something that's like, you know, I'm trying to get her somewhere, and and this whatever's happening is the worst thing to happen in her life. And I'm trying to explain how no it's not, and de-escalate the situation. But it's like you said, like, if I don't have the skills to do that, what am I going to do? I'm going to do what I've learned to do is I'm going to come off the top rope and yell and take this stuff away. And and so those little moments, even though that might work for that second, you know, what does that cost to me and to her especially, but even for me, for the rest of my day, and then the rest of the week, and then the rest of the month, and the rest of the year? Like, so it's those little things to go, "Okay, this is one of those moments. How do I want to handle this right now?" And and that alone is kind of like a check on your own thoughts and feelings and emotional reaction at the moment. But but learning, like you said, to communicate that is is is difficult. It's difficult for guys too. Yeah.

Well, one of the things I read, Joe, that that I'd like you to talk about for a minute if you've got time. At the time, I I've been turning victims into opponents since the late '70s. And back then, I used to write on the dry erase board all the time in the dojo, "First you learn your boundaries, then you test your boundaries, then you push your boundaries." It was a way for people to understand coping skills when they were dealing with other broken humans. You talk a lot about boundaries. You also talk about that that your love for other humans can wear you out. And that's where I think you found your need for boundaries and to reinforce and enforce them. Can you talk a little bit how how you see boundaries in your work?

Yeah, so one of the things that really clicked with me when my when my friend passed away, you know, I saw very clearly it was just this lack of boundaries. Like, he was just pouring, and he'd show up for you at midnight, 3:00 a.m. Like, I got out of the hospital in 2013, a mental hospital, and he was there for me whenever I called. But he had eight adopted kids, and he had a marriage, and, you know, he was, you know, his cup was empty. And, you know, where else can you go when your cup is empty other than just shattered and broken? And when you think about a broken glass, it's really hard to put back together. It's possible, but it's really hard. One of the ways I refer to the boundaries in my book is this: I'm a kind of an aficionado of chocolate milk. I love chocolate milk, I go to the bar, I order chocolate milk, it's my thing. And you think about, you know, pouring a, you know, getting a a a gallon of that your favorite TruMoo, you know, Brown Cow Moo, you know, whatever, and pouring it on the counter. You're not going to do that because you're going to waste it, you're going to make a mess, and it's going to scatter all over the place. So, we have this idea of like, I I want to I want to create a boundary for this chocolate milk so I can enjoy it more. So, I pour it into a cup, and then I can enjoy it more. You think about in terms of like the guitar. If you have no boundaries in the guitar, you're just going to be plunking this, you know, strumming the same chord over and over again. It's not going to be music. But when you move your fingers up and down the fret, and you create boundaries for every string, you'll be able to create beauty, music. And it's through our boundaries that we really find freedom, we really find the joy of life, because it's contained. And yeah, that's what I think. And and one of the one of the major ways I've done this, Greg, is with my friendships, and knowing who I can say no to, knowing that it's okay to say no. And and and especially with my intentional best friends, like I used to call my ten friends, knowing that if am I going to say yes to anybody, it's going to be them, and I'm okay saying no to everybody else. The other thing is, and Brian, you're you're mentioning on this, is this this idea of growth and how small and important growth is. And I got a picture of like a little baby Greg, if I can use you in this.

Nibble of course.

And and now you've got this slightly grown-up Greg. And in order for you to get from that baby to where you are right now, if you wanted to hurry that growth up and you wanted to be the Greg presence that you are right now, you'd have to tear that baby limb for limb to stretch it, and it just doesn't happen, right? So, that growth has has happened over like, what are you, 36, 37?

Over the course of 37 years. Almost 40, yeah.

Yeah, you know, and like Brian, you talk about the frustration you had with your your wife and kids sometimes, like those are situational opportunities for personal growth. Absolutely. Every time you come across a a a tactical problem or an opportunity to cope ahead, it's it's like when you're a kid and you're eating your vegetables. It's just this is another decision that's going to make the little Joe, the little Greg, the little Brian grow up to be the healthier Joe, the healthier and the healthier parent, the better police officer. A study done in Baltimore, sorry, in Buffalo, New York in 2016, said that the life expectancy of police officers among white businesses, between white police officers was 21.9 years less than the average life expectancy of the white male in Buffalo, New York. And why is that? Right? Yeah, it's it's you you don't think that stress has an impact? You don't think that every little choice when you're when when you make a choice and you hang up this call, and you're going to decide if I'm going to I'm going to grab a whiskey and just drink the rest of the night, or or I'm going to drink some water. You don't think that every single choice you have is is has a right and a wrong, a good and a bad?

Exactly. It's okay to have fun. It's okay to enjoy certain things in moderation with boundaries. Hey, we talked about that.

All of these little choices will will be judged by that 80-year-old Greg and that 80-year-old Brian. And and what do you do? You want them to be thankful for you, right?

Even be around at 80.

What about your wife and kids? You know, I don't know. And it's those things, think about it like proximity. It's the things that are closest to you literally in proximity that should be the most important. And that should be your wife and kids, your relationship with God, you know, your friends, your home, your community. Like when I was in Kosovo, like the the thought that there are so much pain in this world, right? And I can't do jack squat about it. I mean, I'm just trying to get my kids to go to school, right? Um, yeah.

I think all the noise that's out there, especially with social media, makes it all worse, right? Because it it gives this appearance that overwhelming feeling, and then you get helpless because you're like, "Well, I can't deal with this. How do I understand all of these issues? Look at what's going on." I mean, it just and we're bombarded with that stuff, and and you just you just nailed it. You know, when you said, "Well, what's what's in close proximity to you? What can you do?" I mean, that that's my whole thing is what I take with the insurgent too. It's like, do I want to go out and and nerf the world and try to make sure she never has any bad experiences and try to change how people are and the way they treat her and everything? Or or or I can just, you know, increase her ability to deal with the the overall struggle that is life. So, how do I make her more resilient so that it doesn't matter what she faces, right? It's it's it's going to make she's going to be able to handle it, and that makes her stronger, which means it makes the people she's around stronger, which means it makes the community stronger, which I mean, so you start to multiply those those um those benefits as they go out. They, right, it increases exponentially over time if you're doing that. So, it's like, "What what can I do right now?" "Well, I'm literally looking at my yard going like, 'Damn, that's a lot of weeds out there.' Oh, yes." Like, "Yes, I got to clean all that stuff up." "What can I?" "Well, I I don't have time, but I, you know what, I can do that part right there today, and get that done with. I know I can do that." And it's like, "Okay, well, now we're getting somewhere." So, it it that that proximity thing is close, and it's funny how it relates to something we talk about, or or our course is called proximity negates skill. Now, the idea is, it's it's more if I'm facing you, let's say you're my opponent, Joe, in whatever situation, I could be the biggest, baddest, most highly trained person in the world, but if you're six inches from me, hey, you know who's going to win that fight? Whoever comes out on top, because the closer you are to me, the easier it is for you to hurt me or do me harm. But but that the other side of that coin is true, so the closer you are to me, the easier it is for me to do good or help or do it. So, having that connection and that close group of people, it's like, just focus on literally as far as you can stretch your arm out, start there, right? I mean, that that's that's really all it takes sometimes. So, you know, you come at it from a different angle, but I think that's why we clicked on our last call when we first met is because, you know, you we have such a we're all, you know, using different terms maybe sometimes or talking about a different subject, but we're talking about it in the same manner. Does that kind of make sense, Greg? I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, so here's the thing, Joe, I'll issue a challenge. Let's collaborate on something by the end of the year. Let's put something together where we're all together helping people, because I like the cut of your jib. I think you're a practical, sailing, resilient guy. You're a pizza. Exactly. I I think you're a practical, resilient guy, and I think that anybody that looks at the the website, I think that anybody that gets a book is going to find themselves humbled by your path and the path that you chose and sometimes didn't. And they're going to learn a lot about themselves, and and if I could say that about me, if that was my legacy, then I would be proud. I I will tell you this as well, my dad, my dad's dying words, you know, a lot of people's dying words are, "Ah," you know, my dad came through and grabbed me as hard as he could and said, "Never say coulda." And it's taken me 60 years to understand exactly what Dad meant. But but Joe, you live your life by that ethos. And Brian, I I can't stress the practical levels of resilience that we got to talk about on the show. It was amazing. And Joe, we knew from the first time we talked that there was something special about you, but but now it's even more obvious that people need to reach out to you to talk to you about their story and talk more about yours.

That's an honor. And I think it's it's really important to, you know, when when people like you and I, and then those are listening, we we have the capacity because we have healthy support systems to be a little bit more vulnerable. And I think it's important to point out the fact that I have support systems in such a way that I can be here right now sharing so openly. Not everybody can or should be. You're right. But when you have a situation, when when when you're on a platform like police officers are often, you know, put on platforms, you know, not of their own doing, but because what society puts them here, or pastors or teachers. And when there isn't that sense of vulnerability, when there isn't that sense of, "Hey, I'm human too," then it can make those that are not on the platform misjudge reality and say that, "I'm not good enough, and I'll never be good enough," because so-and-so acts this way. And that's one of the things I've always done is compare myself to other people because of what I assume their life is like, or what I assume their challenges are like, when in all reality, we all face pretty much the same thing. It's just a matter about, you know, how open are we to share it? How how embarrassed are we of the of the of the struggles that we have to open up about it, right?

And and that and and that, you know, I hate the word stigma. There should be a stigma around the word stigma, but it does perpetuate the word. No, seriously.

I think you're exactly right. So simple.

Yeah, you know, it if if if I can talk about it, it makes it easier for you to talk about it.

Yeah, and then it and then it takes the stupid, it takes the scary away. You talk about exposure therapy, right? It's all up. It's it's all it's that's what it's been for me.

No, we we appreciate you you talking about this. And, you know, I I've got I'm going to have all the for for you listening, all the the links to get a hold of you and to your book and your website and everything would be the episode details. Um, and and so, you know, if if if you're if you're listening and you you can always reach out, but you can also share this. Sometimes I I've one of the ways that I've communicated with friends before in the past is by literally sending them things something like this, whether it's a podcast episode or an article or something, and gone, "Just, oh, hey, man, you got to check this out." And then, you know, they'll without thinking about a dive in and get a few minutes in, like, "Hey, wait a minute, are you all right? Was this like a message?" Like, "No, no," you know, to be just and they'll like, "Got it. Okay," you know, or even a song. You know?

Yeah. Oh, it's a perfect example. Me and I know music and your music in general is the great there's one universal thing to unite all humans, it's it's absolutely music, because there's so many similarities across culturally about different types of music. But but yeah, and that's one of those things I like to do, like, "Hey, check this out." And it's almost like a passive way of just throwing something across someone's about. And and I think conversations are good to to this is why, you know, I love podcasts and they're so popular now because it's just if you if you find one that's an open honest conversation, man, you get a lot of value out of it for not paying having to pay anything, you know? So, I I always like to throw that out there, and Greg, I know you you had something else you wanted to add.

I just wanted to say that the divine intervention, I truly believe it. In 45 minutes, we got a call with Abigail Manning. The first person I wrote down that I'm going to send your information to, Joe, after talking to you today, specifically, is Abigail Manning. Do me a favor, look for that name, make sure you look her up, you guys connect. I think together, you, Brian, and I can do a lot in the LE (Law Enforcement) first responders realm to get your message further out there. I think that's this podcast was an important first step, I really do.

Yeah, and I'm just, you know, the fact that we're just here talking the three of us, and people are just kind of zooming in from the, you know, from the background listening, you know, it's just this is what it's about. It really is. It truly is being in this moment right now with this message, that's wonderful.

All right, well, we we appreciate you coming on, Joe, and and appreciate everyone for listening. Again, remember when you can check out the episode details. We'll have even more stuff on our Patreon site if you haven't checked that out. But check out what Joseph's got going on and and his book. Um, you know, it's I I I like his approach. I don't always like a lot of people's approach, but I like yours because because it works for me, so if it works for me, it can work for anyone.

At least you're not biased whatsoever. That's Brian, folks. That's Brian being vulnerable right there. Take it.

They can't believe it. No, it's it's I I know, well, I'm it's all about about growth, but I some approaches I just kind of resonate with me right off the bat, so I find it easier to get into, and that's definitely definitely how you are with stuff and that's that's who you are. So, just, man, I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your story and and talking to us.

It's an honor. Absolute honor, guys.

Well, thank you. And everyone listening, don't forget, training changes behavior.