did the CIA try to assassinate Donald Trump no what about the FBI the man that I have on the show today is a former CIA officer he's a founder of a group called everyday spy the reason I wanted you on is like well he says some stuff I've not ever heard before and I love little micro distinctions and so one of them for me was this difference between perspective and perception perception is about how you view the world around you you see a sunny day and you believe that a sunny day is a good day that's your perception of the world perspective is when you step out of your own shoes and sit in somebody else's shoes and look at the world from their point of view so what ends up happening is you gain an advantage over everybody around you when you stop thinking about your perception and start thinking about their perspective if you can stop and think what does this moment feel like to them you're going to have an advantage in being able to shape that moment even better in your best interests because you'll be able to think oh they probably want to hear me say these words they probably want to see me act this way and until you step out of your perception and into their perspective you won't know what it is that they want I think this is like the great blind spot for most people who are wondering why I'm not moving forward and attracting the relationship I want in my life why am I not as persuad Ive as I should be why am I not closing the deals because everything's their own lens it's like this hyper lack of awareness or situational awareness because they have not had the ability to switch these two lenses how do you go about actually changing this one of the easiest things you can do and we do it at CIA all the time where you imagine anybody anybody that you're close to in your life you take a piece of paper you draw a line right down the middle of the piece of paper on the left side of the paper you write down all the things you try to be for that person on the other side of the paper you have to do the exercise of saying okay if I put myself in my son's shoes what does my son see from me I try to be patient but you know what my son sees he sees me lose my temper he sees me ignore his questions he sees me get frustrated with his mom he sees me work late he sees me wake up early he sees me leave for a business trip some days without saying goodbye well what I find is that now on my side of the paper what I think I'm doing is very different than what he sees me doing and when you see that on the on a piece of paper that's when it really starts to set in like oh I can do this in real time also and you have to see the problem before you can be aware of the problem in real time one of the uh most cool things ever covered on the show right [Music] now so hey guys listen list we're all trying to get more productive and the question is how do you find a way to get an edge I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth a growth-based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster and that's why I love growth day growth day is an app that my friend Brendan brashard has created that I'm a big fan of write this down growth day.com Ed so if you want to be more productive by the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that get your day off to the right start he's got about 5,000 10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app and I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis and I do so go over there and get signed up you're going to get a free tuition free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well so you get a free event out of it also so go to growth day.com sled that's growth day.com sled all right welcome back to the show everybody hey today's going to be interesting I mean really really interesting the man that I have on the show today is a former CIA officer he's a founder of a group called everyday spy which is cool because what they do is they help everyday people learn the skills and strategies that you use in the CIA you can be more influential you'll read people better you know whether you're being lied to situational awareness all the things I'm going to make him talk about today on the show uh so Andrew bamonti first off welcome to the show brother it's great to finally have you here I'm excited to be here Ed thanks very much and uh man just hearing you shoot through that bullet list of things we teach I feel like I'm already talking to an experienced student this is pretty badass well thank you thank you well I'm certainly willing to learn I can tell you that here's what we're gonna do today guys first 20% of the interview I want to talk about the CIA when you got a guy here from the CIA I want to do that and then the remaining 80% will be tactics and strategies okay everyone so hang in there if you're not a CIA interested person that's not going to be that long but I'm fascinated and I got stuff I want to know so that's where we're going to go and we'll get into all the tactics straty stuff first thing Andrew I'm going to go right to the hard stuff did the CIA try to assassinate Donald Trump no this is this is super interesting right and super important for people to understand CIA does not have a domestic footprint post 911 after 911 the mission the oversight the values of CIA uh changed significantly now before 911 back when you're talking about the years of Castro and the Iron Curtain and the JFK assassination CIA was very much a different animal back then it didn't have a lot of oversight it was kind of a dog off a leash and that's who know nobody really knows what happened back then because they didn't even have to report everything they did back then which is why there's so much conspiracy and so much mystery but after the massive intelligence failure of 9911 CIA became very much a dog on a tight leash so um when I saw what happened in Butler Pennsylvania uh I knew for a fact Not only was CIA not culpable for that but it was very likely that that the threat itself wasn't even identified by CIA because it was an American citizen who was not showing any kind of ties to a foreign intelligence organization what about the FBI FBI doesn't FBI is responsible for keeping people safe inside the United States and enforcing law inside the United States but when it comes to close personal protection for uh for a high ranking or high-profile politician like that that's secret services baileywick so FBI would have been in coordination with anything Secret Service was doing but at the end of the day just like we're seeing play out in the headlines Secret Service really does carry the culpability for the event okay I'll ask it a third way and then we'll move on do you believe that this kid acted alone or do you believe Secret Service FBI intelligence agency some other entity tried to take out uh the former president or this was just a breakdown in the Secret Service and local security there and won't happen again so in in the world of intelligence we look at everything through a lens of probabilities probabilities rather than certainties right I would say that it is highly not probable so it is very low likelihood that organizationally any federal organization worked in a conspiratorial way to assassinate the president that does not mean that there may not have been an individual inside one of those organizations who was speaking outside of school or or taking some uh some action on their own and abusing the rights and privilege of their office that may still come out and Frankly Speaking Ed if that is what happened that's going to be one of those closely guarded secrets that the American public never gets to know about but when it comes to the idea that some 20-year-old kid in glasses no less was able to climb up on a roof during uh a rally and and get eight shots off at the president again looking through a lens of probability it's very low likelihood that he really could pull that off by himself self if the machine was working the way it was supposed to work gotcha so it's difficult to to to determine one no but I like the way that you phrase it probability wise because I asked this as a complete Layman and and and just you know my logic test tells me you know why didn't they get the asset at least off the stage once they knew you know things like that why was he not taking off the stage and by the way I'm not that political of a person it's just uh it fascinates me correct me if I'm wrong by the way we're almost moving off CIA to tactics in a minute guys but I want to ask a couple of these things I think a lot of you are interested even if you're a casual political Observer am I wrong that President Trump sort of privatized intelligence when he was the president meaning he was the first president to go I don't trust the CIA and the information they're giving us anymore so I'm gonna I'll call it privatize I don't know if that's the right term or not but basically I'm going to get my intelligence through contract work not through you guys now I've been told this multiple times that's extreme to me and am I wrong about that when I say it no you're actually exactly right about about that Donald Trump was the first one to really turn on the spigot for privatized intelligence now post 911 uh there was the beginnings of private intelligence because the the 9911 commission that the Congress put in motion essentially forced the United States federal government to to uh hire at such a fast rate that they couldn't actually vet and recruit people themselves so they had to turn to your your booze Isen Hamiltons and your cais and your Rons of the world to very quickly hire Personnel who would work on contract so we developed what was called a contract or contractor Cadre but those contractors essentially were still people who worked for Ron they just worked inside of the building under a CIA boss got you what Donald Trump did is he said I don't trust anybody at CIA because CIA is constantly digging into the Russia Scandal they won't let this go right they're supposed to serve me and it's true CIA serves at the beest of the president they serve the executive branch so when Donald Trump decided to stop trusting in CIA he actually started paying completely private outfits to collect foreign intelligence collect drug intelligence collect Military Intelligence execute military operations execute covert action execute covert influence like it was a massive upscale in uh in using private sources that again during the bid Administration was curbed and pulled back down okay all right last thing um the this is a broader perspective not just CIA but just because someone with your background your experience and I have a friend you know that people well I have a friend who's a part of the organization as well and um I've asked him his viewpoint on the United States the next six months and the next five years and you know when I step back as a and again as a as a hack amateur watching this stuff I watched you know an acting president the United States walk out in a debate to me looked like he was set up that night whatever he normally was given to get ready for a debate medically he wasn't given that night uh then the former guy gets assassinated then the existing president decides to withdraw but he's still going to serve as president but he's not going to run for president anymore and I go boy this is going to get really heated the next six months in this country not that it wasn't already and I wonder your forecast for the safety of the country internally the next 6 months and right when November happens and then maybe what you see the next three or 4 or five years here it's a great question um and I I think that your observations what you're doing is you're reading the the bones right you're reading the wall and the writing on the wall Ed um the fact that we've seen what we've seen at the executive level meaning that the commander-in-chief of the military the president of the United States the senior diplomat for foreign policy what we have seen from that position not just in the last 6 months but really going back to early Obama really even all the way back if you want to I have many peers that say we really started to see a change in that office when Bill Clinton lied on the stand under oath about having sexual relations right so what we've seen is this transformation at the at the top of our food chain where integrity and honesty and courage and com and um conviction has come in question and that's the leader of the land who is also known as the leader of the Free World so without a doubt this transformation that we've all been witnessing is not anywhere close to over I try to explain it as adolescence if you think about the United States we're still a young country we are not nearly as old as Russia we're not as old as China we're not we don't have the cultural um bones that you see in places like India or France or Germany or even the UK right we are young and we're basically entering middle school right now in terms of our growth and middle school middle school sucks man nobody liked Middle School your body changes your voice changes you smell bad people are mean to you like that's where our country is going right now and that is going to look like conflicts between parties and polarization economic recession um all sorts of back and forth uh uh developing conflicts with foreign Nations backing allies changing allies just like we're seeing right now with with our work in Ukraine and Israel um and and what does that mean that that doesn't mean that there's going to be imminent physical threats in the United States and I'll tell you why because most of the countries out there realize that the United States is still their bread and butter they need American dollars they need trade with America they need buyers and customers from the United States that's what makes the world run because we're a globalized world and we are the only superpower in the world so the chances of us having an invasion in the United States by Russia or a nuclear missile that goes off in Washington DC that's sent by China or North Korea the odds are very very low because the rest of the world wants to feed on us we're their fat cow however that doesn't mean they're not going to sit back and watch us kill each other from the inside and watch us undermine each other it's really the the the next me the next 5 to 10 years is going to be shaped on the backs of of leaders entrepreneurs and and people who are smart enough to recognize that the socioeconomic divide in the United States is going to get bigger and more pronounced and that means that the people on the top of the socioeconomic food chain the people making $150,000 a year or more the people who are in management or executive leadership or entrepreneurial roles those people are going have exponentially more impact in the future than they have right now but we're going to be fighting a socioeconomic bottom class that is very similar to what happened in Venezuela yes where poorer class is going to start to drive politics for the poor instead of politics for the nation very interesting yeah very interesting okay what I've been asking you about in number going tactic strategies everybody so hey guys I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth and by the way it's no secret how people get ahead in Life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future if you want to change your future you got to change the things you're doing if you continue to do the same things you're probably going to produce the same results but if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented you're much more likely to do that yourself and that's why I love growth Day write this down for a second growth day.com Ed my friend brenon brushard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life everything from goal setting software to personal accountability journaling courses thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influencers like the Avengers of influencers and business Minds in there get the Netflix for high Achievers or people that want to be high Achievers so go check it out my friend Brennan's made it very affordable very easy to get involved go to growth.com sled that's growth day.com Ed what I've really been asking you about is a form I get metaphorically of situational awareness and I want you to talk about this uh concept for everybody you know guys one of the main things I've noticed as I travel and I speak if I'm being candid is the lack of self-awareness and situational awareness most people have I think one of the most attractive qualities for me of friends of mine and people in my life and people I hire to come to work for me is self-awareness and situational awareness and I I'm Blown Away by the amount of people that lack both they can't read the room they don't know about threats and opportunities they don't know how people view them they're not cognizant of the energy they put off and what people are feeling and they also don't read uh the tarot cards very well of forecasting the future for themselves and business just like why I just asked you about the country so just I'll give you the floor on it talk a little bit about those two concepts for us yeah so when you talk about self-awareness and situational awareness it's the just super important and interconnected topics just like you were saying self-awareness is basically an awareness of your own limitations as well as your own natural strengths and Gifts you have to be aware of both unfortunately what happens is many people become either ignorant of both or hyperfocused on one or the other but not both things simultaneously understanding their gifts but also understanding their limitations when you talk about situational awareness it's the exact opposite it's about being aware of what's Happening outside of you in your area um anybody who's watched uh you know CNN or Fox News has seen a situation room a situation room is very much a real thing in the intelligence World whenever an event happens that is catastrophic or dangerous we call it a situation and you bring people together of different disciplines and you all have them pay attention to the situation so that we can try to get one step ahead of cascading events so situational awareness is what you can do to get yourself one step ahead of the environment around you and there's a very specific framework and there's a very specific process that you can use to go through that and get yourself ahead of your environment um but it takes effort and it takes work just like self-awareness takes effort and takes work what is sad rat sad rat is a framework that CIA teaches to essentially take advantage of a process that is inherent in the cognitive building building blocks of every human being so that you can create human assets an asset being a person who is of value to you yeah so Sadat does it's interesting that you you ask this along with your situational awareness question because Sadat takes advantage of people's inherent weakness for recognizing their own values and their own gifts Y and also exploits another person's lack of situational awareness so when you're coming across an average person a lay person a customer a client a competitor when they are both ignorant of their own strengths and and uh values and simultaneously not attentive to the situation around them they are a prime candidate for being converted into a human asset using the sad rat system and sad rat is I got it here it's SP it's spotting assessing developing recruiting agent handling determination so there's a a process to this so I want to pick that apart a little bit but I'm going to shove something in there with you on it CU I was like the reason I wanted you on I was like well he says some stuff I've not ever heard before and I love little micro uh distinctions and so one of them for me was this difference between perspective and perception Absolut this is all still to me in the same family of situational or self-awareness to some extent like understanding the difference between these two things is profound I don't think I even ever really even thought about it until I was reading through your work so let's go through that for a second perception and perspective absolutely so so perception and perspective just like you said had two words that often times get used interchangeably people people don't stop to think about the difference between these two words um but just like we talked about situational awareness and self-awareness and the distinction between them the same thing exists with perception and perspective perception is about how you view the world around you so where you sit and you look out on your bedroom and you look out from your front window of your house or you look uh you look behind the driver's wheel of a car that's your perception of the world you see a sunny day and you believe that a sunny day is a good day and you look at the car in front of you and it looks like it's only moving it's moving at the same speed right it looks like there's that the car is not moving at all because the distance between you in the car in front of you isn't increasing or decreasing so that's your perception that's your perception of the world perspective is when you step out of your own shoes and sit in somebody else's shoes and look at the world from their point of view so when you step out of your shoes and pretend that you are the FedEx delivery guy for the day what does that FedEx guys day look like because from you from you sitting inside your house you see the FedEx arrive drop off a box get back in the car and leave that's it that's it that's the only that's the only time he crosses paths with you in your day so you don't even think about him you just think about whether your package got delivered but in reality that man or woman came from somewhere is going somewhere next you don't know if they couldn't find your box if they dropped your box if your box has been like under a stack of other boxes that were heavier but that person knows all that so what ends up happening is you gain an advantage over everybody around you when you stop thinking about your perception and start thinking about their perspective because you're getting more informational data points about the situation this the current reality whereas the person who's trapped in their own perception who's literally just sitting there thinking when am I going to get out of this meeting what's my next cup of coffee who's pinging me on my phone that person is so trapped in their own world that they're losing all of the data all of the information around them it's just like you talked about the person who can't read the room Ed the person who can't read the room is the person trapped in their perception brother this is a so here's everybody stay right here everyone what we're talking about right now look in personal development or persuasion or self whatever you want to call it selfimprovement there's very few New Frontiers like work that can break open a new paradigm and this is it so brother I did not know I was going to have you on the show uh last week I put a podcast out called change the lens I'll tell you what it was and then I want to unpack this with you a little bit because this is if someone can get their mind around this it will literally change their life as you know right so I was at my mom's house a couple years back like a year ago and I want to just take a picture of myself for social media which as a middle-aged man is weird and of itself right but so I got to take the picture so here's the phone right I go to take the picture except the lens was flipped and it was I could see my mom not me and this massive thing hit me I switched the lens I wasn't not now seeing it my way I was seeing my mom seeing me and it made me very emotional because I started to think about how much what what her experience of her relationship with me has been for the last 52 years 53 years and how many times I've walked in and gave her a kiss and then talked to my dad for three hours and left or didn't ask her how she's really doing her childhood her life her emo and then I started applying it to almost every relationship I've got I've changed the lens to your point and it made me realize I've actually always been pretty good at this which is why I'm persuasive I don't see everything from my own perspective I think I want you to elaborate and give us maybe an application of this I think this is like the great blind spot for most people who are wondering why I'm not moving forward and attracting the relationship I want in my life why am I not as persuasive as I should be why am I not closing the deals why would I walk in a boardroom because everything's their own lens it's like this hyper lack of awareness or situational awareness because they have not had the ability to switch these two lenses or to your point perspective and perception so how can someone apply this where would they apply it how would they reply it I mean you you just rattled off a number of fantastic places to to apply this concept uh a job interview a client briefing a pitch a negotiation um when you're on a date when you're trying to get a date when you're considering how to propose to a to a partner that you've been serious with for a long time these are all excellent places to apply the perception and perspective framework and your in your words at to flip the lens because if you can in that moment in in just that five 10 15 minute window of time if you can stop and think what does this moment feel like to them yep you're going to have an advantage in being able to shape that moment even better in your best interests that's right because you'll be able to think oh they probably want to hear me say these words they probably want to see me act this way they probably want to understand that this emergency situation is taken care of whatever it might be there's something they're looking for and until you step out of your perception and into their perspective you won't know what it is that they want now you also asked that how do you go about actually changing this one of the easiest things you can do and we do it at CIA all the time is a simple like desktop paper exercise right where you imagine anybody anybody that you're close to in your life you can imagine your child you can imagine your boss you can imagine your your coworker your business partner your spouse anybody at all you you take a piece of paper you draw a line right down the middle of the piece of paper on the left side of the paper you write down all the things you try to be for that person you try to be reliable you try to be honest you try to be fair you try to be you know timely you try to be professional whatever it is on the other side of the paper you have to do the exercise of saying okay if I put myself in my son's shoes what does my son see from me I try to be patient but you know what my son sees he sees me lose my temper right he sees me uh ignore his questions he sees me get frustrated with his mom he sees me work late he sees me wake up early he sees me leave for a business trip some days without saying goodbye well what I find is that now on my side of the paper what I think I'm doing is very different than what he sees me doing and when you see that on the on a piece of paper that's when it really starts to set in like oh I can do this in real time also and you have to see the problem before you can be aware of the problem in real time that's that's what's so hard that's the intelligence piece of it yeah last night I was in this room I'm in right now with my son and his very good friend who I love like a second son and they're at this age now they're both in their 20s where they like want real feedback they think right so just they're sitting about 30 feet from where I am right now and I call them boys but they're in their 20s and both boys said hey what do you think would hold me back dad you know or and he calls me Dad too from from winning and I uh started to give them a real answer and I started to watch the face of the other boy as I was doing it and there was just a point in my feedback where I went over a line that was his comfort level for what he was hearing but because I've switched the lens and I was actually listening to that conversation from his perspective I saw when that line got moved where ID crossed it and I was able to Pivot and move it and bring him back up and build him back up again this is a really important thing you guys in all of your relationships from your business stuff to everything that you do it also just takes the pressure off you from seeing things from their perspective I think the work that um Andrew's doing on this stuff is like super Cutting Edge I totally support it I love it this show is sponsored by betterhelp everybody and I'm so grateful that we are because you know I really believe in therapy and so many people ask me what have all the people on your show have in common because I've had athletes entertainers you know scientists political figures Business Leaders self-improvement folks and what do they all have in common the vast majority of them have been to therapy and it's helped them and so therapy can help you in a lot of different ways it could be that you just really need to work through a challenge or a problem you've got right now maybe you just need somebody to talk to but maybe you're going through a really difficult dark time and you need some professional help to work your way through it and that's why I love therapy but especially better help because you can do it online and if you don't Vibe with your therapist they'll switch you out and get you somebody that you click with instantly it can make a big difference in your life so whether you're going through just kind of a difficult time and want to talk out loud about it therapy is the way to go and I love better health so never skip therapy day with betterhelp visit betterhelp.com edow today to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com edow what I've been terrible at in my life and I know there's no bulletproof way on this but I've not been good at knowing when someone's deceiving me in my life I've had a tendency like many people to project my own values onto the people that I interact with and just assume that they think and operate like I do so I'm surprised I've gotten as far Andrew honestly brother in my life in business with an inability frankly to detect deception lying or even someone's not not great personal interest of mine they don't have my personal interest how can someone this would be huge if you how how do you know when you're being deceived or you can be tipped off the potentially you are being lied to how do you know that so I'm going to start by answering your question by telling you what is not reliable most of what you see online most of what you see on Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube about watching how people react in their face what's known as micro Expressions most of that is absolute hogwash just totally not realistic not not applicable to the everyday world and here's why it's not because those people are phonies or Liars many of them are are legitimately trained interrogators and special operators like they are correct that micro expressions are a tool for lie deception or lie detection what they are leaving out though is that you can only use those expressions if you are in a what's known as a constrained or confined environment when you control the environment and the the the asset or the target sitting across from you is a captive audience when you control their environment that's the only time you can rely on micro Expressions it when they can just walk away when you're talking to somebody on the street or in the office or at the at the water cooler at the coffee shop if they have freedom of movement all that microexpression stuff goes out the window because they don't feel under imminent threat you have to put somebody in a confined environment where they feel the pressure of an imminent threat in order for their body to work against them like that so that doesn't work that doesn't work so instead what the agency teaches us to do in the field because CIA operates outside of interrogation rooms we operate on the street we operate in the trenches you know in the caves with terrorists we need to deal with people on their home turf which is really much more akin to everyday life so what you're looking for for for lie detection or deception in everyday life is you're looking for what's known as a Baseline and then a deviation from that Baseline so let me give you an example right um You you know your dentist you see your dentist probably every six months or so and you've gotten a Cadence over the last two or three cleanings for what their mood generally looks like you already know you'd be be able to tell if you sat down in the chair your dentist came in and they were in a bad mood M because it's a deviation from their Baseline you can apply the same thing to people who are trying to buy from you people who are trying to sell to you people who are trying to you know uh gain equity in your business or people who are trying to borrow or lend from you you need to measure them over time to see what is Baseline Behavior they normally twitch they're normally late they normally talk fast they're normally nervous they're normally quiet whatever normal Baseline is you'll see that over time even if it's just over 60 minutes or so because you do need an extended period of time to get a baseline 10 minutes not enough time to get a baseline somebody can fake it for 10 minutes it's hard for somebody to fake it for 60 minutes that's that takes a lot of energy so once you have a baseline now you're looking for deviations from that Baseline so when you're talking to somebody when you're buying a car and you're negotiating a price and they've been smooth talking the whole time and then you throw at them that you want 15% off the MSRP and then they're like the smooth talking ends and they they struggle to respond and then they respond with something like I I don't think we can make that work that's just too much that's a lie because it it was a deviation from Baseline if right away they would have been like oh you know I understand the 15% off is something you're looking for but that is outside of the norm for our for our dealership chances are that's that's the truth because it was very very normal it was within Baseline but when you see people deviate from Baseline that's the best way to tell whether or not they're lying to you in a moment or the reverse right if there's somebody who struggles to answer questions all of a sudden you ask something they pop right out that's a deviation from their normal processing pattern they're probably lying because this was they were ready for the objection to okay I got you you said imminent threat earlier I always wanted to ask you this I've had good buddies of mine that been on that have you know or seals and whatnot and one of the parts that I didn't know about the CIA but I've learned through researching about you was that you guys do go through training on um if you find yourself in an interrogation or torture situation and I'm wondering what if anything somebody can apply in their own day-to-day life that you learn there meaning this in our own minds and I'm not equating these things at all but you know exactly what I mean the world is caving in on us I just lost my job my spouse left me both those things happen whatever it is I'm going through my own form of internal and I don't mean to equate to things I just I'm trying to delineate a lesson learned from the most extreme situation that we can apply in a less extreme situation in our lives so what what can be learned from what you learned about going through interrogation or torture that someone could apply in their own life in their own somehow small way when they're going through their form of mental torture or anxiety or worry so there there are two really powerful tools that we learned in our resistance training and resistance is what you're talking about resisting the fear of torture because often times when you're trying to forcefully interrogate somebody it's the fear of the unknown that makes them fall apart it's not actually when they're getting slapped or getting punched it's when they're sitting in the chair and they don't know what's coming next and that's what really gets into your head and that's part of the Psychedelic or the psychological manifestation of torture in advance of physical torture and that's what that's exactly what you're saying Ed when you say that the world is caving in Upon Us mhm what that mean you can relate to the person who's sitting in the chair before the torture starts where they're like oh what's coming next the world is collapsing I have no control I don't know what's going to happen that's that feeling so the two main tools that they gave us to cope with that sort of situation and I I I have used these countless times in my own business man because business is a wild Rodeo of of the world the first is something called false dichotomy false dichotomy false dichotomy means you create a two scenario situation right false dichotomy yes or no on or off red or green you create a dichotomy you force yourself to believe there's only two options even though there's countless options you force yourself to believe two very fundamental options let me give you an example from business um I remember when I was first starting out when I first quit my full-time job and I first started being uh full-time with my owny company everyday spy I knew that to keep my family afloat I needed $4,000 a month to keep my family afloat but I didn't know every month if I was going to make $4,000 a month some months I made 2,000 some months I made 10,000 I never knew where it was going to come from so it would cause me great stress and I would lose sleep at night and I would ring my hands and I would worry about am I going to even am I going to have to go find a job am I going to crash this business before it even takes off so I applied the false dichotomy where I would tell myself it's either going to live or it's going to die that's it the business is gonna live or it's gonna die period once I said those are the two options I had no control over those options I didn't need to to stay up at night worrying about is this thing gonna sell is that thing gonna sell am i g to get this client is that client going to leave me all of the wh ifs went away because it's either going to live or it's going to die the end and that is something that we use all the time in the field because there's countless wh ifs but if you focus yourself on a basic dichotomy very good it shuts all those voices off very good that's funny in my life of the things I've really feared and worried about were the unknown I handle them very poorly internally my anxiety my heart rate my stress level what's most amazing to me is when the really bad things have actually happened I've handled them very very well that's what's bizarre and so to your point about the woring of the unknown is so totally true because I'm processing all these SARS but actually when really bad things have happened last night Inside Story I have a lighter for um my cigars and uh I put the butane in it incorrectly where it like I didn't realize it but it got all over the lighter and I went to this is true everybody this just happened last night I went to light my lighter and it caught me on fire and actually you can't tell today but I burned part of my hair and and like it you know I'm I don't know what I'm doing you can't just pour water on the flame and it's a really and I after it happened the two boys were here I said I'm my heart rate didn't move a millimeter like not a millimeter I just reacted it ended up being okay and they're like Dad your hair's on fire I'm like really okay and I put the but the point that I'm making I'm fine I don't even have any Burns it wasn't that serious my point is my heart rate's gone ballistically higher on things that have never happened in my life that are nowhere near as serious because of the unknown aspect of it so this dichotomy thing I'm like stealing that tomorrow bro that's that is killer hey guys I want to talk to you about Shopify look you know when I started the show the furthest thing from my mind was doing online business and now I can't imagine my life without it so I love Shopify because they're a global Commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business so whether you're in the startup phase where you're just launching your online store or you're at that really big business where you're like hey we just hit a a million bucks in order stage Shopify is there to help you grow they've helped me through every single stage I wouldn't even know what to do without them so whether you're selling shipping supplies or promoting productivity programs Shopify helps you everywhere from their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system wherever and whatever you're selling shopify's got you covered big time they help turn browsers into buyers they convert their checkouts 36% better than all the leading competitors and I've used them for everything I do online so every single thing you that I Market online Shopify is somehow involved I wouldn't even know what to do without them sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com milet all lowercase go to shopify.com milet now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com myet is that why also I'm surprised a CIA guy would say this or maybe I'm wrong that you didn't say it so correct me if wrong that anxiety is actually superpower for someone correct yeah that that is how's that true how's that true it's true in a number of ways and nobody talks about it because people don't understand it right so anxiety true anxiety which is different than the anxiety that is tied to worry or the anxiety that's tied to the unknown right like 25% of Americans suffer from anxiety the people who truly have anxiety no everybody else doesn't really know what it feels like okay because real anxiety comes from when you don't even know what it is that you're upset about like that's the true anxiety when it's when something festers in your gut and you don't even know what's bothering you because it's almost on a six sense kind of a level yeah and there's still a large number of people who have that but it's not the person like when I get worried about payroll at the end of the month that's not anxiety okay right but when I'm sitting there and I'm like something doesn't feel right and I can't sleep and it's nagging at me and and and my stomach feels bad and and I've got all this nervous energy and I'm just off off center there are a number of people who suffer that anxiety a number of very high- performing people who suffer from anxiety because what's happening is cognitively your brain is picking up on cues that your prefrontal cortex can't register so it's almost like your monkey brain your animalistic brain is seeing a threat that your cognitive brain cannot identify yet and that threat is being processed in the deeper parts of your brain and manifesting physiologically in your body now when you hear about what is actually causing anxiety you start to see why it's a superpower because it's like a spidey sense Spider-Man doesn't even have to see what's GNA happen before he knows that something's about to happen and as a as a result of that spidey sense Ed what happens is you naturally become more cognitively aware of the world around you okay so your monkey brain turns on your frontal brain your human brain to a high higher level so now those are the people who are better at forecasting uh bad events better at forecasting good events they're easier at flipping between perception and perspective because their their brains have been pressure tested inoculated over time with the stress of feeling anxiety and for that reason it causes the the lay person the average person with anxiety struggles in life because they don't know how to turn this this ceed weakness into a power what CIA does CIA recruits us because we have anxiety really and then teaches us how to tap into it and use it for what its purpose is really that's you're telling me that that's a criteria that is looked for somebody with anxiety that is a category that is a an inherent skill an innate skill that when it's identified it's dovetailed into very specific job categories got you do you believe that I didn't know I was going to ask you this today do you believe that you can cross a line with anxiety or worry and I understand the distinction between the two now that I didn't before where cuz I am one of those people as are a lot of my mega successful friends however I've wondered in my life because I also believe in vibrational frequency and energy and uh I'm also a Christian but I do believe in that and I've wondered if I've created uh or drawn to me things I've subconsciously worried about or had anxiety about in my life that I otherwise would not have had come into my world had I not repetitively thought about it do you believe in any of that and if so do you think that someone should guard against that if they're one of these worriers or anxiety people so what I am not a person who who tends to believe in much I tend to take objective fact y i take objective fact and I try to synthesize it into knowledge that I can then use predictably and um what I've seen in my clients as well as what you're saying right now about yourself and your own peer group has been really consistent what I believe is happening is where where people write books about vibrations and the Law of Attraction etc etc etc maybe that's true maybe but here's what I do know I know that people who have a heightened sensitivity that causes them anxiety those are people who have greater informational awareness of what's happening in the world around them because they have greater informational awareness they start preparing now for something that may not happen for another six months and then when the thing happens in six months they know how to deal with it you just said it yourself a few minutes ago Ed when really bad things have happened you've handled them really well for me that's not a surprise for me that's because if you tell me that you s struggle with anxiety and you tell me that you deal with bad situations well it's because subconsciously you've been preparing for that bad situation for a long time so then when it actually happened you already had a a process kind of in your brain for how to deal with it whereas the average person who does not have anxiety who does not prepare for a negative event who is not even aware that things bad things are happening around them their monkey brain is working against them yeah so then when bad happens they literally are deer in the headlights I bet you don't have many deer in the headlights moments yeah I don't by the way this is such a great conversation brother but you know I don't I've always wondered those two things like I definitely am a fearful worrying guy and I also have anxiety and I understand the difference yet maybe a lot of you relate to this that are listening yet when crunch times come you get it done I'm pretty calm and I execute and that's really a fascinating description of why I am both of those people what you just said so if you think about it right if 25% of the American population has clinical anxiety which means some psychologist is giving them a drug to make them feel better you and I now know it's not really 25% of the population that has true anxiety it's more like 12 to 15% that have true anxiety and if you get your hands on those 12 to 15% and you put them in your business and you put them in your executive team and you put them in your National Security infrastructure those people are going to deal with emergencies better than anyone else and guess what the only thing guaranteed in life man is the unknown yeah so they might lose sleep they might not eat well they might gain weight they might become reclusive they might self-destruct by the age of 60 you don't know but what you do know is that when the hits the fan that person has got your back and they are going to be unfappable in that moment of of Terror where other people will shut down quit give up or get rolled over yeah one of the uh most cool things ever covered on the show right now by the way if you're a parentless in this and you got a child who's got like real anxiety like the real one you ought to let them watch this because their future is brighter than they think their future is so bright man my wife my wife is a former CIA officer just like me we met at CIA she's amazing she's a badass she has anxiety and her anxiety drives her to stay at home and her anxiety drives her to like be an introvert and just kind of stay away from the world where I put myself out there in the world but I put myself out there to tell you that if you think I'm smart and if you think I'm impressive and if you think I'm helpful she is 10x me in every way because her anxiety has made her so much of a better fit for all of those tasks and the reason that our company still stands and continues to grow at an awesome rate is because when hits the fan I have somebody who I can tap on the shoulder and say I don't know what to do right now and she's like I got you we got this you guys have you ever heard this before because I've never heard this before and it's uh first off at at my age and people I'm just picturing in my life right now it's completely True by the way other people I know it's completely accurate it's totally true what's the uh I'm watching you talk you're interesting because you obious have this very fascinating background um your IQ is very high you process information super quickly but you're also like and I'm not just I'm you're you're a great communicator all these things are obvious to the people listening or watching what you're persuasive what is a major mistake people make thinking they're being persuasive but they're really not tough question yeah you know it's it's a great question uh people often misunderstand what persuasion really is uh especially they when they confuse persuasion and influence right two very different things okay because persuasion has to do with the current moment and it has to do with creating a creating emotional momentum That's What Makes You persuasive if you can get somebody on an emotional drive an emotional driver in the present moment you can persuade them to take the action you want them to take and CIA is very very focused on creating officers who can persuade in the field Under Pressure because we don't I mean we're not meeting with nice people in the world we're meeting with terrorists and drug dealers and human traffickers and and the scum of the universe right that's that those are the people who have the secrets that we need so those are the people we have to sit across the table from break bread and share coffee right that's that's where that's where we operate so we have to get in order to get those people to take an action especially an action that's not in their best interest like Espionage you have to get them on an emotional uh Tempo that gets them to agree with what you're saying so that's persuasion influence is what happens when you're not even around and they're reflecting on what you said and they're digesting the relationship you have with them right right now you and I are on this call Ed and if I'm if I'm getting you to agree with me there's some persuasive energy there but two hours from now when you're having lunch and you grab that fork and you stick it in your salad and you're like that that conversation I'm still thinking about this topic that's influence dude so good so good I'm just when I do shows I'm a little bit different like I process stuff in real time nothing's sort of organized when I go and um that's the difference between a great show and an okay show there are there are times where it's 5 hours later and I'm still processing the person said so they weren't just persuasive they were influential so so good hey guys don't let the back to school season set back your nutrition for you or your family my family we've been using green Chef now for over a year green Chef is making it easy to stick to your smart eating habits with a new more flexible menu featuring 35 customizable recipe options every single week new options including doubling your portion for protein which is what I do I get double protein every single time I got to tell you something these recipes are delicious so it's a way to get healthy to get fit again and actually to save time and money people have asking me hey man you look a lot leaner lately one of the reasons is in addition to the meals we have that we cook at home or going out there's a lot of greenchef going on in our household and it's yummy and delicious and healthy so check out greenchef by going to greenchef.com myet class for 50% off your first box plus 50 free credits with class pass that's code milet class at greenchef.com mlet class to get 50% off your first box plus 50 free class pass credits can you tell us I'm just I want to go back to the Spy thing um you had some involvement with like uh nuclear missile officer experience right what the heck is that like what can you tell us about it and what did you what did you learn from it oh my gosh I learned I learned a lot about myself man I learned a lot about the world so when I was with the before CIA recruited me I was with the US Air Force and I was a US Air Force officer and I was assigned to a to a nuclear missile Squadron as a nuclear missile control officer which is uh if anybody speaks military my Air Force specialty code was 13 Sierra that was my job was a nuclear missile officer and that that is the job that sits underground that is the job that programs in the coordinates for where your nuclear warheads are going to land I was in command and when I was Underground when I started my military career I had 10 nuclear missiles each missile had 10 individual Warheads on them so there were a 100 Warheads that I knew where those Warheads would go if I pressed a button and turned a key by the time I left the military and got recruited to CIA I had been promoted to be the youngest Commander for the entire missile base so I had four squadrons and each of those squadrons had 40 missile and each of those missiles had 10 Warheads so you're talking about thousands of independently um targetable Warheads so the biggest thing I learned Ed the biggest thing I learned is that every single one of us is replaceable every one of us is replaceable and I learned that because even in the missile structure in the in the when preparing for allout nuclear war you can't have a single point of failure so the keys that I wear around my neck launch my missile but they will also launch the missile of every other uh capsule in my Squadron so when I turn my key and you don't turn your key if we're in the same Squadron it doesn't matter your missiles will launch because I turned my key we don't even need you vice versa if I'm if I'm taking a dump when all out nuclear missile War hits and I can't turn my key but you turn your key my missiles are gone so I'm just a backup and you're just a backup and both of us back each other up but we also aren't the single point of failure because there's also a command host that can turn the keys for all the squadrons and then there's an aircraft that can fly overhead that can turn the keys for every Squadron in every missile base all across the United States so we are all backups to a backup to a backup to a backup and I remember how how that struck me when I first started that job I was like oh I must be important and I must be well trained because I've got nuclear missiles that I'm responsible for until the time that I became the base commander and I was like none of these people matter because I can launch all their missiles with a turn of my own key I get shot an airplane can launch for me and that but it humbled me it humbled me because anything I'm doing you know I am very aware every day that while I live in a business Niche that's really just me there isn't another former CIA officer teaching CIA skills that break barers in everyday life there's nobody that's not going to last forever sure someday a competitor will emerge someday multiple competitors will emerge and thank God I had that missile experience because now I am very aware that even when I could take my foot off the throttle I keep pushing forward because the day is coming I am replaceable and I need to get as much of a head start today as as possible because when the day comes that a threat arises the only Advantage I'm going to have that day day is my Head Start So Good by the way his organization is called everyday spy you guys you can already tell the type of content you'd learn is not uh well here's why I like it one it's different and two it's from Real World application in an environment that pushes the theories to their extreme truth because of the nature in which he's the environment he learned these things in let me ask you this last question first I want to tell you one thing I've really enjoyed the day really enjoyed the day and it went by very quickly and I would I don't always say this but I'd love to have you come back on next year we us wait a year but I'd love to have you come back on because I have a million other things I'd like to ask you but I want to ask you this my my children are here on my island with me now and they way you know often I'm not with them and someday hopefully I'll have grandkids and I'm just wondering as as a man who was in the CIA involved in the nuclear program whatever you want to call it's way above my pay grade if we knew what you knew if us all listening to this knew what you knew about intelligence around the world and how the government really operates internally and the Border CR everything in the world would we feel safer than we all feel dayto day in our ignorant situation or would we feel much less safe and more concerned the short answer is that you would feel much less safe you would feel much more concerned and you would lose a lot more sleep but I try not to focus on that that may be the fact of it but I try not to focus on that because instead what we get the opportunity to do is look at the world around us in the United States especially look at the world around us and appreciate what we have today because it really could be gone in a matter of days if we went the direction that some of these other countries have gone look at Venezuela less than 50 years ago Venezuela was a version of the United States and now it is a disaster look at look at Israel and Palestine right now right look at what's happened with uh the historic locations in Ukraine right the the world that we have built around ourselves as Americans in the United States in the Western countries that is a world that is it's always just a few degrees away from totally toppling over and because democracy is such an experiment where authoritarianism has been around for a long time democracy is always going through these uncomfort shifts so sometimes the economy is good sometimes the economy is bad sometimes we like our leadership sometimes we don't sometimes the court system seems sound sometimes the court system seems corrupt because we're still figuring it out right it's it's it's back to being that adolescent conversation again but are you are you gonna stay here and if you don't stay here let's say five years from now you gonna stay in the United States and if you don't where would you go I mean it's a big it's a great big conversation we can have anytime Ed but I am I plan to leave the United States I plan to leave the United States before 2030 I plan to take my children my wife my business and everything um overseas uh some of the countries on my short list I'm looking at Spain Portugal Costa Rica uh Armenia uh Australia New Zealand because what I see in all of those countries is a a level of stability and a level of favoritism towards American citizens and unfortunately what that means is that as our country goes through its struggles your children and my children will have fewer opportunities in the country where we're from but if we take our children and our citizenship our passport our US dollars to another country that is stable our children will have exponentially more opportunities in that country than they do here right just think about trying to get your kids into college or trying to get your kids registered for for summer soccer right like sometimes it's it's so difficult even though you have built this amazing life what the bureaucracy of and the structure of it all makes it so that you can't get anything done but if you go to a place that's just a little bit more like politically stable and a little bit more uh uh economically flexible now you can get basically anything done because your status and your influence matters more there I hope you're wrong I remain optimistic that it's just amazing that I'm sitting here at a time in my life where someone is suggest sugesting that Costa Rica or Spain could be a more stable political environment than the United States that's just a stark deviation from what I grew up at least ignorantly thinking or maybe accurately thinking so I hope you're wrong I remain optimistic I'm going to have you back on we ought to extrapolate that conversation a little bit more deeply and um but I appreciate the honesty and the cander from your perspective very much so I I hope I'm wrong too Ed trust me I I hope I am wrong too but for me probabilities wise I've got to consider all the options I understand that's why I ask you the question hey guys this's a great ride today you are welcome and I want you to share this show with anybody you can go check out everyday spy that is also his Instagram handle as well and um you guys just share the show fastest growing show in the world because you guys share it because of compelling conversations like today with Andrew thanks everybody God bless [Music] n [Music]