USAF Special Warfare Assessment & Selection Prep- Work Ethic Tips

you're listening to the ones ready podcast a team of air force special operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience as well as a decade of selection instructor experience if you're tired of settling and you want to do something you truly believe in you're in the right place now here's your host pj team leader former indock instructor supervisor entrepreneur and physician assistant brian silva all right what's happening everybody brian silva for the ones ready podcast thanks again for joining us in the team room today we're going to just be you know just kind of low-key us in the team room we know it's been a little bit of a difficult year for everybody and just all the stuff going on you know with the election all that kind of stuff we need to take a break we need to talk about something that's not politics we need to straight up talk about you know get back into the groove and get back into training because life goes on no matter what happens so thanks again for joining us in the team room um you know today's episode is going to be all about work ethic um we got a lot of stuff going on right now aaron just finished a whole couple weeks of training he's been out in the field you know sleeping three four hours a day um you know out there jobbing it so we felt like yeah we felt like a work ethic episode would be uh you know pretty good for this week and jared is also on the road he's in the middle of pcsing we might have him pop in here at some point in time whenever he gets a chance but like i said we're always out here trying to grind and trying to get stuff done and make sure that you guys have the best information out there possible and try and share our experiences we hope you guys are enjoying the podcast if you are make sure you go ahead and go on apple podcast give us a five star rating drop a comment you know and if you ever want to hear anything or see anybody on the show just let us know and we'll try and get some really awesome guests we have some lined up and we'll get those out to you soon so um you know again just for the people that don't know us we have some people that are not sponsors but they're friends of ours that uh are awesome companies veteran owned and everything and uh we like to just give a shout out to them so right here hoist um you know they hook us up and they're working on the military type of contract because they're way better than gatorade i know we've traditionally used gatorade at the schoolhouse and all that kind of stuff but we personally all love hoist and i drink it you know after every workout and my wife drinked it drank it through pregnancy the kids love it you know everyone loves it great flavors and it has all the electrolytes unlike some of the other uh beverages out there that only have uh you know sodium and calcium that kind of stuff so make sure you check them out and use the code one's ready whenever you go to checkout so work ethic getting back on that topic um so i'm going to just read you this is what google says workout i guess the principle of that hard work is intrinsically virtuous or worthy of reward now what does that mean to you guys it means that when you put forth the effort um you get that reward of seeing the result of it and it's you know something that's intrinsically in all of us that we want to continue to strive forward and continue to better ourselves no matter what the cost is and it's something that we should always do especially if you're looking to get getting into something like you know special warfare make sure that you are you know putting forth all the effort waking up in the morning all those kind of things that uh people find a little bit more difficult when you're at a younger age and you don't see the result or the end state but it's totally worth it so we're going to talk about that stuff and it's one of the most uh important values you can adopt in life so getting into it a little bit uh aaron what would you rather have a dude that was insanely talented or a dude that was insanely hard working i'm gonna go insanely hard working not not just because it's the entire topic of what we're talking about here today but we actually just threw around in one of the group chats that i'm on with a bunch of other uh jay type dudes we uh so it's a fantasy football podcast but every once in a while we talk about work stuff we try to keep it to a minimum but we were talking about this very thing we were talking about work ethic and i brought up the video if you haven't seen the video of will smith talking about the difference between talent and skill he talks about the only thing that makes him remarkably different than other people is a ridiculous sickening work ethic i will take somebody that has a work ethic that cannot be stopped an undeniable will i'll take that over somebody that has raw talent ten times out of ten you know you might be wrong that one time out of ten maybe you had there's a generational talent you just misjudged their work ethic or maybe you didn't see them at their best day but i'll take somebody that just grinds every single day those type of dudes that you never see out of the gym you never see them slipping up on on the little stuff they're always tight you know i have a couple of guys that work for me right now that it's one of those things where yeah they're extremely talented but more so they've impressed me with their work ethic just willing to be there every single day and the will smith video is awesome if you haven't got it it's literally called talent versus skill but you know he talks about the only thing that's that's distinctly different about him is that he's not willing to or he's not afraid to die on a treadmill so he says you may be smarter than me they may have more talent than me but if you get on a treadmill next to me two things are gonna happen you're getting off first or i'm gonna die so i think that really embodies you know what we talk about too you there are plenty of people that have gotten through the pipeline in one shot like never had to reval never had to get set back i'm not one of those people i've had to re-eval i've been set back like i haven't gotten through my type tire pipeline clean and i think that there's value and being able to grind it out exactly and i think you know faced with the adversity of the pipeline you can't plan for everything it's not like you know we've had olympians that have come on um you know to selection or people that have graduated from ivy league schools or whatever and obviously they have those innate talents but without that work ethic of knowing that you know you're going to fail at some point there's going to be someone that's better than you and you're going to have to pull forth and just you know consolidate all your efforts into getting that whatever thing that you're weak at better and then uh you know putting forth that effort waking up in the morning it's a lot it's a really difficult people that you know have had it easier um throughout their pipeline and i'm not going to say you know i was lucky throughout the pipeline um i didn't know what i was stepping into and i ended up not really getting set back but i failed a lot um especially like buddy breathing and i know i've mentioned it before but i feel like drown proofing i just wasn't ready for that stuff i didn't know that it was going to come up but you know you hear other people talk about it like oh it wasn't a big deal it wasn't this it wasn't that and uh i struggled with some of those things and just being through that and going through that struggle waking up in the morning and you think about that every single time and i think that's uh one of the things that really produces that amount of work ethic if you're that person that's like holy crap i cannot fail at this i'm tired of this dude whoever it is beating me at every single event or whatever it is like no one likes to be second place and i think that competitive nature is really what drives a team and a person to make sure that they level up and help out their the rest of the teammates and stuff so obviously that was a loaded question you know i was trying to get the topic started on that stuff it's feared it's fear a little bit too like we've talked about it but fear driving that work ethic like this is a perfect opportunity like if there's one thing that fear can no kidding motivate you to do it is to translate into into that work ethic into that never satisfied sort of thing because this is a you know that's a great example of using one of those failures or you know somebody else on the team that you're chasing but i made the kind of mistake in high school i was pretty naturally talented as a student i could figure out like how to study as a student at least in the high school environment and i didn't have to try very hard to get like b's and a's so i never did and then when i got to college and i it was more of an adult learning it was more on my own and i couldn't just kind of skate through i struggled immediately and like i'm not a stupid dude like i'm not a stupid guy as far as school i'm a good student you know i figured out how to um you know how to do that but uh man i i 100 uh failed or struggled at least when i when i was challenged with that so i like it to the pipeline to fail in a couple things going through a couple reevals and then um you know being able to use that adversity be like okay i know what this feels like i know how to avoid it my flag fall down as i i was talking about yeah it's all good i gotta use some better and the scotch tip doesn't work on this chef yeah check the uh check the youtube we had to switch some stuff around in my in my sweet podcasting studio which is also my home office which is also where i'll be doing senior ncoa virtually so uh i was switching stuff around the flag no good check it out on the youtube channel watch me fail i'll put it in there exactly boom as we're talking about failure things just happen as we're doing it this is real life folks i'll never fail that flag again i'm gonna be it's gonna be up there yeah that thing's getting hammered to the wall next time what did you uh so when you were down at selection like what did you see as far as like for team dynamics um you know the person that has the most most work ethic i know when there were two or three people on the team that had a high work ethic that team was you know nearly unstoppable and you could kind of see it what did you see is your experiences like as an instructor when you saw somebody that had really really high work ethic how did that affect the team dynamic man i think there's like groups that uh kind of form whenever you're in selection or in back when we're in indock and there was a group of guys that would you know pretty much every time that we had log watch or we had whatever going on they're like i'm gonna head back to my room and i'm gonna take care of whatever you guys got first watch or you guys got whatever and then there was a group of dudes that uh you know ended up making it and they kind of band together and made sure that they prioritize their entire you know schedule because like we said before in previous podcasts the whole reason you're there is to do selection and that's the mindset you should have whenever you're going forward you should be thinking about eating breathing you know how to make yourself better from day to day so um those guys that you know were able to take up that team gear every single time that something happened you know as far as we need someone to take care of the pool gear or our our consolidated team gear bag or whatever you know they stayed up later and made sure that the team was taken care of and i think the team really saw that and they instantly you know they love that guy and they put forth any effort that they could to help that person through selection so like just showing that you're willing to think about the team and put the team first the team is going to put you first in their own minds you know whenever it comes to hey i got an extra whatever a cookie or cheese and crackers in my mre like let me make sure this dude's taken care of because i know this dude's gonna stay up and he's gonna watch the log he's gonna take care of our gear like let me just make sure that this dude's taken care of so i think taking care of the team and doing that kind of stuff really um adds a lot of value to you as a person and the way that the team sees you so i definitely would recommend doing that how about how about you when you were uh you know instructor down there at kirtland what would you see as far as uh guys with work ethic and team you know it's contagious um so you have that guy that starts working or that guy or that guy that starts putting out and people start looking around they start noticing they're like man this guy's always carrying gear this guy's always putting his you know putting the other team gear first this guy is always crushing himself and asking me if i'm okay when that starts catching on and you get like i said three or four people that are all doing that you're trying to just to get on that level that's a that's when teams really start going through the roof that's when teams because when everybody starts thinking about each other that team just starts clicking like everybody's stuff gets done everything just starts getting you know even when they screw up because people are still going to screw up even if they're high performing like you know we put them in positions to screw up we put them in positions where like hey this might not go your way right but even in those positions they do great they do far and away better than the other team because they're just willing to work through it they're willing to work through that problem and they always start with like okay well let's knock this problem down and then you know we'll go from there but yeah i think it's contagious and i think all you need is you know a couple examples of that you don't need to be that super hero a lot of times like people will hear us talk about this a little bit well i want to be that superhero dude coming out the gate for everything you're not going to be able to you just need to pick one time or two times a day where you can just be like what can i do in this moment is there something i can do to no kidding help out like you don't need to spotlight yourself that's not what i'm saying like look at me i'm carrying the gear all the time because we we will definitely pick up spotlight rangers as well but uh but you know just one or two times a day because if everybody's looking for one or two times a day to help the team out that's how big is your team if your team is 20 people big at ans 40 people big at a f and you're all looking for a time of like how can i help the team out somebody's going to hit a home run every day it's going to be somebody different and that's you know i love baseball teams i watch it you know like watching the world series and watching the dodgers come back they had you know one or two players every game would have a big game it wasn't the same guy the entire time but it was one or two players it was a whole team effort like that's awesome to see when you start working like that i think the other important thing um to recognize here is like you know you have points throughout selection whenever you kind of have down time you know there's a break and they're like all right you know change your socks out get a snack or whatever um if you see those guys that are you know going around and checking each other's you know feet or you know helping each other throw up a little sling on their ankle because someone rolled their ankle or whatever you know that there's work to be done and not only does it help the day go by quicker when you're constantly you know thinking and working through things because i know there are a couple times when i started out you really just want to you know they're like all right break time you guys have 20 minutes or whatever everyone feels like they want to just sit down lay on their ruck you know prop the rock up kick their feet up and like do nothing for that entire time but then you see that dude that's like hey let me help you out with this make sure the water jugs are filled up make sure the you know gatorade is in the whatever the jugs or everyone has mres you know what's the count on that do you have at least two in your ruck who needs extra socks who forgot what or whatever if there's those dudes that are out there making sure that everyone else is taken care of and working during that time when everyone else is kind of resting it kind of wakes everyone up like all right let me start thinking about this other stuff that needs to be done because i don't want this dude to be you know working by himself and making sure that everyone's alright so it kind of kicks you out of that mindset of like oh i'm just gonna sit here and do nothing because it's kind of like uh that time period it's kind of like when you hit snooze on your alarm and you're just like i can lay here and the time's gonna go by you know 10 minutes goes by like that yep you're not going to get back to sleep it's just gonna be like you kind of blink and then you're awake like you're like that's what by the way that's what i feel the worst like when i i have like a small amount of time for whatever reason i'll wake up like 45 minutes to an hour before my alarm goes off i'll wake up and i'll feel really good but i'll be like you know what i got to go back i got another hour i should go back to sleep i'd never feel worse in my life than when i wake up after that hour snooze is the same way i hit snooze and i'm a culprit man like i'm not jocko i'm not these dudes you're like roll up never hit snooze i wish man it's just not my life so like i i've hit snooze i just wake up i feel garbage afterwards just straight garbage exactly you know you're not going to feel any more arrested once you get that extra 15. what do you do oh those are live for you homie so let's go hey boss is that everybody all this is live in person everything that happened what's up what's up all right like in that fashion well i just pulled up literally uh just pulled up tonight so we gotta we'll get you some some space here but yeah literally just pulled up outside he came he was like hey i need a ride to the airport i was like i know a guy that can do that so we got it together i think this is the inaugural this is the most we've ever been in a room for a podcast yeah this is the only time we ever had people in the same room holy crap i know right so what are you guys talking about oh man straight up work ethic straight up work out there yeah yeah talking about how you've been jobbing it out you know working on that pcs and just dipping in here with the time that you got in order to make sure these dudes get as much info as possible yeah i i want to address something real quick so aaron's standing i am also standing did you guys see this i just want you to know like when everybody says like are you really that short i mean there you go it's not a camera angle this is why i have good work ethic because i got i've got to make up for all my shortcomings ah even jake even j mac looked huge in that picture that picture jback said i was like godly yeah i was like is it the boots or what you're here man so welcome we'll just hit you with a question straight off you can see it on on here but like you you've been you've been jobbing out and doing the tampa thing and you know you just got out of a large position on a tampa you're taking over a brand new as you as your first chief here like we see you post some workouts in the morning and stuff like how do you what are your tenants of like work ethic like what do you do you have self-talk that you say to yourself like is it is it something that you try to remind yourself every day or is it just a habit at this point uh well it it is a kind of habit and that you know you make it a habit by continuing to do it and forcing yourself to do it um you also got to prioritize you know it's it's a lot about time management so um i make sure that i try and give myself time to to work out in the morning if i can or so at least sometime during the day um then i try and make sure that i've got time for my family i've got time for work so i mean it's tough it's a it's a constant struggle um and i i fail at it every single day but yeah every single day we're already talking about hitting the snooze button yeah like feeling bad when you hit the snooze button that's the thing is that people people think that we just get up and we don't have to motivate ourselves or don't have to to get going and man i really don't feel like training today but man there are a lot of days that i it's like oh man i've got to like i will sit there and you know just play on my phone or something like that and then finally it's like all right i just got to do this yeah the phone is the worst too like you wake up and there's always you know a bunch of notifications that you miss and you're like all right who messaged me what do i need to answer right now and like what do i need to do is it work call me or is it whoever's calling me like how many follows that i get today what meme page did i hit god oh man it's more than 20 followers oh this is a big one oh no what time do you wake up in the morning peach i know personally i'm like you know i hate waking up in the morning i'm kind of like in the same boat as aaron like that's been and i've talked about it before during selection that was the hardest part for me was waking up because my roommate was like super up and at him like he jumped out of bed literally uh you know mccarten even met him before but he got up he'd be shaving and everything i just feel like what are you doing why are you so he's like come on dude we gotta go and i'm just like oh my gosh i'm just not in the mood for this so what time do you wake up and i wake up at five a.m on on east coast time so i wake up at five um i i work out till about my and granted my schedule's changed a little bit since covid but even before that i was still waking up at five so five work out for an hour shower make some coffee and then hit the road um or if i know that i need to do sprints we have mcdell air force base has an amazing track with turf at it so if i'm gonna do sprints then i'll just have an you know sleep in until 6 a.m and then cut out of work a little bit early to uh sleep until 6 a.m this guy this guy yeah i like how you've embraced that uh you know uh pacific northwest type of vibe with that shirt too this guy this guy coming in here like flannel daddy he's got a fear you know i'm trying to impress grantham and uh and jt i mean you know got a beard going on probably sipping on some kind of latte or whatever you got how dare you on the way or whatever kind of coffee alpha brew i don't know if you can't swing a cat without hitting like 40 coffee places up here that's going to be a fun thing but like every little it's like in england having your little pub there's like three little coffee places that are literally just in like the parking lots of other establishments that people go to religiously they know their drinks they know exactly what they want they go to the same one every single time like they have a dutch brothers that's right here but dutch brothers is my little coffee place fantastic because your brother says i i guess i got a lot to learn they're really not good um all right so next question you know for both of you guys just let aaron go first on this one um so when you're training for the pipeline you know what was your work ethic like at that point and what were you doing you know to set yourself up for success um both the first and second time that you were going through the pipeline well i think we'll breeze over the first time considering it was a huge failure you know so we'll probably just go to the second time because that's more relevant um it was funny i just i had a call the other day so uh the shirt called me and said hey there's a shirt of another squadron there's a guy that's cross-training they want to ask you a couple questions and i was i said the guy once asked me a couple questions because no they want to ask the shirt wants to ask you so i was like yeah man no problem you know whatever so i dialed in and it was him and a couple of other fellas from the chain of command and they were basically like hey listen you know this young man wants to cross train we want to know he's requested time off and i'm not going to say how much time he's requested off but he's requested this much time prior to leaving do you think that's appropriate they're you know good on them they're like we don't have the ability to make this call at all like with this is not our lane this is your lane what would you what would you say so i actually answered it in three parts right and i started off with you know when i when when i went through my unit was awesome and they were supported but they didn't give me any extra time so we started work at 7am that wasn't like work out at 7am it was like your air force job started at 7am and then you were done at the end of the duty day which is usually around 4. so we had stuff that we were doing the entire time if you wanted to work out you did so on your own time or during your lunch um so i was up at 4 o'clock in the morning i had to leave my house by 4 30 to get to andrews air force base their gym opened at 4 30 but we all showed up about 4 45 there was like five or six of us and i mean that was a five day a week thing unless i was swimming um and then i would go through my normal day of work and sometimes i would run at lunch and sometimes i wouldn't it would just depend on what my volume was during the day and then two or three days a week i would work out um after work as well just to get some extra training in those days but that was done completely on my own time like essentially i wasn't afforded any of my time so you know as a dude that's going through the pipeline like my work ethic had to be really really locked on point there because i had all these other things that were taking my attention away like you said prioritizing if i was not really good about prioritizing when i was going to bed and i mean i and i did all kinds of other stuff during this like i went through als during this point so then i had like a pme on top of it and i was still doing my other job so i was still trying to do upgrades and i was the only team leader for the hams mission that we had at andrews at the time so i had all these other things it was funny though as i answered this question from the other shirt i was like you know as a as a grown up as a you know senior nco now and you look at it like the unit has to go on you can't just lose this guy for let's say he wanted to be gone for 20 weeks you know he wanted 20 weeks off work which is not what he wanted but i wanted to make it ridiculous but you know he the unit has to still you work you still have to do things right so but i you know i advise them i was like i think there's a middle ground of where you can make it you can give him you know an hour an hour and a half i told him you know as a pj now i get i get two hours a day to work out i show up at seven i work out you have to be in uniform at nine o'clock that's a pretty standard pretty standard operator timeline for the morning you know it's expected or if you can't make that because you're training you're afforded time later in the day like nobody's going to give me crap if i throw my pt gear on and go hey i missed today because i was on a vtc early this morning i'm going to go knock this workout in the afternoon everybody's like okay yeah great like that's accepted in our culture so you know i think for guys going through they have to walk that fine balance of you know knowing what is truly on them you know that work ethic has to extend where yeah you need time to work out but all of those other things like sergeant was it certain spencer that said 100 and everything all the time yeah one like you should be giving 100 to your mobility all the time you should be doing that at home you should be stretching and doing yoga like you shouldn't be looking at your chain of command or looking at the people around you being like oh give me this time to do this like no you own a lot of that a lot of that time but if you can get it off then fine but yeah like if if it were me i wouldn't necessarily go hey i need whatever it was six weeks off i would go hey for the next 15 weeks can i just have a truncated day like where i get an extra two hours to work out because in reality if he takes all that time off he's not going to be working out all day no yeah so i mean just work a little bit but i i want to hit on this because i know that we say this a lot and it's man for the guys that are thinking about guys and girls that are thinking about i'm like come in do a regular job and then cross-train to get more maturity or experience or whatever like that you may not like if you end up going into security forces and you're working 12 hours a day on on a gate or garden planes or something like that or maybe you work at the dentistry office something like that and you you have these set hours that you you can't get out of the unit or your supervisors may not allow you to cut away to go work out they don't see it as a priority because what does it do for them yeah that's that doesn't it i mean that's still a real light like people kind of forget this but they're like oh i want to go do this other job no you already have a real job and a real boss and a real chain of command and they expect you to work like you know if you were working at microsoft and you're like hey i'm thinking about going over to apple will you pay for these courses for me to get picked up over at apple your boss would be like are you insane no like we need you to work here for us so yeah you know people the only thing that's even funnier than that i don't know why i've gotten so many of them but they're like hey i want to go see her first and then go pj is that a good idea or like hey i want to go pj but in the end i want to be a sauce tea doc you know what should i i'm like you you realize that individually the two things that you just are ridiculously hard to do right like i i will not take anything away from seer i don't know if i'd be a good seer specialist c is a hard job being a good instructor and being out in the woods and doing what they do sorry man i'm sorry i i ate uh so we're talking about c right crickets for the first time why did you eat the other day because they were at a gas station you were going through louisiana or what was that uh no it was uh nevada nevada california anyway and and they were seasoned so i can't even and they're dried out so i can't imagine being a seer person grabbing a grub worm or a cricket and eating that just life like i'm i'm good i'll do it if i have to but that's random that was totally all right so a couple things on what you're talking about aaron i think uh you know going back to when you first started though uh and you were talking about at the unit also i think accountability factor is huge because you know like when you're at the unit and you're at seven o'clock in the morning you're like who's here who's not here is that person gonna continue working out or they're not gonna continue working out and going back to when you were talking about you know having a group to work out with you know it's the same kind of deal you guys are forming that whole group mindset and then you know potentially you guys see each other at selection and if a person fails that you knew you know scurved out on some of the workouts that you guys were doing back at home you're like well that dude kind of deserved it because he wasn't there at all the workouts that we were doing he wasn't you know shoulder to shoulder with us when we were you know practicing for 10 ups for the first time or whatever and it's you know not the same exact kind of deal when you go down range or uh at the unit but you know if you see somebody that's not there at the gym in the morning at the unit you're like dude what are you doing with your life like are you just just hitting that button like that's why it's why it's important to get an accountability partner yeah you know and even if whether you're working out with that person or not it's easier if you're working out with them but it's like hey man we're still on for zero six at you know doing this oh man ugh hey dude i i'm going to be there you better be there i guys texted me tonight because we were talking about rolling at work tomorrow and i was just like yeah it was all like when we were thinking about it but it's my first check-in day and they both made me feel like garbage i was like listen man i'm on the senior ncoa thing tomorrow like the time just doesn't work out i'm sorry i didn't know until today and both of them just gave me a rash of crap because they're just like come on man you said you were gonna roll i was like listen dude i'm not popping out on you i just have an actual thing it's not gonna work for time yeah and then uh you know on the other thing asking time off for work or whatever you know that what kind of precedence does that set for the rest of the people are your bosses gonna be able to allow two hours or whatever for every single person that has a different goal no that's not realistic you know that was kind of where i was at when i was training for the pipeline you know i was working at jcpenney and i was a server for me amigos mexican restaurant down there in mesa arizona and then i was also going to college the same time which you know looking back on it weren't big deals but to me it was like a big deal because i'd only been working at jobs for you know a couple years at that point and uh of course i try to keep up on my social life and hanging out with friends and all that kind of stuff so i really spend any time at home i was just you know work out in the morning go to my jobs that i had go to college and then work out again in the afternoon and i kind of cheated a little bit by taking a weightlifting course for credit uh while i was in college you took a weightlifting course in college you got college credits for lifting weights exactly i was like well this goes towards my goals and whatever anyways i ended up dropping out of college because i didn't care about it at that point in time in my life so you know mr pa now yeah i know you're all educated and stuff now kind of i guess i don't know people come to me with them some problems and i do my best to try and solve them with the limited knowledge that i have have you tried vitamin d yeah how about motrin you tried that yet no um standard military doctor no so it's just the prioritization you know that you put in your your work day at that point my prioritization for college and everything was pretty low and then you know social and going to be a pj was super high obviously pj was the first and i was able to do that kind of stuff um so now going to the next question i know we like we said work ethic stuff we don't have trent here unfortunately tonight because he's busy i don't know rewriting some kind of cftp or i don't know yeah because he said he's got to be there for this thing um so we did it specially just for this all right so um talking about weapon school stuff i know peach uh you've seen a lot of people that have failed at weapon school and a lot of people a lot of people be successful and i've you know aaron and i both both been down there to uh mountain home and seen kind of how some of that weapon school stuff goes obviously a different kind but it's super strenuous on those pilots especially that are trying to go through this and you know how important do you think work ethic is for getting that kind of qualification or getting any kind of advanced certification like that that very few people are able to get so they're going to already be taking the best people so the people the students that are going there are already what they have been deemed as hey you're the best in our unit and we need you to go get a phd level education on tactics solving tactical problems and stuff like that so these people are already kind of workaholics and savants if you will but they go there and they are they are no kidding doing 18 hour days lack of sleep the funny part about is you kind of see people kind of balloon up a little bit add a little add a little weight because they're they're eating just junk food because they're throwing anything they can get in their mouth they're not worried about working out because they've got to study for three tests that they're going to have tomorrow on radar theory and missile you know it's just it's crazy and that's that's for you know whether they're pilots whether they're j tax the intel guys so um they have really good work ethic rj tax are are pretty good at at still continuing to work out because we still have the physical aspect of having to run up the hills and and run around on the ranch so and we also identify with the importance of being able to work out as a way to therapy and blow off some steam so and that takes some very deliberate planning and and deliberate habits saying i am working out i am going to do this and forcing yourself when your lack of sleep and you know that you've got three tests tomorrow well and that's that's something that you know about brian mr master's degree mr pa guy mr entrepreneur dude so like what did you do how did you task organize and prioritize all those things that you did as you went through all the trials and tribulations that you are because i mean you know we've been talking right now we talked just before you got on the podcast but you've been super super busy man you got you got three kids all under like young ass ages in the house like you and you you and the wife are trying to figure that out like is is that the same type of work ethic that he needs to chase you know wic students up the hill or is it a different type or how do you manage it well i'm not in charge of like any of the jtac i don't get to talk to adults all the time so it's a little bit different you know talking to a four four-year-old two-year-old and uh you know a newborn obviously literal literal children not the type of children that we are but like actual small humans well small humans still developing how about that uh yeah so you know it's it's been a rough couple years just trying to deal with um all that stuff trying to get my degree you know pa school is a full-time gig uh i think i've mentioned it before but there are a hundred tests that you take within uh a 16 month period and each one of those tests that we take has like 800 slides per test and you have to take two of those at least per week and you're just constantly on the grind trying to do that stuff just but why like what do you i mean what are people going to die oh they are going to die i mean yeah i mean not right away all right whatever yeah whatever we'll see how it buffs up but you know it's just trying to learn all that stuff and then be competitive i felt you know we're talking about failure earlier i failed quite a few tests when i was in pa school because you know i came in not really knowing what i was getting myself into you know i wasn't really in that academic mindset because i've been doing pj stuff and it's you know the tests that we do for that are like what mqt type of stuff uh every once in a while you do some kind of paramedic test to research or whatever like acls stuff or whatever it's not anything that was uh you know i had to intensely study for um right now so i wasn't in that mindset and it was pretty difficult just having my second kid right one week before i started pa school um and just balancing all that stuff out but uh you know it goes back to what we were talking about before is every single minute that i was awake i gave my 100 percent to whatever thing i was focused on granted sometimes you know and i was in the back class uh you know messaging guys from instagram or sending out emails or whatever i know they're gonna take away your pa brian better not tell anybody that i mean i'm already certified you can see it right there on the wall so they can't really take that away oh okay this is a little slack it's just a little thing just yeah i think it i you know you're talking about time management though going back to that is is a lot of times you need to identify and and realize man i have spent on instagram 45 minutes what happened to that time when you could be so productive so when people say i just don't have time to do it i'm sure for a very select few that is actually the case quarantine proved everybody wrong everybody that ever said if i just had more time i would do this you liar you did nothing you watched every i'm through multiple seasons of shows i've never heard of before get out of here if i just had more time i'd have been able to do this thing oh really welcome to the nine month anniversary of 15 days of slow the curve nerd what have you done you got a small little hey i should have come up here with my mask on get out of here no that's 100 right like talking about how much time you have in the day every single person has the same amount of time of the day it's whether you sit here like you know i found myself just like you were talking about peach you know you pick up the phone you're like um oh what is this what is this thing what is this article what's this post that whoever just put up and you end up being in a rabbit hole i tried to like only limit my social media to like post things and put put up a story or do something like that or even just answering messages like and i'm not a super type uh fast typer on the phone or anything like that so it takes me a minute to just answer all these messages that we're going through and uh you know just prioritizing that stuff like what really needs to get done what doesn't need to get done and what can i do now to knock it out like i have a calendar right here that my wife and i share of like this is what i'm gonna do on this night this is what i'm doing the next night and then you know obviously work is work so i gotta go be there and do stuff and stuff comes up you know we have a whatever suicidal patient or that kind of stuff that shows up and just like all right well there goes my entire schedule it's you know i want to be here until six o'clock at night so you know one of the things in terms of time management and work ethic that i that i like from the pj community is when you guys do the ride alongs and for everybody to know the ride alongside you should probably explain it but but it's when pjs get uh essentially assigned out to for what a month yeah it's clinical rotations there's a couple different programs so uh like the c stars program in baltimore brian did you ever go to the baltimore csrs yeah so brian and i both went there we both went to birmingham those programs are amazing i mean it's it's great because it gets you guys the chance to even though you're not in a combat zone get you hands-on with actually helping people saving people's lives and it's it's pretty awesome i have i'm not medical and you don't want me uh treating you but at the same time uh i think that's be pretty cool and it'd be interesting to do kind of like ride-alongs at least from my perspective but yeah but that work ethic is i mean what are what is it 12s oh no you're on so in baltimore at the shock trauma you work at the the shock trauma center that's up there they call it the true the trauma resource unit so you work in 24-hour shifts so it's 24 hours on 24 hours off so they work on 72 hours so an a b and a c shift but you're there to do more than just that room so on the next two days you're still picking up like eight to 12 hour day of work so you're on a 24 usually you'll have an eight hour break and you go into nights that next night so you go ride the truck or you go to johns hopkins and check burns out you can do a lot of stuff in the national capital area that's right there or you can pick up extra shifts birmingham is a little bit more structured but you're not getting more than 12 hours you know 18 hours off at a time tops and you're there for two weeks you're and sometimes you're just like brian said you just get busy you're just like man i was supposed to leave three hours ago but we got two traumas in that time and you're not gonna like yeah you're not just gonna leave well that like you have a pager where you go right like they still use pagers at birmingham which is funny but i mean you're only a block away so you can see what comes in and you're like oh man that's the case i might want to get on so even you're off time you're like well i mean i could sit in this apartment and chill out for the next six hours or i could go to this like multi-car accident like you know it's morbid but that's that's how you get experience i saw more trauma in those rotations than yeah well it's experience and also you i mean you know you're helping somebody no you know you're helping somebody and i mean i didn't come in to help people necessarily but that's what you guys did so wait you said you came in for a pj what's up with that yeah well he figured out he figured out he could go the other way he's like no this is way easier yeah this is way better well so that brings us to like the to kind of like the final question so if somebody's trying to like actively affect their work ethic if somebody wants to know kidding develop you know that muscle of work ethic what advice and we'll start with you peaches but what advice would you give what's what's some simple life hacks just to start building that muscle memory of work ethic i think and i'll just use one um habit you know you've got to create the habit so be deliberate on i am waking up at x time i'm going to work out for at least an hour and then go out you know in the rest of my day and do whatever i'm going to do but you have to create habits healthy habits maybe it's not working out maybe you're good at working out and you you're in college and or something like that and you need to dedicate time to studying and it doesn't mean hey i need three hours of study it means hey as soon as i get back from class i'm gonna do 30 minutes of studying then i'm gonna go work out or have dinner or whatever i'm willing to do and then i'm gonna come back and do 30 more minutes um i know jordan peterson he was talking about and i'm gonna mess it up but he was he was going through people's time management from going back to hey i don't have any time right he goes okay well i want you to log all your everything you do from the minute everything for two days and then come back and let's review it and then he people he they didn't even have to review it because as they going through it they're like they're just writing it down like oh my god two hours watching the tv show exactly and and so you just got to create the habit and do it that's my my advice yeah what about you brian yeah i think uh you know one of the key things that get me out of bed in the morning is you know what happens if i don't do it like who else is gonna do this thing that needs to get done and i know that needs to get done you know we're kind of in a really awesome position where we get to talk to all you guys and answer messages and hopefully you know lead you guys in the right direction that's you know our whole goal here but we have the chance to directly speak with you guys you know all of us have been doing the phone calls and everything talking to you guys directly and making sure that you guys get you know from the bottom of our hearts like the best information that we could possibly give you guys and things that we wish that we would have heard whenever we were kind of growing up and getting into this thing um so you know when i think of that stuff and i have this opportunity to help you and we all have this opportunity um you know who else is going to do this thing that needs to get done if we don't do it it's the same thing for training obviously no one's going to train for you and it it just doesn't work if they try to but i wish it would yeah i wish you could have a surrogate and just like hey man can you go knock this workout off go to the gym for me today yeah and just still be able to get the gains you just wake up wake up one morning you're ready for selection somehow yes you've been outsourcing your training but i think that's one of the biggest things you know i talk about like the visual aspect um having something as a reminder of why you're going to get up in the morning and do this one thing that you're going to do that's why i had like the bfpj stickers and that's why i put it on there just remind people of like this is what your goal is and that's what you said to whoever that you're going to continue to execute this in order to become a pg become a cct or become an sr so those are a huge thing and i think one thing also that i wanted to mention in here was you know don't let one goal override every single other thing in your life especially those of you with family members and everything you know i've heard it and i've seen it a lot i personally have done it before to where i get this goal oriented mindset i don't see anything else i put the blinders up and like this is all i'm gonna do you know it's kind of like when you're hiking and you're just like i'm just gonna go to the top of the mountain you don't look at everything else that's around you sometimes so keep in mind the sparring of this dude's pack yeah exactly i'm in my pain cave i don't care the only thing i see is this guy's blue north face pack in front of me gorgeous beautiful scenery you know four hours into it you're like crap i should have changed my socks two hours ago or whatever yeah i haven't eaten today yeah this place is good exactly so you know like peach was talking about scheduling out that time and just having something to reference like oh crap i need to make sure i eat lunch today or make sure whatever because i you just get too focused on whatever ends up going on so you know going back to it though what happens if you don't do it that's that's a big thing that wakes me up in the morning and keeps me kind of goal oriented towards that work ethic about you aaron so i'm a big uh self-talk kind of like mantra guy and i started like i wanted you know i heard a lot of people like oh it's a it's an easy thing is to make your bed every morning so you know i did it didn't do it i did it i didn't do it so i heard the guy that was talking to the navy seal that came up with it he he did it and he would have this positive self-talk with himself and he'd be like i'm the type of person that makes their bed as soon as they get up in the morning and he would say that to himself every day and it started building that habit well i started applying that to other sort of things that were positive like using positive self-talk or positive reinforcement with yourself is a very handy tool to trick yourself into doing all of these things all these little things at once hey i'm the type of person that works out when they said they're going to i'm the type of person that works out even though it got you know life got in the way and i didn't work out this morning i don't throw the workout away i i stay at work and i work out until you know it's done and for me that really does help me it's one of those things where i'm like yeah okay this is a positive thing i am the type of person that works out because i said i was going to i said i was going to have this in i'm going to have it in early because that's what i said it's one of those things that i found was really really helpful and it's a way to like talk yourself through it and you can do one thing at a time like i started with the bed thing like hey i'm the type of person when i wake up i make my bed in the morning and i you know i come home that way i come home to a clean room at night right so just a couple days of like okay and sometimes it's like i say it jokingly to myself i'm like making my bed i'm like i'm the type of person that makes her bed the morning like i'm making fun of myself too like i don't believe it i i think that that that doesn't stop with making the bed though if you're walking if if you're just getting done doing your groceries and you think oh i could easily leave this card here or i could just walk right over there the shopping cart he oh man he doesn't like the shop shopping carts shopping you know if you're walking by trash you i mean you see it you think to yourself takes trash out man if i'm not gonna do it who is gonna do it so i'm the type person that picks up trash i'm the type person that puts the card away yeah and it's almost like you can speak you can take whoever you want to be like if pjs are the type of people that you know that's who you want to be like what do they do pjs are the type of people that don't leave teammates behind we we work hard we do all these things and then you can apply that to yourself be like i'm the type of person that doesn't let my teammate suffer i'm the type of person that goes out and works hard and you can you can literally talk yourself into being just like joe rogan said the superhero in your own movie um because you already know what it looks like boom i think that just uh kind of consolidates everything we were talking about like from the beginning you know being that kind of person that if there is some team gear that needs to be done or something that needs to be done to take care of the team when you're at selection you're that kind of guy like we're talking about that goes over there and takes care of it you make sure everyone's fins are taped you make sure that you know everyone has a bite to eat or something like that the water drugs are filled it's all the same thing and it's repetitive it's contagious whenever you start doing it because everyone else sees that and they're like man i don't want to let that dude do everything you know i want to go over there and help out and make sure everyone else is taken care of so it's not it's not to be a spotlight range or anything like that it's just hey the work needs to get done no one else is doing it i better get over there and do it boom you guys got any uh pardon shots anything else on work ethic um i think we're good we're good same room this is gonna happen more because it turns out we live in the same area now it's gonna be a whole thing it's going to be great i know right at some point you know this winter whenever peach is settled down he's going to be stationed the same place as aaron hopefully here soon and get us getting settled in so hopefully we can drive up there and all of us meet up for some kind of thing where we can uh all be in person i don't know we'll see it'd be great um all right so back on the work ethic thing uh you know just make sure that you prioritize your work schedule you're making sure that you're taking care of the team and like i said if no one else is going to do it you have to get the job done because well you know the results are going to speak for themselves the work ethic is a principle that work is intrinsically virtuous and worthy of reward and you put in that work you're going to see that reward nothing that is worth having is easy to get so that is specifically related to getting through selection and getting into these type of career fields you're gonna have to put forth the work ethic and it's a habit it's not something that's gonna just happen automatically when you get to prep or anything like that you need to start working towards that now create your schedule and make sure that you knock out everything that you need to do in order to go and be ready for selection so thanks again for all of you guys for listening you guys if you like the show go ahead and drop us a five star rating on apple podcast you can always message us at any time you guys know that we'll keep up with calling you guys and making sure that you guys have as good information as we can possibly provide if you guys have recruiter questions make sure you go directly to the recruiter we can't really provide uh you know super accurate answers on that we can just go based off of what we heard which always changes you know in the months ahead it's going to continue to change find that recruiter though yeah find that recruiter so good at it yeah hit him up um hit us up if you guys have any questions thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Ones Ready

Views: 10,656

Keywords: Special Warfare, af specwar, ans, assessment and selection, assessment and selection air force, be a pj, cct, combat control, combat controller training, indoc, ones ready, ones ready podcast, onesready, pararescue, pj, sof, special operations, special operator, special recon, special reconnaissance, special tactics, special warfare prep, tacp, tactical air control party, usaf special operations, usaf special recon, usaf special reconnaissance, Usaf special warfare, onnit, mobility

Id: VCrkvmRLS7A

Length: 52min 16sec (3136 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020