Kyle Stubbs | Hacky Sacks and Self-Discovery

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:01]:

Welcome back, weirdos, to the Weird and Strong podcast. I'm so glad you're here, because this episode features Kyle Stubbs, a first responder and a coach for first responders. He talks about how his path took him from where he was in his role, his relationship to where he is today, helping others in the first responder space become the best versions of themselves. So without any other delays, let's get weird, folks. All right, Kyle Stubbs, thank you so much for being here with me on the Weird and Strong podcast.

Kyle Stubbs [00:00:40]:

Thank you, brother. I'm excited to be here. This is going to be fun.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:43]:

Yeah. Hell, yeah. We met in the level two of Enlisted, and it was just like many of the episodes and many of the guests that you're hearing as of late, many of these folks I got to meet in person for the first time just about well, for you, it's about a month ago now. So it's great to see you on the other side on the camera yet again. So I'm appreciative of you being here. So I have a weird question for you. Are you ready?

Kyle Stubbs [00:01:10]:

One.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:10]:

Just one? We likely will have many, but we're going to start with just one.

Kyle Stubbs [00:01:14]:

Let's go.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:15]:

Cool. So since we are recording this around Halloween, I have a spooky weird question, and this is playing into some of your background, which we'll talk about in a little bit with vampires. Do you think they prefer arterial blood or Venus blood?

Kyle Stubbs [00:01:39]:

It has to be arterial.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:41]:

Why is that?

Kyle Stubbs [00:01:42]:

It's packed full. Everything good right now. It's fresh out of the pump.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:47]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:01:48]:

They're not going for dirty, old circulated venous blood. And just think of the lack of effort that it's going to take. When you pop an artery, the floodgates are open. You're going to have to actually have to put some work in to fill up on a vein.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:05]:

Yeah. It's like if we go to a water fountain that just has no water pressure.

Kyle Stubbs [00:02:10]:

Yes, exactly. Yes. But we could look at this another way. We could get extra weird with this. If they want to keep coming back to this person. This person.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:21]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:02:22]:

They might want to play that game a little differently.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:24]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:02:25]:

They want to titrate that blood supply and not just empty it out on the first go.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:30]:

Yeah. Because he hit that artery a lot harder to clot.

Kyle Stubbs [00:02:34]:

Oh, yeah. You got to be prepared. He's not coming back from that one.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:41]:

Yeah. Is that anywhere close to where you thought this question was going to go?

Kyle Stubbs [00:02:46]:

Yeah, it was.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:48]:

All right. Kyle's been listening and studying, so he kind of knew what was coming up. Awesome. So let's talk a little bit more about you. What are the ways that Kyle Stubbs shows up unconventionally in life that others may not be aware of or know of?

Kyle Stubbs [00:03:10]:

I got to let some secrets out.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:12]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:03:15]:

A weird quirk, you could say. I start my day in some matter in that first hour with about ten minutes of playing Hacky sack.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:23]:

Nice.

Kyle Stubbs [00:03:24]:

Yeah. In some way I'm not great at it by any means, it usually involves me hitting a wall if I'm inside at some point with my foot, if I'm outside, it's great, but yeah, that's how I start my day. I really put an effort to get just that ten minutes of just goofing off and being silly to start the day.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:46]:

Yeah, that's something that we connected on over in our level two course. What was the thing that brought that about? Because I'm assuming that that's something fairly recent for you in consideration of your whole life. What brought that about of this early morning ten minutes of hackysack?

Kyle Stubbs [00:04:07]:

Just a desire to feel more free in my body and want to move without that hesitation or just that starts to pick we pick up as we get older, I'm in my mid 30s. We start to start to groan when you get out of bed or whatever it might be. And to be able to just freely move and not be so constrained to one direct movement pattern is really how that happened. And then I started seeing some guys that were really good at it and being like, holy shit, I want to be like that. Look at those guys go. Yeah, so that's how it started and I just felt like it was fun. My kids would be really interested in it when I did it too so they'd want to jump in and they'd want to see what I was doing and seeing that engagement in them was like, oh, whatever this is, this is good. And then there's also the edge of allowing yourself to not be very good at something yeah, well and just do.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:11]:

It also there's likely a component of play for place sake.

Kyle Stubbs [00:05:15]:

Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:17]:

Totally. We can get caught up in the sense of especially morning movement being like, well, I got to hit the gym and get my highly prescriptive program. I have to hit all of these sets and reps and I got to move, I got to go go versus I'm just going to move and kick this bag around and see what happens.

Kyle Stubbs [00:05:39]:

And it's a great indication for me on just where I'm at that day. Some days it's a rough go, some days it's not there, and then some days it's just like I throw it on my foot and it's like I've been at it all day kind of thing.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:56]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:05:56]:

So it's a cool way to see where you're at.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:58]:

Totally. Do you use that at all of an indication, like you're saying, of where you're at? Not only from a skill development perspective, do you use that as a check in for yourself of how am I actually feeling? Am I feeling really run down? Did I not sleep as well? Are you using it as a check in on your biometrics.

Kyle Stubbs [00:06:22]:

And not just from a physical perspective, but from a mental perspective, too. Right. Like, if I get in there and if I get angry because whatever, I can't stall it on my foot or something, then it's like, okay, that's interesting. That only took five minutes, and I'm mad at something totally insignificant as a ball filled with some little plastic beads. That's pissing me off already. That's okay, where am I at here? What's going on?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:48]:

Yeah, exactly. That's super cool. And it's like the low tech version of an aura ring. Exactly, yes. You never have to recharge it. You don't have to check an app on your phone. You can just play some hackysack.

Kyle Stubbs [00:07:03]:

Yeah. I've taken this to the extreme where because once I start something, I like to keep it going. And there's that little bit of kind of inner competition factor to it to try to keep a streak alive. And I was on a hunting trip about a year and a half ago, and I forgot it. I didn't bring it with me. Full backpack. Like, we had backpacked in for a day to get in there in the middle of nowhere, it turns out a balled up sock, wet balled up sock. Perfect replacement for hackisack.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:07:39]:

Totally.

Kyle Stubbs [00:07:40]:

So every morning, get out there, throw a couple of balls around, see what you can do in the middle of nowhere. There's all kinds of probably scared every animal off in the entire valley, but it was worth it. I felt great after it didn't find anything that trip. So that might be an indication of what happened. For sure.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:08:01]:

I'd be interested to see that as, like, maybe throughout this podcast, this becomes the next trend of skip your device, skip your whoop or your aura metrics or whatever thing you're using and just play some hackysack in the morning and.

Kyle Stubbs [00:08:18]:

See what that why not? Why do we have to make it so complicated?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:08:21]:

Well, that's a good question. What's your hypothesis on that topic of why do we tend to gravitate towards overcomplication? Why do we tend towards this sense of perfection or chasing the most optimal result?

Kyle Stubbs [00:08:40]:

Because it takes us out of it. In my experience. We're growing more and more disconnected from ourselves, and the ability to be able to see some sort of factual, science based feedback of some kind really gives people an idea of being like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm here. They have no idea how they feel. A lot of those people checking that whoop or that aura ring or whatever, it would be interesting to see where they're at if they could tell what the results will be before they actually look at the results. And a lot of people, I would be confident to bet, wouldn't know what they would be would be surprised. That it's. Oh, I did sleep good last night.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:09:25]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:09:26]:

And that's a problem.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:09:29]:

Yeah, absolutely. I've actually had it. So I wear an oring from time to time to look for trends like, oh, is my sleep trending in the right direction? I only check it maybe once a month, but early on, I had the loop strap, and it was frustrating to me, and I'm sure that they've changed some things. And this was 2019 that I was doing this. I found that as I was wearing it, there were days where I would check it in the morning, and it would basically say, you're about to die. You slept so poorly. You're about to die. I'm over exaggerating.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:10:08]:

And I was like, But I feel great. I feel recharged. I feel amazing. And it's like, oh, you slept amazing. You should be ready to hit a world record today. And I was like, I feel like I'm going to die. It was always polar opposite, whatever it was telling me.

Kyle Stubbs [00:10:25]:

Interesting.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:10:26]:

Yeah. And so that was a point or like, an education point for myself of exactly what you're talking about, of being able to check in with myself much more effectively. And rather than wait for the device or wait for the app to tell me how I'm supposed to feel, what do I actually feel?

Kyle Stubbs [00:10:44]:

What does that actually yeah, and then the stories that come up behind that too, right. Of being, like, seeing that feedback and then being like, oh, but I feel good right now. I shouldn't do this, or, oh, man, I never feel good in the morning, or whatever it might be. You start to get dependent on being cold. How you're feeling? And I find that in my circles in the first responder world a ton. We've become fully dependent on having our emotional states diagnosed to us, as opposed to just tracking how we're doing.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:18]:

Yeah. Is that something that you've had to learn in your experience as a first responder? Is that something that you figured out really early on or what's that path been? How does that look like for you on your path as a first responder?

Kyle Stubbs [00:11:37]:

Yeah, I thought that I was doing really good for a really long time. I was a firefighter and a paramedic and then transitioned into policing eight, nine years ago. And I thought that I was awesome at the job. I was great. I was killing it at work, but unbeknownst to me, I was totally not there at home, not showing up. Had one little girl at the time with my wife, and yeah, it took her to be able to just straight up call me out and say, like, hey, what's wrong with you? And she asked me the question if I even knew how to feel, which was, at that point in my life, the biggest gut punch that I had received. And it's a good representation of where I was at then, because I thought that I was doing great, but I was not in any way whatsoever. And that's what started me down that path of trying to figure that out.

Kyle Stubbs [00:12:41]:

Trying to be like, okay, keep track of where I'm at. If I'm getting frustrated over little tiny things at home, okay, that must mean that something else is what's underneath that. What's the root cause of that? And going down that path, which inevitably led to where we're at.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:12:56]:

Yes. In looking at that, from that question of do you even know how to feel? Or even whatever the specific phrasing was that she asked you, that was it, that was it. What was the path from there? Like, was it immediately got to figure it out the next day?

Kyle Stubbs [00:13:14]:

Yeah, of course. I'm a guy, I figured it out right away. I fixed it. Oh, man. No, it was not in any way whatsoever. I did the typical thing where I got defensive and was like, what are you talking about? Of course I know how to feel. And then really started to think about it and no, I certainly did not. I lived my life right in the middle of peaks and valleys and never experienced either side of it.

Kyle Stubbs [00:13:40]:

How I got out of that spot was interesting for me. It was quite a path where I tried all the things you're supposed to try, like got into yoga. That was just me telling myself how horribly inflexible I was and how my mobility was awful or whatever it might be. And I tried running and I would run on occasion, but I wanted to do like the full blown I'm going full David, goggins on this. And signed up for a 50 miles Mountain Ultra and crushed that thing. I did great at it. My first running race ever. I'd never even signed up for a five K before did that thing.

Kyle Stubbs [00:14:17]:

And it was awesome. It was great. But it was just straight up me running away from my own problems. Yeah, it had nothing to do with getting over anything.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:14:29]:

Yeah, I understand that. I've been there in a different way, but there was something that I've always found funny and entertaining is growing up. That was something I used to actually heckle runners with before. They would have maybe their Walkman with the cassette tape, maybe a CD player with a lot of anti skip if they were really lucky. But many times they were jogging on the sides of the road and I would yell out, what are you running from?

Kyle Stubbs [00:14:59]:

Problems.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:01]:

And many people in the running community, that is a typical thing and there's.

Kyle Stubbs [00:15:08]:

Definitely a healthy way to do that. But how I was doing it was.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:12]:

Definitely not that escape disconnection, replace it with any other activity, totally would have given you the same effect.

Kyle Stubbs [00:15:23]:

And just being able just to put that resistance in front of you and yeah, I can get over that part, but I can't tell my wife how I'm feeling. Right. That's a pretty obvious reflection of where the weak spot in the game is. And what worked for me, actually, was finding a group of guys that did just that. That did talk about their shit, that did talk about how they are disconnected at home or how they have a hard time goofing off with their kids or whatever it might be. And that really opened my eyes to being like, okay, yeah, my situation is unique. I'm a police officer, I'm in a busy place, I have a hard job, but that doesn't excuse how I show up in the rest of my life. And seeing all these other guys that they weren't first responders.

Kyle Stubbs [00:16:16]:

They were everything from yoga instructors to one guy had created a language that he spoke with, the stars with and all kinds of crazy, weird awesomeness. And just putting myself in that situation was certainly something was weird for me, but it was incredibly beneficial. And that's something that I think as a culture, like, even just touching back to what we started on with goofing off, playing some hacky sack in the morning, that we're hesitant to put ourselves that far out of the comfort zone when it comes to a lot of those things. And when we do, the result can be amazing.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:16:55]:

Yeah, that's a common theme that has been coming up on this podcast recently is this idea of staying in our comfort zone for you, this path of getting into running and the physicality and then getting into a group of men that pushed you beyond that comfort zone. What was the timeline like from that first conversation to where you started to really notice that things were very much different in your relationship, not only at home, but in your professional life as well?

Kyle Stubbs [00:17:33]:

I'd say it was a solid year of really to the point where I was like, okay, yeah, this is working. Yeah, this is working. And that was after I had beat myself down with running the Ultra and doing all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I would say a solid calendar year, enough time to have it actually set in and be able to make an impact and see that because we can do whatever. We can go to the gym twice in a row and be like, oh yeah, I'm killing it. But it's a different story when we've been showing up consistently for six months, seven months, whatever it might be, right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:18:13]:

Yeah, that's really cool to hear. And what direction did that start to take you in? What did that start to affect not only at home, but where did that start to take you on this journey of life?

Kyle Stubbs [00:18:33]:

I got a life situation occurred where we'll talk about it and was a really good indication of, like, okay, it was a test. It was like, if we want to talk about the hero's journey and everything, I love about that whole mentality. Our youngest daughter was born at 32 weeks, so she was tiny, she was little, premature baby. She could fit in your hand. She was under three pounds, and she got kept in the NICU for a little while after that and she was okay. She got out of there, but it was a really hard situation. Obviously, it was as disconnected of a birth as you could possibly have for my wife, like, instantly taken her away. And baby and mom are separated for extended periods of time and the opposite of natural on how it should be.

Kyle Stubbs [00:19:27]:

So I was able to witness that and be able to see that this is not normal, this is tough. How can I support her through this? And then we got out of the hospital and about two weeks, three weeks of being out of there, they found a really big lump on Maddie's back. And it turned out to be they didn't know what it was. They flew her back to the children's hospital that she was at, and they told us that she wasn't going to make it. They didn't know what it was, but it was significant enough that they gave us the talk of, are you guys prepared? Because she might not come out of this, because they had to do a surgery to find out what it was. And that was one of those moments where one of those once in a lifetime conversations that's going to stick with you forever. But I'll never forget the feeling I had in that moment, was like, I got this. This is going to be fine.

Kyle Stubbs [00:20:22]:

My job here is support the family, support myself, support the family. And I wouldn't have had that had I not had that background, had that experience with this group of guys beforehand and built that legitimate resiliency up. I would have been a total victim to that situation. So we spent two and a half, three months in the hospital with her. They did multiple neurosurgeries on her, cleaned it all up, but they put her on an IV antibiotic for a month, just over a month, and she's still tiny. Like, she's like six pounds, seven pounds at this point. So we had to work that and shift work with my wife. And one of us could be at the hospital while the other one wasn't.

Kyle Stubbs [00:21:11]:

And obviously as stressful of a situation as it can be. So for lack of a better way to look at that, I breezed through that. Looking back on it, yeah, there's ways that I wish I could have changed, how I maybe offered support or how we lined things up. But I was in my best spot there, and it was because I had put in the work prior to this, and I had a network of guys that I could talk to and be like, hey, man. Yeah, this sucks. I'm not doing very good here. This is tough. And it was the perfect representation of being like, okay, yeah, this works.

Kyle Stubbs [00:21:50]:

Whatever I did here works. And then it was an indication of what's it like for other guys in my circle, in the first responder circle that go through something like this? What do they have at their disposal to get them through it? And the answer was nothing. Like, you go off work and then you're alienated and you're alone there, and yeah, the paycheck is going to come in still, but you're just on your own. And then you're thinking about, okay, do the guys think I'm just skipping out? Do the guys think that I'm just milking this or whatever it might be very alienated, very alone. Right.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:22:31]:

Yeah. As opposed to whatever that internal dialogue or whatever that imposed story is, whether.

Kyle Stubbs [00:22:37]:

It'S because we all like that lone wolf story.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:22:42]:

Yeah. I mean, you look at popular culture of how much it gets glorified of that, even if you look at some of the extrapolations of the hero's journey, is that it does glorify that individual hero so much, and yet there would be no frodo in the ring without Sam.

Kyle Stubbs [00:23:03]:

Yes. Without whole the whole lone wolf thing is something we got to kick to the curb because there's a couple of reasons why there's going to be a lone wolf out there in the first place. You don't want to be that lone wolf. You either lost a fight and you got kicked out or you did something shady that got you kicked out or you're sick and you're barely hanging on.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:25]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:23:27]:

Occasionally there might be one majestic wolf out there that's on his own little journey to start a new fantastic tribe, but that's very rare. The lone wolf is usually the sick, twisted one, even that majestic one.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:42]:

He's on his way to the next.

Kyle Stubbs [00:23:46]:

Make his own path.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:47]:

Yeah, exactly. Or join another one or whatever that is. So that's an in between phase, not the entirety of the journey.

Kyle Stubbs [00:23:55]:

Exactly.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:23:57]:

It's a wild idea that we've held onto it beyond just the exposure to it. Do you have any hypotheses of why that becomes so attractive for us, especially for men to gravitate towards?

Kyle Stubbs [00:24:15]:

It's the resistance that we get to fight against. We want to be fighting something, challenged by something. Yeah. Like something there. And we can make that as silly of a needless thing that we want it to be. Right. Like everyone that's in that stuck in that victim mentality has created some kind of a situation that they have resistance towards or resistance against, and it's their identity to fight against it. And it gets addicting.

Kyle Stubbs [00:24:54]:

I get it. I've been there. But we don't have to be there. Yeah.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:24:59]:

The freeing moment of realizing that you're the only one holding yourself back.

Kyle Stubbs [00:25:05]:

Holy yeah.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:25:07]:

I had with a common cohort from our community and past podcast guest Mr. Hefe Jeff Lester, through one of his yoga and arrows of light ceremonies that I took part of, wrote this story of a funny, comical version of that for myself, of finding a box that you put yourself in, turning it, manufacturing that box into a prison, realizing that you're the one that put yourself there. You're the one that built the prison around you. And there's likely not even a prison there anyways.

Kyle Stubbs [00:25:52]:

No, it's not even locked. You can just open the door.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:25:56]:

Yeah. Or the door is not even there. Whatever metaphor you want to put there.

Kyle Stubbs [00:25:59]:

Exactly.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:26:00]:

And there's two to this point of what you were talking about, of the things that are ways that we can distract ourselves, disconnect ourselves, we can chase different achievements as a way to hold ourself back. There's a concept I've heard on other podcasts that I like to listen to of creating a shiny room in hell for yourself.

Kyle Stubbs [00:26:24]:

Yeah.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:26:24]:

You've got all the things and I can imagine that this plays into exactly what you're talking about with the first responders say they're struggling with something. They've got the leave, they're on their own. They've achieved the things. They've got the partner, they've got the family. They've got the boat or the camper or the cabin. They have all the trappings and the toys. They have their man cave, whatever it is. And yet when they're there by themselves for an extended period of time, it does start to feel like a shiny room in hell.

Kyle Stubbs [00:27:00]:

Totally. Yeah. The indication of that would be like can you comfortably go for a distraction free walk?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:07]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:27:08]:

You've got the wakeboard boat and the truck and whatever, but can you go for a walk without something on?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:17]:

How long can you go without it?

Kyle Stubbs [00:27:20]:

Yeah. 15 minutes.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:21]:

Is it 45 minutes? Are you gone for 2 hours?

Kyle Stubbs [00:27:25]:

And are you, like, staring at are you speedwalking home to get back to whatever it is?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:31]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:27:32]:

And I find that a ton. And that's a really good indication of where somebody's at just the comfort that you have with yourself.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:27:42]:

So in looking at that, since this is an area of I'm assuming an area of a focus that you use with folks, what are the types of tools or tricks, things that you can suggest for folks who may be struggling with this idea that I might go for a walk without my phone or without earbuds in, without something to listen to, or that finding that speed walking home. What could you suggest for somebody who's perhaps in that space and struggling there?

Kyle Stubbs [00:28:14]:

Yeah. As much as our temptation is especially as men to dive into the deep end to like, okay, well, I guess I got to do that hour and a half long yoga class or I got to do that hour long meditation, whatever it is. Start small. Go walk around the block just breathing through your nose. Do it till it feels good. Now move it a little longer. And maybe it's not even a walk to start. Maybe it's okay.

Kyle Stubbs [00:28:51]:

Before you go and start scrolling through your phone every morning, just look up at the ceiling and count ten breaths, count 20 breaths. Something super small doesn't have to be this massive, giant leap that we want to take, because it puts us back into that situation of having some resistance. Right. Something that we can fight against.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:12]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:29:13]:

We want to make it so that it feels good and that we want to keep doing it. And then clearly, as you know, as everybody that listens to your show knows from having this all star lineup of enlisted coaches on here, once you start to really pay attention to that, and once you start to think about your thinking starts to open up and all that stuff gets easier. That voice is a lot easier to tame than we give it. Credit.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:44]:

100% for you in that entanging of that voice. Is it something that's still ongoing for you? What does it look like now versus, say, when you first got started?

Kyle Stubbs [00:30:02]:

Man, my Billy, that inner voice, the guy holding me back, sitting on my shoulder, his name is Todd, and he was savage. Todd was tod still is savage. He's still there. But the thing that shifted for me is being totally comfortable and accepting the fact that he's there. That voice is there. We all have this voice, this part of us that is present and gets really, for lack of a better word, savage at times. But the understanding that it's there to protect me, to help me, to keep me safe from something, and the transition of being just fully jumping on the team with that voice to now just having compassion for it and being like, hey, man, I'm good. I'm all right here.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:30:59]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:30:59]:

Thanks for showing up. Thanks for trying to help me out through this. Thanks for trying to keep me safe from whatever this situation is that can potentially cause me discomfort or vulnerability, but I'm good. I got this. And that's the switch. When that switch happens, when you can have compassion for that voice in your head, that's where the money's at. That's where things start to open up.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:31:22]:

Yeah. I really love that. And that's an area of conversation that many other I don't know, you want to say programs, individuals, whatever. Yeah. We can take care of the impostor syndrome. We can take care of this voice in our head, and we can also, to your point of identify it as it's part of us and it's there for a purpose. If we can love what that purpose is and give it that care and compassion, that's so different than what popular culture would tell us.

Kyle Stubbs [00:31:57]:

Is it ever?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:31:59]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:32:00]:

And you can accept if you got to do that, if you got to climb to the top of that mountain. Yeah. Jump on for the ride, man. Let's go and let's talk some shit and get to the top of that thing, right? But once you're up there yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks for helping me out. Thanks for getting me to the. Top of that thing.

Kyle Stubbs [00:32:18]:

Yeah, I'm good now.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:32:19]:

You can take a break now.

Kyle Stubbs [00:32:20]:

Yeah, we're good here. And it starts to really paint when you start to think about that. And one of the groups I have on the go right now is these guys are just about over the hump of working through that story and the realizations that come once you start to see the situations where that voice is showing up to attempt to keep you safe, to protect you from something. We can start to really look at those and be like, okay, well, what's the discomfort there? Is it because I have to actually open up and say how I'm feeling about something? Is that what it is? Is that where the edge is? Or is it that I might be seen, that I might make a mistake yeah. And start to really analyze where we're at and what does affect us and what doesn't.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:33:08]:

Exactly. Well, and I can imagine, too, of, like, in the first responder line of work or in this realizing that voice and being able to take a look at, well, when this shows up, I usually do X, Y, and Z. Can I do something different?

Kyle Stubbs [00:33:29]:

Yeah.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:33:31]:

And how does that make an effect, or how does that change the people that you work with in this first responder role?

Kyle Stubbs [00:33:44]:

A big part of it is the realization that we all have it and not just assuming that you're the only one that goes through that. Right. Especially I've done the full gamut of being a first responder. I've put out the fires legitimately, and I've put out the fires theoretically, and as police, specifically, when we go to a disturbance of some kind, an argument or whatever, and you can start to see, like, okay, this is imagine what this guy's self talk is right now. Let's start to look at this from this perspective where we can start to actually analyze the words that are legitimately coming out of this person's mouth to help them calm down, to help them get some space and clarity from that situation that they're in right now. And we can de escalate things by realizing where somebody's at just by listening.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:34:46]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:34:46]:

And that's a huge part of policing, especially that right now, my mission, aside from the programs that I run currently, is to change this and think of language as a legitimate as a use of force option to de escalate something.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:02]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kyle Stubbs [00:35:04]:

As opposed to as much as we want to talk about how important it is and I love Jiu Jitsu, and I love my firearms and everything as important it is to train in these different aspects, 90%, probably more than 90. I don't actually know. The statistic of our involvement in the public is just having conversations with people and just de escalating things. And our training on it is poor.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:31]:

Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody's training on it is poor.

Kyle Stubbs [00:35:34]:

Exactly. Yeah. And we're supposed to be the ones that can help do it.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:38]:

Right. Set up. It's one of those components of looking at it from the perspective of you're not even given the real tools to do your job.

Kyle Stubbs [00:35:49]:

Yeah, 100%.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:35:50]:

Like, all right, dig this ditch with a hand shovel.

Kyle Stubbs [00:35:53]:

Yeah. So that you'll go there and you'd be like, oh, you can't keep doing this. Yeah. That's going to help. That's going to calm that person down right away.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:36:01]:

It's going to change something right away. Right?

Kyle Stubbs [00:36:03]:

Yeah. And then that language comes into the office where you start, oh, they always do this when we go there. Or, I'm so busy. It's been such a busy day. Yeah. It's been a really productive day.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:36:14]:

Yeah. Those are major shifts. In what ways? That perhaps those of us who are in the public, not in the first responder realm or in the policing realm, what are ways that what you've been doing with language training for yourself and others has been helpful in ways that people may not have recognized or may have thought of in this role?

Kyle Stubbs [00:36:44]:

It's an interesting question. Our unknowing should I phrase this how often, without intentionally doing it, we start conflict without any inclination to do so? But just because of the words that we use, it puts that other person on the defensive. And once you start to see that and start to pay attention to it, quite often we're not giving the other person we're communicating with a chance. Right. If you think about it like a back and forth, like a tennis match, like you've hammered your first serve at them, their only reaction is to just get a racket on and get it back to you. When you say something like, let's give the example of you never empty the.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:37:37]:

Dishwasher, is that actually true?

Kyle Stubbs [00:37:41]:

Bullshit. I don't I did it, like, two weeks ago. I remember the moment I did it. And it could be something as simple as that, or it could be like, you got to do this this week, as opposed to, hey, are you able to create the time to do this this week? That coming from like, a supervisory perspective. When you say something like, you got to do this this week, that person is instantly, okay, man, I don't know how I'm going to find the time to do this. How am I going to do it? And they're in that stuck and suck spot, as opposed to be like, hey, Jeremy, do you think you can find the time this week to get that project done?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:24]:

What do you need?

Kyle Stubbs [00:38:25]:

Or can you create the time? Yeah, what do you need to create the time to get that project done? Yeah, totally. 100% different perspective on that.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:35]:

The pressure versus being supported.

Kyle Stubbs [00:38:37]:

Yeah. And we just don't realize it because it's so ingrained in us to communicate this way really quick back and forth.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:47]:

Well, especially when you talk about things like policing and whatnot, too, because we look at that as the public, as they're an authority figure and an authority figure making a demand on us. And so exactly to what you're saying of you have to do this or you need to do this, I was like, well, that puts the other person on the conflict side of whether they're going to comply or not. They're already in this state of fight, flight or flee. And that can change everything so quickly.

Kyle Stubbs [00:39:28]:

Yeah. As a police officer, our uniform presence alone just puts that barrier there in some way. Right. So as opposed to that first intro of introducing yourself to somebody or talking to somebody, hey, what can we do today? Or what's going on? How can I help you?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:39:52]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:39:53]:

As opposed to something that's more in your face, more abrupt, more we got all the time in the world. There's no time clock on us for going to have these conversations with people. I think we can slow down and we can talk. Yeah. There's going to be some things where language takes a backseat and you got to handle something. Yeah. That's a different situation. But when you go to the argument or the disturbance or the neighbor whose music is too loud or whatever call that we inevitably get called to that we can take the time to have a conversation.

Kyle Stubbs [00:40:27]:

Yeah. Think about how we do it and go from there.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:40:30]:

Yeah. I was going to say to your point of just the presence of the uniform, that just becomes just a butthole puckering experience for a lot of people.

Kyle Stubbs [00:40:41]:

Anyways, I'm a cop and if I see siren behind me or lights behind me, I'm like, oh, shit, what did I do? Yeah. And I'm used to it. I get the same response. We all get the same response.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:40:53]:

Yeah. And that's a weird thing to hear about coming from somebody who wears uniform of something that could be. Those are the types of conversations and the perspectives that I know could be very helpful for many of us in the world of like, hey, they're still just people. They're doing the best they can with the tools that they have. Yeah. There are better tools out there. And people like you are helping to get them into the hands of first responders, which is incredible and amazing. And also, we can also give people a little more credit to be humans.

Kyle Stubbs [00:41:35]:

We're all on the same team here. We're all trying to keep this thing spinning.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:41:41]:

Yeah. In looking at from the other perspective, too, of what you were talking about is you have enough time, where do you think that comes from as far as an attitude from the policing side or first responders type of the urgency even when it's not there, where do you think that comes from? Or what's that component?

Kyle Stubbs [00:42:11]:

I can speak personally to what it's like when because there's different police in different areas is going to be very different. I've policed in the city where every time you sign into your computer in your car, there's 15 calls to go to or whatever it might be, and it's go go all the time. And then I've also policed in the small town where you might get one call a day or two calls a day. So entirely different perspectives. So a lot of that will come that scarcity mindset when it comes to time is going to be when it is in that go go state. And you'll see, that just the same as the difference when you're in a city and you can feel that rushed energy. It's the same as if you're working in that city and it's go go. But when you're actually at we call them files.

Kyle Stubbs [00:43:09]:

When you're at the file at the call, there's no time frame on it. Then it can slow down. And quite often a lot of times where that comes from is just being stuck in that hyper vigilant, excited, nervous system about to fry state where our breath is super high and we're not keeping track of it by any means. Our inhales are longer than our exhales, and we're all over the map and not making any sense of anything, and we have a hard time calming down. So what I like to tell guys is when they get on the way to the call, before they show up to the house, if it's a regular routine response and you don't need to be extra tactical about things, slow that breathing down, make those exhales longer than the inhales.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:43:54]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:43:55]:

Because I've seen it. And anybody that's worn the uniform, no matter if it's fire, paramedic or police or bylaw whatever it might be, has seen it where you can calm people down just by your presence, just by having slow and controlled breathing.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:44:11]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:44:12]:

As opposed to you come there and you're in that heightened state, you come in like the Koolaid man through the door. And that's what the other people are going to be like too.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:44:20]:

Yeah. For those of us who haven't served in that capacity of, like, if you've worked in an office or something like that, looking at are you constantly checking your email inbox and feeling up regulated, like, feeling that nervousness and like, oh, shit, how am I ever going to get this done? And this and this and jumping and feeling really frantic or can imagine going into a meeting and feeling great, and then your supervisor, the CEO, somebody of authority, or even a team member comes in and they've got that attitude or it's the worst day possible, and they're on the offensive and on the attack. What does that do to the rest of your day? How does that change the meeting? Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:45:06]:

Are you even listening to anything that's going on there? Or are you just whatever story you've cultivated about how this guy's nuts and about to explode.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:15]:

Yeah, I've done a little bit of experimentation with this in the past of that co regulation of breath, of, like, somebody comes in like that, and I just sit back and breathe and see what happens. I bet you know what happens. They start to slow down, and they're like, oh, I didn't realize I needed whatever just happened. They're like, oh, I feel so much better than I did when I came in.

Kyle Stubbs [00:45:41]:

Totally. And you will see this a lot, especially in the relationship side of things. As first responders. You'll come home sometimes and just as anybody, if they had a stressful day at work and you come in the door and you're still 1ft at the job, whatever it might be or at whatever situation you had and you have a hard time connecting or listening to, whether it's your wife or your partner or friend or whatever it is your beagle, and being able to really have a conversation or to be able to listen and input. Quite often, it's because we're still in that upregulated state, and I like to practice a thing called looping. When I'm listening, when I'm in a conversation, I know that I'm getting distracted. I know that I'm stuck out of that spot. I'm still up.

Kyle Stubbs [00:46:33]:

When I inhale, I'll think about what's going on with me, where am I right now? What's going on? And on my exhale, I'll really take in what's happening, what my wife might be saying, or I'm on the phone with my mom or something, what she might be saying on the phone, and then on my inhale, it's back to me again. And then on my exhale, it's back to them and just keep that loop going for as long as I can. Generally, that will get me back into that spot.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:02]:

That's a great practice that I haven't actually heard that one before.

Kyle Stubbs [00:47:07]:

And I'll find that on calls where you have somebody that's really up here, and they want to tell you everything that's ever been wrong to them, ever. As much as I want to get out of this situation and go on to the next file or go and have my lunch break or whatever it might be, let's just let this person unload do the thing, and we'll go from there in that situation. Yeah, I'll practice that looping. Let them go. Let them go. Let them go. Okay. And now I can say what I have to say and actually have the point come across as opposed to just trying to throw random sentences at them when they're not in the space to listen.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:47:50]:

Yeah. They're just waiting for their next turn to unload the yeah. But whatever it is that's coming out. Yeah, that's interesting. A previous guest, and he was also a co facilitator at the Men's retreat that I held, james of Furion.

Kyle Stubbs [00:48:06]:

He.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:06]:

Had an exercise that he used which was quite similar in a lot of ways but they use chest timers in the conversation between each other. You've got the chest timer, and so your job is only to focus on the other person. So it's a very similar idea, just with a little bit of external and external practice from person to person, man to man, whatever that is.

Kyle Stubbs [00:48:34]:

I love that. I also have the mental image of that really heated speed chess match without slamming down on the timer, going back and forth on that person off and.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:47]:

Slapping, but still being able to be present while you're doing yeah, no, I love that.

Kyle Stubbs [00:48:52]:

Anything that really gives us the opportunity to take stock of what we're feeling and what we're experiencing incredibly valuable. And that's another thing I find with guys, especially. We have a really difficult time just describing how we actually feel from a physiological standpoint. Like, from not just, oh, I'm angry because this happened, and then they didn't let me do this, and then I wasn't given the opportunity to go and do this, as opposed to being like, hey, my chest feels real tight and my jaw is, like, clenched, or I'm sitting here at the desk and my fist is clenched. Keep noticing it perfect. Okay, awesome. That's great. You saw where you were at and you acknowledged it.

Kyle Stubbs [00:49:43]:

Perfect. If we could all just get to that point. Huge win. But we want to put all these words, all these stories on why we're feeling a certain way as opposed to actually how we're feeling.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:49:57]:

Yeah. We want to explain it away.

Kyle Stubbs [00:50:00]:

Yeah. And you can't argue that's the other thing. You can't argue with how you're actually feeling. If you feel like, yeah, man, having a hard time taking a deep breath and feel that kind of uneasy feeling in my stomach, you have that conversation with your spouse as opposed to being like, that really pissed me off when you said that. Totally different situation. You can't argue with the fact that how you actually feel in your body, and you can go from there, like.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:34]:

Trying to argue with the wind.

Kyle Stubbs [00:50:36]:

Yeah, exactly. Stop being so windy. And I'll spend a lot of time with a lot of guys just talking about that, just getting that I feel stressed. Okay. What does stress feel like? Oh, man, it makes me angry. What does it feel like when you're angry? I don't know. It's frustrating. What does it feel like when you're frustrated?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:59]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:51:01]:

What are you actually feeling? What's going on in the body? Let's connect to the body for a second.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:51:07]:

Keep asking those questions and finding that. So one of the things that I was hearing, as you're describing this, is that is continually with that connection to self finding this connection that we likely haven't had before. And in that journey that either you went on or that you've helped with others, has that been one of the most important components in the journey of changing the self and changing your life to being what it really want, what you really want it to be?

Kyle Stubbs [00:51:49]:

Yeah, absolutely. And the big takeaway from that is that it takes so much less to feel satisfied when we really connect with ourselves. I know you have. I can distinctly recall even seeing you have a moment like this in Virginia when we were there, where you can be by yourself, and then all of a sudden you can see that kind of nice, big breath come, and just a little smile comes up on your face.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:52:17]:

Yeah, totally.

Kyle Stubbs [00:52:18]:

Unlike, you didn't have to go and buy a new toy of something or a new whatever to make that happen. Just happened from self fulfillment, whatever that moment was. And when you start to get to that point where you're connected with yourself and you're noticing what's making you feel good and what's making you feel like crap, you'll start to notice those moments that come where you're by yourself somewhere and you'll take a big, deep breath and feels good. And that's a really sad thing that not a lot of us experience that on a regular basis.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:52:52]:

Yeah. There's a sense of, like, I understand that we all have pressures in our lives, whether they're real, imagined, or otherwise. There tends to be this want to rush towards achievement, fulfillment. I need to check the boxes. I need to buy the thing. I need to get the thing. And the reality is that we miss the point of life. Many times talk about finding the meaning of life, and it's like, well, what if the meaning is that? It just is.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:53:31]:

We miss that point. This whole experience is crazy and wild and amazing, can be heartbreaking and sad. It can be all of those things. And being able to see all of those things as just the experience, that's the thing. That's the whole point, is to experience it.

Kyle Stubbs [00:53:56]:

Yeah. That's the beauty of it. Exactly. And I've been there. I've been in that spot like we talked about at the beginning, where everything's muted, where everything's gray tones.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:10]:

I'm just doing the thing to get the retirement so that I could possibly one day live the way that I want to live when I'm 67 or 80 or whatever it is, or whatever number it ends up being. It's like, well, that was a moment for me of realization, of, like, well, do I have to wait until I'm in my sixty s or seventy s to do what I want to do? Who made up that rule? Because that's not a rule I want to follow.

Kyle Stubbs [00:54:40]:

No, it's not a law.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:54:44]:

Why not be happy now? Why not fulfill the things that you want to fulfill right now?

Kyle Stubbs [00:54:52]:

We get so soft with ourselves from this. I love where this is going, because especially when we start to think about the cultural norms of whatever it might be and say, there's that dinner party that you're supposed to go to, but you really don't want to go there, don't go. Just don't go if you don't want to go. Yeah. Sometimes you're like my Billy's acting up here and telling me I don't want to go, or whatever it might be. But we constantly put ourselves in these situations where we know we're not going to feel invigorated or alive from them, and we'll just keep going to do them because we're supposed to do them.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:55:33]:

Yeah. Or we're chasing the next thing to make us feel alive. It's the next thing to buy. It's the next thing in my shopping cart that's going to show up or whatever, the next achievement. And it's like, oh, can I get more comfortable just being me? Or to throw this back to what we were talking about even before we started recording, of when you are in this place of realizing that you can do what you want to do, why not start and just keep going and see what happens? This is the funniest side of when I was in a more traditional thought pattern of get into a retirement and find some thing in retirement to fulfill you or whatever. The idea that I had the thing that I wanted to do was become a cheesemonger. I love it. Just selling cheese, I love it.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:34]:

That was a moment, too, of like, I don't even know if I would like it. I'm going to wait until I'm nearly 70 to figure that out if I'm going to like it or not and take on a whole new career path when I'm 70.

Kyle Stubbs [00:56:50]:

The only upside to that is that you could monger something else. You could become a fishmonger or just.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:56:58]:

Work a deli case somewhere. But the idea was, it became so hilarious to me of like, what am I waiting for? If that's something I actually want to do, what can I do to get me towards that? What can I do to explore it? Could I shadow somebody who's doing that and just see what the day to day is like? And I don't know if this is something that speaks to you as well of, like, when we're making those determinations for ourselves or we want to try on that next identity, or we want to make a big shift or big move where it's like, well, I have to get the certification. I have to enroll in the school. I have to get myself so far down the path to even know if I want to do it.

Kyle Stubbs [00:57:46]:

Absolutely. There's so much gold in just the putting yourself in the arena, so to speak. Whether that's diving first into the world of cheese or if it's climbing Mount Everest or whatever it might be, it doesn't matter. And it's like what you said, the ability just to start and keep going and being okay with the struggle and the not knowing exactly where it's going to pan out or what's exactly going to happen is the whole point in my mind. Right. And that takes us right back full circle to where we started the conversation with on. You don't always need the answer. You don't need to know the answer right away.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:58:41]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [00:58:42]:

The journey is part of it. And if we can figure that out on our own, perfect. If we need some help from somebody even better, great. It's out there. There's no lack of support for people out there. And that's something that we'll get stuck on, is just the thought that we're alone. Right. We're on that island by ourselves.

Kyle Stubbs [00:59:05]:

Or so far from it. So far from it. And anybody that went to that experience in Virginia saw that pretty darn quick when they walked in the doors of anywhere and all of a sudden there's a hundred people that would dive in front of a bus for you.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:59:21]:

Yeah. Or you could have a conversation that goes anywhere from being really silly talking about things like geez or goes as deep as you possibly can and can be vulnerable and whatnot and having that as a way to be. Able to have a common source of language or a common way of speaking that is very different than any other community that I've ever been a part of, which is so cool. And to also realize that even though we're all coaches in a very we use a lot of similar technology, we use a lot of things that are very much the same, and yet none of us are competitors. We're not competing against each other. We're peers in this. And there's more than enough pie to go around. You don't even have to reinvent.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:12]:

You can do the same thing as somebody else and there's still enough people to help.

Kyle Stubbs [01:00:17]:

There will never be a shortage.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:00:21]:

That's a wild thing to think about of, like, within especially a coaching community or in a place where you become very self sufficient or it's your own business, your own practice, where it can be very easy to feel like you are competing against everybody else in the room. To be able to have that conversation and say, yeah, this is how I'm using it isn't like, that's really cool. This is how I use it in a different way. And we're all here doing our best to make a better world.

Kyle Stubbs [01:00:51]:

Yeah. And that experience in itself. And I know we've talked a lot about and lifted already, but was really eye opening for me to see that many people from that many different walks of life and doing totally different things from the hippiest of the hippies to the most straight and narrow CrossFit guy out there or whatever it might be strict materialist. Yeah. And everybody just didn't yeah. Didn't matter in any way whatsoever. And just the amount of, like, you walk by any group and you're like, oh, I want part of that conversation. Those guys are talking about how the pyramids are made.

Kyle Stubbs [01:01:33]:

Let's go talk to those guys, or whatever it might be.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:36]:

Yeah. Or these guys are talking about building a garden, or these guys are talking about high stressful situations that they've been in.

Kyle Stubbs [01:01:44]:

And it doesn't matter if, like, me a cop there in the conversation with five guys talking about the last time they used heroin as a ceremony and just totally being involved in this awesome, fantastic conversation of seeing people's experiences and without judgment or without that voice getting in the way to hold you back from it. It's eye opening that we can create that in our own spaces anywhere.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:02:18]:

Yeah. What's that been like, to take that idea into your community?

Kyle Stubbs [01:02:27]:

Yeah. That's the big goal with the programs that I do run. So I run, like, ten week long programs for first responders, and the idea of it is to create that community. One. Realistically, and I tell people this often that the whole point when I started this was to be like a back doorway for just guys to connect with each other. Yeah. I've got you in here to talk about helping you communicate better at home, feel better, be healthier, all these things. But realistically, what I want is for you guys to have a community where you can talk, you can have conversations.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:03:04]:

That isn't just the company around the water cooler.

Kyle Stubbs [01:03:07]:

Exactly.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:03:08]:

Yeah.

Kyle Stubbs [01:03:08]:

No, it's not just a bunch of victims telling victim stories. So that's evolved, obviously, into what it is now, which is fantastic. But that's my end goal, is to have that, like, what you experience there, to be every detachment across North America. Yeah. You want to come in here and talk? Yeah. Okay, let's talk. See what it is and be that approachable and not just be this a there's a part to being a police officer where you have to be vigilant and you have to be aware all the time of what's going on, because there's real shit out there. There's no doubt about that.

Kyle Stubbs [01:03:49]:

But it doesn't mean we have to be stonewalled to everyone out there all the time and each other.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:03:55]:

Well, if you treat everything like if the only solution you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Kyle Stubbs [01:04:01]:

Yeah, sure does. And then you don't get very good at hitting the nail.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:04:08]:

Start hitting whatever. Hoping that the nail is there.

Kyle Stubbs [01:04:13]:

Exactly. Awesome.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:04:15]:

Man, this has been so fun. As we approach the end of the podcast, any final thoughts? Any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with the audience? We've been on a wild journey so far, so would you like to leave.

Kyle Stubbs [01:04:27]:

The folks with just pay attention to your perspective. Right. The reticular activating system is a thing. It starts to can pick up on things and start to shadow what's actually good out there. Pay attention to how you're thinking about things, and if you're stuck on something, write it down and look at. It. It's that simple. And then magically, you can listen to the Weird and strong podcast and be like, oh, look at these 100 people that have been on here.

Kyle Stubbs [01:05:02]:

I could send this sentence to anybody, and they can help me. You're not alone in this stuff.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:05:07]:

Exactly.

Kyle Stubbs [01:05:07]:

You're not alone in this stuff. Once we start to really pay attention to that, that perspective can shift really quick.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:05:16]:

Awesome, man. What would you like to share with the audience as far as programs you have going on, people you would like to help, how they can get in contact with you?

Kyle Stubbs [01:05:25]:

Yeah, I'm on Instagram and Facebook. I don't use them a ton, but I'm on there. I'd love it. If anybody listening, jump on there, find me. It's just my name, Kyle M. Stubbs. I'd love to connect on there. I run everything off my website, Kylesubs CA, and currently I'm getting as many speaking engagements as I can.

Kyle Stubbs [01:05:46]:

I run workshops aside from my ten week long program, but currently I'm getting a few speaking engagements in the books to talk about perspective and talk about police interaction with the public and all that kind of stuff. So anybody listening? If you're looking for a speaker, let's go. I'd love to talk about it.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:06:05]:

Fantastic. That's great to hear. And I'm sure we'll spread this podcast all throughout the Internet, and who knows.

Kyle Stubbs [01:06:13]:

Where it'll take you, the wild interwebs. Yes, I'll be here just playing Hacky sack.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:06:17]:

Don't worry about me playing hackysack until the call comes, right?

Kyle Stubbs [01:06:21]:

Yeah, it's hard, man. That's a big hurdle for me right now, is trying to figure out how I can make my uniform as mobile as possible because it's tough to play hackysack in a full blown police uniform with your vest and your belt, and we got big ass boots. There's not many people making minimalist, safe boots out there.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:06:44]:

Yeah, I can imagine. I was just, like, even looking at the fabric and stuff. I was like, I could never do it because I don't think I would fit into it.

Kyle Stubbs [01:06:52]:

It's tough. Awesome.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:06:56]:

Well, thank you so much, Kyle. It has been an absolute pleasure getting to connect with you again and having you on the podcast. So very appreciative for your time and your message and your stories, and most importantly, for you being you.

Kyle Stubbs [01:07:11]:

Thanks, brother. Much appreciated, man. Keep it up.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:07:14]:

Thank you. And thank you all for listening. This has been a fun, exciting podcast for me to do with Kyle. And until next time, as always, stay strong, folks, and most importantly, stay weird.