Don't Screw the Future You

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What's up ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to another edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. This podcast seeks to deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help The US military veteran community and anybody else willing to listen to live their absolute best lives. I am your host, mister Chris Albert Palmitessa. I am a US Marine Corps veteran who's been doing this podcast for six.

Oh god. Not even six. It's been seven, I think. Seven years. Seven years of interviewing people who are a lot smarter than I am, more accomplished than I am, trying to bring new ideas to the veteran community to help you guys to improve your lives.

And and a lot of times, I am interviewing somebody who's a lot smarter than me, more accomplished, somebody who's done things that that I could never do. But sometimes I I sit here and I talk about my own experiences. And my own experience I don't talk about my own experiences to brag or anything like that. Most of the time, it's to tell you about different things that I've failed at in my life. Different things I've done poorly, and that is a whole lot of things.

And I do that because I'm probably older than most of this audience. Right? Like, I'm I'm about to be 43 next year, a lot of you are in your thirties, some of you are in your late twenties, some of you might be even be in your early to mid twenties, but but by and large this audience, people who served, people who were generally in the Marine Corps of the Army though we get some some Air Force and Navy brothers and you guys are welcome here too. And you know, people who are looking for a way to to move forward in life and so if that's you, the show is for you. Alright?

And if you know somebody who who who is, you know, a veteran or or anybody else who's just trying to figure out their path in life, please share these episodes over with them. I got a couple of announcements, and then I'm just gonna kinda riff today. The first announcement is this. I have put together along with my friend JP Cowher, US Navy veteran and comedian extraordinaire. We have put together a veterans benefit comedy show that is going to be occurring in Miami Springs, Florida on May 14 at Old Tom's Tavern and Old Tom's Sports Bar.

I'm sorry. And it is gonna be an outstanding show. We've got a lineup of all veteran comedians who are gonna be doing some outstanding stand up comedy, and all the proceeds of this show are going to benefit my friends over there at the Warrior Angels Foundation. Now why did I choose the Warrior Angels Foundation? Well, you guys know that I am good friends with Andrew and Adam Marr.

Andrew was a special forces Green Beret, suffered from severe traumatic brain injury, severe complications from low level traumatic brain injury. The man never got directly hit by anything. But from from serving as a breacher in the Green Berets, having been exposed to explosion after explosion, that created a problem in his brain. So much inflammation that it shut down his hormonal cascade. And a man who was at one time an elite performer got turned into somebody who could barely function, somebody who was an alcoholic, somebody who was dealing with depression, a man who had five kids at the time and was barely keeping it together.

And Andrew worked until he could find a solution to that because the the current medical authorities at the time were not helping him out. And he came in came in touch with doctor Mark Gordon, who has developed a nutraceutical protocol that helps veterans with traumatic brain injury, and these guys are attacking this problem from the root cause. If you haven't watched the the the documentary Quiet Explosions, you definitely need to check that out. So many people in our community are affected by traumatic brain injury. It it it is a huge problem, and that is why we are supporting the Warrior Angels Foundation because I love these guys.

I love the work that they're doing, and it's going to go to help a whole lot of people. But admission to the show is simply a donation to the Warrior Angels Foundation. You're gonna present your proof of donation at the door. If you're not in Miami and you can't visit the show, you can still donate. Hit my Facebook page, and that'll bring you over to the Warrior Angels Foundation, donation page, or you can go to www.warriorangelsfoundation.org, and you can donate there as well.

I wanna try and raise as much money for these guys as possible. This is not the last comedy show we're gonna be doing. We're gonna be working with a bunch of charities, because there's so many great organizations out there doing some great work. But Warrior Angels Foundation is up there is is one of my primaries, and I, I I think these guys are doing some of the best work out there right now. So definitely come check that out.

I've got some awesome comedians that are gonna be My friend JP Tower, US Navy veteran. I will be there. My friend Creighton Bayer, US army US army veteran. Corey Brodsky, US army. Lee Smith, US army, Rob Callert, US air force, and a bunch of others.

I mean, look, this is gonna be a phenomenal show. If you've been around veterans before, you know that we've got an amazing sense of humor. So so come on out, check this out. We're gonna have a private room in Old Tom's. We're gonna be able to get wild.

It's gonna be so much freaking fun. So that's 8PM on Saturday, May 14 at Old Tom Sports Bar. And that's actually it as far as the announcements go. You know, I don't have a whole lot planned to talk about today, But but what I did wanna talk about is the process that each of you are going through right now. Now if you listen to this show, it's probably because you're on a path to something.

You might not know what that that something is yet. Right? But you know you're working, you know you want your life to be better than what it is right now, and you know that, you know, you've gotta put some work in to improve it. One of the things that that I have started to realize in my life is this. Yes.

There is a ton of work that needs to be done to get to whatever goal you're going after. Anything worth doing is gonna take a ton of work. One of the things that you really wanna make sure you're doing is making sure that you're doing the right work. Because you could spend months, years, or decades focused on the wrong thing in that path. Something that's just causing you to spin your wheels.

Something that is just just causing you to focus on on, you know, small things rather than big things that are gonna actually get you to your goal. And it's perfectly possible to spend months, you know, quarters, decades, on something that that that, you know, is just keeping you in the same spot. And in your mind while you're doing it, you think you're doing the right thing. You think you're putting putting the work in, and you are. You're working your ass off, but you're working for the wrong thing.

That work you're putting in is actually moving you more and more away from your goal because what you haven't done is you haven't, you know, taken some time to actually look at the path you're taking. Alright? It's like when you're doing land nav. Right? Sometimes, you know, you're going into some low area and there's high areas all around you, and, you know, you're you're not able to shoot an azimuth, and, you know, you're trying to use terrain association, but you can't really get a lay of the land from from where you are.

You have to climb to the top of the hill or something like that to see where you actually are to really orient yourself, to to to really associate that terrain. You know? And and unless you're doing that from time to time in your path, then you could you could be going way the fuck off. Right? And I've seen so many people do this.

I've done it myself. And, you know, I'll give you some examples here. You know, when I was, you know, getting out of the military, I thought that I needed to go to school. Right? Everybody was telling me, you gotta go to college.

And not only do you gotta go to college, you gotta once you get your bachelor's degree, you gotta go get your graduate degree if you wanna be competitive. And I just took that as face value. So I went and not only did I get my bachelor's degree, I went and I got a master's degree and I went and I worked on a PhD. I was in higher education for ten years of my life. That's fucking crazy.

Right? Ten years of my life. And I was studying political science. I I studied international politics, quantitative methodology, you know, I used some of the logic and and some of the principles from quantitative methodology in my work now, running a company. But but, you know what was I doing during that time period?

I was dedicating myself to the study of political science and didn't even have anything to really do with real politics. It was it was theory. I was studying theory, and then I was listening to people talk about theory all day. And we were debating about theory, and that took me further and further away from the real world. Right?

And I worked my ass off on it. I was a great graduate student. I I got perfect grades. I I passed my doctoral exams a year early. I spent, I've read hundreds of books on philosophy, on political theory, on on regression models, on game theory, on on every abstract aspect of international politics.

I've read it. Right? And that got me absolutely nowhere. The only place it got me was wasting ten years of my life, giving me a disadvantage in the business world which is where I eventually ended up, and putting me on a path toward toward greater and greater debt. Because even though I was, you know, getting the the post nine eleven GI bill at the time, I still had to take out loans to live.

Right? And I thought I was doing the proper thing because I, you know, was going to school, and I thought that that was gonna put me somewhere. It put me absolutely nowhere, you know. And by the time I I got out enough to see the light, by the time I climbed that mountain to see where the path was, I was miles and miles and miles off course. And that's a mistake that I made.

You know, I'm I'm working my butt off right now, paying off those student loans. I am pushing as far as things go, you know, in the business world. I run a company now and and things turned out pretty good for me. Right? I own property.

I'm I'm I'm doing great. But it was a struggle. I mean, I you guys know my story. I've talked about it a bunch of times. I mean, I ended up, living out of my car for for a while.

You know what I mean? I ended up being dirt poor for a really really long time. And just now in my forties, I'm getting up on my feet and that could have happened so much earlier if I didn't make that mistake. And I see so many guys out there making the same mistake I did. Know, their their folks are telling them they gotta go to school.

Society's telling them they gotta go to school. Well, guess what? Right? If your goal is to earn money and your goal is to to have a career, school might not be the best thing for you. Maybe it is.

Right? Maybe you wanna be a lawyer. Maybe you wanna be an investment banker and that's awesome. If that's what you want to do then then go into finance. Go study law.

Study business. Do the things that you need to do to get there. Maybe you want to be a nurse. That's awesome. Then go to nursing school.

But one of the things I'll tell you is that if you think the only way to get there is to spend $40,000 a year at a state school or not at a state school, at a private university, then then that's bullshit. Right? You could as a veteran get your whole tuition paid for at a community college or a state school. Right? You you get the whole thing and don't take out any loans to live because there's no guarantees that your degree is gonna give you any success.

But if your goal is to make money and and and you wanna own a business, you know what? Think about the trade schools. Right? There there's fucking they're a fraction of the fucking cost. And you could fucking go over go over there, learn a trade, and then you could learn what you need to learn about business afterward.

You know, that's what I did because I didn't learn shit about business during my degrees, my fucking ten years of higher education. So I took online courses in accounting, Started to understand how money worked. Right? It's a really fucking important thing. The other way I see people falling into this is they think that material possession means wealth.

Right? You know, you get a nice car, you get a nice apartment, right? You you you pay rent, you know, you're living in like Brickell Downtown Miami or something like that. And you know, you're making a $150,000 a year and you think you've got it made, Right? But the reality is you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're putting your most of your money toward that car payment and then that rent.

It's all going away. That car is decreasing in value every fucking year and you you you're not keeping anything for yourself. You're not actually building wealth. Right? I see so many people doing that.

And if you just took a step back and said, you know, how can I actually build wealth and actually talked to people that that were in the know, they tell you, you know, you don't don't fucking get an expensive apartment? Try to buy property. Try to buy a house. Right? Try to try to rent part of that house out, you know, so you're not paying a full mortgage and try to stack as much money as you possibly can.

Buy a freaking modest shit car that you could pay off as quickly as possible. Right? Don't don't fucking go out there and fucking, you know, get some fancy ass car that's gonna put you you tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Nobody needs that in this society right now. Right?

You need to be stacking your freedom bills, those dollars. You need to be keeping them for yourself and your future and putting them into things that are gonna make them grow and multiply. Right? So how do you figure this stuff out as early as possible? Right?

Well, could point to some things in my life that that that kept me from figuring that out. One, I thought I was the smartest man in the world. Right? When I was in my twenties and I got out of the Marine Corps, I thought that I I knew everything. I thought, hey, you know what?

I know how to figure out my future. Right? I just survived the Marine Corps. I know I know everything. I didn't listen to people who are older than me.

I didn't listen to people who are more successful. I didn't listen I didn't seek those people out, right, and try to get their advice at all. I thought all the answers were gonna come from within me and and man, that is the dumbest thing that I ever did. I was such a fucking idiot. If I could go back You know, I have a few I have no regrets.

Right? I've lived my life. I've made my mistakes. I've learned from them. But if I could go back in time and find myself when I was 22 years old and smack the shit out of myself and fucking knock some sense into that big fucking thick head of mine.

Oh my god. That would be so fucking amazing. There is no person whose ass I wanna kick more than the 20 year old version of myself. Right? There's no person who's driven me to that point of anger than than me.

Right? And I'm telling you guys that. Don't be the man that I am right now. Right? Be somebody different.

Be somebody who's proud of what you did when you're in your twenties and thirties. Be somebody who who set yourself up. Be a friend to the future version of you. Right? Because nobody's fucked me over more than I have.

Right? You know, and don't fuck yourself over. I think that pretty much sums it up guys. I mean, it's a real simple thing. Right?

And if you're in your forties like me, one thing I realized is this, you know, I could sit here all day long and talk about, you know, like I just did, about how much I wanna kick the 20 year old version of my ass. Right? But I also don't wanna be sitting here when I'm 60 years old saying, man, I wish I could go back to when I was 42 and and kick that version of myself's ass. Right? I'm trying to be a friend to the future version of Chris right now, the 50 year old Chris, the 60 year old Chris.

Right? The the Chris who has grandkids. I'm trying to be a friend to that guy. Make sure that he has a chance to do all that shit. Alright?

So so don't get wallowed in your fucking pity party and shit like that because life goes on and this world is a constantly evolving thing. Put yourself in a better place, put the future version of yourself in a better place and things will open up for you. This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast. Man, come on down to Old Tom's Miami Springs, May 14, 8PM. It's gonna be an awesome awesome night of comedy, great comedians.

We're gonna be doing some raffles. We we've got some 22 cereal coffee we're we're giving away. I've got a month's worth of karate lessons we're giving away from from one of the best karate senseis in Miami. So come on down, check it out. It's gonna be fucking outstanding.

I'll talk to you guys soon. This is Chris Albert and I am out.