How To Survive The Next Crisis

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of f bomb nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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Really great company. If you wanna get 20% off your first order of f bombs, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you with the help of Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events that include fishing, golfing.

They also do a lot of work with gold star families. And unlike a lot of other organizations, their board doesn't take a salary. Really great organization that is doing amazing work. So go and check them out at savethebrave.org. With that, thank you guys so much.

Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What's going on, everybody? Chris Albert here with the Warrior Soul podcast. And today, I want to talk to you about lessons we're all learning from this situation, this COVID nineteen shutdown. And I think it's important. It's important for us to think about this because while this shutdown is is certainly not your fault, it's certainly not...

I I don't believe it's anybody's fault. Right? Nobody nobody anticipated a disease coming in and wreaking havoc on society. But one of the things we need to think about here are what are the lessons we can take from this? Because I, for one, I don't believe we can go on much longer like this.

I don't think that freedom loving people are going to tolerate being locked up in their houses for much longer. And I don't think they're going to tolerate being kept from making a living for much longer. But if we think that something like this can't ever happen again, we're being fools. And in a lot of ways, while this is not anybody's fault, it's not your fault, it's it's not your fault that if you're out of work, it's not your fault that you're out of work. What we do have to think about though is what are the things that led us to be so highly impacted by this situation?

What are the things that we could have done to mitigate the damage? And it's important to think about that because in any situation, you can look at the things that you can't control and you can scream and you can cry about them. Right? There's a good portion of our government now that wants the shutdown to go on, and there are people within the government who don't want the shutdown to go on. And whatever way it goes, that that stuff's pretty much out of our control.

You know, there's very few amongst us who can sway the opinions of those in charge. At the same time, there are things that we can control. And what we have to think about is prior to the situation, what are the things we could have controlled? What are the things that we could have done that would have mitigated the damage? And it's kinda like this.

I'm gonna use this metaphor. You know, when you're you're climbing up a mountain, right, and and your goal is to get to the peak, but then you come upon a vista. And maybe that vista looks like paradise. Right? There's there's fruit there.

There's berries that you can pick. Right? And we'll say that this is a fantasy vista, so maybe there's animals there that you can hunt. Maybe there's running water there. Maybe there's fertile soil.

And maybe halfway up the mountain, you come upon this vista and you're tired. And you say, you know what? I I just wanna rest for a little bit. I'm gonna I'm gonna rest here. So you you you lay camp, and you you get some game, you set up a fire, you know, your belly's full, decide you're gonna stay there a little bit longer.

Alright? So you start gathering water, you you start gathering berries, those meals that you're producing on the campfire, they become a little bit more complex, a little bit more flavorful. You notice there's fish in the stream that's nearby, and you're picking salmon out of the stream just like a bear would. Alright? And life is good.

And before long, you say, you know what? That that climb up there to the rest of the top of the mountain, it doesn't it looks too hard. Right? I'm just I'm gonna rest here a little bit longer. So maybe you take some of that fertile soil and you start planning.

Right? You start planting some vegetables and and again, those meals are getting more and more substantial, and you become a little bit fat. Right? You're you're you're getting great sleep. The mountain air is awesome there for it.

And the whole time, you didn't realize that this camp that you set up, this this temporary quote, end quote settlement that you set up was right underneath an avalanche site. And one little shake of the mountain sends rubble come tumbling down upon everything you built there. And the reason why I bring that metaphor up is because that's what happens to a lot of people in life. They start out fighting, they start out grinding, they start out hungry, and they want to get to the top of the mountain. But along comes an opportunity, a shiny object, and it it pulls them off to the side.

And that shiny object is there, and and they grab onto it, it makes them feel comfortable. It makes them feel a little bit more secure. You know? And and a lot of us, we settle into jobs. We we do that without ever thinking that that job might be threatened in some way.

That that job might be, know, might go away if an economic disaster happens, like the one that just happened now. And when we get that job, what happens is we start buying crap. Right? We start buying cars. We start buying clothes.

We start buying all kinds of toys. And with everything, we we load our lives up with non essential things. And we live beyond our means. And essentially, that's what happens. Right?

When you get a job, when you're when you have a salary, and most of your money is going to crap, that is what we're doing. We're basically building a settlement on the side of a mountain, waiting for an avalanche to come. When we get ourselves into debt, that's what happens. So what do we need to think about here? Well, what we need to think about is, were the things we did prior to this that that led us to this situation?

The situation of desperation where we're gonna have credit card bills that we can't pay, where we're gonna have mortgages that we can't pay, potentially rent that we can't pay. You need to ask yourself, am I living beyond my means? Right? Am I living beyond the the security and comfort that my salary could provide? Because that's what the credit card companies really want you to do.

Right? They they want to lend you money at an extremely high interest rate so that they can make tons of money, and you get to have all the creature comforts around you that aren't necessary for your survival. And I say this as somebody who who, you know, has done that before. I've I've had my own situations where I've gotten myself into loads and loads and loads of debt, debt that I could not sustain, and it's because I wasn't thinking. Right?

When I was young, I spent money so frivolously. And I say this to all of you because I know a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are younger than I am. I'm gonna be 41 this year. Right? And if you're young, you can rebuild from this situation.

And even if you are even even older than I am, if you're 40 or you're 50, you could rebuild from this situation. But we can't live our lives as if this never happened. We can't sit here and be conscious human beings, human beings who believe in freedom, human beings who believe in individualism and opportunity. And we can't sit here and spend ourselves into a hole if we truly want freedom. If you want freedom, you need to be financially taking care of yourself.

You need to be looking after your finances so that you have an emergency fund, so that you are contributing to your retirement, so that you are creating some sort of safety net for yourself in case your job goes away. Now I know a lot of you in the military are in a situation right now where, you know, you think your job's never gonna go away. And what I'll say to you is that, well, I grew up in the nineties. And during the nineties, they did massive military cuts, right, under under the Bill Clinton administration. Right?

There was a lot of military members, a lot of members of of active duty, and the reserves who found themselves without positions. And so what all of you need to be thinking about is how am I gonna secure myself? What is my plan if all this stuff goes away? And am I saving enough money so that if my job goes away for a little bit, am I gonna be able to come back? Now I think this situation is is going to go down in history as one of the most shameful periods of American history.

And the reason I say that is this. If you are not from New York or from Los Angeles or from San Francisco or from any one of the major metropolitan areas around here in this country, you are not necessarily cared about as much. Right? And I'm seeing that because I'm looking at what's going on out there. And, yeah, there's there's some horrible deaths going on in New York.

Right? There there is a huge danger from this virus in those areas. But if you were from North Dakota or Montana, or West Virginia, or any of these other areas around, essentially, what is happening right now is it seems as if the politicians don't care about you. Right? And and I I hate saying that because I can't get into their psychology right now, but but it seems to me that right now, if you're in the so called flyover states, there isn't anybody out there looking out for your best interests.

Right? They they... You're you're sitting there without income, without a means of of taking care of yourself, taking care of your families, and the politicians continue to direct your attention to places that are hundreds or thousands of miles away from you where this virus has taken effect. And Dennis Prager says this all the time. If if there were hundreds or thousands of people, you know, dying in Montana or North Dakota, would they be shutting down New York?

Would they shut down New York City if that were the case? And I think the answer is no. I mean, it's a counterfactual, so I can't possibly know. But the reason I'm telling you this is because what you have to understand, and I've said this from the beginning, the start of this podcast, from the start of my interaction with this community, is that you can't wait for anybody to help you. Yeah.

You'll get a stimulus check in the mail. Yeah. $1,200. $1,200 isn't gonna go far. Alright?

What you need to understand here is that if you're not constantly moving as if an avalanche is going to come about... Come down on you, then you are putting yourself in a situation that is dangerous to your financial health. And so what I'm going to ask of you now in this podcast is to make a commitment, a commitment to yourself to understand money as much as possible, to read books like The Millionaire Teacher, right, to read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, to educate yourself as much as possible about how to save money, how to invest money, how to set up security for yourself, and to begin putting things together so that if a situation like this ever happens again, you're gonna be okay. You might not you might not be a millionaire or a billionaire or anything like that, but you are going to be okay, and you're gonna be able to forward with your dreams and take care of your family. Because if we're not doing that, we're not looking after our own freedom.

Alright? Freedom isn't just about making a stand. It's not just about the second amendment or the first amendment. Freedom, at the end of the day, is understanding that each of us is individually responsible for maintaining our own freedom. I've said it before that fitness is freedom.

Right? When you are taking care of your body, you are ensuring that you have the liberty to do whatever you want to do physically. And when you are taking care of your finances, you are ensuring that you have the liberty to do what you want out of life. Right? When you have good finances, that allows you to become healthier because you have more time to train.

When you have good finances, it takes stress off of you so that you're less likely to face a medical problem. And I know that right now, for many of you, these words sound like they're too late in coming. But what I want you to understand is that, again, this situation, this crisis is not gonna last forever, but that there are other crises around the corner. And if you put yourself into a good position, there's even opportunities in the midst of crisis. So think about that, guys.

I'm always here if you have questions, if you have questions about resources, if you have questions about books. I mentioned a few here on this episode. I will put the links up to them in the show notes. And, you know, I hope you take these words to heart, and I hope that these help you. So with that, I wanna thank you guys all for listening.

And, you know, again, I don't care if you ever spend a dime with Warrior Soul. What I do ask of you is that you share these episodes out, that you let people know that this podcast exists, that you head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. That helps so much to spread the word. And if you do want to help out Warrior Soul in other ways, we have a number of ways to do so. For this episode, I'll suggest the Warrior's Obituary Society.

And that is a group where we get together each week on Thursdays and on Fridays, and we empower each other to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries. We toss thoughts against each other. We we talk about the situations that that we're all going through, and we come up with solutions for each other to move forward. And in addition to that, everybody who signs up, all new members go through an eight week development course. That course is centered around your fitness, around your finances, around your life.

So if you want to check that out, that's up at www.warriorobituarysociety.com. You can check that out. Otherwise, can check out the rest of our content up at www.warriorsoulagoge.com. That's a g o g e. And I hope you're all doing well.

I hope you're all staying healthy. I hope you're all staying safe. And I hope that for the good of all of us, this situation comes to an end very soon. God bless you all. This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul Podcast, and I am out.