Episode 268 Paul White USAF Veteran Shares How To Reach Goals And Motivate Personal Success Transcript
This transcript is from episode 268 with guest Paul White.
Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today my guest is Paul White. Paul is a retired 21 year Air Force veteran with over 1500 hours as a tactical flight instructor. Over the years, he’s developed strategies to motivate people to become better versions of themselves, and he’s here today to talk about these strategies and how his 1 of 5 project can propel you to reach your goals.
Welcome to the show, Paul.
Paul White: Glad to have you here. Thanks Scott. Appreciate it, man. Glad to be here.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. So, for the listeners who may not be familiar with you could you tell us a little bit about yourself
Paul White: and your background? Yeah, I mean, you kind of [00:01:00] summed it up a little bit right there by the little bio snippet.
But that’s me in a nutshell, man. I mean, I grew up small town down south. Grew up on a cotton farm, joined the military young, and figured out that after a few years I could fly airplanes. Did that for a few years, retired after 21 years of active duty and still kind of doing my thing. And, you know, riding the wave, the military wave while rise raising a family at the same time kind of gives you some unique opportunities to do some different things.
And that’s how I got into coaching and really started develop the tactics and strategies of making people better at what they do. And I’ve been an instructor for a really long time teaching people how to fly airplanes and I found out that they’re not very different. You know, coaching football is not really that much different than flying tactical aviation in an F 15.
It’s two totally different mission sets for sure. But when you break it right down to the, the planning process, the executing process, it’s all kind of the same. And that’s, that’s really where I got to where I’m at today, is just kind of putting all that stuff. It’s
Scott DeLuzio: amazing how versatile you could be with [00:02:00] the skills that you develop throughout the, the time in the military, right?
Yeah. Like you’re, you’re an instructor and you, you learn how to teach, which is a weird way of saying it, but like, you actually have to learn how to teach people effectively, right? You can’t just, yeah. It’s
Paul White: a skill in front of a class, right? It is, it’s a, it’s a skill and, and, you know, well, that’s one thing, you know, so one thing is getting up in front of a class and speaking in front of people and, and that I think some people are just very more comfortable doing it than others, but it’s a skill that needs to be developed.
But there is a, there is a process to teaching people, to getting information, to stick in someone’s brain that you just really have to learn. And, and you didn’t realize it, I don’t think when you said it, but you, but you hit on something kind of key right? There is, you know, for your listeners, for the veteran listeners, oftentimes we just take for granted a lot of the things, a lot of those traits and those skills that we develop over years of service that we think is normal and second nature.
There’s a, there’s a broad population out there that doesn’t get that kind of exposure. You know, [00:03:00] being able to be a good leader and be a good follower, knowing when to shut up, knowing when to follow directions, knowing how to execute at a high level, knowing how to show up on time and being prepared and, and looking the part and all those things, you know, that we just take for granted cuz, you know, eight or 10 weeks of basic training, it was just kind of beat into us.
And as we transformed into that military version of our younger selves, we, we, we look back on it now and it’s quote unquote normal for us, but there’s a lot of people, I mean, I got kids, I evidence living in my house that that’s not, you know, necessarily a normal thing. . So for your veteran listeners, don’t discount some of those things that, that you’ve acquired over the years.
Really sit down and take stock of the things that you’re skilled at, that you’ve developed over, over your time in service and you’re marketable based on some of that stuff when you get out to the real world. Oh, for
Scott DeLuzio: sure. I think military veterans definitely undervalue the experiences that they’ve had while hundred serving [00:04:00] military, right.
I mean, you look at you know, just the equipment that you’re trusted with, right. Especially Oh my God, as a fighter pilot. Geez. Yeah. Like you have millions of dollars of equipment that you’re responsible for, and I mean, you’re responsible for not crashing it and totally screwing it up. Yeah. With, for not, you know, killing people while you’re, while you’re in training or whatever.
Like, there’s so much
Paul White: responsibility there. Well, yeah. Okay. So yeah, that’s, that’s one extreme example, but let’s Isn’t gonna have, right. Yeah. That’s one extreme example. Let’s take another example. Like you said, you were an infantryman. Think about the things that go along with that. I mean, you’re carrying live munition in an M four across a battlefield.
There’s a lot of discipline involved in there, you know, and so if I’m a, if I’m a leader in an organization and I’m looking to hire somebody that requires a disciplined mindset, you’re somebody that I would target because, you know, you know things about muzzle discipline and [00:05:00] when to carry your your weapon on fire versus safe and, and how to not flash somebody or, you know, the little things that we just don’t even think about.
That’s, that’s, those are marketable skills out in the real world. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: And, and the ability to make those split second decisions. Any, anyone from an infantryman, I mean, any levels of the, the military, any, any moss that you have, you’re, you’re gonna end up with split second decisions that you need to make.
Talk about fighter pilots too, right? There’s gonna be that for sure in that that type of job. Infantry as well. You know, whether they shoot or not shoot like that. That’s a very split second decision sometimes. Yeah. And in the business, You know, the civilian world, you’re gonna need to make decisions.
They’re not gonna be all the time, the same life and death decisions that Yeah. Have had to make in the military, but you’ve had training on doing stuff that is life and death. So those other decisions are probably gonna be more of a piece of cake. Right.
Paul White: Well that’s, I mean, well that’s another thing though that, that we take for granted is being decisive.
You know, even as a, even as a young enlisted [00:06:00] man, I was required to make decisions like we’ve, we’ve entrusted. All this training and we’ve put you on this pedestal, we expect you to make decisions on your own. If you, if you’re constantly going to your supervisor and going, mother may I, well, that’s not why we hired you, man.
We, we hired you and we trained you and dumped all this money into you to be a functional member of this team. And you, if you know your role and you execute your role at a high level, yeah. I mean the, that goes along with it. Be decisive, man. Go with it and know that you’re gonna make mistakes. You’re gonna make wrong decisions here and there, and you can’t please everybody.
And these are all kinda those axioms and these platitudes that we throw around as we’ve gotten older and we’ve gotten in these leadership positions. But it’s true, man. I would rather have somebody, I had a supervisor tell me this one time when I was really young. He’s a man. I would really, I would much rather have a guy that I have to grab by the shirt collar and bring him and pull him back than a guy that I have to constantly be pushing on the ass to get him to keep going.
Yeah. You know, I want that lean forward kind of guy. I want the guy that’s sticking his neck out there and not afraid to make mistakes. I’ll reel him back in, dust him off, give him [00:07:00] a little bit more training and send him right back out. For sure.
Scott DeLuzio: That is the best type of person that, that you can get because they’re not gonna be afraid to take initiative.
When they see something that might be wrong and they need to do something to fix it, they’re, they’re gonna go out and just do it. Yeah. And they’re gonna take care of it. You don’t have to sit there and babysit them the whole time. They can take care of the, the job on their own. Right. Well, as you
Paul White: trans, as you trans transition into a business environment or a corporate environment, or your post-military career, you start to notice things like, if there’s trash on the floor, how many people walk past that piece of trash before somebody bends over and picks it over?
Picks it up, you know, and that’s the little stuff that we, you know, we just, we don’t allow trash on the floor. It’s just, it’s part of our DNA now, and nobody else is picking it up. Fine. I’ll pick the damn trash up. All right.
Scott DeLuzio: There, there was a, a thing I was at a couple months ago, and I was standing off to the side and I saw some, some trash over on the floor, a a little ways away from me.
I, I wasn’t. Moving from the area. I was, I was doing something at, at [00:08:00] the time, and I, I saw it outta the corner of my eye. I saw it there and I said, okay, when I’m headed that way, I’ll pick it up. If, if it isn’t picked up by the time I head over that way and I was just watching how many people were walking, right by it, stepping on it, kicking it, mo it was, it was getting knocked to the side here and there.
And then there’s this one guy, clean cut, clean shave, you know, you could tell you got the military look when, when someone is walking, you could, you could usually tell you, tell he’s the one who walked by, walked up to it, stopped, picked it up, and I mean, there’s a trashcan 10 feet away. It wasn’t like it was out of the way for anybody.
Pick it up and just toss it, you know? Yeah.
Paul White: My wife and I like to play this game when they’re, when they’re in the airport waiting on your flight or whatever. We play this game of, we’ll just pick a couple or a guy or whatever, and we’ll try to guess what he does for a living based on how he looks and what he’s wearing.
And if his knuckles are skinned up, he probably works hard, you know, and, and if he’s wearing a suit and a cowboy hat, he’s probably a good old boy that’s got a good job, you know, whatever. But you can always pick out the military. They just, we, it’s just the way you carry yourself, generally speaking, you just [00:09:00] carry yourself a little bit different than your garden variety civilian dude does.
Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. And it, it’s good for situational awareness playing those kinds of games too. Right? I, I play those games with my kids. Yeah. And it maybe not to necessarily to the degree that you’re talking about, but even just things like, you know, what do you see Yeah. When you walk into the store you know, what, what color shirt is that is the cashier wearing?
Or, you know, that, that type of stuff just to Yeah. Keep that stuff in in mind. Right. And it’s, it’s a way to just keep yourself sharp and, and not to be paranoid and, you know, no checking out every, every corner, but just to be aware of
Paul White: your, your situation. Dude, you’re a hundred percent right. And, and you, two things I wanna mention on that, because I was actually gonna bring that up right before you did, about the guy that bent over and picked up the trash.
You said that a lot of people passed by it. How many people just never, didn’t even notice it. You know, because you know, you’re walking around when you’re head in the clouds or you’re focused on your phone or, or you know, whatever it may be. You’re distracted and you’re not paying attention to your surroundings.
And then the other piece of that is you’re exactly right. [00:10:00] And, and I promised when I would, when I came on here that I wasn’t gonna promote a bunch of my stuff. But I do have a book coming out in April. It’s called Work Hard, don’t Suck. And it’s a bunch of little vignettes and stories from my life, passing it down to my kids.
One of the chapters in there is called Situational Awareness. And I tell the story, I start the story out, or I start the section out sitting in the Denver airport. I’m just sitting there and I’m just watching people. And my kids have gone off. They wanted to go get ice cream. My kids are grown, they’re like 18 at the time, 17, 18.
And so I’m there by myself. I got my laptop with me and I’m watching people. No kidding. Like in the, in a busy aisle of people, there’ll be one guy just standing there, just standing there looking around like, like, come on man. You gotta know what’s going on around you, you know? Or going against the flow of traffic.
Get on the right side of the flow of traffic, man, knowing what’s going on around you. And there was this guy behind me that had his two daughters. They wanted to go off and go to the restroom. And I heard him say as they [00:11:00] walked off, I heard him yell to them, Hey, stay outta people’s way and trust me, man, this is not a common courtesy.
How many people walk in front of you? Like you’re just, I’m, I’m six three, so I can generally see overcrowd and, and through things. People cut me off all the time, have no idea that I’m even there. So no one, what’s going around going on around you? I got some, I got some really good stories about how we almost got rolled up in, in Vegas by a nefarious guy hiding in the dark.
And had it not been for knowing my surroundings and, and always kind of head on a swivel looking around. I noticed the guy and sure enough, he fell in behind us about 15, 20 yards behind us and started following us. And that’s when I grabbed the rest of my crowd. I’m like, okay, let’s go. We gotta get going.
And you know, we got to the hotel, got to the brightly or more lit part of the, of the street there before the guy was able to get in on us. And then he turned around, went right back to the dark shadow that he’d been hiding in. So yeah, he was, he was prey on somebody for sure. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: He, he was looking for the, the easy prey and you weren’t that, and so he was going to find
Paul White: somebody else.
Oh, we’d had a few drinks and we were kinda acting the part [00:12:00] for sure, but
Scott DeLuzio: Oh yeah. Yeah. But you still were aware despite the drinks, right? Yes. You know, he’s still aware and Yeah. Made it just that much
Paul White: harder, right? Yeah. That, that, having that essay of what’s going on around you, man, that’s, that’s huge. It, it go, there’s so many levels of that.
So many levels. That’s good. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: So we got a lot going for us as veterans. Right. And what did I wanna talk? I know you said you didn’t wanna promote too much about what you’re doing, but let’s, let’s talk about what you’re doing now. Yeah. You have the, the 1 of 5 project, and you’re helping people basically just become better versions of themselves, which I think we just covered.
We’re already pretty good version of ourselves as far as, that’s certainly arguable, but Well, we could be. Right? There’s, for us we, we’ve all shown just the fact that we’ve been in the military, that we are teachable, we haven’t learned things, right. We’ve, we’ve all learned our, our military jobs, whatever it was from, you know, basic training and on, we were teachable to some extent.
Right.[00:13:00] So talk about the 1 of 5 project and, and what you guys are Yeah. Doing to help
Paul White: people out that way. Absolutely, dude. So, This came about the, the 1 of 5 project came about from a conversation I was having with a guy about another book that I was working on a compilation book with him. And we were kind of brainstorming some stuff and, and we threw out that quote Jim Roh had a quote that says, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
And as soon as I say that to somebody, they start thinking about the five people that hang out with the most. Well, I want you to look at it from the perspective of being one of the five people and how you influence others through your actions and, and their interaction with you. And that’s where it kind of started growing and, and we started getting really selfish with it.
I, I brainstorming this with a few guys and, and we really just started pointing back at ourselves and, and saying, okay, so if I can just focus on me and making. Making me the best version of myself that I can, then that’s gonna elevate everybody around me because I can’t control what you do. I can’t control you.
We’re not in the military [00:14:00] anymore, bro. I can’t just go over and order you to go do PT in the morning, you know? But hopefully if you see me going and and get mine every day, then maybe that’ll inspire you to go and get yours. And it’s kind of that ripple effect that we’re looking for. So our mission statement is improve, ignite, inspire.
We want to improve our personal standards and then ignite that fire inside of us. When, when you get a small victory, maybe you lost that five pounds that you were trying to lose. Maybe you made that one connection that you were trying to make, that you’ve been working on for a while, and you get those small victories that creates momentum and that that’s the ignition that we’re looking for, that, that ignite piece of it.
We want to ignite that fire that makes you wanna win more and win harder all the time. And before you know it, you’re gonna be inspiring other people because they’re gonna see how good you’re doing, how much good you’re doing, and how well you are just generally walking around. Your chin is up, your chest is out, you’re more confident, you’ll look better in the mirror.
You’re more educated and more articulate because you’re reading more little things like that. And then eventually, it may take a while, but eventually they [00:15:00] come back and they go, man, what are you doing? How, how are you doing that? And that’s where we get that ripple effect in. If we can just get everybody to do a little bit more like that, then I mean, nobody can stop us.
We’re, we’re, the sky’s the limit. We’re just elevating each other and we’re feeding off of each other and we’re edging each other out. It’s, it’s pretty great. Yeah. And
Scott DeLuzio: I think with those changes that you make in your life, I, I found that what was the book that Atomic Habits? Yes. That’s a great book.
Where they, they talk about how if you just make small, incremental changes, that’s it. Right. And, and you make those little, little tiny changes. By the end of the year, you’re not gonna even recognize yourself in, in that area that you’re focusing. Right. You’re, you’re gonna be so much better, so much more improved.
Yeah. And, you know, so making those changes first off, it helps develop good habits, right? Assuming you’re focused on the big things, right? Yeah. Making it a [00:16:00] habit and have, you know, a couple drinks, and that’s, that’s probably not the habit that you
Paul White: wanna be focused on. Well, habits are habits. They, they can be either good or bad.
Exactly.
Scott DeLuzio: Right. So, but if you’re focused on the good things you know, like you said, losing that five pounds, you know, going the gym on a regular basis, exercising, eating healthy, doing the right things, you’re gonna find yourself getting into a better situation, healthier, happier, losing that weight, gaining some muscle, you’re just gonna be in a better position.
Right. And then people are gonna look at you and I know a lot of people do this. They, they see the successful people and they look at, it’s like, oh man, that guy’s, so. No, that’s not luck, dude. It’s not luck. No, it’s
Paul White: not luck. You, you see the guy standing on the pedestal and, and you know, you, you don’t see the years of training that went into him getting to that pedestal.
Right. You know, and, and we’ve all got our own little stories of, of how we accomplished something, you know, however, major or minor it may be. Like I I, I did a Spartan race a few months ago, which was freaking [00:17:00] epic. But the most fun part was the training up to it. I had three buddies. We formed a little team and, and we helped motivate each other.
We sent text messages every day and, and we were trying to outdo each other in our own training. And by the time we got to the race, the race was fun because we were so prepared for it through our training. And, and we had this we got, we got taught this thing in, in flight school called the 60 to one rule.
And it goes something like this. So there’s 360 degrees in the compass rose, right? North is 360, east is 0, 9 0, et cetera. And so if I tell a guy to fly heading of 360. Do north. And if he flies a heading of 3 59, only one degree of separation after 60 miles, he’ll be one mile off course. So one very, very tiny difference that seems insignificant.
The difference between one degree on a compass rose is not much at all, but given that long for that to fester and to grow, all of a sudden it gets, it gets to be large and [00:18:00] measurable. And this is the same way, you know, I communicated this to my son not too long ago. He was itching to make some changes and I said, take a cup and every day I want you to go put one drop of water in that cup.
And at first it’s like one drop of water, like that’s it. Half of it’s gonna be dry tomorrow by the time I put the other drop in there. But after a year of putting one drop of water in that cup, you’re gonna have a full cup. And that’s kind of the same thing that we’re going after here. Just like you were saying with atomic habits, making those small changes that add up over a long period of time.
Exactly. And,
Scott DeLuzio: and it’s interesting too because as you’re talking about that, that one degree difference, if you’re just off that one degree as, as you’re going, you’re, you’re gonna be off a, a long way. But if you are trying to make some of those good habits and you are letting yourself slide just a little bit here and there, you’re not gonna get to the destination that you’re trying to get to.
No. You know, whether it’s losing that weight or you know, in studying, learning things and whatever it [00:19:00] is, you’re not gonna get to that same destination as quickly. You’re, you’re gonna be at the end of that year. You’re gonna be someplace else other than where you should be. Yeah. And it’s gonna take more work to get back to where you need
Paul White: it to be.
And so, well, you get what you tolerate though, you know, and, and if you tolerate allowing yourself to sidestep or slip, or if you, if you start negotiating with yourself in your own mind, then you’re already losing. And, and I’ll tell you how I beat this and, and maybe some of your listeners can appreciate this.
So I invented this character in my mind, and his name is Stan. All right? And no slight on anybody named Stan. This is just my character name for my inner bitch. And my inner bitch is the one that’s constantly trying to talk me outta stuff, right? He’s the one that’s telling me it’s cold outside. You don’t really need to go get that run in.
Or there’s snow in the parking lot at the gym. You don’t wanna get your shoes all wet or No, come on man, you can go ahead and eat the cheeseburger. Imagine how taste, how, how good that taste, you know? Well then on the other side is another character called Jack, right? [00:20:00] And Jack is my inner champion. And Jack is the one that kicks Stan’s ass and says, no.
The, the process says you go do your run today. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot outside. I mean, I go out and there, I got, I got a, a ruck sack over here with 40 pounds in it that I’ll go out and do rucks at 110 out out here in Phoenix, because that’s what Jack says I gotta do. Right? That’s the difference.
And, and, and so my little, my little inner dialogue ends up with me, you know, flipping the middle finger to, to Stan, which feels kind of good. It gives me somebody to talk to. I sound schizophrenic when I’m in here in my room talking to Stan and telling ’em to shut the F up while I’m putting my running shoes on.
But, hey, it works man. And so maybe some of your listeners can, can use that tactic a little bit and start calling yourself some, some really bad names that maybe you didn’t even hear in basic training. But it’ll get you outside and get you. Yeah, absolutely.
Scott DeLuzio: That’s kind of like the the devil and the angel on, on the shoulder cartoons.
Yes. You know, it’s exactly, it’s that same idea where you got that one
Paul White: pull. Yep. I got stand one side. I got Jack [00:21:00] on the other .
Scott DeLuzio: One thing that you’re not supposed to do, you know, you’re not supposed to do it, but it sounds good, it might taste good to go have that cheeseburger or the cheesecake or the cookies or whatever else Yeah.
That you might be, be pulled to. Yeah. But then, then you got the other side
Paul White: that’s pushing you there. There was a story. Yeah, there was a story. And, and I forget the exact details. I need to go back and research this cuz it’s such a good story. But it was about a a British rowing team and they lost in the Olympics.
And so for the next four years they, they basically threw everything down and every time they got ready to go do something, maybe it was eat the cheeseburger. Right? They would ask, does this make the boat go faster? And if the answer was no, then they didn’t do that thing. What, whatever it was, you know, going out for your morning run, you know, go get your morning 5K in.
Does this make the boat go faster? Yes. Go do the run. Come back and stare in at the cookie crisp in the cabinet after your 5K run. Does this make the boat go faster? No. That, don’t eat the cookie crisp. Get the oatmeal instead. You know, little things like that. So there’s, there’s 1,000,001 ways out there to motivate yourself and draw the same metaphor.
But the [00:22:00] bottom line is, you know what you’re supposed to do. You just gotta make yourself do it right. And you gotta be consistent. You gotta build the consistency. So to get yourself off the couch one time by watching a Tony Robbins video, that’s called motivation. You know, I can, I can sit over here and watch a CrossFit video and put my shit on and go outside and run a little bit.
That’s motivation. Discipline is being able to do that every single day until I reach my goal. Then setting a new goal and doing it again. Exactly. And sometimes
Scott DeLuzio: you have to be humble enough to just go back to the basics and, oh yeah, just, just look at the The stuff that you’re, you’re like, oh no, I’m, I might be too good for this.
I’ve done this before. Like, especially if, you know, you’ve been in the military, you’ve, you’ve been in shape at, at one point, well you are, you’re in the military perhaps, and you get out, you, you let yourself slide and now you wanna get back into shape. It’s like, okay, well you gotta go back to the basics and, and start in that, that crawl, walk, run kind of phase.
You can’t, you can’t just start off going to the same speed that you were going as you were, you know, 25 years old in the military, you’re not, you’re [00:23:00] right. You know, as a, a 40, 50, some odd year old guy, you’re, you’re probably not gonna be going at that same speed. There’s a, a football coach Vince, Vince Lombardi.
Yeah. Way back when he started off practice one season, he walked into the, into the room with all the football players, professional athletes, professional football players, and he walked in holding a football and he goes, gentlemen, this is a football. Like, no shit, it’s a football. Right? We, we know this, but.
He’s going back to the absolute basics, back to the fundamentals. Sometimes you have to do that and you have to be humble enough to admit like, okay, well I might
Paul White: need to go back there, you know? Well, you know, we see this a lot though, so, so I told you, I, I trained up for the Spartan race, right? Yeah. And standing in the parking lot after the race and we had gotten a 50% off discount to the tough utter race that was coming up just a few weeks ago.
And I signed up, I’m sitting there right in the parking lot. I’m smoked from the race that we just did, but I’m like, screw it, man. That was fun. The, that evening when I got home, I [00:24:00] found a training plan and I started from scratch on my training plan. Had a a 90 day training plan to get up for the tough mutter.
As soon as my wife and I ran the tough mutter I scratched and went right back to it. So, so what you find is, and. We’re using exercise as, as kind of this metaphor, but it’s really true in all aspects of your life, right? You’re gonna set a goal out there, you’re gonna set a target, and you’re gonna work really hard to meet that goal and, and knock down that target, whatever it is.
Whether it’s business, whether it’s a relationship or, or some kind of new skill that you’re trying to learn or, or some kind of physical training that you’re trying to acquire. Well, you’re gonna climb this ladder and you’re gonna get up to a point, you’re gonna reach the goal and then you gotta start back over a cuz you’re gonna set another goal.
And, and, you know, people say, well, what is success? So I think that everybody should define success for themselves. I can’t tell you what, what your version of success is, right? It’s up to you, right? To define that. Well, somebody said, okay, well I wanna make a million dollars. Great. Well, what [00:25:00] happens when you make a million dollars?
What are you gonna do? You know, you gotta, you gotta start over, you gotta shift, you gotta, you gotta pivot. You gotta move that, that goal out a little bit further and keep going because, To me, success is not a destination. Success is a journey. And, and that’s part of the fun of it, is learning something new.
Have you heard have you, have you, have you read the book Winning by Tim Grover? I have
Scott DeLuzio: not read it. I’ve heard of
Paul White: it, but I have not read it. Okay. It’s a good one, man. It’s, it’s really good. Holly recommended, so he was the, the trainer for Jordan and Kobe Bryant and, and Dwayne Wade and, and some of these high profile champion athletes.
And he, he kind of uses the he uses the parallel between Paradise and Hell. And he says, the whole season, the whole training off season, and then the season you’re climbing and you’re climbing that mountain to get to Paradise, and then you win that championship. Bam. Dude, that’s paradise. Well, guess what?
To get back to Paradise, you gotta go back to hell and start it all over again. I love that man. It just, that resonated in my mind, you know? [00:26:00] So every goal that you set, you’re gonna fall off this cliff and go right back to hell and start it all over again.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, like that, that million dollar example that you, you used earlier.
When someone says, okay, my goal is to make a million dollars, you hit that mark and it’s not like you just quit and you just stopped doing anything. Like you Yeah. Yeah. You’ve made a million dollars. That’s, that’s, that’s it,
Paul White: boys. I’m out.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Still got work to do. You still have things to do now? Now what’s it goal?
Make a million dollars. Make. Yeah. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe in your, with where you are as far as your career goes and your income and all that stuff goes, and you, you’re content there, but may there’s something else that you wanna focus on, wanna improve in your life. Yeah. Maybe it’s in a relationship, maybe it’s you know, some other activity that you do that, that is something that you wanna improve and so now you gotta continue focusing on other things to work on to improve yourself.
And, and you’re right, it’s not a destination, it’s, it’s kind of like your whole life [00:27:00] is just mapped out. Journey from start to finish. We don’t know where that finish line is necessarily, but there’s a whole lot of pin checkpoints along the way that we are, are hitting. So every success goal that we hit, that, that’s just another stop along the way.
Yeah. You know, throughout our lives.
Paul White: Right? Yeah. And if you take that and, and we kind of step back into the 1 of 5 project for just a second, you know, one of the, the very first part of the mission statement there, that first pillar is improve. And I want to improve your personal standard. And so these things that you’re doing by, you know, you set a goal and, and you climb that hill to get to the goal and you put in all that work and everything.
Well, guess what’s that? What that’s doing that’s improving your position, right? You do that over time and that’s improving your standard. So when we get into, when we, when we kind of get down into the nuts and bolts of how we built this and how we approach it and how we teach it and coach it, it’s. It really is those stepping stones, right?
So start with a very small goal, and I’ll give you my story where I [00:28:00] had a, I had really bad back issues from flying jets and working on airplanes for so long. Had a back surgery and my doc says, you’re probably never gonna run again. So about two years go by after my surgery and I was out walking one morning trying to get some exercise cause that’s about all I could do.
And I picked a tree about 200 yards away and I said, I’m gonna run to that tree. And I jogged over to the tree, okay, I, I don’t feel so bad, I can, maybe I’ll pick another tree. And I just started stringing together these series of trees a couple of hundred yards away. And before you know it, I was running half marathons and spartan races and tough mutters and doing all these things.
But it all goes back to that one decision to run 200 meters to a stinking tree and then do it again. And then do it again. And pretty soon that 200 meters bumped out to 300 meters and then it bumped out to 400 meters, and then that bumped out to a half mile. And you, you see these, these compounding effects to where now when I go out, my new standard when I go out to run is three miles, not 200 meters to the tree.
Like [00:29:00] if I say I’m going for a run, it’s at least a three mile. You know what I’m saying? Mm-hmm. . So that’s improving your standard, that’s step one in the one to five project. And that’s everything that we’ve just been talking about, about setting a small goal, reach that goal, set another small goal, keep going.
And I think you
Scott DeLuzio: touched on something there, which I don’t think you intended on touching on, but, but you touched on something there where, you know, the doctor said you’re probably never gonna run again. And you said, well, you know, screw that. I’m, I’m gonna give it a try. Yeah. You know, may maybe I’m gonna try it and it’s gonna be agonizing pain I’ll, and be like, yep, okay.
The doctor was right. I probably shouldn’t do this. Right. Yeah. But then you took. You took that up upon yourself and you’re like, let, let’s just give it a try. See what happens. Yeah. And you did it and you proved the doctor wrong. And so I think a lot of times people put doctors and other experts up on this pedestal, like, they can’t be wrong.
And they are wrong all the time. Not, not nothing doctors or anything like that. I’m not trying to, [00:30:00] they’re, they’re great, you know, at what they do, but they’re human. They, they make mistakes too. They’re not perfect. And every once in a while, they’re gonna have something where they’re gonna tell you, you couldn’t run and the doctor was wrong.
And here you are, you’re running now. Yeah. And you’re running multiple miles over and over. You’re doing all these extreme you know, events. Something that the doctor probably never saw. Oh, no. In your future, right? No. So, so don’t take whatever the doctor says as gospel, and this is now your life sentence, you’ll never run again.
Take it as a, you may never run again, but maybe if you give it a try, maybe you will. And
Paul White: yeah, and, and I think you, I think you don’t let that hold you back. For your listeners, I want, I want to just point out something for the listeners. I’m not a doctor and I’m not advocating going against doctor’s advice.
If your doctor says, don’t run, that’s, that’s between you and him. All right? So don’t, right. Don’t just go out there and do what I [00:31:00] did and expect everything to work out. Right? If you’re broke, you’re broke, but at the same time, know your body, know your limits, and occasionally push those limits just a little bit.
And that’s, that’s where, that’s where you see the improvements. That’s where you see the growth, right? Is, is busting outta your comfort zone. It would’ve been very comfortable for me to listen to my doctor and sat here for the next 30 or 40 years, not doing anything but walking around my neighborhood.
But I just, I know my body. I felt pretty good. And I know when to turn. I know when to back it down a little bit. So, Push outside the comfort zone just a little bit. And then I looked back on it and I was like, well, you know what? That really wasn’t that bad. I mean, I probably could have done a little bit more.
Let me try again. All right. And, and that time went just a little bit further. And, and that’s what I’m saying. So please, for the listeners, don’t, don’t just go out and completely, well, I’ll listen to this podcast and they said, screw the doctors. No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying know your body and push your limits as you are capable of pushing your limits.
right? Yeah. And
Scott DeLuzio: that, [00:32:00] that is, that is a good point. That is not my, that was not my intention of saying that doctors aren’t a hundred percent right all the time. That human, all that kinda stuff. My, my point was what? Exactly what you said, you put a little bit more eloquently than I did. But I’m just, I’m grunt.
And
Paul White: so that may be the first time that anybody’s ever said that I was eloquent. So I’m gonna write that down and tell my wife in a little bit.
Scott DeLuzio: Hey, it’s, it’s on recording too. That’s so I got proof. You can prove it to her too. That’s great. That’s great. But I mean, it, it seems like. This idea that the 1 of 5 that you have here, and I, I like the way you flip it because the original way of thinking of things is you’re the average of the five people that you are hanging around with, but Yeah.
But you’re also one of those people to somebody else. And so how do you improve those people by improving yourself? Yeah. And it really seems like this, this mindset can improve any areas of your life, right?
Paul White: Yeah. And, [00:33:00] and I, I try to keep a pretty decent mind body, soul balance, and, and I think that I’m 46 and I don’t think that I’ve ever been in at this level of harmony in, in just, and I’m speaking just for me, right?
So again, this 1 of 5 thing, it’s very selfish. It’s all about me. And as I’ve learned to, to balance those things today I, I had a, I had a pop-up target come up and. I almost talked myself out of going to the gym to focus on this thing, but then I was like, no, no, no. I, this, this keeps me in harmony. You know?
And, and imagine like a, a really good three or four piece band when they’re singing like, I remember the Dixie Chicks and, and Hate ’em. Hate ’em. Or like, ’em, doesn’t matter. But when they were singing and then when they were hitting those harmonies, man, they were some of the best. They just sounded so good.
And you could just hear it in the speakers. It just resonated, you know? And, and the way that they each sang their different parts and did that, that’s your mind, body, soul balance, [00:34:00] man. And, and when you get that thing balanced, when, when you can get that trifecta really balanced. Man, it, it just feels good.
Like, it feels like you’re getting in that flow state every day because ev things are just clicking. You know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, you feel good, you feel smart. You, you, you’re, you feel healthy, you feel strong, you feel like you’ve got energy and, and you’re just, you’re just vibrating around with the universe and, and it feels really awesome.
Now, on in contrast if you’ve got this one problem at work and you’re giving it all of your attention, and you’re skipping the, skipping your afternoon workouts to go and, and work on this particular problem that maybe you’re, you know, your supervisor or whatever dumped in your lap, well, pretty soon you’re gonna start getting irritable.
You’re, you’re gonna come home in a bad mood and that’s gonna make you want to go sit down and munch on a bunch of comfort food. And pretty soon you can see really quickly how this starts to get outta balance. When if you would’ve just put, put the problem away for 30 minutes, go outside and go for a walk, there [00:35:00] was gosh, I forget the, the the exact philosopher, Hippocrates, maybe titis one, one of these, one of these well-known philosophers back in the Gresham Roman days.
He said if you’re in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you’re still in a bad mood, go for another walk. And man, how true is that, right? You go out and you get it on for a little bit. You, you kind of forget about the world for a little while. You get your endorphin rush and you come back with a little bit of clarity.
You just come back feeling better. You rehydrate, and now you’re able to really give that problem that probably would’ve taken you two or three hours. Now maybe you get it done in an hour, hour and a half because you got so much more clarity and energy to be able to put to it. So keep those things in balance.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. That, that clarity and energy is so crucial to any problems that you’re having. I mean, if you just go do something physical, it doesn’t, that doesn’t have to be a walk. If that’s not your thing, it’s if, if you want, just go. If you’re into gardening, if you’re into, yeah, whatever it is, just go do something physical and you, you’ll focus your attention on that, whatever that [00:36:00] is, whatever that activity is that you’re doing.
And you’ll, you’ll for, I don’t wanna say you’ll forget about the problem that you’ve been having, but it’s not gonna be the center of your attention. And when it is the center of your attention, you’re using so much mental energy and you end up just feeding yourself. Just, just worrying about those, those problems.
I, I know in my, my career even I, I would find myself working late nights trying to solve problems, trying to get things done, and I’d be working, working, working all hours of the night and never solving the problem. Eventually got to the point where it’s like, okay, I’m, I’m spent, I need to go get some rest.
I’ll, I’ll come, I’ll regroup and I’ll tackle this in the morning. And I found myself working hours and hours at night not solving the problem. Going to bed. Yeah. Waking up the next thing in the morning, and within the first 20 minutes, sometimes I would have the, the problem solved. It’s like, you know what?
I’m never gonna work another crazy [00:37:00] hour, late night like that, trying to solve problems. Like obviously if there’s stuff that you need to do and just taking time, yeah, there’s deadline, fine. You, you gotta do that stuff. But if I’m struggling and I’m trying to find a solution to something, I’m walking away.
I’m not gonna sit there and just, just keep burying my head into this thing because I’m not gonna come to the solution as easily as I will if I just wait a few hours and come back to it. Let my myself clear my head. Maybe I need to go for a walk. Maybe I just need to go to bed because it’s, you know, 1130 at night and I’m, I’ve been working all day.
Maybe I just need to go to bed. That’s all I need. Right. But yeah, but when you just keep focusing on that same thing, it’s, it’s just becomes too much and Yeah. And you need to give your brain a break.
Paul White: Right. Well, you, you made a comment in there about, you were talking about you know, focusing so intently on something, and maybe it doesn’t make you forget it, but it can, it can at least get you around it for a second.
Well, I’ll kind of push the, I’ll push and disagree with you just a little bit on that one, [00:38:00] because I, I got hooked up with this this, this group up in Wickenburg. They asked me to come and speak to ’em. Telling a story about, you know, I overcame some challenges in this other book that I wrote that’s over my shoulder here.
No new lessons. It’s a great hiking book. It’s, and it’s really about the battle of wills at the end of the day. Bad decisions, poor planning, and the battle of wills. But talking to this lady, she’s a mental health physician, and She takes, she takes people out on these wilderness excursions, just, just day trips, just hiking trips.
And they’re, you know, maybe a little bit elderly. They, she works in a 55 and older community. But the whole idea is if you’re focusing on the path in front of you on a hike up through the mountain, you’re not thinking about all our other things. Right, right. And, and my own personal story of this was just a few months ago, I went and ran this half marathon over in the white tanks over here in just outside of Phoenix.
And it was it was a trail race, an exterior trail race. And it was a lot of fun, you know, and [00:39:00] I got to like, I got to about mile eight and I was feeling pretty good and then it started all downhill from there. And that’s when not only did my legs just completely give out, cuz man I haven’t run more than about five miles in about 10 years.
I just wanted to see if I could go do it. It was just for shits and gr shits and giggles really. But about. About the mile eight mark is when my mind started to fail on me just a little bit, my, not my mind, my concentration, I should say. And so I was having to co, I was having to talk to myself out loud, telling myself to concentrate.
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Just like if you’re rucking up a hill, you know, to go take the bad guy’s house or whatever, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, and you would be amazed when you concentrate that intently on every single step you take for 13 miles, guess what you’re not thinking about?
You’re not thinking about the water bill or the problem at work that you had, or the fact that you, you’re not thinking about [00:40:00] anything else. So, yeah, in a way you can really just clear everything off your plate by going and doing something really freaking hard. If you go outside and do something just really, really hard, you’ll forget about all that other stuff.
Exactly.
Scott DeLuzio: And I know for me I got involved in artwork and painting and stuff and I, I found myself where I would just sit there for hours and just be painting something and I, I’d be, I’d be intently focused on that. All the other worries in the world are just, they faded away. Yeah. Cause I wasn’t thinking about those things.
I was thinking about the thing that I was doing. My wife even would comment. It’s like, you know, you actually seem a lot happier when you’re doing that. And it’s like, Yeah, maybe cuz I am Right .
Paul White: Well that’s, that’s part of that balance. You know, you, yeah. When I, when I sit down and, and play my guitar, or when I go jump in my Jeep and go blast down a dirt road with some country music blaring, that’s my church man.
That’s, that’s where I get right with my soul. You know, I just kind of one hand on the steering wheel, one arm out the window [00:41:00] and, and kind of let it all go, you know? And, and so there is, there’s, there’s a delicate balance to all those things. And, and if you’re putting all of your energy and all of your time into any one of the three, you’re not helping out with your balance at all.
Just like if you were neglecting one of ’em more than the others, you’re, you’re, you’re not solving your balance. And, and the way it was described to me years ago was a three-legged stool. If you have a three-legged stool, they all have to be about the same length or the thing will topple over, you know?
Right. So the good thing is though, is, I mean, and, and here’s the good part, so the listeners can take this away, right? If you, if you go out and let’s say you wanna start going out for walks around your. , well go listen to an audible book while you’re doing it. Right? Or, or listen to some calming music or, or something like that, right?
And so you can get two for one, sometimes three for one out of one event in the day. And like when I go out for a jog, I’m usually listening to some music that’s clearing my mind or, or taking my mind off of everything else. [00:42:00] Not only that, but you’re getting the health benefits, you’re getting the endorphin rush from, from the exercise.
You’re purging your body of some toxins through all your sweats. So you get to come back home and rehydrate and you’re, it’s all good stuff. Now, when you come home after your, after your workout, you’ve got all this energy, you feel great, and you can apply that into something that’s gonna boost your mental capabilities, whether it’s be reading or solving that problem you’ve been working on, or getting ready and going for work if you choose to PT in the mornings or so.
All these things kind of, they, they kind of all play together if you do it, if you do it right.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. All of that is a hundred percent true. I, I know for myself. I am not the biggest, like sit down and find time to just read a book, but listening to an audio book Yeah. And or listening to some podcast on a topic that is interesting to me in the area that I’m trying to improve on.
Cool. Now, now I’m killing two Bridget, one stone. I’m getting out there. I’m, I’m doing the exercise. I’m listening to the thing. That’s right. You know, it, it’s just, it’s just [00:43:00] a, a great way to compare of that all at once. And you almost don’t feel like you’re, you’re actually learning anything, but at the same time you are.
And, and so it’s almost a. I dunno, one of those life hacks, if you wanna call
Paul White: it . Yeah, no, it is man. And, and I actually talked my mom into starting doing this. She’s 65 or 66. She, she could use to get some exercise out. She’s been, she’s been kind of sitting around for a little bit, she’s starting to have a little bit of health issues and, and I said, Hey, just go for a walk.
Yeah. And finally got her out and, and she goes, okay, well, I feel good. She went walking a few times and, and she felt good. I was like, okay, so now go get you some earbuds, some cheap earbuds at Walmart. You can get ’em for, you know, probably 10 bucks or so. Plug that into your phone and download an audiobook or find you a good podcast that you like to listen to.
And now, now you’re, you’re, you know, you, you’re getting all this good information in into your mind. And if you’re concentrating, if you’re concentrating so hard on your PT that you’re not concentrating on anything else, that’s a good thing. So if you’re [00:44:00] concentrating so hard on your book that you’re not paying attention to how hard you’re working at pt, guess what?
That’s a good thing. So, so these things, these things kind of feed off of each other. I, I did this other challenge. I feel like I’m talking all about me, but no, it’s fine. This is good stuff for, for the listeners and, and this is one that I really highly recommend. I don’t, I don’t recommend going out and punishing yourself in a Spartan race cuz it, it was hard and it sucked.
But I do recommend this one. It’s called the 12 Hour Walk Challenge, and it was started by Colin o Colin o Brady. He set the, the record for hiking across, or Transversing Antarctica solo. And he challenges you to go out and walk for 12 hours. No music, no phone, just just you and the crunch of your feet on the trail and.
For, for the people who say, well, I can’t walk for 12 hours. Okay, go walk around your block and then sit on your front porch until you’re not tired and do it again, and do that for 12 hours. The point is, get outside, no distractions, just you in the wind [00:45:00] and stay inside your own head for 12 hours and see what comes out.
You, you never know. It took me about three hours into, into mine. I, I left the house here at six o’clock one morning, just did it a few weeks ago. Left the house at six in the morning and I didn’t come back until after six at night and about three hours into my walk is when my first problem popped into my head and I was able to drill down into it so far and so, so long that I had walked, I’d probably walked another couple of.
Before I even realized it, and I was like, holy crap, I’ve, I’ve got, I’ve been thinking about this thing, this project for like three or four months, and now in my mind I had step one, step two, step three. I mean, it was so clear to me. And all I took with me was I had I had my phone and airplane mode just so I could keep track of my pedometer and, and how far I went.
And then I had a piece of paper with a pen and I wrote all those, step one, step two, step three, so that when I came home, I was able to execute. The next week at eight hours and 29 minutes into this [00:46:00] walk is when I wrote down this is it. Everything hurts. And that was the reason that I came cuz I wanted to go to that dark place in your mind where you have to, I’m still five or six miles away from my house at this point.
And you have to force yourself to keep going. And that’s where you learn, I think a little bit about yourself. You, you get in those dark recesses of your mind and, and kind of have to go to that. You know, Stan, Stan was my biggest cheerleader at that point. He was he was bright red and rosy at that point, cheering me on to just, Hey man, just lay down.
You got your phone on, you call your, call your son, he can come pick you up and put you in the back of the truck. Yeah. So Jack had to come out and beat the crap outta him. We made it .
Scott DeLuzio: I like it. I like the, I like the, the how the two play off each other. Yeah. And yeah, everyone’s got
Paul White: it worked well.
Everybody’s got that inner voice. Yeah. Yeah. It just helped me to name mine so that now I got somebody I can yell at. Yeah, for sure. Better. It’s better than kicking my dog. Right. Right.
Scott DeLuzio: No. And, and the dog didn’t do anything, so why, why would you, [00:47:00] why would you even need to do that? Right. So, yeah. But you have, you have these two playing off each other and you know, Jack comes around, pick the crap on stand, and, and you, you push through and you, you’re solving problems that you didn’t realize that you were even gonna be able to solve.
Yeah. While you’re out doing this right now, obviously 12 hours, there’s a time constraint there. Like, not everyone’s gonna have 12 hours to dedicates to, you know, on a regular basis, but do it every, every now and again and solve some problems along the way, or clear
Paul White: your mind. Right. Well, you know, and, and I mean, be careful the way that you frame these and, and this is just my opinion, all right?
And I’m not, I’m not throwing shade on anyone, but when you say not everybody’s gonna have the time to, to devote to something like that, if you schedule it, And, and like I put mine on, I put it on the calendar, like I cleared everything for that one Saturday. I’ve been planning this for over a month. It was on the calendar and I made sure that all my chores were done and all the kids’ obligations were [00:48:00] cleared off of that day.
So I set that day aside for all that. Right? And, and I think that that’s, this is an extreme example. Yeah. I’ll give you that. But how often, just day to day do we fall into that trap of saying, well, I don’t have time for that. Right. Well, that’s called an excuse, right? The, the reason that you say that you don’t have enough time for something is cuz you’re not a, you’re not disciplined enough to manage your time appropriately.
And if you would sit down at the beginning of the week or the beginning of the month and draw yourself out a daily battle rhythm for every day, well, guess what, man? Have you done the 75 Hard challenge? I have not. No, dude, the, my biggest takeaway from the 75 hard challenge was finding those little 10 minute gaps in my day.
And when you start to add ’em all up, man, you find hours that you’re not using. Like, oh, well I’ve got 15 minutes until my next event in my day. Real. Okay, so what are you gonna do with it? You gonna sit there and play on Facebook? Or are you gonna pick up your book and read it? You know, you can go walk around the building [00:49:00] 15 times in 15 minutes.
Come on dude. Like, you can get something out of this and, and you start to manage your time a little bit better and stop making excuses like, oh, I don’t have time. No, you do have time. You just have to plan it appropriately. Do the stuff Monday through Friday so that your Saturday is open and get your butt up at five o’clock in the morning.
Pack your backpack the night before and get out the door and go have fun. So, yeah, you, you can. Oh yeah,
Scott DeLuzio: absolutely. You definitely can. Yeah, for sure. And I think I, I was saying as far as making it like a part of a daily routine or something like that, obviously Yeah. That, that’s just not, not no, not 12 hours for sure.
You know, for for sure. You
Paul White: know, but you can, you can afford an hour to go to the gym or 45 minutes to walk around your neighborhood. Yeah, no,
Scott DeLuzio: yeah, you definitely could. Yeah. You can fit those or that kinda time and, and yeah. And when people say that they don’t have time for stuff like that wake up an hour earlier and just hundred percent be done, you know, that, that’s just too easy.
I I I don’t think there’s, there’s anything there other than Stan who’s standing in your way, you know, [00:50:00] whoever
Paul White: your time and your day get up earlier. You’re right. Exactly. Yep.
Scott DeLuzio: So I gotta imagine your time in the Air Force had something to do with Coming up with this one, one to five project and, and how you’re able to shape that mindset to be able to get you to where you are now and teaching people the way you do now.
Right. I mean, it, it, it wasn’t it wa wasn’t something that necessarily just popped out of the blue, but you probably had some of this mindset
Paul White: going into it, right? Yeah. Well really when I started adding it all up and, and I had this interesting talk with a fellow kind of a similar conversation to this, we were just kind of throwing some spaghetti on the wall and seeing what stuck.
But we were talking about you know, some people esp I think especially, , I don’t wanna say just veterans. I’ll, I’ll throw law enforcement and paramedics and, and anybody that’s service oriented, you know, your first responder type people, firefighters, especially, you know, these people, we people that devote your life to service.
[00:51:00] A lot of times I think you get wrapped up into this, this kind of mentality, this attitude that that’s who you are. Yeah. And at the end of the day, and, and this is where, this is where a lot of people a lot of people get in trouble is January 15th, 2018, somebody handed me a flag and said, thank you for your service.
And that was it. It was over 21 years, my entire adult life. And it was, it was just, it was over. So now what do you do? Right? And as I, as I thought about it and I started. All the things that we’ve been talking about, you know, taking stock of some of the skills that we developed and, and maybe some of the talents that I had.
And I started putting all that together with some of the stories and the messages and the experiences that we have going through the military. I mean, you’ve no doubt been to some really cool places and seen and done some really cool stuff. You know, when they start putting all that together, you just kind of find out, man, you’ve got a lot to give back and, and really share [00:52:00] with a lot of people that whether they’re affiliated with the military or not, there’s people that, that just yearn for that storytelling and, and that, that relation to their life and learning from other people.
And that’s where I started going. That’s where I really started to kind of. Kind of formulate all these thoughts and really package ’em more than just, just kind of say it. And that that’s kind of where the mission statement came from. And some of these stepped you know, 1, 2, 3 step processes, whatever.
I was a football coach for a long time and, and that too, you know, it really, like I said before, you know, football and, and, and tactical aviation are not very dissimilar when you break it down to the processes. Obviously in football you’re not getting shot at, but the processes are generally about the same.
You still have to plan, brief, execute, debrief very efficiently and very thoroughly to be able to win. And so as I started kind of taking stock of some of those things that I’d learned over all the years and socializing around with a [00:53:00] lot of buddies and, and other people realized that not everybody’s exposed.
To that level of, of execution on a daily basis. Like we are a lot of times, you know, like yeah, how many times were you sitting around and, and in the army and you know, boss walks in and goes, Hey, we gotta, we gotta plan an op real quick and go take the house. Okay, cool. You sit down, you, you, you throw some, throw some rudimentary plans together, you do a quick rock drill and you get in the Humvee and you go, you know, so we get very used to these step-by-step processes and we can do them very, very easily and efficiently.
And I think a lot of people just, they just don’t, you know, a lot of people especially a lot of civilian people have just kind of been floating through life. They look at people like us who have. Have developed those skills and have those experiences to be able to lead them through and get them through that rut that they’re in.
Because I mean, that’s, that’s really what it is in the end game is you’re in a rut and maybe you’re choosing to not get outta that rut, but maybe [00:54:00] you just don’t know how to get outta that rut. Right? And that’s where I started putting these processes together, is to teach people how to do this stuff.
You know, it really is it, I mean, dude, it, it is so simple, left foot, right foot. Just keep moving. And I, and I, I use little sayings like, win the next play or just move the ball a little bit, you know? Well, man, in football, if I can move the ball on every down, I’m doing pretty good. I’m gonna figure out a way to get first downs.
If I can consistently move the ball, then I’m doing pretty good, right? And, and your life’s just not that much different. Again, back to my book. Work Hard, don’t Suck. There’s a chapter in there called Everything You Need to Know From Life You Can Learn From The Game of Football. And it really is, man, you break it down into these simple, just ge peel back the onion right down to the core of it.
And it’s all about the same. It is. And
Scott DeLuzio: going to that football example, it’s not like you need to get 10 yards every single play No. To get that down, you, you only need a few yards. Every single play That’s right. In order to get there. Yeah. Maybe, maybe you have one [00:55:00] big play and, and boom, now you got that
Paul White: first down.
No, I used to tell my, I used to tell all my teams. I say, if you get me three yards on every play, we’ll win every game we play. Right. Cause we’d be unstoppable. If you can get me, if you can get me three yards on every single play we win.
Scott DeLuzio: Easy. Yeah. I mean, you’re a hundred percent of the time, you’re, you’re gonna get your hands on the ball.
You’re getting a touchdown. No, no problem. Yep. If you do just three yards, not that far, nine feet, you, you can make it. Right. Yeah. It’s not that, that hard. I say it’s not that hard, but when you got.
Paul White: Well, but, but then see, but so, so that, that’s an example. This is an example of you set a goal, right? Mm-hmm.
and now you have to reverse engineer it and figure out what’s involved to get to that goal. So take it from a coach’s point of view, right? From a coach’s point of view, in order to, for me to get those three yards, just to get those three yards, I have to coach 11 people to do their jobs and do it very, very well and do it consistently.
Yeah. Right? So they have to, we have to practice and drill and instruct and [00:56:00] teach and coach very, very succinctly and efficiently so that these kids can go out and execute and, and win their individual battle on that play. So from the coach’s point of view, You know, it, it’s still process oriented. That’s it.
And it’s so simple. You break it down into its smallest, simplest form, and then you just go in there and execute it from the player’s point of view. If you’re, if you’re a player, and this goes into kind of that team building and knowing your role, are you a leader? Are you a follower? Knowing when to be one or the other, or be both, you know, all that kind of stuff that the military guys kind of take for granted because either it’s rank or it’s who your supervisor is, it’s kind of dictated to you.
But oftentimes in the real world, it’s not. You kind of have to find your role on the team. Well, if your role is to be a player, right? Don’t, don’t concern yourself with what the other players are doing. You focus on doing your role at a very high level. Right. Optimal performance, peak performance consistently, and you’ll be fine.
Mm-hmm. . [00:57:00]
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, exactly. And I, I was talking to my kids the other day and we were listening to some music and there’s, there’s some part in the music. It was like a, you know, real crazy. Crazy fast part of the song. And we were like, you know, could you imagine being that good to be able to play that part of the song?
Just that, that one. And then my wife goes, yeah, but could you imagine making the whole song sound good? It’s not just that one instrument that it’s, it’s, it’s all of them working together. It, it’s a symphony football. It’s right. Yep. Where everyone’s gotta work together. It’s not, you can have the best quarterback in the world, but if the rest of the team sucks and they, yeah.
Don’t know what they’re supposed to do, don’t know where they’re supposed to be, that one quarterback even gonna be able to carry a team. You all have to be work together. Yeah. And it’s very similar with a lot of things in life. I mean, yeah, you might have a team that at work, that you’re working on a [00:58:00] project together.
If you’ve got one superstar working on this team and everybody else is just taken back and not carrying their weight, That project is probably gonna fail on whatever. It’s that work,
Paul White: right? You can’t, well, not only the project gonna fail, but the, the individuals who are on that team, like the one kid, yeah, he’s getting a lot out of it.
Right. Or the one, the one person that’s executing and, and doing all the work, he’s getting a lot out of it. While the other guys, they’re just atrophying and, and you’re creating that gap between. Between the, the teammates, you know, so Sure. Taking it, you know, you take this to a business discussion and it’s exactly the same.
You, you’ve got teams in your business and each one of those team members has a role. And if they a, if they all execute their role at a high level, then the team wins. And that means the business makes money and then everybody wins, right? Yep. But if your team. If you’ve got these teams set up in your business and one of the team members is more concerned with what little Johnny over here is [00:59:00] doing versus with what he’s doing, he’s not focusing on executing his role.
He’s more, more worried about why little Johnny’s not doing his role. Well now neither one of you are doing good job means the team doesn’t win, means the team doesn’t, or the business doesn’t get money. So in your personal life, you can take this as well. Right? So if I’m not executing my personal battle rhythm every single day the way that I’m supposed to now, my mind body soul’s getting outta balance.
Now I’m coming home and eating cheezits and watching Netflix instead of reading my book and going to bed early. You know? So it’s all these things are really, they’re, they’re so similar. And, and that’s where, you know, when I stepped back and I wanted to throw a big blanket over everything, that’s kind of where I took it down.
I just went down, right down to the nuts and bolts of it and say, how do we build this from scratch? And it’s, it’s seriously, man, it’s just, It’s just win the next play, dude. Set a small goal and win it. Set another goal and win it. And just keep building on that momentum. That’s it. Well, that’s
Scott DeLuzio: awesome. I mean it, this has been a [01:00:00] pretty awesome conversation.
I think for the listeners who are out there who want to find out more about the, the 1 of 5 project and, and everything else that you do your books and, and things along those lines, where can people go to find out more about
Paul White: all of that? Check out my website, www.paulroscoewhite.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram at Paul Roscoe White.
Right. I pretty consistently put stuff up there. I got a little blog section on my website. Then go check out and, and read some different topics, kind of similar stuff that we have talked about today, but maybe different stories. I like telling stories if you couldn’t tell. So, I think, I think, you know, telling stories is just a way, great way to connect with people and and deliver a good message.
So I try to get a few stories out there to people and yeah, hit me up, send me a message, whatever, and, and we’ll try to connect. Sounds good.
Scott DeLuzio: And I will have links to all of those your website and your social media in the show notes. So anyone who’s looking to check that out, they can just click the links in the show notes.
Paul, it’s been a absolute awesome pleasure [01:01:00] speaking with you today. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on and sharing all these stories with us. Really do think it will help out a lot of the listeners. So thank you again.
Paul White: Yeah, man. Great. Appreciate you having me.
Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to support the show, please check out Scott’s book, Surviving Son on Amazon. All of the sales from that book go directly back into this podcast and work to help veterans in need. You can also follow the Drive On Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.