How First Responders Recover From Traumatic Events With William Branum

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Barkel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Codcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell. And this morning I am sitting in a seat of gratitude, feeling just incredibly blessed and fortunate to be here to be doing what I am doing and looking forward to the conversation that I am about to start with someone that I was introduced to. We have mutual friend and we've been chatting for a couple of months. And actually I got to see firsthand what he's up to in his business experience. Some of that which we'll get into in just a minute. But let me, let me share a little bit about him and then we'll dive right in because this is going to be a really rich conversation. I think all of you are going to love it a lot. So first of all, I'll say that Will Braun is a retired 26 year veteran of the Navy Seals. In fact, he was a Chief Navy Seal, a Seal sniper instructor, and then pivoted, I'll say, out of that service. And we thank him so much for that service. We're going to talk a little bit about that as well today in connection with how it was that he maintained, created and maintained resilience as a seal, as a SEAL instructor, as a leader in that so just incredibly respected institution. I think as far as the military goes, it's definitely thought of in a way that's a little different than maybe some other branches of the military. And we could talk about whether that should be the case or not. But I just want to thank him for his service at the outset here. He also went into something quite a bit different. So I think you guys are going to love the pivot story of retiring from service and then starting a business on his own, an entrepreneur like so many of us, and launching a business, actually a CBD company, back in March of 2020, which is an interesting time, I think historically. Would it be like to start any kind of a new business in March of 2020? But it's called Naked Warrior Recovery. And initially the inspiration for it was to help veterans and first responders to recover from traumatic events, both physical and emotional. And you know, I guess we're sort of saying tongue in cheek that it would be a difficult time to start A business at the outset of Pandemic, and yet the business was intended to assist veterans and first responders in being able to recover from traumatic events. And I can't think of a more traumatic, extended traumatic period than the last seven or eight months for so many people. So, Will, it's just a pleasure to have you on the show today. I'm really glad that you could join us.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah. Way cool.

I'm excited to be here.

You know, I would love to know what's not a part of that bio that, you know, people might be thinking to themselves, what does it take to become a Navy seal? I mean, if you've ever read a book or listen to another, you know, a Navy SEAL talk about what that training is like, what it's like to not just apply, but to go through the process and be accepted into that service, it's. It's pretty daunting. So developing. Developing yourself to that level, to that capacity is something really unknown. I'd say. It's great. Unknown for a lot of people. So, Wilk, what can you tell us just about yourself that you want people to know at the outset? That's not a part of the bio I just read.

So let's see. I spent 26 years in the Navy. 95% of that time was in the SEAL teams, had, you know, some good times and some bad times in there. I am. I have. I have many, many failures in my life, and I love having failure because that's. Those are the things that I have learned. That's. Those are my most precious lessons in my entire life. It didn't matter if it was, you know, a marriage or if it was, you know, doing some sort of underwater navigation while diving. You know, if I. I never learned when I succeeded. I only learned when I failed. Like, oh, don't do it like that. Do it like this. And those are. Those are all my. My. My greatest lessons. So failure is really my. My friend. Even though I don't like it. I hate failure. But I also love it.

Wow. I mean, we could probably just stop this show right now. Just lead with the one great lesson, that your failure is your friend. But you're not. You know, you're still not happy to see that friend.

Right?

It's like, I know you're my friend.

I know you're here to help me, but I don't like it.

But I really wish you weren't here right now.

Right.

And just. Yeah. Gosh, man. It's sort of first chapter of the book. It's a middle chapter. I haven't gotten to the end, so I don't know what the end chapter is. But I imagine that if history is any indication of the future we've got, our lives are just filled with great, you know, ups and downs. Moments where we feel we've succeeded, quote unquote, and moments where we have gotten the feedback that something hasn't worked according to plan or is a, quote, you know, a failure. But I've always had a sort of a personal issue with that word because. And I guess this is sort of on the vein of motivation maybe, or inspiration, but how do we reframe that word failure? I mean, the word failure itself. Just like you feel, you think about if you're sitting right now listening this or you're watching it on YouTube and you think, you know, I failed. Just like this guy. Guy's a 26 year veteran of the Navy Seals and led other, other seals. You go, and he's, he's talking about how his greatest teacher was failure. You know, where do we see our own lives and see our failures and give them a meaning that is all about what didn't work and what we wish you could done differently. And the regrets we've got about those things or the stories that we tell about how it stopped or impeded us. And what you're telling us, or at least what I'm getting out of this, is that your ability to move forward, consistently move forward, has been the result of the failures you've had. It's kind of an ironic relationship, right?

Yeah. I mean, really. And you know, I've, You know, it comes down to resilience is another word that you can use. And you know, when I was going through training, I didn't prepare before I went to SEAL training really at all. I was able to pass the entrance physical, entrance test, but I didn't really do a lot of, I didn't work out that hard before I went. And it certainly showed when I got there because I experienced a lot of failure. However, you know, there was, I wasn't there to quit. I was there to become a Navy seal. And you know, I watched these amazing athletes, these guys that could run, they could swim, they could do the obstacle course, they could pt, they could work out. And you know, they were, to me, they were like leaders and inspirational and oftentimes those were the first guys to quit. Because, you know, when you're going through that selection course, you're, you're going to fail. The job is to fail and to learn and to become better, you don't show up to SEAL training knowing everything you got to learn. They're going to break you down. There's, you know, many of these people were collegiate athletes. They were the best of the best in their circle, in their team. And, you know, they got there and, you know, they would run super fast or they would, you know, do everything better than everyone else. But you know what? Okay, you all suck. Get lock arms, get in the water and. Or run over this berm and get wet and come back for the next hour and a half. And to me, I was like, oh, that's just part of training for them. They're like, I did everything right. I should not be being punished right now. And they couldn't take that. I guess the fact that they weren't number one anymore, they were just a loser like everyone else in the class. They were a failure. And they, they couldn't take that emotional stress on their, on their psyche. They're like, they took it personally instead of, you know, like, hey, this is a team effort. We're. Our job is to just, you know, suck it up and move forward. And, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine, Bedros Coolian, yesterday, and we were talking about attitude and effort. And he runs a program, you know, for, usually for entrepreneurs, it's very expensive to go to the program called the Project. And you know, it's a 75 hour, like little mini hell week. And a friend of mine is one of the instructors there. And they take all of the control away from you. And this is kind of important in life. There's so much around you that you cannot control. You know, these guys that were super athletes, they couldn't control the fact that they were losing right now. They were failing. Right now all you can control is your attitude and your effort. Are you gonna have a good attitude and are you gonna put forth the effort to do what you need to do to accomplish your goal? And so, you know, and I didn't realize that at the time. I was just there to finish training. And later on, as I matured, you know, I learned that, you know, it's really, it's about attitude and effort. It doesn't matter what is happening, whether you're in combat and things are blowing up around you. You put forth a lot of effort to train, to make the right decisions, to do the right things, to get out of bad situations, and you have to have a good attitude. You know, some people, I've seen some people, when things start going badly, they just Lock down. And that's the opposite of what you should be doing. You need to like, look up and start looking around when things go bad. That's the most important time to have the right attitude and to put forth the maximum amount of effort that you possibly can.

Yeah, yeah, Will. It reminds me of that old Charles or Chuck Swindoll quote about attitude. I wish I could quote the entire thing. I won't right now, but sort of the penultimate line in his, almost like a poem, is that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. The attitude is the only thing. It's a, it's a quote about attitude and it's the only thing. You've got to play that one string over and over and over again. Your attitude, how it is that you, that you respond to things attitudinally. I remember when I was a kid that my dad would sometimes say to me, you know, change your attitude. It's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. What do you mean? Yeah, like if you. To have the self awareness to go, yeah, my attitude really sucks right now. You're right. I got to change my attitude right this second.

Right, but.

So that word was kind of an enigma to me growing up. And to hear you talk about attitude and effort being these two things that were the inflection point, let's say, at the SEAL training between guys that made it and guys that didn't, and that the inflection point really wasn't as much about performance or about raw talent like that. You're saying these guys with just tremendous talent and ability, yet when faced with failure, you know, the failure they couldn't control, not a failure, because they themselves suck. But when you're, you know, you're literally only as strong as your weakest link. I know we're hitting up a couple cliches here, right? But that any team, whether it's a SEAL team or it's a team, you know, in your business or in any area, your family, you're legitimately only as strong as the weakest link is. And so if anybody fails, we all fail. And they couldn't handle the failure personally, so they couldn't ultimately be part of the team. I mean, that's pretty remarkable. So is there a way that you were able to reframe that word? I know I'm being a bit semantical now, but for folks that, that, let's say that the word failure itself is a trigger and even an anchor, like a legit like, you know, keeping people stuck in place. How would you. Or did you, in fact, reframe that word and use a different word to describe what you were experiencing?

For me, it was. It was a learning point. It was just a. I mean, I learned how to be a better runner. I learned how to push my body in ways that were as uncomfortable. Um, I mean, I knew that I could go. I don't have to go quite as hard, and I'm still going to pass the run or whatever, pass the swim or. Or just to not quite keep up on the run. But if I. If I put forth just a little more effort, it's going to hurt a little bit now, but I'm going to be finished more quickly, and so the pain is going to stop. So it just kind of taught me to think about how about that effort. How much effort am I going to put out? You got to put the. You got to put the effort out. Am I going to put it out and right now, or am I going to extend out the amount of pain that that effort brings over time? So I learned to run faster. I learned to work just a little.

Bit harder, put the effort out in the moment. Yeah, this is a really interesting thing, and I'm getting. I'm getting chills here just because on a performance, like a part of what we do, what I've been doing for a while, I was a lawyer for 18 years, and I pivoted out of that profession and it performed quite well, you know, at least at the level of, you know, sort of at a business level. I wasn't performing well on a personal level. It was destroying my life, A great life, a great, you know, all these amazing things to be grateful for. Wife, love of my life, you know, college sweetheart, four kids, all that. I'm miserable. And. And it's funny because I work with our company, will sometimes consult with organizations about resilience, and I'll work with individuals within those organizations, including the founders, CEOs and stuff. And I find there's other people too, just like me at that time in my life that have everything truly to be grateful for, but they're somehow still miserable. And I think in some regards, it tracks back or I'm doing my best right now to trace this back to what you just described, which is that a lot of people are saving. They're saving themselves, they're saving their energy, they're holding back for something they imagine they'll need that reserve for in the future. And so they're sort of not putting out their Best effort in the moment, thinking that somehow they've got to save it for tomorrow, you know, And I'm. I'm a spiritual guy. I'm not terribly religious, but I think there's great. This great story, great learning of failure and success in things in biblical text and other spiritual texts. And so I love that story of the Jews wandering in the desert and they're given enough food, you know, manna for their day. And, you know, they're told, don't, don't save it.

Don't save it.

Don't save it, man. Because if you do, you know, it's just not. You don't need to. You're going to have some more. There will be for you. There'll be more tomorrow for sure. And people then, because they couldn't deal with that uncertainty, with the lack of control, perhaps the control over their destiny, they went ahead and saved it anyway. And of course it turned, you know, was poisonous, it was toxic, and, you know, the rest. The rest sort of history that way. And it's interesting when you think about what you just described, that the lack of control, the uncertainty that tends to produce fear in us, that we then kind of go into saving mode, saving our energy, etc. And so if you'd have done that, do you think you would have succeeded if you'd just sort of been trying to save yourself in the moment?

No, not at all. No. And it's interesting. I didn't really understand what I was doing back then. And now that I'm older and I have many other lessons in my own life, I'm still trying to build resilience in myself. And so if I go out for a run or something, I, you know, in the neighborhood that I live in, there's a few hills. And I have learned that if I. Many, most people are just going to kind of take their time and kind of ease their way up the hill. I don't do that. I, as a friend of mine, he calls it, I just attack the hill. So I just attack the hill and I think about him every time, and he's a former teammate of mine. And, you know, I run up the hill and once I get to the top, then I think about slowing down, catching my breath and, you know, figuring out, you know, what the next plan of action is, if it's. Whether it's, you know, keep going at the same speed or slow down, catch my breath, and then get ready for the next hill. So. But yeah, I did that early on. We're totally so much stronger and you know, this was something. Even at the end of SEAL training, we're out on San Clemente island and you have to like earn your food every day. You, you know, you go and you have either you have to do a bunch of push ups, pull ups and sit ups to eat, or you run up what they called Frog Hill. And it was about a quarter quarter mile, almost straight up. So it starts off pretty flat and then it turns into this very steep hill. And I was, I would say mediocre runner, middle of the class, I guess, and. But you know, going up that hill, it's like this little goat trail that goes up and if you go slower than the guy in front of you, you're pretty much screwing everyone behind you. So I thought it was my job to get out of everyone's way. So I would just run as hard as I could. And I was in the top three or five every time we did that hill. And other people would like kind of like mosey on up or whatever, but you have to get there in a certain amount of time or you have to go get in the ocean and then come back and eat, you know, your lunch or dinner soaking wet outside, away from the class. So I did. I never wanted to do that. So I.

That sound great. Is everybody so jealous right now? Everybody's going, sign me up, man, I.

Want to do that.

Yeah, it's so we're stronger than we think, always.

And I. That was something I learned early on that I. You always have a little more in the tank. It doesn't matter what the, what it is you're working on. If it's like a paper, you're writing, a book, you're exercising, you're working on a relationship, you always have more in the tank than you think you do.

Yeah, I want to, I want to transition into. And this will be simple because we're talking about it already. But what does it take to create resilience? Did you, over 26 years in that profession, in that line of work, in that service, what did you learn about what produces long term resilience? Because you obviously saw guys come in, some of them failed and then were able to succeed because they learned from their failure. I would say that I might reframe the word failure as feedback or as finding out, you know, you don't fail, but you find out, you find out often what's not going to work, you know, what didn't work in that instance. And you can make some adjustments, but you saw that at the outset and then through 26 years you must have seen guys come and go, people come and go. Make it, not make it at all, at all levels. Can you draw some conclusions about resilience in the seals and what, what, what resilience looked like, what produced it and how ultimately it either contributed to people being able to go the distance or when it was lacking, their, their not being able to.

I think it was a lot of it is just mindset and in the seal teams, you're, I would say lucky because you have, you're surrounded by similar attitude, similar mindset and if you started to sort of dip in your resilience or dip in your performance or dip in any way, you're going to get that immediate feedback. If you don't perform, if you don't show up, if you're feeling sorry for yourself, you will get immediate feedback. It's not always positive feedback, but it's feedback. Therefore it gives you the ability to make corrections that you need to make.

So a team, the reflection of other people around you maybe may not feel supportive when people are holding you accountable or giving you really rough feedback, but ultimately it's, it, you can't really sort of hide, I suppose from the, from the truth of the moment. Is that right there.

Yeah, you're, you're definitely not hiding anything. It, it's, it's a such, it's such a tight knit group of, of people that. Yeah, there's no hiding. There's no real secrets. I mean you can have secrets, but things will come out and be exposed at some point. Yeah. And again, if you're not performing to the level that you need to perform to the level of the team, the team will either bring you up or you will no longer be a part of the team.

Yep.

It won't be an easy path. It's not, you know, it's. Nothing is given to you. You have to earn it. Every day.

I'm thinking to myself that the name of your company and I don't know if true or not feels like it has something to do with what we just said, because when you're that exposed, like the exposed to everyone around you for the purposes of you being better, I mean, ultimately that's the only goal. It might not feel like that to some folks, I suppose, when, when they're being, being pressed so hard. But it's for you to be better because ultimately the team is better as you individually are better. You're naked in that moment. I mean, you're naked that whole entire time. And so you get a company called Naked Warrior Recovery. And I. So I want to track both that, the name of the company, and the. That naked part of it, as well as the recovery piece. Because in our study and our research about resilience, a lot of it has to do with that word recovery. And so I want to see if we can't talk in terms of the expenditure, the spending yourself in the moment part, knowing you've got more in the tank and yet understanding that recovery is in many ways an unsung hero of resilience that doesn't get spoken about a lot of. Why don't we start with the name?

Okay, so let me back up just a little bit. So I transitioned out of the Seal teams in August 1st of 2018. I started another company, a consulting company, to help organizations navigate the military acquisition system. Basically, it was a kind of science and technology field where I was pretty good at getting money for other companies to develop technologies for the military. It wasn't super happy doing that. People just wanted me to sell their widget that I didn't really believe in. I also lost a family, a team that I had recently had. Once you walk out the door, it's not like the Marine Corps. They're like, once a Marine, always a Marine, and you're expected to uphold all these values and maybe you have the same support system. It's not really like that in the SEAL teams. It's because, you know, it's not that they don't want to be helpful or they don't want to be friendly or whatever. They're busy doing other stuff. They're, you know, preparing for, you know, to go into bad situations. And, you know, they have to take care of that inner core. You're no longer part of that inner core. So we'll talk to you when we can. And so I. That was. That created a incredible loss for me. I was actually in denial of getting out of the Navy. I was returning emails the day that I retired on work projects that I was working on, and I was in complete denial. I'm like, okay, I guess IT department. Maybe you need my phone back. So that was very traumatic for me. Like, I lost my entire adult life, has been in the SEAL teams, and now I'm a civilian. I have greatly reduced income now. I no longer have a mission, a purpose in life. I no longer have a family, a team. It was a huge traumatic transition for me. So. And I also have some other stuff. You know, I will call it mental baggage from, you know, toxic relationships or work stuff or whatever, you know, life and Life isn't fair. Life. Life will beat you down if you don't. If you don't take charge. And so I.

Or fill your knapsack filled with. With rocks and bricks and other other shit you carry around all day.

A big bag of stuff. Yeah. So, you know, I was using alcohol for many years to kind of. As. To kind of turn off that noise that's in my head. And at some point, I had heard about cbd, you know, before it was cool. There's a million CBD brands out there now. But I'd heard about CBD before. It was cool. And the guy was talking about, you know, the medicinal qualities of. Of THC medical marijuana to this day. Never tried marijuana, but I'm certain that it's not as bad as the amount of alcohol that I have consumed. But he said, everyone knows about thc, but there's this other molecule called cbd, and it has all these medicinal benefits and, you know, good for your central nervous system and all these other things. I was like, oh, maybe I should try that one day. And it wasn't for another year after I got out of the Navy, because I'm a child of Nancy Reagan's world Drugs. Just say, no, I'm still scared. I'm still scared of that stuff. That I finally tried cbd, because a friend of mine gave it to me. He's like, here you go. Because I was. I said I was interested. He had some bottles, and he gave me a bottle. I tried it that night. I slept a little bit better. And, you know, I like to say, you know, water boils at 212 degrees. I was walking around at, like, 210 degrees. You know, it didn't take long to, like, hit that needle and, like, have a flare up and, you know, some sort of trigger, like a small trigger, not even a big trigger. So, you know, I started, like, coming down from, like, you know, 210 degrees to 208 degrees, 200 degrees. So very subtle changes. And I didn't really notice it over.

So emotionally, I know people are tracking this, but the right. Your emotional stove, so to speak, was right, ran hot as a result of this trauma, the stress, just the stuff in the bag that you're carrying around day to day. And so you started to explore the CBD and could see that the sort of. The figurative temperature of that stove was coming down, reducing.

Yeah. And then something else I noticed was some pain was not as bad as it used to be. You know, normally I would do certain movements, and it would just be the Stabbing pain. And. And so every time I do the movement, I'm grimacing, I'm getting ready. I'm like, oh. And then about three weeks after I started taking cbd, you know, it wasn't this sharp pain that was like stabbing me anymore. It was just a dull pain. I was like, oh, that's. When did that happen? I must be getting better. And then I ran out. And then I thought nothing really of it. And then things started coming back. Things started like triggers, you know, little triggers were, like, starting to set me off. And so I was like, maybe there was something to that cbd. So I tried another brand, and things got a little bit better. Eventually, I found a way to start my own CBD company because I believed in the product. I believed in what it did for me. And so I started Naked Warrior Recovery. And the reason for Naked Warrior Recovery, the Naked Warrior is the predecessor to today's Navy Seal. So back in World War II, if you've seen the movie Saving Private Ryan, you saw the assault force in the beginning of the movie, they went ashore there at Normandy prior to the assault, right, that amphibious assault. But prior to that assault, several days, week, two weeks prior to that, these guys that the Navy got to volunteer would swim into the beach. They would measure the depth of the water with a. With a. With a rock on a piece of string and, you know, look for obstacles underwater. They would do 3 to 5,000 yards of beach a night. They would go back to the ship. They would chart everything out, and then go back out the next night. And hours before the assault, before that Saving Private Ryan, taking the beach, these guys would go out, they put demo on all the obstacles in the water and as many on the beach as they could. And as the assault force is coming, they're blowing the. You know, they're taking fire from the beach, and, you know, the naval ships are firing at the beach to kind of give them some sort of COVID fire. And then they blow the obstacles on the beach, and then the assault force comes in. That was awesome. And then in the Pacific, the Marines were doing the same thing. They were doing these amphibious assaults. They would run aground on a barrier reef around the island in this, you know, island campaign. They would run off, you know, wearing 60 to 80 pounds of gear, and they would run off the edge of the reef thinking they were in, like, three feet of water, and they would drown. And so the Navy brought these. These underwater demolition teams, these naked warriors, because they would go into battle with basically naked, with a mask, some fins, shorts, a Ka Bar knife and their little lead line and slate, and that is all they wore. And so they would go in and they would, you know, clear these obstacles so the Marines could go in and. And. And move forward. So. And then in 1967, the underwater demolition team became Navy SEALs. And that's, you know, today's Navy SEAL. So it's the predecessor for today's Navy SEAL. The other side of that is, you know, I was walking around, and I still do sometimes, walking around with this ego, with this armor, with this, like, chip on my shoulder, I guess, for the lack of a better term. And, you know, I. I had been, you know, everything was an attack on me. Everything was a trigger. Everything was something that was holding me down, keeping me down or whatever. At some point, cbd, I realized, allowed me to be a little bit more vulnerable so that I could face those triggers, so I could face those stressors, you know, find a little bit more healing mentally, emotionally, psychologically. And so what I discovered is at some point, you know, in combat, you know, we put on armor to go into harm's way, and then we come back, we take our armor off, and then we go clean up and whatever. But in. In life, we never take that armor off. We never allow ourselves to recover. We never get naked. We never expose ourselves to healing. And so the naked warrior is really. We're all. We're all warriors in our own life. It doesn't matter if you're a soccer mom, you're a real estate agent, you're a Navy seal. It doesn't matter anyone, any. Anything in between. There. You're. There's stress in your life. There is triggers, there's whatever. And, you know, for me, you know, I had to learn how to expose myself to people who want to love me, who want to give me. Not everyone is trying to attack me. So I need to get naked in order to find the healing that I needed, because I needed a lot of healing. And CBD was a modality that helped me get to that point, right?

So that there's. There's a. Multiple meanings to the. To the way that you're using the word as a part of your brand, as a part of the company. And. And I think that's the. You know, to me, the origin story is so important. I'm very happy that you shared that. Thank you. And the idea that so many of us are walking around with this armor and unable or unaware of what it takes or what it could look like even for us to take the armor off at. At. At Points to recover. And I gave a TED talk was a little bit of a different metaphor, but so similar because I was using this metaphor of guarding. I was a lifeguard. And you imagine walking, you know, sort of walking around in a guarded state all the time and hyper vigilant, always looking for the threat. So I've got to. Grew up, grew up in New York, you know, was a lawyer for 18 years. It was like I had all this kindling for that sort of fire of, of, of, you know, it's fear. I mean, that's all that is ultimately when we're unwilling to be vulnerable. And, and by that I mean real, just real about where you're at in a moment without thinking that you make yourself the weak member of the herd. And by being the weak member of the herd, you get eaten. I mean, that's ultimately right. I think the way our brains work.

Just stuck in this fight or flight. Constant parasympathetic. Yeah. Always not. Yeah. Never able to like slow down and recover.

Yeah. And so do you know, I mean, I know just as a part of putting this all together, you've become, I don't use the word expert if you don't want to use it, but you, you know, you're very knowledgeable now about how the body works biochemically and how these things are helping us or what modality will help us when our parasympathetic system is compromised, when our adrenals are compromised, when we're producing cortisol morning, noon and night because we're walking around with low level and sometimes not so low level levels of anxiety, how do we recover? I think what's really cool about your company is that it's one of those ways that people can recover that not everybody's considered or even just is aware of because there's a lot of stigma. You and I, before we turn on the camera or in the mic, we said there's just stigma associated with cbd. I mean, the other part of the plant, or at least the psychoactive component known as THC, is a Schedule 1 drug. I mean, it's still in, you know, in federal law. You go to prison for it. States are changing those. But yeah.

And until 2018, December of 2018, CBD was still was a Schedule 1 drug, even though there's no psychoactive effects of it at all.

Interesting. I don't want to get into politics. I know you probably don't either. Do you have a sense of why it is that. That something that is, is not dangerous and in fact is really helpful has gotten that stigma. You have a historical perspective on that.

There's some history that it was kind of like what you said. It was political. It was really business political. But there were, you know, people can frame things and make stories up to tell whatever story they want. And so, you know, hemp, marijuana, whatever you want to call it, has been around for thousands of years. People have used it for medicinal purposes. And I think probably when it became more recreational, there was a stigma put on it that, you know, it's going to create more. More crime, I think, you know, I've heard stories where, you know, it was actually, it was a paper company, I think, that helped get hemp to be illegal until World War II when it became illegal again so that you could make rope and things like that. And it became illegal again until 2018. And it was really because hemp was a viable alternative to paper for, I mean, the constitution was written on a hemp document.

Interesting. Yeah. Will, what, what's, what is it about the components of cbd, do you think, or do you know that's helped you, that's helped you to bounce back recovery.

So for me, cbd, it's an anti inflammatory. It's not an anti inflammatory, the same as ibuprofen, but it. Which really takes into consideration acute inflammation. You stub your toe, you bump your head, you have a headache, that's kind of acute inflammation. Chronic inflammation is where a lot of disease is derived from or it happens because of disease. So CBD has been shown scientifically to reduce chronic inflammation. It also interacts with your endocannabinoid system. So all mammals have this giant network of neuroreceptors throughout your entire body that's connected to your digestive system, your endocrine system, your central nervous system, your immune system. It's connected to every system in your body. And it's called the endocannabinoid system because you naturally create endogenous cannabinoids that I didn't know that until I started researching this industry and science and how the body works and why does CBD work. And so it turns out that CBD is a neuroprotectant. So it helps feed your endocannabinoid system. It helps to keep your endogenous cannabinoids from breaking down. It reduces inflammation. And the reason that's important is the endocannabinoid system is because everything is connected. And when things get out of whack, that's when chronic illness happens. And you may have heard stories where people are saying, CBD cured my cancer, it cured my Lyme disease, it cured all these other things. It's not curing anything. It's reducing inflammation. It's kind of like a multivitamin for your endocannabinoid system and it helps bring it back into homeostasis. So that's how sleep is.

Homeostasis is sort of a word to represent balance, right?

Equilibrium, balance. Yeah. So it brings everything back so that everything can work the way it's supposed to work, the way it was made to work. And then your body sort of heals itself.

Right. Because you, if your body is, is not it's self fatigued or, or that you're not, your body isn't expending energy in ways that aren't efficient. It has the capacity to resolve things without the use of drugs or things of that sort in cases. Right. Obviously we're not saying across the board, is there a particular way that you have either experienced yourself or you've seen in others? That's the sort of the best way. I'm sure people who may not know much about CBD are saying, well, so do I ingest it? Is it topical? I've seen it in both forms. Is there a sort of a best practice for somebody that was curious and wanted to find out more? I know our show notes are going to have more information about you and your company. So people that go to the show notes will be able to click links and you know, know if they want to look at products and things that you're producing, they can find out more about that there. But you know, what's the best way for somebody just getting started with this to experience cbd?

I think it, that's.

Is that a hard question?

The answer I'm going to give kind of sucks, but it depends. Okay.

Yeah.

So everyone is different. Everyone, everyone's body, everyone's endocannabinoid system has different requirements, different needs. So I, so I have, you know, gummies that are only 10 milligrams of CBD. They actually are the least efficacious product I have. But I have more positive feedback from the gummies and from any other, other product that I sell the most. I would say the most efficacious would either be a tincture that you, you know, take sublingually or the soft gels which have a nano emulsion technology which makes the oil droplets much smaller, better for a better bioavailability. But I would say if you're going to try cbd, try, you know, try whatever you feel like, you should try the gummies. It's a pretty good price point to get in. It's like 40 bucks for a jar of 30. And if that's not enough for you, maybe you move up to a soft gel or up to a tincture. Tinctures have the quickest absorption because you're pretty much getting it right into your. Into your blood system, you know, kind of sublingually, because you go.

You just drop it in under your.

Tongue, is what you're saying, under your tongue. You hold it there for 30 to 60 seconds. You know, I use the tincture mostly if I have, like, you know, some triggers, like, come in, and I'm like, start getting super pissed off. I. I'll take a tincture in like 10 or 15 minutes. And I'm still mad. I'm just less mad. It doesn't make your problems go away. It just helps me to. It just takes the edge off of, like, I'm not ready to, like, come across the table and choke someone. I'm like, okay, now we can have a reasonable conversation. I'm still really angry. But we can, like, you know, work through this reasonably instead of me making irrational decisions.

And this is without. Or whatever kind of be repetitive about it. This is without any psychoactive component, right? This is not thc. It's not like you just went and, you know, went outside and smoked a smoked joint, right, to get chilled so that you weren't so angry. CBD does something different when it's. When it's.

It does something. It does something different. It's just. It, like, it just makes the bad stuff less bad. It's. It's not. I can still. I can still perform at a very high level. It's just. It's the way that it interacts with the central nervous system, with the anger, with whatever my emotions are. There is a ton of literature on PubMed, and I go there periodically to, like, get new research and get new facts and. Because, you know, maybe. Maybe things have changed because this is a very new science.

Just rewind, rewind like 10 seconds because it broke up there. So you just repeat what you were just saying. So where do you go to sort of learn more about that?

So I go to pubmed, like pubmed.com and you can just do. It's got a great search engine, and you can put type in there, cbd, endocannabinoid system, cbd, anger, cbd, whatever, or endocannabinoid, and see any combination. And you're going to come up with studies that are as current as November 2020. Since today is December 1st of 2020 and possibly there's studies published today, peer reviewed studies are published on PubMed. Prior to 2018, December 2018, CBD was not studied very well.

Right.

Because it was, you know, in that Schedule 1 class of drugs. So now that it's like, there's more popularity, there's more emphasis on it. There are studies coming out every day on the effectiveness of cbd, how it's working with the body, what it's doing. And so I'll go there to get more up to date information. But you know, what I know is how it affects me is it just brings me down. It like, you know, brings me away from that 212 degrees, brings me down to like, okay now because I've taken enough cbd, I can come down much more quickly. Before it was like, you know, I come down one degree, now I can come down 10 degrees.

Right. And there are topicals as well. Right. So people that are having physical pains, aches and pains and things that are, as you say, more chronic, not acute, that the topicals work. I know I rub, I rub my, got some knee challenges, occasionally surfing and stuff like that shoulder. I use it topically and I see relief from that. And so you use it topically as well?

From time to time I use it, I use it topically all the time. So if I'm like working out and I'm like, have a really sore session, do squats or something and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's so hard to stand up and walk around. I'll put, you know, some, some CBD on and it's still pain. It's just not that stabbing me in the legs pain that it takes so much time to get over so I can get up and start moving a little more quickly. It's still pain. It doesn't take the pain away. You still have, you've caused that damage to your body. You've broken, you've torn muscle tissue and the lactic acid comes in and you know, creates that soreness. It just makes the soreness less. Yes.

Which again, studies are clear on that too, that pain management is a really big thing. I mean, that's probably why too many opioids were prescribed. Know that you recover when you're not in tremendous pain. Your body will recover more fast. So I think it's one of those things that again we track to the topic of resilience. One of those unsung heroes is recovery people who are, you know, you're studying, they perform better long term when systems in place for recovery. Like you said, taking the armor off and that, that produces a period of recovery. We're walking around with our armor on and some of us have, have a difficult time taking it off ever, you know, taking it off at all. And just the exhaustion that comes from that. I don't have to think. I know, I know it personally and I know it through so many of the people we've worked with and even studied. So I'd like to just get one, you know, one ritual that you, that you have created for yourself. And it may be that you've answered this question. I just believe that the power of ritual is so important when it comes to creating a change, creating a conscious change. So what's one thing you do on a ritual basis daily, if it's, if it is daily, that helps you to recover, that helps you to create that longer term resilience.

So for me, and I have to work really hard at this is just to have a, A the same bedtime every night. Because if I'm. I still get up at the same time no matter what time I go to bed. But I think the important part, because I'll stay up until 11:12, 1 o', clock, whatever, doing stuff or letting my mind get in the way of sleep. And I used to use alcohol and I still do drink alcohol. Not as much as I used to. I've cut it in probably 2/3. I drink about a third as much as I used to. But if I allow myself to stay up past 10 o', clock, who knows when I'm going to go to bed.

Yeah.

And that affects me for the next day. That affects like I don't feel like getting up, I don't feel like whatever. I'm, you know, kind of feeling sorry for myself. And so I'm already. So I'm sitting tomorrow up for failure by not just going to bed by 10 o' clock every night.

Oh brother. You know, this is, I don't know, 200 and some episodes in to this conversation about resilience with so many different people. And that has not. I had somebody actually that we did interview that was all about rest and the difference between rest and, and sleep, which was really cool. Well, no one's ever said that before that the bedtime specifically that the ritual of going to sleep at a certain time or before a certain time is really the component of setting up their resilience or their performance for the following day. I feel the same way, man. If I stay up Past a certain hour, call it 10, who knows when I'll go to sleep? I mean, I know I'm going to go to sleep before two for sure. Unless it's a weekend and you know, whatever, we're just hanging out. But yeah, I mean to get interested in something and start reading or start watching or whatever it might be, you know, it could be 12, 30 and then getting less than the right amount for me. I'm an 8 hour guy, love to get 8 hours of solid sleep. And I typically, I don't know for so many years now, just tend to get up at least once a night. Once I'm up for a couple of minutes, I go back to sleep. But to not have that solid sleep, I think is setting ourselves up for more feedback than we need, finding out what doesn't work for us. So I think for me personally to hear you say that really powerful will and for those of you that are out there going, man, the same thing, I'll watch the news, I'll watch tv, I'll just, you know, do crosswords, whatever. I mean, lying in bed or elsewhere, you know, somewhere else, and you go, I could just be sleeping and resting, recovering so that the next day when I wake up, I'm not groggy, I don't, I'm not sitting in that zone of yeah, am I, am I okay today? Am I not okay? Am I feeling good? Am I, you know, like, because you can fall off the, the cliff pretty quickly, especially in the morning, you know, those first, those first waking thoughts. And, and this leads perfectly into, into my own waking ritual, which is maybe a bookend to what we're talking about here, which is how you begin the day. What's, what's the waking, what's your waking ritual like? Because my waking ritual used to be I get up in the morning, put my feet on the floor, feel kind of shitty and even anxious to start the day, go, what the heck? Just starting the day, what do I have to be anxious about? Thinking about what's going on or whatever, falling into self doubt or self pity even in that split second, that nanosecond, energetically at the beginning of the day. And in part it was not getting enough sleep at night for sure. And also not having what, what is a more of an automatic set, set my, my compass correctly or as my grandmother would say, start out on the right foot. And the starting out the right foot for me was the first thought, the first idea that I'd entertain. It's, you know, in my head and then, then Physically, what am I doing? And then that became a moment to actually say something. That's my first physical act in the morning, other than just swinging my legs across the bed. And sometimes it comes before that is to feel gratitude intellectually or mentally. I go, I'm awake. I'm alive. I'm grateful for that. There are people that went to bed when I went to bed last night, just like when you went to bed last night, Will. There were people put their head on the pillow same time as you did. Not everybody woke up today.

Right?

You go, okay, I'm aware. Like, that's not it. That's not a. You know, that's as real as it gets. So I'm grateful. I'm way. I'm awake. And then I say out loud, I say, I love my life. These four little words, simple words. And that's my sort of physical act at the beginning of the day that I do for maybe it's 12 years now or something. But it's. It's such an automatic thing. And yet it. It doesn't. It doesn't fail me in this, in the sense of I'm. I'm recognizing how I. How I want to experience myself and how I want to experience the day. But I will not lie and say if I've gotten a poor night's sleep because I stayed up too late or, you know, whatever might have been the case. Um, that. That's tougher. It's tougher to. To start out on the. Right, right.

Yeah.

Super glad you brought that up, man, because. And I'm glad we. We sat with it for a while too, because it's. It's an unsung. It really is an unsung hero. I don't think people recognize enough and they hear people out there who are influencers talk about how you should, you know, to work, you know, work 100 hours a week.

Right.

You know, don't be a. Don't be a wimp. You know, start your. Your side hustle at 7pm work to 1. I. I just talk total. In my view. I don't could care less who hears that. That's just crap. I think for. Except for the people outside of the bell curve maybe, who somehow their body doesn't require more than four or five hours of sleep. And for those folks, hey, good on you. Amen. Yeah. Well, listen, thank you for being on the show, brother. I know we'll have. Again, people are going to want to have questions, will have questions, they want to get answered. You can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast. Leave a Comment Questions there subscribe Tell a Friend Share this episode with a friend, especially if you think there's somebody that might be open to learning about cbd. And maybe you're open to learning more about it. And you can go to the Show Notes and click the links to find out more about Naked Warrior Recovery and the work that Will is doing in the world. I am a consumer of that product as well and have gotten to test Will's work. I'd say just higher quality is how I define what you've curated in that space and so I appreciate you doing that. I know there's a lot of companies out there, not all entirely reputable, not all doing the right things. You know, just recognizing a business opportunity more than something more, more moral or ethical in terms of what they produce. And you're a. You're not. You're not coming from that place. So Will, thank you again.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build results, resilience and become change proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@admarkel.com podcasts. For more Resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com becoming change proof.