GA 647 | Making Sleep a Priority with Tim Thomas

If you want to cut the amount of sick days you have in half, improve the quality sleep of the people that work there. Sleep-poor people take twice as many sick days, and it's not just absenteeism, it's presenteeism. If someone hasn't slept well, they're 30 to 40% less productive.

Today I am excited to welcome Tim Thomas to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Tim is— he's from Australia and he's got a military background, Special Forces in fact. And so we had a really wide-ranging conversation today. We get into just some special forces talk and just maybe just some things about resilience and how to work through situations. But then I would say a good part of the conversation is about a topic that I don't think we've ever really dug into on this podcast, and that is sleep.

Sleep.

And so Tim is a sleep expert, if you will. In fact, he's got a company that has an app that helps you fall asleep and all the rest of it. So we talk about that a little bit, but it gets more into sort of like, why is sleep so important and what happens when we are deficient in sleep? And he ties it back to Special Forces and different things like that, but it really applies to I mean, all human beings, right? And sleep is something that I've personally really worked on over the years. So I was especially excited to talk to him about this. So we also then kind of get into, well, towards the end, we take some zigs and some zags. So you'll have to listen to the end to hear. This one's a little bit longer than normal because we really got going and I had a lot of fun with it. I think you're going to enjoy it. But show notes for this episode can be found over at gembapodcast.com.

Look for episode 647.

Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 647. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Tim, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Ron, great to be here.

Oh man. Hey, from your accent, it sounds like you're from like Toledo, Ohio or something like that.

Yeah, down south of your country.

Oh yeah, wonderful to have you on, man. I'm really excited to talk to you. And as we were kind of talking before we hit record, that this is going to be maybe a little bit different episode than our normal episode, but I think that's really exciting. I'm super excited to see where it goes. But Tim, as you know, before we really get things rolling, we like to start with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Mine comes from a guy who lived in the 1800s called Edwin Hale, and he said words to the effect of this: I am just one man, but I'm still one man. I can't do much, but what I can do, I should do, and by the grace of God, I will do.

Hmm, what's that mean to you?

I was breaking this down before we spoke, and it has 3 different layers to it. One is the idea of taking imperfect action moving forward. 2, the other thing that comes to it is my military background is you get strong by doing it wrong.

Hmm.

So in training, If whoever came in last would actually have to do extra work to get stronger so they could be in the group. So in many ways, and a lot of times those guys that came last after they did the work ended up coming into the front. So imperfect actions moving forward, forward, but also getting strong by doing wrong. But it also speaks to, and I know it. Doesn't say it in the quote, but to me it deals with how to deal with fear. Because, um, a lot of people think, you know, you're in the Special Forces, you, you dealt with fear a lot, you would, you would learn how to, um, be resistant to it. And I'm like, no, but because I was exposed to fear so much, I got a, a really clear, uh, indication of how it worked. And fear is the wrong word we use. Fear is an emotion we attach to something that seeks to immobilize us. The ultimate goal of fear is to immobilize us. And once you understand that, the opposite of fear isn't love. The opposite of fear is action. Taking action dispels fear. So what I encourage, what I do and what I encourage other people to do, I don't, don't say the things that you're fearful of. Say the things that are immobilizing you. Because yeah, that taking action dispels fear because that fear will be real. It'll be there. It'll be present. But the second you take that action, it just, it disperses and, and you're no longer immobilized. You're no longer at the, at the power of that, um, thing that's trying to keep you from taking action.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got you. I got you. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Tim, before we dive into the questions here. Tell us about— I mean, you mentioned military, but tell us about your background. Tell us about— I'd love to hear about your military background and then what you're up to these days.

Sure. So father of 2, my kids are grown up now, 19, 20-year-old. And I started in the early days of mixed martial arts before it was really a paid thing, and I joined the Special Forces. And the only thing unique about my service, Ron, was it was the very first— in the first time in Australia's military history where they started direct recruiting into Special Forces.

Hmm.

So they took civilian personnel, screened them, and if you could pass the basic test and pass the advanced test, you could apply to do Special Forces selection. And that— and when I did mine in 2004, that was the very first intake. And you have to understand, in military history in Australia, you had to spend 2 years in a regular infantry battalion before you could even apply. But here were these guys coming off the street, going straight into Special Forces. So we initially met with a lot of resistance. But then when Afghanistan kicked off and they could see that we could do everything everyone else could do, just as well, if not better, then they became a fan of the scheme. I got out in 2010. I had undiagnosed PTSD. And essentially getting through that, I realized there's a lot of other veterans in the space. So I started these programs That would help veterans. And I was very successful in that. And there was a few things I discovered in that space that had certain universal applications. So the success of all my programs was measured by how much it effectively improved sleep.

Hmm.

Because we noticed if we could improve the sleep quality of these guys that were really strung out, then all these other metrics in their lives would improve. So I just kept on saying, how about we just make it all about sleep? The more sleep improved, the more everything else improved, which makes sense because when we're on deployment in Afghanistan, we would deliberately target the enemy sleep. You know, we didn't know about the science of sleep. We just knew if we could take it out for 3 nights, It would mess them up better than a bullet. So that became a thing for me, and I thought, "Well, what's the easiest way to help people to sleep? What's something that we can all access?" Because I was a guy that lost many years to pills when I told a doctor I couldn't sleep. It's very common, and it and it's very easy to lose years of your life to pharmaceuticals. No one told me that something like breathwork, something like breathing, could make a huge. Difference to the quality of your sleep. And I thought, well, I triaged it, right? So in a battle space, they've got this thing called triage. You've got a med kit and they say there's a bunch of people that need assistance. How much— what's the most amount of good you can do with your limited resources? And I thought, well, with the limited resources I had, if I could connect people into their breath, into that golden window 5 minutes before sleep, That would then improve the quality of their sleep naturally and immediately. And then when they wake up, they've got more energy to bring their gifts into the world. So, you know, Ron, I can't do what you do or anyone listening can do, but if I can improve the quality of your sleep, then, um, you're going to bring your gifts into the world, you know, even better. Yeah.

Well, I've got a million questions as it relates to sleep. But before we get to that, I want to just maybe— you've mentioned your time with the Special Forces and working with some veterans and helping them recover or whatever it might be. So I'm wondering if you could just maybe tie it all together. What do Special Forces, veteran recovery, and for many of our listeners, corporate leadership, what do they all have in common as it pertains to, say, pressure? Because pressure exists everywhere.

Yeah, pressure exists everywhere and there's a million ways to do it wrong. And you can tell when a leader's doing it wrong when, if you're in the room with them and they make you feel like a smaller version of yourself, or they've pushed themselves so hard they're in a state of fatigue where it's their way or the highway, they've got no bandwidth for anything else. There's a in fatigue. There's a lack of humility. There's a lack of understanding. There's a there's a whole lot of victimhood as well. So so I'm I'm pointing out the negative just to to to sort of have people understand that leadership was very similar and and doing it right was very similar to my healing journey in the way that there's a lot of people out there spruiking hey I can do this I can do that but it's really hard to find a find a good one.

Mm-hmm.

And I do need to speak to fatigue in this space because in the corporate world, just like in the battle space, there's an outcome we want. And the way I explain fatigue is something I call the performance pyramid. Okay, at the top of the pyramid is the goals you have, the outcome you want, the impact you want to make. That's the top of the pyramid. And then underneath that are the actions you need to take to achieve that objective, whether it's in the battle space or the corporate space. And that makes sense, right? You know, set a goal, make a plan. But people get into action to achieve an outcome and they bounce between outcome and action, outcome and action. What most people don't understand, and this is where leadership gets it wrong, Underneath the— at the bottom of the pyramid is rest, recovery, and healing art forms. Good leaders know how to go to the bottom of the pyramid, rest, recover, rejuvenate. As a soldier, I was all about achieving outcomes, taking actions to achieve outcomes. How could I take the best actions to achieve outcomes? How could I train my body To do that even better, and that cycle of actions and outcomes inevitably leads to fatigue if you're not going to the to the underside of that rest recovery and healing. And if this was just a wellness speak, I'd say go home, drink more water, and and you know sleep better. But I need to speak to why a lot of people get stuck in these actions and outcomes because. In any battle space, you need to understand the enemy center of gravity. And it could be something as simple as a good night's sleep. And if you're going to attack that, they're off-centered and then they're no longer thinking because they're in a state of fatigue. So my observation of us humans is our center of gravity is our sense of self-worth. And here's the trick, and here's what I want people to draw towards them. If your sense of self-worth is attached to what you do, And the outcomes that you want to achieve, then if you try to truly rest, recover, heal, do nothing, there's a part of you that goes off. Oh hey, you're doing nothing. Maybe you are nothing. You've got to get into action. You've got to get those outcomes because that's where you get the affirmations from others. That's where your sense of self-worth, you know, gets nourished. So so I I just need to. make people present to this invisible play that sits underneath. Just everyone knows, you know, you've got to rest, you've got to recover, but to truly rest, to truly recover, to truly do nothing could challenge, I should say, people's sense of self-worth. Does that land, Ron?

Yeah, no, it does. It does. It's deep. You know, it's, uh, it's really deep. I am fascinated. You've mentioned sleep a number of times, and I am I've really worked on my sleep personally over the years. I used to not sleep great, but it was mostly self-induced, drinking alcohol late at night or whatever it might be, stuff like that. And I wondered why I felt, wasn't even drunk, but it just would make me not sleep good. So I've learned along the way some things not to do. But I'm wondering if you could, everybody listening right now, You know, every person walking the earth needs to sleep. But what are some practical tips and advice that you can give for sleeping better?

Sure. So I'm going to ask you a question, Ron. How much natural light do you get on your skin each day?

Oh my gosh. Like, literally outside? Like walking outside?

Outside in the sun. Yeah.

Oh boy, like on a weekday or weekend?

Okay, obviously it's something, it's a thing, right? Because it's a thing we don't even think about, right?

Not much during the week, you know. I mean, really, it's not much.

Okay, so yeah, so consider your body, our bodies are light receptive beings, and we've been that way for millions if not billions of years, right? And breaking that natural cycle, being indoors, being underneath unnatural light, that has an impact on your circadian rhythms. So light exposure is a massive one. And, and, and like blue light exposure, you, you may see some people, you know, wearing funky glasses like that.

Yeah, blue light blockers.

Yeah, blue blocking glasses to stop that blue light. So if you're looking at TV You know, at, at after sunset, I'd recommend one of those, but I'll make it even easier for you. Understanding that your conscious and unconscious mind have 2 golden 5-minute windows, 5 minutes going to sleep and 5 minutes waking up. That's when your nervous system gets a chance to be programmed.

Hmm.

So doing breathwork in that 5-minute window going to sleep, and I have to point this out, breathwork isn't meditation. Meditation is thoughts controlling thoughts, and I've had a train wreck going on up here. There's no way I could control that, but breath is a chemical override. It's like going to the side of your house and pulling the fuse box out. Your breath outranks your thinking mind. It's older wiring, and that's why I'm very confident in recommending it to people.

When you say breathwork, are you talking about like, like box breathing or something like that, or what do you mean by breathwork?

Well, well, okay, so breathwork makes you realize we don't own a set of lungs, Ron. We own a medicine cabinet with a lot of different shelves.

Mm-hmm.

And you don't hear about this stuff because this medicine's free. So there's a, there's a number of different ways to breathe to essentially turn your bed into a cloud, and then there's a type of breathing to do to turn your bed into a trampoline. And the— there's a, there's a quite a few different scientifically proven, uh, formulas. The 4-7-8 technique.

Yeah.

And there is, there is the box breathing. But here's the thing, here's what I found after doing this for years. Because we've been breathing our whole lives, for us to reach the medicinal version of breathwork, having breathwork instead of just breathing, it does need to be guided. For us to sort of stay in that zone for long enough to get that medicinal result, and and you have to remember people are busy enough; they don't want to remember six things before they go to sleep. So I thought, well, if I'm going to do something for people, it's got to be as easily accessible as as Uber Eats. Press a button and it arrives. Okay. So as much as as much as I'm not a fan of phones, you know I've set my company up breathwork in bed that all you have to do is tap. A button, and then you get the guided breathwork. And that, that little notification falls out of your phone and says, hey, press me in exactly that 5-minute window that you want it to. Everyone knows to breathe, but when you're going to sleep, you just want to go, forget the world, I want to get into bed. But if you can have that little thing there to give— to maximize that 5-minute window, you're not just sleeping better, Ron. You have to understand that the presence of oxygen is absence of disease. Mm-hmm. When you cycle deeper into your REM sleep, something happens. Like everyone knows their brain's important, right? But what people don't understand is, you know, we eat and we poop, right? Our brain creates a lot of energy and it creates a lot of waste. When we sleep and we REM cycle, our spinal fluid comes up into the brain and through the blood-brain barrier pulls out all the waste.

Mm-hmm.

So if you're waking up and you're feeling crappy, that crappy feeling is following you around throughout the day, it's because literally you're not pulling all the wasted— all the waste out of your brain when you sleep. And this is, this is what sleep does. And, and there's plenty of products out there that'll support poor sleeping habits. This is how they, they make money out of us From I call it the economy of dysfunction. When you're not sleeping properly, properly, there's a there's a bunch of things we we spend money on that we we really don't need to. I'm not against coffee, but if you're going to have a coffee, wait ninety minutes because when you first wake up, your body's purging all these sleep chemicals. So when you first wake up, have some water, have some salt, hydrate, put some Put some tension in the tires before you rev the engine. Otherwise, if you have a coffee within 90 minutes, you'll need another one because those sleep chemicals are still coming out and they'll come out just a bit later on.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on— like, I use this, I think it's called Sleep Cycle. It's an app on my phone that listens to you basically. And I don't have my phone right by my bed because I don't think that's good. You should not have your phone right by your bed, but it's close enough to where it— I guess it's using the microphone on my phone. And like if I snored or something like that, it literally records it and, and you can play it back and hear yourself snore. But, but, but yeah, it kind of, kind of gauges how well you sleep throughout the night. Are you a fan of things like that?

I'm not a fan of technology even though, you know, I do have an app. But the first way to improve anything, Ron, is to measure it. And so I do like the fact that You've got something measuring your sleep, but here's the thing: we can become slaves to this technology in the way that oh, it's told me I've had a bad night's sleep. I must be feeling bad. So I'll give you a free tip: if even if you've had the worst night's sleep ever, when you get up, say that was the best night's sleep ever. I feel good. I feel recharged. I feel I'm ready to go. That thank you for a great night's sleep. Because, because, because what's the choice? Knowing that you've had a bad night's sleep and then putting all these affirmations in your head saying it was terrible, I am bad, and then you've, you've already smashed out the launch pad underneath your rocket. So it, you know, failure to launch happens in the first 5 minutes of when you wake up. Um, so that, that first 5 minutes is so golden, and most people unconsciously Instead of giving medicine to themselves, they poison themselves.

Yeah.

They start thinking about the stuff they've got to do, the thing, the places they've got to be, all the, you know, the stress, the anxiety. In the veteran space, we call it the vultures that sit on the bedhead. So as soon as you wake up, these negative vultures dive into your head and start kind of beating you up.

Yeah.

And, and this is why in the morning, Breathwork is super important because if you can win the first 5 minutes of the day, you've won the day. Yeah.

I want to switch gears and maybe we can even kind of dip back into some, perhaps some Special Forces discussion a little bit. But I'm wondering if this whole idea of resilience is something that you hear a lot about and be resilient, but what does that really mean? So what are your thoughts on resilience and perhaps is there anything that people are getting wrong? When they think about it.

Yeah. So good. So most of the people listening to this, Ron, wouldn't have any problem getting into action, achieving goals, doing what they got to do, right? They don't have to be told that. What these guys need to do is learn the art form of regeneration. And it is an art form and it is counter to what most people talk about. Grind, push hard, grind, push hard. Because I was one of those guys. I could grind, I could push hard, I could achieve an outcome, but I wasn't— I didn't know anything about the art form of recovery. And the inevitable end to that is 2 things. One is fatigue and failure. The other one is, well, I'm completely stuffed, so I've just gotta— I've gotta get myself in a position where I can take from others.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of crazy personality types That they've burnt out, but they've learned to take from others in a way that allows them to keep going forward. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It does. Yeah. In fact, I don't know, about a year or so ago, I just wasn't feeling great and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't feeling great. So I made some pretty fundamental changes in my life and haven't even never shared this on the podcast, but it's fine. It's just me and you and a bunch of people listening. But I actually, I did several things. I've really I've gotten much better at sleep over the years, so I feel like sleep wasn't necessarily an issue for me, but I cut out alcohol, so I don't drink alcohol anymore. I cut out caffeine, so I don't drink caffeinated coffee, or definitely don't drink. I've cut out basically processed sugar from my life.

Yeah.

I mean, I eat a lot of fruit, so there's fructose, and so it's not like I'm sugar-free per se, but And just a number of things that I've done to sort of improve my own life. And gosh, it's really paid off. And so, I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on, and obviously optimizing our sleep, but what are other things that we should be doing as human beings to sort of optimize our ability to maximize value that we bring to the world?

Okay, so I'm going to start with a metaphor that I'm hoping will land, and it does speak to the idea of both having the ability to make an impact and hit your targets, but also the ability to prioritize the part of you that makes all this possible. So I don't call my rest days rest days. I call them bow days, like bow and arrow. Because there's a bunch of targets I want to hit, right?

Yeah.

Okay. Um, but if I'm going to hit those targets properly, I've got to draw that bow back. But my conscious thinking mind and my insecurities are like the tip of that spear. When I'm drawing the bow back, they're like, hang on, we're getting further away from the target. This makes no sense. We're getting further away. It's got nothing to do with going towards the target. But that bow day, even though it's going in the opposite direction, it doesn't make— seem to make any sense. When you then, you know, release it, you can make that impact.

Mm-hmm.

Otherwise, you can spend years sort of drawing it back a little bit, falling short, and you think resilience is just doing this short drawback even though you're fatigued and your fingers are bleeding, and you just keep doing that. And oh, I need more resilience, or I need more coffee, or whatever it is. So, so understanding that Resilience isn't in the doing. Resilience is have is the knowing of that again. I call it a bow day where I'm actually creating that momentum even though it's in the opposite direction and it looks nothing like where I want to go. That's been the the ability to access real resilience because I don't care how tough you are; it's a matter of time. Before the person who's doing the rest, recovery, and healing overlaps you. Because if you're not going into that place where that creates that momentum for you to hit those targets, then bit by bit you're slowing down.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I'm not sure exactly when this episode's going to come out, but one of our newest courses at Gemba Academy that we're working on is— and I'm the talent. I'm not the talent very much anymore. I used to be, but once in a while they'll bring me back in. But the whole thing is on self-care. You know, like taking care of ourselves. And it's just something that in the business world in particular, I mean, we just don't talk about it enough. We'd say, how do you optimize your profit and loss statement? And how do you this and that? And great, it's all good stuff and it's important, but man, without people doing the work, I mean, I guess maybe one day robots just buy from robots and AI is buying and there's no more people. But at least right now, people are involved, right? And we've gotta take care of ourselves. And it's just something that doesn't get talked about enough.

Well, you're absolutely right. It didn't get spoken about in my space. In fact, it got somewhat demonized. If you ask for help, that means you're weak. And if you're weak, you'll let the team down. So, you know, and we'll die before we let the team down.

I'll get sleep when I die, right? Or whatever, you know, people say.

And you will die early.

Exactly. You'll get there sooner.

Yeah, you'll get there sooner, mate. But I mean, ultimately, There is a certain amount of top-down leadership needed. So what I'm putting into effect is, is this notion. Imagine, and I'll start with top level first, imagine if a metric of success of any government is the quality sleep of the people they govern. Imagine that. So these government, you know, the government might say, hey, we're building roads, we've balanced budgets, but sleep being a very measurable metric. But imagine if the people that you govern aren't sleeping peacefully in their beds at night. I believe we own that much.

Yeah.

And if you want to dial that back, imagine a company that, you know, the graph, the visible stuff is going up, but you had a metric that says, oh, my people aren't sleeping very well. If you want to get beyond the fact that, you know, humans are connected and, and it makes a lot of sense to strengthen the person next to you, consider this, and corporates love this. If you want to cut the amount of sick days you have in half, improve the quality sleep of the people that work there. Sleep-poor people take twice as many sick days, and it's not just absenteeism, it's presenteeism. If someone hasn't slept well, they're 30 to 40% less productive. And these things are statistics now. Like, insurance companies know that if someone sleeps poor, the likelihood of workplace incidents, accidents, is greatly increased. In the States, there's 100,000 accidents per year that's directly related to fatigue. So when you get into a car or Sometimes you've got to blow into an alcohol, you know, testing, you know, breathalyzer, and some some work sites you've got to test for drugs, right? But at no point are we testing for fatigue. At no point are we saying here's what we're putting in place to help people sleep better. So financially, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. To to implement something, but the the the problem though is these days if it's if it was how I experienced it, the second you say you can't sleep, well here's a bunch of drugs, and and that is certainly not a long-term solution, and it's it certainly comes at a cost to your performance and your you know ability to to be a normal human. Yeah.

Hey, maybe to wrap things up, I'm wondering, I don't know, you probably aren't allowed to share anything, but I love when I talk to former military folks, is there any sort of, I don't know, wild story or something like that that is something that maybe that you're proud of?

Yeah, I'll give you a fun one. All right. So we got news that an RPG ambush, a rocket-propelled grenade ambush, was waiting up ahead for us. And that's not uncommon, right? That's just the way it is. And we're in a vehicle convoy. And when that happens, we always put the heavily armored vehicles to the rear of the convoy, which, which can take a hit from a rocket-propelled grenade. But this was middle of the night. And in the, in the rush to get everything formed up, we got cut off. And I was just in what's called a light-skinned vehicle. Think of a 4-wheel drive with the roof cut off and you got your sort of machine guns put in place.

Guys shooting at you. Yeah, great.

So, so This guy cut us off, and then we're moving into the ambush, and us blokes are looking at each other. And, and, and no joke, my— the vehicle commander actioned up his, his machine gun and said, fellas, if this goes the way I think it will, it's been an honor serving with you.

Oh.

And I discovered just how freaking angry I could get. In my mind, that guy cut us off to save his own ass. And, and I'm having visions of my own, uh, they call it a ramp ceremony when they carry the, the body of a soldier down the ramp. And I was at the time, I was married, had kids, and I could see, you know, the, the then wife and the kids. Um, I call her my then wife, not my ex-wife, because I stand for a positive future. But I was married at the time and I saw her and the kids and there was this sort of dark humor came through. It says, Tim, they're going to carry you down the ramp of the airplane. With all this bullshit ceremony because you got cut off in traffic. And here's the thing: when I was in that pissed off, emotional, blaming others state, my brain was getting dumber. And but then a question came to me, and this question has literally shaped everything and has led to so many good things. And it was this, Tim, who do you know that's got— has been in this situation and has gotten through it? And at the time, Ron, I didn't, I didn't actually know anyone. And, you know, Australia seemed so far away, and the night got darker. I began to feel very alone. But then I realized, you know what, I do know somebody, not in my timeline, but before me in World War I, when our Anzacs We call them Anzacs, Australian New Zealand forces, went up the beach at Gallipoli. And those men went up against an enemy waiting for them in a situation that wasn't ideal. And I thought, what did those guys do? They kept moving forward. They kept moving forward in a very imperfect situation. And just because I finally knew somebody Who'd done it before, somehow that just cracked open the isolation, the disconnect. It's like these guys reached through time. And on Anzac Day, we say something called, lest we forget, lest we forget the sacrifices of those before us. But it was like these guys came through time, poked me in the chest and said, Tim, lest you forget, lest you forget the power inside of you, lest you forget the power of looking after all your mates here.

Mm-hmm.

And it was like the sun coming up at midnight, Ron. My whole body felt illuminated. That state of disconnect, emotional blame, switched into this place of connection. And I realized I wasn't the only other person in that vehicle. And it was like the tourniquet came off my intelligence. My brain came back online. I'm like, okay, RPGs, they self-detonate at 1,500 meters, which is about a mile in your speak. So these guys are going to be shooting at us from between 800 to 1,200 meters. If I swing the arc and the distance they're going to cover, us going at about 35 kilometers an hour, we're going to be inside that kill box for about 3 to 5 minutes. So all I need to do is survive for that 3 to 5 minute window. And let's look at this, Tim, and, and what I saw, it was like a vision of my body jump out in front of me, and it was like a roadmap. I saw the blood circulating from the heart to the arms up to the brain. I said, the only thing I've got to maintain positive pressure on is the brain. Okay, I can lose a limb, that's fine. I've got a tourniquet, I'll just hose clamp it off. It's just like a hose, it's just a, it's just a, it's just a hose on your arm. You just, just tourniquet it off and you'll be fine. You can survive 3 to 5 minutes because if we can get to the other side of that kill box, your mates are going to be able to put a saline bag into you and get your volume back up. And that, that was like the amount of trust that was in that vehicle, you know.

Yeah.

Like, I, I— you've done that one where you sort of fall backwards and you let your people catch you. Well, this was, this was literally me saying, it's okay if I die. My, my guys— I'm going to put 2 tourniquets on my chest, so if something comes off, I'm going to tourniquet it off, keep that positive pressure, and then, and then my guys will have me on the other side of it. And, you know, Ron, when in that state of connection, I was able to have guidance in some form, and it was like Okay, they might find my body in 5 minutes' time, but you know what they're not going to find? Magazines full of bullets. I'm emptying all ammunition on this one. And I thought, well, you know, that's, that's not a bad way to live. Whether I die in 5 minutes or 50 years, I'm going to be just as dead. But my magazines contain very simple bullets, but my mind, our minds, contain something so much more valuable and powerful than bullets. Our minds contain ideas, hopes, dreams. You know, wouldn't it be a greater pity to die with all those still in your, in your head, in your body? And I'm like, whether I die now or in 50 years' time, I am emptying the magazine. I'm emptying out all those things that are yet to be fired. And obviously I've still got my hands and legs and, you know, We made it through that night. Yeah, but, but I just, I feel like I survived that night so I could then, you know, share that with people and, and they can, um, take what they need from it. Yeah. And, and not die with a full mag of bullets, if, if that makes sense.

It does, it does. Ah, good stuff, man. Well, hey, Tim, I, I Yeah, I appreciate you coming on. It's been fantastic talking to you. Thank you for your service, by the way. So maybe to wrap things up, what if people wanted to connect with you personally? What's the, what's the best way?

If you go through LinkedIn, Breathwork in Bed, Tim Thomas. But if you just simply want a good night's sleep tonight, pick up your phone, put in breathwork in bed, just like breakfast in bed. All you have to do is tell it when you want to sleep, when you want to wake up, and we take care of the rest. I wanted to make the Uber Eats of breathwork.

Got it, got it. All right, well, hey man, I appreciate you coming on. You take care.

Thanks, Ron.

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