On Violence - The Human Experience with Randy King

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 212. Today I'm sitting down with Randy King and we are talking violence and the human experience. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson and today I have a really exciting interview for you. I sat down with Randy King, who is a highly respected authority on conflict management and violence prevention ascension, and we sat down and really had a candid and incredible conversation all about violence, how it plays a role in our everyday life, how we need to integrate it and how it and how, why it exists as human beings, how we can set powerful boundaries, how we can recognize signs to really dismantle the onset of violence and really work towards preventing violence. We talked a lot about really just some powerful components here. This is an episode that I cannot wait for you to hear because Randy is incredible. Randy is incredibly gifted in being able to create comfort and create a safe space to have a conversation about things that aren't always comfortable. And I learned a lot. I had a lot of takeaways in this, in, you know, in this episode. And I can't wait for you to dive in, so. Randy has taught in over 10 countries and over 50 cities and his work has been featured in media outlets around the world. He is the president of the 8020 Conflict Management Strategies, a company that provides training and consultancy services in the field of conflict management and violence prevention. He's also an internationally recognized protection specialist who has been involved in martial arts for over 30 years. In 2002, his perspective and confidence were shattered when he survived a stabbing while attempting to de escalate a violent situation. He talks a little bit about this inside of the episode. The experience led him on a journey to understand human behavior and he soon realized that the old ways of doing things did not stop serve as a functional platform. He's been fascinated by conflict, what makes people tick, how does the mind work in high stress, life or death situations? We also talk about this inside of the episode. This quickly changed his desire for technical expertise into a hunger to demystify the psychology of violence through evidence based research. Combining his growing knowledge with practical experience, he built KPC Self Defense, a highly successful local gym that he carved out of Edmonds, Edmonton's inner city. EPC's mandate was to train and empower today's most vulnerable members of society, working alongside at risk youth, victims of abuse and the general population. As an instructor, Randy quickly realized that one size does not fit all. He took great care in understanding each individual's needs and motivations, adapting his teaching style so that students can learn effectively and apply what they had learned into their own lives. His innovative and progressive methods gave people a realistic, easy to digest set of tools and helped propel him onto the world stage. He's been invited all around the globe to share his unique perspective on training with others in hopes that they can use this knowledge for their own personal gain too. Randy is highly sought after as an educator and consultant in the area of conflict management and violence prevention. His clients and colleagues appreciate his insight, practicality, his dedication, and has a unique ability to make complex topics easy to understand while maintaining a focus on the practical applications of the material. He continues to teach people on how to protect themselves both physically and emotionally and inside of this episode he is going to share with us how so without further ado, let's roll that interview. What's up Randy? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm doing awesome. How are you?

I'm doing great. This is going to be such a fun conversation I cannot wait to dive in. Thank you so much for joining me. So for those of you who have not been introduced to your work, Randy, can you please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Absolutely. Who I am is Randy King. I am a former bouncer, current martial artist and former VIP security specialist working with some D list celebrities, nobody of any importance and I turned that career into a martial arts self defense business. I ran a gym, a gym in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada called KPC self defense for 15 years and through that platform I jumped international and now my full time job is public speaking and talking to people all around the world about self defense, self protection and mostly my focus is all of the skills that lead up to a physical encounter and ways to de escalate ahead of time because the people I serve are not just martial athletes and fit people. Self defense is for everyone. So Whether you are 75 years old or 13 years old, your self defense strategy shouldn't rely why I'M being a young, fit human.

Oh, I can't wait to dive into this. So now as someone, I'm a parent, just for the record. So I've got two little girls. Oh, I love that I have two little girls and they are ages. Oh my gosh, don't fire me, kids. They're seven and five, right? But this is something you should know.

That a little bit faster.

Oh my gosh, buddy. But you know, this is something that does keep me up at night is how do we build resilient children? How do we teach them? How do we teach them to, you know, you know, self defend themselves and de escalate? So I'm curious, like, how, how did you even before we even get into that, like what, what brought you to that? How did you get there?

So this, I like to make the joke that this career is the only career you can make after a lifetime of bad decisions. So pretty much what I did was I made a whole bunch of bad choices and then learn from those choices and decided to spread the message on how to accomplish what I eventually learned to accomplish without having to pay the same price that I did, which was blood and sweat and hospital visits, et cetera. So I think what really got me into this, like the big transition was I first started off as a physical self defense coach, as a bouncer, as a man, my thoughts on violence very limited to bar fights and, you know, bullies and this kind of like Hollywood social dynamic. And then as I started listening to clients and training more, moving more to the self defense space, I started talking to a lot more women who have a much different experience when it comes to violence. The people that choose them, the crimes that are committed. And I got, I got whacked in the face of reality a couple of times of learning what I didn't know, right? Like, oh, I know everything. I'm a violence expert. I protected, I protected Verne Schroeder one time. So I know everything. And then I taught a woman self defense. And the women were very open with me about their experiences. It was at a women's shelter. And so the things I was teaching them at the time, they're like, this wouldn't have worked for me. This would have been escalation. And so that was one of the major pivot points for me, was realizing that all I ever focused on was, okay after they throw the first punch, okay after they're grabbing you. But in a lot of cases, like most victims of violence, the person has some kind of advantage on them, whether it's mental or physical, whether it's abusive, whether it is just size and strength and a lot of people start at a place of disparity. So I then went with the rule of if my daughter can't do it to me, I'm not going to teach it because I'm not a small human. I'm six foot one at 200 pounds. Right. I'm a big fella and my daughter is not a big fella, she's a little lady. So she, if she can't do it to me, I don't teach it. But even with that on the physical side, when I started working with the First Nations, I started going up to different reserves and such a lot of the skills which, oh, just run away. You can't run away if the only way to get into your community is by playing. So we had to work on the what we call proactive skills or the soft skills of self defense, which is boundary setting de escalation, building strong communities. The honestly, the biggest self defense tips I can give anybody right now is have a strong community, whether a family you have or a family by choice and have strong boundaries. And those two things will keep you safer than almost any BJJ class, Muay Thai class, etc.

Oh, that's, that's powerful and interesting because I'm curious. You know, I feel like so full transparency. My, you know, I feel like I am also Hollywoodized, for lack of a better word, when it comes to. Yeah. When it comes to violence and, and that we all say things like, oh, well, I would never do that, but of course that's never gonna happen happen. Like, you know, are. I mean, I think about before I was a parent, you know, all the. I was going to be the best parent before I became one.

Right, Exactly.

You know, so I'm just curious, like in your mind, you know, how would you unpack the word self defense? Like when should someone, when should someone start being paying attention to these types of skills and what are some of the first things that you know, we can be thinking about as we start to develop our resilience?

Sure. I firmly believe that good self defense or self protection skills are just good life skills in general. So if you know how to communicate, if you know how to set boundaries, if you know how to pay attention to the environment you're in, that's going to put you light years ahead of everybody else. Right. When we look at situations, like a lot of people, we have this Hollywood mindset, right. Like, like Rambo or Salt. When Angela Jolie Played it right? Or Atomic Blonde, like, oh, we're going to be this like this one human destruction machine and nobody's ever going to mess with us. And that's just not how violence works in the real world. It's like when you said, well parenting, right? Like, oh, I would never let my child stay up late. And when you're like, I don't care, watching the movie, five minutes, right? Like so when reality hits us, things change dramatically, right? And a lot of people think that when they do self defense or they're in a self protective situation that they're going to be fully rested and hydrated and warmed up and stretched and not inebriated. All the things that life happens. And what I want people to understand is I think honestly I'm biased, this is my whole business, but I really think that people should be thinking about the stuff at least a little bit all the time. Good self defense training is like good safety training. The goal is no incident happens. It's not when somebody punches me, it's hopefully nobody punches me. Here's how we get to that point, right? Hopefully no abuser selects me to go on a date with. Hopefully no person sides to mug me. So I think since these are such important skills, it should be taught all the time. But they shouldn't be considered different from like regular skills. They should be like learning how to communicate is good for self defense and good for job interviews, right? Learning how to set boundaries is good against the mugger, but also good against your creepy ex, right? There's lots of things that are going to work in all these areas, but we like to make violence like romantic, like oh, I would die for my family and all this kind of crazy stuff. When in reality, if dying's on the table, so is, so is being in a wheelchair, right? So is having somebody take care of you the rest of your life and maybe you're not, you're not ready for that yet. So I think that people should start with just number one, externally paying attention to their environment, knowing who the people that commit crimes are in your area, knowing what kind of crimes you might be selected for, Just kind of paying attention to that sort of stuff and then from there just generally improving. Humans are tool using, pack hunting liars. That's how we got to the top of the food chain. We're not the toughest, we're not the strongest, we're clever, we use intelligence and we work in groups. If you bring that to your self defense strategy, you're going to do a lot better.

So there's something you said that I would love for you to unpack. How do we, how do we figure out what types of crimes that we would be subject to?

So that's a great question. I think we have to base it off of demographics. So I'm going to be using a lot of binary language. Not, not to offend anybody, but just off of the demographics that we have right now. So men and women are often selected for different types of crimes. There are different overlaps. But if, for example, not to pick on bjj, love bjj. Guys, don't, don't at me. But some of the self defense positions for bjj, that is the guard is putting yourself into a sexual assault position.

Oh really?

Well, yeah, because you wrap your legs around the person and bjj, that's the guard. Right. So that's like literally the opposite of what you would like to do in this situation. So realize that everybody's selected for different things and the things you're select for, you have to pay attention to. So a great example. We just moved. So I used to live in downtown Edmonton and the threat assessment of downtown Edmonton is different than the threat assessment of the white picket fence area I live in now. The boring ass up suburbs that I'm in. So with the, with downtown, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on, right? There was people with addiction issues that were maybe going through a traumatic experience. There was aggressive panhandling. All these things were crimes I could have been affected by at that time. But the second I moved, those things shifted. So how you realize what crimes be affected by is number one, just look at the crime stats in your area. If you're, if you're local, if you're in Edmonton or anywhere in North America, almost every single police station has crime maps. So you can just go to eps.com, look up crimes in my area. It'll show you carjackings are high here, assaults are high here. Right. And then realize, okay, who's being victimized in these areas? If that avatar who's being victimized looks like you, you could potentially be victimized for that.

Interesting. It's, it's such a nuanced conversation and I'm, I'm glad we're having it. Especially, especially when we're talking about men and women and things that they deal with. Like I'll give you a tangible example, there's stuff that I'm scared of that doesn't even cross my husband's mind.

Yeah. Of course.

When we drive across the country and we have to go into the gas station. I hate going to the bathroom by myself in the middle of the night. Like, I make him walk me and like stand by the door and he's like, I don't even think about that. And it just, it scares me. I don't know why it does, but it does. Right? And so, you know, I think that it's like this interesting nuanced conversation of like there are things that it's true, is just not fair that we have to pay attention to, but we have to pay attention to it.

I agree. Like fair doesn't exist a lot of real conversations, right? Like if you, if you expect all of this to be equal then it's almost even hard to have the conversation. But this is one thing people like to make fun of, right? They like to make fun of, oh, women go to bathrooms in groups and bars. That's so weird. Is it weird or is the bathroom in the club down a weird dark hallway? Right? Like so is it like so that's just, that's a good self defense strategy. And this is the thing, right, is knowing your reality. I'm going to make a guess. I'm going to assume your husband is physically larger than me.

Oh yes, six, three, two.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a proper way. And you're not six, three, I'm assuming. No. So even if we, if we take the male, female out of it, smaller people have to worry about more than larger people. Young boys have to worry about more than full grown men do. It's just women cap off a lot shorter on average, A lot smaller physically on average. So people don't pick fights for free. They're going to lose for free. They'll pick fights they'll pay for, they'll lose those. But nobody's going to if somebody has selected you for whatever victimization, whether it's they're trying to get their ego pump, their it's, you know, territory, it's status, it's membership or it's they need a resource from you or they want to harm you, or they just enjoy being a horrible human being. They're only going to select people they believe they have the advantage on. They could be incorrect, they could have picked the wrong person that day. But at the time they're going to assume they're going to win because predators especially talk about on the women's side, predators don't want to get hurt and they don't want to get caught. So they're going to make sure that they're going after people they can get some sort of control over. This is why we have to talk about the before fight part. Because a lot of predators use gaslighting, manipulation, verbal abuse, threats, threats with third party, stalking, drugging. There's a lot of ways for people to do this. But when most people talk self defense, they only talk about, okay, I grab you, you grab me now what now? And that's a portion of it. But there's everything before and also there's everything after. The amount of people that have survived an encounter but have lost because of mental injuries or physical injuries is horrific. Right? And we like to say that you cannot survive wrong if you made it through the situation and you're telling me the story, you did the best you could with information you had. And so this is why I, well of course again bias. But I think 80, 20, and our mission is so important is because we look at violence, the whole totality of it, right? The setup, the occurrence and then the aftermath. Because when I went through a very high impact traumatic event, I was stabbed. I've been stabbed a couple of times. But the biggest one that that really affected me, I almost died that night, I didn't even know. And once that happened, it wasn't the stab, the stab ended up my leg. You can barely see the scar now. But the mental effects after. For a year I was depressed, I thought it was Batman. I had all these black belts and this some method almost killed me one day, right? And so we have to look at this self protect as a whole thing. That's why I said community is so important too, right? And if we just dial this down into. Okay, so you got me in this wrist lock, what do I do from here? So you gotta the wrist lock, but you're still locked in a basement now what? Right? Or you gotta have the wrist lock or somebody grabbed you, you got him in a guillotine choke. But that was the human resource manager at work trying to be funny. And now you're getting written up for whatever, right? So we really need to understand when it comes to self defense and knowing what you're gonna be picked for. And like you said, statistically, like you asked about what you're getting picked for, statistically, women are picked more for crimes of like a body, right? So like to be harassed or stopped or sexually assaulted or stronger words. And then men are usually picked for property or ego crimes. That's not always the same, it flips over. But lion shares one or the other. And the problem is when you look at violence, the things that de escalate the predatory stuff are actually the things they actually escalate social violence, which is what we consider mostly male kind of pattern violence. And the things that de escalate male pattern violence actually escalate the predatory violence. So you need to know what kind of violence you're facing and then go from there. It's like you said, it's a nuanced conversation and it's not one quick tip that everybody needs to know. Right? Like your self defense strategy is different than my self defense strategy is different than my friend's self defense strategy lives in Scotland. It's just a different things.

So can you talk about social violence? Like what do you mean when you talk about like social violence?

So this is just one of the models out there when you're trying to categorize human behavior. We use a sociological model of violence. There's multiple. You can use biological markers, you can use psychological markers. I like the sociological marker because violence in some ways for some people is a form of communication. Like some people just do express physically, which is awful, but it's just the way that it is. So we break violence into two separate categories. So we have social violence, like I mentioned. And social violence is almost always about status and ego. So it usually comes from one of four drivers. Number one is membership. Where do I fit in the group? Number two is protocols. What are the rules of this group? Next is status. Am I getting respected the way I should be respected? And then the last is territories. This is mine, that's my girlfriend, that's my drink, et cetera, et cetera. So most social violence stems from those four areas. We're talking about de escalation. You can de escalate from each one of those areas. When it comes to predatory violence, this is the one that in general is more women are more affected by. At least in North America, it changes everywhere you go, it changes. And that we break that into pretty much three categories. We have survival based predation. So somebody going through a traumatic event. The example like to use is if you've ever taken water safety training a the listeners have ever taken water safety training. You know the first, the only thing you don't do in water safety training is grab the drowning person because they will drown you for one more breath of air. That's survival based predation. The person is working off of, if I don't do this, I will die. So somebody going through a deep drug reaction, especially on hallucinogen, if you try to negotiate with them and they see you as Like a demon goat. There's no way, way you're going to be able to have human connection with that person. We have what we call resource predation. Resource predation is there. They need something from you, they need property from you or they want to use you for some kind of reason. And then last but least, we call process predation. These are your high end predators, your serial killers. These are people that just like doing what they're doing.

Dark. It's dark.

Yeah, it gets, it gets really dark. There's a port as a portion of one of my classes, my conflict communication class, where I use a chunk of an article from a lady named Deborah Ann Davis and she wrote a like huge essay on her rape and I use a chunk of it and I literally say the course. Like you read this and if you're not in the self, if you're not a self defense instructor or like Victor or trauma aware coach, do not read the rest of this. There's literally no need for you to read this unless you're in the space because this does get dark.

Yeah. So, you know, along that line, I'm curious, you know what, statistically speaking, you know, how many people are, are really affected by what I would call, and this is just my language, but what, what I would call like unpredicted crime. Like where they're just like, someone jumped out of the bush and grabbed me versus people that you actually know.

This is the best possible question to ask me because this is like, let me pull out my soapbox real quick, stand on so I can talk about this. So this one, this is, this is so important. 80%, 80% of victims knew their attacker ahead of time. Only 20% of the time is it stranger danger. And this is where a lot of the industry comes from, right? Is oh, what if a bad person jumps you? And I'm not saying that doesn't happen. It's 20 to 30% of the, the time. 70. So, so let's, let's do it actually break it down. 70% on average, 80% to women, 90% to children, knew the attacker in some way. So that could be an acquaintance, it could be a date rape, it could be a worker. But again, these predators, these people have to find their way in. They have to test the waters, have to interview people. Right. Just randomly jumping somebody is a little bit of a roll of the dice. People do do it in desperation, but the lion's share is people, you know, and this is where, this is what I specialize in. But this is where the training Gets squishy. The reason why most people who focus on self protection focus on the stranger danger part is because the answers are clean. They are bad. You are good. But when it's grandpa or your uncle, it gets squishy, right? Like, but I love. But I. But I love grandpa or I love. And then, right, like, oh, just do this and break your neck. And you're like, but that's my. Whatever. What if your son has autism and has a knife and starts coming at you? Right? Like the emotional freezes that are going to happen, that situation are going to be deep. So that is the best question you could have possibly asked me. Because a lot of people don't know that. It's mostly, it's mostly people from your social circle. That's where most predators they hunt from.

I have to just, I'll just also share because this is, you know, we're getting into my darkness, but whatever. But for me, like, I'm super protective over my kids over things that people think I'm crazy about. Like, I don't do sleepovers.

Right.

I don't like, even like family settings. They're like, oh, can all the kids sleep? No, they can't. It's a hard no for me. And they're like, but they're cousins. And I'm like, I get it. But not the. I'm always measuring risk to reward and that's not a risk I'm willing to take when I don't have to.

Right. Yeah, I think. And I would agree with you, I'm very blessed that my daughter lives with my ex wife. She's with me half the time. And her family I've known forever and there's. I get no creep vibes from anybody. And I pride myself on what I do. But not everybody has the training that I have to look for that guy. Right? Yes. So. But there has been a time, like, she had a skipping coach once. I was like, don't. No private training with him. And she's like, what do you mean? I'm like, if he says he's going to coach you separately or you're special or none of that, because you could imagine from what I read, and then having a daughter, I could easily go to a real crazy place.

I can't imagine. I mean, my husband is NYPD detective, so like, yeah, so we do have to balance that, right? It's scary. We have to balance that. Like, hey, this is safe and this is, you know, but to me, I'm just. Everything's a spectrum. I'm always Evaluating risk versus reward.

Reward.

And there are some, I'm going to have to take risks. That's life. But there are some that I'm like, well, I don't have to take that. I'm not going to.

And so are the predators. And that's the best thing to point out is they're also using a risk reward equation. Right. So if you're the parent who's like, oh, let's talk about your day, and you always show up on time, you're always paying attention to your kids, the odds of your kid being selected drop because the risk is too high for the reward. But, and it's unfortunate, this is me, I'm not shaming anybody at all. But this is the issue is the kids that are picked are often picked from single parents. Not because single parents are bad, but because single parents who see an opportunity for five seconds of yes, please watch my kids so I can catch up on work are more likely to take that opportunity. Right. Because they don't have the extra, the extra structure around them. That's why I'm so big on good community.

Yeah, that's so, it's so powerful. So now something you, you talked about, and I want, I'm curious about this because it kind of goes on in with this conversation is this idea of boundaries.

Yes.

Right. It is a very complex experience for me, at least personally.

Right.

Sometimes people will be like, I have great boundaries and then come to recognize, oh, actually, actually I don't.

Yeah. So.

Right. Because these are hard because in, in community situations, we want to please, we want to, we want to serve people. Nobody gets into this industry or like, you know, usually to be, you know, to, to not be a jerk. Right. We want to connect and we want to belong. So what are some of the ways that you recommend people start getting present to what their boundaries are and how do we increase that and like. And be. And belong.

So number one, I have an online boundary setting course. I recommend that. But outside of that, here's all the free information I'm gonna give. Obviously, because you don't actually have to take the course, you should. It's great. But here's the information. A lot of our advice on self defense and self protection ends up being what I call thought ending cliches. So I would just run away and then you stop thinking about it. Right. Or I would just carry a gun and you stop thinking about it. Same thing with boundaries. You should have good boundaries. Okay, I should have boundaries. What does that mean? What are boundaries? What areas do boundaries Exist in, right? And this is what the course breaks down. So for me, when I first started exploring boundaries, I've always had pretty decent ones. But again, I'm a. I'm a big guy. I'm not unconfident. I'm loud, right? I'm like 68% chest. Like, I'm not a person. Like, oh, I look, that one's I'm gonna pick on. On. So for me, boundaries were easy. But that's not for everyone, and especially to work with the First Nation. So that would be our native. Our indigenous people here become first nations in Canada. When I work with them, like, because they're taught to be so meek, it's very easy for people to break their barriers. But the reason they break through is when you say set boundaries, you need to set parameters of what boundaries are. What does a boundary look like? How. How does the boundary sound? What areas do we need boundaries in? I break boundaries into six categories. You need boundaries and physical boundaries. So how I like to be touched, how I want people to interact with me. So, for example, I'm not a big hugger. It's known all of my social media. I don't like hugs that much. I don't like hugs from strangers. I travel the world and I see hundreds of thousands of people a year. I don't want to hug every random human that I meet. It's just. It's too much for me. So that's a physical boundary I have, right? We have sexual boundaries. What's your orientation? How do you identify? What do you like, what you don't like? Also, those go around sexual conversations. Are you okay with dirty jokes? Are you not okay with dirty jokes? Right? So we have physical. We have sex. We have material boundaries, highly people interacting with your stuff. Do you like to lend money? We have time, boundaries. How do you set up your day? Do you burn out all the time? If you're an entrepreneur, I guarantee you you do, right? Because I do, right? Then we have intellectual boundaries. How we think, our spiritual views, our political views, all those sorts of things. And I'm forgetting the sixth one right now. So we have time. Material, intellectual, emotional. We have emotional boundaries, right? Like how I want to be interact, how I want to be spoken to just by alone. Thinking of those six, we call them boundary pillars. You can then start creating a strategy, right? It's like somebody. It's like you just saying to somebody, right? Like, eat less calories. Like, yeah, that works. But like, how do I eat less calories? What am I doing wrong? Right? It's when people say, just have boundaries. You need to have metrics. You need to have measurement points and metrics for success. So when I built the course, I it kind of put a mirror in my face. I was like, oh, I'll build this boundaries course. I'm super good at boundaries. And then I'm like, oh, I suck at time boundaries. I suck at material boundaries because I didn't know those even existed. Right? So, so I think what we need to do, number one is the first thing. So we have like a self defense training stack. You can imagine a triangle here. If you're on audio, I'm making like a little triangle symbol. I'm not part of the Illuminati, I'm just trying to be visual. So from, from this position here that we have the, we have, we have the bottom rung, the base of the pyramid. For me, when it comes to self protection, we call it permission. You need to give yourself permission to defend yourself. Need to know that you're worth defending. You need to know that your time is valuable. You know you deserve to exist. Because if you don't have the basic permission of you should be here, that anything else I teach was a waste of time because it's going to fall apart under pressure. So with boundaries, you have to realize, number one, you're allowed to have boundaries. You should have boundaries. Number two, boundaries are not walls. Boundaries are the arrows to the gate. They teach people how to interact with you. So if you think of boundaries less as taking things away and more of these are the rules that exist for you to engage with me. It makes things a lot better, right? So for example, if you don't like dirty jokes, just be like, hey, if you want us to have a smooth work environment, if you tell a dirty joke, just don't do it around me. I don't enjoy that. That's a boundary. When people hear boundaries like know this and know that, right? They have these like hard boundaries. But mostly it's just how you want the world to interact with you. So what you need to do is sit down and because we're negative, biased creatures, you have to think, what do I hate? What are my pet peeves? What are the things I don't like? Because normally the things that you don't like people doing are things you don't want done to you. So if, for example, you hate people being five minutes late because your time is precious, that's a time boundary. You need to express that this person. So this is where, this is where I think More education is needed. Because just saying you need boundaries. Go walk. Just have situational awareness. Just eat less calories, right? That's, that's.

That.

That information isn't helpful enough to a lot of people. Right? But if we actually break it down and we look at these pillars, you can start seeing. Right. Like, again, I'm an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for, I don't know, 15 years. I'm 41. I've been doing it forever, maybe 20 years now. Jesus. So I've been. I've been doing. I've been doing this a long. I've been doing this a long time. Long enough that I forgot the math on it. So for me, time boundaries just meant I wasn't hustling hard enough, right? No. You need to take a day off and recover. You need to spend time with your kids. And I understand that college is coming and they need funds for. But also, also, if you burn yourself out and get sick, that's not going to be beneficial either. So in order to build better boundaries, number one, you know, you're allowed to have boundaries. And you are, if you need my permission, some random Canadian. Listen, listeners, you're allowed to have boundaries. You're important. Your space matters. All the air on the planet is for you, right? Then from that position, start looking at the places where you're having issues. I think one of the biggest issues with boundary setting is that if we don't set it ahead of time, then when somebody violates it, we. We perform weirdly, right? So we're doing something new. So somebody gets awkward and you're like, oh. And then you have, like, this weird. You know what I'm talking about, right?

I do. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yes.

So if we can discover these ahead of time, then when they're violated, you have a. You have a defense mechanism. But if they're violated in the moment, you're like, right, it's an awkward situation. So go ahead.

And then I was going to say, like, at least for me, right. Like, I have, oh, my gosh, so many things. This is such an awesome conversation. I love this. Is that, like, sometimes too, like you said, we're negative bias. We end up going into the shame spiral, like, oh, someone crossed my boundary, and I'm so awful because I didn't do this, blah, blah, blah. And so. And it's hard. And I know that I've, you know, I. I've battled that myself, so.

Right.

I am. I am curious about this because I think that this is Also really important and I'm wondering how you navigate it and navigate it for your clients is because you said that, you know, community is one of the pillars for self defense and it's also part of our indoctrination and like hurt people. Hurt people. And that we learn sometimes we learn these people, you know, these people pleasing behaviors from 80% of our predators. So like, you know, how do you sometimes setting boundaries isn't going to come from the 20% of people that are jumping out you. It's from the people that you need to be approved that or that you want to be get approval from.

Right.

So how do you navigate that?

I. I reverse engineer it. Boundaries build communities. Communities don't build boundaries. So if my bout so I build my boundaries and the people that respect my boundaries then become my community, not vice versa. Right. So all of us have, you know, family is roll of the dice, right? You might have a good one, you might have a bad one, you might have a crappy member of your family. Right? That blood is thicker than water stuff gets stuck in people's heads. But I agree. So you have to look at what are my boundaries, what are things that are important to me, what are my non negotiable, unalterable terms, what are the things that I need for myself? And then once you start enforcing those, really quickly it becomes a. It separates the wheat from the chaff. It really quickly shows who is your friend and who is just there for convenience. Because the people that. The people that push.

People wrong and be right. I want to raise consciousness, right.

Sa.

If someone wants to go deeper. And.

Sa.

Thank you for listening to the PT Proffit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends on your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team@info simpsonfitness.com and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you. And you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.