Old Guys Still ROCK

Blair Armstrong (01:23)
All right, right, all right. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. This is your first time here. This is Blair Armstrong of Team Armstrong Cobalt Banker. I am a global luxury specialist in the world of residential real estate. Today I am located in beautiful Maui, Hawaii, which is amazing. We are.

here last week and here again this week, so this is kinda cool, but ⁓ it's bright and early for us. Typically we do these episodes when I'm back in the desert at nine o'clock, and so it is six o'clock my time, so I'm probably waking some people up, but we gotta get this done. So, and then on my left, possibly your right, is my good friend and the other host of the show, Brent Wright of Brent Wright Incorporated. He's a man with many different hats, from payroll companies to

Brent Wright (01:57)
You

Blair Armstrong (02:18)
body shops, to detail shops. Him and his wife just opened up a wellness center about two years ago, actually just a little bit over two years ago.

Brent Wright (02:25)
Now

it'll be two years, November 1st. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Blair Armstrong (02:27)
Okay, so it's coming up, right? I mean, how quickly

that time has come. if you haven't seen, there's some great transformational videos that they have posted recently. Some people have been in there with some experiences they had. So look up Wright Wellness Center. ⁓ Some really cool videos, actually. Some really good information on there. And then plus two is, if you go back, I can't remember what episode it is. We actually had Brent's wife on here.

talking about her journey and how this came to fruition because of the situations, health issues that she was having and now this is her platform to be a servant leader in the world of wellness.

really kind of just spurred from, even goes back even further from Caitlin Wilson, know, with in like hyperbarics. mean, this, guess that we had on there, but anyway, so man with many different hats and first and foremost, forgot this part. If this is your first time here, this is old guy still rock. We are OGSR. We are in episode number 119 today. And we're going to kind of ask a couple of things. We're going to go through a couple of things because we're old guys, but today we're going to be talking

Brent Wright (03:31)
Holy smokes.

Blair Armstrong (03:38)
about control the controllables. So once we kind of get through a couple different housekeeping stuff, strap in. It was a rough day yesterday. That's actually Brent said this best before we even came on the air today that it was, yeah, yesterday was a culmination of a lot of things. And so we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that and how we become better as not only as Americans, but as society in general. So strap in, but before that happens, since we're old guys, what's going on with the weather?

in Eugene, Oregon today. It's September, it's football season, it should be raining.

Brent Wright (04:09)
⁓ 72 degrees

and heavy overcast, pretty low overcast. It's not raining yet. We've had periods of rain and thunderstorms like lightning and thunder. Like, you know how they say that you can tell how far the lightning is away between the lightning and the thunder, right? Lightning, thunder, lightning, thunder, like less than one second apart. So it's just been.

Blair Armstrong (04:36)
That's crazy.

Brent Wright (04:37)
hanging overhead over the valley and just hammering down. So since we are old guys that still rock, because we used to listen to music while we were on the podcast, I think ⁓ the theme, the song that I would like to promote today is Iron Maiden, the evil that men do. If you look at the lyrics, yeah, we did that. Yeah, we were, you're pretty much against evil on average. So yeah, I can see that.

Blair Armstrong (04:41)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Yeah, we I think we did that a while back. We did that a while back. We will.

We will

somehow get that into the show. Before we get too deep in this, know, the same thing is, mean, your weather, actually dodged a hurricane while we were here. We were, yeah, it was supposed to be, it was a category four at one point. I'm like.

Brent Wright (05:18)
wow.

Blair Armstrong (05:24)
This is not a good time to be here. It was supposed to culminate on Tuesday, a couple days ago, Monday, Tuesday, but it actually just dodged and went north and we're on the west side. So we've got a little bit. It was kind of cool to see how the ocean reacts. The winds were coming, when it got to the ocean was literally going sideways. So waves were coming into shore and the way, and the wind was blowing it this way. So we're supposed to get a little bit of rain today.

little hazy out there but that's not it so as I said we had a eye opening it's been an eye opening week really brother it's just been this been one thing after another the dark forces are in action and I know you wanted to start out this morning with a little prayer so I'm gonna let you have the floor on that

Brent Wright (06:05)
Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. ⁓ I'm usually not real good at this guys. So usually I pray in my head. just kind of bear with me. It's just going to be real quick. And I just think that it's important to, to bring this into fruition. So here we go. ⁓ Heavenly father, please, please.

help us to understand the meaning of yesterday's actions and all that you would have us ⁓ glean from that. Please be with ⁓ Charlie's family ⁓ as they ⁓ try to understand ⁓ the meaning and the true meaning as well. I know that they look to you for guidance, so please help them with this. ⁓ Please make...

a very important ⁓ transition in our country. ⁓ Please be the bridge that bridges political sides, that bridges religious sides, and that bridges humanness. ⁓ And I ask these things in your name. Amen.

Blair Armstrong (07:31)
Thank you, brother. So let's just get into it, man. We're going to kind of spur around this stuff. So yeah, control the controllables. we've, you know, we had a unfortunate situation, there are multiple situations, obviously, since really Monday, maybe even last week, I can't remember, but we had the Ukrainian lady ⁓ that lost her life due to a gentleman that supposedly had mental illness. ⁓

Brent Wright (07:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (08:00)
I wanna talk a little bit more about that. I know you have some information on that as well. Then we had Charlie Kirk yesterday, ⁓ which is, anyway, that was a hard pill to swallow just because of how many lives he affected. ⁓ You have some information on that as well. And then, right after that, was just like bam, bam, and then a school shooting.

Brent Wright (08:04)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (08:28)
story you know reports how that the person that did the shooting ⁓ took his own took his life ⁓ so just kind of a this is no longer you know first of all foreign lost him and else i'll stand up and say this i don't think it's really a issue i think this is a

It's a society issue. It's a mental health issue. But most of all, it is dark versus light. You and I have talked about this. We're not afraid to put it out there that we do have our, you know, our faith is in God, our savior is Jesus Christ. And we've brushed on that. And I think that's more important that we rally together. I think there is a silver lining in all of this that maybe society starts seeing that it's

not right about right and left, we have to come together. And if you guys are this year, first time here, there's a lot of common threads between, again, as I said, we're in episode number 119 today. ⁓ But if you go through to, we always talk about coming and communicating. There's some form of a common thread throughout our episodes of communication that we can't do this alone. Right now, we can't do this alone. But anyway,

So when you came up with this topic of control the controllables, right? ⁓ What what spurred that? What besides divine intervention, which will somehow come up with everything, right? That's why we're here today. But I actually think I asked you before all this stuff happened. I know what do you want to talk about?

Brent Wright (10:00)
Yeah.

You did.

Yeah, you did. So.

You know, really the issue for me about controlling the controllables is, and it happened this morning, I'm being tested all the time. So driving down the road, there's somebody in front of me that's going 42 and a 55. There's a guy behind me that I can't see his headlights in any way, shape or form. So I'm trying to do the right thing.

I'm trying to be very stoic about this. Guys, I'm not good at this. I would tell you that that is the largest irritation for me is that impatient ⁓ people driving erratically, trying to, you know, use, it's the keyboard warrior thing, but in a car. And that, those two things are like an impasse for me.

Blair Armstrong (11:05)
Right.

Brent Wright (11:09)
And I don't do well with them. I wanna hold people accountable. want to, you know, I'm gonna show them, right? So instead I took a neutral path today, tried to do the best and I turned on my Jake break and I just let my Jake break handle it. I didn't break check this person. I wasn't a butthole about it. I didn't do all the things that I normally do and

feel like I should do. But again, I'm standing in the gap. It's not my job to be the policeman. It's my job to be the watchman. We've talked about this a couple of different episodes. And so can I control this person's actions? Not at all, because they're in another vehicle. We're both growing down the road, 42 miles an hour. I don't have an opportunity to talk to them. They can't hear me yelling at them from my vehicle. Why, you know, my wife,

Blair Armstrong (11:48)
Yeah.

Brent Wright (12:09)
tells me all the time, why are you letting this person rent space in your head for free? You usually charge for that, seriously. That, know, going back to one of the things that I do is coaching. I charge for people to get in my head and get things out of my head. ⁓ So here I am just kind of ⁓ doing the things. And all of a sudden he actually got right with himself. He understood the program and he backed off and he drove like,

Blair Armstrong (12:16)
Right. ⁓

Right.

Brent Wright (12:38)
a decent human being. And I was grateful for that. I actually prayed and thanked God for that one because he had to take the wheel, because Brent didn't have a hold of the wheel in the right way, right? So, but long before that and long before yesterday,

The things it was brought up, so earlier this week, I started thinking about our subject and I started thinking about the things that I have control over and the things that I can make a difference with personally. ⁓ And then it was brought to me by several situations, including Andy Fersella posting a very lengthy, a very lengthy mind you.

post about, it's called, These Are The Inputs That Matter. And it's an email that shows up daily from Andy's team. I believe Andy probably puts most of this out and then his team just formulates it. But I'll go through a few of these because this is exactly what I was thinking on Sunday and Monday out of several other interactions. And I'd already been thinking about 90 % of these.

You are in control of the most important factors that have built the life that you have currently. You control what you eat. We've talked about that before. Health and wellness. You control what you drink. We talked about that before about me quitting drinking and nine years ago and how and why and all those things. You control how you move your body. We've both done the live hard program or variations of it, 75 hard and things. You control what information goes into your brain. This is a big one this week.

Blair Armstrong (14:24)
Yeah.

Brent Wright (14:25)
This is a big one and I'll take you back to a post that I posted last night in response to this one. Two posts actually yesterday, one before all this happened and then one after. You control who you spend your time with, very key. You control your attitude, very key today. You control your effort, you control your decisions. These are the inputs that matter.

Everything else is noise.

Blair Armstrong (14:57)
down.

Brent Wright (14:59)
So I'll just quickly go into the two posts that I posted.

Last night, I posted this. For all of you that got to go home and hug your wife and kids tonight, count your blessings and then become an agent of change. We've talked about this on the podcast several times. Faith without works is dead. Without action, don't even talk to me about it unless you're willing to act. That's one of my daily discussions with myself. Howard, what are you?

What are you doing to become an agent of change? And I said, dot, it won't happen by social posts. There are a lot of people that got angry yesterday, started posting on all platforms and.

I just, struggle with that. I struggle with how are you gonna actually change something by posting? Who's gonna read it? The five to 800 people that follow you? 10 % of those people?

I believe that if you're posting...

as part of like a counseling opportunity, I guess, to counsel yourself. Maybe that's good, maybe do that. If you are posting to get action and traction, I don't know if that's the right venue.

Blair Armstrong (16:38)
I just hold you on that thought because yesterday it affected me in a way that I, that normally that stuff doesn't, you and I have talked about this and I never understand, know, when an actor dies or a musician dies and stuff like this and then all this like over us in peace and like we don't even know it. ⁓

Brent Wright (16:49)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (17:00)
Charlie's hit different for some reason yesterday. There was just, it was just more, I think it was sadness and anger ⁓ where society...

Brent Wright (17:03)
Yeah.

Yes.

Blair Armstrong (17:13)
has has has become, you know, on both sides. mean, I know that we're not talking about sides, but just as Americans, we've we've picked a side for me, the right or left, and we dig our heels in and like, you're wrong, I'm right, I'm right, you're wrong, blah, blah, blah, just it just goes back and forth. ⁓

And there was times like you said you're going to control the controllables. You're talking about a car ride home yesterday. And I'm in here in Maui and I should be out enjoying yesterday. And it just it fricking took me down. just mentally I was just out. I'm going to flat out say I was a fucking asshole yesterday. Excuse my language. But it just I was just super affected by it. Probably have to dub that out. But. But it.

Brent Wright (17:45)
Okay.

Well, let's go down that road. What

Blair Armstrong (18:00)
But anyway, I held

Brent Wright (18:00)
was it that affected you?

Blair Armstrong (18:02)
back because I watched all these people celebrating this.

You go on these message boards in the social media and this is what stirs the pot, right? We talk about this, control the troll, we read this, you watch the news and you do see the different things. You see large media and I went through all the channels yesterday, really trying to absorb this. What are we gonna talk about today? Because I knew what the topic was yesterday and just like, how is God gonna lead us through this conversation with this? And you see these people stirring the pot, making acts of... ⁓

Brent Wright (18:12)
watching.

Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (18:37)
accusations or assumptions, you one of the four agreements, ⁓ you know, don't make us, you know, don't make assumptions. ⁓ But then you also see people celebrating this stuff. And I just like so many times I picked up and like, dude, I'm gonna lamb blast this guy. And I'm like, no, this time I just got to sit back. I've got to let this play out. And but

If those people are gonna go down those, if those are the type of people that you're gonna celebrate this and think that was great and you're gonna make an issue out of something that really wasn't an issue, it's not a gun issue, this is not a, you know, we can go down that path and I know it was bam, bam, bam, especially with a couple weeks, as I we had a stabbing, we have a societal issue right now that there's so much eggs right now because we've picked sides.

And we can't communicate. I have my phone. I'm like, I'm going to get you. I'm like, no. I'm putting it down. I'm going to absorb this. Let me digest my thoughts. Let me get this thought. Same thing as what you did with the car. And that took a lot from me yesterday.

But my thoughts, and when I was going through all this, especially when I woke up a couple of times that night just thinking about it, what am I doing to be better if I'm gonna be just like everybody else and follow one and say, well, it's because of the left, it's because of the liberals, it's because of this, it's because of the right, it's because the president agitates. It's like, holy shit, guys, we've gotta stop this rhetoric and literally try to find a way. And what you just said too is,

It's about action. I have to be the active participant in this. So when I talk to God in the morning, I'm going through my journal ⁓ and I'm writing things down. You know, either what's happened the day before, what's happened this morning and God, need you to, how can I be a better servant to you? That's what I usually end up my journal with. And I think yesterday he showed me.

Brent Wright (20:13)
Mm-hmm.

you ⁓

Blair Armstrong (20:40)
this is where I need you right now. And this is where I need Brent right now. And this is where I need your podcast to go right now. We have, and I think that's one thing that I go through and we go through 118 episodes that have been recorded and put out in 119 today. ⁓ We've always stayed that path.

Brent Wright (20:42)
Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (21:02)
Go make a damn difference. Go be that person. ⁓ Here's our message over time, time and time and time again. And one thing that it came up in a devotional that really hit home that leads me to this part is, ⁓ why do you do your plaidcast? We can talk, there's a pleasure in this.

Brent Wright (21:04)
Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (21:23)
We all have the capacity to be our worst enemy to undermine what we ultimately want because of what we immediately want. And a big part of the reason is our confusion around two words, pleasure or happiness. Pleasure makes us feel good in the short term. Happiness takes longer.

According to Jesus has to be sown and grown, but because most of us are impatient, especially when we're unhappy, we often opt for the quick fix of pleasure. We binge, we shop, we scroll, we go out or stay in. Whatever will make us feel better as soon as possible. ⁓ So that's from Andy Gay.

Brent Wright (21:56)
Yeah. Comfort,

comfort. did a whole podcast about comfort.

Blair Armstrong (22:01)
Right?

And so those are things that when I think there's been so much, I don't think I know there's just been so much angst and animosity and all these different things that was constantly in front of us, especially with the social media part of it, especially when this stuff happens. If this type of thing, which should probably happen, you know, years ago with,

If this would have happened without social media, I don't think there would be so much tension to it.

Brent Wright (22:35)
Well, when I was gonna go there about this one, it kind of came into my head when you were talking about this earlier. 100 years ago.

If this happened, we wouldn't even know about it for three days, five days, right? It would go out over a telegram and likely it would take three or four days for it to get to the West Coast and into the newspaper. Cause the only way to really hear about things was the newspaper.

Blair Armstrong (23:05)
So you can control your controllables, right?

Brent Wright (23:07)
Well, there was less inputs, less speed

of input. This is a big ship that turns on a dime now compared to a big ship that used to turn on a $1.50 and give you back some change.

Blair Armstrong (23:19)
And it's immediate and a lot of times those that the immediate reaction the knee-jerk reaction that immediate information is so long and the information

Brent Wright (23:29)
I was looking at the video of the shooting eight minutes after it happened. Eight minutes. That is intense. The amount of intensity that came from yesterday's actions and the day before, ⁓ you know, the school shooting, the subway thing, literally minutes after things are happening where we have access to it.

Blair Armstrong (23:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Wright (23:58)
And that gives us a different kind of dopamine and adrenaline hit that is so unhealthy. You know, we talk about mental stability. wonder, somebody posted yesterday and thank you, whoever posted that, that follows me and I follow them. I can't remember who it was, but it was people. Check in with your veterans right now.

Those are people that have served us and served our country and made it to where we can sleep at night without one eye open. We don't have to listen to AK-47 shells going off in the morning. We've talked about this multiple times. We live in a very blessed area of the world. ⁓ But these are people that laid down their life for us and likely are right on the edge of just checking out permanently.

Blair Armstrong (24:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brent Wright (25:03)
And for somebody to say that instead of getting on the bandwagon about all this or that, rest in peace, know, blah, blah, blah, all those other things. And I'm not saying some of that isn't good.

But for somebody to say, guys, check on your people. Check on your people right now. This is the most important thing. Funerals are only for the living. Check on your people.

That was a game changer for me. That was one of the social posts yesterday. It one of the only social posts that I could get behind.

Blair Armstrong (25:32)
Yeah, I think.

Yeah, right.

That's a good one because I'm sure there's a lot of those guys went out there and put their lives on the line and this is what they're coming back to and I'm here to protect you and all this chaos. ⁓

Brent Wright (25:57)
Well, and they can't,

that's the PTSD thing. go from, I mean, we watched it, you you watch the Chris Kyle story. He came back and he didn't know how to participate in society. We have thousands of these guys, hundreds of thousands of these guys and gals that don't know how to participate, see this happen and have no output for the energy that this creates in them.

Blair Armstrong (26:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you're watching this podcast and you are involved with helping veterans out, we would love to have you on this show and to talk about some of the things that our community can get involved with, to be a participant and to contributing to society in that way. I also have a friend pseudo family member that...

who is in the education field or was in the education field that said that our youth, and you really don't think about it because it's just every day, what our youth is exposed to these days makes them, what's the point? ⁓

the shootings, the stabbings yesterday, you had a massive following by Charlie Kirk. There was an understanding that you could actually learn how to debate and have conversations and he was teaching them that. No matter if you agreed with Charlie Kirk or not, yes, we're gonna use some example. Yes, it's gonna be, you're gonna see a lot of this. But what his gift was that he could sit down, it didn't matter.

who you were, and you could have a conversation, debate. Didn't have to agree with them, but you could have a debate. And sometimes people took it too far. Now when they see this and the kids were gathering around, and the youth was gathering around, even the adults were gathering around, learning how to communicate with people, to know your facts, but to have conversations, which we've talked about in the past, 20 years ago, we could have those conversations.

Brent Wright (27:59)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (27:59)
Ten years ago, we could have those conversations. If you're a Democrat and we didn't agree with you, we have this, this, this, and this, but it never got to a point of anger.

Brent Wright (28:08)
Well, it might,

got to a point of anger, but it never got to a point of anger and then an action that was unethical or immoral.

Blair Armstrong (28:19)
So I hope that when we see... That's true.

Brent Wright (28:21)
We got in fist fights in the parking lot at school

and it was over and then we were best friends with them and we all had guns in our trucks. Nobody went and got a gun, not one person.

Blair Armstrong (28:29)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, God's knives. mean, there's this type that you you sell it up by fist and if you For sure

Brent Wright (28:41)
We all had a knife in our pocket. Most of us had it hanging off our side, because we were going hunting after school. But not once

did I ever carry a knife or carry a gun and think that I was going to use it on somebody, because I didn't agree with them.

Blair Armstrong (28:58)
Right. We've made that acceptable with so many different things. ⁓ It's on us, all of us, ⁓ that again, lack of communication, letting our anger get in our way, ⁓ letting assumptions get in our way, ⁓ letting people try to silence us.

⁓ It's again, I think the biggest thing that I'm going to take away from from all of this is learn to communicate I love what Brett said earlier reach out and it may be it may be a service map, but it could be a Friend of yours. It could be a student ⁓ More more than ever. We need to reach out to their youth. This is not a therapy thing, but let's talk through this It's okay to communicate We can't let a tragedy

And that's what I think. That's another thing that I took away with this. To me, what happened yesterday was a dark side. ⁓

trying to suppress, you know what, whatever I do doesn't matter anymore because it just, it's never any, someone's gonna die. So why even try? Well, we're 119 episodes in there. We're slowly gaining followers and stuff like this. Why do we try? Because we know that there's gonna possibly one person that we're gonna change their life. And I know that we have a lot of people that watch either on YouTube, Spotify, now through Amazon Music and Apple.

pods. Really love your message.

⁓ And keep doing what you're doing. Okay, so now that we're equipping you with these thoughts or maybe engulfing your thoughts that we're hoping that you take those thoughts and these ideas we're talking about Control your controllables and then go out there and share that message If you want to use our video to our podcast to be a part of that That's great. If you wanted to go ahead and take our words and make them your words even better It's just wisdom wisdom is spoke

is meant to be shared ⁓ and put it into your words and go share that with especially right now and just really from now on. ⁓ We've have sound body after sound point. This is the turning point.

⁓ Some of us will stand up and take advantage of that. Some of us will sit back and watch. ⁓ Either way is okay, but I'm talking to, especially the people that watch this episode, think, watch all of our episodes, or our followers and subscribers. ⁓ You guys are the ones that wanna become servant leaders. So.

Let's get you equipped. ⁓ If you wanna share your experiences on here, everyone that follow us and who's subscribers, if you wanna share your story of how you took this, what was the boiling point for you that this is it, I've gotta step up and learn to do some stuff. ⁓ It's not about protesting, it's about communication. It's about when you see something.

Don't sit back there. Brett and I talked about this before, know, that these things are people getting beat down or the subway issue where people are literally just videotaping this without doing anything. We can't be that society anymore. We've got to take advantage of this. We've got to come together and protect each other and have faith that God would protect you in those situations.

You know, I think that we've also been groomed like, okay, if you see something, do I think that was even a topic. If you see something, do something for like, I don't want to be my, I know that could cost you your life. Right. Well,

It's costing somebody's life if we don't do something So I know it's a soapbox, but it's just been an eye-opener and when I'm not preaching to you guys to say hey You got to do this and we're gonna Brett and I are gonna sit back and do something that there's there there's definitely been a mind a mind shift for me ⁓ from yesterday and golfing this that it's it's it's time to take a different approach in life and

Brent Wright (32:43)
Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (33:08)
do what I've been supposed to do by putting on this earth is making an impact ⁓ and just being a better person.

Brent Wright (33:18)
We talk about this often that we're not just talking to you guys, we're talking to ourselves. We say it, we've said it several times in several of our podcasts, stop living a hotel lifestyle. If you don't know what that means, call me, text me, email me, smoke signals, don't care, let's chat. The hotel lifestyle is in essence waiting for somebody else to clean up your messes.

It's not fruitful. It's not what we're called to do in any way, or form.

We need to be an agent of change. We need to be people of action, not just discussion. Discussion is the first start. Fruitful discussion is really where the magic happens. I was telling you before we started the podcast today, my biggest takeaway from Charlie over the last eight years that I've been following him is his ability.

to bridge the gap with groups of people who normally wouldn't have even given him five seconds of their time, but he was so articulate about it that he actually had a group of atheists that used to follow him and show up at all of his gatherings just to have conversation with him. And some of those people actually converted and came to Jesus. mean, he's made a huge impact. He's still making a huge impact today. And maybe that's his legacy.

Blair Armstrong (34:40)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Wright (34:48)
Maybe we celebrate the fact that he ⁓ willingly martyr himself on a daily basis and then ultimately paid the highest price we could all pay is to be a martyr for our salvation. There was somebody else in history that did that too.

Blair Armstrong (35:02)
Yeah.

Right? Right? Yeah.

Brent Wright (35:13)
Have you ever seen

the one where he goes into the dissertation of why he believes the Bible is true?

Blair Armstrong (35:19)
Yeah, about because of all the unearthed artifacts and information have been given. ⁓

Brent Wright (35:25)
Yeah, I mean, there's a snippet

of it, but if you really go into the deep dive on it, it's like 20 minutes of him just regurgitating the reasons why all of it's true to a devil worshiper, literally.

Blair Armstrong (35:39)
Yeah, you

can see though that can see that thought and I think that's a big thing, know, is I can't control the controllables you guys. And Brett said something to reading. Look at the information, be equipped with information to go ahead, even if it's not, if you're debating somebody on the other side, be equipped with information that fits you. Not everyone, we don't need to be drones about this, but that's one thing that I, again, I can look back and.

and see that as well. ⁓ Know what you're talking about. If someone presses you, ask them questions why. ⁓ And I'm preaching to the choir. Listen, I was mad yesterday. I was mad, angry ⁓ that I didn't post. Did I?

Brent Wright (36:27)
I was surprised, quite frankly, that you didn't post something.

Blair Armstrong (36:32)
I almost sat on the patio a couple of times and was going to do a live feed and like, I've got to digest this a little bit. I'm acting on emotion and every time that I've acted on emotion before, it just never turns out. Well, it happened yesterday. I acted on emotion and ⁓ I wasn't a good person for a little bit and that part sucks. ⁓

We, if Charlie can be, I can't imagine taking the questions that he took and sat there and was very calm and didn't let him affect it. He knew what his faith was. He knew what his purpose was. He knew what his journey was. knew that guy got death threats all the time, but he kept on his journey. He kept on his purpose.

⁓ And I don't want to take it away from everybody else. Yes We're using this as a symbol because all of us were engulfed in this yesterday I don't want to forget the Ukrainian girl. There's there's hundreds and hundreds of stories that we can talk about ⁓

Brent Wright (37:31)
So my

nice thing about this is guys, if you really look at the statistics, there were probably like over 1500 people that died yesterday, nationwide. And all those people.

Blair Armstrong (37:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brent Wright (37:50)
Their death affected someone.

The three people that we're talking about are the three incidences that we're talking about, not three people, because I think there were three or four people at the school shooting as well. ⁓ But all of those incidences this week, I mean, if you take that in the last five days, take that times 1500.

Blair Armstrong (38:08)
you

Brent Wright (38:14)
Right? 7,500 people died in similar style incidences or similar situations or because of gun violence or peer violence or, ⁓ you know, muggings or whatever. mean, pick a violent act across this country. All of those things need to be dissected. They need to...

be validated and they need to have action taken on them. Not just Charlie, not just the Ukrainian, not just the school shooting people. We've got to come to some rational understanding that killing in the name of nothing

Blair Armstrong (39:06)
you

Brent Wright (39:08)
needs to be not tolerated.

Blair Armstrong (39:11)
Yeah, you know, and then you throw in the conspiracy theories and stuff and some of them are true. They're gonna get in this, I'm just gonna take all this away. Because we go down that path and put on our tin hats and our aluminum foil hats, whatever you wanna call it and go down that right, this way. This is dark, this is the devil, this is Satan coming after us and trying to keep us separated, keep us angry at each other. ⁓

And if you're not a praying person, we need more prayer. And I know that, you know, that's kind of been a topic of the big media, you know, watching out. It's like, you know, no more prayers. We need action. Well, you know what? We do need prayers. We need prayers. How we come together as a society. If you haven't done it before, what's it going to hurt to try it?

Brent Wright (40:07)
I told you this a couple of times on our podcast. I have a friend of mine who's a devout atheist and he tells me often that he prays for me. You can even not believe in God and still pray for somebody. You can pray for any type of universal or divine intervention even though you may not believe in God as a deity, okay?

Blair Armstrong (40:15)
Yeah.

Right.

How do I, know, pray? How do I become a better leader? How do I, what is my purpose in all of this to help society? You can pray for families, you can pray for, I hope that someone gets sick and you know, it seems when there's a tragedy of, even when it's done, I'm like, my friend's got cancer. I just pray for them. You're in our thoughts, all that stuff. Well, right now is,

How do I become the servant leader that I'm supposed to be become? What is my purpose? So many things we go down and it's like, again, go back and watch our episodes on here. This is not a promotion on there, but there are some golden nuggets then in a lot of our episodes that we can go ahead and discuss. ⁓ And that we've discussed that you can go ahead and maybe stir some thoughts of.

What's my next step? How do I do this? How am I going to make an impact through tragedy to make it the silver lining, which we always talk about. This is a great, great time right now to readjust your purpose, ⁓ figure out your purpose if you don't know what you have to and go out there. I don't think it.

which I hold myself back at even this morning. I'm sitting there looking at certain things and getting angry again. like, no, I've got to go make the difference. I can't let the person who's going in and having these yucky thoughts about a horrible situation, regardless of what it was. ⁓

I can't control them. I can control me and I control by the way that I interact with each others. I fail miserably a lot, but it's something that I need to work on more. And not only when I become better than others will become better because people see what my actions are.

and then themselves will try to make adjustments. Those are my thoughts.

Brent Wright (42:46)
So on that, back to our subject, controlling the controllables. If you're frustrated and don't know what to do, the first thing that you could do is control yourself. What can I do if I'm so frustrated and angry and hurt and feel like the world is coming to an end and chicken little and all the things? Well, the first thing you can do is get right with yourself in your mind. If you don't know how to do that,

Go physically move, physically move. Go work out, go for a walk. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen. Go volunteer at the mission. Go, go, go, go do something.

Blair Armstrong (43:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Wright (43:33)
So take action so simply to serve others that yourself will be served. You cannot, you cannot feel bad when you're helping others. You can't be angry when you're smiling. We talk about these things as tools, but if you don't know what to do or where to start, volunteer.

Blair Armstrong (43:57)
Right, right. You know, we're on the anniversary of 9 11 today, ironically.

Brent Wright (44:00)
Volunteer.

Blair Armstrong (44:09)
And when that happened, a lot of people came together and did some stuff.

Brent Wright (44:13)
For the first

time in about 60 years, people came together and we were a nation under one God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. From there on out, and it only lasted about eight months.

Blair Armstrong (44:26)
Yeah. So I would do, I would do this because I again, using myself as an example. Um, and I think there might be some people that do this will get affected and go back into their cocoon shell and become silos. This is not the time. I encourage you to what Brett said is, is go be active, go workout, go on a walk, uh, go journal. Um,

you know, walk and journal at the same time. You have this amazing phone and can record yourself and just get your thoughts out even if you have to talk to your stuff. As always, Brent and I are here for you. Even if we don't know you and you see this episode, you can reach out to us and say, hey, I'm going through this. And if we're not your peeps, ⁓ there's...

plenty of hotlines out there. Call a friend, call a spouse, call a girlfriend, boyfriend, call a best friend, call a friend that you haven't talked to for whatever it is. ⁓ Don't do this by yourself. And I understand yesterday was a lot, this whole week, last couple of weeks, this last couple of months, this has been a lot. It just always constantly turmoil. You could control this. ⁓ You can...

you can become better, but you can also be the leader that God has instilled in you. Brett and I both believe this. Everyone, we believe that everyone can be a leader and it takes a lot. But as I said, happiness, you know, what we talked about a little bit earlier is

Happiness is a journey.

Brent Wright (46:10)
Yep, it's not a destination.

Blair Armstrong (46:10)
Pleasures Institute,

happiness is a journey and you're gonna have some good days and you're gonna have some bad days. ⁓ I believe as tragic as it was yesterday that, since I'm listening to you today and everything that I ⁓ have absorbed from yesterday, even though that his life was cut short, I believe Charlie's journey, ⁓

He did that. He ended his life talking about God. And I think that Jesus said, you know, you've done well on my good and faithful servant. And I just, and I think that's out there and I know that we're, we are faith heavy today. I just think it's important because I think that's to me. I think that's where a lot of us have lost some stuff in when we don't have hope. ⁓

Brent Wright (46:52)
Yeah, welcome.

Blair Armstrong (47:09)
You can't have faith that kind of intermix with each other. And I hope that I hope and I do have faith that you find something and you get back and even if it's a start of a long journey and it could take the rest of your life and maybe dabble with it for a little bit. But I hope that you do find faith that there is a powerful, powerful, powerful God.

that does not want anything less than to give you everything in your life that you want to. And he's the only one that's going to be consistent with your journey. ⁓ Brett and I can't make you happy as much as we want to. Not anything on this earth. And yeah. Good.

Brent Wright (47:54)
Nor can anything on this earth, quite frankly. So on that, I do have to run, buddy. I've got another meeting that just clicked

on. ⁓ The last things that I will leave you guys with is obviously go make a damn difference. And I just, I really have to emphasize the need for action.

Blair Armstrong (48:19)
Yeah. You guys be great today. As Brent says, go make a damn difference. ⁓ Call us if you need us, email if you need us. Yeah.

Brent Wright (48:29)
One last thing,

Gerard is engaged, proposed to his girlfriend Amelia yesterday and she accepted. And so by the time this comes out, it will be known to the universe. So we're not letting the cat out of the bag. ⁓ So congratulations, Gerard and Amelia. We've been praying for this for you for a long time. I can't wait to see what your life ends up together.

Blair Armstrong (48:37)
good boy.

Hahaha

Brent Wright (48:56)
how fruitful and blessed you guys will end up.

Blair Armstrong (49:00)
Love it. Guys, have a great day. Stay safe. Most of all, God bless. Take care, guys.