In this special “333” episode, Chris reflects on the personal and symbolic meaning of the number 333—creativity, growth, and encouragement—and revisits a month full of powerful insights. Episode 329 explored Formal and Informal Power in Relationships, where the team discovered that true strength comes from vulnerability, not control. Episode 330 took on Willpower, revealing how pairing determination with habits, mindfulness, and self-compassion creates lasting change. Episode 331 asked How Do We Control Mental Health and Substance Abuse?, emphasizing the power of small, structured steps and layered supports in recovery. Finally, Episode 332 delved into Elderly Dating, highlighting connection, safety, and the courage to begin again.
Tune in to see the October Month in Review Through a Therapist’s Eyes ties it all together.
Links referenced during the show:
https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/monthinreview
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
Audio Podcast Version Only
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode #333 Transcription
Chris Gazdik (00:01.518) Hello, this is through a therapist eyes and you are finding us on October what I'm being tested 30 right before Halloween II and this is episode three three three. So we got a lot of weird things kind of going on with this episode, but this is through a therapist eyes. If you happen to find us for the first time, we fire off on YouTube live at about six 15, six 30. It's a great way to interact with us, play along, especially when we're doing. 30 Chris Gazdik (00:26.988) the month in review which we are doing this week and Mr. Kyle King is back with us man. You done flying around the world? Something like that. I'm back for a little bit. At least for two more weeks. Stay here for a few days. He has been going everywhere Neil. That's why we didn't see you last night. I was like, what was so weird about this one? Because we did the Riverside. OK, that makes sense. Welcome back. And Neil comes out behind the curtain to have hang out with us for the month in review. How are you, sir? I'm fantastic. Snarky. Neil Robinson (00:54.158) Not at all. No, absolutely. No, I'm perfect. I'm great. I think something's going on, Neil or Kyle. Okay. What else do I say in the introduction? Uh, because now that we're all out of source, we're used to doing the Riverside and now we're back in live in the person in the office, which is totally fun, but it's throwing me out of off kilter. Um, we do a month of review at the end of the month where we talk about all the shows we did for that month. Uh, we have a lot to get to. have four shows that we did, not three. say, saw that for you, man. Yeah. Because last month we only had three or two, right Neil? Yeah, we only had two because we did the whole conversation about the world. You have to listen to that one, man. We started out for the whole half hour with my new, funnest topic. I'll be talking about that on the show. So subscribe, click, we try to entertain you a little bit. We get you some information about mental health and substance abuse and your job is to help us by subscribing, clicking, telling a friend, five stars, John gets upset. If we don't get the four stars, don't get the five stars. Listen, contact at therotherapy.com all that fun stuff. Listen, this is the human emotional experience, which we do endeavor to figure out together. So I promised I was going to tell you guys a or a story. is episode three, three, three. Does that number mean anything to you? Numerology, you know, never hear anything about numbers like a horse six, six. Yeah, of course, Stuff like that. Chris Gazdik (02:18.798) And then lucky number 13, lucky number seven type thing. You ever hear of 333, what it means, Neil? Where have you heard this before? Yeah. Yeah, I have. It's usually biblical. It also goes back to the number three itself in the Bible. And that said three times is like a promise or commitment. So when you do 333, it's that triple commitment kind of thing. But there's all sorts of stuff tied to it. Okay, so this has always been a special number to me. Check this out. Okay. When I was a kid, okay, we lived in Ogleby kind of Ogleby Resort is what it's called now. It was just a golf course. Had to walk through the golf course. We went to the swimming pool and came back and we were allowed to go out there all day long. You just come back before dark, whatever. did like the 1980s thing. And so one day I was doing this. I was at the pool and I'm coming back and I'm walking back home. And I just find a golf ball. Never think anything of it, because it's a golf course. And I'm walking through the woods, walking through the greens and, you know, teas and whatever. And that's fine. You know, but I look at it I'm like, OK, cool. You know, because I sold golf balls at the time. Well, I walk a little bit further and I got a second golf ball and I'm like, oh, cool. This is a good day. I mean, we're getting a bounty, you you know, usually fine. It's, know, it's nothing to walk through. Go home and find none. I get to the other end of the golf course and I'm going into my neighborhood and I got a third golf ball. I mean, this is a little bit weird. Like I don't. This is a lot of golf balls just to stumble upon. But then I looked at each number on the golf balls and each number, guess what number it had on it. Each ball had a three and I found three balls. I totally remember the story because I went home and my mom, was like, mom, what's the deal? Like, well, this has got to be something. This is, and we looked it up. She, you know, we talked to Bible talk for that day and whatever. And she was like, you know, we came to the idea that that was perfect holiness. Kyle King (03:44.866) The three. Kyle King (03:50.038) And you remember that story. Chris Gazdik (04:03.544) That's what we found that time, Neil. You said what, Neil? You found or looked up? Usually like a promise or something. along those lines. Perfection, completeness. There's a lot of stuff tied to that. Right? That's a crazy day. Isn't it? mean, that, that stuck with me. so three, three, three is a big number. I don't know. looked it up online today or yesterday. Angel number, uh, it's a sign of growth, encouragement in the belief that prayers are being answered. Um, message from a higher source to trust in guidance and stay on the right path. I don't know. It was wild. So something weird, Kyle's got to happen today. Sounds like it. Right. Hey, excited to be here then. So I don't know what we're in store for but we got a lot to get to On the month of the review we start out with going down the rabbit hole. Mr. Adam Clonager kind of started this tradition and we have decided to keep it going and Curious to see what we got. So we go down the rabbit hole with mr. Kyle Kyle King (04:56.654) Yeah. Kyle King (05:04.14) You know, I had, I had a theme cause it was Halloween. I'm like, well, let's go down the rabbit hole with Halloween and stuff like that. But then when you sent me a text last night, I'm like, Ooh, now you just like got the thoughts turning. And you know, what I want, what kind of where I went is like with this whole evolution of AI. It's like, how, you know, how does it, how the conspiracy theory is evolving? And I'm like, okay, well that's very interesting because you can train these models differently and such. and I started doing some research on it. Do you know there was actually a study done by American University in Cornell with AI and conspiracy theories? I love this. need to read this. This is the best rabbit hole ever. Adam, I'm sorry, brother. We're already there. is very cool. Kyle King (05:53.762) The cool thing is, and I didn't even know this, did you know there is like a baseline for conspiracy theories index kind of thing? had idea. So take all your conspiracy theories. It's like if you believe all these conspiracy theories, there is now a baseline that you can be indexed by. So you're ranked like zero to 100, let's say. All right. This is how like conspiracy theory mindset that you're looking into. kind of thing. I was like, okay. I had no idea that existed. But what they did is in this study, they took 2,000 people and they said, okay, we're going to present information to you based on your specific conspiracy theory that you're putting into this AI model. And it's called debunk bot is what it's called. And so you go in there and you put in this conspiracy theory that you are set on. Okay. The debug bot. Yes. Kyle King (06:52.91) And it's in the course of this information in this conversation with this chat bot. It's basically an eight minute conversation. And they did it for like three, three conversations in eight minutes. And it presented information to the person that said, this is why it's not real. And so after that eight minutes, what they came away with is when they finished this study, 20 % of the participants. reduced their belief in a certain conspiracy and another quarter quarter like 25 percent of that actually ended up being really uncertain whether or not they were even existed that conspiracy theory even existed so it was kind of of the 20 right it was really interesting to read that kind of stuff and i'm just sitting here thinking i'm like C-Theories. Chris Gazdik (07:36.942) Okay, surprises me 80 % of people kept their yeah even though they were providing information. You're in. And I started doing a little bit more further research on it. It's like, well, okay, why? And it's the reason why is because they were actually presented with data. And you know, to say, is, this is why this cannot be real because think of all of these facts right here. And not only that. Yeah. Chris Gazdik (08:05.678) chatbot. And the thing is too, the chat bot takes the emotion out of it. So somebody like me having a conversation with that same person, chat bot takes the emotion out of it. They don't have emotions. All they did was take facts and present it to them. So it's kind of interesting to see that. now here's where it gets kind of weird. Now with the availability of these language models being freely available and that you can do on your own, you can train these models in certain ways. Well, now they're doing the opposite. they're feeding into the conspiracy theories. right, so now it's, you you think of social media times 10 because now you got all this information. So if you want to say something like, well, I believe the earth is flat. Well, it's going to give you all the information on why the earth is flat and to feed into it. You know, these are the kinds of things. Now, again, it was just two opposite ends of the spectrum, but it was kind of interesting to read about. And I did that, you know, after your text last night. as they are. Kyle King (09:07.468) That's awesome. I will. I will. Definitely email me that. want to. I, I, I, this is the best rabbit hole ever because I want to do the whole show on this right now. didn't really need this topic. Yeah. 100%. 100%. Neil, I, all right, go. I'll just, cause you know, if I start going, I'm going to go, I want you to cover me with this. Calm down. Neil Robinson (09:25.39) Well, think the interesting part about, think you hit on that, is like only 20 % actually started doubting or didn't believe, right? Right. So that just goes back to say, when people get really entrenched in whatever their conspiracy theory is or whatever belief it is, whether it's a conspiracy theory or not, you know, when you get entrenched in something and you've made yourself believe whatever this is, even, like you said, non-relational cold data. can't even change it. Now, granted, I would say there's probably some conspiracy theorists who say, I don't trust the AI model to begin with, right? We saw with Chat GPT when it first came out, it was very biased, one direction or another, because the data that was thrown into it was around certain ideologies and certain stuff, right? Now it's gotten better as the information has gotten wider and they've kind of changed that. But I can see in that 80%, there's probably 60 % of those are probably why they just don't trust AI anyways, no matter what's said. There's always that too. But it is surprising. Only 20 % shifted when they were presented the data. That's weird. That's crazy how stubborn we are as humans. Yeah. Chris Gazdik (10:36.354) And you know where I'm going. I'm going to try to be brief. really do this. I love your topic. And here's why, because I have started to really feel like my whole industry, mental health needs to be in the front end of this. And by this, I mean human beings interacting in total with the computer world. We're all of the age, think in the room here, Neil, you're pretty close to, you know, millennials and this type of thing where we absolutely had zero computing going on in most of our childhood and most of our whole childhood up until college. I didn't touch a computer until I was in my sophomore year when I bought my first computer in college. But we had computer influence with VCRs and you know, different technology started to pick up pace. I am of the belief that human beings just can't tolerate this. It's, it's wrecking humanity. And I don't mean social media. It's just, haven't figured out how to handle the interaction with the whole information age. Thank Kyle King (11:48.584) People can't, they no longer have no how to interact with each other. They don't know how to handle the emotions, conversations and all that kind of stuff. There's that date directly. Chris Gazdik (11:58.382) About what you just came with this study. I mean, there's there's belief systems there that are in place. mean, you know, it's it's I'll get off this because I could I could go for a while. Real quick example, though, that that that I thought of that helps people understand this. have this dear friend, Pam, and she would get into road rage. She got upset, right? And she'd have her middle fingers up. But they were underneath the dashboard. Right. And she's going to just like shooting guns. She's mad. Right. But it was underneath the dashboard. You wouldn't have your hands up above the dashboard saying, bam, you know, double deuces to somebody and be so overtly rude, you know, because you just, had real interaction. Well, we are now living down here underneath the dashboard and it's out into the world. It's just fundamentally different. You know what saying? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think we can handle our behavior norms as a result. I don't know. I don't, we don't know how to. No, it does. It does completely. Chris Gazdik (13:00.476) When's the last time you drive somewhere out of town without a maps on your phone? Thank you. I've tried to challenge myself going to Western to try and not use a map. I'm like, I've gone here long enough. I should know how to get there. And so I think the last time I went, I didn't use my map. I'm like, free. It's freedom. been there before I can usually remember. Chris Gazdik (13:22.998) I'm absolutely like I went to Jacksonville and drove down. like, I don't want to it's I don't know man. I could go on and on about it. just it's really really getting me very very concerned about our mental health the age of loneliness the suicide rates are skyrocketing people's you know fears of missing out and anxieties just we need even to have names for it FOMO like it's it's exploding it's gonna get way worse. That's what I your topic. No, cool. Glad I brought a good one in. AI is not bad, our handling of all this is just deplorable. Just so you know, Kyle, you ever want to get on his good side, just have a rabbit hole about AI. He's all about it right now. So if you just want to, if you want to be happy, do that. Mean about the snarkiness. What is this man? I'm not used to this side of Neil. He's getting comfortable with me where he slams me now. I love it. Neil Robinson (14:16.334) Truly just a statement of fact. It is a fact. It is a fact. All right. We did show number one, episode 329. We got formal and informal power and relationships. We have a lot to kind of get to. I noted, especially in EFT. but I have a note that on, on this episode 329, we welcome Sarah A on the YouTube. Listen, we need YouTube subscribers. Tell them, Kyle, how to do it to become a YouTube subscriber. It's really, complicated. I thought it was complicated. Simple. No. Find the episode and click subscribe on therapist. You're through the therapist eyes. Very simple. need that because we need to grow and we are appreciative of Sarah. So tell somebody, tell a friend they're more likely to do that. It helps us get. Would you subscribe to us, Kyle? Kyle King (15:02.638) I have everything over there. don't know my grandmother. your friends. Is she subscribed? I don't know if she is. She might be. Let me see that. I don't know. I know I'm subscribed. Chris Gazdik (15:19.094) It helps us guys. It makes a big difference. that is our ask, but formal and informal power and relationships. I'm really curious, not from you, Neil, but from, from Kyle, your non-clinical mind, like, cause you have a clinical mind at this point. I'm sorry, brother. Like you're basically one of them. I am. You see what I mean? That snarkiness again, though. You notice this, right? I'm gonna start pointing it out every time it happens. All right. Just giving you a hard time. What does this even mean to you in your head? Are you calling me clinical? Chris Gazdik (15:47.694) formal and informal power dynamics in relationships. Does that make any sense to you honestly? a little bit, you know, where I have direct control versus indirect control is kind of where my thought process goes. I don't know if that's where you're headed, but I did not watch that episode, but you know, that's the kind of thing where I think about that. Things that I can, you know, I have direct control over, whether it's mindset, whether it's, you know, You're actually talking about locus of control issues in psychology. look at like internal locus control versus external locus of control. So another different but cool phrase as well. That's not this one. Okay. Are you so enlighten me? Yeah. So, Neil, what did you think? So the three questions were, my closest relationships, where do I hold formal power and where does my partner hold it? Formal power. So second question, how do informal, subtle forms of power show up between us? Example, influence, emotional leverage, that sort of thing. And then third question that we pondered when we were going through that show was, when has power in your relationship felt actually balanced and when has it felt misused? Chris Gazdik (17:02.956) So I'm curious, what did you pick up, Neil, formal versus informal power, like the definitions to help pile out with what we're even talking about? Cause we've talked about this before. So going through it again was actually interesting because that's why I got kind of confused when I saw the heading. So the idea of formal versus informal power. Think of, I guess in a formal power is easy, know, boss, employee, know, owner, employee, whatever it's, parent, child, those types of, so formal power is there's a, there's a structure to it. There's very clear in the government, there's president and everything below that. Don't ask me to go through that. haven't been in civics for a long time. But informal power is like, say, you and Chris, where you basically have some sort of a Chris run, or even in this podcast, right, in this show, there's an informal thing that Chris runs, or Chris makes the decision, because it's his podcast, which he says, it's our podcast. I'm like, oh, no, it's Chris. It's still your podcast. This is your thing, and I'm here to help. But that's an informal part, right? fun. Neil Robinson (18:02.328) So that's interesting dynamic because in every relationship you create, there is either a form or an informal power that happens just naturally, right? In your relationship, know, husband and wife, there's an informal power structure. Sometimes that power structure can shift depending on what's needed. So it's not like you're always going to be the husband's always on, you know, on top of the wife. It's because sometimes the wife might because maybe they're over the children or certain decisions that the wife is the one leading. That's a different cultures actually we have formalized power in those structures just to point out the difference, right? Like you have legal laws where the man makes the decision about the family that's formally crystallized with law. Like so even in marriage, you can have cultures that do that differently. Or even in my wife's case, becomes the power of attorney, medical power of attorney. So now she has formal power over her aunt at given the time. So that's the big difference with the informal and formal. That's what's like, I don't really, I don't really get where you're going with this one, but I remember it as you're talking. Oh, it makes sense. power. Kyle King (19:02.968) doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and it has just all kinds of ramifications when you start talking about how we're interacting. mean, the, the, the keyword is boundaries, right? These are, these are all about how we hold boundaries and in groups of people, we see all this stuff kind of totally flying around. mean, now your brain probably can maybe think about all the little different nuances of power structures. And you know, that person who walks in the yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you always have those kinds of people, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a Neil's point is, you know, when you think about the formal power and brought up a great, analogy with the husband and wife, because when it came to the kids, especially when they were sick, that's more on her, right? But when it came to like doing chores around the house, so that was my directive, right? You Hey, you need you're in control here you need to make sure they do these things you need to make sure they take the trash out or the grass or whatever What was that? Formal or informal? Kyle King (20:06.227) That would be more formal for me because... Informal. Yeah. Yeah, no law, right? credence, no, you know. Right. Just through the marriage of us, right? know, that kind of thing. So I can see where that would come in play. But it's right. mean, there's always a perception of no matter who you're talking with in a conversation, there's some type of informal power somebody is going to hold in that conversation. Whether it's a, you know, their subject matter expert of a particular thing, like in your case, right? My case, I'm taught computers and security. You're therapist. All the informal power there, brother. That's for sure. Kyle King (20:46.87) So there's those kinds of things too as well. at peers, right? You you look at you versus John Pope. I think when it comes to just general therapy and just experience the practicality, you probably see John as informally he's above you, which is weird because you're kind of the employer, so technically you're then above him. So, and that's like in IT, I know I've had enough, I've worked with enough systems admin that, depending on subject matter, I was the higher tech where they were in a different but Kyle King (21:14.67) Okay. application. But so it's always that that give and take and that and I think is more of a give and take kind of thing. Sometimes you're you're the one in power. Sometimes you're not from a job status. Now. Sure. Now from personal standing, that's different. Well, it personal bleeds into professional. It's just all around us. mean, these things are kind of constantly going at it. Yeah. I hired my superior. Kyle made me think like I did really good of the, by myself of not being the smartest person in the room. know, they say that. They say that don't want to be the smartest person in room. I accomplished my goal there. It's just so much in professional relationships, work, environments, politics. You know, when you get into your stickier points. Yeah. Chris Gazdik (21:57.614) You're, you're really dealing with boundaries in informal power and marriage is the loudest. That's why we focused on EFT, you know, episode 11, 101, 201 and 301 by design. the numbers. Not three, three, three. So nothing's happened yet, by the way. She's going to, she's going to like find something. She's designing something that happened. Kyle's wife is hanging out with us. that's going to, I'm now I'm terrified. She's going to order you chicken butter. That's it. Chris Gazdik (22:29.605) I love the chicken bucket people Neil. Don't get me in trouble. My car's already been keyed by mysterious people. I don't know what's happening. All right. Marriage EFT episode 11, 101, 201 and 301. Seriously are the numbers to really clip into like the dynasism that happens with this informal power. People get wired around the issue of control. You ever hear people talk about control? Particularly in close and tight marriages and relationships attachments. Family, especially if you're living with them. People get really, really weird about this issue of control. How does that interfere or interact with the balance that we're talking about, especially with informal power? That goes to one of our questions, right? How do informal subtle forms of power show up between us? Yeah. Chris Gazdik (23:18.574) influence, emotional leverage. You can just imagine all the ways with that, I'll let you start. you try. I'll have that one first. Ha ha. I think that's when you look at the different people, you can go with traumatic or abusive relationships, right? That's the glaring one. Those are obviously informal, but the person who's usually abusing is trying to think it's formal power. But then outside of that, just the dynamics of going to a family gathering, you ever go there and you see how one person could go from the leader of the house all of a being timid because of a cousin that comes in, you don't realize it, right? I think that's something in everything we do that, that when we look at it, every relationship is a little bit different. And we adjust as humans, unless you're just narcissistic, you just don't care. And he's just like, I want to control everyone. There's always going to be a shift. There's always going to be some sort of a, a subtle change from the power structure. As more people get involved, come in and out as you get into your habits, you know, we've noticed in our house with Mason's home, he kind of does a weird power flex because he's so loud and noisy in his personality. Neil Robinson (24:26.924) Right. He kind of takes over. He doesn't do it on purpose. That's just his personality. Yeah. And so when he comes in, of course, my younger son, who's the younger sibling is like, he kind of comes down a notch because now he's the older brother's home. And it's not bad. Once again, it's just Mason's unintentional loud personality. reflects that. I love that. Chris Gazdik (24:35.372) point. Neil Robinson (24:50.476) You know, we got to kind of adjust around it. He's picky. He does some stuff, but he's a great kid. It's just when he's not here for four months, it's nice. We just have to get used to him being back into the house. But once again, it's not intentional and it's just the way that it is. That's the really key. Kyle, I'm thinking like this is a little controversial, but I hope we get a short out of this. Mental note, wherever the marker is. Because like, look, when we get so into our abandonment fears or our engulfment fears, we get into fears about being controlled or being controlling or having controlling behavior. And I'm going to maintain exactly like you said, Neil, that I don't, people don't intend to have that happen. I feel like that's it. You kind of you're operating out of a fear and you end up trying to control things that you can't control, which is definitely against what we try with the Serenity Prayer. Grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I quote it all the time in my work, but like I don't even think necessarily a full blown domestic violence abuser is intending to control. They're just so wildly in their own head and their fears that they fall into literally telling you what clothes you should wear, thinking they're giving a deep suggestion at you and then getting all negative if you don't follow it. It's controlling, but it's not with, as you said, your son intending. Does that sound crazy? No, it doesn't. mean, because you just think of extroverts and introverts. know, you can be an extrovert at home, but you put go down to the public situation and then you can easily clam up and be that introvert because you don't want to interact with people. You put an introvert into an extrovert situation out in public and maybe public speaking or something. You're going to, you're going to like, Hey, these, this audience has all the power. I don't have anything up here. Kyle King (26:55.31) And it's because they're not used to it. They don't understand. They don't know how to cope with it. They don't know how to mentally accept what position they're in. to be honest, mean, that I had before I started doing a lot of public speaking, you that was one of the fears is like, okay, I'm up here making sure I got to get all of my words out. And I'm thinking everything I got to do, right? It's like, you know, I can prep and I can do all this stuff and, you know, being a fitness instructor at the Y really helped. calm some of that because now I'm up there. I've practiced. I've done this. now it taught me how to prepare to be in that scenario. it's so it's different. Deal with the informal power. I tell you, funny. This last time I did a professional all day conference, I went down to Jacksonville, you know, getting on a United States military base for a civilian is not easy. Can I just tell you, I didn't know the direct gate that I had to go to. I had to go into a building and do a little interview thing, fill out a form, whatever. didn't, nobody told me how to do that. All that and whatever. So I had a presentation as opposed to toward it like eight o'clock. Yeah, it was eight o'clock and that was early. They moved it back from seven, thankfully. Eight o'clock in the morning, about seven 55. I'm calling the guy. I'm like, dude, I cannot get through your stuff. Like I don't know what to do. He's like, Oh, we'll come pick you up. So I, I literally walk in the, the, building of the room at like eight Oh six with my bags on my shoulder. And I'm like, you must be Charlie. You have the clicker and you have the slideshow. Okay. Boom. Set my back. No breathing, no coffee, no surveying the room. Just hit it. Kyle King (28:35.958) Yep. Sometimes that's better. Well, the pacing in in the, in in the parking lot was longer and comfortable or better. gotta tell you, I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, what the heck? Yeah, that was, that's where my brain went when you, when you went to that. Let's move on. Cause we got a lot to get to episode three 30. went to willpower. Willpower was the second show that we talked about. Um, we were kind of theming together, uh, like tips and different things with a little bit of substance abuse. angle to it. And I think we did that, you know, with this one where we talked about willpower. three, three, oh, I don't want to leave the value of vulnerability and power dynamics. That's really where we landed on the other formal and informal power. And now I feel like we have to move on, but I want to mention like vulnerability is a bit of an antidote to any boundary challenges that you end up finding yourself in. Just let that sink in. Right. But moving on to willpower. The three questions is when have I relied on willpower to push through something difficult or how did it work out? Two, how did I believe willpower is a reliable tool for a long-term change or is it more of a short-term strategy? That's an interesting question. Let me read it again, right? Do you believe willpower is a reliable tool for long-term change? And then, or is it more of a short-term strategy? Right? And then third question, how do I respond when my willpower runs out? I thought that... We talked about getting war down in that show, didn't we? Which was a different thought. And then what support systems, what supports or systems kick in or fail to? Those were the three questions. What do think about Willpower? You like it? Love it? Hate it? Kyle King (30:19.374) I think we all use it at some point in our lives, right? know, second question, can it be, is it more long-term or short-term? I think it depends on the situation. So if you're trying to diet and trying to lose weight, well, guess what? That willpower has got to last a little, it's got to be a longevity type of thing. Yeah. Halloween candy coming up, right? So willpower to stay away from it. but then if you, you know, for something like, if you're doing something strenuous, like if you're doing a hard workout, you know, especially. Kyle King (30:48.28) You got to have that willpower to get through that workout for that hour or 30 minutes or whatever it is. So it's a short term game, but you know, you got long-term effects that come from it, but it's a short term to push yourself through that willpower, you know, that exercise. So there's all kinds of things that it could be. you know, you mentioned substance abuse when it comes, that's a big thing, right? To have or not have that drink to take that pill or not take that pill. You know, all of these things come to my mind. you know, we've had, well, you know, we've known people that have had to deal with that. Obviously it's a struggle and you think they overcome it and they fall right back into it. And it's what we tend to see is you're back to that support system that you mentioned. They do not have that support structure around them. They fall into a place where they're by themselves all the time. They don't go hang out with their friends. They don't go golfing. They don't do anything. Don't go just ride in a car and have a conversation and. they tend to fall back into the problems. So there's a lot there. think I'm going to do to you what somebody told me was done to them. I want to be clear. There's no gun in the office. I'm not using a firearm at the moment, but it's going to sound like I am not like in a bang, but so he's this therapist is sitting in a, in a group therapy session in a rehab facility. It must've been the old guy in the back of the room, just like in an AA meeting had been through rehabs, been through this before. And he kind of, he understood what was going on and they were doing a particular lesson that day. on, willpower and, and, and kind of really the dangers of this willpower, because there is a lot of thought in a positive way as you're talking about, but in other ways it's, it really has potential of setting people up as the police. So if you imagine me with a gun and he walks up to the instructor, the therapist in the meeting, and he says, all right, John, we'll call him Kyle. I've got the gun pointed at you. Chris Gazdik (32:48.11) Now want you to use your willpower to take this away. All right, good point. Right. Yeah. And obviously, you it's you'll get shot if you try to take it away. You're the reality is there's a gun here. And so we mistaken like in the substance abuse field. Did you get a sense, Neil of John and I kind of combining with our substance abuse therapist brain on the dangers of willpower when you were with us that show? Do you remember? Yeah, I think I remember that because that's I mean, that's a big part of it. It's a huge part. It's a huge part and it really has, I think, of really, I'm going use a hard word to make the point that, you know, it really gets into damning people and being stuck into a spot and they're at fault and desperately feeling full of shame anyway as it is because they don't have enough of the oomph to do what it is that we try to do when we're working out or dealing with a habit or Chris Gazdik (33:48.994) We talked a lot on this episode with food and dieting and weight and all. But with this reality, I mean, you cannot just change, you know, the reality that's in our face, whether it's someone holding a gun or the genetics of our body or the reality of our various physical problems. Okay, I got something to go against your gun idea. Okay. If, if once again, you brought a gun to me or you were aiming a gun at me, I would get shot. Now, if I was a trained special forces, that was a trained cop and I knew how to disarm someone because of your training. Yep. That's different. So if you think about your willpower, if you build systems and you do things to help you make it through your with willpower, use that as a small piece. That's a different outcome than you coming to me, hopefully my willpower will get me through. So the idea is willpower is a thing that helps you temporarily. It's all about systems. It's about habits you build. It's about all those different pieces. Willpower is similar to your muscles is that you can start great. I can make it a week without ice cream. Now 14 days in, my willpower muscle gives in. like that's... I can talk about the ice cream I last night, but that's okay. did get tired. Hey. That's good ice cream. But that's the same idea, right? No, my willpower alone won't get me get that gun out of your hands. But if I spend time and I have systems and I have things in place and I learn how to, then that's different. So that's the same idea that you have to look at it from a willpower. Willpower is great temporarily. It is not a long term. You are not going to grit your teeth and make it through two years of sobriety. Chris Gazdik (35:17.794) Build the skill. Neil Robinson (35:33.246) You're not going to, you have to have a system in place. You have to have something through those pieces. And so I just kind of wanted to, that was an interesting analogy. I'm like, let me kind of put a spin on it. that because you know it helps you to build it I mean and that's what you were talking about Kyle and I think that's where people get you know mixed into like you know this absolutely helps you get discipline. yeah. helps you make sense. It definitely helps you to start the process. then, I mean, what happens with January 1st New Year's resolutions? We're coming up on holiday season. We make fun of it every year. we see it every day, every day in January at the gym. Right? I mean, they start great. They start out strong. Two weeks later, those people are gone. Chris Gazdik (36:15.042) I'm proud to say this January is not going to be my first gym thing. I've been there. I've been there, Jake. I've been there, Jake. Matter of fact, I'm even going to Jake's on Wednesdays. And, I went into the other room and did resistance training on the day that I do my row machines, that has been so routine now it's been built into my schedule. It's been built into my understanding. Like if I'm not on the row machine on Wednesday nights, it's weird, but that doesn't happen immediately. Well, and always here two weeks, two weeks. If you can build a routine for two weeks and you keep that routine going for two weeks, then it now becomes part of your system. What's the phrase? It takes seven days to make a habit or so? What's the 14 days or? What is it? 30 days to make a habit into a 30 days doing a routine to make it a habit. As soon as all kinds of things, mean, you can put that towards, mean, even stopping drinking soft drinks for, for me, it sweet tea. I'm a Southern boy. grew up on sweet tea. wow. And so now to give up sweet tea at, you know, in my later stages in life, I mean, yeah, that's huge. My stepdad's same. Kyle King (37:21.032) Yeah, I did it and my teeth are happier for it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that your point, Neil, is really on point in that the habit design is where willpower can help the developing gradual goals so that when you are placed in a situation, then your training can kick in and you don't have to even think about it. Willpower isn't even a part of it then because you don't have to think. You just, you click into what you do. When I teach my classes, have the expectation when any new person comes into my class, and I think you can use this kind of logic, do not try to be where I'm at when I'm teaching the class, because you'll fail. Hmm. Now start the first class, kind of learn what it's about. Next time you come back, pick one thing you want to do better. Just one. Whatever that is. If it's, you know, doing better in biceps, doing better in triceps, doing a kick better in kickboxing, whatever. It doesn't matter. Do one thing. The next time, come back, do another thing. Pick another thing better. And now you're starting to build that system as we've been talking about. Chris Gazdik (38:31.662) I that. I love that a lot, honestly, because I think about that in my newer experiences with yoga. You know, yoga is hard. That stuff is not easy. And you do, you fall into like, I should be able to put my head behind my head and grab a toe like this lady's doing on TV. wow. Right. No, that's not, it's not wise. Yoga is hard. Kyle King (38:47.768) Right. But you can use that same type of mentality in anything you do. mean, anything you want to change. Well, it goes back to, to be more successful, you have to find easy wins or quick wins, right? If you get to the point where if you, I've done some go-ruck events and the one thing they tell you is when you do those events with people, like you do what you can do in the event, right? If you want to carry the log longer, you carry the log longer, you do those certain things. But when you look at that, if I tried to push too hard and I'm dead, well, I'm not helping anyone. But I think if you do enough that you can succeed and get My goal for this first go-rug event is I want to just be at the end, still at least doing something, right? I want to go to that class and at least make it, you know, 45 minutes, even if I'm just like walking for part of it, right? Because as you, as you make those goals, you get better self-esteem, which will kind of actually help build your willpower because you're not sitting there thinking the whole time. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. It's I can do this. And that helps then extend that willpower, you know, the little engine that could, right? That is my favorite childhood fable. love the little engine. Neil Robinson (39:58.126) So that's important and having the systems in place where if you feel you're stumbling, the system helps you, keeps you from falling. And it also takes a lot of that pressure off of yourself, right? If you're always getting beat up because I can never stay off, I can never stop drinking because I always mess up. I always screw up, right? Now, if you have systems in place like, you you call your buddy, hey, I'm having issues. They're like, hey, let's go. Let's go on to the golf course. Let's go, go for a drive. Let's go meet up Barnes and Noble. So that takes it off of you. And then you basically succeed. So then that helps your world package. You're like, Oh, last time I did this, I can do it again. And so it's really helpful with willpower is once you start getting to that point where you really are stretching your willpower, what is that break you're going to take to then be able to then, okay, I can stop using my willpower muscle. It's my system. It's a piece. Switch over to the. And then you can do it again when you have that issue again. And the goal is that as you extend your habits or you're trying to break habit, you're using less willpower muscle and you're relying more on the system. Kind of like breathing, it becomes natural at that point. Chris Gazdik (41:07.95) listening to you. Check this out. I want to combine comments or even shows, right? So pair these two things together. What you're talking about there is super cool. And I was sitting there thinking like, so do formal relationships or informal relationships work better to build off of the willpower that we have in the beginning and then move forward? How many times have you had a workout buddy that didn't end up being a long-term workout buddy? Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's more. I mean, fails, doesn't it? And that's an informal relationship. Right. I'm willing to bet I have a personal trainer, Jake. He's awesome. Fit for you, by the way. And you can look him up. And I know that is a formal relationship because I have given him formal power. I hired him to be my trainer. And that has, I would argue, a whole lot more consistency built in. So can we say that a formal relationship builds more of what you're talking about, Neil? then an informal relationship is going to tend to be. Would you say that a sponsor at AA is a formal rel- Chris Gazdik (42:13.696) I was thinking that as well too. Yes, it is a formal relationship that you basically do the same thing. You ask someone to be a sponsor and the sponsor has sort of set criterion and they do. It's a known role. So would you say that if you have someone that you're really, really interested in holding you accountable, could you turn it in formal relationship into a formal relationship just by setting boundaries and expectations? Right. doing those things. Because that's one of those things you would think, right? If I have a buddy that I do a lot of stuff with and him and I are doing like 100 day challenges, 100 days. is the question. Neil Robinson (42:50.424) break or set habit, right? Because we found 30 days is just not enough. I get a day 31, I'm like, screw it, I made it, great. we have this thing, we're doing 100 day challenges, but him and I have built pretty much this almost formal relationship. Like, here's my challenge, here's my challenge. How you doing? Right? Where's your problems? What's going on? So we built this from an informal one, it's almost become formal outside of- but it still sounds informal because no one has the authority like Jake has the authority to work with me. Yeah, but that's still but that's still. We're not working. Could become formal, right? We could literally sign like a contract and say, I'm going to be there for you and turn it into a formal relationship. just see, right. Cause even a sponsor, even a sponsor could fail. Yeah. Even though your trainer could fail. Yeah. Right. Those are things. So it still goes back to both sides have to agree and have to be really committed to create that formal relation, formal power. Right. You, like I said, it's almost a contract that you build. closer. Chris Gazdik (43:36.398) Better Neil Robinson (43:49.08) So if you're really concerned about it, you almost could take that step as long as the person you're building the contract with. There's definitely some fun things there to think about. it is. Yeah, that absolutely is cool. To wrap this up a little bit with willpower, we want to get to the idea of mindfulness. I mean, this is a key element. We all have heard of mindfulness and stuff now. guess I'm getting to know your clinical knowledge, mindfulness. I mean, that's a total buzzword nowadays. People use the hell out of that word, right? Do you know what that refers to or how that? The mindfulness? Clinical mindfulness or just mindfulness in general? in the way people talk about it. No, I'd to hear your thoughts on it. Chris Gazdik (44:26.914) Well, it's just, it's just really the here and now being in the moment and paying attention to the moment. Like you're, actually encouraging mindfulness when you say, Hey, just focus on one thing that you're doing and improve that you're being mindful, being in the moment. Don't compare yourself to me. Just do this and be with that in this moment. That's exponentially helps our elements. Yeah, I tell that to my guy, my team, when they go to customers and like, don't be typing on a laptop. Go old school. You can write notes, but don't be typing on a laptop or notes electronically, please. gotta be here. Chris Gazdik (45:04.744) He needs to learn how to deal with computers. Yes Translate them later, but yeah, be in the moment. So, so another one of these types of things would be anger management. Yeah. Right. And I have this thing that I've gotten reacquainted with, it's called a lifesaver technique. And it really is demonstrating mindfulness and the power of mindfulness that helps you to get into your muscles, Neil, of willpower. People get really impulsive in anger. Right. And they will, we will explode. And I've worked with people that like get into fights before they know very, short fuse. And so the idea is you literally just take a lifesaver, the hard lifesaver. and you put it in your mouth and the rule is the process is you don't say anything. You don't do anything until you are done with the lifesaver. And I'm sure. And so there's a there's a few. Yes, there's a few different elements to this. that is one, your your anonymical system in your limbic system is interpreting sweets. And that is a calming, just biologically a calming thing. We don't do chewing because that is aggressive. They can't cure. Chris Gazdik (46:07.918) And the whole suckling response is ingrained in your limbic system as well. That deescalates that gets calm. Thirdly, like just time, you know, it takes time for you to then sit back, be mindful. I'm in this space for I punched this guy in the throat. Let me just do my lightsaber. And you get through the pinnacle of anger where you're not really able to think, well, you've come down and now you can get back more into an objective state because this happens so fast. Right? You go up. You come back down and you're like, why did I just hit this guy? So the lifesaver technique is kind of cool thing, but it's all about mindfulness being in the moment, building your willpower ability so it'll catch back up. You you're giving it like a five minute break to let your willpower muscle rest. What happens on the second rep, Kyle, as opposed to the first rep when you're lifting weights? Yeah, you do a whole lot better. Crazy. Explain what I meant to said, because I think that's that's our point. And I still that blows my mind. Yeah. Messes with me every time he does it to me. It really just, even the first rep is you're trying to figure out what to do. And then the second rep, you've kind of got a better technique and you're able to do it more successful. Neil Robinson (47:21.026) I just thought because I was older and my body just not used to moving yet. I've noticed in my workouts, like my third round is like, why is this easier than my first round? We always start with light weights and stuff and you know the reason why is really just kind of get those muscles going right? Yeah, oxygen flowing get blood flowing. You know get you know those kind of things. It's so funny talks about this so intelligently. He'd be way over our head. He said something and I can't recall, but it's something about when you're forcing your straining and you push a muscle, it's literally pushing the blood flow out and then it comes back in. And so you get like fresh nutrients literally to your muscle or something like that. So that the second rep, that's why you can literally do more. I love science though. All right, we need to move on. It is crazy. Chris Gazdik (48:07.854) Okay. So episode 331, how do we control mental health and substance abuse? That was what we landed on for the show. The three questions, what aspects of mental health or substance use do you feel you already have some control over and which feel completely out of reach? People feel pretty desperate sometimes about depression or anxiety, the, you know, the what have you. When have you tried to tough it out, quote unquote, in mental health or addiction, which tends to happen? relapse burnout avoidance is what the result is when you try to just tough it out. We were talking about that a little bit with this last show and then what kind of support structures or tools would make the idea of control feel safer or more sustainable to you. You know what drives me nuts, Kyle? People make this statement like, well, you feel the way you feel. You ever hear that? You hear anything about that? You just the way you feel. Yeah. Yeah. Heard that before. You know my response is? My entire industry history and present is going geared towards like helping. Figure out how to deal with the way we feel. Right. Yeah. it makes my head blow up. films. Kyle King (49:16.14) This is interesting though. mean, a lot of these things that we kind of discussed in the last, from the willpower thing is just, you know, very interesting to understand how the mental health aspect and the substance abuse, that willpower, going back to that willpower, know, getting to that next step, you know, how do we progress, right? How do we progress forward and move forward into a successful outcome? How do we? Chris Gazdik (49:44.462) Should we try the game, that Victoria, John, and I played in the middle of the show towards the end? I don't think we have time for that. I'm afraid you would win and I would be embarrassed. I'm kind of glad. would probably smoke us all. Tell us what we did. I don't know about it. Neil Robinson (50:03.438) They basically went around, you know, one person at a time to say habits or things you can do to help basically with your mental health, things that you can do to help you check yourself back in to, you know, self care tips. Like they were basically just going one way or another to see who, who, who could either repeat or come up, you know, not come up with something. yeah. So it's the idea of like, how many things can you do to help your mental health? Like there's so many different ways that you can do it. And just so many different personalities, right? It's the idea that some people want to go read a book. Other people might want to go paint. Some people would drive their car. out. out. Go play golf. Yeah, there's all kinds of things. It was really fun, Kyle, because I mean, obviously we're therapists and I had a little bit of angst with that thing. I know she, Victoria and John, John, especially like he chirps out with that sort of thing. I guess I pop people cold and whatever. you're like, God, I'm not prepared. How do you develop a list of things that you do to literally help cope with your emotions? And we're on the spot going one to the next to the next to me, John, Victoria, me, John, Victor, to see who would, you know, run out of things and thus the loser would be. Five seconds passed, I don't know what to say. Kyle King (51:13.454) Yeah, I mean it's an interesting point because I just started a new one a couple weeks ago. I get up in the morning and I start playing Sudoku. And it's like, okay, just to kind of get my brain going, right? There's really nothing more than that. And it's just like, I kind of like doing this in the morning. Yeah. So was like, okay. So that's kind of something new that's just popped up. It's like, oh, okay. fun. Chris Gazdik (51:36.078) We didn't have any trouble filling the time, Victoria, John and I. Yeah, yeah. But it seems like, I found something like that and I'm sure everybody else is like that is just find something new to, you know, engage your brain a little bit. And here's, here's one of the big distinctions. I mean, you're, you're landing on something that I call self care. I, I. Coin. I think I've coined the term in my brain, like it's the cornerstone of mental health. So that's just fun, relaxing, enjoyable activities that are not self destructive in any way. And they're not work related tasks. I've said that in therapy sessions with people like thousands of times, I'm sure over my career, because we've always known self care is really that important. And so these are hobbies. are these are these things that you do. I'm playing Envoy this most recently. It's like another computer game on my phone that takes way too much time. You have responsibilities to accomplish for the day. It's actually stressful, but it's fun, right? You just settle down and settle in. Books, dancing, you know, these are hobbies, right? But there's so much more in how do we manage actually what we feel. Cornerstone of mental health is self-care though. What do you think, Neil? and not think about things. Chris Gazdik (52:46.569) Toria, John, or I tallied the most. I don't remember who won that one. I feel like someone said the same thing that someone else said, that was the end of it, right? That's the rule. I think we just ran out of Yeah. But no, and I think that's important because I think that's the thing you have to understand. It's just because people's now think about this because when I give myself care, Chris judges me. He's like, can't can't kind of walk with your wife as a self care or you can't do this in self care. Like, because I don't because I don't like watching like sports like 20 hours over a weekend. Like, that's not my thing. And I think it's really, really important to understand that, whatever you do to help you control your mental health is really it's. Neil Robinson (53:31.374) an individual result. it's, everyone's going to be different. Once again, I gave the example. There are some people who actually love to drive. I know people who hate driving. I think of a handful just off the top of my head. I have no problems driving. Now I have my friend who I do challenge with. He's a road rager. My wife, she's a road rager. know, really doesn't like. But I think it's great. Chris Gazdik (53:45.496) I relax. Chris Gazdik (53:56.962) Wow, never knew that. It's because they're idiots and they don't know how to drive. Alicia is amongst a bunch of idiots out there, aren't you? And it drives her crazy because there's risky, there's a riskiness. But I think that's important. You find what works for you and anything there is, there's thousands of things you can do. You just have to find what works for you. And that's, that's the thing. Cause you always say, well, they say I need to journal and wake up at five o'clock and do yoga and play Sudoku and blah, blah, blah. No, you do what works for you. You sleep until six 37. If it comes down to it, do what you need to in your morning routine to get yourself in the best mental position for that day. Right. I've started reading in the morning. Now, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is not a book that you really can read a lot of that 5.30 in the morning. I'm not quite awake, but I've read other books. I'm reading less pages in the morning because of that. But most of the other books I read in the morning. And I found that that's great for me to not get on my phone first thing in the morning. Right. Because I play all the stupid little games that I have. You know, but that's what works. So you find it works for you. What helps your mental health helps you get past those because that's super important. Chris Gazdik (55:00.814) Yeah. Kind of to play off that Neil and go back in that, yeah, the reason why I give you grief is this. There's actually three cares. If you want to go deeper on it. We said self care, cornerstone of mental health, but then there's relationship care and you're doing that with people that you're in relationship with. Same thing as self care, but it's with somebody that you're building things up with. And then there's physical care. And so if you notice, Neil, a lot of the cool things you do to uncharge, to unwind. They're all in the realm of taking care of physical. A lot of them. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. I'm to take a walk. I'm going to go do the rucking. I'm going to do the challenge, the push ups for the day or what have you. And I feel like it is important to really do the the Sudoku of the world. The really like I will sit at home. I got a jigsaw puzzle that's taken over my dining room table. It's just 10 minutes. Yeah. But that 10 minutes my brain is just doing coming down instead of like the physical or the relational, we just want the brain to deescalate. That's why I give you grief. But I love you for it anyway. You see I'm bad about waking up in middle of the night my brain starts going immediately right and then I'm like, okay I got to calm it down right and so I turned something on them, you know in my ear just to drown things out. It's like Yeah settle it down. It's a very, very common deal. But it's hard, you know, to do something like deep breathing or meditating or, you know, using a mantra. are things at night that are good or stress, tension, release combinations with breathing so that you kind of settle down or guided imagery. These are not self-care items. These are actually like things that John, Victoria and I were just like rampant fire listing. Chris Gazdik (56:47.736) that are actually like strategies. we've got self-care, relational care, physical care, and then like strategies and whatnot. And we just want to try a couple. Yeah, and it's all about self-awareness too. It's like what works for you? 100 % 100 % One thing I want to mention before we get out of here and go to the last show is the through therapist eyes re-understanding your emotions and becoming your best self I want to put in here to really kind of highlight a book that I wrote not because I wrote the book because it fits with like Legit how do we control this stuff? What do we do and I took all of these four all of these chapters and whittled them down into four people if you're a little Long time listener to say you heard that before, but do you remember all four of them? Right? If you've heard me describe, that's how we came up with these. Do you remember all four of them? You could say it with me if you do you listening at home, you, you have focus points are really important. Action points are really important. Stop and reflect on emotions so that we're aware of ourselves as a third important area. then a fourth value cell. And all of the chapters that I wrote, Kyle fit into one of those four categories. So I ended up with like four main elements of like how to really control our mental health. I think it's pretty cool concept. Value self, stop and reflect on emotion, action points and focus points is just what I naturally fell into identifying. I'm going to do the same thing with the marriage book too, Closing thoughts on these, how do we control substance abuse? Kyle King (58:16.596) There you go. Chris Gazdik (58:22.338) mental health episode 331. There's a time we're going to move to episode 332. And I thought this is Kyle's show, This is Kyle's show. Elderly dating, not because you're in the dating room and you're elderly. This is not why. I'm on something else really now. Yeah. Across that threshold. I don't want you to take that. wife's also here. She's about ready to hit me, but it is episode three 33 and something weird is going to happen. Right. I don't know. Okay. So the reason why I say that is because this is techno land. The three questions, how does dating or what does dating to you mean now in this stage of life? Companionship, romance, new beginnings. What's really going on there for you to, how do you feel about online apps based dating as an older adult? or as a partner of someone dating later in life. then thirdly, what boundaries or safeguards there is where you shine. What boundaries or safeguards do you currently use or wish you had when pursuing new relationships? That's not just online. That's just, you know, meeting people in person and stuff. First off, I'm glad I don't have to deal with the dating scene. my gosh, I heard the horror stories. Chris Gazdik (59:34.35) Yeah. Bad. think people, people talk it up worse than probably. I'll let know. What was the other guy's. By the way, this is a horrible show for me, This is, you know, I'm just realizing this is where, yeah, this is, this is where I got this idea that Neil is like attacking. It's, it's, it's a little raw, man. Yeah. He's like, we do, okay, we do a shrink wrap up, think. Right. And, and you know that what it is now we compete. I can't. Neil Robinson (59:53.42) Yeah, this is why you're sensitive. Chris Gazdik (01:00:03.89) have a friendly competition to review the show and see what's going on. This Joker comes on the wrap-up show. Which show was that actually, Neil? That wasn't Elderly Dating, was it? It was this one I think. Thinking of what you're thinking. Yeah, it was this show. It's some international podcast. It's a, okay. So if you're of this age to that age, Chris is like sick. He's ready to just go to the email contact and through there. I'm like, what are you doing right now? This is so not even funny. This is so not cool. Like I haven't gotten any emails by the way yet. have not. You try. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. All right. Somebody take it away. What do we talk about for real in this shit? I tried. Neil Robinson (01:00:45.898) I think the interesting part of the dynamics, like I said, we've talked about, I'm like I said, I'm dealing with that with some, someone I know in my life. but I think it's the interesting part from an elderly dating standpoint is one, the dynamics of technology. Elderly people just don't understand what's out there. They don't understand a lot of the things are AI driven. Now there's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot. Thanks. When, when they, when they give someone access or they talk to them about certain things, they don't understand what that, what ramifications have with those pieces. So there's a lot of stuff to that. And I think the other part that we came across was if your parent is dating again and you're a child and you're trying to help them understand, Hey, there's something suspicious about this. You know how hard it is for that parent to be pulled by their child. that they're doing something wrong or there's a risk is the parenting being parented. informal power of a parent just kinda can't tolerate. Kyle King (01:01:45.666) Yeah. Right. And so that's those a couple of things in that dynamic. That's really an interesting thing. But once again, elderly dating is just like any other dating. You still have to be careful who you talk to. You be careful, set your boundaries. You have to go for what you want versus what they want. there's, still the same stuff. But the issue is, is I feel like some of the elderly dating because they've lived a life, I feel like it's the opposite of, well, it's kind of the same idea of a teenager. Teenagers know everything because they're so smart. orderly people know everything because they've lived a life of experience right when really they're just as gullible as anyone else so I he's got to have a lot to say with this because I think you have a lot of experiences with it in the tech world but to really highlight a point you made is absolutely I find anecdotally very true in all the people I've talked about and it's kind of amazing like we diminish the emotional experiences that like teens have it's like that's so cute you know they got they that cute little puppy love thing going on and they're sitting there with a broken heart they're sitting there like suffocating inside themselves like how do I go on? Yeah, they had been married for 43 years and their spouse died, but those feelings are the same when you're in elderly years. Yeah. 14 years. Or midlife. you think those emotions are different because of your life experience and what I'm here to tell you, the biological experience of the emotion is like the same. Kyle King (01:03:11.744) It's interesting. mean, when you talk about the emotions, that's, when I think about the elderly, that's what they're preying on. You know, when I'm looking for somebody that's going to take advantage of somebody, they're preying on those emotions. So they're looking for those people that may be posting on social media or that, you know, through a friend of a friend of a friend, right? You know, kind of know about this. And to your point, you know, the elderly, they don't understand that technology as well as you or I. And so now they're easily falling prey to it because they're seeing something. Okay, they got an alert. Somebody told them that they're susceptible. Now this person helped them out. Now they start building a relationship, starting to have conversations. Now it goes further. Can I push it that and probably be wrong? Sure. I want to push it that and I'm probably wrong. But the reason why I push that is because I would normally just find myself disagreeing like, yeah, totally. You we all have examples of this and it's that burns inside of me when somebody goes on Facebook and does romance fraud. It just, I just really want to throw. You heard about the big bust they did over in Europe, right? No. yeah. There's a big, they as a week or two ago, they got a big, they made a big bus for this ring. They were doing relationship type of fraud and it was, I forgot that number, but it was. Chris Gazdik (01:04:32.642) huge. Love that. That's fantastic. And back, you know, back to the thing you sent me last night. Yeah. A lot of it was being driven by bots. Not even people. Butts. So here's the thing, I wonder, I think we threw elderly people under the bus. I think they can really function pretty well on Facebook. They've kind of figured out how to post and it took them slower to kind of get into it as a generation. But I think us Gen Xers think that we're all technically savvy or whatnot. Neil's first person to tell you I'm not. Look at his face already. He knows I'm not. I don't know. Obviously when elderly people have diminished abilities, we're not talking about diminished capacity for memory and processing. That is a little different. They'd be taken advantage of, but know that we're less susceptible to your fraud elements at 60 or at 40 or at 30 or at 75. Is there much variance there? I think in some regards, yes, in some regards, no, because even people our age, right? They can be emotionally down and somebody come in and build them back up, right? So that could definitely happen. You know, in terms of some other people that are, I guess, more sure of themselves, they're going to look, they're going to be a little bit more timid about trusting somebody initially, where the elderly, they're easily targeted. Kyle King (01:06:06.636) They prey on them because they know they have money, maybe stashed away in retirement or whatever. And they're looking for those easy targets. You and I may not be an easy target because we're not, we're going to be a little bit apprehensive of, yeah, I don't know who you are kind of thing. Where now they're starting to trust them a little bit more just by saying a few things. looking through the Facebook post or whatever social media post that they may have done and says, I'm sorry that your dog died and my dog died as well. What kind of dog? And they start building that bond, the kind of thing. There's a bond and a relationship for element that would be different, but I just, don't know. Even when we did the fraud show with you, we all literally had stories of personal experience with that. And your wife literally got a phone call before the show was over of a new event. And I don't think that person was elderly. Were they shaking her head? No. Right. So I just wonder, you know, if we, if we are more into, I don't know, we're all at risk. Well, and especially, know, Neil mentioned it with the AI aspect of it, the deepfakes. They're blurring the lines between reality and fiction. a lot. that I talked to, she's like, I talked to the celebrity while he was on shoot. They literally had the camera while I was talking to them and like, it's fake. It's not real. Well, no, no, no. It was him. And I've talked, like I talked to one of the guys before and I'm like, dude, you're, you're a black guy from Africa. couldn't help him. And like, what do you mean? I'm like, you're, but like, so I don't know if they have something in the Facebook messenger that Kyle King (01:07:31.896) really Neil Robinson (01:07:47.118) disguises their voice. Cause I mean, she's, she's supposed to talk to an Irish musician. And I'm like, you're definitely not an Irish musician. Like so, but there's tools, there's things where you can mask voices and do video. I guess maybe we're not equally as susceptible, Rob. We're about ready to be. 30 seconds of voice. That's really typically all they need to build a convincing deep fake. And then once they get that trust, that's where it becomes, that's the part we're fighting right now. Right. They've ingrained and... Because what they'll do is they'll do one small thing for them. And here's that trust that starts to build, right? And then it's like, well, I want to do this other thing, but I need something from you first. Chris Gazdik (01:08:31.886) And that's what real money that goes into your wire bank account. give you, you know, they give you $100. It's sitting there like, okay, great. It's $100. Yeah. Now, now you give me need to give me 10 and we'll do the box. That's somebody I know is going through that right now. Yeah, right. Hey, we're going to, I want to meet you. want to come in person, but I don't have enough funds for the airfare. Can you spot me? Right. an easy pop. Right. I just get fearful about the way humanity is interacting with computers and we're not emotionally in tune with it. And I feel like the baby boomers, guess those would be the elderly, they've essentially gotten in and they're definitely not native and I feel like they're lost. I think Gen X, we've gotten in and we're only barely figuring out how yucky social media is to our psychology. I feel like we're, we're, we're almost lost cause it's going to get worse. And before we really figure it out, like we're going to be older and out of, out of play and the millennials, I'm sorry, we have screwed them up. Gen Xers. It's our fault. What y'all we did that. And they're not getting out. I do have a lot of hope in Gen Z because they are the first generation of all of humanity that has had this their whole life. And they see this weird, crazy stuff. Chris Gazdik (01:09:50.87) As like the kids stuff. don't need a Snapchat. Yeah, it, I'm, our kids, think, you know, having a lot of hope on because I don't know. People get took. You don't have to be all easily. Yeah. That was a lot of shows, Neil. Yeah. Starting to see that as well. Kyle King (01:10:05.228) easily. the It was, but that makes it for the previous month where we missed one. So true to that, true to All right, closing thoughts, closing comments. Awesome, awesome. Rabbit hole. Appreciate that. Just do anything AI and you're right. I'm going to be in love with you. So I'll remember that. Chris Gazdik (01:10:27.342) down a rabbit hole with that. Closing thoughts, comments though, Neil, Kyle? Ready to out here and get something to eat? Loved, loved, loved all the shows that we talked about today. Loved hearing how we can deal and help each other through things, whether it's through typical willpower, getting through a scenario, substance abuse or anything. Yeah, everything. Even you can go back to the dating app, right? Hey, have somebody, have that accountability partner, right, to make sure that you're doing the right thing. wasn't there. Chris Gazdik (01:11:00.492) the dating app would you you lost me? Chris Gazdik (01:11:07.832) going to be checking my WhatsApp now. I'm calling you at two in the morning next weekend. Appreciate the offer, brother. So there you go. That's true. They have people that just don't be alone. Yeah. Don't be isolated. Right. Kyle! Kyle King (01:11:23.502) Because then you're susceptible to think to be more. Don't think you're too sophisticated to not be fallen prey, I'm telling you. Wild. Neal, closing thoughts? It happens. Neil Robinson (01:11:36.706) Great month. like the fact that you're theming these things together every month and it's been great build up. Hey, I do have a little bit of a tip. Neil doesn't know this yet, but we've scheduled a show on the 13th with someone that we could talk about my newest favorite topic. I'll just leave that as the cliffhanger. Yeah. We're going to have to like talk about a link for her, but we'll tell you more about that soon. Happy Halloween. Listen, be safe. This is October the 30th. We got lots of people giving chocolate candy. Happy Halloween. Be safe. Make good decisions. Young men, young woman. and we will see you next week. Take care and be well.