Ep 75: The Self-reliant Path to Confidence
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So, let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver:
John Brewer, Jr, I am not only grateful that you're here today, but I want to thank you for all the service that you've provided the country and maybe you could even just start off introducing yourself and some of your background, that would be really great.
John Brewer, Jr:
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here too, to kind of help your audience with hopefully some topics on confidence that relate to my experience. And so really, my experience is, I joined Army Special Forces back in 2011. And then I maintained an active duty for eight years. And with that I, at first, I was what's called a weapons sergeant, which is kind of the guy on the team who was supposed to understand different weapons systems, employment tactics, and things of that nature. And then I deployed twice with fifth Special Forces Group to Syria, during the conflict with ISIS. And then also, once after that, I decided to reclass to a medic. And so, my time during the National Guard, which has been the past three years, I just recently got out, I was a medic, so I changed my MOS, my job. So, it wasn't no longer working. uh, you know, as the was called the bravo, the weapons, I was then, you know, solely the medic, which actually my time in the Maryland National Guard is more so training people for our selection process that we go through. So it's more so that but at the same time, my job at the time was medic, and since then, did get out of the military and trying to do new ventures and, and kind of start new stuff. So, but yeah, that is most of my background and where most of my experience comes from.
Alyssa Dver:
That's great in a way that I can't even express I'm so grateful. Like I said that you're here sharing some of your knowledge and wisdom. And then at the same time, also want to be very clear with the work that you have done in the past is so inspiring. And I appreciate it. I'm going to ask you some live questions, because I do a lot of work with various military people, but I don't think I've ever actually had a one on one with somebody in special forces. And I personally don't know what the difference is, and what that really means. And I have a feeling some of our listeners are curious to what does it mean to be in Special Forces?
John Brewer, Jr:
Yeah, so the first thing is, you know, a lot of times there's confusion between Army Special Forces and special operations. And obviously, the news they use that sometimes in different contexts, but truly special operations is there's a big community, and it's all branches. And it's not very specific Army Special Forces is more specific to obviously the Army. And then also, the nickname is Green Berets. And, and really, it's just a team of 12 individuals that you know, each kind of have their own skill set their, their own job, and then they're brought together to then be put on missions that are more unconventional, because usually the army, you know, we haven't had a conventional war in a long time, but when it comes to Army Special Forces, what ends up happening is that we get put on more unconventional mission sets. The most relevant has been counterterrorism, counterinsurgency with ISIS, and things of that nature, foreign internal defense. So those types of missions sets that are less about, you know, large units movement and taking territory and maintaining terrain, it's more so which that can happen as well, but it's more so some of the unconventional stuff that that is less than that, you know, a 12 man team can do instead of, you know, a whole unit or units sort of speak.
Alyssa Dver:
Well, today, we're talking about self-reliance, since I'm curious, you're on this team, you all have to really rely on each other. You know, let's start with that. I mean, how hard is it to build that teamwork? And then, you know, kind of bring yourself into that, like, hey, I'm here for everyone else. It'd be 11 other people that are here. I mean, that's got to be a skill set. Can you train for that? Is that something that you screen for?
John Brewer, Jr:
Yeah, so actually our training is pretty long. It's depending on what job you're doing. It's either a year or a year and a half of training that you go through different phases and some of the phases, everybody's together, doing the same stuff, some of it is MOS specific to where you go off and do your own job and train in your specific job task. But truly, you know, everybody generally had the same mindset. And, you know, the big thing nowadays is multidisciplinary teams, you're starting to see that a lot everywhere. And that's pretty much what it is, it's just people who they do have their job specific tasks, but they still know how, and they do that without autonomy, but at the same time, they know how to bring it together and use it as a team, rather than just be purely focused on their individual tasks. So, it's, it's definitely a lot of collaboration. And everybody's on the same page, they have to be, we all have to know, you know, what everybody else is doing, at the same time that we're doing our own stuff, and then it just all comes together and syncs. And that's truly where it comes in at is you got to make sure everything syncs together the way it does. And leadership does that, but at the same time, everybody on the, you know, the second tier knows how to do that, as well. So, it's less micromanaging so to speak.
Alyssa Dver:
Yeah, so you have the benefit, I guess, of having that training, having that time together. Because there are, as you called out, three different levels of confidence. Really, if I can somewhat intermingle stuff, you know, this idea of reliance with confidence. You have to believe in the leader, you have to believe in your team, and you have to believe in yourself that not only will it come together, that it can come together, right. And back to kind of you join the army you taking on these various you put special assignments, unconventional assignments, where does the confidence come from to do that? And let alone, you know, to even say, Yeah, I can do this, and then you get there? How do you build the confidence in yourself, let alone your team?
John Brewer, Jr:
Well, that, you know, that I think, you know, there's a little bit of that, that needs to come before you even get to, you know, that process, because obviously, in high school, my confidence came from wrestling. And so, when I started wrestling, I found that that was pretty decent at it. And then from there, that just became my mindset of like this confidence of, and I've talked about it before, to where these individuals who were at the peak level of whatever, you know, athletics or whatever they're doing, there's a little bit the cockiness that comes into that. And, and I'm not saying you have to brag about it all the time, but you have to believe that you are the best at what you do because if you don't, then you're not going to be and truly and this also goes back to fake it till you make it type of mentality. And there was a lot of that, that I went through and training to where I might not, you know, I definitely wasn't number one or the best. But when it came to it, I knew that no matter what I was going to pass through, whatever I was going through. And if I ever doubted myself, I knew that there was just going to increase my chances of not getting to where I wanted to be. So, I could never, ever doubt myself. And that's kind of you know, with practice, you have to be able to just get away have that self-doubt, talking to yourself that internal dialogue, saying that you can't do it. But at the same time, there has to be a little bit of cockiness, and I think that's where truly confidence come from, is that balance of cockiness and humbleness and being able to use those together at the same time?
Alyssa Dver:
Well, I appreciate what you're saying. And I don't disagree. I will say that just because of someone who studies this, and we have broken down the difference between cockiness and confidence, I would argue that it's not cocky to tell yourself, hey, if somebody else can do it, I can do it too. Right. It's self-belief that overrides self-doubt. You know, it's like those little critters that are on your shoulders, saying you can do it. No, you can't. Yeah, right. And being very clear with yourself saying knock it off, I can do this. And you know, that's really tremendous. So like, when you were doing and, of course, we're not going to talk the details of any one of your missions, but you hear you are in some pretty scary situations, I'm sure where that voice in the head is going, I don't think, you're gonna be able to do this, like, what do you do?
John Brewer, Jr:
Well, the funny thing about that is, is some of my more, you know, in real life with life-or-death experiences, you really don't think about that at all. It's just and maybe that's a lot to do with the training that we went through and having that experience and, and, you know, scenario-based training that we do. So, we're already conditioned to deal with that type of stuff. I'd say more. So my, where my panic would come from is during training because at any point time during what we call the qualification course, which is what we go through before we graduate and then move on to a unit you can fail out of it and go to a regular army unit. And I would say I was more deathly afraid of that happening than I was at any point in time on deployment of something happening to me, and really that’s because you know, you have to live with that right to where You have a failure, and then you live with that for the rest of your career or whatever it might be. But so, at the same time, so that type of, like I said before, and I actually did fail out through a certain course that we went through the medic course, actually the first time of me going through, and then that's when I reclassed to weapons sergeant. And I was definitely afraid of being kicked out the Q-course at that point in time. And, and really, it was just about understanding what happened, knowing that it did happen, and then just moving past this as fast as possible. Because really, if I were to carry that with me, at an emotional level for any period of time, it would have started seeping into there, you know, my other performances or in other phases of training. So, you really have to have like, you know, it was just I forget that show now it's called Ted Lasso, he talks about having a goldfish brain to where you know, you're very short, your short-term memory is very quick. And there's a quick turnaround, you have to forget about the bad stuff so that you can move on and perform at a high level.
Alyssa Dver:
Yeah, I appreciate that. So, you know, part of, I think what you're going to tell me about being self-reliant is having that self-awareness that like, you know, that knock it off moment where you're like, come on, you're not being rational, you're not being fair to yourself, you know, it's not even true, probably. So, talk to me a little bit about self-reliance, and why did you pick that area to kind of focus your next set of career moves? Like, what is it about that space that draw draws you in?
John Brewer, Jr:
So really what it is; I have a vision of society to where everybody was self-reliant, that we would be able to, that we would lose a lot of our societal issues that we have, because there's a lot of dependency. And instead of enabling individuals to better themselves and their situation, we're more so causing dependencies, which is not good in any form, or fashion. And so, what ends up happening is, when you teach self-reliance, that's a little bit liberating to where they understand that, hey, I have more opportunity. You know, I'm not, I can, you know, and that's not saying that you do everything, because obviously, we delegate tasks to certain organizations, services, products, that, you know, we don't have time to do ourselves. But at the same time, we still understand those processes and those services, so that if something was a little iffy about it, we can say, hey, I know that I have knowledge of this. So when you do it a different way, I want you to either tell me why you're doing differently, or whatever it might be. And so that's really truly where self-reliance comes from. It's just understanding that, you know, it's, it's liberating, you're able to do a lot more with your life. And then it's not saying that you still do everything yourself, it's just saying that, hey, you have an understanding of how things go. So, you're never at the mercy of others. And that's truly where I want society to get is that we're not at the mercy of anybody. We can if we needed to, we can do it ourselves.
Alyssa Dver:
Yeah, it's a really interesting construct, to be honest with you. And it very much in parallel with the way that I believe to the name of my confidence book is Confidence is a Choice. You know, it's that ability to give somebody agency right to enable or power or equip them, you can pick your favorite word there, to make those decisions to say, Yeah, I can do this that does, you're right, it doesn't mean that you can't, or shouldn't get other people's input and ideas and data and research and think about things of course, but you know, it whether and I sit here and I can't even imagine being in that some of the situations you've been where you have to make those decisions for yourself, life or death, but give me some examples that you hear now from people, what is the cost of not being self-reliant? They come to you? And they're like, John, I need help. Why? Why are they asking for help?
John Brewer, Jr:
Yep. So, you know, in the realm of obviously from a military training and things like that, mostly I focus on safety and security, and then also the medical side, because I think it's very important in this also a very good example of, of the self-reliance because a lot of first aid techniques is very simple. And though it might seem overwhelming to you know, a layman's person to where, you know, they've had no medical training themselves, the point of self-reliance for medical care when it comes down to it is very important, because one, when you call the ambulance, you're gonna be waiting, you know, however long it could be 5 10 minutes, depending on where you're at, it could be longer than that, but during that time, someone might be losing their life, and it's probably a loved one. And so, that's a good example of like, for self-reliance for being able to provide at least basic first aid. One you're not having to rely on third party to get there and then provide the first aid you can do it there yourself, you if you have the confidence to do so. You know that you're able to do CPR, or stop a bleed, or, you know, just calm the person down enough to where the situation is less chaotic for everybody, which is a big thing too, because obviously, chaos, then your vitals go up, which is not good in any traumatic scenario. So, you know, it just goes along with that to where, it's not the definitive care, because obviously, they would have to still go to the hospitals, things like that. And just like with any other systems in place, there's probably still going to be another level that the service or operation goes to, but at least you can take care of it from the foundation or from the start. And that's truly where self-reliance is the key.
Alyssa Dver:
Yeah, yeah. And it calls to mind a podcast that I did not too long ago on the different types of enablement, right. You can be an enabler, if you are enabling somebody to become self-reliant, right, if you're teaching or helping somebody, or being a thought partner, just helping them sort through things. But I think you're right, when you when you are completely dependent on somebody else. If I'm wondering, you know, it's just a fresh example, in my head, my son came back for visiting his grandparents and, you know, he had reprogram all the TVs not reprogram, they just show them how to use the TV remotes and all the phones and everything. And, you know, I think that, you know, as we get older, you know, I wonder, you know, do you see differences in age groups, as far as their ability to become self-reliant, or their resistance to be self-reliant?
John Brewer, Jr:
Honestly, my mother is kind of, me growing up, I remember my mother just being like, a go getter, you know, just everything, she did everything. And then, you know, just recently, it's gotten to the point where she's asking me a lot of questions on how to do stuff. And I was like, well, I thought you knew how to do you know, this is things, obviously, over time, there's certain systems that have changed in technology and things like that, but it's relatively all the same. And so, I think with age, there comes a little bit of, especially with technology, the way it is, you start to think that things have far exceeded your understanding. And in some cases, that's true, but also like, we're definitely not in sci fi society yet. So, nothing is ever truly out of grasp for anybody to understand. And there's an actual, I’ve looked at children's book that that actually, you know, explain quantum physics and stuff like that. So and that and that's truly what everybody should be doing is fine, whatever education level you're at, for these concepts, and just take it for what it is because you don't have to be an expert on it truly, you just need to be able to understand the, the foundation to it or the core concepts. And then like I said, just use it for what it's worth for you but, but it's definitely something that I think people should be curious about and question and, and things of that nature.
Alyssa Dver:
Alright, well sometimes these things are easier said than done. And you know, I think somebody who's listening maybe like I'm not John, I can't do what he does, right? So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a quick break, give a little love to our sponsors, and come back, I want you to really give listeners an idea of things that they can do to become more self-reliance very non weapons, grade things. So, we'll be right back stay tuned.
This podcast was sponsored by the American Confidence Institute. ACI uses basic brain science to teach you not what, but how to think with more confidence. ACI is endorsed by top universities and business experts. And it is accredited by the Society for Human Resource Management, and the International Coaching Federation. Learn more about ACI as uniquely empowering keynotes, workshops, online training, and coaching certification at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.
Alyssa Dver:
All right, John, I'm ready. If somebody is literally sitting there listening to this podcast going well, I'd like to be less dependent on other people other things, what are some of the suggestions that you can give them that they can do right now.
John Brewer, Jr:
So, first thing is understanding yourself and that's just having an awareness of one what you want out of life and your aspirations, your purpose and things like that, because obviously, all that will line you know, whatever you need to do will align with that purpose. But also what that also entails us understanding your strengths and limitations and being able to understand that yes, there are some things that I'm not that great at and then there's other things that I am and the you want to bolt, you want to obviously still improve your strengths, but then at the same time, kind of limit the gaps in your limitations.
The second thing would be question everything, and I don't necessarily mean you know, become a conspiracy theorist, although sometimes that's warranted, but also at the same time when people like especially professional services tell you something, asked them why that's the case. Because anytime I have a plumber that comes in, he says he's going to do whatever he's going to do. I asked him, “Why are you going to do that? And how are you going to do it? And you know, one, that's for my knowledge. And two is also to vet if he knows what he's talking about, or if he's just trying to sell me on a service.
And then three, is just be curious and seek new experiences. Because truly perspective is where we gain a lot of knowledge and confidence. And I think that really being curious and see, seeing those new experiences will be leaps and bounds of what anything else that you could probably do in your life. Because we have that comfort zone, and we'd like to stay there. But every now and then we need to venture out of that and really start to see what's outside of our normal view of the world so to speak.
Alyssa Dver:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I think podcasts are particularly great ways to explore curiosity. So here I was asking you even questions about what the what was special forces right, but I think as a just as a general person, anyone who knows me, well would say I am always curious, asking questions. Not just because I want to feed my own, you know, knowledge bank, but in many ways, it allows me then to connect with other people. So, it's not as much self-reliant as it is connecting too, right? I think that that opens some really nice doors, maybe that team that you're on, you know, when you get to know people better your self-reliance can reduce, because you know, that other people do have your back if you need them. So, interesting, full circle here. John, you and your book, let's talk about that where people can find you and the book and the best way to reach you if they have more questions.
John Brewer, Jr:
Alright. So, my book is Fight for Your Best Life. And it is a self-defense kind of safety and security book, but it is definitely as tones of self-help. And really, it's meant to better your entire life rather than just the safety and security aspect of it, but that that is available on Amazon. And then also people can find me on LinkedIn, especially if you want to collaborate professionally. And then also have a website, mindshieldand spear.com, which will have info on the book and then also some other services that I will be providing in the future.
Alyssa Dver:
Great and well, of course, include all of that in the show notes. So, thank you so much listeners for being here with us today. John, thank you for sharing. Again, thank you for your service, your support and your mission to help us make the world a lot more self-reliant. And in that way more confident.
John Brewer, Jr:
No problem. Thanks for having me.
Alyssa Dver:
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
