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My Uncle Has a Country Place No One Knows About

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I'm going to take you back to1981. My brother (3 years older than me) turned me on to numerous bands: Kiss, ac/dc. Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant, Van Halen, Black Sabbath and... RUSH! 
We lived on the WestSide of Grand Rapids, near Richmond Park. Back in those days I would still often go to the store with my Mom. We'd go to 'Little Meijers.' It was the last of the smaller grocery stores of the Meijer chain at the time. It closed down only a few short years after the time of this story.
Little Meijer was only a few blocks away from our house, may three quarters of a mile or so. It had a tiny... and I mean teeny tiny little 'music section', made up of a handful of albums (you know, vinyl records), a few cassettes and some simple electronic stuff. If you looked up on the top shelf shoved in the corner, you could still find an 8 track cassette on clearance!
Anyway, I saw this album, new and shiny... 
RUSH Moving Pictures
My little tween brain said... I NEEDED it!
I wasn&…
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Connecting Off the Grid

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Funny how sometimes it takes getting 'off the grid' to connect...Well...
I reconnected with an old friend of mine. He's been wanting to go out camping for a while now, so... 
Off the grid we went for a few days. 
We went up in the Manistee National Forest near Bitley, Michigan. 
It was really good to reconnect and spend some time together. We bonded with some shared adversity in the woods... It was cold and rainy pretty much everyday... However, we had a great time and are looking forward to doing it again!   
Do any of you have a friend who you haven't connected with in a long time?
Sure you do!
Give one of them a call and reconnect with them. Go out for coffee, lunch, dinner, or drinks.
Time moves so quickly! Days turn to weeks, months, years and decades!
Before you know it there is a lot of time in between...
The second thing is that you may have noticed that my last email had a number of links.
Problem is (if you tried them) most of them were disconnected! (oh, shi*t...)
Oops.…
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How I Beat the FBI Pistol Qualification Course

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Me doing some shooting at Caliber 3 Counter Terrorism & Security Academy in Israel

Oh, where to start!?
As I was telling you several weeks ago, I decided to reinstate my concealed pistol license. Being that I advocate responsible gun ownership and usage, I wanted to make sure I also dialed in my shooting skills. Being that I haven't shot that often in more than a few years I decided to return to the basics (again) and review things from the ground up so to speak. 
I had many gracious offers from you PeaceWalker Community members to help me get back where I needed to be (and beyond...).
One of the offers came from a (semi) local shooting instructor, Skip Coryell. Skip is a former Marine, a USCCA firearms instructor and the co-host on nationally syndicated Frontlines of Freedom Military Talk Radio Show. He is also one of the featured instructors on our PeaceWalker Private Membership - Tactical Firearms Defense Module. 
The past few weeks, I've taken two of his advanced pistol cou…
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They Want You Broken

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How Do You Stay Un-Broken?
There are a lot of ways to be Broken.
Ethically? Emotionally? Physically? Socially? Financially? Psychologically? Spiritually? Structurally? Politically? Philosophically?
...I could keep going, but I think you are getting my drift.
Most of our unrest, conflict and violence comes from broken people doing broken things. They are trying to feel less broken at the expense of others...
Some of them are scratching an itch that being broken brought on. 
There are even some who hold on to their broken-ness so much that they actually enjoy breaking others for their own amusement.
Some people like it when others are Broken, that way they don't feel as bad about themselves.
"I may be bad, but look at THAT guy?!"
or
"See, I'm not that bad."

Logic like that paves the way so they don't have to really deal with their own Brokeness.
Some people make it an unhealthy competition...
"Yea, you think that's bad?! That's nothing... Look at me!"

No Excus…
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Here's the Thing w/Difficult Conversations...

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There are many types of difficult conversations...
The ones I'm talking about today are those who we have with people we know and want to be able to trust.
You see, trust, in the most basic sense, is placing confidence in another person, and in return, them placing confidence in you. 
In Brené Brown’s book, Daring Greatly, she shares a story of her young daughter losing trust in her best friends and her subsequent decision to never trust anyone again. Brené uses the analogy of a marble jar to help her daughter understand how trust is built. 
Here's how it works:
Every person has a metaphoric 'Trust Jar' that marbles are added to or taken away from. 
Here are some ways to add to the jar:
~ Spend quality time with that person ~ When they do good things for you (w/the right intent) ~ When they open up and share stories about themselves. ~ When they are honest with you. 
The more stories, experiences and deeds they share, and the deeper they are, the more marbles you are able to add …
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SFT... WTH?!

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I just re-watched a movie I really like, it's called Seven Days in Utopia. It's about a young, up and coming pro-golfer who just melted down at his last tournament.
He ends up wrecking his car in the middle of nowhere, a place called Utopia. He gets help from an old guy named Johnny, who he later finds out was a top notch PGA golfer.
Johnny takes Lucas under his wing and mentors him in golf and more importantly in Life. And just like a 'Mr. Myogi' of the golfing world, Johnny coaches the young lad into developing both his golf and personal game. 
By using some very unique training methods (much like Myogi), Johnny instills the lessons that could ensure Luke's future in golf and as a man. 
One of the exercises that johnny has his new protege' do is to begin to:
See It Feel It Trust It
SFT
Ironically, this is a process that I help students to develop as well... Only, rather than golf we are training how to defend ourselves (and others).
Learning how to SEE conflict from a …
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Is This the Calm Before the Storm?!

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Those who know me understand that I'm not one of these doomsday, prepper, conspiracy theorists, alien abduction, zombie apocalypse fear'n kind of guys.
HOWEVER... =)
There are many experts who are thinking that we may be experiencing the calm before the storm of what's coming regarding (more) government control and (potentially) violent social erosion & unrest. 
And I have to be honest here...
It has me a bit concerned as well...
I'm pretty level headed and 'moderate' when it comes to things like this, but with what we've experienced in the last few months, there is good reason to be vigilant at the very least. 
There has been a lot of change and with change comes conflict. There is still a lot of uncertainty with some big issues coming up on the horizon: 
~ This pandemic  ~ The November election  ~ The economy  ~ Government control & power ~ National efforts to de-fund our police ~ Social/political movements that are sweeping people up to draw sides ~ Social me…
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