The Commanders Challenge

[00:00:03] You're listening here to PBN. Your path back the stability here.

[00:00:32] Morning everybody, what is up? Back, the week is upon us. The Matter of Facts podcast is here already. Snow in the Gulf of America. Snow in the Gulf of America. Firewall Forge is with us in chat. Oh yes, The Commanders Challenge is only days away.

[00:00:55] If you've been with us for any duration, you have seen it. I don't know if you have partaken. It's a test. In fact, I may have to add to whatever it is that my Commanders Challenge looks like this year, I may have to add to it.

[00:01:17] So there's this strange, so the Commanders Challenge was built to help me survive the month of February.

[00:01:25] I come from this ideology that winter is hell. And I've worked hard to not believe it as much. But something about February, as it starts to wane, as January begins to wane into February, it's like, we've got another month of this. A lot of this has to do with me being such a fisherman.

[00:01:52] Like fishing, most of you know it, but fishing has been a huge part of my life, my whole life. And I married a woman who, she just took to fishing like a fish in water. I mean, just really good right out of the gate. And a southern girl, you know, so no problem wading in the water and catching fish and having fun.

[00:02:18] You know, and then you have two boys on top of that. And my oldest son really is into fishing. My youngest, he's getting there. So it's I think that plays a lot into it. And and what I've found is the more you can punish yourself in February, the quicker it goes by.

[00:02:40] No, but the commander's challenge really is a focus on kind of fighting the low levels of vitamin D in the depression of February. That's really what it's all about, but it'll make you better. You know what I mean? It will do great things for you. So since we've been prompted by chat, let's do something that I never do. So let's just go right into the show topic. Let's do something crazy.

[00:03:12] I think I got to bring up in order to do this, I got to bring up the commander's challenge. I know a lot of people have seen it in the past. I know many of the longtime listeners have done it and will. Some of the stuff requires a bit of explanation. And this is building on our January routine, right? You're still doing your January routine. You're still doing your dry fire. You're still doing your your kettlebell work, all that kind of stuff.

[00:03:43] The kettlebell is going to become important to this show, guys. It's going to become very important to this show. Maybe every show that I do. So if you don't have a kettlebell or a single dumbbell, you may want to consider that. We have a new piece of technology here in this camera that I bought that may give us the capability to bust a workout right after PBN News. I think it might be kind of cool. I think it might be kind of fun.

[00:04:13] So let's get this. Let's get this commander's challenge up here. What do I want to share? I want to share a window. And that's the window. All right. So it's a 30 day challenge. I don't even know if there's 30 days in February, actually. It didn't start out as my sort of February. No, 28 days. So it's a 28 day challenge.

[00:04:42] It didn't start out as my February. What do they call it? Binky. But it turned into my February binky over time. Last year, we did a really great urban survival challenge called the Gotham Get Out. I guess I should run the Gotham Get Out. Maybe I'll run it this weekend because I think I'm going to be doing some traveling. But we did the Gotham Get Out in February and it sucked.

[00:05:13] No, it wasn't too bad. I think staying up the whole night kind of sucked. And being cold for like 12 hours was pretty rough. But then we had a delicious breakfast at the Silver Diner the next morning. And it was a good time to hang out with the Patriot Power Hour boys in person. It was fun. The Joneses, you know, to be well, to be honest with you, the Gotham Get Out was so well done because of the cache placement.

[00:05:42] So we had a route to travel and sort of a short-ish bug out simulation. We had a route to travel. We had survival caches to find that were placed by the Joneses. We had to not just take the whole cache, but we had to rummage through and find like what's worth taking and what's worth leaving and all that kind of stuff. And man, yeah. So we wound up with a bunch of different things at the camp.

[00:06:13] It was a ball. We wound up in the woods overnight constructing shelters with tarps. It was good. Wind block. We did well. We did well. I look back on it. One of the things we could have done better, in my opinion, was our shelter building. And it was fundamentally willpower. And that was what was surprising about it.

[00:06:42] So at the end of it all, we had to combine. We had to form the Voltron of survival shelters. We had to combine all the stuff that we gathered from the caches. We started out with nothing. The other cool phase about the Gotham get out was we had to buy our clothes from a thrift store. And we had a budget and a time limit. I can't remember what the budget was. 20 bucks, maybe. So we showed up. I showed up literally in like a t-shirt and a long sleeve base layer underneath.

[00:07:10] No hat, gloves, nothing. I think it was like 20 degrees out that night or something, 18. So we had to go through. We had to buy all of our gear in this thrift shop. Whatever was in there. We had to go through. Backpack the whole nine. And we had, I don't remember, three minutes, five minutes, something like that. Get in there. I got so lucky. I found this unbelievable wilderness, sort of like outdoorsy hiking jacket. Got a great backpack.

[00:07:40] Yeah, it was fun. But anyway, the reason I went on that tangent is because it pushed me hard in February. It pushed me. I hate the cold. You know what I mean? I can deal with it a lot better now than I used to, but I really do hate the cold. So for me, doing that hard thing in the cold, I don't know. It sort of gave me sort of an upswing in February. That's what the Commander's Challenge is all about. It's 30 days. It's four things.

[00:08:10] It doesn't seem like a lot. It's four things. We'll call sadhana meditation for now. Okay? If you get into the Commander's Challenge, I have a video explaining the sadhana practice. But fundamentally, it's a meditation in the morning. Get your day started. The fasting. The fasting. The fasting is really determined by you. Okay?

[00:08:38] Lately, and I think what I'll probably do through February, is I've been doing just a couple meals a day. I've been doing, like I'll eat today at noon. And I don't know. That's a weird one for me because I love breakfast, but I just eat breakfast food at noon. Because I love coffee and eggs from the coop and bacon and all that. I love all that stuff. So fasting, however you want to do it.

[00:09:04] You know, if you've never fasted, I highly recommend you do this challenge. Even if it's an intermittent fast. Even if time-restricted eating, you know, like I'm not going to eat from after dinner till, you know, like mid-morning or lunch the next day. And you just do that every day. Or, and I might polish it off of something like this.

[00:09:29] See, I was supposed to do a three-day fast, which might sound like a lot, but trust me, you can do it. A three-day fast starting January. But I got leveled by some sort of Dr. Fauci concoction. Some sort of gain-of-function research hit me hard, man. It hit me hard. I still got issues. I've got like cartilage damage or something like that here.

[00:09:58] It's really not a big deal. But it's sore still. You know what I mean? And I would be laying up on the pillow coughing my head out. And I actually felt like I like strained an abdominal muscle too from all the coughing. That's long-heeled. But this thing is lingering. I'm guessing it's like a cartilage injury in the ribs. Feels good today. Not bad at all. But, you know, it is what it is. So we start with the meditation.

[00:10:28] Move into the fast. At some point through the day, you execute on what is called the 50. The 50 is something that I made up. Calisthenics. Calisthenics, 50 reps. If you want to do 50 of each three exercises, that's what the 50 is. If you want to do 50 of one exercise and do that, whatever. 50 crunches today.

[00:10:51] The way that I do it, 50 reps of any three calisthenics exercises, squats, push-ups, sit-ups, you know, whatever. Something along those lines. If you like to do plank, then you can replace the 50 reps for, you know, a standard time. Two minutes. Something like that. But I like the calisthenic aspect of the 50 because you don't need anything. You know what I mean?

[00:11:16] I can, and I do, drop down on that wood floor right there sometimes and knock the 50 out while I'm working. And then to round out the day for the commander's challenge is the gratitude prayer, which is kind of cheating because I do the gratitude prayer nightly. I try to. Some nights I pass out. Some nights I get distracted. But I try to do the gratitude prayer nightly.

[00:11:43] And that is literally a listicle, like literally a list, listing the wonderful things about your life. It sounds like whatever, but I could tell you it will improve everything. It will improve your entire outlook on life. I mean, it's impossible not to. And I don't mean like, like try not to be a caveman about it. You know what I mean?

[00:12:09] Try not to be like a wife, kids, steak. You know what I mean? Nothing wrong with that being on your gratitude prayer list, but really think about it. You know, really think about it. Get down into the details of the day. Think about the day. See, some people struggle to pay attention to the world. So they lose sight of that gratitude prayer.

[00:12:33] Like, you know, you walk out front like in the morning if you wake up in the morning and you see the sun coming up. You're like, holy shit, look at that sunrise. You know what I mean? That's one of those things. Or like, I don't know. Like, do you ever get, for those of you who grew up in the cold weather environments, when the cold air comes blowing in, do you ever get that like waft of frost in the air and it takes you back to your childhood? Like being outside and being outside in the cold? I don't know.

[00:13:04] It's the little things, PBN family. That's what the gratitude prayer is about. It's about overwhelming your mind just before bed with like all the good things in life and thanking God for them. So more on the commander's challenge to come. But that's the deal. That is the deal, folks. So definitely saddle up. Okay? It's not a lot. It's not as heavy as our routines. Our routines are heavy. You know, it's a heavy lift.

[00:13:33] I think we've got like a, what are we doing? A 50, yeah, a 50 kettlebell clean this month. That's a lot. That's a lot. I knock it out in one set, 25 on each side. That's a big lift. But it's, you know, you are what you do every day. That's the deal. Right? You are what you do every day. L2 survive slides into chat. What timing? What timing?

[00:14:01] Because he has an incredible video that you all have to see. I was checking the YouTube channel just this morning. I rolled up in there to see what he had been working on. I'm going to put this link into the chat. You got to see this emergency gear charging station over at L2 Survives YouTube channel. Okay?

[00:14:33] Backup power solutions, man. Wait till you see it. Lanterns and bad and how to set it all up on racks. What it is is like a lot of people have this idea of like managing battery power with a whole home powered by solar. You know what I mean? And what I would say is how do you manage your charging and your battery power now with what you have?

[00:14:59] This is a very cool setup that anybody can do. You know, what's really cool about L2 Survives setup is anybody can do it. And it'll put you in a position. And the reason for the video, not to put words in your mouth, nub, but the reason for the video was really watching power outages.

[00:15:21] Watching power outages through the last few months and him saying, I'm going to show you how we store power and effectively charge things so that you know when it's go time, what you need is charged. And I can tell you from experience, like we don't depend on a ton of charged up things, but I can tell you from experience, if you're not intentional about charging your preps that need charged, something's not going to be there when you need it.

[00:15:50] You're going to reach for that nice flashlight that you've been using and you didn't charge and it's going to die. You know? It's a good one, Jay Ferg. You'll love it. It's a cool little build. Let's get into the cash. What do we have? We have a funny, we have almost a comedic item from inside the cash today. It's not, I mean, it's fun is what it is. It's fun. It's from the home security superstore and I don't know.

[00:16:20] It's cool. Let me big size myself real quick. One of the things I forget to do is show you guys what the hell is going on. So yeah, let's get into it. What's in the cash today?

[00:17:05] Hey. Swords and things along those lines to hold things like that increases your testosterone. I really love it. One of the big things that I look for in knives that I never looked for in knives in the past, particularly knives that you're not going to like chiffonade the basil with this thing, right? You know what this knife is for.

[00:17:33] But like I said, you can look at the point there and you can see it needs. This is a cool little project, man. When my son saw it, he lost his mind. He was like, good guy. I want that one. But anyway, one of the things that I look for in knives a lot now are, well, it's really a hilt more than anything, right? Like, do I have my other knife on me? My Kershaw?

[00:18:00] Like I said, if you're into these kind of fun things, link down below the Home Security Superstore. There's a ton of cool stuff at the Home Security Superstore. But I had this sitting on the shelf and I was like, you know what, man? We should put this thing on there. But I want to show you something, okay? It's something that kind of, hey, garden girl, what's up? So this is the knife that I carry every day. This is the Kershaw. I have no idea what it is.

[00:18:30] I don't know what the name is. But this is it. You see this little thing? Like this is the hilt of the knife. I'm going to get graphic because it's what I've been thinking about with knives for about six months to a year. If this knife were to get covered in blood, right, I feel so nervous about slipping my hand up.

[00:18:54] You know, if it's going into something, I feel nervous about my finger getting wet with blood and slipping up the blade. So one of the things that I've been focusing on with knives going forward is, you know, a real hilt on a knife, right? Oh, no, garden girl. It'll heal stronger. Just look at it that way.

[00:19:23] So a knife with a grip like this is kind of like the opposite problem, right? The opposite problem. I don't know. It's fun. It's fun. I thought we'd do a little something fun on a Monday from inside the cache. It's called like the skull and bones or something at the home security superstore. There's a link to the home security superstore down below. I don't know. You know, some things in life are just fun. And that's a fun one.

[00:19:52] So let's talk about tonight's guest. We've got a lineup, folks. I don't want to go too long on too many subjects, but that's kind of what I do. So we've got a guest tonight that's going to begin. It really is going to begin. L2 Survive in chat says Dow futures currently down 370. I don't know what that means. I literally don't know what that means.

[00:20:20] I know it's probably not a good thing, but I have no idea how not good it is. I don't own a stock. I own none. There's none of that. You know what I mean? In my world. All that said, tonight on PBN, we are not going to be doing Preppers live. We are going to be doing a live interview with a man named Richard Ramos. And what Richard Ramos is going to do, and I'm going to thank him for this tonight, hopefully I remember,

[00:20:49] is he's going to kick off a new phase at PBN. And that new phase at PBN is sort of a focus on interviews, not on every show, but on Mondays, right? Mondays and whenever else it's convenient. Personally, I'm entering into a phase in 2025 where we're going to interview people who are interesting.

[00:21:18] People who are doing things that are interesting. Interest me. Fundamentally. You know what I mean? Because there's a lot of people out there. And there's a lot of great survival and prepping people to bring on the show. And they make for great interviews usually, right? But there's also a lot of great people out there. And what I always preach to you guys is prepping is lifestyle.

[00:21:48] And it lends itself to sort of, well, the Dave Jones adage of establish a position and improve upon it daily. Which is a recipe for a great life. Establish a position, improve upon it daily. I mean, that's the recipe for a great life, right? Takes a lot of work. So, what we're going to do. Oh, I can put this on. Why not put Ramos up here? Where'd I go? What we're going to do tonight is we're going to have Richard Ramos on.

[00:22:18] He is a parenting specialist, fundamentally. That's kind of his deal. He's going to come on and talk about the youth. He's going to come on and talk about, I don't know, I'm sure we'll talk about his book, Parents on a Mission. But what really is interesting to me is sort of waging this war for the heart, mind, and loyalty of your children. You know what I mean?

[00:22:44] Like the, it's a weird world out there with parenting. Parents are weird. We have the weirdest parents in history. Do you know what I mean? Like parenting is, I think it has a lot to do with like all the advice books like these, right? All the advice, there's all kinds of different ways to do it. You know, like back in the day, it was like, whatever I got to do to keep this kid alive and working. It's kind of like, that was like the method.

[00:23:14] And even if he does die, we got 20 others, so we'll be okay. But nowadays we have one child and the parents are like, I don't know what parents think anymore. Parents are very weird. I'll never forget when I read that article about parents who don't let their kids have sleepovers. And I was like, whoa, this is a new thing. We're entering a new phase.

[00:23:40] So, you know, I talked about this yesterday and it's important to recognize it. Like the parents are at war with technology and the kids are at war with technology. This is just one example of the heart and the mind and the loyalty of your children, right? I think Richard Ramos is going to really open our eyes to a lot of things on tonight's show in terms of this.

[00:24:06] You know, how often do you really focus on intentional parenting and the things that you do and don't do? And, you know, in my life where I'm at, I'm going to be 39 years old here in a month. It's all about the bad for me anymore. You know what I mean? Like, it's all about what's missing. It's all about where I'm falling short. These are the things that I look for. You know what I mean?

[00:24:34] There's no, the hiding phase of life is over for me. You know that phase where you're like, no, you're doing okay, buddy. It's okay. You're doing good. You're really good at this. All it is for me is, what did I mess up? What am I messing up? What am I not doing? And it might sound like negative to you. And it probably is pretty negative way to look at things. But that's how I stay on the grind. That's how I recognize problems and all that.

[00:25:04] So I'm looking forward to hear what Richard Ramos has to say tonight. Like I said, 9 p.m. Eastern. This will be a PBN interview. I don't know what. I don't even know what we're going to title the show. I may just call it Richard Ramos and win the competition for the heart, mind, and loyalty of your children. Because it's a battle, man. It's a battle. There is sorrow in this world like you wouldn't believe. I don't know how much of it is.

[00:25:32] You know, there's a bunch of things to blame. So we'll get into that tonight on tonight's show live. Richard Ramos. We will be streaming right here wherever you're watching us. X, Rumble. Most likely you too. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, man. And like I said, he's the first in a line of guests who are not going to be preppers fundamentally.

[00:26:02] I have guests coming on that are not necessarily preppers and may not even necessarily talk about somewhat prepper-related things. See, it's hard for me to look at anything as not a prepper-related thing. I mean, if your children aren't a prepper-related thing, parenting is not a prepping-related thing. I don't know. Right? If you're a parent, it most certainly is. But it's a big wide world out there, folks. You know what I mean?

[00:26:29] And I want to introduce you to some people who are out there doing things. You know, people who like experts. You know what I mean? Who have focused in and honed in and wrote books on single topics. Singular topics. Singular focus. Lifetime of experience. Those people. I've listened to podcasts and have heard things. That have really changed my life. You know what I mean?

[00:26:54] Probably the biggest one of all was Jesse Itzler. Jesse Itzler. If you ever get a chance to listen to him. His podcast with Joe Rogan, the first one. Years and years ago. Three hours. I remember running through the woods and listening to this podcast. And just having revelation upon revelation. You can have revelations listening to podcasts.

[00:27:20] But there's things that happen in certain podcasts or in certain courses, classes, meetings, conversations. That they sew themselves to you. Like those ideas get sewn on to you. And then you go in that direction. And it could be a way that you think. A way that you work out. A way that you live. Whatever it is. And we have a vehicle to put that out there. And really, you know, give that to someone.

[00:27:49] It's a great gift. I mean, my life has been punctuated by these things. So, is that it? Did we do it? Is that a show? Let me look at the show notes. I think we did it, folks. Yeah, I don't necessarily. Oh, one more thing. One more thing. This is a very cool thing. I gotta be careful about, though. For those of you who are not on Twitter. Ooh, dude. We got a little something in here.

[00:28:19] We've got something new to unveil from our sponsor. Lima Tango Survival. They are now an official sponsor of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. You guys have heard a lot about them. Did you get your fire kit? Remember, we were supposed to buy out the fire kits last week. Lima Tango Survival. You're gonna dig on this thing. You know, what Lima Tango does that's really cool is they do varying kits.

[00:28:45] But what really caught my eye from the get-go were these massive kits. Massive. Like the Homestead. The Homestead is a survival crate. You know, and it's huge. LimaTangoSurvival.com. But you guys bought a bunch of fire kits. I'll be transparent with you. We showed off that fire kit. You guys placed a bunch of orders. Thank you very much. That's probably largely what got us the sponsorship deal.

[00:29:15] So thank you. And I started thinking about that. I started saying to myself, you know, I've been talking about this bag. The Gray Man bag. Which is, you know, it's an incredibly capable bag with a price tag of $170. I don't know how many of them we bought. What I do know is the moment I talked about a smaller and, you know, effective fire kit at $25. It took me. Oh, look what I did.

[00:29:43] See, my thing will actually zoom in. The camera's so sweet. I could do a whole podcast just showing you all the cool shit this camera does. But anyway, the fire kit for $25 moved really well. And then I started thinking practically. I started thinking, why did the fire kit move so well for $25? Obviously, it's cheaper, right? Than $170 for the bag I've been showing.

[00:30:13] And then I also started thinking like practicality. You know what I mean? And use. So rather than I was going to show you the big gigantic bag. I was going to show you a double bag for 2P. I may still. We're going to do all kinds of stuff with Lima Tango in 2025. They got great stuff. But then I started looking at their smaller kits and saying like this. Like I said from the get-go, they solve problems. You know what I mean?

[00:30:40] That's what this company does better than any other pre-made backpack company that I've seen. They solve problems. You know what I mean? And this is what I have next to me here is one of those things that solves problems. And we'll get to it probably tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll do a full review of that thing on Family Gear on the membership side. So visit pbnfamily.com and sign up for your membership. But visit limatango.com. All right. Check them out.

[00:31:09] Check out our great sponsor, limatango.com. I think I'm out of here, folks. Do I have the new? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that. We're going to go out with a promotion of the Prepper's Medical Handbook. Okay. It's our first video promo. There's no audio. And I can't talk over it either. So it's going to be a quiet outro. But for those of you watching, this is kind of the direction we're going to go with commercials

[00:31:38] because now we have the ability to run real visual stuff. And we got cool stuff, man. All of our sponsors are tremendous. We are still running the giveaway for Pack Fresh USA. They're going to be with us for a while. It's a sponsor also. So make sure you visit Pack Fresh USA. Bag up. Box up. Get the food storage game in order, man. You're going to dehydrate. You're going to freeze dry. You're going to vacuum seal.

[00:32:08] PackFreshUSA.com has it all. All right. So on that note, I do appreciate you guys. We're going to get out of here. All right. Talk to you soon, folks. All right. All right. .