[Intro][Intro]911, what's the nature of your emergency
Ashlie: Welcome back to another episode of tactical living by Leo worriers. I'm your host Ashlie Walton.
Clint: And I'm your co-host Clint Walton.
Ashlie: For today's episode we're going to talk about why it's important to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and how that's really the only way that you can grow. So just sit back, relax and enjoy today's content. Now Clint can you think of a single time that you and I have ever gone out on a holiday weekend and done anything? In terms of an event wait when you're not working.
Clint: I can't think of anything. We've talked about it, but we always talk ourselves out of it too.
Ashlie: We've been married for over eleven years and I can't either. I can't think of a single time that we've allowed ourselves to be immersed in a high population event on a holiday.
Clint: The only one that I just thought of was the presidential inauguration.
Ashlie: Yes. And that was because we knew that we would be surrounded by like-minded people and not a bunch of idiots who were going to just frustrate us and potentially ruin our time. But that's different for us this year. It's different because for the first time we decided that we're going to use the fourth of July holiday, mostly because we both have it off. We have the day to be able to spend together. About two months ago I received I'll say complimentary tickets to go see brad paisley in Las Vegas. And in addition to that a complimentary suite at the MGM hotel and that's not something to brag about, that just goes to show how much money we donate when we go to Las Vegas.
Clint: I think it's an easy cause for us.
Ashlie: And when I received that offer. Clint, I love brad paisley, our song. Most people in our relationship have a song that they've embodied to represent their love in their marriage and for us it's one that's written by brad paisley. And when I saw that offer it was right before your birthday. And I remember thinking how cool it would be to surprise you and to take you to Vegas. And for us to be able to just experience what Vegas is like on a holiday. The concert is what they call an exclusive concert. So it's for people that are a part of the rewards program with the m life hotel. So that means that it's not opens to public. You can't go on and buy tickets for this.
So I thought well that's pretty cool. I just wondered what it would be like to experience the fireworks and just to see other people enjoying themselves in their time as they celebrate the essence of what the fourth of July is and mind you I'm sure when we go there most people are going to be drunk out of their mind and ill intention when it comes to the whole reason why we even celebrate the fourth of July. But I thought it would be a cool thing to experience together, because we've never done anything like that before.
Clint: And we've always stuck to like fireworks shows that are localized or I've always had to work the fourth of July.
Ashlie: And I can't even remember the last time that we went to go see fireworks together.
Clint: Neither can I.
Ashlie: And those are the things that we did a lot while we were dating. You know we would go out. I mean even something as simple as going to an angel's game and then watching the fireworks at the end of an angel's game. And it brought me back to that feeling and how it feels to be together experiencing something like that. And after getting married and going through the motions and your schedule constantly changing. I was going to school until I finished my MBA program and that required a lot of my time to where we didn't go out and we use that as an excuse.
And mind you I needed to for the most part. But we never allowed ourselves to carve out any dedicated time to get to go and experience life together like that unless we go all out. We tend to, it's like we have this reserve bank where we tend to save two weeks where we know we're going to do an international trip. We try to do that every year and that's the only time that we get to explore and discover things together and really see new things and meet new people. And those are some of the best moments in our marriage outside of our home.
Clint: And I like that you said to meet new people. Because some of our closest friends now have been when we've actually taken that time to go out and explore and really get to know people from all around the country and the world just to hear their story and get to experience that with them. It's something that we share not only together, but with them. So it's an interesting and exciting experience to do.
Ashlie: We used to use the excuse of okay well neither one of us are comfortable being in an environment where there's too many people, too many unknowns. And especially with your profession being a police officer, that's really amplified. We always think of the worst-case scenarios. Then of course we have tragic events that happen. Like the shooting that had happen in Las Vegas and it starts to implant these things in your mind that almost make you want to prevent yourself from exploring and doing these kinds of things.
And we hear that story a lot when we go traveling somewhere especially when you know there were so many different terrorist elements happening, and it coincided with us traveling somewhere. Of course we would never go implant ourselves in the middle of a war zone and we're always very cognizant and do our due diligence when it comes to researching where we're going. But why would you stop yourself from exploring life because of all of the what if's. There are what ifs in our day to day that have a lot higher risk rate than doing something like going and enjoying yourself in Las Vegas for a couple of days on a holiday weekend.
Clint: Absolutely. I mean you run more risk driving to and from work than you do experiencing something like that. And I think it just it's all that numbers game and is it impossible? No absolutely not. But anything's possible in the world that we live in. And you can't limit yourself or your beliefs on not doing something just based off of maybe a couple of people's experiences behind it.
Ashlie: I think arming yourself too and knowing what your cognitive abilities are and what other types of things you're going to be doing like in our instance, we're not the type of people, we hardly drink. We're not the type of people are going to go get so trashed to where if something ever did happen that we wouldn't be in the right frame of mind to be able to act and react. And I don't ever want us to be held back because of the potential of something being uncomfortable or something really tragic happening, because that could always happen.
Clint: And I think a lot of that for us stems from, when we do international trips we don't always necessarily go to the safest countries in other people's mindsets. And then when I tell people we're going to; we'll say south Africa they look at me like why would you want to go there? And that was the most amazing trip that we've ever experienced.
Ashlie: And maybe that's a part of it. Maybe because our growth and knowing that by putting ourselves out there to be able to experience new things, that's really been the biggest breakthroughs in our life with being able to open our eyes to something more than just coming home and what we see in our own box every day.
Clint: Yeah. In just that whole experience that you miss out on by just coming home staying in your comfort zone is, it inhibits you to experience life in itself.
Ashlie: We've done a lot of personal development in this past year and we've done a great deal of things that are incredibly uncomfortable. A lot of unknowns. Things that we've had to do tremendous trial and error just to figure out to get from step one to step two when there's a thousand steps in the process. And I've found that there's no greater gift than being able to finally make it to step two and I never would have been able to even set my foot into step one if I hadn't have taken the leap of being uncomfortable and getting okay with the fact that.
I'm accepting and knowing that I have to get uncomfortable and be comfortable with being uncomfortable in order for me to grow in any way. And I think that's not just with the self-development. But that's also with your interpersonal relationships. With the things that you're able to see and experience in the world. Even something as simple as going to a different restaurant you've never been to before.
Clint: Ordering a new meal from the restaurant.
Ashlie: Yeah going to the same place you always go and just order something different. And we get so caught up in doing the same thing over and over. We don't even realize that we're doing it because it's comfortable. It's habitual. It's in our human makeup to do the things that don't induce any kind of stressors on our body, any kind of stressors emotionally. But what would happen for you if you allowed yourself to do something that you've never done before. Maybe it's something massive.
Maybe it's something really minute like parking in the parking space next to the one that you usually park in. What would that feel like? What would it feel like to just to be different for a second? To be different in knowing that you can always come back to that safe space. It's always there. But that you're making the choice to be uncomfortable. To see what journey you can go on and then what gifts you might discover on the back end of it. And Clint like you pointed out we've some amazing gifts in reference to the friends that we've made and the relationships that we've made based on traveling out of the country.
I never would have thought that traveling for the first time we would have come home with four best friends on the back end of it. Four best friends where we're always going to be there for each other. We celebrate holidays, we visit one another. Who would have thought I'm going to go to Italy and I'm going to come back home and I'm going to have four best friends?
Clint: Like Ashlie said, those relationships has just snowballed from there to where we know one another, and we go out of our way to not only help but to spend time with them.
Ashlie: It's happened every time that we've taken a trip. Every time we've allowed ourselves to be vulnerable and to be open to receiving those friendships. And I'm excited. I'm excited to have the time together next week. I'm excited to take a step back to where it all began and just date you for a weekend. And you just get to experience something that we might bypass as something simple like a firework show or like a concert. But with this new, this new awareness that we have in being able to explore the beauty and the gifts instead of all of the negative stuff that could happen. But to just be present and centered in the moment and to just allow us to be and to feel and to smell and to pay witness to all the craziness. All that, that is Vegas.
But I'm excited for that and as you sit there, if there's something in your own life that you can go out of your way to just explore, allow yourself to be immersed in. Take a chance on yourself and take a chance on a new opportunity and then to allow yourself to receive the gifts and the experience and the memories that come on the back end of that. Then you're really able to enjoy your tactical living.
