The Velvet Hammer Podcast
The Velvet Hammer is a hard-hitting series that clearly explains missions, training, and world events. These stories are sometimes intense but always filled with powerful life lessons.
David is a successful businessman and has created several successful enterprises from the ground up. David is a decorated United States Air Force veteran with over a decade of honorable service. He founded the Urban Warfare Center (2002-2012) and is a former Dive Rescue International public safety SCUBA Instructor. His background includes humanitarian missions, military operations on multiple continents, search and rescue, defensive tactics, anti-human trafficking, counter-terror, and certified bodyguard for high-risk areas. He is a small arms expert, National Taekwondo Champion, and the producer and director of over 16 commercial films. More can be found at www.davidburnell.com
The Velvet Hammer Podcast
The Fear of CHANGE and the Reality of GROWTH
Change is hard, in fact the brain has a real physiological response to change . Part of the brain—the amygdala—interprets change as a threat and releases the hormones for fear, fight, or flight. Your body is actually protecting you from change. That is why so many people when presented with a new idea—even a good one, with tons of benefits—will resist it. This podcast identifies three keys to overcoming this response and illustrates how we can learn to win!
For more information, please visit www.davidburnell.com
Today's podcast is about change, you know, I'm the velvet hammer. Well, so what does that mean? It means I like to hit really hard, but I like to wrap everything that I do around this velvety soft love. So the truth can be hard for us. It's hard for me. In fact, I'm going through significant change right now, physically, as I hired this phenomenal trainer, uh, and a nutritionist, a master nutritionist who is guiding me through significant health increases by tremendous sacrifice by unfilling from myself, layers of dysfunctional thinking related to food, whether, you know, it's it's comfort food or the cravings versus being, um, fueled. These are the things that I'm learning. You know, the interesting part about change is that our brain actually resists it. It's biological via amygdala, which is the middle brain, which we used to phone focus on in the urban warfare center to increase retention of, of our training concepts for soldiers, airmen, uh, Marines, federal agents, and law enforcement officers. The amygdala, the middle brain is the repository for all of our memories. It's also a place where we store experiences trauma. It's also the place where the brain, when it realizes there's a threat, which change can trigger the threat response in the brain, it triggers fear or fight or flight, and also freeze our body's actually trying to us from change. It's PRI trying to make it so that we will not be exposed to something that might hurt us. And this is an inhibitor psychologically to prevent us from being chained to the past. And that's really a powerful concept. So this trainer, her name is Tamara wat and she's a professional athlete also, and has competed in the fitness world for a very long time and done very well. A matter of fact, when, uh, we visited her home for my first consultation, she had a bank of trophies grief if I didn't even count'em, but there was, I don't know, 15 or 20 trophies. Uh, so it's a combination of body building slash flexibility and strength is the genre that she participated. She's also an extreme athlete in the, in the Spartan circuit and some of these other circles, but what's really neat about her in peeling, the onion. So to speak of our own behaviors is said she has the science down, pat, cuz she's a master certified nutritionist and sports trainer and she has the behavioral side down pat. And then she has the methodology how to apply the science and how to understand the behaviors. Every time I talk to her, I think I have arrived at learning something new and I constantly am amazed at how much I don't know, but what I also like about this process that I'm going through, where I've lost over 30 pounds in three weeks health in a healthy way is that I have complete control and ownership over what goes into my mouth. What I eat. I have began to understand the difference between cravings and being fueled. And I'm learning some of the science that is essential for us to have healthy eat nutrients in our body and, and how those things interact with each other. I had no idea that some of the stuff that I have been emotionally tied to for so long and I still struggle with cravings on is tied to some chemical reactions that take place in my body. And these are all things that I don't expect to be a master of, but I do expect to become I'm competent in as I adjust what I feel my body with to be able to see greater results, I have a long way to go. And I'm excited about it. One of the things I think seen as I've changed is I've begun to embrace this change and be honest with myself to take ownership to as a good friend of mine named Michael Bailey says to lay cl to my circumstances, to my reality that, Hey, I I've, I've got too much weight. I'm not healthy. My liver's fatty. I need to make a change. So I don't become prediabetic or diabetic. That's a very real possibility as we age and our diet is not healthy. So what kind of a program is it David? Uh, you know, it's not keto, it's not Mediterranean. It's nothing like that. Matter of fact, she doesn't even focus on weight. She focuses on healthy nutrition and fueling the body correctly so that it responds organically naturally to improve. And what's happened to me as a result is that this tremendous falling off of weight that I have struggled with forever off and on. And I, like I said, I'm going all the way. What does all the way mean? I don't know what the bottom looks like on this because it's gonna be a continual process that I'll stick with for the rest of my life. And right now I'm just setting the base. I'm getting my body sorted out. I'm detoxifying my liver and, and my body and learning how to adapt to kind of the rabbit food out there. You know, lots of vegetables, uh, lots of good, healthy proteins, very limited carbohydrates at this stage, but down the road, healthy carbohydrates. And that doesn't mean I won't be able to, to have some good meals that we would call good meals. Like Thanksgiving were emotionally attached to that good meal, but it means that my choices might be varied. My choices might change as they already have. You know, I, I remember very vividly as I ran the urban warfare center for 10 years, from
Speaker 2:2002 to 2012 and trained thousands of federal agents,
Speaker 1:Police, military, and, um, airmen inside of my facility in the dynamics
Speaker 2:Of a close quarters fight
Speaker 1:In urban combat, we would use this, these significant tools
Speaker 2:To stress people out.
Speaker 1:We, we we've talked about this in
Speaker 2:Previous podcasts a little bit,
Speaker 1:Um, where rubber balls, 200 miles an hour, 30 rounds per second, uh, would stimulate a lot of learning because it opens up the middle brain, the amygdala that we talked about earlier, and it
Speaker 2:Impresses upon
Speaker 1:The, the brain, a lesson through pain, through, um, the sensory overload that you have done something incorrectly. You should not do that again, such as sticking your muzzle through the windows. So the bad guys can see it by not moving too into danger, not by not pressing muzzled To nose and everywhere your nose goes. Your muzzle goes
Speaker 2:To save time for engagement
Speaker 1:To shoot, move, communicate, and take terrain to never pay for
Speaker 2:Real estate twice. All these principles
Speaker 1:That are wrapped around the urban warfare center in its decade of existence are not unlike what's going on right now with me and my change. I just happen to be in the combat
Speaker 2:Stress program
Speaker 1:With Tamara wat peeling back the
Speaker 2:Layers of dysfunction as we did with these
Speaker 1:Soldiers and federal agents
Speaker 2:And police officers
Speaker 1:For a long time,
Speaker 2:We would put'em in a
Speaker 1:Scenario where we'd just overload'em in
Speaker 2:The first 30 to 60 minutes
Speaker 1:And they'd walk out going what the heck just happened to me.
Speaker 2:And then we would start to peel back and say,
Speaker 1:You know what? The
Speaker 2:Classic was to fear classic response to
Speaker 1:The middle. Amidala the middle brain being over stimulated and you not having a
Speaker 2:Relative experience to draw back upon.
Speaker 1:So what I Hope's happening to me in this dynamic change that's taking place
Speaker 2:Is
Speaker 1:That I reprogram my brain and my body to understand how good it feels so that my middle brain remembers that when I decide that I want that key line pie and or I want that treat. So to kind
Speaker 2:Of wrap this segment out, I would break down
Speaker 1:My experience with change at the age of a rip sea years old with a body that has been abused and, and broken its several layers. I would say first I had to acknowledge that my flaw thinking existed wherein I thought because of age and injury, I would just continue to be more dysfunctional until I finally of eventually died. And I cannot tell you how wrong that is, how skewed that vision was and how
Speaker 2:At this age, I'm having more energy,
Speaker 1:More powerful workouts in the morning, longer sustained workouts and feeling better about them. Um, as I progress with my nutrition focused lifestyle. So the second piece outside of recognizing and identifying our lies, the things we tell ourselves as my sweetheart likes to say the stories we tell ourselves, we look for information and data to validate our skewed perspectives. Well what's truth and what's not David. Well, I am finding out with Tamara as it relates to nutrition and fitness, that the truth is in the science it's in the methodology and it's in the behavior and that's no different than the urban warfare center. There was science involved in affecting the middle brain. There was behavioral analysis in how stress affected the body and the brain for these soldiers, agents and law enforcement guys and cows. And then there was a methodology to steam that learning that we applied repeatedly throughout a 10 area, tra 10 hour training day until the lessons were learned and eventually mastered in a short period of time. That program was so powerful. I went to England in 2005 and presented it to the British at Warminster at their land warfare center, the oldest training for in the world, a Roman established training base that exists still to this day and the British run it. And I spoke to the special operations folks there and explained to them how in a short period of time, we could induce stress and get this retained learning. So that's part of principle. Number two here. The first is honesty with yourself. The lies back second is to have the process validated to Val, use a valid process and validate it, the methods, the tools and the science and the third piece, which is the hardest one for me. And I think a lot of people is to stay the course, continue the mission. Charlie, Mike never quit and take little victories as huge achievements. As you run down this path, imperfectly or perfectly, however your makeup, uh, allows you to move forward. It's been wonderful speaking to you this morning, and I appreciate so much the opportunity that I have to have a personal experience recently, that has been one of the harder things I've done in a very long time to not yield to the cravings and to let the science of healthy fats and healthy proteins and nutrition actually feel my body correctly. So I'm really not hungry and I feel better. And my body's shedding up tremendous amounts of weight that's not needed. The result will be interesting to see six months to a year from now as I stay the course. I hope you too stay the course now and tomorrow. Have a great day.
