 At the time of filming this, I just lost my first legitimate chess game to my son. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we're out here today to talk about pride and how it relates to team building and maybe parenting. So I just lost my very first chess game to my son and he legit beat me. Like I didn't throw the game, I didn't try to lose. Like he legit beat me. And my pride is a little bit wounded. Now you can look at that and I can make excuses. I can say, well, I was distracted and we were doing other things or I made some mistakes that I shouldn't have made and whatever. I can make all the excuses in the world, but at the end of the day, I lost my chess game to my son. And now there's two directions that we can go from here. The first direction of course is the pride. It's the normal human reaction, right? I want to diminish my son's accomplishments, right? And I want to tell him that yeah, well, I did this, that and the other thing and that's really why you won, right? And I want to make excuses to my wife about why he won and I want to tell him to run around me and oh hey, this was an anomaly, you know, but the best is sure. I usually win the chess games with my son, right? That's the reaction you can go down. Or you can go down the second reaction, right? Where you swallow that pride and eat it and you praise your son's accomplishments. Why would you do that? Well, one, because it's the right moral thing to do. And two, because you're trying to grow the character of your son into the man that you want him to be. And he did a good and honorable thing destroying his dad at chess game. And so you should of course affirm that and help him grow in that, right? And I think this translates to Minuteman teams because people don't grow up, they just get bigger. And what I mean is that's still that feeling of pride, right? We want to protect yourself and your own identity. That translates directly into how you interact with your boys. And if you go out and there's a shoot call and you fail and someone beats you or you're usually the best shooter, but you're not this time, right? You have, you can do that same thing. Well, you know, Frank, I mean, I'm a little tired today. My hands are cold. It's a little bit chilly. Or you know, there's a slight wind from the east. You know, that's why I missed that. And the wind stopped when you were shooting, right? You can go down that path and you can start to diminish your other teammates' accomplishments, right? I saw this once in a rifle class. We're all doing like a qual thing and we're going for a competition and if you failed, you were out or whatever. And then the guy who was it was one of my buddies actually and he made it all the way to the end and then the instructor said, okay, well now you and I are gonna go. And he beat him. He beat the instructor in whatever the little shoot call was, right? And the instructor immediately said, well, it's not that it matters anyway. And I saw that and I thought, man, look at that. Like look at that pride come out. He's an instructor. He's supposed to be here to help us be better shooters. And rather than being excited that this kid out shot him and saying, hey man, fantastic job. Let me go get you a little gear thing from my truck to give out to you because you did such a great job. Instead of doing that, what did he do? He diminished his accomplishment, right? He said, well, it's not that it matters even though the instructor is the one who set up the game, right? So what did he do that? He missed a fantastic teaching moment and a fantastic team building moment to be able to say, hey, look at this, be like this guy. This is how we did. Hey, tell us how you did that, right? He missed a horrible, he made a horrible mistake and missed a pristine opportunity in order to again instruct, teach and encourage people to be the shooters that they're paying him money to be. So when you go out with your boys and you're training with your boys, get out of your own way. Don't let your pride overcome your team development growth, cohesion and ultimate betterment of skill set, right? Because that can happen. You can get your own way and say, well, you know, I don't like this thing. I don't like that we do that thing or you know, again, I would come but you know, I did this or I have to do this. Like there's all kinds of excuses where you make yourself the center and then your team fails to grow together and that's a problem, right? That's a big problem. So like I said, don't allow that to happen. Don't be the guy who holds the whole team back because all you can think about is yourself. Think about the team. What does the team need from me right now? How can I help the team? You know, how can I help these people be better shooters, be better fighters, be better emotionally and physically prepared? How can I do that? Instead of being like, oh, well, you know, you only squatted 295 today but I did a 315 for reps yesterday. Like instead of saying that, right? How can you encourage and help your guys be better? You want to be the weakest guy on your team. You want everyone else on your team to be a better shooter than you, a better fighter than you. You want them to be able to run harder, run longer. You know, you want all those guys, right? That's what you want. You want them to be the best they possibly can be because hey, I don't know, maybe your life will depend on it someday. So I just want to come on here, make this video to say, hey, again, don't let the pride, the you self-focused ego thing destroy, ruin or hold back your team. You're there for your team, for your boys, for a reason. So be there for that reason. Love your boys. Make sure that you are helping grow them into the men that you want by your side if things get weird. Do brave deeds and endure.