530: The 8 Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water. With Andy Stumpf

This is Jocko podcast number 530 with echo Charles and me jockel willing a good evening echo good evening If you're ever given the choice between being ambushed or ambushing someone else Go with the ladder. It is infinitely more enjoyable when you are ambushed You're often caught unprepared and in an environment that favors your enemy fear in these situations is normal If we can agree that fear will be present It is no longer a question of whether or not you will be afraid the question becomes whether you are going to allow it to control you or Are you going to control it? When you are ambushed the single most dangerous thing that you can do is remain in place and do nothing If you do your enemy is bound to maneuver on you and destroy you the likeliest way to sustain your life and To turn the tables on your enemy is to maneuver when you maneuver you change the angles on your enemy You change the geometry of the problem and you start forcing them to react in a perfect tactical world You would maneuver flank and destroy your enemy The first step in that sequence is the most critical and it answers the question. I have received countless times How do I get started? the answer You move And that right there is an excerpt from a new Incredible book called drown proof drowned proof eight life lessons to keep your head above water is written by my brother and retired seal Andy Stumpf and our paths cross briefly while we were both in the teams and we actually got to know each other more once we both retired Andy was one of the first guests on this podcast. I don't know if you know that Andy you were guest number 12 I countered that I thought I was like episode 64 But I used to just read books more and then eventually I started getting the people that wrote the books on which Yeah Eventually started his own podcast. Oh, yeah, that's episode 64 So if you want to hear a bunch of background about you know Andy and his time in the Navy and whatnot You can check out episode 64 But eventually he started his own podcast cleared hot podcast and he's now all also an author And this new book like I said, it's called drown proof and it was an honor for me to be able to write the forward for the book Incredibly taxing on my mind to try and figure out how to make you look good. I mean, is there a more difficult task? But no truly awesome to be able to do that and honor to have you back here again after a nine year Hi, yes, nine year nine years from podcast 64 till now is nine years I would have guessed five tops. Yeah, it goes by quick man. Wow. Okay. Yep. We should probably get together more often Well, we've seen each other hunt camp. We've seen each other jiu-jitsu stuff We've seen each other of other random things, but we just never got down and recorded again. Wow, didn't I do I did your podcast? What's an origin? Yeah, we're out there at the origin. Yep I think I recorded one with you here, too at the gym at some point. You did for one of my episodes. Yeah, yep So there you go. So we've done it. Yeah, but anyways welcome back How why'd you write a book? Man first off, I think what you wrote I probably just cut and pasted that out of your book It's not super similar to things that you would say It's almost like there's a lot of lessons that a lot of people from our community learn It's a different way of expressing it. I have been asked that question a lot recently because I have talked a very volumous amount of smack about seal authors in my Younger days and said that I would never write one the honest answer to that is my glover tricked me into it And nobody believes me, but I finally had him back on my show and he admitted to it We were supposed to do a collaboration Oh By the way, I can confirm this because you guys talked to me about yes You guys talked to me like hey, we want to write a book and I was like cool, you know And this was his idea. Yep, whatever guidance I may or may not have given but like yeah I totally remember it getting on a phone call with you, too Yep You're you're gonna write a book and you had your take on what it was gonna be and you're both gonna eat right like you know Half the chapters couple chapters we had a date on the calendar where we were gonna come together and compare our work and I came prepared to share my work and Mike showed up and said yeah, I didn't write He was talking about coming up to Montana and spending time He's like he's just like gonna just go full hemming way and like have an owl on his shoulder and smoke a pipe and Like just be out, you know watching the sunrise and set and riding zero words He so he had found though and I so this was my first time doing anything like this I and I still don't even necessarily understand the full process yet because it's not even out yet That's what do they call that an arc. Yep advance readers copy. Yeah Are the are the hard covers bigger than that or is that the size of the book? Might be a little bit bigger, but it's pretty much this is pretty accurate to what it's gonna be again highlighting I have absolutely no idea about this process So he found somebody who takes an idea and turns it into a PDF document and the guy was thank me paid him five grand Awesome document and then Mike had found a literary agent who takes it to publishers our friend mark over at st. Martin's was one of the recipients of those and When I showed up and had my sections Mike was like hey, you've already gotten some stuff written just hand it over to the guy Let him create a pitch. Maybe it'll be something so I said, okay, cuz I think I had 45,000 words written I really enjoyed writing it actually Handed over to the guy he created that document handed it over to Esther the agent who shopped it around and mark came back And I actually talked to you on the phone as I was speaking with mark because he's like yeah, I do jocco stuff I'm like hold on. I don't want to talk to you anymore Jocco, what's the story with this guy like straight to the source and That's how it came about but it wasn't my idea was legitimately gonna be this collaboration and We didn't really know how we were gonna do like he would write in italicized or bold Some way to to form the two in there, so yeah as with everything in my life not not my idea had he already written Prepared was prepared. So this was gonna be his sex. We kind of knew what he should have been getting into I am convinced he 100% Reverse engineered this would never having any intent whatsoever to write a single word And then did you go full Hemingway and have an hour on your shoulder or whatever? They're hard to catch No I So how did this go? I talked with mark. They agree that they wanted to do the book. It wasn't finished yet though I signed a contract that I very briefly looked over and don't even necessarily understand what's in it But there was a date associated what do you have to have the manual script in so I kind of reversed engineered for that but I would only write stuff when I wanted to that would take a couple weeks off in between maybe 500 words or like maybe 1500 on a good day But I would usually in the mornings and then just put it away and I did it over a couple months I didn't find it to be hard at all. It wasn't easy by any stretch But the process I didn't find to be a little worse and you had written before because you had that in the blog Confessions of an idiot so absolutely Yeah, I never took it down. Yeah, because I don't know how but you Writing in there, you know clearly you're a articulate guy and you're writing look like that for sure So yeah, that's yeah the very first time I was actually on your show You read one of the blog posts from that which was the first thing I think I did publicly after getting out of the military Was right was right, but then it the blogs and then The podcast for me is a quicker medium. I enjoy writing, but I can't do it quickly I'll often kind of vomit stuff out and then I go back and I trim stuff away from that which takes time Whereas, you know, you can sit down and have a multi hour conversation and yeah podcasting is definitely incredible It's all there's a I guess the negative to that is that you can just pretty much anyone can make a podcast tomorrow And you have to sort through like if it's worth listening to or not and that can be a challenge But it is weird how some people just think oh, well, I'll just make a podcast and they think they're gonna be talking like Joe Rogan You know, oh, I can sit down and talk to people like Joe Rogan does they don't realize what the hell Joe Rogan is doing It's well after they work through their family and friends they realize how am I gonna do this? So at guess number six they go, oh boy This is a little bit harder than I thought And I have an episode that's due out on Monday and I don't have anybody so End of podcasting journey. Yeah. Yeah, cool. All right. Well, um, let's get into this book here. Um I'm just jumping just as a disclaimer. The four word is probably the most fictional section I pay a jockeau. I still owe him some bitcoin for the kind things that he said Highlights of the of the four word. No, I'm not gonna read the highlights of the forward Um, other than to say, you know, the story that I told is true is like I was in charge of trade at And we were you know, we get like a little package of who's going through the training and I'm looking at all the you know Normal guys and I see like this dude Who's you know Came from uh, the special missions unit been wounded in combat combat experience Uh, we it had gone up through the ranks and I'm like, okay, this could be awesome This could also be terrible And they know that's exactly what I wrote in the forward because I had dealt with guys that What you know in the SEAL teams you get some guys that got some massive egos and it it can suck Generally speaking, it's cool. Generally speaking guys are like, yep, I get it But you know, definitely I'm like, oh, I hope he's one of the guys that is cool Because if it's not it's always just turns into a gut check but sure enough you were totally humble and cool and Like listened and we're on board with what we're doing and helped guys out You weren't a deck to people which is I might be surprising for some people to hear Shocking but uh, but yeah, you were just super cool super humble despite all the experience you had You you were a real value not only to the guys that you were working with but like the trade at guys as well We're so I thought that was the most impressive thing about you was the fact that you didn't think you were all that impressive I was trying to figure out how to be an officer. That's true, too I never got out of the new guy cycle my entire career I mean, I got you know most e5 of the machine gun. Let's just be clear best job on earth Little to no responsibility other than to not kill your friends or people that you're with And then I mean I picked up o1 after e6 and then got out as an o3e I mean that is complete middle of the road From a leadership perspective your entire career. Did you do an lpo slot? The reason I became an ldo no lpo. Did you do an lpo slot? Well, the reason I went to the ldo program is that when I got hurt overseas. I was on my lpo tour, which they counted as incomplete So when my package went to the chief's board two years in a row I swiped off the table and a guy finally called me he's like clearly you're not supposed to share this information But I saw what happened to your record It wasn't even looked at because the lpo for people who don't know like e6 e7 is the big enlisted jump in the navy You have to have done your leading petty officer tour or you're not even eligible Dude, so it got swiped off and I'm like I don't and I was at second phase where a new lpo had just started And for sure duty that's 24 months. So I would have had to wait for that To get into that role to do it for 24 months to put my package in the next cycle assuming that it lined up So five more years of like spinning my tires So I was like, how about all of you can call me sir? I found this art like antiquated program, which I don't think is even optional anymore That's not yeah, that didn't that didn't require a college degree because spoiler alert. I do not have one And uh put in for it and got picked up on the first look Yeah, I was similar in the fact that I couldn't make rank as an e-dog Uh back in the old days when you were competing against the fleet and so I got I got e4 out of buds Merit or whatever not meritorious, but like automatic e4 out of buds I got capped to e5 and then I was I was watching like my friends my peer group Was getting advanced and I'm like shit and uh, I looked around and I was like well And plus I had worked for a an officer that was a prime enlisted guy And he was the best guy ever and so I was like, oh that that would be a cool thing to do And so that's what that's what happened to me. But yeah, it was definitely uh An interesting Career line for the prior enlisted guys on the officers when they switch over the officer side. All right, uh, let me get into this book here As we were corraling platoon members across the street the individual who moments before had been in the back of a cop car went directly Toward a different bouncer and began another verbal confrontation By this point we were at least around the corner of the building from the initial incident and not in the direct line of sight of the officers But they were less than a hundred feet away. I ended up pulling out a folding knife These are police officers. These are police officers by the way. I ended up pulling out a folding knife Holding it against my leg and threatening the bouncer and then running from the police I don't know how to rate my escape and evasion, but I feel like I put my best foot forward It involved a sprint down an alley clearing a razor wire fence that left me with a souvenir on my right hand I still have to this day hanging from the side of a building then falling Through a tree directly in front of the teammates. I had just separated from What would one likely do after evading the police? What would have been the smart decision in that moment? That's right. Keep drinking at yet another bar. I swapped shirts with a friend. God. This is just freaking classic I swapped shirts with a friend across the street and sampled the cold beverages of our newest drinking location It was a relatively mellow dive bar But it was tough to relax and enjoy with the lights and sirens of the local police constantly passing by I guess they were looking for someone and again. I'm just reading little excerpts from this, but you know typical Uh 90s night out for a team guy A new guy an idiot, uh, which we all were Uh, you end up getting rolled up by the cops. Um You go to captain's mass and again this this is freaking all in the book and it's it's all it's I can relate to it, but It's just good to read and it lands But one of the one of the things that stuck out with me is you're a commanding officer So you you're in captain's massed after chief's mass after chief's mass. Yeah, it's a total nightmare But you have on your camouflage uniform. We have our You know our name tape and it says us navy and then it says, you know willing or stump and then above that There is the most sacred thing to us, which is our trident Especially when you're 19 year old are you 1918? Yes, and also I had just been issued said trident Six weeks before. Oh, yeah So this is the thing that you suffer for it's what you want so badly first trip with my trident And so your commanding officer hands you a pair of scissors slid them. I still remember the sound of the Across the table and says cut your fucking trident off your uniform. Yeah god Dude, not my best moment. Thanks for opening with that one I mean, there's a reason why it's chapter one, but yeah, yeah Uh, what a horrific moment and you got to be thinking like you you're getting kicked out You have had those moments where you think other people can hear your heartbeat Like I don't know if I don't know what my game face looked like at that time, but it did that like the Like every I don't know how many veins people have on their forehead, but I feel like all of them were thoroughly exposed at that time I thought I was done. Yeah, I really did. Yeah, this is the 90s. They don't need you. He could have easily just said I'm gonna take your n.c. Instead of because he didn't necessarily didn't really take it from me He didn't let me wear it for six months, which is and you know as well as I do that's about as bad anyway But if I had done anything j walked in that six month time period gone Fast forward a little bit to your kind of your lesson from this and again Get the book. There's so many so many good lessons is eight life lessons It is my hope that no one finds themselves staring over the edge into the abyss with the balance of their life in their Or their hopes dreams and aspirations resting in someone else's hands and judgment I personally do not think that you need to take it that far to recognize that the first and most critical step in a young man Or woman's life is to change their perspective of who they are and the role they play in their own life Here's the uh eureka moment You are responsible for your behavior. You are responsible for the emotional reactions you have to the things that happen to you Integrity cannot be outsourced Until you view yourself as the author of your life. You will be the victim of it You won't be a participant. You will merely be an observer in what happens to you and around you so Did you have that clarity? At 19 years old once you got your trident uh revoked I almost went into the chief's board With the mentality I had that particular night, which was It was the cops fault the bouncers fault Anybody but my own I almost did that and if I had done that you and I definitely wouldn't be sitting here because they would have ejected me for sure um I look back at that that was probably the most Pivotal moment in my life shifting who I Was and what I wanted to be up until that point and what I'm about to say people will say that doesn't sound reasonable But they've also never walked a mile in a guy's shoes who wanted to be a seal since he was 11 Made it through training made it to a team and is with people that you look at as if they're walking gods If they would have told me we're gonna go rob a bank Like can I at least be on the roof with a 60? You know You're gonna crawl through burning coal like how far do you want to go? Hey, we're all about to get into a bar fight Okay, like let's go and that was the mistake that I made that night There were so many things that could have stopped that night from happening Which I was present for all of them and didn't say anything Because in my mind, I'm like, I'm the new guy. I'm the youngest guy It's I need to do things that these guys will appreciate and all of that is just like external bullshit as opposed to looking in the mirror and be like, hey um This isn't correct. You know, this isn't correct and you need to do the right thing and I didn't listen to that voice It was in my head, but I didn't listen to that voice and that's what I almost went into the chief's board with but instead I went in there with the exact opposite and just owned 100 I think I opened with an apology. I'm sorry. I apologize for bringing a poor light upon the seal community because it was late 90s not a not as much knowledge about seals back then but You know the apology of that like I'm completely responsible for what happened Um, this is what I learned from it and I hope that you guys will give me a chance and an opportunity to show you who I want to be Yeah, yeah, very similar to the story of the blue on blue for me When you know, I had my x my my commanding officer command master chief the investigating officer all coming out to like get a debrief from me And I'm sitting there trying to figure out what I'm gonna say and who I'm gonna blame And I just felt like nauseatingly sick about Like why can't I figure out who to blame like there's all these different people that made all these little mistakes You know what the hell why is this so hard for me? I was like, oh jackass because you're the senior guy and this is on you And it's funny. I had another friend that was that got fired from a position in the seal teams and He called me and he's like, hey, I'm getting ready to go to you know the big boss What do I say? and I'm like You say I'm sorry that I got fired and I will try and do better Here's the mistakes. I think I made and that's it and that's what he did and you know it worked out for him But yeah, there it's incredible How much it hurts to do that, but it also is incredible the way it's received and I'm sure you and in your career You know got to see the other end when people did not come in with that attitude Yeah, where it was like you just wanted to freaking slap them upside the head. They slid their trident's across the table Yeah, they did. Yeah, I and I thought I mean it was it was so funny the chief's board I Was the last part they interviewed everybody in that room and if I'm like standing, you know They're probably my dress blues or something. Maybe camey's I don't know And I didn't realize there was a whiteboard off my shoulder And then they started asking me because I went through all that and I I didn't talk to any of the chiefs after this, but there was an essence of them Like not bad, you know pretty good because I look over and a portion of the e and e map is written up They've been asking the platoon members. So what exactly happened? So then they're like they start asking me like tactical quest like well draw where you went over the fence I was like, oh I went over here No, had you get on the roof? I was like I climb this tree up onto a connex box and then jumped on the roof They're like, you know, so one of them was like super like trying to be like Mike mayor was one of them Just being a total just coming at me. But all the other chiefs were just like You know, so they would take their turn being pissed but also at the same time like yeah, we get it And by the end I had drawn this whole map Then I go right get out of here. I thought I was I thought I was completely done with it I go to the interview process for the east coast. It's this single Question that they open with Asked by the master chief of the command. He goes. Hey, what happened in Tucson? So I tell the whole story same thing what I learned from it and that I appreciate that it happened. He goes, okay Let's put ourselves back in that situation. But it's me. That's the one who is uh Acting out of sorts. What are you gonna do? I was like, oh, that's actually an easy one now I don't care who you are how much combat experience you have what rank is I'm gonna grab you and take you home And we're gonna be done with it. It's the last time I ever got asked about it. Sure Yeah Squared away. Um This is just kind of a continuing thought here when you wake up You will realize it doesn't matter if someone's older than you. This is what you just got done Say it doesn't matter if they're senior didn't rank to you your mentor your friend or your or your parent When words need to be spoken when actions need to be taken you are the one that needs to be stepped that needs to step forward We have control over very little in this world But make no mistake you have complete control over yourself and the actions you take You will never feel ready to take them until you reframe how you see yourself in the world My path to reframing required handcuffs and scissors. Hopefully yours does not so there you go There are other ways people. Yeah, this this kind of reminds me of the um, you know the The me lie masker. So the me lie masker You know, these guys are out there with lieutenant william callie just murdering raping um mutilating bodies like to the tune of 500 women and children and Finally this helicopter pilot hue thompson. He's like doing flyovers to trying to help out. They're trying to Get some people out of there. He sees what's happening Actually brings his helicopter in between civilians and us army guys to protect the civilians flies back to camp and is like, hey, there's a massacre going on right now You need to put a stop to this and they got on the radio. They called the company out in the field I'm like, hey stop killing people right now and immediately they all stopped And it took one person. Yeah having the intestinal fortitude to not to to from a detachment Perspective tell people to stop. So it's just what you're saying right now Like it doesn't matter your new guy. It doesn't matter your and I'll tell you what if you're a new guy and you get overridden At least you tried to freaking speak up And usually if you're saying something that makes some semblance of sense people will go, you know This is actually a pretty good call right now. We need to get the hell out of here Or we need to stop what we're doing or whatever. So that that idea that one person can step up and really change the The direction that that a group is going and I always talk about from a leadership perspective Like there there's a mob. You're in charge of a mob and if you're in the mob You're going to be having the mob mentality like all of them and if you Can detach from the mob and not be a part of it You're going to be able to beat you're going to actually be able to lead And it it comes into play Whether we're winning like oh, we're winning guess what happens when the team when the mob starts winning Everyone gets cocky and we need to work as hard. We don't need to train as much We don't need to worry about anything and the leader needs to go. Hey, actually. Yep. We're doing good But let's let's let's see we can get better at let's let's make sure we don't get cocky When the team is losing and the morale's bad and like this sucks It's the leader that goes. Hey, you know what? We had a bad mission last night, but we learned some lessons from it Here's what we can do to fix it. So not participating in the mob is a huge part of leadership and being a good human being I don't know. I don't know if you read the inscription. There are no bad leaders only bad team Which is the second book i'm going to write called extremely limited ownership Chapter two laif game. He's like the boss didn't tell me that My team and then chapter three is my team didn't do what I told him to do How many people do you know late into life though that have never had that shift in mentality where everything they have no Nothing is in their control everything. They're just I I would like to believe had that not happened to me I would have had that shift or I was on my way to it for me. That was just a super concrete Shift and who I thought I was as a person I know people in their 50s and 60s who haven't had that yet no doubt about it and their life is just it's like There'd be an under an avalanche of boulders just getting nuked I was talking to a guy a while ago and he went through his life story starting with football coach didn't like me Uh wrestling coach wouldn't wouldn't focus on me parents, you know got divorced they it was it was thing after thing after thing You know the x y I thought it was just everything what the reason he ended up where he ended up was because of all these other circumstances I'm like bro like it hurt to listen And you know when at a certain point like you've dug yourself a really deep hole And i'm not saying you shouldn't you know square yourself away and at least start at least stop digging deeper But it's it's hard, you know people reach a certain point in life where they look around and it's like What am I gonna do now like Even if I completely do everything right from here on out I'm barely gonna get my head above water which is A hell of a lot better than not getting your head above water, but it's tough It just it's another thing that piles on and makes people continue to blame the world yeah, man Uh Fast forward a little bit Yeah Six years ago. I started training judicious. So you the first time you came on this podcast you weren't training When did you break dad Lee's neck? I was I was well after that. Okay. So yeah, I hadn't started because I had just started I was a white belt and Watched you attempt to kill a man for no reason Yeah The old hammer fist choke is such a solid too now that I know it It's funny too because like I remember you know because I was I might be training judicious for a long time And I remember you were like just getting started 100 and I remember watching you going. Oh, yeah I know he's looking at this like going. Hmm. This is puzzling like that that like you have a little bit of understanding But not quite enough to really understand you just got that like sort of inquisitive look on your face And I'm like, oh, yeah, he's he's gonna be really putting that in the roll of decks Dudley's defense was interesting was the bear hug and pull closer which applies additional pressure to the apple area Yeah, man, I wasn't around for when he called you and told you Yeah, did you hear this part echo? Didn't you say it on Joe Rogan? I hope so because I'll say it again on Joe Rogan I don't even care jockeau needs to be exposed for attempted murder Now Dudley thought he was going to like an ear nose and throat doctor. He thought he was dying And you'd hear him on his podcast for months later Yeah, so yeah, he I did an Ezekiel uh, no, he is equal to a conom And in order to try and defend it and the thing is also John Dudley's like a stud of an athlete like and not tiny Yeah, especially then this is before like starvation John Dudley So he and to try and stop me in his mind and the the biggest the biggest mistake that I made And we were talking about this earlier. It's called the delta, right? Is there's a delta between like you and other people and I didn't even think To explain to him. Hey, you know if you feel like pressure tap That's how we tell each other that we're done. I didn't tell him that I thought, you know, he's in the UFC he knows Joe Rogan like if you understand what tapping is and So I put this joke on him and he starts like squeezing me closer, which is literally applying more pressure to the choke and Yeah, it like it made a like a hairline fracture in his hyoid bone And uh, as it healed there was an extra master calcium in there. So he was like bothering him. It felt like a tumor So he calls It's like And the crazy thing about Dudley is he never said a word to me about it Like he never over like and I talked to Dudley like regularly and he never said like, dude, you know, when you He I didn't find out until we were on your freaking or Dudley's podcast or your podcast and It was the three of us and I forced I brought it I forced it into the conversation Oh, man. Yeah, uh epic. Um, jujitsu So six years ago, I started training jujitsu and since that time I've had heard many coaches that I deeply respect say that the hardest belt to achieve is your white belt Do you guys tell people that too? I know that there is a clip of me saying that out there So this might be directed directly at me For those unfamiliar with jujitsu the belt ranking system white is the lowest ranking belt black is the highest almost no one starts jujit Almost no one who starts jujitsu makes it to their black belt But everyone who walks to the door on their first day is going to be handed a white belt With that being the case, why do coaches say the white belt is the hardest to achieve simple? It requires action not only action but action into the unknown action towards something You know nothing about something you know others will be better than you Something you may be afraid of uncertain about and with an end state that you may not be able to precisely define I do agree that walking through the door on the first day and making a commitment to start is difficult But the rest of the trope is bullshit and not just for jujitsu What is truly hard and the heart and the place where so many people give up is the grind after you start So there you go. Yeah, and it's and again, I think there's uh you know What you say is accurate and you know, you're like, yeah, it is most people don't even start jujitsu Most people don't even start like it's they're repulsed by the idea like the physical proximity to another human being Like you put sweat from your body goes into their eye or mouth. I don't want to do that year Yeah, and also might get hurt. I'm they're gonna try to kill me They're gonna try to break me And i'm gonna have to submit over and over and over and over again to people that I Think I'm better than Either physically mentally spiritually and it doesn't matter I'm sorry. I hate to break the news to you. It doesn't matter. You will be submitting Yeah, uh, and and you're right though like most people the jokes and jujitsu are like, oh, you made blue belt cool Black belts. It was it was nice knowing you You know because when people get their blue belt They just never train again for and then the same thing happens with purple ball and the same thing happens At brown ball a little brown belt where you're kind of getting close I know a guy who quit at brown belt Damn, dude I know and we're talking legit 10 10 years into the process some time off in between But I get why people quit at blue belt because they have this It's speaking even from my own experience when you know nothing getting to blue belt You're like triple digit growth almost every class. You're like, oh I didn't even know that was an option I'm now surviving 0.5 seconds longer and then at blue belt I think it it slows a bit right and so people's enthusiasm like you're refining a little bit. It's like, oh The curriculum is repeating itself now. I'm seeing these things again Maybe the outcome of the role isn't that you know, it's just it's just this trajectory goes lower and lower and lower and lower and lower Nobody talks about that. It's like, oh, just come in. It's that's the hardest one. It's like no You're six years in wondering what the hell is happening to you. That's the hardest part about it What did did you get addicted day one? Uh, I do remember my first class It was they were doing takedowns Uh takedown defense actually we were doing a body lock takedown and the guy who I was partnering with was a purple belt at the time He's now a two-striped black belt Uh, it was I definitely enjoyed it. I was looking for a physical outlet Um, and it was just fun and I was it was really cool. Just how happy everybody was They would like laughing and even if stuff didn't go right. They're just like whatever you're just laughing about it And there was no rolling at all. So at the gym that I train at an spg they start with about two to three months depending on how often you can come in with foundations so it's Exactly that and no live rolling. You don't get introduced to live rolling at until you join the uh The midday or advanced classes and there is a difference between those two But I think having an understanding of the alphabet is going to help you write words and sentences and paragraphs later is on so It wasn't even rolling. It was just it was fun. It was a physical outlet that I was looking for was I addicted to it at that point I don't think so. I was gonna say if you didn't get to roll Then you probably wouldn't get the the full addiction when I did start getting to roll though I was like, can you come three times a day? So that's what it took. Yeah, you know, it's so weird because I was having this conversation with my daughter Rana And uh, we were actually we were at a competition that she was competing in And we were out for dinner after she weighed in so it was very glorious for her. Uh, because she gets to eat but you know, my my daughter is totally and actually all my kids are like totally addicted to jujitsu and You know, I like I was talking about my oldest daughter was talking about like where she lives and like where her whole life is like Well, it depends on the jujitsu there, you know, it's all about jujitsu and where you can train and And I was you know, my and my Middle daughter like trains, you know all day long and teaches and you know, I was just man I'm like, isn't it crazy that as much as you love jujitsu right now I tried to convey that to you when you were a kid and I couldn't I was not capable of doing it And in fact, not only did I not the other direction I pushed her in the other end pushed all my kids in the other direction because I was so overly enthusiastic and The delta I've been talking about the delta with echo earlier today I mean like Realizing that there's a difference between you and me and you and me and like other people It's so hard. Like I cannot comprehend that you wouldn't understand how beautiful and amazing jujitsu is So I'm just like, oh, no, just you got to do it man. It's good and like That creates the barrier. So as much as someone as much as you love jujitsu, I couldn't convey to my daughter Or my other daughter when they were young like this is the funnest thing you're going to get to do in your life I wonder if the approach you took had anything to do with that. Oh, 100% dude 100% And you know, we how matters that that was part of the conversation was because Me saying hey, this is so fun And then putting him in a competition against a kid that's 20 pounds heavier and older and better and having them get their Ass kicked in front of a bunch of other, you know in front of a big ass crowd when you're six or seven or eight years old That shit ain't fun. It ain't fun And look, there's a small Group of people in the world that that is fun. There's like even kids in the world that will go. Oh, yeah No, I get it. This is what I want to do. I want to get I want to be the person that that's humiliating other people I don't want to get humiliated anymore But for the most part man kids want to have fun and as much as I said the words fun The actions were not fun at all I don't think they should actually teach children jujitsu. What do you think they should teach them? I didn't find until I was 40 So that's the starting page for everybody because if you learn how to move on the mats, I can't do anything about that And it's not fair. Yeah Kids these days are are so good the next generation and it's just going to keep getting exponentially better. You know, I really Just when you think some Some mode of jujitsu is kind of topped out. There's there's always just someone that figures something else out There's a new way to approach it. There's a new way to do it. There's an there's another counter to it So it's just to me. That's one of the most amazing things about it. It's like, oh, yeah I I will still learn something and I actually feel like the learning curve Because there's so much growth in jujitsu right now Like you can still I can still go and I've been training for a long Long long time and I'll still go and like learn something that is kind of shockingly Revealing to me where I'm like, oh that is sick. You know, that is freaking sick right there. Oh, let me follow it up By why couldn't I figure that myself over the last two decades? Yeah, but I'll ask a question and the answer is so ridiculously simple that I question my own intelligence on my drive. I'm like, why Wasn't I able to figure that out? Yeah, that is really bizarre It's it is one of those things that It helps to have an instructor so much and by the way this right now, you know, your instructor can be youtube And you still got to go do the thing. Yeah, you got to feel it, but you can you can learn a lot from it and you didn't get That's actually funny because I've heard you talk about The fact that one of the reasons you didn't get super into jujitsu Probably was because I could have started in the 90s and you Dorks were so enthusiastic and anytime I see somebody that enthusiastic about anything I have an immediate allergic reaction. So yeah, I could probably be I don't know what it takes to get a coral belt, but I'm gonna say be a coral belt or whatever you would be at right now Because I'm sure I would have gotten addicted then but they were so pumped about it My only response was sounds gay The funny thing is I I was not I was Very open-minded the whole time like I was never like, oh Brazilian jujitsu is the thing that you need to know only like I never really had that attitude I knew that it foundationally like you better know what the hell this is But I was always about wrestling moi tai boxing and jujitsu. I've always had that I've always had that thing But yeah, there was definitely like any religious belief like there's people that would full religion on jujitsu and there's people that go full religion on You know moi tai or any other martial art. It's getting less and less now I think people realize that man, you got to just train a lot in a lot of different shit. So um What do you like about it now? I can't master it. I uh You get a black belt and I don't know if you guys have had this experience people will come up to me and say Hey, how do you do this? I'm like, I don't actually understand the words you just used because I don't know what that is they're like, but You're a black belt. Don't you know everything? It's like, no, I actually feel like I know way less than what I started almost And I have more questions than anything actually what I probably spend more time on is fundamentals Not flashy stuff Not that I don't like the flashy stuff, but I find that solid fundamentals is Not the complete answer to things I don't understand But it's a good starting point especially when people are like throwing stuff out you've never seen like I'll go back to something like pretty simple to see if that shuts that down The the black belt I know that there's areas of jiu-jitsu for People that they're a black belt in like for instance, I know there's areas of my game where I am legitimately like A black belt I can teach it. I understand it fully I can teach all the offenses all the setups and all the defenses And then there's you know, some other move over here that I can do that with And there's very few people that are just oh no matter what question you bring I'm going to be able to answer That's a pretty rare that's like well, that's like dean lister jeff glover where they go. Oh, no, no, no Here's what here's here's the way you do that. That's what the level you got to be at And a lot of those people I found they might physically be at that level in their game But they struggle to develop an athlete or to teach that Very very often I have found that the same Thing is not found in the same person. It's a rarity when you can get both They can do it and they know it and they can teach it. Yeah. Yeah, that is a that is a rare gift And man, you got to be a little bit like Touched if you're that and did you get to little tism? Yeah, a little side of a tism at the buffet You got to have a little bit because it's a weird thing to be super into Is it? I mean, I don't have to get creepy with it. It is a weird thing to be that into I guess it's a we should be into it, but not that into it. Yeah. Yeah, but I guess it's like you shouldn't wear your G when you're walking to class that one freaks me out We have some people that do it and they come in like and they're changed before I'm like, well, dude Did you walk in here in that game? They're like, yeah, 100% Didn't you have some food in like, yeah, I stopped at the store on the way. I'm like, oh You train mostly G you know, you're both it doesn't really matter to me I think uh, our my school is more a G than no G but I have a deep appreciation for both And I try to roll in the G with no G grips a lot of the time So I don't become reliant on the door handles that the caller provides. I've always had a no G ish G game I mean, but you know, obviously you're gonna grab that you grab that G sometimes because boy, how can you not grab the color? It's right there talking to you Uh fast forward a little bit every successful person I know and I mean every single one had periods of time in their life Where they were extremely unbalanced. There was no work life balance. There was only the grind I do not suggest anyone live their entire life in that space but to accomplish the goals that keep you up at night You will need to embrace periods in your life where you are comfortable being unbalanced You'll have to prioritize your goals over life experiences You'll have to prioritize your momentum over time with your friends family and loved ones You're going to have to make difficult decisions and place long-term success over short-term desires I'll be the first to admit that the happiest and most fulfilled I have been in my life is when I have found a true balance But I would not have achieved what I have And in turn found my way to that balance without periods of the exact opposite It takes sacrifice and often mulling over difficult decisions But along the way you will discover an incredibly powerful business and personal tool that I did not find or perhaps Didn't realize the effectiveness Of until much later in my own life This tool is simple, but very very difficult to use at first. It is the act of saying No People say yes to everything sometimes I used to how's that work out? Pretty awesome if you want to accomplish nothing at what point in your life at what point in your life were you saying yes to everything? Uh, it had come Jen. It was usually economically based and when I would get to a place where I was uncertain of Economic stability or what the future would look like so you get you talk yourself into and again. I think this is important too Are you really in an emergency? Are you telling yourself that you're in an emergency? Is it really a crisis or do you just feel like you're in a crisis? Because you're emotionally attached to what's going on I mean, I would say your house being on fire that is a crisis wondering economically about Where the next paycheck is going to come from is important but solvable Uh mid 30s probably Up until mid 30s. Were you still in the teams? No, because in the teams, I mean and you know, I think I could probably speak for you here a little bit The teams is a pretty good example of an unbalanced life Buds is a great example. I the married guys that were in my class going through that how what relationship with significant other like what are you talking about? first platoon training cycles deployments post like okay a lot of the uh Recognizability that you and I both have is from our previous job, right? And so you can find your way to this incredibly stable place and build upon that but it required that instability up front So it was almost required. So I would say my time in the teams was very un unbalanced Getting out of that in my mid 30s is when I started having more options because dude, you know How awesome it is on the old first and the 15th, you know the matrix like oh the first is not a monday I get paid on friday. No big deal. I've got this completely figured out Get out of the military that kind of goes away a little bit other than your uh, you know Your pension and benefits depending on how you get out and then I Family's growing right, you know multiple kids quality of life kind of goes up as you start making a little bit more money Uncertainty about that and just became yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, and I can't personally do 50 things very well But I can do five Pretty well, but you have to carve it away. You have to start saying no and it's hard to do Yeah, it is pretty an awesome time period when you're like 19 20 21 22 years old And nothing else in the world matters. No at all then your platoon Yeah, or the moment you're in or whatever it is you are doing in the like this is actually life and there is nothing beyond this Nothing else matters and yeah, it's just And your parents are like hey, did you lose my phone? I'm like, no, I didn't Who are you again because this is like, you know what I mean? So incredibly unbalanced But so much as much as you and I would ever want to try to escape our past Not that I'm saying that we should the foundation of where we came from is built off of that Then it helps or it can hurt, you know depending on how you use it Uh Fast forward a little bit here. This is from a from a chapter called The deep end in my small social circle growing up. I was unique in only one way I knew exactly what I wanted to do from the age of 11. I had one focus and it consumed me I did not apply myself in school and I think it is fair to say that I scraped by in the educational setting It did it just did not interest me when my peers were studying for the sat and submitting college applications I was working or training for my entry into boot camp and the journey beyond I dove I drove headfirst down the path and it wasn't until nine years into that journey that I finally lifted my head um You know you you end up you're wounded in 2005 and you end up in this like if I'm unable to continue Being a seal. What am I going to do with my life? What am I going to become? What do I want to do? It was a truly pivotal moment in my life and I honestly never thought about What my life would look like when I hung up my military uniform and had to redefine who I was If you allow yourself to be defined by the uniforms you wear or the insignia that sits atop your uniform You are going to be in a difficult place when the time comes to hang it up and that time is coming for us all I don't care who you are or what you do There is an expiration date to your usefulness you will cease to be a value to the community You are part of and it will move on without you It is not the community's responsibility to figure out what the next steps are for you when that occurs It is yours the more you tie your personal identity to your occupation the harder that transition will become I know of so many specimens specimens of men absolute legends on the battlefield Who are stuck in that transition? They live their lives in the rear view mirror unable to let go of who they were And what they used to do and the world passes them by I had a constant mantra for myself That I used to as a reminder and an attempt not to get stuck in the same valley. I have just described Being a seal is what I did It was and will never be who I am That's a rough one for people you know anybody stuck in that valley It gets wild man. It gets wild the longer you're in I think the more enticing it is like the gravity pulls you into that It's the best thing. I think I told you this the first time I was on the best thing In hindsight that ever happened to me was getting shot Because I I was remember laying in a hospital bed asking myself Uh, is this the end and I had not thought about that I had not considered since I was I mean I had no plan B going into but somebody asked me the other day Well, what were you going to do if you didn't make it through bus? I'm like, why would you even ask a question like that? What do you mean? There's clearly only one option. You're like, well, did you ever think about quitting? I'm like, no, I had nothing else to do you know And that's not a very scalable or what I would recommend people have but I also wouldn't recommend that plan B is too Sex either because of old instructor stump there's in the middle of the night with a nice cup of coffee We're going to talk about plan B until it's really enticing I had a friend who is part of a Special operations unit overseas in another country and he was like 30 something years and he was finally getting ready to retire and I was giving him like that talk of like, hey, man You're gonna retire and they're gonna keep going and You gotta let it go man. Like it's not gonna be a part of It's not gonna be part of your life anymore and look, you know, it's funny because I talk about uh, When I read this part of your book I talk about like when you lose guys like when you lose your friends, right? And I what I tell people is like remember but don't dwell. Yeah And easier said than done. It's it's definitely easier said than done but If you just dwell on the past You're not making forward of progress. It just it's not it's not good I'm not saying forget it But you see you want to remember what happened in the past, but you don't want to dwell on it It's and that reminded me of this attitude that you're talking about here Like look you and I both spent our adult life and our formative years In the teams and there's not like can't walk away like can't change that I can't just like uh, uh Men in black my mind and make all that disappear like no that stuff happened. It was cool. I had a good time doing it But to wake up every day and be like, uh That was you know that that was it. I can't I can't go back there if you end up like uncle rico Right from napoleon dynamite like you know if I would have had that just that one one interception in that state finals game I would have we would have been champ, you know like which is a rough place to be and I get it man because it's You know, I love the teams like same. It's the best and Did anybody give you that talk though on your way out like hey or as you were looking at the door of leaving Like hey, you might have some identity issues or even earlier on in your career like hey guys Check in with yourself And I think a warning sign that I've identified now mostly in getting to know a lot of law enforcement people is Is your entire social circle comprised of people that do the exact same thing that you do? That is an early warning sign that when you detach from that job You're going to struggle because the only people that I knew were team guys Because I only spoke team guy Which is in English that nobody else understands because we're unique specimens in many different ways But most guys when they get out They will go back to where they came from and their social circle is then now drastically different I think you would be incredibly healthy about I don't say you do 20 year career about every five years. It's like hey, just you know This is gonna come to an end. I'm not saying disregard what it is that you're doing But like check in with yourself is your entire identity wrapped up in this because even the bullfrog at some point is gonna retire What are you gonna do that? I hadn't thought about that a single time until I was laying in a hospital bed in Iraq going, huh? I don't know if I can do this job anymore. And then the second question that is what are you gonna do? I was like I haven't really thought about that Yeah, I'd say for me, obviously I didn't have the rude awakening that you had of getting wounded and being like Oh, no, you might not be able to physically do this job anymore. I had to come to that conclusion of my own like Hmm. What is it? What is the next? 10 years of my life look like if I stay in when did you start asking yourself that though in your career? so I got home from ramadi and in 2006 and I went to trade at and when I got there Because I hadn't even I had never Ever thought about getting out like I'd never thought about it. It was just like this is what we're doing, you know It was just the best job ever and this is what I'm doing forever So I get to trade at and of course, you know, you start looking at okay. Well, what's next and I start looking at what's next and man, I realized that there was a long time of jobs that Didn't appeal to me in a super positive way. How dare you talk about a disassociated tour of Germany like that? Or a tour in african as the ops officer and you know, you and I were talking about this before we hit record like the career path For an officer is it's abrupt. It's abrupt and you know, I had really been as lucky as a human could possibly be with the Tours that I had and the way my career went, you know, like doing deployments as an enlisted guy And then once the war starts get to do more deployments like I've been very very very lucky And so now I'm looking at um I think the number that I finally put together was it was going to be seven years Before I was like in charge of a seal team, right? And meanwhile my kids didn't know me um Some other dude taught my son how to swim You know, it was just It was just I had to I had to look around and go. Okay. What are we doing here? And so That's what that's why I made that decision. You know, it was just how many years did you you got out at your 20? How many guys do you know though? And maybe this is more on the enlisted side They're at 19 years and six months like dude. I just started my associates program Or my batch. I'm just yeah, I'm just starting online school. I'm like Well, if you said online school, I mean, I know guys who are crushing out degrees that were overseas Which I didn't have the bandwidth to do but I would definitely advocate people taking that look up um, like I said it it Changed for me. I always had The sense that this will end So it got me thinking about the things that I could do Yeah, that's another thing another big mistake that guys make is um, you know you You just think it's gonna last forever and so financially, you're just like, oh I do need a new four to f 350 super duty Immediately brand new off the lot limited. Yeah. Yeah, the hardly davidson one, right? Totally like guys just do the dumbest things Financially because you're gonna like you said earlier. It's the first in the 15th. I can cover this. We're gonna be good to go And that is any loan you want to the hell you've been in the military. What's your contract for? No problem We got you 17 interest rate. Don't worry. We'll pull that over 37 years for this car Yeah, and so I think that's where guys also because if you do it, right You can do 20 years in the in the navy or in the army and you can 100% You can 100 retire never work again. Yes if you do it, right Uh, the amount of people that I know that actually did it, right? It's probably like probably like three or four guys. Well, I was gonna say zero Yeah, it might be zero, but I knew a couple guys that were pretty savvy. I know a couple guys were trending in that direction Yeah, I mean you you know you take your entire Per diem check and just flush it down the toilet. Yeah at the bar the first night Yeah, day one and so then you're just tapping and you're it's ridiculous So you get paid good money and you blow it all because you're young and stupid Then you get reenlistment bonuses. Yeah, I mean to an e-fi. I think my first reenlistment bonus was eight I'm pretty sure I spent 12. Yeah, you know, yeah, but first off eight was more I'm like no one human being has actually ever had I am the richest human this much money I'm gonna go get a pirate ship and bury this somewhere because this is treasure. No, it was gone the next day. Yeah Yeah, yeah, it's unfortunate and as much as you know, uh when I went to ocs They had like a full financial class and of course I was now 28 years old married and I was kind of a little bit more of an adult I was like, oh wow this stuff is And I'm looking around the class not one of these 21 year olds is paying a bit of attention to anything that these people are saying Perfect, and it's just such a bummer So that ties in, you know, that keeps guys in a bad place because when they get out, they don't they're not prepared for it That's not unique to the military. I've become really close friends with a lot of local law enforcement where I live I see the parallels there. I see it in federal service. I see it Um, whether you know any of the agencies that support if there's a uniform tied to it Or some sense of I guess I'll say status Man keep track of it. Do not let it become all that is who you are because that's rough on the end the trapdoor is coming Yeah, and you fast forward a little bit you talk, you know, you you were At a strength and conditioning company you were working at yeah, I had litigious strength and conditioning company questionable morals You had a you had a training role there in the beginning And then you end up in a business role and you're freaking miserable because the leadership sucks Uh, but you're you kind of got addicted to the money 100% gold I call golden handcuffs But and this is what you're talking about though the people who do it right versus the people who do it I'm not gonna say it wrong, but differently Almost everybody I know will define wealth by the amount of money that they make as opposed to looking at the amount of money that they're spending I have some broke ass millionaires Because if you make a million and spend 1.1, I mean, I guess that looks great on the front end But when you're getting you know, your assets seized how's that looking out for you? So I And you know, I'd get a little bit more money. Let's just have a little bit of lifestyle creep You know, we do need the new Tahoe. I feel like the leather seats Bucket of course not bench because that's pedestrian You know, I mean we have we need to have this it's got the new entertainment system and The next thing you know, you're just you're like bumped right up for so long in my life I lived like that bumped right up to the edge And I look back it was all optional misery completely optional misery I Did not do that. I was like you and I I don't know if you've recognized this yet or not to say dude I drove a night I drove a 1997 dodge grand caravan with the with a team Issued riggers tape on the door window on the driver's side. That is actually stealing from the united states government. Exactly exactly And I was always um I've always I don't know why but I was always paranoid about like that Yeah, I was always paranoid about you know having Big bills well, I shouldn't say always not me I would shouldn't say always because when I was younger, you know, young team guy. Yeah, I was like, oh wait I can buy this vehicle like you said. Oh the guy's like, oh, yeah, we can definitely give you a loan for that Oh, how nice of you cool sign me up. So I I made those moves, but I also looked around after a little while going dude Wait a second. This doesn't make sense and I got a little bit paranoid about debt And so I always avoided that and lived uh like a poor person. Let me tell you what the other side of that call looks like I need a seat belt for this one This is when your boss calls and says, hey, I'm gonna give you a raise and completely Optionally, you spend the rest of the day calculating the difference in your paycheck and trying to determine it What it is that you need that fits inside of that delta To the point where you end up refinancing your home to pay off credit card debt multiple times That's the other side of the coin. I'm not saying that happened to me. I'm not saying it didn't It was crazy too the the fact that like a lot of guys got caught by the housing crisis Is it crazy? Well, it's not crazy. Are we always the smartest? Yeah, but we can move quickly very well and make decisions Fine print not taught in the seal community. Like oh, this is an adjustable rate mortgage Let's just focus on the m not the a One of my buddies who I'm sure you know, I won't say his name, but he tells the story of when he Was he had eight houses? Please tell me he was an e5 doing stated income. He was using e6 doing stated income loans He had eight houses and he he's telling me he's like, yeah, I'd be walking to work Just looking at everyone like what a bunch of idiots. I can't believe everyone's so stupid and I'm so smart And and he said, you know, there was like some little ripple in the in the economy and he talked to his, you know Investor friend. It was like, listen, if things start to go sideways, don't worry You can just sell the houses and you'll be good to go and every one of when it when it finally like tipped over Every one of his houses was completely upside down in 30 days And he ended up the only he was able to keep the house that he actually lived in But all of his, you know, you have eight houses in san diego He probably had four or five million dollars worth of real estate at a minimum and it was all gone in 30 days So Get I tell people when team guys do good, we go big When we do bad, we also go big not known for moderation. Yeah, god crazy. Um This is still on that same thing. I tried to view the situation from a different angle I asked myself what advice I would give to one of my children if they were in the same situation as me asking for help This is the situation being that you hate this guy that you're working for but you're kind of addicted to the money The answer was very clear. I would tell them to change their situation the actions I took in the moments after that realization I do not recommend to anyone Just try to be honest, man They can and should be considered irresponsible I texted my boss told him I was done and that moment went from good income to zero dollars per month So boom, you just called it. You'd had enough. Were you still active duty at this time? No Oh, shit, and I hadn't I think I was on 70% VA rating. I was like maybe 1600 bucks a month something like that zero six figures mid six figures to zero overnight And uh, I mean it I talked about it in the book craigslist is a wild place. We started putting up things for sale I literally went and stood in my garage and asked myself What do I need here? And the answer was absolutely none of it Standup paddleboards that had been gathering dust. I lived in Chula Vista, by the way I don't know if you know this not a lot of standup paddleboarding out there Of course, I had a truck that I could you know, take it to the beach and if I wanted to did that zero times I mean all sorts of crazy stuff there. And so I just looked at it But I started looking at it like an operation like Let's prioritize here. What do we need to burn rate get it as low as possible So just like cutting things out selling all the stuff That I could sell and then I was in kind of in that crisis space So that's where I started saying yes to a lot of stuff Which is a double-edged sword because It led me to a lot of the stuff that I do now But it was also a little bit of a time suck in other places as well But that that was one of those times because that was when I was in my mid 30s Of just feeling like I yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes And probably a decade later. I found myself in a place where I could start saying no How how old were you and you retired? medically retired after 18 years 17 years and you joined when you're 17 So you were like 34 35. Yeah. I mean in the Kennedy era we got to be really clear So it was 16 years 11 months in three days, right? I don't want to have somebody come out here and be like was it 50 grenades I don't know. So I feel that the dove can spot me an additional year But yeah, so I was 34 35 Yeah, that's That's like a little That's just that those five years between 35 and 40. They're huge. Yeah, those are big years I might have learned the vast majority of the Concrete lessons post military career in that five-year time period It was actually the time that I struggled the most probably because I was saying yes, but again double-edged sword my buddy was teaching free fall to The tail end of the pj and cct pipeline. Hey, do you want to come do this? Like yes, sure But of course that was in florida. So time away from family, but good money I had been flying for Crossfit and I had been doing some charter work on the side and I would do that stuff But super infrequent the paycheck was okay when they call but a lot of the times they don't call So I had to back away from that Public speaking but the skydiving thing led to being a sponsored athlete Which led to meeting joe which led to start in the pot, you know what I mean? So there's there was good and bad But I you want to talk about crippling anxiety Because you're just waiting for something to come in so you can say yes to it And you have no idea when it's going to come or what it's going to be but your answer is going to be yes Yeah, how long did you spend in that like I don't know how I'm gonna pay my mortgage this month mode? What month is it? Three years damn about three years, but There I mean the one thing I think most team guys would agree with is that if you it puts something in front of us that is Meaningful enough. You're not gonna stop us. The training program selects for people that look at obstacles as an adversity Not something that can't be figured out like we might break our head open going through the wall as opposed to just walking around it But we'll get our way through. Yeah Yeah, so you end up doing all this kind of crazy shit that you just mentioned your flying airplanes. You end up teaching Uh, do you want to sweep floors? You get into base jumping you get into wingsuit flying like all this stuff Uh, my journey through professional skydiving and base jumping introduced me to some massive brands and through those brands and the projects We completed together. I found myself sitting across the table from Joe Rogan our first discussion covered a lot of ground I was sitting there because of the skydiving fundraiser Joe eventually suggested I start my own podcast An idea that was I was originally Resistant to I believe he also suggested to somebody else. They start a podcast He certainly did but then the the thing is he if you go back to that time period like he suggested everyone Oh, I tell people that yeah thousands everyone he told told everyone like you should start a podcast And he was right, you know to a lot of them. Yeah a lot. There's probably There's probably some I wonder what the number is. I wonder how many people actually started a podcast. I do think he probably told thousands Less than three like probably high twos high two digits. We've been like, yes Again, as you know, there's the concept of having a podcast and there's the reality of having content that's due every week The two are not the same No doubt. Um Speaking of base jumping here Alex was an amazing man and I feel fortunate in so many ways that I was able to spend time with him that I did Alex also served in the navy as eo d explosive ordinance disposal tech He also screened and completed selection for development group and was assigned to a squadron just down the hall from mine We did not work directly together and I do not remember our past crossing while we were there We connected when we were both stationed in back in san diego First over skydiving then through base jumping Post service he had attended the worton school of business and was preparing to move into a CEO role In the gas and oil industry in texas. Alex learned a base jump before I did But I was able to dedicate more time to it due to pursuing it professionally and we progressed In the sport at different levels both learned in twin falls, Idaho You end up doing a bunch of trips with him. You go to switzerland. You go to italy And Alex becomes your main jumping partners partner countless hours hiking through some of the most beautiful terrain on earth Having multi hour conversations about life our past our futures and everything in between we shared fear Fear at exit points together exhilaration and landings and tears of laughter when one of us did something stupid I've always had a few friends. I've always had few friends, but he was one of them In june of 2018 I was camping with my family for a weekend in an area that did not have cell service As we were driving out my phone exploded with notifications as soon as we reached coverage I remembered stopping the car and looking at the locked screen of my phone I could only see the names of the people who'd reached out not the messages they had sent But before I unlocked my phone, I already knew what had happened The combination of names was not random and they were all tied to a specific social circle I knew alex was dead before I read the messages Alex had gone to france with his wife to attend a wedding While he was there he arranged to meet a mutual friend for a quick jump at a well-known location The jump did not go as planned Alex impacted a ledge and was killed instantly I felt a sense of responsibility for his death because I was in a way responsible for his involvement in the sport I had introduced him to miles made sure He was on the trips and given him the suit. He was eventually killed in I've asked myself countless times if he would be alive today had I not done those things I suspect he still would have found his way And perhaps the outcome would have been the same But I was deeply involved with his progression and cannot shake the sense that I have a fingerprint on his death Even though I was thousands of miles away I spent a lot of time considering my own path forward after alex's death Was the benefit of base jumping still worth the reward for me I came to the realization that I'd moved past the place where I needed to silence Needed the silence that base jumping had provided. I still needed the silence. We all do I've just found other outlets that provide it I have not base jumped since alex's death and I do not think I will ever Return to the sport It's a tough one it was a tough day um You ever had one of those where you were out of coverage and you come like it was I can I know the exact road and spot I was on and it just exploded and I looked down I'm just thinking That's weird. I haven't heard from that guy in a while. That's weird. I haven't heard from that guy in a while that guy I never hear from And uh, yeah, I knew he was going before I swiped it up. Yeah, I've had those I've had you know the get done with something and have seven missed calls from You know war calm or traditionally Not to tell you happy birthday. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely know what's happening and you just dread Like you you look through the number of people that call you know, like which one of these guys wants Give me this shitty news that I'm about to hear. God knows what it is, but I know it's not going to be good um The how long did it take you to recognize? You know, I'm probably not base jumping again When we moved to montana, there's no drop zones up there. So my currency in skydiving was limited or decreasing which is okay as long as like if I was going to put on what I'm wearing now in a parachute I could go jump 10 years from now. It's god at sandia. Go would be fine the Wing suit stuff Is all tactile based and it's all visual based. There's no altimeter. You're looking at you're literally in flight Like do I have the angle To clear that tree and if not, hopefully you planned and gave yourself an out or you can change your trajectory and increase speed and lift and All those things So you got to be super current. So I already knew that it was going to be tougher um I talked to the other person I don't know if I put it in the book, but there was a mute. Yeah, there was a mutual friend that was there who watched this happen live and actually dedicated a really immense amount of time to go back to make sure he got his video cameras because he didn't know what was going to be on the But he didn't want that to end up on the internet And he and I talked about it really deeply because he when I spoke to him He's just like I'm never I'm never doing this again like it in and I can't even imagine watching that happen in in real time And that really got me thinking about it And then I ended up on the phone with Alex's mom Uh a few times and you know, she's asking me like why did this happen? Why was he doing this and those are Questions that are hard to answer to somebody else But I left those conversations asking myself those same questions And what is it that I'm actually getting out of this? Is it that I want to be able to call myself a bass jumper or where I want to like put a Brand logo on a wingsuit, you know, or is it is it the content that matters? Again, do I define myself by what it is that I do because people really will try to romanticize the risk associated with bass jumping And it's not a safe sport It can be done as safely as possible But it's not a safe sport and that has to be taken into account But you can also romanticize that a little bit right and try to leverage that against whatever it may be a bigger paycheck or a larger project or whatever it is And after those conversations, I just You know, and then I was I had spent a weekend with my kids were young at the time and just kind of looking at them and I would say within 30 days. I knew that I was gonna that I was gonna hang it up and I love doing it um, I mean I'd be open to going back to the bridge and jumping with miles in that controlled and contained environment, but Zipping up in a suit in switzerland and you know, it's It's an odd moment when you rock for it and you realize you passed that point where there There ain't no rocking back so you better push as hard as you possibly can and perform It's just not worth it to me anymore so you're hauling ass like um through those like Like ravines and shin, right? Which are way steeper than it looks like on go pros on go pros That looks like they're really flat the angle of most of those is incredibly steep The steepness in the speed is your margin to detach from the terrain um Broadly what happened to alex is is he misjudged the angle and got his suit to a place where it it kind of stalled out So he was over-trained that he could not escape and impacted it I was skydiving and as you know, I'm not a great skydiver. Tell me more because we went in the wind tunnel But I should have if I send you the video of that wind tunnel. Would you mind adding this to the? This was in the same it was the day after this that he broke dad these nights I but what this makes me think of is I was you know, like a team guy and We were parachuting and like we all sucked, you know, we were a bunch of you know Well, if you do it for two weeks every year, that's what's gonna happen But uh, I was whatever the last guy to go out and I'm trying to link my buddy, you know, like hey, let's link up, you know cool, so I Go into like a full track to link up with him and he jumped out quite a bit before me and like I was hauling ass and I tracked past him like I I I saved Myself and him You know from myself, I don't want to make a lot of hair. I'm saying I would change your direction a little bit and went past as opposed to through I was barely able to do it because again, I sucked And but my man, I remember thinking holy shit like you are an idiot And but that's the kind of feeling I get if you I can't even imagine what you feel like when you're Going by trees and shit like oh There's a moment where you go. Oh, I'm not going to be able to turn anymore and I imagine that's quite exhilarating. Mm-hmm. And I also imagine it must be uh followed up sometimes by This is a really risky business that we're getting into right now, especially when you have close calls and it happened and uh One of the things that I question Or questioned a lot and probably still do is I was with alex when he had some close calls And I wish that I had taken it more like almost grabbed the dude not slap them around a little bit But maybe depending on how we were like stupid close calls and again, it's all tactile. It's all vision Why did you make that choice? Did you in because you have to go out there? Like if you're standing on the edge you want to feel the air you want to be there at a time of day where the air is Rising and coming up you can jump if it's if it's descending, but you're gonna have a weight It's called the start It's the difference between vertical and then the lateral separation away And it's like somebody's hand pressing on your back and if you have a a non-cont sequential exit where there's thousands of feet Like you're gonna be okay But if you have rising air and you have a good start I mean you only need a couple hundred feet and you can jump over stuff where As you're in the middle of that start you're like this is the end Like i'm actually going to die now and then your suit kicks in you're like that's gonna Say because you need to gain enough speed where you can maneuver. There's a couple where you've put I'm pushed off I'm looking down the rock and I'm like well This was a fun ride and then you're like oh, I got it and you're out of there and then You know a little p-ring maybe change your pants. Not a big deal always hike with an extra pair of pants wear dark clothing You know what I mean echo Those have to leave a mark on you though and if they don't and you don't learn from that um I wish I had been More forceful in some of the feedback the mistake that he made it was a mistake that he made that took his life I had seen him do it before um And it's like yeah, so I was sponsored at the time right so I get all these wing suits and it's like I don't know if I hadn't been able to give him so many suits what he had been there that you know I mean, but those are the questions I ask myself Yeah, it's stuff it it In all the conversations I had with other people I left most of them with just questions for myself where I landed at the answer It just it doesn't provide for me what it used to and it's just not worth the risk Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of that I mean, you've never tried it. It's a super uneducated position to come from you know, it's like we should go give it a try No, no, no, no, no, no not my jam. Um, it is not most people's jam and I fully support that Uh Fast forward a little bit in 2007 I said goodbye to a friend a man far better than myself We completed buds together and later stood shoulder to shoulder as we received our tridents He was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq and his body told the story of that death I didn't want to look at him. I tried not to if you didn't know him Maybe you would have not have noticed the difference. I did I wanted to I tried to remember him for who he was not what remained I watched his wife Hold his hand. I watched her kiss his lifeless head for the last time. I watched his eldest son As his eldest son stood on his tiptoes his hands on the edge of the coffin straining to look over the edge What he saw was the remains of a man Who would never again have a chance to hold him to comfort him and to raise him a man who would miss the highs and the lows His trials and tribulations his own journey from child to man He saw his father for the last time It tore my heart out It hurt more than failure more than disappointment and more than getting shot Every american needs to witness that scene every american needs to experience that pain. We would be a better nation for it Once you have seen it once you have felt it you will never forget Jason Dale Lewis june 30 1977 to july 60,007 father son husband friend seal hardest part of the job in my opinion at least Where was that where was the service connecticut? Uh, you know the people at dover they do a good job, but sometimes they're starting with a Incomplete building block and if again No, I think you would have known I don't know your thoughts on this. Is it better to remember them as they were? Or is it better to go see them as they ended? I'm curious your personal thoughts on that because both lead to it for me at least Really different geometry and how I'm able to kind of deal in process with it I'm not sure man. I'm not either um I had one of my well, you know one of our guys got killed Not not not one of my guys a team guy got killed and um, I was at the memorial service And I was with one of his I wasn't close to this individual But one of his friends was there Who I'm good friends with and he was like You know like the service is going on and and my buddy is like telling me, you know, that's not him He's not in there like that kind of thing where Yeah, I think that leaves a mark as well Especially when they look drastically different than the person You know, it's wild about that is that son who was reaching over the coffin. I follow him on social media He's like off living his life Post-in pictures with women God bless him looking exactly Like his dad crazy and it's like fuck That the fact that jason will never get to know or see that Yeah, I've always I've struggled with funerals. Um It's not that I don't have the respect and that I don't want to go but I I'd also Like I didn't want he had an open casket funeral and I didn't want to walk up in front of that and we were kind of talking with people and got kind of Navigated into the line of walking by and then before I know it it was so it was unintentional. Um, another guy wrote it back about on the book was dave hall and um He he died by suicide, but again, we're at the service And they open and they open the casket And again, they do the best job that they can but like A new day pretty well You know an unnatural look in position for sure And I just I don't know I don't know what the right answer is Because I struggle to remember What they were before and maybe that's just me. I don't know. Maybe some people can I have so much more experience with them before that last visual But that last visual has his hooks really deep Um, I actually think I think more about guys As they were like as they were I try to but that thought always for me tailed and again Maybe this is just me and I'm sure the answer to that question as to which one you should do or which one is better is completely dependent on the individual making that choice but Hardest part of the job for sure. I think I think maybe in my head Just that idea of like that's not them is sort of like uh, the resounding thought of like, yeah, that's not them Like they're not that's not that guy, you know Echo do you have anything funny to say before jocke when I start crying? This is where you step in and stab yourself do your job, dude stab yourself accidentally so we can laugh at you for poor knife skills I That used to be like a the key part of echo's job in the early podcast was like we would do the most heavy Freakin podcast and it would be like I would not want to go home Yeah, like thinking about this horrible thing that we had just talked about, you know from some atrocity or whatever And you know, I'd be like echo say some dumb shit, you know, and please somebody. Yeah And it was actually was good, you know, because I felt like people even people like listening to the podcast would be like, dude I don't want to like I don't want this in my head for the rest of the day right now. They're driving straight to work and just quitting their job and going to a bar Yeah, we don't want that so, you know It's rough anything echo Charles What are your thoughts on that echo? Have you ever had to go to funerals open casket versus close? Oh Yeah, I did actually as a kid One of our friends died in a car accident like in the back of a truck scenario Yeah, I think you're right because since that's like I think there's like a bias in your head people people experience a different but It's called availability bias where The most accessible image is going to have the most sticking power, you know, so Since that's such a jarring image. It's always going to kind of take precedence a lot of times So I don't know that's kind of both make sense to me It's going to be weird when now that there's so much more imagery and video of everyone and you have You know and they're recreating shit like they can make someone come alive with AI like legitimately I've seen some AI stuff that is great I mean you see 10 years ago or five years ago like you'd see it in the movies They'd make someone come to life, right? But but they're going to be able to do that now with With people I don't know if our brains are ready for that. I don't know either I don't think the human brain is evolving at the pace of technology. We might really outstrip our ability to deal with this stuff Yeah, there's You don't need that much either to make someone come to life and that you know people you see those like there's a There's a app right now that can just take your family picture from 1952 And just like make them do some kind of basic movements and they look like they're looks like a short five second video Right and all meanwhile everyone in the picture is dead except for maybe one person Yeah, I did it for that video that I did for years for the 10 year anniversary. Yeah so yeah, you know that uh I thought I came out good, but I knew going in I was like, hey, this is a gamble Because I don't know how people feel about it. Yeah, so and and by the way So he's talking about a video that he made for the 10 year anniversary of extreme ownership and he made a video and it had like Mike Montsour, margley, ryan job and the original one that he made they there was there was Uh more movement, let's say like almost you know Like more movement. Yeah one was manufactured. Yeah, like doing something that he really didn't do the mike Montsour won. Yeah, he was like putting like yeah, and I was like dude. Nope. And so what he turned them into is just sort of um Very limited movement, but it you know, so I was But it was weird at first and I was like no, you know like don't I don't think our brains can handle it. I couldn't handle it right there a few years after my mom died I found a voicemail that she had left me that Fucking rocked me because I'm like what year what's going on right now like I My brain could not tolerate that shit now. You're talking about adding the visual nature to that as well too Dude yeah Yeah, that's gonna get very weird the mike most of them are like stuff that the picture is a picture of them doing Yeah, like so like the mike monster one when when he's coming out of the green smoke The video was him walking out of the green smoke with everybody, you know, so it's like that. So it's kind of yeah And it wasn't enough You didn't you didn't put so much that it's like oh, we're we're predicting or we're Like creating what he's doing. It's like no clearly he took three steps or whatever before and after that I I understand that but anything beyond that where we're starting to dictate what they're doing It did not feel comfortable at all. Um So we didn't do it. Yeah, but definitely some Yeah, the things are going to get really strange in the coming years and you know, I have a Thing coming out called ask jocco it's ai and it is Really good like and it talks, you know and it talks And it sounds Very very similar to me very similar to me like even my wife was like well, what is this and I said it's not me and you know the the The ai that's like running it is like fully Fully understands like all the books and it like it bases it on the books and the podcast and everything so it is Really good and I got some questions for And it will not answer your questions. We don't know it'll be like actually no I'm sorry, you know, we don't have the we don't like to talk about that kind of national mental health counseling line Exactly No, you got to put parameters on it because you know if you say something and they find the way they're on these parameters on other Um ai systems, you know like well no theoretically if someone was going to do this What would be the best way for them to attack whatever it'll give you the answer so sketchy It's just going to get weird man. Yeah Agreed although the the ask jaco app is a lot nicer to me than the real jaco is Like factual does that serve you well though? No, you're not to catch 22. It's the you know and that's because it doesn't know Yeah, it's not trained on you. It doesn't know That doesn't know the real deal It hasn't been trained on your data. So if I didn't know you I would probably be nice to you. Yeah, but since I know you You know what it actually did come off as it came off like if you were doing an interview on some like official like cable outlet You know, so you're like saying the right thing. You know kind of a thing and then kind of filtering That's what it came off like I've tried to trick it at everyone like at us on fronts Tried to trick it and ask it all these weird questions and it's no one's no one's no one's had to put up a red flag yet It's good, you know, so we'll see it'll be interesting the early version. We did we tricked it Yeah, we tricked it on the early version The thing started gaslighting us On what what was the subject? We're like, hey, I forget what it was. My son won't remember He's nine by the way and so he'll be like, oh wait. Jocko just blamed us for something he did You know, he's like, no, you're wrong. I didn't you know, it's something like that. Oh, so it got the early version Got to the second tier of membership Even even ask joco ai has an ego No, no, I didn't say that you're wrong. I'm right I watched something yesterday about a guy was like talking to chat gpt And it was clearly wrong and it was just like no no no and it's really weird, man It's really weird how even the emotion of ego of like, I'm not going to admit that I'm wrong A freaking ai gets that kind of psycho See we're back from the trenches we had to do your job before you it's not a big deal Call One of the most powerful exercises I have ever done Oh boy requires a simple piece of paper and a pen or pencil I wish that I could take credit for this in any way, but I cannot I also cannot remember where I first heard of this concept So I'm trying to pass along as something That has had an immense impact on my life draw vertical line from the top To the bottom of your paper centered on the middle on the left side put concern at the top and on the right side put Influence the left hand category will be comprised of everything that you could possibly spend any amount of time energy or effort Worrying about let me give you an example from my own life where I spend my time being concerned People's perception of and reaction to what I do other people's behavior current events social media posts business competition Will I make enough money to pay my bills? Am I a good enough partner for my wife? Am I a good enough father to my children? What will people think of me? Will I fail? Will I succeed? What is going to happen tomorrow? Who's going to be president? As you can tell the list could go on and on forever the right hand column influence is going to be much shorter and far more powerful Powerful what can we as individuals actually put down on the right hand side of the paper? I've tried to look at this from every angle possible and I keep coming back to a single answer literally the only thing we have We each have absolute and total control over in our lives Is ourselves what do I mean by that? I mean you can control your behavior You control your reactions. You control how you speak to yourself You can control how you set and approach your goals. You can do your best to control your thoughts, but that's it Why was this so shocking to me when I first tried the exercise? Well I created the list for the first time I came to the realization that I spent nearly all of my time and most of my effort trying to control things that I was definitely concerned With but had zero influence on A simpler way to put it. I was wasting my time High 90th percentile of time by the way That one sucks and I actually will literally do this when I if I get to a place where I'm struggling like Okay, what is it? I'm like, oh Whatever payroll bubba bubba listed all out cool This is and I can actually bounce it off my calendar like what I've been doing with my time And then I have to go over here. Me like okay me It sucks It's the same thing as the realization when I had my bird taken the first time like you can't control what happens to you But you have complete and total control on how you deal with it And that sucks because it's right back into your court That stings doesn't it? Yeah, it's also man like the list that you were rattling off I could have wrote four pages. Oh for sure. And how many how many how much time are people wasting? You know on social media today. It's totally insane and getting aggravated and getting you know, we we did a podcast one time and I was talking about like Because I was reading some comments and it was you know, some political comments, you know and and You know the bubba bubba and fuck you and I'm like I said to echo I said when's the last time you looked at another person And said fuck you you never do in person because right after that you fight. Yeah Like what does it take to get you to say that now? Can you imagine you're in your house? And you're looking at a computer screen filled with bots and you're Random stuff and you get so freaking emotional That you write fuck you that's crazy to think I don't have to imagine it just go online right now It's like greetings and salutations freaking crazy. It's insane and they'll blame it on Well, this person did that or said that or this person or the like all again That's all left-hand side of the category stuff I I wish I could say well actually pretty much nothing that book that I wrote is of my unique creation because I don't think I've ever had a unique idea of my entire life I read it or try to repurpose things that have helped me. I don't remember when I found that but it is if people actually spend the time to do that it's kind of It's pretty shattering especially if you think you have your stuff together Because the left hand side of that column really sucks up a lot of time And it doesn't do anything doesn't get you anywhere No besides emotional frustrated wasted time or out of time having accomplished nothing Yeah, that's a rough one. That's a good tool though freaking scary And again, I'm reading the total highlights of this book get the freaking book people order it This chapter is called I solemnly swear the horrors of war and combat are real fortunately. So is the treatment and help Everyone has a cup unique in both dimension and capacity some can hold more than others But eventually if unchecked regardless of who you are it will overflow when that happens you will need the help of others Thankfully this country is bursting with patriotism. There are countless organizations initiatives and individuals lining up ready willing and able to help I can't Imagine the struggle and pain that many veterans face on a daily basis. I know it is real Hard numbers tell me so I cannot fathom a place where the thought of taking your own life seems like the most viable option But I do but I know that for many it is their reality We will all have struggles. It is your choice whether or not they define you embody the principles and ethos of your previous service and face them head on Many think that reaching out for help is weakness when in reality it is a sign of incredible strength Although there is no shortage of outlets for help. The first step must be taken by you It is not the responsibility of others and organizations to help you get better It is yours if it doesn't work the first time try again if it doesn't work the second time keep trying giving up Is never the answer What a freaking crazy uh scourge that This has been for the veterans something that is almost like Totally foreign and I was talking to an old vietnam seal Um after a seal killed himself one of our generation And he was like totally irate on the phone with me like what the fuck is going on? Why the fuck is this happening? And i'm like Man, I was like we never would have thought about this shit. We never would have fucking done this. What is going on? It's freaking crazy He might have said that in the moment if you look at the veteran suicide numbers a lot of them are actually from that generation as well And that may be as they're I mean, no my dad was in vietnam he's turning 80 next year right so it might be a little bit more as people are getting to that phase of life where their body is just painful and hurting but Yeah, I don't understand necessarily what's going on with it either. I think military service is absolutely a privilege not a right I think it should be very hard to get into And if you go down that path I think you should go into it with eyes wide open But the trauma that will be associated with military service It doesn't have to destroy you and that seems to be the narrative. I hate the veteran broken toy narrative like if you served in combat Well, we have to make every accommodation for you and the accommodations are great And there are like 50 000 service-based organizations for what are loaded with cash that will help you But nobody can make you do that And you don't have to you don't have to live with that for the rest of your life I personally feel That whatever you would describe my experiences as where they were traumatic or scary or whatever it is They made me a better version of myself and I know that a true disorder for some people They can't make their way through but if you look at the data It's about single digit percentage that will have those lifelong struggles for life if they put the work in So post-traumatic growth is just as important as post-traumatic stress But almost all of that emphasis is on that front end And not on on the tail end or focusing people on that journey towards that because I do think you can it can make you a better person Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree and I also think it can totally wreck you and That's one of those things where you see like when someone has Whatever whatever little Rupture in their system, right and sometimes going through something hard can Can solidify that little rupture and sometimes Going through something hard like completely blows it apart name. They get destroyed and There's experts out there that can help you on both sides of that though I mean asking for help for guys at least and from our community at least when we were in probably not talked about You know very much. I wouldn't say that there was like a stigma associated with it. I remember when I was getting out they were really talking more about Integrating family units and counseling and therapy and all of those things and those things are all great But if people think if they go to therapy and that's actually where the work is done Sorry, like that's where you get sent home worth homework and you have to work on yourself And it's a super long path and some of the things that the country asks us to do are really gnarly You know, maybe don't expect to be doing high fives and backflips on a rainbow You know after talking to somebody for an hour it could take Years But you also could be such a better version of yourself and therefore a better husband or parent or father and all of those things I have never been told no when I asked for help in almost every phase of my life And somehow we have an incredibly large cohort of our peers It gets to a place that they either think that they don't have anybody to say I need help from Or they're not willing to I don't understand it Yeah, and I would say when I was in I think I retired about three years before you. What did you retire 13? Yeah, so in 2010 I retired and like I don't even remember any Like mental health being discussed in any way That's probably not good. Yeah I don't remember anyone saying like I remember we filled out some kind of a um Form before we left which I'm sure guys did super honestly Yeah, depending on what they had to do after filling out the form Well, Tony of fratteys he showed me his form that he filled out and these opening line was this is a cry for help So I knew that this was being taken very very seriously because he was not being serious He was like literally just making fun of the whole process Which is probably not the best thing to do But that's what he did because we're having a good time. But yeah, I don't I don't remember any like like Thought that these that guys were gonna need you know help now. I do remember guys that We that had some they got in trouble, you know and The thing is guys got in trouble in the 90s Yeah, you know your jackass got thrown in jail in the 90s You didn't look around and be like well, I have PTSD from what? No, no, I don't I'm actually just a freaking young jackass And at some point it's pretty it makes it a little bit more Digestible when they go to hell you doing like well, you know, I'm freaked out or I was mad or I was got whatever and people start saying that and Then people are saying well, is that an excuse or is that is there something real here? Two things can be true. Yeah, you know and plus how can you tell because you can't read somebody's mind? Yeah, uh How could they possibly have ever thought that with an occupation that asks us to do the things that they did that mental health Wouldn't probably be a component in that Like hey guys, you have a super normal job And we're not dealing people who struggle again first responders people who deal with that. I mean largely just we'll call it trauma That the stats are what the stats are. I mean Yeah, I told this story on uh one of my podcasts, but I I was in I was out for dinner and I have a guy come up to me and he's like hey like I need your help And I was like, yeah, man, what's up? And he's tells me story and I want to go through the whole thing But you know, he'd been in a hostage situation hostage got killed partner got wounded Perp got I forget I forget he got killed or whatever, but it was just shitty And He of course what when they go through that what do they do they take his badge away? They take his gun away they get to put on admin like so they're basically telling him you're all screwed up and And I'm like, oh Are you second guessing your decisions right now? And he's like, yeah, and I go cool. That's normal And I'm like, are you having some bad dreams that you wish you would have done some different different things? And he goes, yeah, and I go that's totally normal Uh, do you do you think that everyone's looking at you like you did something wrong and You feel bad about that. He's like, yeah, and I go cool. That's totally normal And the look on his face as I told him like bro, this is just normal You've gotten an incident where the hostage got killed and of uh perp, you know, your partner gets wounded Of course You're gonna have some night. You know, I was like, you know having some nightmares. Yeah, that's totally normal And I think for guys to recognize like, oh this shitty feeling that you have That's normal and that is to me very helpful for guys to realize that it's kind of like uh, I used to tell fighters taking them Before they would fight and be like, oh, you know how you're super nervous right now and you've like got uh, Bubble guts and all that stuff like yeah, yeah, yeah, like that's totally normal Totally normal. It's totally normal that you're having that and when you tell people that it's normal people go, oh, okay Like, oh got it. Oh when you're going into combat for the first time. Oh, you're feeling nervous and scared. Yeah. Yeah, guess what? That's normal. It's okay. You got done with combat. You're home and you're driving on the highway And you're looking at this car that's trying to get close to you like you might want to drive it off the road right now Cool. That's normal. Don't do it. Yeah, but that is normal And I think when people realize and I think that's what you know, one of the things that happened After world war two those guys got to drive home on the big ships together and debrief and like, oh, you were scared shitless So was I uh, oh you freaking had to kill some person that you maybe think didn't deserve it Cool. So did I like yeah, I feel bad about that. Yep. Okay. That's cool. Me too. Okay, cool We're on this boat for six weeks six weeks. We're gonna debrief all of our problems We're gonna get home and then we're gonna carry on with our lives And we realized that all that shit that was running around in my head was the same shit that was running around in your head And okay, that's kind of normal. Oh and you know, hopefully we can talk in three months Still having some weird dreams. Yeah, dude for sure. Okay, cool. That's normal. That's normal. Cool. Got it And I think a lot of times What people feel is I'm not normal. There's some the the thing that they feel is there's something wrong with me Yeah, they're holding themselves to a standard that's not realistic the stoic person that is Like unaffected by anything right Teflon and just bounces off It's really okay to not be okay at times. Yeah Yeah, it's it's bizarre, you know, when you when you As a grown adult, you're supposed to be able to like control your emotions And it's very scary when all of a sudden you're like You know Hear the national anthem and you start getting tears in your eyes. Oh, there's something wrong with me I'm telling you there's nothing wrong with you Oh, oh, you got some feelings when you look up at that flag or you hear some certain song or whatever happens that reminds you of Somebody that you had That's freaking normal, man That's just the way it is and I realized this I did a guy in my podcast I was in world war two of Korea and Vietnam And he got a purple heart in world war two Korea and Vietnam Three threesies. Yep. Tom Fife was his name And he was and he was started off as a private soldier Enlisted guy and then he moved up through the ranks Like a second lieutenant in Korea and then world war two or sorry in vietnam. He's a battalion commander And I'm sorry, you know, we're going through the whole thing. We're having the podcast. We're talking about war and you know all the stuff And I you know, he's all good and we get to vietnam and you know, he's talking about what his battalion do What kind of operations they were doing what the nop tempo is I call the normal stuff and then he says um And I said, oh, well, how many casualties did you take in your battalion? And he got choked up And I was like, oh Oh, okay I'm always gonna feel like this when I think about my guys And that's perfectly okay. I think you know, I think it would be abnormal. Exactly. If you didn't Exactly at the the perfection again, I think people are holding themselves to an unrealistic standard and I think What you just described and being open and honest about that is probably the most important thing that people who are dealing with that can actually do and so Recognizing that it's like, oh, this is normal. It's maybe been going on longer than I think it should have been Let's reach out to these resources that are all going to say yes to you by the way If you reach out but nobody can make you make that call Yeah, I think another huge beneficial thing is talking about it talking about these things. Uh, I was I realized this from writing uh, eulogies which I was always seemed to be the guy to write the eulogies and and When you write a eulogy like you're gonna sit down there and you're gonna freaking cry all you can barely be able to Be able to write But you're processing it. Yeah, and then you're gonna you know, you're gonna show it to your buddy make sure Hey, but what do you think of this? Did I miss anything cool? All right, you're crying with your buddy and then you get up and you stand up in front of a bunch of people And you got through it and you get mad so you don't you know act like a bitch in front of your bro So now he's actually he's going backwards now. So we're now now we're actually causing generational trauma Like hey, you got to get through that thing man You got to get through that thing and so You do And then you get done you turn around you walk off stage you cry your eyes out again It's like okay, but when you do go through that process and then you're talking about it You see your buddies and eventually, you know that emotion starts to quell it starts to relax a little bit And again, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, like I think some people feel guilty because they don't feel as bad as they felt You know a year ago. Well, I'm I'm I'm forgetting but no you're not you're processing. You're human. This is what's this is what's this is normal life shouldn't be a competitive game of suffering Like there is no suffering olympics. I know I you know doing the audiobook interesting journey by the way Sometimes I'm like this is actually not that bad. Who wrote this? You know other times I'm like, who who wrote this? I don't know. Maybe change the words here. I get to the last chapter about my mom. Holy Shit, I thought I'm just like Alex it was alex too and then talking about dave like I'm just guys like oh, we're doing great. We're ahead of schedule and I'm just like I'm gonna need about seven days off right now. It's tough man. It's tough It's tough and it is it is forward momentum like it's forward movement It's processing and it ultimately is helpful and You have to you have it hurts to do it Yeah, you know every time it hurts to do it But if you don't do it, I think it causes way more hurt and way more damage. So Get it out there This next section use with caution and it says not everything from the military is applicable to the civilian sector Many things whether equipment or systems are not designed for and do not perform well outside the military ecosystem Some things can be used with caution and some things should be avoided at all costs the aar process the a Arr process is an example of what I believe has immense overlap and value But that is not true of all things in my opinion the military the quote military leadership model Is at the top of the things that should likely be avoided Sorry, I know that's kind of your jam, but well You know, it's it's actually perfect. It nails it because that's one of the one of the most difficult things that I had to overcome especially early in after I left the military was overcoming the stereotype of the quote Leadership military leadership model which people think is like oh if you just bark orders and tell everyone what to do Everyone just do does what you tell them to do It's the full metal jacket exactly honestly It's like the best worst movie first setting series And what's interesting is there were some people especially in the beginning and I still get it occasionally now Like I remember I was one of the earliest companies I worked for Is uh a guy, you know the CEO of the company says I can't wait till you come in here and whip these people into shape And I said hey man, if you're looking if that's what you're looking for you should find someone else because I'm not whipping anyone into shape You whip slaves and slaves do not perform optimally. They actually rebel against you and kill you But that idea of military leadership and what people think that is It's it's dysfunctional. Does it happen in the military? Yes, it does Does it happen in the civilian sector? Yes, it does. Is it functional in the military? Nope, it's not. Is it functional in the civilian sector? No, it's not it happens People get away with it more in the military and the reason they get away with it more in the military is because You only have to survive for two years You have to survive for two years if you're working for an Authoritarian leader in the military. He's only going to have his job for two years It takes you six months to figure out that he's an asshole Then you start saying wait a second. We need to confirm that this guy. Oh, this guy's definitely an asshole Well, should we have a mutiny against him if we do that our platoon is going to look bad We might not get the best deployment. So let's just keep our mouth shut The guy continues to be an asshole. You still do a good job because you're a bunch of squared-way guys You accomplish whatever mission you get tasked with You make your boss look good despite despite his terrible leadership And he gets promoted and that's what happens with the Oftentimes doesn't happen all the time and usually there's generally speaking that does cap out at some point because you can only burn So many bridges and look out for yourself so much before you get that reputation But but in what you just described Is nested what the civilian world can't see Because all they see specifically from spec ops is success success success because I think I almost wrote your exact words The team succeeds Despite who the leader is but the outside it's like you guys are tasked with doing the impossible And you always succeed so therefore and this is the jump that they make that is a mistake Any leader in the SEAL teams Therefore must be a great leader everywhere and you guys have this secret sauce And I worked for the best leaders of my life in the SEAL community and the absolute worst And from a you if we were standing there out at quarters, you know this as well as I do Almost everybody at the command could be like awesome dude. Awesome dude awesome dude piece of shit But in the picture if you show that to civilian they're like these are the most impressive leaders and warriors We've ever seen and by the way, that's the guy that's in charge and that's why they were so successful and so if you think and again There's something else too and I've heard you talk about this A lot so I know that you agree it's the buy-in like for our community the crucibles that you go through to even arrive at that place Like you're there for the right reasons, right? You understand Why you're there you've been through multiple years of training. You're with your peers. You're a high functioning team. You're high functioning individuals You can get away with a little bit more of being Directive in nature at times because everybody there is so incredibly bought in I have 40 people who work for me at a coffee shop The average age is 20 and they're female That is way harder Than leading at a SEAL team. Let me just tell you right now. Yes Consequently Probably not as dangerous But oh my god The complexities of leadership in that environment far exceed the SEAL community Yeah, the interesting thing about that is like You know and we were talking about this a little bit before we hit record today But the SEAL teams is filled with a lot of a lot of individuals. You know a lot of individuals with their own ideas their own egos their own emotions and If you ask, you know, generally speaking if you say hey, we're gonna hit this target and you ask 20 guys in a platoon How you think we should do it? You're probably gonna get like 20 different courses of action. I'll say 30 Yeah, you might get 30 And so so, you know one of the one of the black belt moves that I talk about When you want people to buy in if something is and I did this throughout my career And I learned this from one of my platoon commanders was He didn't tell us what the plan was He told us what the goal was And then said come up with a plan and therefore the plan wasn't his plan It wasn't the command's plan. It was our plan and we were 100 bought in and that's kind of the way I always tried to operate because you know I don't even have to ask you this question to ask you if like when your boss told you to do something Or are you telling me that you were 100 bought in with every, you know, every time anyone told you to do that from 30th percentile And that's another thing that people think like oh when you're in the military Oh, you just tell someone what to do and they're gonna do it. No, it's so far from the truth What you actually have to do is lead now. Listen again Can I get away with it? Look if you're an e6 and you work for me and I'm a chief and I'm like Hey, Andy, I want this done like this and you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. I go shut up and do it You're gonna shut up and kind of do it kind of half ass and when something goes wrong You're gonna look back at me. This is what you told me to do. It's just terrible. It's terrible It's terrible leadership doesn't it doesn't look it'll work for a moment in the military It'll work for a moment in the civilian sector to be that kind of tyrannical authoritarian leader But it is not a long-term solution the idea of this the the thing that you put in quotes of military style leadership or whatever it is Not real and not only is it not only do you not want that not only do Should you not want that but it's not the right thing because if I'm telling Andy Hey, go do this thing right now the way I'm telling you I actually want you to say hey, John go that doesn't make sense That well, why not? I told you to do it. No, but here's here's the secondary effects that you're not thinking about right now Because you're not in the front lines with me. So here's some adaptions adaptions. We should make to what you're saying Oh, thanks, man Appreciate it. Go go do what you think is right. So that's the kind of thing where you know, there's a great book I covered on this point. I think I think I did four podcasts about this book called What about one book is it's called it's called the psychology of military incompetence And yeah, it's so I'm gonna add to cart. Yeah add to cart add to cart Uh And and what's crazy about is when I first saw it I was kind of like oh, what's some Some psychologist gonna know about military, right? And this is guys what I'm not gonna read this But of course I was like, well, let me do a little research Yeah, the guy was in world war two was wounded was then he became a psychologist afterwards And what he bled out is again, this is something that we talked about before he hit record is people have like certain personalities, right and there's some people that have a very authoritarian mindset And those people when they see the military from the outside, they're like, oh I'm gonna go do that because when I'm in there, everyone's gonna follow me. They're gonna have to follow me They're not gonna be able to question me and they that the military attracts that kind of person And what sucks is that person can actually do well in a garrison environment when it's like, oh, we're gonna get ready for this inspection watch you guys out here at this time, but where their brain Implodes is in combat when all of a sudden you don't have control everything the enemy gets a vote the weather gets a vote The weapons system is going to vote and by the way the people that you bark orders at and they listen to you when you're in Garrison I want you out here for inspection at zero four hundred And he's gonna show up because he doesn't want to get in trouble when I'm like Andy go charge that machine gun nest You're like bro. I ain't charging that fucking machine gun nest. That is the correct answer Yeah, exactly. So So those people that have that authoritarian mindset They perform well in non-combat situations, but in combat situations they fall apart and meanwhile the guy that is like open-minded and free thinking That guy does terrible in the garrison minds that he said what the hell do we got to be in here at four o'clock? It only takes us three minutes to get our free uniforms on that guy is terrible in garrison But in combat he's like wait a second. Why would we go charge that machine gun nest when we could just set over here on the flank and put you know Indirect fire on them. Oh, okay, and so you get this this mindset that That is is a stereotype of military leadership and it's so bad And again, this is at echelon front one of those things that you know, we had to fight We're pretty pretty much there We don't have to do it too much now because there's enough information about us out there. But yeah the The idea that You're gonna bark orders And everyone's gonna be on board It just ain't happening man for that garrison leader too. I would say be really cautious using your coffee cup Oh Because people like Andy have a very creative mindset give it a wash if you're gonna leave it at work. You know what I mean? There are other ways to be insubordinate Oh lord Uh a little bit of uh seal training you talk about here. Uh, there are five potential outcomes for a bud's trainee Graduate the holy grail for all graduates for all students number two quit number three performance drop number four And the performance drop each phase of training. There are very structured test gates You know, you get the run this one in the office course all these testing things number four is medical drop Injuries happen during training death too. I don't think there's ever been a student who attempted seal training It was not nursing an injury of some kind And some injuries cannot be worked through and then five is admin drop Academic tests and buds as well as physical tests Not college level courses and the aptitude test given to attempt the pipeline generally ensures an ability to pass the academic requirements So but things like tragedies personal life Those things can happen and then the disciplinary issues um And so you talk through through those various things and you say although there are five potential outcomes for a student one is clearly the most common and by multiple orders of magnitude and that is the quitting sweet Sweet sound of the bell and you were a bud's instructor, you know after you got wounded you needed to heal up and so you went and Became a buds instructor you talk about some of that some of the things that you surprised you how Uh structured the training was shocked when I was I don't know your experience, but going through as a student I just assumed that the instructor staff had carte blanche to do whatever they 100 that's what I felt like And I also think that when we went through That might have been a little bit more true um because or they were more free. I mean the first remediation to use the acceptable term the term by Mike mirror who was beating the ever-living shit out of us at the time at The 618 barracks on a weekend Uh, yeah, he used the term beating. Um, we were there for hours So he either was operating outside of the purview of the co's desk Which is what I think it was or out of the guidance, but every day is basically a three-ring binder. I was shocked You know, you're out there and surf immersion like you're gonna be out here forever And you know at nighttime the lights are on facing the students There's a suite of doctors back there like there's there's a guy over checking the temp and an instructor like well We got six more hours and we can have you in the water But then a guy whispering in his ears like yet 90 seconds and then you got to pull them out All right berm sprints, which you think that that you're punishing them, but you're warming them up so you know, you mean so there's a lot of stuff that you think that they're just Making up and it's literally just Okay, uh one alpha then we'll do one bravo and then work our way to one charlie and it's just it's shocking actually the Thing you were talking about with mike mirror that they had a name for that It was called extra buds, which it wasn't they didn't call it that when I went through but I I heard that term And I think that got tightened up in the past couple years The extra buds was very becoming very very extra the curriculum works The job of an instructor is to apply the curriculum. You don't need to do anything on top of that I mean, it's been the same since whenever the training started largely it works And then the injury rate you talked about how that surprised me As a student if somebody either quits or get hurt just disappear. See you later like running to You I mean this scenario would definitely play itself out echo now I'd be running to chow chatting you would stop training after chow so I'd run back and have a conversation with jocco because we Successfully made it through I would uh in that scenario. I probably would never think about you again or ever see you again And that's just the way that it was that's not like you're just it's an individual team journey Right like you need a bow crew, but it's your personal journey to get through training You just don't see the guys you get a lot of time around the injured people as an instructor because they augment the classes, but man obstacle course choose people up. I was talking to uh Jason who's the pt guy that eventually came to the teams and but the guys that would work at buds like Uh, I forget what injury was it was like patella fomoral syndrome, right happens to Like that the the buds medics guys they would see literally dozens and dozens of cases of patella Patella fomoral syndrome a week, which is probably a career for somebody else And yeah, and he said like in the the guys that work In you know professional athletics would literally see like one of those every six months and here you see patella fomoral syndrome Dozens of cases a week. Yeah, because that's what the grind is there Uh fast forward a little there was additional cohort of students that I had the opportunity to spend more time with than When I went through training and it was this group of students Who had made the decision to quit that I learned the most from The departure from buds training command can make can take days even weeks during that time when these students were grappling with the Decision they had made and the consequences that came with that decision. I had time to talk to them For the most part I found them to be incredibly open and honest about the why that led them to quitting I suppose that I was catching them at an emotionally vulnerable state And I always approached the conversation with no judgment and only a desire to understand very rapidly I recognized there was a pattern in what they would tell me They didn't use the same words and the stories were certainly not all the same But a singular theme rose to the surface repeatedly. I would say things like I was too they would say things like I was too tired I was too cold. It was too hard Although the reasons may sound different They all they are all verbal expressions of the same thought process and mental failure What those students were describing whether they realized it or not was not only the moment that they broke But the reason for it as well as an instructor. I had a variety of tools at my disposal I had water in the form of the pacific ocean sand physical exertion sleep deprivation telephone poles boats obstacles runs swims in a variety of physical exercises I could also combine those tools assuming I stayed within our acceptable training guidelines When what I came to realize over time, especially when especially time spent with students who had quit Was that it wasn't the tools used in isolation or even in combination that drove students to the point of making the decision to quit It was the students themselves What these students are describing is the exact moment in which they allowed their view of time to override their decision making process They're describing the moment that they the student allowed the optic and lens on their goal to be forced open to its widest possible aperture and then Decided that the distance between where they were and where they wanted to be was too much They stopped focusing on where they were and started focusing on how much further they had to go If the lens gets wide enough and the distance seems far enough A tsunami is coming if you let it it will smash you into the rocks and before you know it the bell will be singing you a lullaby It's honestly as simple as that. Yeah, shockingly enough. It's the world's best laboratory on why people quit And it was I mean not every student sometimes the life happens, but almost always They just I couldn't take it anymore I Quitting on Monday of hell week. I couldn't make it to Friday Quitting on the second day or first day of first phase, which to this day still shocks me like what the fuck did you think you were signing up for? At least make it to the lunch of the first day Do you think i'm joking? I am not joking. It sounds funny. That's all if you're not a student. It is funny But like what god paper could be written on what you thought this was gonna be It's all versions that I just couldn't take it anymore And once you realize that that's all I would do Would just talk to students like man you look cold And it'd be Monday of hell week and my watch is set to Sunday at like 2 a.m. You know So because they're looking at your watch too like yeah, I guess what dude? I was a student also Like man We got a lot more to do we're gonna be here for a really long time. Did you catch that echo? Charles so he would set his watch back so they'd think four hours had gone by but But yeah, do you know how I learned that trick because instructors like to me too And as with all good generational trauma it has passed down I mean you could scream at these students you could get them physically exhausted But it's if you can Get them to a place where they start asking themselves how much longer can I do this? The likelihood of them quitting just went through the absolute roof Shocking and then once you get one And other people especially if they have put some level of faith into the guy who just quit if he can't Do that. What is he what am I not paying attention to if he can't do it? There's no way that I can It's all it is it has nothing to do with any of the tools. It's just the student is actually the student's worst nightmare It's the most powerful tool you can use against them and that to me Applies to everything in life. How would you PID like a weakness? Like physical or we're talking like when you when you would you just pretty much every Guy in the class you'd be like amen. This is gonna be a long week for oh, yes every multiple times Um You can tell when somebody's paying attention to you when they're not and the person who would just shut me out which is the correct move or Minimum you know the deal whatever I ask you the question is who you off course But get through that environment the ones that would sit there and engage with you at a deeper level And there's the ones who are starting to think about it. That's how you know that you have cracked the door a little bit That's how you know that you have cracked the door a little bit the ones where it's just Teflon You're like next moving on to the next one the guy the guy I don't know how long I can do this like well You're in the middle of a nine day evolution. This is like the third day into hell week, right? Which is actually only five days, but they don't you know and they know that too, but it just you just slam it open Well, you know it it doesn't have to be hell week I mean just imagine the likelihood of being able to graduate if you have a stack of 3m Uh, you know little note pads and the first one says 182 And you put that on your wall and after the first day which does suck by the way you rip that off and it says 181 Like how many how long you're gonna be able to look at that mental picture? Which is exactly what I was saying in the book like this is where I am and this is where I want to be But this is all I'm gonna focus on Versus a dude who's like oh, I'd actually have that I just I just you know Do what we're doing and we get to the end of the day And you don't have to count at all because at some point one plus one equals two plus another one and another one and you're at 182, but I tell you what the dude who was counting down the other direction. He's not there Did you ever have a guy that that you talked to that you got to quit that you were like, damn That might have been an okay, dude Bud's isn't selecting for okay, dude If I was looking for good dudes to fill up the seal teams I could go to your average 7-11 on the street corner and find okay dudes You're looking for guys that can do the job I had that conversation with someone the other day like you You that's what we're trying to find out. Yeah, that's literally what we're trying to find As a matter of fact, I talked to Dakota Meyer the other day and I was like, hey man If guys are like afraid to die Then they don't really want to do this job Actually, I think it's okay to be afraid to die if you can control that and do what you still need to do It's you know, if you're paralyzed by that fair enough fair enough Um psychopath. Well, there's a little peek into jocco psyche there You know that to go to add on to what you're saying like and I because I did have that question as to Huh That kid probably could have been awesome come back when you're ready Because they may not just be ready You might just need a few more laps of life experience And I wrote about Mikey in the book because his story about quitting the first time and coming back People forget that you can do that that's never talked about and so again, you don't have to define yourself by these failures He made a decision. I was able to record a podcast with his dad, which was awesome He's honest to me. He's like, yeah, it wrecked him By putting more logs on the fire until he was able to go back So yeah, if you're a good dude and you don't make it on the first try the come back, you know Yeah, mark lee by the way same thing really mark lee quit first time he went and uh was like Totally distraught over it. Yeah and worked his ass off and came back and kicked ass and was a freaking awesome guy in a platoon That just means they weren't ready the first time through that's all it means now that that makes total sense. And I mean You do not That's that's that's the thing that we have in the teams is like the guy look man It's gonna be shitty. It's gonna be cold. It's gonna be wet. It's gonna be miserable. It's gonna be scary And we're gonna have to get our shit on and go again And like the feeling that you just know that that team guy Is is with you man. That is as good as a feeling as you could get and Very rarely would you hear about a guy that like would not Drive on you know, you had one of my first platoon. Yeah, like I said, very rarely It happens very rarely and when it happens. It's like dude like it's a shocker Uh, but it does happen and that's the whole reason that draper cough draper koffman made hell we because like I want this shit to be so bad That On we know when we're getting ready to go on the beaches in normandy or wherever like guys aren't gonna give up Did he put himself through it? He did indeed good Did you know that? No, so he got he made it And then they had a massive attrition rate and the navy was starting to look at what the hell's wrong with you And he went funny. They're still looking for that He went through the program himself and he was like 35 years old or something like that when he went through it himself And it just so happened when he finished literally secured hell week It just so happened that the base commander had gotten a call from whoever And said like what the hell's wrong with this training look why aren't any guys making it through And he the base commander. I think it was the base commander. Don't quote me on the story. It's in ben milligan's book by water beneath the walls freaking outstanding book Calls him in and he's like, you know, what's happening with this training? Why are so many people quitting? He's like, uh I just went through this training. It is totally makeable and i'm 36 years old or whatever. So yes He is it is very makeable. Yeah, it is what I would call actually relatively simple yet not easy Yeah, don't quit. Yeah, this is the whole thing I've been hearing. So, you know what people will ask me Because I talk about this concept. They'll say, well, why don't you teach this theory of breaking things down like that to begin with? Which I don't think you would actually make a difference Because it's something that requires practice or that you have already inherently learned in your life And there's a huge difference between understanding a concept and living it This makes things digestible how I break it down and talk about like breadcrumbs and chunks It makes it digestible Not less painful. Yeah, so you still have to go through the pain But you are working through it in a digestible chunk that you're still fighting against yourself with I don't think it would change attrition rate. And by the way, I think they do tell that to guys They might they tell guys like hey, just make it to the next meal Whatever you say in the book they make it to your next meal. I think that's where you are focused on Yeah, just make it your next meal like that's totally like Obvious and they tell guys that hey, you know like just just go do the next evolution just make it through the next evolution That's all you got to do Especially in hell week because in hell week like you don't fail a run You don't fail a you get punished for it, but you're not going to get dropped from it So like just keep freaking going and you're going to be all right And that's kind of what you say here If you can recognize and weaponize the most effective tool to make people quit You should be able to reverse engineer the process that has the opposite effect And then you talk about some examples from your life of Chunking the sentence chunking things up, you know, like whether it's moving a pallet of bricks Whether it's uh making it through hell week, which I just talked about You know, those are things that you have been able to Chunk up the personal one you say I've never been had a lower sense of my own self-worth And place in the world than I did about halfway through the nearly two-year divorce process I do not possess the vocabulary needed to describe what it feels like to be reduced as a human being Down to a number on a piece of paper and then have that number be argued over Add young children into the mix who are being fed a narrative that Has at best a casual relationship with the truth paired with limited time together And you have a very heavy situation There were days where I felt where it felt as if the force of gravity had increased threefold Days where I woke up more exhausted than my lowest moments in the seal community Lying in bed trying to figure out how I was going to make it through the day There were days when I questioned whether I was good enough human being to deserve to be a father To deserve finding another partner and days where I pondered whether or not the world would actually be a better place without me There were days where I questioned everything that I thought about myself days where I stared into the abyss of Heartbreak wondering if there was a bottom there were days where time seemed to slow Where it seemed like every piece of information and every interaction I was having were only negative There were days where I felt like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain and boulder after boulder continued to tumble down the mountain Only to crush me And there and others where it felt like I was being pulled under in quicksand In those moments the single largest threat and the biggest enemy that I was facing was not someone on the other side of a Divorce proceeding. It was myself myself. It was and remains the lowest point I have ever been in my life That's a freaking I actually think we should abolish sales rating and just force people to go through divorces dude The attrition rate would be higher It's the hardest thing I've ever done. It was The absolute worst Not from a physical perspective, but from an emotional perspective is the single hardest thing I've ever done It's gnarly and it's just day after day after never ending for almost two years during coven Oh, and then you got the kids involved. So there's there's like Parameters on what you can do and say and they're supposed to be not everybody follows parameters jaco Imagine your entire life though literally that excel spreadsheet thing that's real. I remember that that was actually the crux of all arguments in the mediation that lasted almost two years. It's basically money. It's money. What is What are you worth as a person? Okay, how do we spread this out? Amicably or depending on the state that you live in you'd hope it's 50 50 It's not 50 50 in Montana. Let me tell you And it's just like everything you've ever done you've ever tried It gets jammed in this excel spreadsheet And then you argue about whether or not you're worthy to get a percentage of that or somebody else. It's it's insane It's the absolute worst Yeah, and you got to be looking at like kind of what I was saying earlier how you dig yourself a hole And at some some point you look in the hole and you're like wait a second. I don't know if I can get out of this thing Oh, yeah Oh, I didn't even know where the top of the hole was at the end of that process There's not even any sunlight. You're just like, okay And somehow I got down here and I forgot where my shovel is so it's just me No, it's the worst man And so you talk about the reason you talk about that is you talk about like How you basically one step at a time how to use this concept Regardless of what's going on. So what does it look like when you're going through this horrible divorce? So again because of the covid stuff, we'd have zoom calls, right? And you know, let's say hypothetically one side hires a financial expert to try to value you as a person If you don't agree with that then you have to hire your own financial expert that values you as a person and argues against their value and You're paying for both. It's pretty fun And then you're having these calls where people are arguing back and forth And you just feel like less and less and less of an actual human being and more and more and more about a number And I remember just sitting there thinking I don't know how much longer I can sit here and have people talk about me in this manner as if I'm not on this call Which is the dangerous headspace that those students get into and I just flipped it. I'm like, okay, you know what? No, we're not going to do that. First. I'm going to get up go for a quick walk here. I'm going to come back I'm just going to get through this call this call sucks. I'm going to get through it We'll see what comes next and not think about the remainder of the week that had three more days that were scheduled for calls exactly like that One step at a time Yeah Did you have any uh Outlet like the jacked janials was good friends. Were you drinking hard though? I didn't drink anything during that. That's one of the first things that I realized that I couldn't do that jujitsu People are like, why did you go training for like seven days a week and four times a day? Oh, yeah, I mean honestly, yeah, it was during that it was right during that time period and again couldn't travel very much Um, not that jujitsu was supposed to be happening, but I mean whatever this is social club It's hard to say what was going on behind the door and there was a group of people who took uh health very seriously And it's like hey if you're not feeling well, don't come in and we would get together almost every just train our asses off Helped tremendously and You know to go back to the base jumping chapter one of the things that base jumping always gave for me was Not like disassociation, but you can only think about what's going on in the moment So you don't have to worry about if you had an argument or bills or any of that stuff because you're like Am I gonna hit this tree or not? I live in life at three seconds in front of my face That for me helps clear a lot of the stuff out of the filter jujitsu not the same level of intensity But I don't know how it is for you guys It's a little bit harder for me to get there at this point because i'm thinking about a little bit more stuff Just because I understand a little bit more stuff, but you can be in the moment, which is the same thing It helps Pull away that stress. Yeah, my my jujitsu mind is very very very empty Yeah, like like I'll literally get down trained in and someone will be like, hey, what was that thing you hit over here on that? Second round i'm like, I have no you and I are similar that people will ask me that after a while I'm like, I actually don't know what you're talking about How did you do that thing where you got around to my back? I'm like I'm gonna need you to replicate what you did and there's a good chance. I'm not gonna do the same thing Which is like that's the meditation thing, right? You know because people like oh you need a meditation you can clear your mind. I'm like, uh freaking Get out there and have somebody trying to kill you for yeah, you know eight five minute rounds Your mind's gonna be pretty clear I don't know what I would have done absent that because I had found jujitsu before that process started I I I don't know maybe able to become a botanist or something or long walks out in the Montana hillside And you said alcohol cut off was a conscious decision 100% And what what how'd you get there? I mean I don't know if you know this but we drank a lot in the ceo teams and I have seen it destroy enough people's lives and I've made enough bad decisions when drinking i.e. first chapter Um that I knew that it was going to be hard enough and that one's like why would you want to wake up feeling like Shit having to go through any of those conversations I need to be able to think clearly because this is probably going to be the time Where I need to have the clearest level of like lens and objectivity not only in this situation But also on myself as well the more I did jujitsu the less I drank I've always had like it like I can casually drink or not. I can turn it off for years It never had its hooks in me like that and as I've gotten older I don't even have the desire to drink more me neither Yeah, definitely don't and it's yeah Very lucky I think because I think there's some guys when I talk to them They're like, dude, how do you do it? Like I'm like damn dude. I don't even think about it anymore Well, there are some people also who are genetically predisposed through you know Chuck One thing you mentioned here is developing a mentality that doesn't allow you to quit is actually quite easy Knowing when you should is truly hard because there's plenty of examples and you know Some people get that mentality of hey, I'm never gonna quit And they're digging a hole And you had to make that call, you know, basically with your relationship your your ex-wife like yeah, but I made it 10 years Too late a decade Because I would stand there literally stand in the mirror You'd be like really you're gonna quit It was the currency that we were judged by for almost two decades I'm really good at positive self-talk Wake up in the morning be like good morning again. You piece of shit. What is it today? You're gonna fall short of So you're just brushing your teeth away you legit looked at Your marriage as like if I get a force where I'm quitting Jocko, there was a time in my life where I looked at giving up on anything That was quitting. It was the only currency that mattered with the people that I cared about most in my life And that doesn't work I mean toxic really I hope everybody has a fantastic relationship, but toxic relationship exists. Let's take a no-quit attitude to that Where's that gonna go? Yeah, you know and also what example and what I realized and this one pisses me off to this day Um, and I never give any details really about the divorce. There's two parties inside of that I have a larger platform than she has the access to so I just always leave it very bland Um, and I own my I own my share of the divorce as well too But if I waited 10 years too long What example that I set for my kids when it comes to if the relationship which and I've had very deep conversations with my kids And they're all like, yeah, uh, just so you guys know when you guys were arguing we were just sitting on the stairs listening All right, the kids Are way more attentive. They hear more. They see more like don't think you're hiding anything from your kids They see it like what example that I set for them by trying to have be Johnny no quit You know, like yeah, you're on the football team. Don't quit You're in a relationship now for over 10 years. It's really falling apart. It's unhealthy in many many different ways, but you know, just Stay in there, buddy Yeah, I actually wrote about that in the book leadership strategy tactics It's like no one wouldn't quit and you definitely need to look around there sometimes where it's like, oh if you don't quit It's only gonna get worse. Yeah Yeah Fast forward a little bit There's nothing I value more than my children, but I do not tell them they are special Instead I tell them that I am proud. I tell them that I am proud to be their father proud of who they are And proud of who they are becoming when they fall. I don't rush to pick them up I rush to make sure they are okay. And then I do my best to teach them to pick themselves up I teach them to value work honor integrity and family. We discuss accountability responsibility and the consequences of words and actions I do not shield my children from the ups and downs of my own life I want them to see me challenged physically mentally and emotionally so that they understand that it is okay that it should be expected That it is essential My kids are the single most important job I will ever have it keeps me up at night worrying about whether I'm doing a good enough job I hope it keeps you up at night too The most important lesson they will ever learn to me is to never under any circumstances give up when they succeed it will be Do not too luck or good fortune. It will be from hard work It will be because they know that the rent is due every single day and they're prepared to pay it They will learn these things from me at least that is my hope And then you have this author's update. Oh, yeah, my kids were super young when I wrote that. Yeah. Yeah When I was giving you a verbal update on this before talking about my oldest son and his choices When I wrote those first few paragraphs my children were much younger My oldest had just become a teenager a few months prior and their problems Now that I have the ability to look into the rear view mirror were far less complex I hear parents saying all the time that they cannot wait for their kids to grow up I understand the sentiment but all I can say in response is be careful what you wish for I obviously don't love my children any less and it's certainly fun to enjoy activities They were unable to participate in at a younger age But as they grow in age the potential problems and issues they will face grow in complexity Your kids are going to be exposed to drugs alcohol and sex just like we all were at this point I think the best you can hope for is that it doesn't all happen in a single experience Their social circles will develop into an influence that dwarfs your ability as parents and they are going to be connected to them Nearly 24 7 I heard an amazing quote recently about smartphones And that is something that I think all parents should consider especially when you When you cheer children approach you because everyone in their friend group is online and they Communicate via social media apps when you give your children a smartphone. You are not giving them access to the world You are giving the world access to them It is a terrifying concept and it is 100 true I feel like a failure as a parent. I know of no other way to put it I've done my best to model to my children everything in the opening paragraphs and more often than not It seems like water hating the side sheet of a metal building Sliding off to the bottom and forgotten about my children have seen me reinvent myself multiple times as opportunities present themselves They have seen me at my low points and when things appear to be going well I do everything I can to model an example of hard work doing what needs to be done To allow for us to live the life I think we want spending the time to needed to accomplish the work that needs to be done Sacrificing personal wants and desires to make sure that they have what they need and being responsible with my time energy and effort They've seen me sweat bleed cry succeed and fail and yet it seems like the majority of the lessons I am trying to pass on them are lost or just simply discarded I do not want anyone reading this book to think I am I have Parenting figured out or that I am even a successful parent because I truly do feel like a failure The more I try to help the worst thing seemed to become when I step in to be of assistance It often ends up being an opportunity to be taken advantage of or at least that's how it feels I have three children each on their own unique trajectory. I know they will find their own way in life I just no longer know how much of an impact I am able to have on them It is so easy to write those first paragraphs talking about parenting in a virtuous manner Laying out a playbook for developing the perfect child prepared for life and ahead of Ahead of them and ready to tackle any obstacle for the parents out there struggling. I feel you I'm right there with you and maybe this is the way it's supposed to be Maybe this is the only way it can be Children sharpen their teeth on your bones Yeah, it's um I remember like we've been doing this podcast for like 10 years And so my kids 10 years ago were kids. Yeah, they would do what you said. Yeah to a degree I didn't really talk about parenting. Yeah because Then I remember telling echo like dude the jury's out bro Like who knows like you don't know what your kids and I had new people growing up who had kids Man that just completely went off the rails. Uh, and I mean good people good families good people The best like parents if you if you drew out what a perfect parent would look like these are the kind of parents and they'd have Three kids and two of them would be totally on track and having great lives And one kid would go completely off the rails and I mean like heroin addiction like any the worst thing Jail like the worst things you can think of and so man, it's a it's a tough job and to your point like The amount and some people get so freaking bent out of shape when I say this kind of thing But like you the amount of influence that you actually have Is very hard to judge it decreases over time. That's for day. I'm sure yeah, you know, I think I've seen my kids kind of Like I would say Come back, you know like I think that's the way because as soon as they go to school They're actually with their peers more than they're with the parent more often. That's where I say it starts the shift But I have found with all three of my kids. It's two out of my three because they're a little bit farther in the journey They do come back But goddamn that ship drifts over the horizon for a little bit Yeah, and that's you know, I always I always say, you know, you got to let your kids brush up against the guardrails of failure Right, they're gonna make mistakes. They're gonna do dumb things and another thing is people think that their trajectory of their kid Is so permanent like, you know, I can't believe my kid Whatever doesn't like jiu-jitsu like I've had that conversation with people had that freaking conversation with echo Charles You know, he's like dude, you know, I brought I brought the boy in here Yesterday and like dude, he just was like didn't want to train at all and like, I don't know like this You know like what and I go I go. I go. How old is he again? And he's like Six and I'm like bro freaking Chilba five. Yeah, he was five dude, but that's the way people feel like they feel like oh, this is it This is that they're off the f- they're they're never gonna train. They're gonna be good They're gonna be a bad human being it's like no, dude Actually, it's not that big of a deal and kids are gonna hit the guardrails Look, there are sometimes where your kids are gonna hit the guardrails with such force They're gonna die or they're gonna like really ruin their lives and that's where parents step in and that's if you're there Or and that's why you put in my opinion All that equity up front So because a lot of the times where they're gonna hit those rails, you're not gonna be there They're gonna be more with their social circle in those drug sex alcohol moments with poor decision herd mentality That's where the equity comes in and it may not be enough right like the horrible shit happens to people and their kids But it also may be enough to change the trajectory of their life. So you can't give up on that front end Just because You don't see it right away, but I could not put that in there without the author's update Because it how easy oh this Just virtuously do these things wake up every morning and wear your robe and go out and harvest your own oats and make it for you Like shut the fuck up, dude You're like barely trying to get the Sandwich in the kids face on the way to school and like doing the absolute best you can and as it gets older Their personalities develop more their interests develop more they can't they want to be with their friends more than they want to be with you Yeah, it's uh Yeah, I don't know how my kids will respond to you know, like I feel like it's being ignored or taken advantage of But the reality is that's what it feels like on the receiving. I'm just being honest about my journey through parenting Yeah, it's weird. I had ranna my middle daughter on this podcast and uh, man It was good because like you said there's no There was no me being able to say like oh, and then I did this great move as a parent Then I did this other great move as a parent. It's like no no no here's oh, let me tell you how bad I screwed this up And I screwed up bad. Um, you know like You know one small example, um taking a six-year-old girl and Bragging to your friends about how heavy she is And being like oh wait no lift her up and feel how heavy she is and how dense she is and like you know, you literally in my mind just truly stoked that my daughter is like a mutant And me thinking how cool that is and her as a six-year-old little girl Thinking oh, I'm I'm dense. I'm heavy like that's just fucking awful man. Yeah, and You know like that's what I did and then of course, you know I forced jujitsu down their throats and and then you know, I always talk about the jujitsu thing But that wasn't the only thing it was like, you know academics like this is what you're gonna do This is the this is what we expect like of all those things. So I definitely Went overboard and I will say I kind of caught myself uh You know right around I guess the girls were maybe like 11 and 9 or something like that maybe maybe 10 and 8 but like I I was like, oh, yeah Oh, there's this is This is this is not going the way it should be going You know, this is not going the way it should be going in the same thing with my son. I was like brutal yeah with him as a kid where it's like What you think you can be with boys, but damn you can mess them up too. Yeah, and so I just yeah, it's it is a really difficult thing and I This is what I've discovered though is to the best of your ability Believe it or not The way you interact with your team Should as much as humanly possible mirror how you treat your kids So for me what that meant was like when if you worked for me it was hey You know, you're responsible for this. Hey, how do you want to do it? You make it happen? Here's the end goal we're trying to make. Hey, here's the parameters. You're allowed to work with them Don't do this Andy. Don't do that. Okay, cool. You got it. Cool. I trust you go get after it And you got to do that with your kids and it's really scary because if I tell Andy the team guy Hey, you're going on this trip. Hey, don't do anything stupid and you do something stupid cool You know, we you get in trouble. We write you up Like there's a method but when you the same thing I just said earlier like you feel like your kids Oh, that's the trajectory of their life and if they mess up then it's going to ruin everything And so you're super paranoid and you over parent and you over protect and so you got it and then you micro manage them And when you micro manage people just like when you if I micro managed you in the teams If you worked for me in the teams and I micro managed you what would you do? Fuck with your cage. Exactly. Like it's not going to be good. So when you micro manage your kids It's the same thing like you're going to get pushback. You're going to get for lack of a better work rebellion. Yeah, and so It is a very difficult Challenge and just like leadership, you know with decentralized command comes a level of risk Because if I tell Andy you work for me and I tell you to do something There's a chance you do it. There's a chance you do it. Maybe some Similar to the way I would think it needs to be done There's also a chance that you do something totally off the rocker and you do something that's stupid or illegal or immoral And now I got to deal with this shit And it's a problem But the counter to that is like, oh, I'm just gonna micro manage you and not make let you make any decisions And now you're not a responsible human. You're not a good leader yourself. It's a problem So that's the delicate balance that we have to follow as parents, man And it's so much harder because the emotions are so much more drastic with your kids. I agree So I would add to that. Don't expect something from your kids. You can't model yourself I think the most important teaching tool for your kids If you want to tell your kids, hey, you need to be disciplined and you need to have a clean room and yours looks like Ramadi, you know, like I mean how Like, you know, we got to be careful like, let's you know How you feel your body is important and you have like cheetos orange stained fingers at the time I all you could have all these virtuous lessons laid out and they see you doing that the actions have to align With the words just model to the best of your ability so they can ignore at will Your best attempt to be a parent Yeah, it's it's rough and You know, sometimes You'll see it They'll be in a spot and you're like they make the right call and you're like, fuck. Yes It's good. Yeah, my middle son one time just fucking Just he is the one who like who will stand up in front of like a bully or stop it or protect his brother and sister I'm just like that is yes Yes Yeah, it's um It's such a such a such a journey as you said, you know these kids They will sharpen their teeth on your bones Check uh Going here to the book in my first platoon. I met a man who I still believe had the single greatest impact on my military career His name was Dave Hall And he was everything that I had ever thought a seal could be he was finishing his fourth platoon And it was physically preparing to complete the selection process that I would attempt myself years later at development group group He was a point man a sniper comms guy free fall qualified jumper free fall jump master static line jump master and likely had many other Qualifications that I can no longer remember Dave was also student of history not only american history but history of warfare He understood not only tactics But also where those t-tactic came from to include their strengths and weaknesses Dave's standards were grueling You either met them or you suffered his wrath One thing I always appreciated about Dave was not that he not only did he hold himself to the same standards He expected from others, but he also expected himself to exceed them In your first platoon fresh out of buds And the additional training required to earn your trident you possess just enough knowledge to be a danger to yourself and everyone else around you Not your enemy, but your friends and co-workers the job is expansive the book knowledge and practical skill based Required to truly operate at a high level takes about five years to acquire up to that point You need mentors and that's what Dave was for me Working with Dave was not easy He had a tongue that could be sharp and a fuse that could be short But he was fair if you did the job well you would know about it if you did not beat the standard Well, you would also know about it It would take me over 10,000 words to list chapter and verse the situations He helped me through the mistakes he allowed me to make and then helped me correct And the sheer amount of information about the seal teams and what the job entails that I learned from him He was the true essence of a mentor the way he treated me Shaped the way I treated others when I was in a mentorship role later in my own career His approach to problem solving in a tactical environment impacted my own approach He was truly everything that I thought a seal could and would be At that point in my life, I not considered the concept of being drownproof But if I had he would have been the individual that I used my as my example He killed himself in October of 2020 I'm going to be blunt because Dave would not have it any other way Dave had a problem with alcohol A lot of us did as I mentioned in the first chapter It has never ceased to amaze me how much trouble you were guaranteed to get in for an alcohol related incident While at the same time working in a community that absolutely pushed a drinking culture You won't find that culture anywhere in doctrine and I can only speak for the time period that I served But it was there and it wasn't hiding anywhere other than in plain sight I do not blame the seal teams or the community for anyone's alcoholism But I do believe it is fair to say that the environment could and would be troubling for people who were predisposed to alcohol abuse The words that Dave used to describe how he felt about himself would bring a tear to any man Especially those who knew him well Although he was my standard and the standard for many others He found himself in a place of feeling unworthy because he could no longer hold them himself He was in pain. He was suffering and it seems that toward the end he had at least started to reach out to a few people I'm not sure to what degree he opened up and asked for help But I do have no doubt that all of them would have given him their last breath and drop of blood for him if he had asked for it In the end alone and isolated He ended his life At the funeral the sentiment was the same from all his friends who assembled in florida I wish I had known I wish that I could have done more Suffered in silence for years Stuff that happened in his military career. I didn't know about I'd like lost jobs had it impacted him professionally and he had come up to montana and he had visited and It wasn't like crazy abnormal behavior But you know, maybe something but not enough like five alarm alarm bells that are going off But yeah, I mean for years he he legitimately is What I would consider to be the standard for a team guy. He was that for me in my first platoon like We were I was a calm guy in my first platoon And this is funny because this ties back into when the skipper gave me my bird back We were in uh, korea at foul eagle And I was part of a reconnaissance element. We were Swimming out of a zodiac to overwatch a vessel very very traditional seal skill set here We decided not to wear wetsuits. So that was a really chilly evening God You really huddled with your friends well in those environments Did a calm check before we got on the mark five everything's good to go Like, you know the deal like you got your radio you got your crypto all this stuff calm check good to go right before you Get on the boats we get on we swim in we go up I go to make calms The coaxial cable is missing one of the ends the twist on ends and it's just got the little nipple sticking out of it You're a new guy com guy new guy com guy good times. This is our o re which is operational readiness exercise Which I don't actually think means dick But they make it seem like your career's over if you don't pass this because I think they'll just give you another one um So my first move was I'll just stick that little nipple into the hole to see if it works it doesn't just to save anybody time if the coaxial cable strips And Dave was the element leader's like hey, did you make comms as like well? Yeah about that He had been a com guy and again, you know Not only like the understanding of tactics like he was a student of history But he was like the calm guy who could tell you well, this is the frequency you need He's like in this situation here. They'll tell you in the book. You should use a reverse dipole But actually what I've really found is an inverted B bounce off the stratosphere and I'm just like, huh Well, like she's that kind of guy right like he knew his shit because he was the standard and I was like Dave. I can't make comms. He's like, what are you talking about? He's like just go point the goddamn antenna at the satellite and make comm like the coaxial cable Isn't working and of course at that time we had a backup hf radio as well All three of these pieces of gear were in my backpack Hf satcom crypto Probably a kick 13 that I you know had crippling anxiety about losing it several times during that operation Which wasn't even real and we had a lane grader who was there with us too, which is just like a cadre member that's watching us And instead of jumping down my shit For the next four hours he showed me more about hf comms in an attempt to make I mean all sorts of stuff layering things out trying to get angles working through frequencies trying to take apart the coaxial cable It was insane Never got pissed and in the end of the day we never solved it the lane grader hopped on their walkie talk And was like hey go back there and just get them a coaxial cable because there was supposed to be a follow-on combat swimmer operation and I mean you could go so many different ways there, right like crush the new guy You're an absolute piece of shit and instead I still remember Like him talking about the math and the formulas and lanes. I'm like to this day This is almost 30 years ago that this happened We get the coaxial cable shockingly enough you point the antenna at the correct satellite and comms really start working So we go through all that later that night I get my tried and back But that's that's just the guy that dave was like he could have solved Any of those situations you just needed the right to look his knowledge base his standard Physically fit always, you know at the range topped here and everything that he did understood like breaching jumping comp like all of that stuff And then to come to find out that and again, this is my words He didn't ever verbalize this to me or anybody else, but it seems like He got and based off of what he the some of the written words that he left behind that he just He couldn't live With the idea of not being able to live up to his own standard And it took him to a place where he killed himself Do you ever see the movie there will be blood? Yep So the first time I saw that movie I was like so into it and in the end you're seeing the movie echo So there's like Daniel Daylouis and he plays this like totally control freak manipulative just a businessman that's doing the oil thing and you know making everything in his world work for him and Then in the end it's like it's like the whole movies like that and in the end he's an alcoholic and he like kills another guy drunkenly and and When I first saw that movie I was like this is just this is stupid. This is ending ruined it because It did not compute to me That's someone that that was that smart that mean manipulative that much of a control freak would Ruin their lives with alcohol and uh Boy was I wrong like you never know what's going on in people's lives. That's the lesson that I took from that and we I mean Saw people that I hadn't seen in years and almost all of us were just like Like did you have any idea? Did he ever reach out and because I mean you I would do anything for him and I wish I had done more and I wish I'd paid more attention to I guess what could be seen and hindsight is the warning signs, but Would have been the what I wrote is true if there had been somebody Who I based the title of the book off of it would have been him Because he just got shit done regardless of what was going on in his life Until he didn't you know the guys that have killed themselves I'm trying to think I Almost all of them I was kind of there's not one of them where I go. Oh, yeah I see see that thing coming. Yeah, like it doesn't seem like I can't think of at the top of my head. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, that guy was in a rough place. I could really see that coming like no It's like guys where you go wait. What the how did that happen? How why what what are you talking about that guy's In the right spot I mean damn we've had two Seal team commanders. Yeah Kill themselves, which is like So hard to understand that's the like the The best job, you know, you're the you're the commander of a seal team, you know like Ah, man, it's so hard to understand. But then again, I go back to that. Um To that there will be blood and what you just said like what is going on in someone's head. It's really hard to understand The other thing is What things look like? Inside people's own heads like I used to talk about the fact that you know, you get someone that's like, uh, you got some You know you get some young team guy and he's going out with some Idiot stripper girl that's like causing all kinds of problem in his world And you just like hey bro, just break up with this girl like this is not going to be good for you No way dude. She's the one. Yep. She's the one or you get it, you know, like whatever that thing is whatever they get wrapped up in And you cannot get them out of it or like they get dumped, you know They get dumped by a girl and same thing. They're in this totally distraught distraught place in their world And you go hey, man Like there's another girl like go find another girl and they cannot like get out of that so The way that people get wrapped up inside their own heads is really really scary, you know another good example of that is like, um Anorexia, right? Where you have this visual You know, you look at someone and you can see clearly like they are damaging themselves and going to die And in their own head In their own head They think they're fat like it's it's impossible to even understand And and like they're getting told by the doctors like you need to eat they get a Feeding tubes and transfusions like all those things and they still look in the mirror And think that they're fat And and I think there's so many things in life that are comparable to that Whether it's, you know, a financial situation Uh, how am I ever going to get out of this a relationship situation? How am I ever getting out of this a work situation? How am I ever getting out of this? There's these things that people get wrapped up in and it's so difficult to explain to them like hey, man This isn't this isn't there's a way out of this You know, it's kind of like the fact that I couldn't explain to my own daughter who loves jiu-jitsu More than anything I couldn't explain to her when she was a little bit younger that jiu-jitsu was cool like I could not get that into her head and Man when people get that idea in their head they get wrapped around something It's so scary and it's so it can be so freaking challenging to get them out of there I would add to that too, which I think makes it even more dangerous Is it when they fall into a headspace where they think they're the only person dealing with it? You think you're unique in your struggles But I why say something to somebody because they're not going to understand they've never gone through this And you gotta remember again, maybe the person you're gonna ask for help Do they might be in the trenches with you because they might look like they have their shit together But they barely maybe hold on their station In the water reaching out and asking people for help is An essential and critical skill that people have to learn and because human beings can do a lot of cool things I've yet to meet one that can legitimately read somebody's mind There's a couple people out there that claim that they can but they're liars This is a huge point that you make in the book, you know, you're not alone and and then you say this You know checking in on people most of the time you're going to get brushed off You're going to get the blanket. I'm fine. Especially if you ask a man Don't stop asking I have asked when I've asked these questions I open the conversation with how much I care about the person or what they mean to me in their in their life And how I am concerned if they continue to blow you off They will continue to blow you off But they will have no doubt that you care and that you left the door open and the light on for a conversation in the future If they need someone to talk to I didn't have those conversations with Dave And I know I should have I don't know if we'll to change the outcome But I know it would have he would have understood how much I care for him How much impact he made on my life my opportunity is gone. Please learn from my mistake and don't lose yours I can imagine no worse feeling than thinking you are alone in the ocean with the weight of the water pulling you under gasping for air And not recognizing that right behind you is a lifeboat full of people Watching holding a life preserver and waiting to throw it to you All they need is for you to see them And to ask them for help Regrets a bitch man. I wish I would have had more conversations It's tough with guys And the difference between hey man, what the fuck is wrong with you and like hey, dude Like let's go for a walk Like I haven't heard from you in a while like what's going on man Like our relationship is super important. You seem like you're dealing with some stuff Like what can I help you with two very different answers? I've tested a variety of approaches And uh, you get some different answers depending The what the fuck is wrong with you is not the one you should go with for clarity Yeah, you know, this is a a problem that I have is Human emotion A problem that I have is You know going back to being in the SEAL teams No one's going to tell me they're tired No one's going to tell me they don't want to go on a nop. No one's going to tell me they need more You know rest no one no one ever told me that stuff I mean, I would have to pull it out and figure it out through you know sources. Yeah Uh And so no one wants to tell me when something's wrong. No one wants to tell me they're in financial trouble No one wants to tell me they've got health issues. They don't want to tell me any of that stuff. And so You know, I am the Master of receiving the answer. I'm everything's great. I'm fine. I am The the the master and by that I mean the worst like I've gotten told By people like that they were in a terrible situation And the only reason they're telling me about it now is because they're out of it So they're like, oh, yeah, I was in a really bad situation financially relationship the whole nine yards health And you know, I've been told over and over. Oh, everything's good. Yeah, everything's fine You know plodding along doing the thing blah blah blah living the dream that whole thing And so if you have any advice on like how to ask that question I'm all ears But you're talking about though like the position you were in again This is the uniqueness of the military like that honestly The reason they probably so likely hesitant to say anything is because of the respect level that they had for you You nailed it when you said the counter intel you need sources Yeah, yeah, you need you need and this is going to be something that takes time But I know that you had this with the people that you worked with You needed the ability to Probably behind closed doors and secretly receive information from some intermediary Probably you're gonna be like the lpo or the chief about what was going on further down the ladder than anybody's ever gonna expose to you The hard part is in that though is how do you take action on it without Disclosing how you got that information and shutting sources. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't surprise me that that and again specifically in that setting People can find that place though in parenting as well too because no, I mean no kids like hey, I really want to let my parents down today Sometimes I think like on Thursdays my kids are like that. That's definitely the headspace they go with but I mean, it's it's tough and I think it's more of a soft skill than a hard skill and The world we came from is more hard skills than soft, man. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm also uh like um If you don't call me I don't think about it for a heartbeat But if you if you didn't call me for a year and you call me up like hey, I need you to come and do this right Like cool. Look, I'll be there and you know 28 minutes whatever, you know, like I my my running mate Who I went through buds with went through stt with Did three platoons with was in training style with at seal team one Who was my roommate that entire time? When I went to virginia beach uh to team two. I didn't talk to him. Yes, because we're dudes Yeah, I just didn't talk to him and then came back two years later And was like, oh, hey bro. He's like, hey, what's going on? Like five minutes probably to catch up Yeah, like literally like nothing ever happened and nothing ever, you know, like just that's the way it is and so You know when you don't You know continually reach out like, you know all the times I call you on your birthday to say like hey, andy Just wanted to let you know i'm thinking about you totally And christmas eve's I got you a present. It's a you go fuck yourself And like that's not I know it's it's tougher though because that's that you know, I mean that's a little bit more remote I think it's easier to do if you're in the socials and you can kind of feel the ebb and the flow Right because there's ebb and flow in life and you can tell when people are having a good day or bad I think that's more reasonable if you're different coast and both like on a professional Trajectory, I think that's more around the people that are actually physically located with them that can kind of keep a pulse on it yeah, yeah, and He was totally fine. My point in saying that was like it's not I don't I don't expect you to ever call me and say hey, bro. How's it going? I don't expect you to do that in any way shape or form. Yeah, and I Actually expect the opposite like if you called me I'd like oh andy must need something like something must be going on And if you never called me I would be like, oh, yeah, everything's cool with andy like he's doing great Like that's what's happening you I only expect people to call me when something's going wrong pretty much You know what I mean? Like people call me when they have problems and so To to have you ever just tried reaching out like testing your own theory. Yeah, that's what I'm saying I need to do more of like oh all dudes need to do more. Yeah the call of like Hey, man, what are you up to and the person's gonna say? What are you talking about? This is weird And you're like, yeah, I know it's weird, but I totally miss you and I love you and I just want to know It's gonna be like wrong number But at least they'll know Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think it's something and I know it's I know it's a point of From I always feel like dude, I'm not gonna bother andy or echo. Yeah, that's a lie. We tell ourselves Yeah, maybe it is because you are an exceptionally busy person phone calls are like five minutes I'm in the same boat right and my dad lives a mile for me and they're a week ago by and I won't stop by and see him I don't want to interrupt. He's not doing anything. He said they're talking to his dog, you know Jack Well, uh, reach out to your bros. Yeah more than once. Yeah, that's the that's the lesson here Refining your stroke. I believe that we must take the world for what it is not what we want it to be I believe that when you encounter an obstacle in life, you must find a way through it over it around it not ignore it We live in a world of instant gratification. So you go into this you talk about the social media The you know the trying to get things trying to the tenure overnight successes must be nice Ignoring every ounce of effort that gets you there Uh, and you got your secret to success in here. Um, do I come as no no shocker here There's no replacement for hard work. Indeed. Just like everyone else I wish it was a Hack to hard work hard work requires delaying instant gratification And that can be challenging both physically and mentally especially when contrasted with more enjoyable activities that seduce our attention time An effort for as deeply as I wish that success did not require countless hours of effort to make microscopic and often imperceivable improvements in our personal and professional lives I've yet to find a way around it. It's unavoidable. You're gonna have to freaking get into it Why do people just avoid that reality? It's like they will put three times the effort in to find a hack To instead of just doing the thing that needs to be I'm optimizing my life, bro Like you just spent six hours doing something that would take you 30 minutes My favorite example that is dean lister who hated cutting weight And what he would do is he would go out to the world. This is in the in the 90s to 2000s, you know, so it wasn't quite full internet So we just ask all these people and he'd find all these different methods for cutting weight And then take whatever seemed good out of each method whatever the easiest path of each method was like to cut weight And we would end up having to cut, you know, 28 pounds in freaking three days or something ridiculous I got excuse well, no, I heard that if you did this salt bath and you cut the potato chips on thursdays And then you know, like he had these things or if your shit was tight for months leading up to it You maybe you would have to burn some water weight off the day before but that's Hard But he spent so much time Doing exactly what you're like looking around for what would be the easiest way to cut weight, bro The easiest way to cut weight is freaking watch your diet and work out I have people I know like yeah, I gotta I gotta optimize my email You know, I'm looking for a way to integrate AI. I'm like, hold on like how many emails you get there like several a day I'm like answer the fucking emails, dude You don't need an AI tool You just need to sit down in front of your computer and put your phone over here and answer the do the work several a day Yeah You have fast forward a little bit you have the tools that you need to succeed the tools are not failing you You are failing yourself That's 10 that sentence stings and it's a difficult one to write out because it's true Is it true for me as any reader of this book? I almost always have the tools and so do you and I often have the knowledge When I don't it's easy to find Where I have been known to struggle stumble and fail is execution There are countless reasons why this happens to all of us But upon objective reflection of my own life, I have identified what I considered to be the two main culprits discipline and motivation You know anything about those I still work on it I define motivation as the fuel that drives you some people are motivated through praise and recognition Others are driven by negative reinforcement and proving naysayers wrong I fall more into the latter category than the former when I was young people would tell me that my goal of becoming a seal Was foolish and when they did so they had no idea that their words and criticism were stoking my internal fire to this day The most effective way to motivate me is to tell me i'm not capable of doing something very true little rebellious streak, huh? I mean as you could choose whatever you word you want too hard headed is another good one Goal oriented Uh Relying solely on motivation is problematic It can and will fail you because it's more like the ocean tide than a bridge Motivation ebbs and flows it will recede in return But not always on the timeline we want or need it to thankfully Motivation could be outsourced We live in a beautifully interconnected world and with an internet connection and device of your choosing You can find and connect with what inspires you allowing you to throw logs on your own fire When your personal stock of fuel is running low That kind of I wasn't I never really thought about that before Uh, but then I think about how music Like when you listen to mute well for me when I listen to like certain music Like oh my workout is definitely going to be better now Or if you see somebody legitimately doing something awesome, you're like, okay I mean the internet is the best worst thing ever You just have to make sure it's working for you and you're not working for it One of the beautiful things is you can scour the globe for things that make sure work out harder or better The negative side of that is 98 of the time is going to be you being sucked into the rabbit hole. Yeah I define discipline as doing things you need to do regardless of you whether you want to or not discipline is action Regardless of outside influence internal monologue or motivation discipline is taking the micro steps along your path Sequentially which one day will lead you to macro success discipline is easy to define And very hard to live a true statement there um Can't be outsourced either. Mmm That one's on the control side of the yeah, or influence. I should say as opposed to concern Yeah, it's you know, it's like you can like when you're in boot camp You're gonna keep running because that freaking drill instructor whatever is yelling at you like that's imposed discipline It has a short period of time a short period of time. Yeah, and it's not going to be there For you in your personal life, you know, it's just not going to be there. You have to have the intrinsic discipline My advice starts small and focus on momentum The opportunities to do so surround you in every aspect of your life each choice is a decision we make we have at least two options easier hard you talk about this Uh taking the hard the hard choice or the easy choice talk about McCraven making your bed Wildly misunderstood speech I believe why is that because it has nothing to do with the goddamn bed Oh, parents are just like, yeah, it's finally And the kids make their bed and there's still a shit sandwich It's like no start your day with a discipline act and build momentum on that It doesn't have to be the bed, right? You could put your shoes away. You could do your laundry All things my children ignore me on and people used to ask me like do you make your bed first thing in the morning? I'm like, no my wife is in it like I'm not making my bed while my some people are into that Uh discipline equals freedom sounds good. I heard somebody say that. Yeah, that's probably the best book in this whole book You know, I quoted you but then I think I said in the next sentence. I disagree. I didn't say I disagree I didn't want to do this, but I said I'll go willing. Yes says that discipline equals freedom a statement that I agree with in concept Yeah, I describe it differently though. I frame it slightly differently through the lens of two choices You have the choice of discipline or the choice of regret. Oh, I like it. Yeah, there you go Um, you can regret not having freedom, you know through your poor discipline Uh, uh, it takes things longer it takes longer to do things wrong Then it does to complete them correctly the first time that's a good nugget of advice for any human beings out there You kind of mentioned this earlier fast forward a little bit. You talked about the fact that you know, mickey monsoor um and and meeting his dad george and you know, uh What and You know, he's on my podcast as well and just such a great dude and and you know, I Spent a lot of time with the family. Um And what a great family but you know to to your point, you know people don't A lot of people don't know that he quit but it's the first time through and like his unwillingness to give up though Saved everybody's life on that roof that night. I mean, who knows so many different things could have happened But let's say everything played out it but that person wasn't there That's a completely different outcome and yeah, that choice cost him his life But it was because he was unwilling to give up. I mean it Yeah, people just think oh if you try buds one time and you're done like now Some of the most amazing people from our community did not have success their first time but they weren't defined by that yeah Yeah You say although I never got the chance to meet him his equipment and metal of honor citation were on the quarter deck Of seal team three. I walk past this shadow box every day I would often stop to look at it and ponder the life he lived and the decision he made that ultimately ended so young I wonder what decision I would have made if I were putting his shoes Do I truly have what it takes to sacrifice everything I have and everything that I could ever Have for someone else. I would like to think that answer the question is yes But none of us know until we find ourselves in that moment mike knew and he answered the bell Knowing that the outcome was certain I'd like to believe that I would take the same action but damn man There's a difference between talking about walking the path and walking the path Yeah, that's such um You know that that that guiding legacy, you know, it's it's very when I read that man I was very moved the fact that you were talking about this, you know, you're a An experience seal yourself, you know with whatever time in the teams and yet you as a wound guide been wounded guided been conduct into combat and you walk by that quarter deck every day and you know, you see mike's gear there and like That's doing exactly what it should do which is setting the standard for The young frogman out there. I hope it stops him in the tracks. I mean Yeah, I mean again I'd like to think That I'd be capable of that but dude. I mean, how can you really know? Until you're in that spot You know, it's wild as uh, mike's sister She was like first of all, he lied to them the whole time he was on deployment. He's like, oh, we're just training the iraqis There's nothing going on. Exactly safest deployment ever but uh, you know like mike's sister was just like I wasn't surprised at all. Yeah, I was like Check me neither. Um, I would be surprised if like someone like echo did that Yeah There are those that you know and then those you're like, oh, he jumped off the other side of the building that checks out While screaming save yourself That's how you bring it back from being so dark You were supposed to do your job. So I did it for you Uh Another point that you make in here Nothing comes without a price tag. There is a cost to everything even winning And this is a rough chapter. This is like you're back at the team. You've already been wounded. You're back at the team You're getting ready to deploy Your mom has cancer at this point for the second time. Yep. And uh, it's the bad kind of cancer Um for clarity. I'm not aware of a good kind. Yeah, I give what you should say. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, you know, um likely terminal diagnosis. Yeah uh You're getting ready to go on deployment Of course because that's what we do I did not know if I would see my mother again when I hugged her goodbye at the front door of my house In the early morning hours of the day I left I didn't need to be at work early, but I was trying to get out of the house before my kids woke up It's hard enough to kiss them goodbye in their sleep It is nearly impossible to hold it together when they are waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs like my sons were I do not know how to describe the feeling of wrapping around your arm wrapping your arms around your children And hoping that they can feel the love you have for them But would never be able to verbalize The feeling of trying to pass every ounce of that love for them through your embrace While trying to hold back your tears and uncontrollable nightmares thoughts of whether or not they would even remember you or your love Should the next time they see you it being a flag draped coffin I barely made it around the corner before needing to pull my truck over I could not stop the tears And I couldn't see that through them enough to drive Tough days, yeah, uh leaving on deployment Is a motherfucker we got delayed that day and actually left at like Late in the evening so people had the opportunity to go back home Yeah, and for me at least the move is no because I cannot physically tolerate going through that again It is gnarly. Yeah I remember uh my last deployment leaving my kids just like turning and walking out and just being like you can hold it together for another 38 seconds. I drove like 60 feet. Yeah, but how far I got it. Yeah my pretty bitch in Toyota to come outside a big deal We don't have to celebrate it echo Totally stock probably v2 Um now you're on deployment. Yeah, it's a you know, it's a good deployment solid deployment things are going on operations happening kinetic deployment and uh Well for anyone that doesn't know when there's something going on an emergency at home You get the american red cross they they send like a message. It's a way of getting information to troops that are overseas And you get this red cross message Of course does not planned and There's like a choice. You know, you got to go home your mom is your mom is in a really bad way And they want to get you out of there, but at the same time you got another operation that's on the table You say this the decision was not easy for me I cared deeply about the people I was with but the truth is that I loved the job and the fear of missing out was real I recognized that there was risk involved with the operation I could be killed or injured in combat and mechanical issues With helicopters caused them to fail and crash at times let alone from enemy fire I also realized that if I did choose to go on the operation, it would likely be the last of my career I'd been experienced nagging issues with my ankle the entire deployment And I did not think it was likely I would be able to continue as an operational seal beyond that point On the other hand, I could have accepted that the operation that my operational career was over in that moment Put it all behind me and focused on getting home I felt a sense of obligation in both directions In the end I chose to go on the mission and accept the risk associated with that decision I made it back to the base with limited time who was able to pack And turn over my sensitive items and then begin my journey from Afghanistan to san diego and then to monorail bay when I got home The world felt like it was on mute 96 hours after landing back in the united states. I made it to my mom My mother chose to stop treatment and enter hospice My sister was able to provide for her the palliative care that she needed I was not going to be able to provide anything I obviously love my mother, but I don't nearly zero emotional range when I returned And I went right back to finding tasks to accomplish and then accomplishing them My mother died in her bedroom in santa cruz, california I was not with her in that moment I chose to return to san diego a few days before if I had the ability To go back in time and change only one thing in my life even given the amazing volume of my mistakes The one thing I would change would be the final interaction I had with her The last time I saw my mother I hugged her in bed and told her that I loved her She told me that she loved me back then asked me to handle the garbage can so she could throw up into it That was it. That was the son. I was capable of being in that moment If you had trans for transported me into a conflict zone, I could make any level of decision I could reduce nearly any problem down to its core elements and make a decision almost instantly I could take a life in the blink of an eye and not think about it twice But I wasn't able to sit with my mother and simply talk with her to tell her how much she meant to me And how thankful I was for everything that she had done for me in my life For as much as my mother was the shell of the woman who had raised me I was equally the shell of a functioning human being I may have looked normal on the outside I was anything but on the inside Is this fun audiobook chapter to read? We took a few takes and that you know that the The title of this section is like winning has a cost right and I and when I made my notes on this I'm like winning and I put that in quotes air quotes Uh, you know What are we winning and what is the cost and what's the ROI on it? Yeah, that's a rough one. Yeah, and uh, the uh amount of You know the there's the real clear things that people in the military and law enforcement Sacrifice right there's really clear Like oh, yeah, you sacrifice this time you sacrifice this, you know, obviously if you get wounded you get killed You know, I It's in the book but like you talk about the fact that you're having trouble with your ankles because you Freakin had nerve damage from getting shot like that's kind of sacrifice that people think about but the this like level of personal sacrifice Is something that can be difficult for people to understand I mean it's difficult to go through. I didn't realize I mean the shell of a human part Outside of my ability to function through the technical proficiency of my job Was completely accurate. I didn't even recognize it at the time though Like the muted emotional range and I'm I'm very clear in the book to say that it's the military is not at fault for that Like I signed up for my job. I knew what I was getting into and I worked myself Very hard to get into that headspace because I was terrified I was going to do something overseas where somebody would get hurt Injured killed whatever it is that was my fault. So it takes time to work into that headspace but life overseas from a I'm good Normal life Issues is very easy. You have to worry about your bills the Washing machine went out somebody else's you know what I mean like everything is gone Except for this is what we're doing today and we're going to do it to the best of our ability And that's where I go back to that place of just like would it need okay? I'll just be task oriented because that's what I had been doing for almost 10 months Completely devoid of any ability to be the human being that I wish I could have been for my mom And yeah, I don't know how you quantify that is that a sacrifice? Is that the natural consequence of working yourself to that level of efficiency with decision making? Like the mission I mean I lied to myself in that moment I was like I'm letting the guys down if I don't go on this. What's the reality is I wanted to go on it. Yeah Yeah, I wanted to go on it. I could have and it's and so I'm even then like later like and that was my last combat operation Even then it's like you're having those struggles. Is that the job? Is that the cost of the job? Is that the person is you know what I mean? Like it's It's a very murky soup Is there any way to like anchor you think? To not get in that mode. Would it even be good to not get in that mode? like You know one of the the stories that I've told is uh You know my wife I was in ramati. My wife sends me a Email was like oh the kids want to see a picture of where you sleep and so I had like the typical like little plywood bed in the building and uh I went to take a picture of it and I was like oh hold on I opened up a A bag and pulled out a folder and pinned up pictures of my family Around my bed took a picture of it and then unpin all those pictures and put them back in the bag Because I did not want to be like seeing my wife and kids Every day You know and thinking about them all the time like I had plenty of shit to think about And the shit that I needed to think about was an absolute priority and so You know to think that to not be in that mode Might not be the best thing Or it might be what you have to do to bring as many people home as you can It goes back to the portions of your life are going to be unbalanced In those phases of my life that was probably the most unbalanced human being on face planet earth I mean you can you present me with a tactical problem You're fucked like I'm gonna be able to solve that pretty quickly You ask me to describe how I feel about something and I'm gonna sit there staring at you like the mac is turning on right Just scroll we'll just like Let me mean what are feelings? Let me tell me probably six months before I started feeling like a normal person and I don't think that's abnormal I think that's what the job requires. I mean that's there's a difference between the price and the cost That falls into the cost category for me. Was there anything that kind of uh Allowed you to start to refill the shell time But no particular things No, I can't think of any one thing that would like kind of crack through that or fill it up more I think it was just I mean it takes time to get into that headspace I think you just have to expect time to get out of it as well I'm gonna close out the book and again the book is freaking great. Um, especially the the forward to it And the discussion on uh discipline and freedom and things, you know things You pulled some great quotes into this book But I want to close out the book with this um I'm not one who feels qualified to tell anyone how to live their lives, but I will say this Please be careful with what you are willing to strip away to become quote successful At this point, I would rather see someone fall slightly short of their goal and be fulfilled and enriched human being Rather than watch them achieve ultimate success And have nothing including their humanity left when it is time and they arrive at their finish line This is not permission or suggestion to avoid hard work Or to use an as an excuse when things become difficult This is a reminder that success has nothing to do with what you have or what you may have achieved and everything to do with who you are None among us will ever be able to tame the tides currents and oceans of life But I truly believe that we are all capable of becoming drownproof You may not become an olympic swimmer with a gold medal around your neck But you will survive And that is the first step Once you have mastered the ability to keep your head above water You will be limited only by your own imagination and self-imposed boundaries When your ability to survive is assured I believe there is one additional step that can be taken And I believe it is the most meaningful metric of success that there is You can share it You can look around Look around you and identify others who are struggling And you can teach them how to swim The end Helping other people out man I care a lot more now at older in my age and wisdom How I accomplish things Is an equal measure of what it is I want to accomplish And I didn't think about that it was just just you know It was winning to the detriment of everything else I care a lot more now about how I arrive at the destination Yeah, I think it's important to think about how I can help others At the destination And like I said if I look at my own kids they all have their own aspirations Would I rather have them get 90% of that and be just super stoked on life with a great supportive social circle and network Work isolated and alone But achieving a metric of success that everybody else thinks is important and they're miserable I'm going with the former not the latter When I went to college I was already I was like 28 years old or someone I went to college I was in the teams and like I Took it as a personal challenge to like beat the teachers at their own game and I so I went freaking totally psycho dude I went totally psycho. It's all checks out so far. Yeah So I would be mad if a teacher asked a question on a test that I didn't know the answer to So and what but what I realized post afterwards Was that like to get a 90? On a test would take like an hour of study To get 100 would take four hours and 90 days Yeah And looking back should have been like, oh cool. I'm gonna pass this class like it's all good And I could do to hang out with my family or do something freaking useful And it's kind of what you're saying like the amount of effort that it takes to get to 100 Versus a solid 90 or an 85 and by the way, no one gives a shit You know how many people have asked to see my freaking college transcripts Do you want to know freaking zero? No one gives a shit. No one gives a shit And yet I put all this time and effort Into you know getting a hundred And so this advice of like hey man Like what is it? What does success actually look like? What is winning actually look like you know in quotes and and making sure that you're getting You're doing you're actually doing something worthwhile And I think to your point like and I've this is something I definitely learned in the teams Helping out some other dude Is way more rewarding than anything that you do for yourself for sure And you know when when I got to see like the guys that worked for me at some point like grow and do awesome Like that was so cool and so much cooler than like doing something cool yourself And you definitely get to see that with your kids you kids do something cool Like what you were just talking about like standing up for you know looking out doing something That is so that is the best you know, and so the idea of helping other people out as the Best return on investment. I totally agree with and I think that's what you're doing here, man with this book I'm trying we'll see how it goes. So that's where we're at Uh still you that bitcoin for the lies and the forward made me look good, but you know, we'll get it too Check uh when's the book come out april 14th so april 14th. Here's the deal pre order the book Right now, um, we'll put the link Will you though echo? I'm hate making a promise that I may or may not be able to keep I'm gonna text you the link I got to for people. It's easy. You ready for this one. You guys are gonna like this. It's cleared hot podcast dot com slash book There you go. So go there order the book and here's why because uh Yeah, you know about this like at this point. I'm still completely baffled by this process We want andy to be a new york times best-selling author because you know, do you get a plaque with that? You do you get like a make your own pinky ring and you can just like it'll be my Version of being a ring knocker you and I can sit here and I'll tell you what's we cool about it What'll be cool about it is uh, it's that's like a high literary achievement And for someone like us To have that is is pretty dope You could just say me I know you're trying to round the edges on that somebody like you. How do I say you without saying? It is funny like you'll go and like there's there's literary people and like that that's a big deal and like It's like if I told you I got um, you know the the badminton award in 1995 you would be like, oh great And that's kind of how you and I would have for you like oh, you're a new york times best-selling author like oh, yeah Cool good for you. Is that good? You know, it's one of those things but uh, it the cool thing about it is good advertisement for you and it'll when if it gets on that list then it uh Other a bunch of people see it that it wouldn't have seen it before cool. And so I'm just telling everyone, please if you would be so kind go to clear podcast.com slash book correct in order this book asap so we can make uh, Andy's day You know what I would like more than that though like this is again like the monetary I have no idea what to expect from this process I just hope honestly that my mistakes and what I learned from them helps somebody else I would take that over any list or dollar amount any of that stuff of course Yeah, and again to to my uh, my assessment man is you did that you got a great book that clearly goes through Some really hard things that you went through, you know the kind of thing, you know like when when I don't all rainbows Like when I wrote extreme ownership and it's like, okay. We'll just open this with me just Having a blue on blue While i'm in charge of shit. Let's start let's open with that. That's that's gonna be great. That's if you're gonna feel great And you know, there's points where I was reading this book. I was like damn Okay, and I've told people this before like if you're gonna do something good Whether it's a song or a book or a poem or whatever Shit's gotta hurt a little bit. You know, it's gotta be like exposing Yeah, and so, you know, you do that like that freaking chapter where you're talking about what it felt like to be going through your divorce I'm reading that. I'm like, okay, bro. I think we get it. Oh, there's another nine examples Like shit's heavy, dude. That was the wavetops That was the readers digest summary the divorce for idiots if you will Uh, so that's everyone go to the book. Um, is that good at some speed? Anything else right now anything else You tackled all seven continents recently years ago. So we're good. Yeah, what'd you call it a journey that we were on? Degregating our expedition that we did I don't know the differences between the two but You're flying your helicopter just basically getting off of it after to cross the board. I tried to yeah You did the seven continent thing. Yep. Triple seven. Yep With mike and a bunch of other dudes just went out there and yeah, it was cool broke the world record I thought an article was gonna be the coolest. I tell you what dude looking down over freefall in over the great pyramid of guiza That's a tough one. I saw that picture. Um What else am I going? Yeah, that's about it Uh, where can people find you you got andy stump dot com. Yep. You're on twitter x At andy stump seven seven is it okay? Yep. You're on instagram andy stump 212. Yep And uh facebook andy stump and then of course you have The cleared hot podcast I do which is on youtube and wherever you listen to podcasts. It is at cleared hop podcast I think that's about it That's about what i'm up to that's where you're at. Yeah echo trials. You got any questions? Yeah, man. But we'll stick with this one. So we'll talk about the um, you know the the flight suit The wingsuit wingsuit scenario tell me more So you can already tell this can be a very technical question. First off, how did you Why did you start doing that? Because it seemed to be the natural progression and it looked awesome. Have you never seen the videos? Yeah, I have but then it and how old were you? Roughly, oh when you started that like your first wingsuits in there. Oh, uh, oh that was later on for sure I think I probably had three to four thousand jumps before I put a wingsuit on so 30s So okay, then so you had a bunch of jumps. Yep, a lot of experience. Yep, and then you're like I'm gonna do the wingsuit thing that first wingsuit scenario Where where are you like over the water or something because you're not jumping off drinking into the rocks? Or are you I now have some questions for you? How would water change the scenario? I don't proud of it Just see are you under the impression that you land that wingsuit without deploying a parachute? You know like on point break the original one. They're like, hey, we're not gonna land on land We land on water. So it's like softer. I don't know that's what I was referencing. I guess subconsciously This is man. Your your brain is an interesting spaghetti noodle or whatever. I'm just thinking of this stuff right now I've never been on a wingsuit. Nice. So you deploy your normal parachute So the wingsuit you zip it up in an airplane if you're skydiving you have a main and a reserve parachute So you zip it all the way up. Otherwise, it's just it's compartments, you know what I mean? So your arms are free. So after you deploy your parachute you unzip your arms and legs and you're just flying your normal parachute Okay, and then you land so the water wouldn't necessarily help you there. Okay When I'll get the progression, you look super confused right now Yeah, the progression is this one day you decide you're gonna jump a wingsuit and you put one on And you exit an aircraft in flight and you work it out Yeah, but then you're saying that you have a parachute going if you want to do it And one then once the wingsuit is just used while you're before you pull your parachute. Yeah Unless you only want to do it once. Yeah, but then you guys are like going through that You know the month like I don't I don't get how you go from like, oh, yeah, I'm just gonna Do regular skydiving. Yeah for lack of better term. Yeah and be like, oh, I'm gonna navigate On in a in a wingsuit through the mountains and over the trees So you skydive first so you learn how to fly a wingsuit from altitude which altitude is going to give you more time I'm not going to say necessarily safer, but you do have a main and a reserve parachute You get used to flying it You most people start on a smaller so you wingsuits come at all sizes Okay, so you work it out in like open air kind of a scenario. Oh, yeah I'm not going through mountains or nothing like this I guess you could that would be like one jump, huh? Dude, well, you wouldn't even survive the exit because the big difference is in base jumping When you jump out of an airplane It doesn't feel like you're falling because you're already you have the forward throw of the aircraft You're not going from you don't get the roller coaster like stomach coming up in your throat Because you have speed then you're actually speeding up in freefall But if you watch from the ground people come out of an airplane it's forward throw they're being Thrown forward because of the velocity and so you don't get this sensation of like When you base jump you do get that so your suit doesn't really fly for the first few seconds because it has to inflate And then have enough air passing over it to act like a wing Okay, so it so first so you can skydive Then you need to learn how to base jump without a wingsuit so you can practice a zero airspeed exit Then at some point in time You combine the two okay, then okay, that's where that's the yeah the little point in which i'm asking this question when So you were 30 something years old and you were like okay. I got enough base jumping enough skydiving enough wingsuit In i don't know free air whatever you want to call it Not like that. Isn't that's call it that free air isn't that the biggest transition right there? Yes, okay, so you're 30 something years old and you made that transition It kind of it feels like it gets exponentially more dangerous at that point That's what it feels like to choose you to choose your own adventure. You don't have to fly close to terrain You can just fly straight out off a cliffs and all sorts of stuff. Oh, and you like slowly make it to more challenging terrain Yeah, it just doesn't seem like something like a 30 something year old person would do what age would be appropriate I don't know before like like 1920, you know when you're young. Oh when you have no prefrontal cortex development Pretty much exactly. Yeah Why what does age have to do with it? I would say you have a little bit more wisdom and probably better decision making ability at a later age Right and 30 is like a later age. That's what i'm saying. So it's the perfect time to start Well, i'm just saying with the risk and all that it just seems like okay, so which brings me to my second question Do you feel like it was like? a coping mechanism of some sort Because you mentioned something in buds So you're about buds where you're like, oh, yeah, me, jaco echo went to the chow hall and echo quit I'd forget them. Yeah, because you're so like Focus kind of incidentally like you have to be focused on this next task kind of a thing You're on your journey. Yeah. Yeah, you're like but you're kind of saturated with stuff that you have to freaking do Right and like I didn't read this part of the book But I kind of mentioned it but there's a thing that he talks about in the book Which is like a space, right? So the silence in the book. Yeah the silence. Yeah, uh coping mechanism Wait, but buds you don't have that space because you're constantly It does it's very two different like buds is a crucible though, you know, they're trying to you know, the curriculum's trying to weed you out Uh, was it a coping mechanism? You might be able to describe it as something like that. I would say it was a headspace That doesn't have I mean, I've seen people who can get to the flow state is what I'll call it Right, that's a traditional like yoga meditation playing guitar Like it doesn't need to be prescriptive on how you get there But I think it's important that people do for me That was probably the most powerful way and it was just associated with something that I was already doing I would say it could probably be described as a coping mechanism because I could think better After having a good like trip overseas for months afterwards And I would struggle if I didn't find myself in that flow state for a little bit just because the BS of life Will bombard me a little bit more So I guess a tool or coping mechanism would depend on the angle that you were looking at it from But an argument can be made for that I think Yeah Interesting If you were to jump in a wingsuit, would you go first over water or land? Apparently that doesn't matter, but it does not if you get a yellow Do you know how to swim for that? It could matter. How's your swimming? Yeah. Yeah, my swimming's strong. Okay good in a wingsuit Well before your intervention, I would choose water, but thank you for that guy. You're welcome. You're welcome Yes, good to see you. I guess Andy any closing thoughts No, I generally never have any Right. Oh man. Well again, thanks for joining us. Glad to have you back after nine years Let's do it again in 10. Yeah, let's do it again in 10. Uh, thanks for bringing our walkers in here Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for your thanks for your service Same to you man for the country for the teams and thanks for what you're continuing to do today Trying to teach people how to swim. I'm trying man. It's awesome. Thanks brother. Cool And with that Andy Stumpf has left the building So good lessons learned And you'll notice in the low point of his whole life There was one saving grace So we're training we're lifting we're running we're training the jujitsu. You know what that means You need fuel we highly recommend jocofuel Protein is critical to life Get yourself some protein 30 grams of protein in ready to drink 22 grams In a one scoop by the way, I often do two scoops of powder if 44 grams So that's what we're doing. Go to jocofuel.com get energy drinks get whatever you need get creatine get on the creatine train If you're not on there right now, what are you doing? What are you doing? Honestly? jocofuel.com Or go to whatever retailer you go to We got it there. If we don't have it there ask them for it Jocofuel the clean fuel also since we're training jujitsu. You may want to have a jujitsu gi You may want to have jujitsu rash guard and you want those things to be made 100 in the united states of america with Materials that are 100 american So for that you go to origin usa.com and by the way, you can also get jeans boots hoodies Rash guards already said that You can get pretty much whatever you need hunt gear training gear shorts Pants just everything that you need 100 american made So go check out origin usa.com and get yourself some gear Yep, it's true Also Jocofuel.com discipline equals freedom got more gear by the way discipline equals freedom good standby to get some and get after it Other things as well. Well, we got some shirts on there. Matt some hoodies Pretty cool. Also. We have the short locker, which is a subscription scenario new design every month People seem to be in that one into that one. Uh, the most recent design For your knowledge, you can check this out on the website. By the way, just click on the top where it says Check out the short locker and see this stuff but you're interested it's a Discipline it's very simple, but it's a discipline in red script One of those ones where when you're representing it's like it kind of goes hard. Anyway, you got to look at to see it Um, yes, that's it. It's all on jockelstore.com also We got some books. We got drown proof By andy stumpf. I just read some excerpts from it today so much and they're so good Go order it right now. Please drown proof by andy stumpf By andy stumpf also put your legs on by rob jones and of course the need to lead by dav burk check those out Ashland front. We have a leadership consultancy Ashlandfront.com we work with businesses around the world and help them with all the problems that they have through leadership If you need help inside your organization, go to ashlandfront.com. We have events like the muster This is a two day two and a half day leadership event You can go and learn the skills of leadership live If you can't make it to that you can go to extreme ownership.com and you can learn of the skills of leadership through online learning and online training and online interactive courses and online question and answer sessions with me That is extreme ownership.com. Check that out as well also Check this out on march 21st a couple weeks away 2026 in scott's dale, arizona mark lee's birthday celebration mark lee would be 48 So this is the mark 48 event which is a Which is a very powerful thing because he carried that mark 48 machine gun If you know who mark is mark lee the first seal killed in iraq just an outstanding human being and they're having a celebration of his life 48th birthday Mark's platoon mates two of mark's platoon mates are going to speak one of them is lead bob haaland He probably heard of him. He's been on this podcast a few time a few times Founder and owner of huli golf And also another guy that was in the platoon with mark a guy named jake kyne bomb Another awesome dude that was in tasking a bruiser and a friend of mark's So those two guys are gonna gonna do some speaking about mark And this is all of course part of americas mighty warriors dot org So go to americas mighty warriors dot org if you can be in scott's dale, arizona march 21st It's going to be an outstanding event And it's in support of an awesome cause that is everything that mark lee's mom momily has put together So check that out, please If you're in arizona go americas mighty warriors dot org Also check out heroes and horses dot org And finally beyond the brotherhood dot org to connect with us on the interwebs For andy. He's andy stump dot com. He's on twitter x at andy stump He's on instagram at andy stump 212. He's on facebook At andy stump, and then he's got the cleared hot podcast And a youtube channel, which is his podcast on youtube, which is at cleared hot podcast And then for us you can check out jockel.com and then on social media. I'm on there and i'm at jockel willing kennec Was at echo charles Just don't spend too much time on there Thanks once again to my brother andy stump for joining us Thanks for your service Thanks for your sacrifice bro, and uh everybody else go pick up his book. There's a lot we can learn from it And thanks to the entire military out there right now. Yes right now risking your lives and limbs sacrificing your freedom in order to protect ours and we are grateful Also, thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders Thanks for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there you know in andy's book Drownproof he talks about sub par behavior And one of the ways to avoid sub par behavior is to look in the mirror And ask yourself some questions questions like what am I willing to allow for myself? What will I allow in both thought process and internal monologue? What will I allow in both behavior and actions? What will I allow my word to mean? What aspects of my life will I allow others to control? What type of man or woman do I want to be? What is my standard and are my actions aligning with those beliefs? And I think if you ask yourself those questions and you answer them honestly You will move your life in the right direction and you can become Drownproof And that's all I've got for tonight and until next time this is Echo and Jaco out You