217. DJ Shipley: On Psychedelics, Discipline, PTSD & Rebuilding the Mind After War

I had my best friend get killed on a hostage rescue December 8th 2012 that was a tough thing to go through man. There's no greater bond than just you 100% knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission I mean you've been in some that are just you pin down feel helpless your buddies dying in your arms This guy shoot madness. I've got to save him while not getting shot out and you can't take out the human aspect of you spent so much time together You'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture What is the culture one person better of a day be a probe? Be the better than you found it don't be an asshole at the end of the day How do you want to be a good Navy seal be a good dude? And one of the things I really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish With the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away I'm trying to live to be 105. I'm trying to be an asset my family as long as humanly possible and there's a big physical component I'm exhausted everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me What about the mindset of having been a seal? What did you draw out of that culture in that career that's now just a part of who you are not what you do? I think ultimately and somebody do really good it is Hey guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host gary brekka human biologist where we go down the road Of everything anti-aging biohacking longevity and everything in between Today is a really really unique podcast. Not only is our guest a former member of seal team 10 But he's a father. He's a entrepreneur He's a husband and his advice. I've actually I told him today I actually take some of your advice I started following your morning routine and if you know anything about me like my morning routine is sacred but Welcome to the podcast dj shipley. You you invaded my morning routine and now I'm actually taking taking some advice from you You know, it's astounding, you know, you've been here for for a few hours and uh, I always end up running a podcast before the podcast with my guest But it's been great getting to know you brother. We we had an awesome order We're both freezing right now because we just got out of cold punch But we did uh hyperbaric and then we got in the sauna And then did a little cold punch. So we're both the lights are on. Oh, yeah fire in all eight cylinders, man Thank you very much for having me So, you know, there's so many avenues that we could go down with this podcast, but you know what what I found Really unique about your story. I feel like you are kind of like the uncommon navy seal. I mean You come from a long line Of military and your family, you know, your fathers uncles Even even your mother And grandparents war war two Your father was a seal Your father-in-law was a seal your mother was She was in the military That she was in the navy so my father was in the navy too. So you kind of have no choice Right. Yeah, I find that there's a kind of a common theme that runs through my podcast and I feel like the people that are the most impactful in this world um The people that are the most passionate passionate like purpose driven are are people that solve the problem something in their life and that became the foundation for greatness and And For you was that how you were shaped? As a navy seal. I mean because you were you were actually 17 when you went in, right? so um And I found it really fascinating that you said, you know today's day and age. I probably wouldn't have made it just because the To qualify not that the qualifications have changed but the caliber of the people coming in there's so much more Educated and well prepared more than I was, you know, it's 2025 the internet's infinite They can they can download a david goggans and jocco and all these other people they can read about the pipeline They can see it on You know discovery channel. We didn't have any of that. Yeah, the human potential has Grown so much. I mean the bearer for entry if you look at the screen test and what it takes to get in It's not a very hard thing to do but the numbers these kids are producing now They wouldn't even looked at me really bottom. Yeah, good enough to get through good enough to make it through But now the scores are all based off of physical push-up push-up Sit-ups pull-ups running swimming all of those things the numbers are so much Greater than what I was able to produce in 2002 It just shows the you know the human potential. It's really climbing fast Yeah, did you go in because your father? Sort of gave you no choice. I mean one of the interesting things and I want you to tell this story, but Um is when I hear you talk about your story I mean you really grew up in this seal environment. He actually it didn't take you on missions Putting me took you around those guys a lot growing up not just because they were over at the house But you know you went out to the base Um I grew up there grew up there and so so it was like kind of like this environment that you were in and And I recall you talking about how you never really around a lot of normal people Never so what was that like, you know being a young kid, you know fathers and Navy SEAL High achiever coming from a long line of military families and that's sort of growing up around this base because I don't think a lot of people really Are in tune with what that kind of youth is like when people think growing up in military. They think Major dad right flattop haircut. He comes in plowsh uniform, you know SEAL teams are very special operations is very unconventional. So they never felt like they were in the military you'd see the uniforms and you'd see all the stuff but It felt like more like a professional sports team than anything else. But it was the culture the way they were the Living out of 15 pastures 15 past your vans in and out of hotels always gone on the road dropping off dirty laundry But just you know the humor the dark humor just the physicality when these guys would come over I mean I can remember being a tiny tiny child and watching the guys pour into our house and just they all looked like Superheroes their specimens. I mean they were freaks And I just I always wanted to be one I really wanted to be a veterinarian like in the back of my mind. I love animals. I love being around that So I'd always say that I wouldn't be a vet. I want to be a vet And they would just You don't want to be a vet. Yeah. Well, I mean you had like chickens goats Yeah, like every animal in the world when you're growing up. So you know, you're in that farm lifestyle Um, I grew up on a 300 acre tobacco farm. So I know it's like to be in that Urban environment, you know, uh, skateboarding was your outlet, you know And then you used to bust yourself up a lot skateboarding It's kind of funny. Oh, I've been hurt. Um, and um, so, you know, was your dad Around a lot. I mean at that time he was always on deployment, right? Always just going Kind of rough average it out 250 300 days out of a year going well and that's continuous the entire time But when he was back, he put you in that lifestyle, you know, you're on the base. You're around his guys did you Did anything strike you like did you notice that culture where like who were you young enough to grasp it like These guys, I mean, they they're messing with each other. They have a funny language. They joke a different way They all look like physical specimens. But could you feel that culture like as a Taste it it was palpable And you know now that I've I've been on the other side I could see where his frustration is coming back and trying to assimilate normal life There's always a friction point because he'd never heard the word to know And now I think back to all the small things like hey guys, everybody's gotta come out of my house You know, we had a hurricane. We've got 14 trees falling down in 60 dudes She'll put the house with Cases full of beer and chainsaws and they check they chop up every single tree. No one complains about it They do it. They burn it. They haul it out. That's just what you do. You've never heard the word. No, or I can't do that Or it's too heavy. It's too long. We can't make it. They always just did it So you get used to that being the performance anxiety like they've never said no They've never said we can't do it They're always going to find a way because the collective is always trying to solve that problem together I think that's what makes it so infectious because everybody deals with stress and problems all day long Nobody has a group where everybody goes. I'm going to stop everything I'm doing right now. We're going to solve it together Right now. Yeah, and that's what the essence of that culture is. I think it's so unique because you know, how do you take a You know, young farm kid because you you go into the new the seals at 17 years old So you don't know what combat's like you probably don't even know what buzz is like you have no idea what to expect I mean you have a little Maybe idea of the culture from being around your father and and and all of his buddies But I always find it fascinating I think it's just such a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for culture for families for businesses How they take these dispartite guys that don't know each other They're young probably can't find your ass with both hands at 17 years old, right? It's not like you have this vision of being on this team and you know, you know how to build culture Those are not things that are just inherent to you And you go into this program Uh, which is really designed to weed you out. I mean it's really designed to fail you or to break you um and The shocking fact that you're not broken leaves you with a unit that's tight, but then Talk to me about like the the culture building because lots of people do hard things And lots of people do hard things in groups, right? Um, it's one of the reasons why I think CrossFit was so successful For example, because it was the first time, you know, for most of the people in that Class that they push themselves to absolute exhaustion. I remember after CrossFit wads everybody's laying on the floor sweating And but there was that unity, you know the conversation afterwards where you just tripping off sweat And it didn't matter if somebody was a school teacher another dude was a firefighter another guy was a You know, he was there from uh swat team from the from the county. You were all on the same level For 50 minutes, you know um So how does that Culture evolve i'm really interested in because there's there's an intentionality to it You're bringing in these guys from all over the country You're putting them through a battery a test But all that battery a test is doing is saying who's the hardest who's the most determined who has the greatest willpower who has an un an unbreakable ability to Deal with suffering But at the end of that that you don't just magically get culture No Can you A lot of it is the unknown it's the fear of the unknown nobody knows what's coming next you've never done it before in some of the evolutions you do I mean, I'll say it to everybody. There's a point where Your mind will take over and it'll tell yourself you're gonna die right now They don't realize how cold you are They don't realize what stage hypothermia you're in and you're gonna die if you don't say something And you'll look to your left and right and nobody's throwing their hand in the air and go I'm not gonna say anything I don't want to get pulled out of here. I don't want to get the pro because if my core temperature does drop and he kicked me out of here That's not what I want. I'd rather I'd rather die right here in the surf zone Close out the whole chapter knowing I did everything I could yeah, and I think people hit that when the collective hits that same point It's no different than crossfit. Yeah at a certain point during that wad during that workout You think your heart's going to explode Do and no one else is stopping and you just keep going Like there's a little internal governor inside of your body. You just override you go one more One more like we've all done these crazy runs where you're like my heart's gonna stop right now Like I have to stop and yet you don't yeah once you do that so many times and you see everybody else do the exact same thing It builds this internal strength that nobody else can feel but you But you get stronger as it gets harder People start to leave they're all quitting you see guys show up to special operations like They look like Dolph Lundgren and Rocky for you like really I can't believe that kid It grew up and looks like that and once it's the same thing I do like why aren't you on the cover of men's health And they quit in five minutes. Yeah how That cold water changes everybody like they don't want to be here and I think that's where a lot of my success was is That was a barrier for entry. I have to do all of these things in order to do that And I've been around it. So I see what the end state is Everybody who ever met has gone through this exact same thing. They picked up that same boat the same logs been the same water Do you have to do it? Yeah, you want a college degree you gotta go through college. This is my college Yeah, I have to make it through You know, we talk a lot about mindset and I remember you telling the story about how you're you know You're in california. You're in you're in the um You're in the surf you're in the water water is cold as shit And you guys are all linked up and you're doing whatever calesthetics and you're going through the program in the water and um You're suffering and you feel like you're gonna die and then you look over You see like a kid with a inflatable Like pink flamingo like floating in the surface You're like, how is this 14 year old boy a 10 year old boy floating next to me. I feel like I'm gonna die Um, so that's it's got to be where the mindset comes in um And so during during buds, which has got to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life I don't know if that is or not Maybe some of the mission sure. Okay at the time. Okay, because we're gonna get into that too. Um And at that point you're not a unit yet. You're just you're just suffering as a group Right, so they that camaraderie that culture has not started No, um, this is the weeding out process. You can feel the culture in the cadre And I think that's one of the things that nobody ever gets to see unless you're If you'd be exposed to it early you can watch the subculture inside of it So you can see the clash just getting pounded and you can watch the instructors They'll go up to a little corner. They're drinking coffee. They're dipping Copenhagen. They're talking smack But you can see how much they love each other because they've all been through this before and it's like Man, I really wish I had that cup of coffee. It was over there Well, if I ever want to have it I gotta get through this Do you get to see the culture from a distance and the closer you get to graduating the more you feel like you're connected to it? Really gotta go through all these steps, but They bring out the best and brightest to be bud instructors. They're all physically fit They represent what the essence of being a seal is so well So when they come out there and they're leading pt, they're a freak Really? Oh And they're in it with you a lot of times too, right? They're leading the pt So you get a guy that'll drop down and I mean you'll do a 500 push-up workout That's 500 and I mean Wide grip close grip diamonds all all kinds of crazy stuff And you go mount the bar and they'll have a guy that'll hang on that bar for five straight minutes doing pull-ups And guys are cycling through and he's not dropping And you're looking at him like how is he able to do that? He's been prepping but he sets the bar so high you think you'll never be able to get there Yeah He's been right here with me falling out after his first set of 10 like he can't hang on the bar anymore He's so exhausted But they always give you this pinnacle like if you just keep going you'll get to that spot Just don't take your foot off the gas. I think you do a really good job of showcasing that Yeah, and I mean a lot of the culture is based on you we talked about this in the sauna today Like I mean your training has got to be as difficult as the combat situations that you're going to go into So that you're not shocked by the exhaustion the temperature change, you know the environmental shifts You're prepared because your training was so difficult That the missions become as you said earlier routine, right? I know exactly what i'm going to do at this second at the next second at the next second and You know when you when you when you graduated or you you know you you completed this um Is that where the culture really began is that where you really because at some point seal Has got to be willing to exchange his life for his For his comrade, right and I think there's no Like greater risk. There's no greater bond than just You 100 knowing that the guy beside you Is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission That level of trust must be Something that's really difficult to to emulate in the civilian world right I mean the um The mediocrity Averageism of life after you've done something like that and then taken those skills Deployed them in combat, which I want to get into too um Coming back from that Doesn't life seem like Very mediocre in that one day, okay Yeah, most people have never had an opportunity to sacrifice himself or something they couldn't take with them Like you'll sacrifice for a hundred million bucks But you won't sacrifice for 70 grand a year Right knowing you can't take the pinnacle of that profession You can't take it with you once you're gone and at a certain point in your career You realize that and you just don't care. Yeah, you just want to play another game But they're about tom brady bought. Yeah, he could have wound that thing up and retired early and still been the greatest ever Yeah, he wasn't done. He wanted to play one more game That's very much for him and not for anyone else. Yeah. Yeah It's like for the group. Yeah, and first team. Yeah, you got to be willing to sacrifice it for the group Yeah, and once you see people how far they're willing to push You'll do evolutions. You're like, there's no way I can do that. There's no there's no way I can do it And then as soon as you get through it, it's like a little confidence boost. You're like Well, if I got through that I can get through this I can get through this somebody said it the other day like If if you change the entire The entire selection in order to do that you had to run the moab 250 If you want to be on this team, you have to run the moab 250 every single person would run the moab 250 Really? If that was the new selection process everything else is up get through this evolution. You can do this job Everybody would do it. Wow The attrition rate would still be the same. Yeah training protocols would same be the same or be different, but You'd still get through it. Yeah, if everybody had to climb Everest You'd have a lot less people but they would still climb Everest. When did it first click for you? Like when when did you Decide I am in the right place. This is the right time. This is what I meant to do Like when did that when did that culture? Snap into reality for you. Was it after buds? Was it after you actually performed a mission? Was it like? It's probably uh, probably halfway through my first deployment I was in iraq 2005. We had operation red wings in afghanistan happened with marx latrell and that was the other half of my seal team Yeah, when that thing Happened that shock was our own little private 9-11. That's when the publicity. I think of the seals just just started I mean you were in it. It was very much a I feel just a very secretive Organization before and I mean a lot of people didn't even know that we had them. Um The movies didn't really start coming out till like 2002 Ish, I mean we had charlie sheen navy seals back in days greatest navy seal movie ever made Yeah, you had tears of the sun with bruce will she had a couple things Yeah, I mean it wasn't I mean kids made fun of me in high school. What's your dad do? He's the seal Right no, he's a commando and they're like what's that? Oh god nobody knows. Yeah, say now everybody knows right? It's a household name now, but it wasn't back then like you were doing it for something that nobody else could whatever see Yeah, I've said that before like I've seen 12 people do the most amazing things you'll never get to see I can't explain it to you'll never understand Yeah But the juice is totally worth the squeeze it is and I think that's really when you get invest in the culture when you watch that group of people Do the most heroic things you've ever seen? And no one else will ever witness it outside of us 12 right never even talk about it right some of the things that have humbled me The most is I I have seen things that Almost haunt me with how heroic they were and they don't even talk about them. They don't even debrief it Wow, it's like What I mean? I was just one of my very first times I brought it up in debrief like are we not going to address this incident that happened And he looked right at me goes when you get in the end zone act like you've been there before and walked out Really? Wow, wow like I've seen quite a few things up until that point and that was definitely the most heroic thing I had ever seen You don't even want to talk about it. Yeah, okay. Wow. Okay. That's the bar. Yeah recognition Yeah, not the glory. What was the first time that you ever saw? real combat because you know before we just to preface this when we were in the sauna we were talking about how I've had this fascination with Not just professional athleticism, but like a professional athlete that can dominate their sport or a really prolonged period of time You know like a Lance Armstrong seven tour de France's um, you know A LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady who's not just excellent or excellent once but is excellent over a prolonged period of time Which means they were able to block out all the other noise, right? all the pleasures of the flesh all All the fame all the fortune, you know all of a sudden going from Virtual obscurity to to to fame which has its own set of challenges And block all that out and stay excellent for a long period of time. That's always fascinated me and I described to you how uh a former wide receiver from the running back that I won multiple Super Bowls was telling me that he he described this moment where he would break off the line and He would be barreling down the the field giving Exactly 100 percent of every ounce That he had in his body. He knew that he did not have One more ounce of energy or effort to give And he would tell me like at that moment um I there were 70 000 people in the stadium and I could like hear a single voice Right here one person saying go Billy and he was like cue into that one voice and he knew You know 25 yards later that the trumpet player was standing too close to the sideline And that's where he was going to go out and he's going to wipe out that trumpet player and what he told me was he's like I could feel the ball snap Like I actually knew the ball was in the air Even though I hadn't looked back to see that it was in the air I could feel the defender coming across the the field to hit me and At that moment Just given 100 effort and I would put my hands up I'll grab the ball that I would get hit would end but he he said there was that period he would just chase that moment like a rat to cheese and I have to imagine because I know nothing about calm combat that by grace of god. I've never been shot at so And I'm never shot at somebody but I have to imagine that when you're in a combat situation and and the risk is not whether you want to lose a game the risk is whether or not you go back or You know you go home and in a coffin or you you come back to maybe see your family Like they the level of risk the stakes in a game like that The level of trust and confidence that you've got to have on the people Around you can you can have zero doubt? Not just in yourself, but in whether or not The people that are on your flank are going to do exactly what they're supposed to do Like Where does that come from and can you talk about like what was the first time that you saw real combat? And you came back and you're like This was worth it. This is for me Unfortunately for me in that first deployment you got to see a face full of combat the entire time But it's skewed over the years. You got more violent more violent more violent in 2007 It really uncorked in felucia. You really got some some really serious combat in your face close proximity It can't be ignored And then all the things that would freak out normal people They no longer freak you out and it's because the training has been ingrained so much and they've taken it so Above and beyond what's necessary to normal people That nothing fazes you anymore like You're walking up to a door You're under night vision. There's not an ounce of starlight. There's no moon. It's jet black And as you're walking up all your scene are infrared lasers I mean a foot off your head covering everything around you and if that door opens as you're touching it They're gonna take a shot right past your head and you don't move. You don't you don't need to He's gonna make that shot every time and you just trust it because you've been exhausting all the resources The boys are those are your boys behind you with the they're training 52 weeks out of the year. I mean They're exhausting everything they can Mentally physically spiritually emotionally tactually to make sure that we don't ever have to say no or I can't do that You can always make the shot we can climb up and over the mountain. We can jump out of the plane We can do all the things And you build that trust through Time like I've seen you show up every day. You're in here at 5 a.m. You're in the gym You're at fight club. You're on the range. You're in the kill house You're jumping the wind tunnel everything you have to be great at You're really committed to greatness in all those areas. Hmm. Unfortunately for us There's not a whole lot of room for anything else. Right. So all the external stuff You kind of got to block out and really be good at departmentalization Here's something most people don't realize salt isn't just about flavor. 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It's like for us Because you're so diligent in the debrief and all the planning you're so meticulous All the operations kind of stack on top each other. You can draw information from this one and apply it to this one But when it rapidly changes everybody just stops a different tactic right now Can't do that. We got to do this and you don't even call an audible. You just do the audible It just naturally transitions into it. But that's because you've only been thinking about that one thing the entire time like Tom Brady's not thinking about pickleball No, he's not thinking about his golf swing He's watching game film and just studying this one thing so he can when he gets on a line of scrimmage He can read it in real time. Right. I mean all the little micro moves that are happening He's just process information. Everybody on our team's the exact same way. They're just processing speed is so fast compared to the opposition That unless you just get us in a mudsuck and Get really lucky. We're gonna solve that problem really really fast regardless of whatever you're gonna have to do Yeah, I mean, I remember you talking about the amount of preparation that you went through You know phones emails patterns You know You know a hit on a on a target that was going to be watching their favorite football game that day football by soccer That day You knew if you took out the satellite he would get up from the football game Go to check on the satellite and that's where contact would be made The amount of preparation and and investigation and and Intelligence that you would do beforehand Was that a lot of the confidence that you had going in? So when you got out of that When you jumped out of that plane And you were on your way to the ground you technically never been there before I mean, maybe you had a model city that you had used or a model compound that you had used But you've never been there before You don't know how prepared they are You don't know if something's changed in the plan that you had hoped would be executed I find that fascinating because it's such a metaphor for life for business for our families You know that people are not adaptive They they crumble and they get stressed from From change I think it's our expectation that we set and then we're constantly disappointed that things don't meet our expectation Our spouse doesn't meet our expectation Our business partner doesn't meet our expectation our competition our partners. So When you're a seal How much of that planning Is Giving you the comfort when you're in that zone and your life is on the line Like what does a typical mission look like building up to that moment when it's go time? A lot of it depends on Your currency right in the height of the global war on terror I mean sometimes depending on where you are sometimes two times a day You hit a daytime you hit a nighttime sometimes it's three or four a night back to back to back Sometimes it's your eyespell might be a bigger target You know you've been after this guy for a while you think you have A group of intelligence folks all they do is build a target package on this guy. They have watched the target move He has ever done for the last six months No blinking coverage. They know everything about him and they're just spoon feeding to you So you go in there you eat lunch and you're just watching the isr feed and watching the satellites Where does he go? Where doesn't he go right handed left hand is always he's kicking a soccer ball at 2 p.m. With this kids it's 6 p.m. He's walking next door and he's coming back with an rpg Okay He's got a motorcycle stage two houses down his wife doesn't know about blah blah. This is how he's doing all this So you really get to see a real picture when you drop down on the floor of it It always looks different, but if you've done your homework I know how many doors how many windows inward opening outward open is there a storm door Is there is there 10 on the windows? I mean you can tell everything how high the walls are how many Sections of aircraft ladder we have to bring me all the different things so when you get there I have gone through every possibility every contingency we've been through So this happens Option two here we go. Yeah option two is not gonna work out of three three is not gonna work going to four Boom boom boom four is not an option make one up here we go And I mean it happened so fast because everybody's an individual thinker You might be looking at this gate going I don't know how I'm gonna get through this and he comes over and he's like we're going up and over the top And we are up and over the top. Yeah I mean like you don't even have time because everybody's on the same page as you Yeah, some people just farther in the ooloop process and you are yeah, so that's where the the strength of the team comes and I know a lot of A lot of different organizations. They put so much pressure on developing the individual And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah for us. It's a strength in the group. Yeah, we don't do solo missions That's not our jam. We do everything as a group And that's really where the source of strength comes from because I know you are just as committed as I am If you weren't you wouldn't be here. Yeah What's an average team size that that you would do a deployment with a mission with? It all depends on the target size, but no more than I'm saying one no more than Typically 20 guys and that's it's all the supporting assets me. That's everybody you do it in very small teams. Yeah, I get a typical assault teams Five to seven people really I mean hopefully you have two assault teams. I mean you run out of bodies really really quick I mean we have done some really complex stuff with nine guys ten guys really you get done at home you're doing debriefing like I'm glad we didn't have 50 people. Yeah, I had 50 but a nightmare. Yeah, what about 25 like 25? I've been a zoo too. Yeah, sometimes less is more because you gotta get you gotta get in and get out Yeah, right if you don't mind me asking what was the gnarliest? Mission that you ever went on anytime you introduce water. It's always gnarly That ocean is big black and scary and it's unforgiving It doesn't care who you are doesn't care how much you've prepared one slip up and Now you're soaking wet you're freezing cold and the surf zone is just consuming you. Yeah So we did one and we did one off the coast of Africa that was very dicey Shark infested waters and the whole thing and the reason that thing became so complicated Is because they didn't want us to kill him They wanted you to capture him. Yep. So you have to put hands on That becomes the issue because if you don't want to be captured and you have an a k and grenades and suicide vest It's very hard to capture you. Mm-hmm. So if anything goes wrong any early warning network dogs are barking He happens to walk outside to smoke a cigarette He usually doesn't do that after midnight and now it's one o'clock in the morning. He's staying on the front porch smoking a cigarette Very dicey very different. So all those different things but anytime where you are Anytime where you're kind of hamstrung like you have to bring him home alive Yeah, what if he doesn't want to come alive? Like now i've I basically assumed all this risk to put myself in a position to put hands on him and now it goes lethal Like I still have this thing in the back of my mind. I don't want to have to say no You told me not to kill him. I'm gonna exhaust everything in my arsenal to not kill this guy Right, but at a certain point we're gonna have to do something because now we can't get out of here, right now We're pinned down Somali is very unforgiving In the crowds are massive. So I I think you know, I don't have a good reference point, but I think You know people think of Somali and they're like, okay, it's they're they're trucking spears and rocks. I mean, but Apparently not you seem black-cocked down. Yeah, that's exactly how it is really that is everybody's arm and these guys are yeah It's one of the best war movies ever made in How how how accurate of a depiction do you think that was pretty accurate? That I mean you have to have Tom Saturday in the voice around the ground But from my experience I went there exactly 20 years later to the day our operation was 20 years after mogadishu in the beltway Was so concerned They don't want anybody to go into mogadishu Really very gun shy over that Helicopters getting shot down. That's not what we want Americans getting drugs in the streets We're trying to avoid that at all costs. So they had to assume a lot of risk for us to be able to go and do that But I mean I tell people my very first time I ever drove into mogadishu In broad daylight, you know, we're in this big convoy and there's a dog very visible. Yeah, I mean, yeah I'm a white dude. I Tatted up. Yeah We're driving through here and we've got a bunch of Ethiopians. We're in m-wraps We're doing the whole thing and right in the center of the car market. There's I call it a loose traffic circle and there's a dog sitting there with a human arm hanging out of its mouth. No Oh, wow There's no police. There's no red lights. It's whatever you want Everybody's walking around with ak's and machetes and you just don't know what they're doing You don't know what they're you don't speak the language. Yeah, it's violent And it's not it's not organized enough that you really have I would imagine like a specific hierarchy If we wipe out this hierarchy, then they're all disjointed. They're sort of this loose band. It's all tribal. Oh, yeah, very very tribal What was what was the mission there? We were going after Going after a bad guy who had done a bunch of bad stuff. He did a he did a mall attack killed a bunch of people and Yeah, we were we were supposed to swim in grab him extract him and get him out to a vessel and then prosecute him later for Crimes against all the things he'd been doing and Everything was going great The swim in was great. Everything was in approach and we got contacted on the roof So three-story building In all the intel that we're getting is this is his beachside bungalow Like this is a place he goes with the fame that it chill out to kind of rest and regroup and that's we were talking about the football game Okay, we're gonna go there Twist off the satellite he'll walk outside wrap him up Peel him over the third story swim him out the whole thing will be over How do you just swim somebody out that doesn't want to doesn't want to go? That's one of the things we talk about physical readiness. Like sometimes you have to You have to do people and you have to force them to do something against their will physically and that's a super human feet So you have to be able to overpower them. We had a bunch of things we were trying to do And we got guys set on the roof. The whole thing was getting ready to commence And a guy came out of the third story Cracked looked out our guys don't shoot him because he can't see a gun yet and next thing you know a k comes from the corner He's shooting at you Skipped off one of the boys helmets shot a strobe office helmet and the whole thing cracked off when it did all three fours lit up Sistine gunfire belt fed machine guns aks everything going off All in one shot. So he was that ready Yeah, so what they didn't tell us is we had a gap in coverage We weren't seeing everything and they were hauling dirt out all day long They were digging out bunkers The entire time sandbag positions in there getting ready for a fight I don't know how they knew if they knew if just bad coincidence, but when it went it went all floors Not all the windows and Throwing grenades out the front door right in front of you. I mean But you can't kill him So at a certain point you have a right to inherent self-defense I have to be able to shoot back but in the back of your mind the last thing he said was don't kill this guy, right? Like But I can kill everybody else though You don't know who they are. You can't see them. They're just they're shouting and they're shouting swahili and mix of english And it sounds like arabic. You don't speak the language. You don't know who he is and you can't see him It's not like I walk in the room three you were sitting here and like i'm not gonna shoot you i'm gonna shoot everybody else It's not like that. Ah, so we put you in this weird shift of Now I feel like a failure like what are we gonna do now? Well, now we have to get out of this place Right now we've got technicals massing the whole city's coming alive just like black lock down They're gonna surround us and we're all gonna die as soon as that starts happening and starts calling in other assets Right there. They start coming to that site. Yep. His wife's on the phone Springing up everybody and they've got all these little tribal pockets that are all over the city and here they come Oh boy, so now you're getting the updates. How deep were you at that time? How many guys? uh About 20 20 guys in And now we've got technicals that are massing. They've got dish because they've got belt feds They've got rpgs and they're all closing in on you. So we've got to get out of here We got to get out of here right now. Yeah when we're blocked off They're shooting out at every corner of this place and the only egress is right in front of the front door right in front of the gate where he's shooting Now you're lobbing grenades back and explosive charges trying to get a a little bit of gap and coverage in it It never stopped it felt like that hollywood that Rambo belt fed machine gun just yeah And it never ends it was like that. Wow and you only have So much ammunition because you brought what you brought You don't take a whole lot and that's the difference in special operations You watch a lot of guys, you know, if you ever seen a documentary for strepo Those guys are running out with nine ten twelve magazines. All right. We're running out with four right because you know You shoot what you kill like I don't need to have 12 round magazines. That's not the gun fights. We're trying to get in That's not typically what happens And yeah, I mean it it got dicey really really fast now guys are blown up massive concussion bleeding out of your ears bleeding out of your nose It's a nightmare and then you got to get those guys out. Um, were there any guys that were injured? I mean severely injured. I mean, I was injured a bunch of the guys were but it was a lot of tbi A lot of concussive stuff and then you know torn shoulders torn hips just from the surf zone very unforgiving boats flipping over and just Yeah, a lot of bad stuff happens and then so you retreated from that and went back out Took back off. Did everybody make it everybody made it. That's where camaraderie comes from You know, and I mean, I mean, but I mean you've been in some that are just you pin down feel helpless Everybody shot up, you know, your buddy's dying in your arms essentially and you're like Oh my god This guy's shooting at us. I've got to save him while not getting shot at what are we gonna do here? And you can't take out the human aspect of you spent so much time together Like my best friend now, you know, col facler started all these businesses with him We've done all these deployments together went through buds together like I've spent more nights consecutive sleeping next to that dude Then his wife ever will yeah 180 days at a shot like no break every breakfast every lunch every lift every op For years. Now. Why is that is that so that? You know everything about them you do. Yeah, so I mean that and the trust level by the time you're in business. I mean Trust is not an issue. Yeah, right. I mean because You know, you get back into that civilian life and that's that's what I'm so fascinated about like how does this culture evolve to the point where Everybody knows that everybody else will take the same level of risk With their life that you will and there's never you never second guess that right? It's because you never hear no You never hear in what training anywhere You come over here. Help me do this. Yep. Come over to my house on Saturday six o'clock and more and help me move Yep, everybody's they just do it always. I never hear no You can actually just build trust through that. Wow. I need for you to do this physically They're in the gym every day. They can pull it off physically. Yeah, I need to make the shot They make the shot. Hey, we got to do this jump. They make the jump You've never failed so far and that's because you're exhausting all the resources in the training You're not missing a day as you're living this like it's your only thing Yeah, you look at the work ethic. It's like he's putting in the work. Yeah, he's showing up. 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I was I got married in 2009 so I had already been a seal I'd done three or four rotations My wife's first husband was a seal got killed with mark's latrell on the ground. Oh, wow Russian red wings Her dad's a seal so she was already in danger. She was a veteran herself. She's a little conditioned. No guys. Oh she was You know That's the hardest lie you'll ever tell Yeah, it's not going to happen to me. Right. So she could see the transition. But why am I? Yeah, she could see the transition from starting at teen 10 and then transition over the national mission force tier one element You have to change and that group becomes smaller more intimate and now you don't leave it So now, you know, you're up. You're out of the house at 5 a.m. You're not coming home till 11 12 o'clock at night Training all night always with the boys everything you do is with a group even on weekends You're all doing it somebody's house You're eating brunch you go to the normal place and three or four guys in team are in there Slanted tables together everything becomes one big community. Yeah, and You can feel the resentment build up like you're spending so much time with them and that's your justification Through the best in the world. Yeah, if I want to elevate they're all better than me. They're gonna drag me up with them But I've got to be there. I've got to be in that van. I've got to be on that airplane I've got to be in that hotel room. I have to be at his house Like we have to all be together. That's the only way because there's so much non-verbal communication There's so much buying and if you're running a nine to five schedule with us You're not a true believer. Yeah, so a lot of guys just sacrifice the household Wow, it's not the thing you want to do. It's a thing you have to do But the divorce rate in special operations is over a hundred percent It is. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, it's just I'm a unicorn like the fact that me and my wife are still married And we shouldn't be she should divorce me multiple times She should have you ever heard my story like I I burned a candle at both ends and yeah But I mean most guys been divorced two and three times my first my first uh True chief for second one. I think he'd been married six times. Really? I mean, it's they're not used to it So guys, you know, they graduate high school. You've got your girlfriend. She goes off to college. You join a navy You come back together. She has no idea. She's gonna be sitting at home in a city She's not from for 300 days solo. She's know what that's like. She's in what that life. Yeah, she leaves you. What do you do? collapse on team Take it take it and run. Yeah, I've got my boys. I'm good You keep doing that same thing until you retire to get forced out medically or whatever and then you have nothing left Yeah, so that's not what I tell guys now, but in the moment I wouldn't change it Yeah, you have to be able to sacrifice everything else because And that was my big turning point when I really started to isolate and wall myself off from my family Is I saw the risk I had my best friend get killed And he was a true believer like nick check was one of the greatest navy seals that has ever walked this planet There was no denying it. Everybody knows it really and he got killed on a hostage rescue December 8 2012 When he got killed It crippled my life. And where was that? I can understand He was shot. Yep Crippled my life crippled me. I because she knew him Oh, yeah, very well because he was one of your boys. It was in that sphere constantly I went the buds with him. We did our first platoons together He went over the tier one command right before I did pulled me in now. We're in the same team I mean before his first deployment with that organization He retiled my entire kitchen floor him and my wife together like he left there covered in Soot from cutting tiles and jumped straight on c17 and flew to afghanistan No, I mean he is one of the greatest humans that's ever lived. Wow And when he died, I was uh, I actually had my both my uncles one was an army ranger One was a marine they were in town of virginia beach and we were eating at yard house And I got a phone call from one of my friends and he goes Where yet? I eaten dinner with my uncles Walk outside Walk outside and he's like, hey man, um Nick got shot Okay, how bad is it? It was a long pause and I could feel my anxiety start to build up I could feel the goosebumps coming and you could tell by the whimper in his voice. He's like he didn't make it and I Fucking crushed like my I'm so surprised I didn't throw up. Yeah, I mean I walked back in there I sit down at that booth and I could feel my wife staring at me because she saw the number She knew it was one of the guys from the team and my hands were shaking and I'm staring right in between my two uncles I could fear burning a hole in the side of my head and she goes. What's going on? nothing I have to go to work And she grabbed me and spun me and I looked at her made eye contact and I just started Convolting just no ugly crying at that table and I was like he's gone She's ugly crying. We drive in the work and do the whole thing and that was the hardest thing because He was the reason or one of the reasons he was one of the things I used to justify How much time you spend at work? Showing up early staying late training on weekends Christmas morning new years everything everybody was doing That wasn't me. That was a cultural thing that everybody did Because it buys down the risk and she looked me and she goes It buys down the risk. How is he dead? Yeah It's a dangerous game, honey It's a dangerous game But right now I have to exhaust all the resources to buy down as much risk as humanly possible The end of the day you run into an eight foot room with people belt that machine gun shooting at you. Yeah, it's dangerous Yeah, and that's what happened. Now. Why weren't you on that mission with him? Were you not so we had Extortion 1 7 happened when all the guys got killed in the helicopter crash I remember August 6 2011 all the bullshit that came out in the media about that that had to be so frustrating I've heard you talk about it. Oh, dude. It frustrated me. It frustrated my father who's he was a navy captain He was a navy seal, but um It frustrated the hell out of my father. He was like I don't believe in You know ban and free speech with these people dude. I have goosebumps talking about Yeah, never been so mad never been so disgusted with people for saying the things they were saying people that have absolutely zero Inkling into what's going on there. They have no line into it at all probably never served in the military Just on there. There's just the Keyboard warriors, you know and even some of the family members Those guys came on like it was an inside job Yeah, not an inside job. Anyway, that happens and every other team had to cough up some bodies to refill all those people So nick got put over and that was the best of the best of the best On there, right? If you look at them, I mean the amount of combat experience was on that helicopter will never be recreated Never I hope we never go to a conflict that long But I mean you had guys in there with 14 15 16 combat rotations So think about that in the vietnam guys come back and like we've got three tours in vietnam. That's substantial This dude's got 16 afghanistan Like the amount of experience in between that dudes two years you're never gonna understand. Yeah the amount of things he's forgotten about Hunting humans. You'll never even understand. Yeah, you lost them all in one shot Well, we got a back film You back film and that's what happened to him that next deployment got killed in a hostage rescue and You know, I looked at her and I was like It wasn't for a lack of preparation It wasn't for a lack of commitment. Yeah, his number got called. Yeah, and he went through it with no hesitation and That's what happens to me. That's what happens to me. Yeah, you got exhaust all the resources But that was a tough thing to go through man. I just I walled that up and I just I never wanted to think about it again If I keep a picture him in my refrigerator, I see him every day I have a process at all. I keep that in a special little box buried way down deep and every now and then it'll uncork and come out Yeah, it sucks and the reality of it. Oh reality reality of it's it's but you went on after that I mean, I mean that happened 2012. Yeah, I don't retire until 2019 Wow, so you were deployed after that too. Yeah, right after. Yeah. Um, and were the other guys Deployed with you that that were also very close to him that yeah Never talked about it. Never talked about it. Nope. Just one of those unwritten Risks of the job you don't want to think about it. Yeah It sucks because in the military when people die, there's only one or two things It was either a freak accident Or that guy wasn't really as good as we're gonna make him seem during his eulogy Right, you're always always gonna paint him up like oh, he was the greatest. He was the greatest. No, he wasn't Yeah, he was see average at best. He was a nine to fiveer. Yeah, he did a very hard job But was he exhausting all his resources? Absolutely not. No, he wasn't. Yeah 30 pounds overweight blah blah blah This dude was a phenom in everything he did everybody knew it Really if you take a you take a hundred people you didn't want to be on the other side of him in other words No, you take a hundred people that work at that organization 96 of them are absolute true believers a couple guys swing by but even them They're so good that it doesn't really matter right it all kind of averages out But when you lose a guy like that And that was like extortion every single dude they lost was like that. Yeah all of them. Yeah Oh, yeah, you just see the family you see everybody else and you see all of us Well, yeah, I never thought that would happen us. I never thought that would be a reality The same thing for June 28th like my father was in the military. There was no combat going on back then a little bit of skirmishes granada, Panama Somalia, but not that he was involved in so I wasn't going to funeral this entire time So that was not a part of the culture. No, maybe Seals getting killed was a freak accident Guys falling off the back of a truck and hitting their head guys dying in a parachute accident drowned like randomness Not like that and getting shot out of the sky with the best Highlights in the world was just not something that I ever thought was going to happen Even though you get numb to the risk. Yeah, because you're so successful. God. That'll never happen. That's an anomaly Then it happens to you and you're like, oh my god If I just been lucky this whole time were you ever deployed when you lost somebody close to you on a on a deployment Not lost. No, no game really should have lost Banged up bunch of them. Oh, yeah, because I've heard you talk about IEDs and and the danger of that and how you were in a convoy multiple times and it was either the one in front of you the one behind you or It was delayed when it went off Um, but for whatever reason your number just didn't come up. I mean in that That's I mean how that doesn't play in the back of your mind when you're on one of these missions We were talking a little bit in the sauna earlier about Where mindset Sort of integrates with training and this is this is where I want to bring this back down to to the every person because I think so many people can can benefit from the the not just the mental toughness, but the mindset that You developed and the mindset that you still have today um I I feel like you apply a lot of your You know your military training to your life Um still today. So, you know back in let's just call it civilian life um father husband father two your your kids is seven and ten 12 and seven 12 and seven And so, you know 12 and seven year olds Life you're in the real world now. Um You know, so what about the mindset of having been a seal? Um and having been such a part of a team like that the ability to set that kind of culture outside of a seal team It's impossible. I mean you you'll never reach And correct me if i'm wrong, but you'll never reach that level of culture In the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture so What do you what do you take away from that? You know building a business? Raising a family being a husband like what did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now? Just a part of who you are not what you do I think ultimately And someday you do really good is You'll have a guy who is the exact representative of what you're trying to mass produce It could be your boss. It could be a dude who's three or four guys down in the team, but he's the guy If you close your eyes and imagine what you think an avc looks like open your eyes and he's standing right there Okay, close your eyes. What is he gonna say when he opens it opens his mouth and he says you're like, okay Get him on the fly range. He does the thing get him in the shoot house. He does the thing jumping out of airplanes He does the thing he represents the best of what it's supposed to be right What my job is to emulate that My job is now there's 50 of us sitting in a room. I need one representative to stand up and be the example I should be able to just you brian get up You're a guy if everybody represents What we think the essence is then we set it It's really hard to do that or ask for it if you're not represented yourself. So that's the first thing The guys I I really model myself after they lived and breathed They woke up. They did fitness. They did fight club. They were on the flat range They did all the core things they had to be and they represented the group really really well And they would always say it's like the culture is not going to morph to you You have to morph into the culture and if you don't you can't be part of it We don't take half-timers part-time beat it. You gotta live at a full value And it's like that and everything. Yeah, it's really hard for me to talk about mental health If I'm drinking a 12 pack every night posting hateful stuff on social media It's really hard to talk about physical fitness about 50 pounds overweight, right? But if you live it and they say it as the example I'm not a unicorn. I'm doing the same thing. I've been doing my entire life. Yeah, do it too So we started gbrs. We did the same thing first thing I mean a gym We had a squat rack a 70 pound dumbbell and a barbell I mean that's what we had nasty in there, dude Now now he's built the whole thing up now. It's Hyperbaric chambers and the whole thing but the love it is the same. Yeah, like when I say I'm training five days a week I don't mean kind of yeah, I mean five days a week I got this morning five a.m. Got a lift in next door came over here did morning routine with you I'm not missing it for anyone, right? Not my 20 minute walk not my diet Not just what I eat but what I consume if I just live it in your Close and proximity you'll naturally have to pick it up. Yeah, if you and me are on board He's on board the three of us. She's on board. Everybody will just start to adopt it Before you know you look around Everybody's living the same routine. We're all living the culture. Mm-hmm. What is the culture? 1% better per day be a pro leave it better than you found it Don't be an asshole be a good dude at the end of the day. How do you want to be a good navy seal? Be a good dude. Yeah, what's that require be good at all your jobs and represent the group before yourself Just do that. Dude. I love that man. God is such a great metaphor for culture It is, you know, I'm big on culture too and and I I'm the same. I believe in lead by example, you know My wife and I just did eight uh 14 cities 18 days That the team was with me on on a lot of that What I've noticed too is we're doing so much more on our team with less people because We've got people managing work Not managing people When I first started the company We just hired somebody for everything, you know, we need a marketing director that's hiring marketing We need to do a media buy let's hire a media buyer, you know, we need a social media director spy or somebody from social Oh, we need somebody to answer emails to have people answer emails And then as the as the team actually started to shrink We started to produce more outcome and And in this space, you know, which just in this social media space, I mean Everybody is bought into the mission when we have meetings. I'm clear about the culture I'm clear about where is this company going to be in And where's the ultimate human platform going to be in three months? Where is it going to be in six months? Where it's going to be nine months. What are the big things that we're going to do next year? We're going to do a lot more than you know, like we're going to we're going to try to put 20,000 people We're going to put 20,000 people in the state um You know, we're going to host a live event for a million people online We've never done it. Um, but I know that we can do it And I think what you've done fostering this culture is so this lead From the front It's it's more about it's like when you're raising kids they learn more from observation than they do from what you tell them to do Um, this whole do it because I told you not Do as I say not as I do They learn more from what you do And one of the things I I really identify with is that you are not afraid To be selfish with the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away Can you talk a little bit about that like, um, you know, because I've actually borrowed some of your Believe it or not. Um, and my my My morning routine is sacrilege man. That's like it's my time. My wife knows it the team knows it My assistant knows you schedule meetings and travel around sleep and exercise sleep exercise everything else and that has been such an incredible mind-ship for me Right because the most entrepreneurs have that mentality you wake up and start to grind um But if you if you do that eventually you just start putting yourself in the back seat Let the into women you're used to self-sacrifice because your mother's that's what you do I don't like that approach. It's also a 82 percent of all autoimmune diseases in women because they have this It's called caregiver syndrome They just put the needs of everyone else before the needs of themselves and they don't realize how detrimental that is They think that that's being very selfless. Um, it's actually being selfish because you you don't care for yourself There's only so many withdrawals you can take from a bank account before you make a deposit, right? And we're no different So how how do you structure your day? Um, and what is a typical day? For you, you know look like in a perfect world in one where I control all the variables There is nothing that's going to stimulate me on that phone or an email before 10 a.m My answer in text messages is not on social media. What time you up? 5 a.m. Five. Wow five hours. So in a perfect world In a perfect world, it's five Realistically because I started doing the math I'm not having enough time with my kids to make a positive impact. So I was waking up at five I was out of the door before they woke up Knowing that no matter what I am unwracking at 7 a.m. That's what time the workout is That's what time my trainer comes in we used to do it at 6 a.m Now he's getting a doesn't have time with his kids my business partner doesn't I don't Now we come home, you know, you know the grind is an entrepreneur. Yeah, you coming home at six I may be coming home at nine now. I'm not seeing him for weeks on end Right, I don't want to keep having that. I have to have a shut off at some point But I'm getting pulled in so many different directions if I don't make time for myself I'm not going to find it later. Right and I hear these guys like I'll get a workout and drive home. No, you won't. No, you're not five days a week. You won't So for me, I've always been accustomed to sacrificing sleep. I know that's not what the doctor wants I know that's not what I'm supposed to do. But that's what I'm used to doing So if I come in on the red eye like tonight, I landed 12 30 in Norfolk 12 30 a.m. I'm still getting up at 5 a.m. And I'm still doing my entire routine. I don't care. I'm not sleeping until eight Well, I'll skip a workout. Oh because the jet lag. I don't do that. I wake up. I knock it out But I'll wake up at five I've got my whole evening routine where I do I lay out my clothes night before I've got a brand new bottle of water sitting next to my bed and my phone's at 100% charge Change your man, right after you were in podcast I started doing that But if you look at it the majority of people my wife included all through her in the bus right now She'll wake up her phone will be at 16% At what point is your phone going to sit on the charger for two and a half hours to fully charge that you're not going to be on it? It's not So now you're running around With your primary system of communication Already almost dead. Yeah, I don't want that But if I have it right next to my bed, that's where people lean over they hit the snooze and lay back I've got mine stretched all the way over. I have to get out of bed. I just carry the momentum with me I swing feet out of bed grab the bottle of water unplug my phone. I've already got the water I've already got the cell phone. I'm walking in the bathroom. It's at 100% Phone's at 100% I don't check the c-tex messages. I don't roll over and scroll on ig for an hour I'm up. I'm out toothpaste on the toothbrush get it wet put it in my mouth Go to the bathroom by the time I spit out toothbrush Hills go down drink with the bottle of water that I had the night before get dressed left sock right I like your pissing and brushing your teeth at times compressing time I got that because I'm trying to get out of there as fast as humanly possible because if not I'm going to make more noise I'm going to wake the wife up. Yeah wake the kids up. That's why I don't have you know I've got a big yeti tumbler. I don't want that with all the pots and pans in the cups now I'm rummaging around making noise. She calls it the orchestra. Yeah, so is my wife If you stop putting my stuff away at night, I've laid it out for a reason Machine goes on coffee goes in. I'm staying next to my red light. I've got my methylene blue. I've got all my stuff I just took that perfect timeline and I shifted it now But I mean I've got to do a cold plunge. I've got to do a hyperbaric session I've got to do all that before 7 a.m. So now I'm on this teeter-totter schedule where If I wake up at 6 I'll be able to get my morning routine. I can leave the house at 6 45 walk in I'll unwrap and then I'll shift it. So I'll do hyperbaric at the end of the day I can make time for that at the end of the day. It's just me. Everybody's powered it down Right, but I'm really trying to give my kids and my wife a positive introduction first thing in the morning And then in the evening if I come through at 6 o'clock most people have their kids in bed Shower in bed by 9 9 30. Yeah, I've only got three hours. Yeah, right so for me It's about Sacrificing my time just for me. So it doesn't inhibit anybody else. I'm not asking my wife to wait I'm not asking my kids to hold on for me Hey, we got to shift this. I'm knocking out everything. It makes me better right now. The things are in control I'm controlling because once 10 a.m. heads, you know the deal you're a slave to the masses But I have to be able to teleport and become the person I need to be that little representative Every door I walk through so if I go into this meeting, what's the version of dj? It needs to walk through that door Wow, right. So that's a great way to think about it. So if you ever watch the content I do I always do the clap the guys in media made me do it for the sound bites like Get the clap I clap before I do everything because it tells me whatever version of me right now I have to switch it into this mode They don't need an operator right now. They need a kid to come through and play barbie for an hour I've got three hours for a bed my 71s played barbies sister. We're playing barbies. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah, here we go You know, I mean, right? I'll do it. I'll do the tea party. I'll take them on a 20 minute walk We'll do a bike ride, but it's so hard to do if I feel bad about myself because I didn't do fitness Yeah, I didn't do any time for me right now. I feel slow. I feel lazy. I've got brain fog and now I'm not present Anyway, I might physically be there but mentally I'm not there right if I get my fitness in first thing in the morning I'll do whatever you want to. Yeah, we can watch movies all day when you Netflix and chill. I've already got my fitness Yeah, I can't compromise on that and I watched a thing with Michael Phelps the other day And he talked about his schedule Swimming twice a day 52 weeks out of the year never missing a session for five consecutive years That's brutal. That is what it takes. I just do a more realistic approach for me I don't need to be Michael Phelps I need to be David Goggins. I don't have to run the you know the bad water 250 or whatever the moab two I don't need to do all that but I need to do something It makes me better than I was the day before and sometimes that's just a consistency of doing the same thing over and over Because it hurt me. No You know, I'll talk to guys They're like, oh you do too much like you'd grow more you'd be healthier if you only lifted three days a week I'm I'm doing that workout more for my mental health that ain't my physical health Because I know what happens. There's two for me. You're really tightly intertwined. Yeah, and if one goes the other ones are right behind Hey guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks Now this is for distance athletes hits cardio exercisers people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely An a game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins It has all of the electrolytes the entire suite of b vitamins before you freak out and read that has 21 grams of sugar Which it does the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey My preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation They actually come from real citrus fruits and the color is from vegetable juice not artificial dyes So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising intensely a game is your choice Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast I've had some really bad injuries And when I can't get up and move I'll lay there in my mental health just declined so fast and that's not good for me It's not good for the group. It's not good for my family. So that's how I justify it I'm sacrificing What I want to do right now, which is probably sleeping and be lazy I'm doing this because it makes me better for everybody else. I said with Andrew. It's like Everybody says they'll they'll take a bullet for their kids. Like I jump out of a building for my kids You won't get on a treadmill for me. You've seen a much eight-year-old running out of 300 pounds. I haven't yeah I'm trying to live to be 105 Yeah, I'm trying to be an asset for my family as long as humanly possible And there's a big physical component of that Yeah training vo2 max for longevity. Like I've got some kidney stuff going on now I'm exhausted everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me to be I just live in normal retain for me It's no I watch the thing with swedzenegger Did you work out today? Yep. You didn't work out tomorrow. Uh-huh. I brushed my teeth last night I brushed in this morning. I'm gonna do the same thing tonight the same thing tomorrow morning It's part of my routine and I never plan on breaking it. Right. Why would I I've been doing roughly this routine my entire life Especially since I was 17 Why break it dude? And we're such circadian creatures. We're such creatures of habit or creatures of routine the body craze routine You actually there there are a lot of studies that support this too that the more Um regimented you are about your routine, you know, even when you travel, you know If you take it with you like you did today when you when your routine is portable The more grounded your body is the more you are capable It's you know, when you levy these hermetic stresses on your body the more you're capable of adversity and change and and You know dealing with like, you know trauma and problems because they don't have a tendency to overwhelm you you're strong enough to To to meet those so your first 90 minutes two hours of the day You're you're up. You're still at the house when the kids are up So you see him in the morning. Okay, I'm trying to know now with this hyperbaric chamber Because I just did stem cells They didn't want me to jump in the chamber right away wanted to give it a time So it was really a 6 a.m. To 6 45 and then I'd cruise in I know the exact time we're going in today So yeah, like cars cars filled up the night before There's nothing that's going to derail me so I don't have to be late because I hate being late The anxiety builds up in me. It's like I'm not setting the example. I'm 25 minutes late Right, I've got to be a master at time management It doesn't have to be I don't have to be a nazi, but I need to be able to justify everything So when my wife says oh, don't take us 10 minutes to get there. I already know it's going to take us 25 I already know it. It's like but I'm really good. Like she'll ask me. She's like, how far are you out? I'm like 12 and a half minutes And you're 12 and a half minutes 12 and a half minutes out Yeah, I'm barring a wreck or a red light that I just missed like I'm Sub 13 minutes out from being home. Yeah, I understand the timelines. I know exactly where I'm at But it makes you accountable and it's small things. So I talk a lot about micro wins If you look at my entire routine and micro wins, maybe we can break it down by the minute At the time I leave that house, I've done 25 30 things under my control every single day You get accustomed to being successful So now when you get to that meeting and it doesn't go your way when you look at it Of the course of your day, it's It's a rounding error. Yeah, it's one thing out of 85 things I did a positive date under my control and I controlled them It builds confidence in you and when everybody else sees it, you're doing the same thing as me Now you've got 25 people in this room. Everybody's stacking up micro wins all day long You're used to being successful. Just continue it. So now when you hit a blip on the radar It's a blip on the radar. Yeah back on track back on routine keep going. I'm not ocd if you look at mine You look at my general area. There's it's chaotic It makes sense to me. I know You don't need to understand my system. Yeah Just take the broad you know the broad concepts. I'm controlling the controllables And I'm trying to be 1% better than I wish yesterday. Yeah, that's funny man I've had a lot of lawyers over the years and When you walk into a lawyer's office, the more shit is just stacked up everywhere that looks like random haphazard nonsense The better lawyer they are that guy. It's got everything tucked away It's one piece of paper sitting on his desk the pencils perfectly lined up next to it Like yeah, you don't have a lot on your mind, man. Exactly. Um So I I love the routine you have to be like where you you cause these little breaks So that you say who's going to show up right now? I'm about to show up for my family And you talked about the technique you use when you when you're popping the garage door checking my phone um, you know, I'm intentionally setting My My next phase of what I'm going into like I'm walking into this house with the intention to be impressive for my kids I think that is just phenomenal because I think so many times and I'm a huge uh victim of this myself is that I You know, your work day never kind of really ends. You kind of always on your phone You kind of always distract you you can kind of get to emails anytime and you're not thinking Intentionally about who's showing up right now. Um, you're still at work even though you're at home. You're sort of half there Um, but you have this intentional way. I want you to talk about that a little bit about, you know, you have this routine that you go through I think a lot of this has to do with Very like your military training, but you know, you have a routine that you go through so that you're like, okay I'm going to show up. This is their time with me I'm going to be a dad You know the deal you're so stressed throughout the day All the little connections you have to have all the sidebar conversations the social media the business the finances everything else Is that the person they need for a seven year old? No, the she knew the navy seal to come to the door. Absolutely not But my whole life it's only been that so I talk about dials not switches I flicked that navy seal switch at 17 and I never unaflect it until it almost cost me my marriage in my life, right? When I went down to mexico and did the ivy and experience that's what it showed me was the dials not switches So when I came back, I'm like, I've got to strip out everything else. What are the only two things that really matter? Well, I've got the business and I've got my family What can I do to support both of those things and I can't do them simultaneous to me multitasking's a false You can't do them both. Right. I can't be on here two-hand texting and have a normal conversation with a 12 year old about navigating seventh grade I can't do it Why would I lie to her and why would I lie to myself and say I could I can't So when I leave work, we'll call it five o'clock I'm rolling out of work at five o'clock. I sit in my car. I have it in park start the whole thing I put on chris stapleton pretty much every day I love chris stapleton in a good mood. It does man. It settles me down and that's what we talk about You know that not just what you mean, but what you consume if I'm blaring in there's been times metallica mega death That kind of energy is not what I need to go home and be the best version of myself for them So I put on something that calms me down puts my heart rate at 42 nice and chill and I pre rehearse everything I'm going to go through so before I put it in drive all my texts. They're cleared I've responded everybody I need to if I need to mark them on red and mark them on red check social Do not disturb. I've got a 12 minute drive home and I start to pre rehearse everything So if my kids had a doctor's appointment if they had Parent-teacher conference my wife went to what do I need to check in with and what's the version of me? They need to see right when I come home Super stressful day my wife had a medical appointment my father's sick in the hospital all these different things I don't need to come in here blaring on all eight cylinders or ramping everybody up I've got to meet them where they're at and the shared energy across the board So if I come in super hostile like you won't believe what happened it spikes everybody up If I come in switzerland nice and easy Who's everybody at? Hugs and kisses to everybody nice positive interaction. How was school today? Great. I'm actually there. I'm not on my phone Yeah, how was school? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh Hold on one second. This is my favorite. Yeah, hold on. I can't do this anymore to the 12 year You're more important than this phone. You're more important to me than business and I actually mean it now Yeah, I'd leave the whole thing right now if I had to for the family And I was never like that before when I was in teams. That was the only thing that mattered I'm not proud to say it, but if she would have taken the kids and left I would have let her I wouldn't have left teams for that. I would now because now I really realize the strength of that family That's really what I want. That's really what I'm trying to hold on to But I've got to be able to give them the best version of myself And if I'm outside of that routine, they're never going to get it Now I'm thinking about I didn't get my fitness in I'm not leading by example. The culture's failing. I'm failing Now I go home and I feel like a sub optimal version of myself. Yeah, I can control that I can control that with just a routine. Yeah, it's not ocd. Like I don't have to move pencils around this doesn't have to be there Right the small low structure. Yeah, just a little bit of structure Just bring it in. Yeah, and now I'm accountable for every minute out of my day. Where are you at 2 15 right here? Yeah, I can You can justify everything you're doing because it's not for me. Yeah, it's for you. It might look like it's selfish right now Okay, you came in on the red. I spend the morning with the kids Can't yeah, because one day I'll turn into two two will turn into five a week turns into a month really really fast I've been inside the gym in a month. I've been so busy. Yeah, I'm about to get back on the train No, I'm not I'm not taking phone calls not a zoom call Nothing before 10 a.m. I'm not doing it. That's so legit, man. I think there's I think that level of discipline Instructure just that level of organization routine is so important. It's so important your circadian rhythm It's so important to the success of your business. It's so important to your ability to Be regarded as a leader. It's even important to your ability to handle and be resilient to stress because you you talk about You know mental illness and the mental struggle struggle PTSD quite a bit You had an experience with it yourself And I'm really interested in your ibogaine experience Because you know, I love lots of people that have done ibogaine ayahuasca ketamine They're not really mixed stories They're different stories, but they have in most cases Very similar outcomes where This was like the life changing for them like literally life-changing and I'm talking to You know bad-ass men like yourself that are not going to make shit up that are not Trying to sell some ibogaine journey And they're not fruity about things you What made you make the decision To go and try the did you know people that had done this? Okay, you knew people that had done this journey at a former teammate marks capone him and his wife He was the quintessential Navy SEAL He's six foot five built like a brick shed house I mean he is the dude when you see him like you're surprised. He's not carved out of granite Mount Olympus. I mean, that's the way he looks And I watched him, you know, he was at SEAL team two when I went there And when he checked in he was larger than life He represented everything you wanted to be just You know how you want to be the best basketball player way out Kobe Bryant's routine or just live it Yeah, it's the same thing just following his footsteps. He'll lead you to the promised land And that's what he did and when he went over the tier one side Very busy very hectic a lot of combat lost a lot of friends and you watched it slowly but surely morph him Eyes got jet black drinking too much Family finally said it was enough he was going to transition out of it and you watched in death spiral You heard the rumor mill like he's drinking a lot His wife's gonna leave him like I think he's suicidal all these different things And he kind of goes dormant for a while and kind of loses track of him and his wife amber in the background She was done They tried talk therapy, still he ganglion blocks all the neuro behavioral everything you could have tried they've already tried Nothing was working. He's actually getting worse especially with all the medications. Now you had an alcohol No sleep insomnia and he became a shell of who he was And she found ibegan and sent him down to mexico to do it. So a combination of five m. EO and ibegan They made this little infomercial on social medias based like his story He looked completely different. I I couldn't believe it was him And I was at the exact same point. My wife was gonna leave me. I was gonna let her And we watched that thing and she's bawling she slides the phone over. I watch it. I'm bawling because I see the change in him She looked for the better for the better. Wow, he looked like he was reborn But he wasn't fufu like he wasn't You know grounding beads in his hair doing the whole thing Right, you know you hear guys go out to the west coast now They're doing they're licking toads and they're doing all this weird stuff my typical west coast. Oh my god. Yeah You claimed another one But he was better. He was the same guy, but you could see the dial in him He was the same dude He can roll with the tin really really fast be the most violent person you've ever seen really but he can hover to two all day Yeah, that's what I couldn't do. That's what none of my friends could do. We were always at eight nine ten Intensity always I just wanted a break. I want to be able to power it down. I didn't know how She's like if you love me, you'll go And I went down there with some really really heavy hitters From your guys that you were yep. Yeah, and that medicine is the only thing I've ever found stronger than the ego Wow, but you've built yourself in this this vessel you think is the essence of your craft And you need something to break through it You're like well, I pride myself nothing can break me not physically not mentally not spiritually emotionally nothing like I'm very resilient Up to this point, but I needed something to hammer through me and break me down to bare metal and that's exactly what it did How was it administered? What was the setting like like what was the very very procedure like very therapeutic? Setting You're essentially a four-story villa You've got nurses e mts chefs are there people just taking care of all your needs everything They give you a drug test when you get there they confiscate all your medications make sure you're not on Adderall any kind of stimulant there's no nicotine caffeine nothing So you are fully sober for the first time for a lot of the guys first time in decades I mean I was taking 60 plus pills a day So when I went down there, I was the worst I'd ever been Mental health was the worst physically. I was the worst. I just I didn't want to play the game anymore And if I'm being honest, I had no intention of coming back from Mexico I really I was so suicidal. I just wanted to die. I didn't care and I think in the back of my mind. I kind of hope I was gonna kill me So I wouldn't have to go home and face the music and all that kind of stuff and Everything I thought I was gonna see is not what I saw I thought I'd see nick check. I thought I'd be in the back of helicopters I thought I'd see tall grass and all the stuff we lived through and I didn't when I say zero Not a singular memory of military It got it from the day I joined to the day I retired. None of them. No, I've been navigating four times and never once Never once not a singular bit of it Maybe because that's not where your regret lies. That's not my trauma That's I wrote every ounce of that even the stuff that's bad even the stuff that I thought was giving me nightmares. It's not It's a bunch of childhood stuff And then it's a realization that I'm doing the same thing to my kids And I don't want to be like that I don't like I have regrets on the way I've treated my wife conversations. We've had infidelity the whole thing. It's like I did all that and it's so hard to realize that's what you've done. So when you wake up the next day, they call it a gray day It was like I had a 300 pound noose around me. My posture was broken. I didn't want to go home At the same token that was the first time I'd ever been homesick Like if if Elon Musk would have had a teleportation machine right there, I would have jumped home Right, but I still had this reservation like I still don't want to go home It's this weird weird shift you find yourself in But everything you've been suppressing your whole life is now at the very top of your throat now It's coming out of your mouth. You sit down this big school circle and Okay, let's talk about your experience last night. It never just looks at each other I'm chatty. Kathy like I want to send it Right and I start talking and everybody else starts piping up. I start talking about wanting to kill myself and suicide ideation dependency and all this stuff And everybody else like me too me too me too really And then I get pissed I'm like Really, what do you mean you too? Like I've known you for 20 years. My best friend. What do you mean you too? He's like, yeah, I'm the same boat You're gonna let me sit in my guest room and shoot myself in the head. You weren't gonna say anything. You knew I was suffering Nothing Just gonna watch it happen and I made that decision right then. I was like, I am never going to sit here and mum's the word I'm not doing that. Yeah Next day we do 5m yo dmt and it It must be what finding religion is truly like Wow when it happens you set up Oh my god. Oh my god Oh my god. Oh my I mean you're freaking out You feel interconnected to everybody Like it's so hard to describe until you've done it You can't believe you feel that good. You can't believe you feel that grounded that balance that interconnected that much empathy in your life Really, but it's controllable It doesn't make you a pacifist and that was my biggest concern. It's like I don't want to run around here with flowers and beads in my hair Sorry for all the things I did. It's not like that a bit It gave me a full dial. I can roll it to 10 so fast But I can sit here to 2 and be the coolest student in the world Like I'm the most normal dude you'll ever meet. I wasn't like that a couple years ago. Really? I was wound so tight I mean I wouldn't leave my house. I I always thought I was going to be under attack I'd have blades and guns and all kinds of tools on me because I thought I was always under attack I'm not Like I can control all these different things and it made me such a more well-rounded person than I was before Yeah, and it's all because of medicine and now once you're off all those pills My headaches are way. Were you cold turkey off of all that? Yeah to wean off because I was on some ball to adder all I mean it takes a while to get off them But man once your stone cold sober no booze knew nothing in you I can't believe I feel this good. I mean I did cobaning it for 20 something years Cold turkey one shot completely done and I didn't really quit every ounce of addiction your body's gone So addicted to women and chaos and everything else. It's gone You had this this whole time So I told marx and amber when I came back, you know, they meet you on the other side of san diego and You know hugs and kisses and whole thing and I grabbed them both and I was like I'm gonna get on the nearest building I'm gonna scream it from the rooftops. I promise you and I went on Sean Ryan Unblurred my face and told my story and I became an advocate for the medicine I remember that if you have if you think you've exhausted everything you haven't gone down there and done that There is still room left on the table. You can still make progress Really a bunch of guys like I've done the immersion. I've done this I've done that I've done talk therapy Stealthy ganglion blocks all the medications and They provide a little bit of relief, but it's not the entire thing and I was suffering so bad And I could see all my friends suffering too I'm so sick of putting friends in caskets for self-inflicted stuff. We can't do it anymore Get the message out and That has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and my family and when you how many days was it? The original one was a three-day protocol now they do a five-day so they do rakey massage breath work They do it all sweat lodge. I mean, it's a full it's a full protocol. Wow. It is perfect. We do through uh ambial life sciences They run the most amazing clinic really. Oh, yeah And so when you were getting ready to leave there you had clarity maybe for the first time In in a very long time stone cold sober and it was the clarity that I didn't even want Like I knew I had to go home and confess my wife about all the infidelity and all the things I'd been doing But I had such a clear picture of how it happened Yeah, and not a lot of people ever have that it just They just think it was an impulse. Yeah. Yeah, I was so hung up on the job that I had to set up these walls and these different barriers So I couldn't let my family get inside to cloud my judgment Because you have to be able to self-sacrifice right now It's so hard to do when I'm thinking about my wife. I'm thinking about those two kids I'm gonna make her the first two-time widow in nsw history. I'm gonna orphan my two kids like I'm not doing this Like there's a hesitation Yeah, I can't have so what do I do? I block them off. I don't put pictures them up I try to limit how much we face time. We won't talk for days on end. Like I'm trying to keep you on the back burner So I can focus on the task at hand limit your options narrow your focus Nobody cares about 63 husband Nobody cares. That's not it's not what they care about. They need me to perform right now And if it calls for sacrifice, I have to be able to sacrifice So we'd go on these trips and I'd live these alternate lives We'd go on jump trips and dive trips and you know, I'm not just running around but Because I'm not thinking about them. There's that internal governor that's no longer there It's like normal people would lean on religion strength of their family all that I didn't have any of those things I was just living this singleton life. We're on the road 300 days out of the year And it's so much easier to compartmental Compartmentalize completely and not think about them when I'm fully single. So in my mind, I'm fully single Wherever I'm at outside of this house. I can be a completely different person now. I come home I snap back into it. Am I really present? No, physically. I'm there mentally. I'm there not there emotionally. I'm not there Right. That's all the time that I regret So to everything I've done for my life up to the 40 years on this planet There's a stretch of four years. I absolutely hate myself for I can never get that back And we came back through I mean, I can't believe we made it through it All the stuff I put her through But I told her it was like I'm gonna re-earn my seat at this table every single day I'm left on this planet You will see a positive change in me every minute on my life because I owe it to you And if you ask you today, I wake up every day with that on the forefront of my mind I'm gonna re-earn my seat at this table by whatever means necessary And the other thing is we cut out toxicity out of my life I sat down at the edge of my bed with her In a lot of its personal relationships went through my phone started a enrolled all the way to z This person this person click click click click click click click about 150 people Block and delete all of them. Really never going back I've known you for 25 years. Every interaction has been toxic. I mean family members included. I can't do it anymore I owe these three people everything right now And I'm gonna give you both barrels right now because you deserve it because I've been absent for our first 15 years of marriage It's a g what took you or took me from you Now I gotta give it back and For me, it's totally worth it. But it is so hard To go down there and let yourself go And is this is this over several days that you come to this or is it How is it administered? Pill form So you grind it all down. It comes from a root in west africa They grind it down to the capsule form take three or four pills you take one 20 minutes later take another one And you'll slowly start to feel the effects come on nothing crazy You need a little bit of tracer and then you take the fourth or fifth final pill banging on the rock because you're steering yourself in the mirror and then all of a sudden Am I feeling it? You'll shake back and forth and everything will drift you're like, oh boy. Here we go. Here we go You hear like bees buzzing in your ear and you put on the eye shades and Whatever happens happens and Some guys don't see anything some people you just feel emotions you can You can feel memories. You're not even but your conscious you're awake. You're in charge. You're in charge of your choices It's not like you're not on like a weird acid trip where it's okay But I mean you get out of control you get up and go to the bathroom It's very hard to walk. You don't have your sea legs. They're assisting you, but I mean, you know, you're in mexico I know I'm laying on the bed. I know that that guy's mad. I know that's cold Yeah, put on the eye shades and then Whatever your feelings what you feel how long are you in that zone from that? Not 24 hours 24 hours. Yeah 12 to 24. So you don't actually sleep through it. Oh, no No, you're awake the entire time so that great day you can't sleep either So I mean you're just up process guys journal. They'll take audio notes all this But that medicine's in your body for probably six months So you'll be sitting in a red light and all of a sudden A picture or an emotion that you felt from six months in a pastor in treatment. It'll click all the dots will connect you go That's why I did that You'll go home to your lady. You're like, do you remember in 2012 this and she's like, uh-huh. I was like, this is why And she'll look at you and go That makes sense That makes sense. Like it'll take you so long to process it but And that's a lot of the guys do wrong is they'll go down there. They'll have this amazing change They'll come back and be reinvented and they'll go straight back to that same toxic lifestyle. Yeah, like You know, you got to quit booze because it's consuming you you go to mexico You come back be your wife drinking six seven glasses of wine a night It's not going to help you eventually you're gonna have one I'm gonna turn the two and you'll go straight back into it If You know, your buddy's a worker hitting strip clubs, you know every weekend now you go back with them You're back on the same path. You have to Get to scrub out all the toxicity out of your life and reinvent yourself. But once you do my god, it's like a superpower Really everything is more vibrant colors. The edges are crisp and clean You feel interconnected everything. It is it is truly amazing That is wild dude. I mean You know, what's amazing is I've had multiple people that I some that I hold in very very high regard um Tell me almost identical stories um I still don't quite understand the mechanism of How it allows you to break through your ego because I feel like when you're in that state and you're not in control You know, you're not conscious enough to process it and make A reasonable choice out that'll lead to a life changing outcome. But that's not what they report So when you come into ibegin, that's not the ego death that conjures up everything else. You've been suppressing The five m. EO is what kills it. They call it the ego death for a reason So good and the ego is so dangerous It is Strength, yeah, but for us when you get in there, I did six rounds of five m. EO my first time through Wow, how long were you there? Each one of those is it's different from everybody else mine were probably four to six minute rides. You kind of have a loose trap You can kind of track a little bit of time, but It's so hard to describe it feels In trevill tell you if it feels like you're gonna explode explode feels like you're drowning Just drown feels like you're dying just die. Yeah, whatever it's gonna do Don't try to fight it just open your arms and just breathe and let it happen And I was probably five rounds through and I wasn't having that breakthrough moment My ego wasn't dying. I was holding on to it. I would scream and cry and I'd ball it up And then I'd come out of it and I'd look at the practitioner and go Get him again This last one, I don't know because we used to go down there with nothing but seals So if they would hold space for you, you'd look around the room You're like, okay, I'm gonna take this medicine and put these eye shades on this foreign country And they're gonna protect the house make sure nothing's gonna happen. So it gives you that piece of calm. Yeah In that very last time, I don't know if it was the practitioner or a team guy that was there They knew how bad I was struggling and they were like You want to kill yourself, right? Yeah, and you just didn't do it I changed my intention and the the sixth time I smoked that medicine I did it with the intention to kill myself And that is what broke me open. It felt like my whole soul went into my sternum. It cracked open and shot out of me I mean just lay in there just I mean you got the eye shades on it It feels like every ounce of your soul is leaving your body in one shot Really screaming? It's that profound when we get done. I'll show you a video of my of me screaming It sounds like a Viking damn a video. Oh, wow screaming and you don't know what's happening That's just what your body is doing and when you wake up from that It's the most sobering thing you've ever had like Everything in the world is right every wrong. I've ever done I can fix you're like I'm good Like I don't have to close this out Like I got to go home and I got to confess right now and I got to rebuild this bridge brick by brick right now It gives you motivation. You're seated at the table. Yeah, like I can totally come back from this I can totally do it without that medicine. There was no coming back from me Wow, that is so profound man because I know so many people are struggling from what they feel is insurmountable mental illness Everybody's got it and even just like to some extent. Yeah So we're doing a documentary it's launching on netflix november 3rd and ways and ways. Is it really? Yep, oh dude. I'm gonna light that thing up for you man. That's awesome. Yeah, november 3rd about your journey My journey marks capone and then if you heard me talk about Um on the shon ryan podcast matt roberts get shot through the arm doing that whole thing It's Essentially mark is saving me me going down to get treatment us coming together and going we got to save matty Yeah, now it's me convincing matt to go down his whole treatment protocol and then all of us going down to Mexico together it films the entire procedure Simultaneously, so I was doing it too Um, Sean did it too. Yeah, but um, stanford did a study on ibogaine in what it's doing for the brain It's unbelievable. I gotta dig into that. It's killing addiction. It's repairing all the um All the neuro pathways in the brain. I mean guys that are really really jammed up It's curing it in one shot. Don't start fucking with big farmers pockets. Oh big farmers gonna hate this Missing navy seals It's working man. That's worse than any enemy you ever fought. Yeah, but yeah, it's amazing that you know, uh Empowering the body to just heal itself. I'm such a huge huge believer too. This is this this has been amazing, man. Um I uh First of all, I I I'm really thankful that you came down and and came on to the podcast And before we wind things up. I I have a vip group. Um, these are these are My most loyal followers their community that I built that are really on the same journey with me They're gonna they're they knew that you were coming on the podcast. They've got some questions for you um, I want to take you into that room and answer their questions, but Before we go I I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question Um, and that is what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? I mean for me being an ultimate human Is it's a realization you're on a consistent progression throughout life The person you are at 18 you're progressively getting better through your 20s through your 30s through your 40s And I'm gonna continue that exact progression understanding. There's no finish line There's no gold medal to win where I just hang it up and go and I'm not gonna do anything else I am gonna live this exact same path knowing there's still room to go still room to grow the entire way through Different modalities you got a different pill that makes me better. Give it to me different drink different sleep Hygiene whatever it is. I am adopting everything positive in my life to make me better than I was the day before And I'm trying to push that out to everybody and I'm just trying to live it To me. That's the ultimate human. Am I better than I was the day before? Yeah, I am I will tell you man. I'm around a lot of people a lot of great thinkers a lot of very successful unique individuals You have an energy about you rather. I mean you really do I feel like I've known you all my life and um Um, not saying like I feel like you're my best friend. No, I just feel like I've known you all my life I can tell that you're a very genuine very intentional Uh, very humble person and I really enjoyed the last couple hours with you man. I really have I mean this has been a It's been an awesome engagement and like I say, I meet a lot of people a lot of high achievers But you have that special cord like that authentic energy that I don't feel very often so Maybe it was the abagain and it worked, but I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity Yeah, I'm excited to go in and meet some of the vip's and and get their questions answered But um, wow what an amazing podcast I'm gonna have you back because I want to see how your journey continues to go And guys until next time