Datasets:

visualcomments

/

human-human-conversations

like 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

this is Jocko podcast number 222 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good evening someone called for my Afghan interpreter Rahman a good man with whom we had worked with for some time these interpreters are the unsung heroes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they often suffer threats and ostracism for their willingness to endure the battlefield alongside us their motivation isn't money there isn't enough money to make it worthwhile facing down insurgents who know where you and your family live they are idealists they work and risk death because they believe in our common cause of freedom Rahman responded to the call immediately running before me his foot fell in a particular spot just two feet away from where I stood I was looking right at him as I later discovered he instantly lost all his limbs in the explosion even though I was staring right at him I never actually saw it happen my experience was a series of tremendous blows and subsequent realizations a train hit me ears ringing what the fuck was that darkness something is wrong got hit my legs reach down and see if they're still there they're there I feel them pain everywhere mostly my abdomen something shot through it I think my eyes must be caked with mud I can barely see anything I hear groaning and screaming someone hit an ie D pain everywhere but my eyes I crawl around a little bit mostly to see if my body still functions my teammates make their way to me I asked someone to pour water on my eyes to remove the dirt so I can see that doesn't work I can only see light and in some shapes must be a lot of dirt I recognized my Corman's voice as he works on my wounds I say dude don't get blown up it sucks he laughs and tells me to shut up I was conscious throughout our corpsman stopped my bleeding the worst of which was from my knees and wrapped up my eyes it still did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with them I could only hear the situation around me my teammates calling to each other communicating the situation with tense voices I later found out that a foot wearing the typical Salomon boot that we all wore hit one of my teammates in the chest about 50 yards away Rahman was groaning in pain deep deep pain most people's experience of combat wounds is from the movies a soldier gets hit his guts spilling out and he looks down at them screaming in horror but this is not the way it is in reality truly bad injuries SAP your energy and prevent you from screaming instead the sound of wounded man makes is a much deeper more visceral emanating from the depths of his being it's a groan a cry a moaning that reeks of utter desperation it is far worse than a scream it is true pain manifested in the sound this was the sound that Rahman made it is unforgettable as the quorum intended to me and we waited for the medevac helicopter a thought entered my head we may be in a firefight any second now Rahman was barely alive and he would later die in the hospital our EEO d chief petty officer took a little Fraggle Sol and would be evacuated with us all hands were needed to fight I could hear the medevac helo coming in low this was no time to ask someone to carry me blown up and blind I stood up and walk myself to it Dave warson who would be killed two months later heroically laid down cover fire for me as I boarded the helo there was my last memory of him medics onboard the helicopter took one look at me laid me down and eased me into unconsciousness I woke up days later far away from Helmand far away from Kandahar far away from my brothers and arms far away from the war and dust of Central Asia I was brought back into consciousness in Germany at the American at the American Hospital long store a breathing tube was being unceremoniously ripped from my throat rather unpleasant I opened my eyes or thought I did and saw nothing a physician came to me and told me the truth my right eye was gone my left eye was so heavily damaged that there was virtually no chance I would see with it again my future was a future of blindness of darkness of no sight no color no visual beauty I would never see a sunset a friend a loved one again in one instant in a fatal footfall all that was ripped away and that right there was an excerpt from a book called fortitude written by Dan Crenshaw who is a former SEAL officer and he's actually been on this podcast before number 118 and the last time he was on he was in the process of running for Congress well he won and is currently a congressman serving the 2nd congressional district of Texas in the House of Representatives and well it's an honor to have Dan back with us today to share some of the lessons learned that he talks about in his new book and once again the name of the book is fortitude Dan thanks for coming back man hey thank you for having me listen do you read that I was like maybe I should have asked you to read my book in the audio version that was good well thanks it's uh it's only good because the story that's being told is is obviously a very powerful one and you know you sent me this book and as soon as you sent it to me I started talking to you about let's get you back on the podcast obviously you're a busy man obviously you're busy man right now for reference it is what is it it's March of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic the corona virus pandemic is going on around the world and around America there's schools and again who knows what this will look like looking back on it when people are listening to sin the future whether if they're listening to in a month from now a week from now or years from now it'll be interesting what this pandemic turns out to be but you braved the travel we did we did and we just you know I'm leaving off the heels of that late night vote again for for listeners trying to put this in context and what you saw in the news leaving off the heels of that late night vote where where which was for the economic stimulus that the the president supported and was bipartisan in nature different from the eight billion plus dollars that we voted on a week prior which was meant to combat it on a public health scale so you know I it's every everybody agrees I think we've as a country and as a government we have taken this particular pandemic more seriously than anything in the past more than we did for Ebola or for h1n1 and I've asked that specific questions to folks like the assistant Surgeon General Admiral red who have worked all of these pandemics and so I just hope people realize that that's not what you hear from the media you know the media would tell you that it's so totally unprepared and you know you're never going to be perfectly prepared I think that's a lesson you and I know pretty well yeah but you learn those lessons and you do better than next time the finger-pointing has been completely unnecessary mostly dishonest and totally unhelpful but the government has been taking it pretty seriously and we're definitely taken it seriously in Congress well I'm glad you were able to get out here and again I think there's no telling what this will look like in hindsight but it's quiet around here in San Diego right now there's just not a lot of people doing a lot of stuff obviously we're we're in the gym and the gym you know not a lot not a ton of people coming into gym right now there's still people training though don't worry it worked we're training that jiu-jitsu but yeah you sent me the book and you know cracked it open started reading it and immediately was just you know getting in touch with you to see if we could get you out here on the podcast to talk about it and man you know the the stuff that you've been through and the lessons that you've taken away from it are very powerful and you know that's one of the things that struck me out of the gate is that when you got wounded you actually you actually drew strength from very powerful place and things that you've been through and I want to jump in and read some more of this um some more of this things that you've been through and I think a lot of people are gonna be able take a lot away from it so I'm going back to the book this is after you wounded I fought back to another time in my life two decades earlier the first time I ever witnessed the kind of inescapable pain that I was feeling now and the grit to overcome it was with my mother she fought a battle so many other modern women fight breast cancer and she did so with endurance Grace and optimism her example has never left me and I wasn't about to let some cheap-ass AED in the ancient killing fields of Afghanistan render me unworthy of her memory she was only 35 years old when she was diagnosed same age as me as I write these words when she got the news it was one day before my little brother's first birthday I was five years old the doctors told her she might have five years to live and they were right soon after she would be feeling the pain I was feeling now as the cancer and chemotherapy ripped apart her body in battle she fought it for five years and when I was ten she died if you've ever cared for a loved one in terminal decline you know what that's like there is an intensity of loss that is immeasurable words don't do it justice the whole deep down in your gut feels like it will never go away as a child the intensity of the experience is made worse as grief is amplified by incomprehension going from kindergarten to fourth grade knowing that your mother is dying that the center of a small boy's world is collapsing is an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone but from this grief came learning I got to experience the nature of a true hero and the example she set was the most powerful fortifying and selfless thing I have scene including combat buying helpless in a hospital bed I had to wonder whether my mother had asked the same desperate question I was currently asking would I ever see my family again I figured that if she could suffer through that question and the unknowable answer so could I my mother spent half a decade staring death in the face burned with caring for two small boys whom she would not live to see grow up she lived day to day in ever-increasing pain the cancer afflicted her and the cancer treatments afflicted her to six rounds of chemotherapy on top of radiation treatments are a brutal experience for even the strongest constitution self-pity is never a useful state but if anyone had reason to feel sorry for herself and had to complain a bit it was my mom but she never did in terminal decline and in pain across five years I never heard her complain once I never heard her bolon her fate I never saw her express self-pity every day she woke up was a day she was still alive and she lived she was dying and she was grateful to not be dead yet every extra day was a gift where she could look her boys in the face every next evening was another night she could tell us she loved us before bed even during her last days when the hospital delivered her deathbed and hospice nurse to our dining room her demeanor did not change Susan Carol Crenshaw was exactly the opposite of what she had every right to be brutal yeah yeah that was more for my mom than for me you know I tell that story because well that the name of that chapter is perspective from darkness and perspective I think is something we lack in our modern-day society we are I think too many people are willing to jump to this false conclusion that you've had it the worse that your life is worse than your ancestors or than your peers or than anybody else walking around America right now and there's just a really just so happens there's a really good chance that's not true I'm not saying it's not true I'm just saying there's a pretty good chance that's probably not true it's interesting too I always talk about perspective from a leadership perspective which means hey if I'm looking at one of my troops the better I understand their perspective on what I'm telling them and what their job is and what the mission is the better I'm gonna be able to lead them and same thing with my boss the better I understand my boss's perspective and what the strategy looked like and what's the overall thing he's trying to get accomplished the better I understand his perspective the better I'm gonna be able to lead and it's interesting cuz when you put that across society you would think that in today's day and age with the a bit with social media with the ability to absorb as so many other people's perspectives you'd think that that would open up your mind yeah to realize that that there's you know a lot of other people that that have been through much worse than then anything I've even been close to gone through yeah and yet it doesn't seem to be happening that way no and I mean one of the most popular stories for an American to hear you know is is a story of overcoming adversity and that's a good thing I'm glad those are still the the stories that are the most popular in the American psyche you know that a movie about somebody who's downtrodden and overcomes it it's still a good movie but there there is it's undeniable that there is this fragility is infecting America and that's that's why I wrote this book and it's um you know it's not a political book it's not a sealed book it's not a it's it's a cultural book it's it's a cultural philosophy book and it's it's it's simultaneously an individual kind of self-help book and just how to be mentally tougher in your own individual life but there are much broader cultural implications that are strewn throughout the book it is a it is a culture book and because I fear that we are getting more sensitive more more prone to microaggressions and prone to saying how offended you are and wearing wearing that offense on your sleeve proudly and and and this gets to the I think what's the the next chapter which is who is your hero and we've changed what we look up to like we think that it's good to to scream about how offended we are that's becoming like a a moniker of a good thing you know it's interesting as as you know before we started recording you know we're just talking about kind of life in the games and and if there's one thing that you never do in the teams and ever is show anyone that you're offended by anything that you're saying to you because if you allow that to happen you know you're gonna get torn apart whereas it seems like and I hadn't thought about from that perspective the all the rage in the public right now is if you can possibly get offended by something then it's you're you're the you're the best thing in the world you know jump up and down and point to the person that offended you and why you were offended and and the more offended you are the better off the aggrieved victim status is supreme these days and that's a and that's more of a serious problem than then I think most Americans are giving it credit for like it's a really bad thing because you're changing you're changing our heroes and and when I say heroes I want to want to be more specific cousin and I outlined this in the book in greater detail I don't mean like Jaco is my hero I don't actually and I person when people asked me about who I look up to and my heroes I I will tell them attributes of people that I think are respectable don't think you should have one person that you look up to I don't think that's totally healthy and that's not what I'm talking about in the book I'm talking about hero archetypes you know in an archetype is a is a is a broader set of ideas or attributes that we sort of that we sort of recognize collectively okay that's it's more of a psychological term than anything else and there are certain hero archetypes you know like the Navy SEALs have a hero archetype when we write about that in our in our SEAL ethos it's such a beautifully written ethos and I and I have the entire thing written in the book because it perfectly demonstrates what we believe we should be now what we should do but what we should be and that's a really interesting thing and I and I and I know that you look at a corporate ethos and if you go to people like corporations websites and you read them there they're usually something like we want to be the number one manufacturer on the west coast it's like that's not who you want to be that's just something you want to do if you if you write out an ethos of who you want to be you can you can reach that level of elitism you can surpass mediocrity so that's important that's important thing is here is that we have societal hero archetypes that we look up to Jesus is a is a hero archetype Superman is a hero archetype real characters too you know I put I could name a thousand you know Rosa Parks Ronald Reagan these all of these people embody certain attributes that the American people think this is good okay man we generally agree on these things I tell the whole story in the book about about when I was at Disney World or was it Disneyland it was Disney World and I was at the Star Wars land and I was watching this really cool thing happened where they where they let these kids do Jedi training and of course like in typical Disney fashion everything is really well run the actors are absolutely amazing and they're teaching these kids you know how to work their swords and all that but they're also teaching them really cool things like just little Jedi lessons like like will you let your emotions be driven by hate and anger you know like really simple because we look up to the Jedi as like a hero archetype and so there are certain things that are just viewed as good but that's changing and I and I find that to be an extremely dangerous thing because we're the aggrieved victim the person who talks about being offended the most and who screams the loudest were elevating that person to a higher level in our society and that's dangerous you're flipping cultural norms on their head and you do that at your own peril you know and ends you know cultural foundations based in thousands of years of trial and error and wisdom those are important they're more important than people realize and like that's that's that's frankly what the first I guess well that that particular chapter is about perspectives chapter you know they're all related of course but the perspectives chaffed and the reason I bring up my mom and the reason I tell that story and then subsequent stories of of other guys that we've lost is because you you need to it's healthy to go through life thinking you know what somebody has hard had it harder than me and I'd like to live up to their memory I'd like to live up to that hero attribute the hero that are the hero archetype of my mother and I'm not lying she never complained she just never did and if she did I didn't hear it as a kid and so when you're living in blindness and not sure whether you will see again it's healthy to have that in your head and I mean I say you don't have to uh you don't have to experience a bomb in your face to get some perspective but you can read about it and it's like you said earlier in a world where we're so connected and we can see everybody else's story of hardship you would think that we would have more perspective but but it seems that the opposite is true and first steps of reversing that trend I think is to at least realize it yeah we we recently had on Rose Schindler who was a house where it's survivor and I got many many many messages and comments coming back saying yeah myself in check you know I I don't have it that bad so that and yet we've had many people on here that have been through some really hellacious things whether it's prisoner war camps just devastating situations and it is it's it's it if they weren't here to here I get the feeling sometimes that if people weren't hearing it here they wouldn't be hearing it they wouldn't be hearing it you know they'd just be thinking that everyone is living better than they are and they're the ones that are in the worst possible situation in the world we've got yeah that's a you know I don't bring it too much to politics but it is it is it is one reason that we that we have lurched into this conversation about socialism because fundamentally socialism is as an ideology that pits people against each other you have to believe that somebody else is oppressing you and that they have it better than you for you to embrace socialism it is it is envy it is the ultimate sin manifested into a political ideology not the ultimate sin but it's one of them and that's I was I'm always looking for the deeper reason as to why something is happening and it is natural for for people to want to believe that something outside their own power is fact is affecting their lives because if it's you if it's your fault if it's you who has to step up that's harder it's much easier to believe that there's something else it also is an assault on your ego when you look at yourself and you say well I guess I'm the one that messed this up yeah it is and that's that's a devastating psychological consequence when your ego is hurt that way it is yeah I wrote a book about that called extreme ownership it's good but again it's it's one of those things where you know you wrote this book as you know as you're saying like a cultural philosophy you know life and I wrote extreme ownership as well as leadership principles but I mean it well it didn't take but two seconds for everyone to say oh yeah what you're talking about is you know easily transforms into a into a cultural philosophy of taking ownership and responsibility for what's going on in your absolutely there's no doubt about it and you find yourself in the lot in light and look do people get cancer yes people get cancer to do horrible things happen to people to families yes absolutely how do you respond to those things is the question how do you take ownership of what you do next and and that's the that's the big difference and if what you do next is is you know say it's out of my control and I can't do anything and your get the mentality that you're a victim of what's happening around you that means you're not gonna make any changes to transform your life and move in a more positive direction it's just the way it is and you know I think I think one of these things that happens with you know these ideas behind socialism in America and again it's it's like crazy that we would be sitting here talking about this anybody that anybody that reads anything about history knows that this is just not good but you know it comes across always as hey well what we want to do is help everyone out that's what we want to do we want to help everyone out and okay if that's like the core belief and this is where I think sometimes we could do better or you know someone like myself could do a better job explaining to people look if you care about other human beings so much if you want to help as many people as possible in this country the best possible thing you could do is allow the market to flourish allow people to build businesses that's what you that's what changes people's lives that that's what helps not get giving them a handout and making them reliable or a reliant on the state right it doesn't help anybody it helps them for a week you know it helps them for that pay period but it doesn't help them transform their lives into something more positive when one way I explained that exact sentiment is to ask someone to imagine how they would raise their kid if they love their kid you know would you give them whatever they want would you would you tell your kid that whatever they do wrong it's it's not their fault somebody else made them do it wrong would you tell them that there's no consequences for their actions would you tell them that if they do an hour of chores and their sibling does three hours that they deserve the same reward and would you teach them any of these things there is no liberal who would teach at their kids these things they don't because they love their kids and they want their kids to be successful but that's effectively what we're teaching what we're saying that we should teach our citizens and so I ask people why don't we treat our citizens the way we treat our kids as if we loved them because that's true compassion it doesn't mean we don't have a social safety net right and that's always the counter-argument it's a disingenuous counter-argument well the counter-argument to that is look with your kids and this is an example that I use when I especially when I'm talking to businesses so I say listen like what will be with a start-up right that's grown from you know they were ten people then there are hundred people now they're getting to that threshold and I say listen at some point you're gonna have to put some discipline on what's going on inside of your company you're gonna have to have people come to work and that aligned times you're gonna have to have them eat lunch at certain times not just like you're gonna have to you're to have to have meetings and that are scheduled and look when you've got a company of twelve people you can get away with all that stuff there and it's great there's money coming in and everything's but as soon as you start to grow well you have to start to have discipline inside your organization right and so the example I give people is I say listen have you ever met a kid that when he's when he's born look when a when a child is born you give whatever they want you got to keep them alive right there's your social state like you have to give them food water milk you have to get you have to feed them you have to take care of them if you continue to do that when they're three four five well by the time they're ten you actually now have Satan for a child yeah because this kid is totally out of control do demanding doesn't it not only is totally demanding but doesn't know how to do anything for themselves can't make them solve the sandwich can't tie their own shoes it can't do anything so what you have to do is you have to let people fend for themselves you have to let kids brush up against the guardrails of failure you you have to do that and yes you have to do that with society as well in my opinion and that's what that's what the thing the argument that I don't hear back at people that are saying hey we should give everything away for free is listen for that we don't have enough to give away everything for free right the best way that you can take care of the most amount of people is to allow freedom allow individual freedom allowed people to pursue goals allow people to pursue business allow people to grow things and hire people that's how you that's how we all win it's so it's crazy to me that we still have these discussions and it's also yeah it's crazy to me that we're having these discussions right now like this there's like this belief that they subscribe to which is if only politicians want so mean and corrupt you know there's all these things hidden that we could just give you but they don't want to and I most like does that really sound right like this is that does that really sound like that's that's correct that was just all just extra money just hidden in the in the in the Treasury that we could just give out what we don't want to that everybody that we have all these luxury apartments that we could just give out you know because housings are right or whatever or that or that there's just enough doctors and hospitals to take care of everyone and they're just kind of waiting around like not you know I mean like come on you know it's it's not if something if it sounds too good to be true it most certainly is and again it doesn't mean that we don't want to keep striving for a you know broader access to health care it doesn't mean that we want to keep don't want to keep striving for a or efficient social safety net not saying that but the but they lurch to the to the progressive left and socialism is it's it's it's based upon this idea that that we're keeping something from you and it's just not true it's based on this idea to that that that where do I want to go with this it's it's kind of like a constant escalation of crisis and it's it's it's not surprising that we got there okay and this is what I mean by that if you're a progressive you're generally wanting more progress right change for the sake of change itself is often the case and you have to promise more things than you did last time right because fundamentally it's it's it's based in the sense of compassion you know giving people things from the government they don't think very much they don't think much more about what that does to the foundation of the creation that you talked about it's just giving me four more things and it's almost like they relied on conservatives for the last hundred years to at least to at least be an obstacle to their to their worst instincts right because the goods conservatives are the ones who say okay hold on like ease think of the second third order consequences of that think of what that does to our foundations when I say foundations I mean foundations of a free-market system that creates all this wealth in the first place like you can't you can't just you can't remove the legs of the stool if you want to improve the stool I get it let's work on that but don't remove the legs of the stool it'll just fall same with our political foundations same with our cultural foundations there's three groups that are very important we can I could go on for hours about this but but I'll try and stay on top on this line of thought here and so you promise more things and you promise more things and eventually you're like running out of things to promise and you've got to be bolder and bolder and bolder this is how you get socialism well-intentioned liberalism always leads to socialism it takes years but it happens we're at that point now okay like the the the the well-intentioned liberals maybe the the the smarter you know Democrats that Republicans have often worked with who I think always over-promised but know full well that the Republican colleagues will sort of measure the the policy and I don't think they believe it themselves frankly but they've created a generation that does believe it this is where we're at right now the AOC s of the world are true believers and they've got a lot of followers this is what happens when this this lie of compassion gets told too many times a generation starts to actually believe it and this is the situation we're in now this is why 70 percent of the Millennials surveyed will say they would vote for a socialist now there's good news and bad news associated with the number like that they don't always define socialism correctly which is good yeah true and also I was having a conversation with someone about this is a day I mean in 1968 how many 20 year olds would have said they would have voted for socialism it probably probably 70 percent as well yeah you know there was a socialist candidate I can't remember the name right now but I just saw this quote and it was so interesting because that socialist communist candidate back then in the 60s basically said what I just said you know you've got a I can't remember the exact quote but it was something along the lines of the the the elements of liberal policy are there to eventually create the fabric of socialism for us it's like it's then that is exactly what happens it happens a little bit at a time and here's another way of thinking about it that I help people understand okay so you want to raise the minimum minimum wage okay and you want to raise it to 15 bucks an hour or 20 bucks an hour and that's fine there's it's guaranteed that you will lose jobs when you do that that's it's guaranteed okay and so you lose jobs and depending on how much you raise it in the cost of living in that area you'll lose a certain number of jobs okay well the the well-intentioned liberal and government who wants to control the economy says well we don't want to lose the jobs okay we'll just make people hire more just make make the employers hire more people okay fine so you make them hire more people but they still have to pay that minimum wage well their costs haven't changed and they're their overall budget hasn't changed so so now what well then they have to raise prices right raise prices Jasta cailli well now there's hyperinflation and that's not good and also the poor people can't afford the things that they want to buy so that's not good okay well just make them lower the prices look we're going out of business okay just take over the business so now you own the means of production and I'm not saying it happens that quickly but that's how it happens like there's there's there's oh there's a logical line there well that well-intentioned first step of intervening in the markets has consequences and eventually if you want to control it well you have to really control it and then you're in a really bad place because then you're then you then you're actually controlling productions when you do that then you're in a place called Venezuela yeah and that isn't turning out so well all right little tangent right there hi well it's actually I go into this huge discussion about the minimum wage in the book yeah not because because this actually relates to mental toughness because the way I relate it in the book is part of being part of having fortitude part of being mentally tough is having the ability to think through some questions before you react emotionally very simple and I'm pretty sure I think I think that example is used in the chapter called be still and and I mean that quite literally just be still when you hear something that is emotionally triggering or you disagree with think about that this notion that there might be another side to the story like just maybe if you just ask some questions and at first again the minimum wage it seems like the right thing to do like how people should just get paid more I want them to get paid more they should so I just give the arguments in there like there's economic arguments and there's geographical arguments by that I mean you know why would you have a federal minimum wage that's the same for the entire country when in San Francisco the the rent is thirty five hundred dollars a month and in Lubbock Texas seven hundred dollars a month you know does that that really quickly makes the case against a federal minimum wage not saying that each city can't do their own thing then I go into the economic arguments of who's actually working a minimum wage jobs the point isn't to make the argument against the minimum wage the point is to get you to understand that this issue like many many other issues and questions has many many layers to it and if you stop and you think first assume those layers exist right then the next step is look into the layers and there might be more to it and when you do that you are exhibiting mental strength you're exhibiting the ability to not react but to just ask questions and like I have a feeling I'm just a feeling that the the people really angrily waving those $15 minimum wage signs have not looked into the our treatments yeah but they're passionate yes really um you know I at our factory up in Maine you know this is a class thing like sometimes you need more people to load boxes and who do you get who do you who do you get to load box this is an unskilled job like hey we just need you to move by it's not even loading by it's moving boxes from here in the warehouse to where they're gonna get loaded on trucks to get take shipped out you know you know who wants that job a kid that's a 16 years old that you know does needs gas money and he's gonna work that job two hours a night whatever and make a little bit of cash on the side that's cool we can afford to do that at that our business the minute you say hey instead of paying that guy 10 bucks an hour you got to give him $16 an hour well now it's guess what we're gonna take we're gonna just take some of our other labor and have them fill in you know half an hour your half an hour there and all of a sudden with you've eliminated three jobs that the overall budget of the business does not change just because you changed the minimum wage but there's this like belief and again you know it's I'm always amazed by how little pockets put into some of these you know feel good policy policy proposals like as if there's no second third order consequences to these things and like you just you have to think through that we just have to that would be nice all right let's get back to the book I'm gonna take you back to the you just did you just deep reef the entire book we descend now all right so here we go awake now in long stool I could not move I was beaten and for the moment physically broken I was riddled with shards and debris under under the skin and deep within I was swollen badly suffering from a thousand small cuts everything burned and itched though oddly enough I don't recall any pain in my eyes I said before that I woke up unable to see but this was not entirely true I could see I could not see my surroundings true but I was certainly seeing I was surrounded by constant hallucinations the result of my optic nerve still communicating erratically with my brain the hallucinations were lucid and all followed a pattern I was in Afghanistan I was with the guys I was in an Afghan village mud walls and compounds there was an Afghan man sitting next to me there were piles of weapons in the corner I lived my previous experiences I lived my previous experiences over and over again I knew it wasn't real I was hallucinating but not delusional if I was awake I was seeing these images if I was lucky enough to fall asleep and dream never more than 30 minutes then I would wake up and still wake up still inside the visual reality of the dream that sounds insane that was that was that was insane now was some of that it was some of that drugs that you were you on were you on any drugs that were giving you hallucinations no or this was just all your optic nerves communicating and there's there's some I research this you know later in life and there's there's some history of this happening to people who go suddenly blind that that optic nerve voles continue to do that it couldn't have been drugs I mean the only drugs I was on or painkillers and the wouldn't wouldn't have that effect there was just some weird things that was it was it was so weird and and kind of terrifying and it just it just it amplified the whole experience because I knew it wasn't real I knew it wasn't real there was but I would I would always see them there and I would talk about them and so you know the stranger stories are from my my friends there's a couple seals who came to me with Lance to Landstuhl which was it's such a enormous blessing you know you can't even describe how important it is for somebody in that state to just have somebody they know or at least somebody they kind of trust it doesn't even have to be a team guy you know it could just be somebody who understands you just there and I remember this old Afghan man sitting next to me and it was always like a weird blue light like it was it was it really was like I'm could dream out of the movies you know we're like a band and his face would be kind of melting I just remembered that very specifically I don't remember all the hallucinations but I and I always remember piles of weapons it was really like we were I was remembering the moments which were so many because we would always do two to three day ops on that particular deployment and so we'd holed up in some compound they knew it you know it's like a you know are all the guys are just in this tiny little room together shooting the shit and our weapons are kind of strewn throughout and that's what I would see I was just seeing that experience all the time the mud walls and one particularly weird dream I and I think I do describe this in the book it's uh I was I was like I was in a third world country and like in a department store you know like going through a very crowded department store not with people but with clothes like they're like there did they you know cuz in like a lot of these countries they'd just it's not like Walmart you know where you can comfortably walk through things like they pack too much stuff in because they don't have that much space but they got a lot of stuff and they pack it in there and I'm just like trying to move through these clothes and it's like musty and the lights are fluorescent like again like this is just a very thorough bold country kind of scene you know couldn't say where it was but I've been to a lot of third-world countries so my mind is used to this sort of visualization and then I woke up and I know I'm awake but I'm still there that's what really sucked to not be able to leave the nightmare like I was literally living in a nightmare and we always used the word literally wrong in our modern-day society I'm not using it wrong I was literally living in the nightmare and like it was inescapable not that's what sucks because like you just couldn't you couldn't shake it and that that's all this was just a horrible place to be it finally went away when a nurse an astute nurse an observant nurse just realized what was going on and she started asking us about it and my wife is just like kind of exasperated at this point she wasn't my wife then but she was you know fiance then and she's just you know exhausted and like just trying to deal with this and I think it was like I think it was like right after my first surgery or maybe right before I don't remember but she was just like how long has this been going on and we're like the whole time like ever since I woke up you know so days and maybe a week I'm not really sure um she's like that's not good you should mean her response was like you will have a reparable PTSD if this continues you know because like you just living in a nightmare is not a great place to be it's just and and so she shot me up with a bunch of ativan which was like it's it's a hard anti-anxiety drug and then then it got really weird then the hallucinations chained didn't go away right away they changed to Christmas so I was like in a I was like in like a like a Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer Christmas world this is what you're seeing yeah even though you can't see anything this is what you see yeah it's very Christmas world it's very vivid it's not like when you close your eyes and imagine things it's like it was vivid the Christmas rolled was cool that's cool yeah it was more relaxing it was like it was happier um and then it went black and then black black was the best that was that was good it was like you would know you would never think that you'd be happy to be blind but like that was that was a good it was necessary I could finally take a nap going back to the book here Tara this is your fiancee at the time Tara was there when I finally arrived in Bethesda and never left my side from that moment on most of my family came up to see me as did many friends they were far more worried than I was and their spirits were low this was most likely due to the fact that they were mentally coherent enough to sense the pessimistic expectations of my surgeons the doctor did not think I would see again they said so many times and I simply didn't believe them my optimism my self-deception and my belief that the coming surgery on my left eye would work and that I would see was nothing less than a delusional gift that allowed me to keep my sanity though I am NOT one for overt expressions of faith I will say this I genuinely believe God's strength was working through me then he was allowing me to believe something impossible I prayed and my family prayed and we believed we believe that the military surgeons would pick through a pierced and shrapnel ridden I removed the most miniscule shards and debris and then restore my sight we did not have good reason to believe it but we did it's interesting that you call this self-deception and delusional that yeah it sounds like everyone else was just like hey man you know losing a good horn yeah it really stops a obviously that's exactly right it was it was a necessary self delusion and again I was like I don't know why that was it's in that's why I say Adam could have it had to been God God saying you know I can't I'm not gonna save your eye for you bud lorelei insurgents to do that but I'll at least allow you to believe that it's possible because otherwise you're gonna go to nuts and again it's it's I I think Mike you know whatever you want to call it post-traumatic growth afterwards is is a function of being able to to live through the experience a certain way because it's terrifying to think that you might not see again that's terrifying and you know and I and I'm again because that that chapter is called perspective from darkness there are other veterans who immediately lost both eyes they had no chance of seeing again that's hardship I didn't have to deal with that you know after somebody else has had it worse than you always remember that even when you get blown up in the face yeah the doctors and that continued it wasn't just being able to see anything again it was being able to see well again I was demanding I was demanding the first surgery so the first surgery for my left eye my right eye is gone my right eye was gone in Kandahar they happen to be an ophthalmologist there that enucleated the eye right away they do that early on so that your body will focus on the eye that's you know possibly savable but the right eye was so screwed up and I wish that pictures of it and that's kind of gruesome but you know and people don't want to take pictures of you in that because they're like that's not good to take pictures of you but but uh you know keep in mind that the person might want those pictures later on that it's people don't realize his kirsty edison and she got you know she got in the helo crash in afghanistan and you know she's a beautiful girl and she had pictures of her face where 50 cal like the way that the helo went down I mean it it did some massive damage to her face and she has pictures of it and look at the pictures and you can't believe that you know she was able to recover the way she did it's amazing but you know she's a marine and I will say that she's much aligned with your feelings on this I think she's pretty stoked that she has those pictures of herself all jacked totally took those pictures though was it the kind like Oh after they got into like the medical you know what actually I think it was I think it was if you remember her story there was some a really good plastic surgeon like a bright red the ladies version and female plastic surgeon that I think was probably like oh I'm gonna document this yes he's so there's a difference between that and then like something like a wait guys and busts up the phone and start taking bitches like which is what you think the team guy would do and I think I would obviously go all cool check out fans are there I I'm gonna get some snacks to this and we got some you know so I've only got one picture but it's a good week out I mean it's not it's at least a few days like it's um there's some healing that has taken place but I look bad like it looks like a shock it looks like I'd hit in the face with a shotgun that's what my face looks like it's show it to you right now if you really want to see it just so you can react to it I've never posted it because it's a little it's a little too gruesome for posting blurry doubt but the option yeah the well not I kind of lost my train of thought well yeah so you get that you get the surgery in the book you talk about they removed the broken lens yes oh no copper wire that was in there right bunch of other debris so hallucinations stop and then then your six weeks they got to put you in a position for six weeks to recover right so there's a couple things that happened here that's the picture oh you know that's about a week after so there's there's some healing there but it's not looking great it's yeah that's rough so damn Yeah right eyes gone left eye has a as a cataract meaning the lens which is in the middle of your eye is is destroyed cataracts are pretty normal thing for older folks to get you know just basically means the lens has kind of I don't know the right term is but kind of clouds over you need to replace it in my case it was trauma induced so just bunch of fragments burst through the eye and destroyed the lens you can kind of look at a lens like a window alright and this is an important way of thinking about it because if it clouds over if that windows just you can't see through it anymore we'll just replace the windowpane but if the blast destroys the window then you're trying to so a new window pane onto basically the curtains which are like the scelera of your eye and that was sort of the situation I was dealing with so the first miracle was they removed the lens entirely so okay so that things out because I remember this I think I think it was in Landstuhl I sort of remember them shining a really bright light my eye just to see if I could see light and I could see some light when they did that what I saw was like darkness but there was like a light almost like we're in this room right now and there's this bright light above our heads it's kind of like that but everything else was like a cloud like like being like on an air but like imagine you're like going through a cumulus cloud as you're taking off like that's what it looks like very odd and strange and again so the first miracle this in a battle you know maybe a week later when I finally got back to the Bethesda we did the surgery they removed the big copper wire that had really been destroying my eye so that's good and so we kind of start to see some blurriness after that you know which is kind of what I see now as I look at you now I'm wearing a contact and without if I took this contact out I wouldn't wreck nice you I don't know wouldn't know I wouldn't run into things necessarily but I can't see anything you know it's it's it's I mean I well it's like you know twenty one thousand vision it's I can't really see anything it's just it's just blurry can't see clothes can't see far can't find my glasses if I lose them the glasses I do have four like that thick that's what I wear at night or on airplanes or you know if I don't feel like wearing a contact so that never goes away but at the time I wanted it to go away like I wanted to be like no just make the eye better doctors why can't you just do that cuz I got a I got places to be okay and they're like yeah do you you know it was like I was like yeah I mean I was like okay so you just did this surgery remove the cataract now I want a new lens so that I don't have to wear like Contacts and glasses because I don't look cool in these glasses right I'm not a fan and uh you know I don't really have to contact situation yet and and I actually wouldn't for two and a half years it would take to get a really good contact that's actually comfortable and so I was like just just do the surgery and they're like well and I'm they're like we really shouldn't and I was like okay what's the how much do we have to wait to do the surgery you know what's the what's the minimum time cuz I need to have it as soon as possible because you know I got to get back to the platoon I've got a I've got to go back and they're like well I mean I guess technically six weeks I'm like six weeks it is and like I couldn't see them at the time but they're looking at each other like what the hell are you talking about like this isn't you don't understand what your situation is it's like they were just I mean and my wife tells me all this now cuz I couldn't see them and I couldn't I wasn't self-aware enough to gauge people's reactions I was in you know totally different state of mind I was on a lot of painkillers and drugs and so you know and and and just like full-on seal mode layer get the job daughter must get back to platoon kill bad guys and it's just like wasn't making sense to people like they were just like I don't know what's wrong with this guy and so they just kind of humored me I think like they're just like yeah sure and we'll definitely definitely do that but they would have no and no intention of doing it for good reason and then and then what you're talking about the six weeks blindness that occurred later so at least miracles happened and like we saved my eye and that was really exciting but then they you know but they're but they're looking at it every day and they do this one test and they see this hole in my retina so that's not a big deal because it's just just a hole you know it means there's some blind spots and as I look at you I can kind of see the blind spot it's like right in my face an own but I deal with it it's annoying when I read frankly the problem with that is your retina the anatomy of your retina causes that hole to expand there's a film there's like a it's like a membrane on the back of your retina that creates tension and so anytime there's a hole in your retina that means the hole will just expand slowly so it's macular degeneration this again this happens with older folks quite a bit the way to fix that is remove the membrane we're not really sure why the membranes on there in the first place and so you just remove the membrane and then you're good all right but and that's fine that's actually pretty normal surgery but for me it was a really high-risk surgery because you know my eyes so fragile and so they're worried about the retina detaching luckily it did not you know because well who knows why again God's intervention and but you do have to be face down for six weeks to recover from that so that was just just suck you had to lay face down the entire time for six you have the latest face down because what they do is they they inject this gas into your eye and that creates a bubble which creates tension so and if the bubble is meant to be pressed up against your retina to keep it in place the only way for it to press up against your retina is for you to be looking down and so you just look just sucks you just have to be face down doesn't matter how you're doing it just lay down or walk facedown or whatever it is but just make sure you're facing down for six weeks and you're blind the whole time most of the time they'll do this like one eye at a time so if somebody can see still but you know I'm not a one eye at a time kind of guy anymore you get past that you say when the six weeks were over I sat up and I was not blind moreover with the help of a truly remarkable contact lens from Boston sight to which the Navy referred me years later I was eventually returned to 20/20 correct hole vision in my left eye that's the story of being blown up I can't say I recommend the experience yet even as it was happening even in the moment after the blast I had to admit it could have been worse I still had my legs I had my arms I had ten fingers and ten toes my brain worked even after a severe concussion I was still alive it is impossible not to constantly think of the many veterans who have sacrificed so much more impossible not to think of Seale Petty Officer second class Mike Mansoor who threw himself on a grenade while on a rooftop in Ramadi in Iraq 2006 saving his teammates impossible not to think of Air Force Master Sergeant John Chapman who fought all night against the Taliban coming in and out of consciousness from his wounds eventually succumbing to them on that Afghan Ridgeline but only after earning the Medal of Honor for saving 23 servicemembers impossible not to think of my platoon members and dear friends Dave warson and Pat fix who were killed just two months after I was evacuated from Helmand impossible not to think of their loved ones who had been expecting them home a month later impossible not to think of the eight men whose initials are tattooed on my chest in remembrance Charles Keating the fourth Patrick fix Dave warson Brad Kavner Brett Mary you Kevin Evert Brendan Looney and Tom Falc this is the simple reality others have had it harder than me many many others from that darkness comes realism from that realism comes gratitude from gratitude comes perspective a healthy sense of perspective is an antidote to outrage is an antidote to self-pity despair and weakness it's not a cure-all for your mental state when faced with adversity but it is sure to dull the edges of your worst tendencies toward mental breakdown yeah that's the that's the perspective that you and I already talked about today that perspective that it would be seemed like it would be very helpful for people to think about it is and you know I'm using extreme examples right not everybody can relate to that but they don't have to and I don't I don't want you to go be in a terrible situation just to earn some perspective right like but just the simple reminder to yourself that it exists like somebody else has had it harder that's there's a comfort in that I think and it is an antidote to self-pity self-pity is a gateway to the outrage culture that I think we see all around us and so that is a gateway to the socialistic tendencies I think that we've been seeing as of late and you can avoid these things with some perspective and gratitude and you know it's it's again it's it's hard for anybody the teams to ever feel sorry for themselves when you know because you know of these guys and you know some of those guys I listed of course and you know if there's ever a reason you need to get up in the morning not at 4:30 but like like later you know get a normal human time then then the boys who wish they could get up you know that's a good reason because they would like to be able to get up and they can't and their widows are really wishing they would get up too and they can't you know and the Manus where I mentioned unsung heroes but the widows are here the the heroes of the SEAL Teams III have yet to meet the wife of one of those guys who fell into self-pity and despair I have only met I only know ones who have overcome with the greatest grace it's just amazing I've watched these watch these women just serve as the most ultimate example mothers as well you know that I know you know like Debbie Lee for instance it's absolutely it's just it's just incredible to watch that fortitude we just we just couldn't do it without them yeah it's always one of the things about about marks mom and life and I talk about this a lot is you know when when we called her from Iraq to talk to her and to console her she was consoling us you know she was wanted to make sure we were okay she wanted to make sure we were handling think she wanted to know if we needed anything you know that was her attitude out of the gate now and that shows you you know the kind of people that you're talking about you know someone that's that's taking their own personal worst nightmare that any you know any parent could ever have of losing their kid and immediately saying well what can I do for you guys yeah it is unbelievable he's uh you know it was recent friend good friend I lost was was Chuck Keating the fourth and you know his his wife started a foundation in his name his dad as well and his family's just been incredible but that's not that that's that's not the exception like that's been the rule from what I've seen and it's so much harder to be the family left behind than it is to to be us I think you know we go and we choose to do this thing overseas and we're doing it with our brothers in arms and we love it and we know what's coming the next day we we're in control to an extent to the greatest extent we can be but our family is not there they're their life doesn't change except that we're just not there and they don't know what's happening and then they get a call and I don't actually go into detail and my wife's experience on the perspectives from darkness but but you know she gets a call and so her only consolation is that it's a call and not a guy at the door but you know it's a call that she's getting before 6 a.m. and before she her alarm goes off to go to work and and then there's you know the very typical kind of lack of exact information given to her she's not sure what my face looks like because they're because they don't know what my face looks like they're not sure if it's still there but my head is still there like there's all this misinformation get enough enough information to just plant seeds of absolute horror it's horrible and guess who but but you know who the who you know who went there first was the loony family row you know it's like it's it's it was it's Amy Looney their canoe her husband two years earlier and she's the one there consoling Tara and it's just that that's the type of community that the SEAL Teams is blessed with and you know it's it is it is a true blessing and it's unique I wish were broader I wish we could say you know I talked to other friends and other and other communities that it doesn't seem it's not as good and I wish it was I wish we should all strive to just to take care of each other in that way so rolling into your next chapter and I haven't made my caveat that I always make I'm not reading this whole book right now and so when it skips around it's because I'm not reading the whole book you have to buy the book so that you can hear the whole thing and and then we're just you know you and I are going off of a bunch of tangents and which is awesome but you know the book that has so many great details in it and the stories are so clear and they're real personal too so you got to buy the book to get that got to buy the book you gotta buy the book so the next chapter which you mentioned earlier is called who's your hero and I'm gonna jump to this part right here where you talking about the SEAL Teams it says the SEAL Teams like any like many military units are relentless in the pursuit of establishing hero archetypes doing so is extremely important when the goal is to create a monoculture that operates as a mission oriented team this is a community with a very deep sense of who we want to be we talk about it all the time and we beat it into our trainees Jocko specifically into our trainees I did some here's some of the things that will be beaten into you you will be someone who is never late you will be someone who takes care of his men gets to know them and puts their needs before yours you will be someone who does not quit in the face of adversity you will be someone who takes charge and leans when no one else will you will be detail-oriented always vigilant you will be aggressive in your actions but never lose your cool you will have a sense of humor because sometimes that is all that can get you through the darkest hours you will work hard and perform even when no one is watching you will be creative and think outside the box even if it gets you in trouble you are a rebel but not a mutineer you are a jack of all trades and master of none and then you go into the official ethos which you mentioned earlier I was debating if I should read this and I think I'm actually just gonna read it it's a good ethos so here we go in times of war or uncertainty there's a special breed of warrior ready to answer our nation's call a common man with uncommon desire to succeed forged by adversity he stands alongside America's finest special operations forces to serve his country the American people and protect their way of life I am that man my Trident is a symbol of honor and heritage bestowed upon me by the heroes that have gone before it embodies the trust of those I have sworn to protect by wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life it is a privilege that I must earn every day my loyalty to country and team is beyond reproach I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves I do not advertise the nature of my work nor seek recognition for my actions I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession placing the welfare and security of others before my own I serve with honor on and off the battlefield the ability to control my emotions and my actions regardless of circumstance sets me apart from other men uncompromising integrity is my standard my character and honor are steadfast my word is my bond we expect to be we expect to lead and be led in the absence of orders I will take charge lead my teammates and accomplish the mission I lead by example in all situations I will never quit I persevere and thrive on adversity my nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies if knocked down I will get back up every time I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission I am never out of the fight we demand discipline we expect innovation the lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me my technical skill tactical proficiency and attention to detail my training is never complete we train for war and fight to win I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in o

this is Jocko podcast number 222 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good evening someone called for my Afghan interpreter Rahman a good man with whom we had worked with for some time these interpreters are the unsung heroes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they often suffer threats and ostracism for their willingness to endure the battlefield alongside us their motivation isn't money there isn't enough money to make it worthwhile facing down insurgents who know where you and your family live they are idealists they work and risk death because they believe in our common cause of freedom Rahman responded to the call immediately running before me his foot fell in a particular spot just two feet away from where I stood I was looking right at him as I later discovered he instantly lost all his limbs in the explosion even though I was staring right at him I never actually saw it happen my experience was a series of tremendous blows and subsequent realizations a train hit me ears ringing what the fuck was that darkness something is wrong got hit my legs reach down and see if they're still there they're there I feel them pain everywhere mostly my abdomen something shot through it I think my eyes must be caked with mud I can barely see anything I hear groaning and screaming someone hit an ie D pain everywhere but my eyes I crawl around a little bit mostly

good evening

good evening

5,0,5

5,0,5

5

0

5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

this is Jocko podcast number 222 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good evening someone called for my Afghan interpreter Rahman a good man with whom we had worked with for some time these interpreters are the unsung heroes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they often suffer threats and ostracism for their willingness to endure the battlefield alongside us their motivation isn't money there isn't enough money to make it worthwhile facing down insurgents who know where you and your family live they are idealists they work and risk death because they believe in our common cause of freedom Rahman responded to the call immediately running before me his foot fell in a particular spot just two feet away from where I stood I was looking right at him as I later discovered he instantly lost all his limbs in the explosion even though I was staring right at him I never actually saw it happen my experience was a series of tremendous blows and subsequent realizations a train hit me ears ringing what the fuck was that darkness something is wrong got hit my legs reach down and see if they're still there they're there I feel them pain everywhere mostly my abdomen something shot through it I think my eyes must be caked with mud I can barely see anything I hear groaning and screaming someone hit an ie D pain everywhere but my eyes I crawl around a little bit mostly to see if my body still functions my teammates make their way to me I asked someone to pour water on my eyes to remove the dirt so I can see that doesn't work I can only see light and in some shapes must be a lot of dirt I recognized my Corman's voice as he works on my wounds I say dude don't get blown up it sucks he laughs and tells me to shut up I was conscious throughout our corpsman stopped my bleeding the worst of which was from my knees and wrapped up my eyes it still did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with them I could only hear the situation around me my teammates calling to each other communicating the situation with tense voices I later found out that a foot wearing the typical Salomon boot that we all wore hit one of my teammates in the chest about 50 yards away Rahman was groaning in pain deep deep pain most people's experience of combat wounds is from the movies a soldier gets hit his guts spilling out and he looks down at them screaming in horror but this is not the way it is in reality truly bad injuries SAP your energy and prevent you from screaming instead the sound of wounded man makes is a much deeper more visceral emanating from the depths of his being it's a groan a cry a moaning that reeks of utter desperation it is far worse than a scream it is true pain manifested in the sound this was the sound that Rahman made it is unforgettable as the quorum intended to me and we waited for the medevac helicopter a thought entered my head we may be in a firefight any second now Rahman was barely alive and he would later die in the hospital our EEO d chief petty officer took a little Fraggle Sol and would be evacuated with us all hands were needed to fight I could hear the medevac helo coming in low this was no time to ask someone to carry me blown up and blind I stood up and walk myself to it Dave warson who would be killed two months later heroically laid down cover fire for me as I boarded the helo there was my last memory of him medics onboard the helicopter took one look at me laid me down and eased me into unconsciousness I woke up days later far away from Helmand far away from Kandahar far away from my brothers and arms far away from the war and dust of Central Asia I was brought back into consciousness in Germany at the American at the American Hospital long store a breathing tube was being unceremoniously ripped from my throat rather unpleasant I opened my eyes or thought I did and saw nothing a physician came to me and told me the truth my right eye was gone my left eye was so heavily damaged that there was virtually no chance I would see with it again my future was a future of blindness of darkness of no sight no color no visual beauty I would never see a sunset a friend a loved one again in one instant in a fatal footfall all that was ripped away and that right there was an excerpt from a book called fortitude written by Dan Crenshaw who is a former SEAL officer and he's actually been on this podcast before number 118 and the last time he was on he was in the process of running for Congress well he won and is currently a congressman serving the 2nd congressional district of Texas in the House of Representatives and well it's an honor to have Dan back with us today to share some of the lessons learned that he talks about in his new book and once again the name of the book is fortitude Dan thanks for coming back man hey thank you for having me listen do you read that I was like maybe I should have asked you to read my book in the audio version that was good well thanks it's uh it's only good because the story that's being told is is obviously a very powerful one and you know you sent me this book and as soon as you sent it to me I started talking to you about let's get you back on the podcast obviously you're a busy man obviously you're busy man right now for reference it is what is it it's March of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic the corona virus pandemic is going on around the world and around America there's schools and again who knows what this will look like looking back on it when people are listening to sin the future whether if they're listening to in a month from now a week from now or years from now it'll be interesting what this pandemic turns out to be but you braved the travel we did we did and we just you know I'm leaving off the heels of that late night vote again for for listeners trying to put this in context and what you saw in the news leaving off the heels of that late night vote where where which was for the economic stimulus that the the president supported and was bipartisan in nature different from the eight billion plus dollars that we voted on a week prior which was meant to combat it on a public health scale so you know I it's every everybody agrees I think we've as a country and as a government we have taken this particular pandemic more seriously than anything in the past more than we did for Ebola or for h1n1 and I've asked that specific questions to folks like the assistant Surgeon General Admiral red who have worked all of these pandemics and so I just hope people realize that that's not what you hear from the media you know the media would tell you that it's so totally unprepared and you know you're never going to be perfectly prepared I think that's a lesson you and I know pretty well yeah but you learn those lessons and you do better than next time the finger-pointing has been completely unnecessary mostly dishonest and totally unhelpful but the government has been taking it pretty seriously and we're definitely taken it seriously in Congress well I'm glad you were able to get out here and again I think there's no telling what this will look like in hindsight but it's quiet around here in San Diego right now there's just not a lot of people doing a lot of stuff obviously we're we're in the gym and the gym you know not a lot not a ton of people coming into gym right now there's still people training though don't worry it worked we're training that jiu-jitsu but yeah you sent me the book and you know cracked it open started reading it and immediately was just you know getting in touch with you to see if we could get you out here on the podcast to talk about it and man you know the the stuff that you've been through and the lessons that you've taken away from it are very powerful and you know that's one of the things that struck me out of the gate is that when you got wounded you actually you actually drew strength from very powerful place and things that you've been through and I want to jump in and read some more of this um some more of this things that you've been through and I think a lot of people are gonna be able take a lot away from it so I'm going back to the book this is after you wounded I fought back to another time in my life two decades earlier the first time I ever witnessed the kind of inescapable pain that I was feeling now and the grit to overcome it was with my mother she fought a battle so many other modern women fight breast cancer and she did so with endurance Grace and optimism her example has never left me and I wasn't about to let some cheap-ass AED in the ancient killing fields of Afghanistan render me unworthy of her memory she was only 35 years old when she was diagnosed same age as me as I write these words when she got the news it was one day before my little brother's first birthday I was five years old the doctors told her she might have five years to live and they were right soon after she would be feeling the pain I was feeling now as the cancer and chemotherapy ripped apart her body in battle she fought it for five years and when I was ten she died if you've ever cared for a loved one in terminal decline you know what that's like there is an intensity of loss that is immeasurable words don't do it justice the whole deep down in your gut feels like it will never go away as a child the intensity of the experience is made worse as grief is amplified by incomprehension going from kindergarten to fourth grade knowing that your mother is dying that the center of a small boy's world is collapsing is an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone but from this grief came learning I got to experience the nature of a true hero and the example she set was the most powerful fortifying and selfless thing I have scene including combat buying helpless in a hospital bed I had to wonder whether my mother had asked the same desperate question I was currently asking would I ever see my family again I figured that if she could suffer through that question and the unknowable answer so could I my mother spent half a decade staring death in the face burned with caring for two small boys whom she would not live to see grow up she lived day to day in ever-increasing pain the cancer afflicted her and the cancer treatments afflicted her to six rounds of chemotherapy on top of radiation treatments are a brutal experience for even the strongest constitution self-pity is never a useful state but if anyone had reason to feel sorry for herself and had to complain a bit it was my mom but she never did in terminal decline and in pain across five years I never heard her complain once I never heard her bolon her fate I never saw her express self-pity every day she woke up was a day she was still alive and she lived she was dying and she was grateful to not be dead yet every extra day was a gift where she could look her boys in the face every next evening was another night she could tell us she loved us before bed even during her last days when the hospital delivered her deathbed and hospice nurse to our dining room her demeanor did not change Susan Carol Crenshaw was exactly the opposite of what she had every right to be brutal yeah yeah that was more for my mom than for me you know I tell that story because well that the name of that chapter is perspective from darkness and perspective I think is something we lack in our modern-day society we are I think too many people are willing to jump to this false conclusion that you've had it the worse that your life is worse than your ancestors or than your peers or than anybody else walking around America right now and there's just a really just so happens there's a really good chance that's not true I'm not saying it's not true I'm just saying there's a pretty good chance that's probably not true it's interesting too I always talk about perspective from a leadership perspective which means hey if I'm looking at one of my troops the better I understand their perspective on what I'm telling them and what their job is and what the mission is the better I'm gonna be able to lead them and same thing with my boss the better I understand my boss's perspective and what the strategy looked like and what's the overall thing he's trying to get accomplished the better I understand his perspective the better I'm gonna be able to lead and it's interesting cuz when you put that across society you would think that in today's day and age with the a bit with social media with the ability to absorb as so many other people's perspectives you'd think that that would open up your mind yeah to realize that that there's you know a lot of other people that that have been through much worse than then anything I've even been close to gone through yeah and yet it doesn't seem to be happening that way no and I mean one of the most popular stories for an American to hear you know is is a story of overcoming adversity and that's a good thing I'm glad those are still the the stories that are the most popular in the American psyche you know that a movie about somebody who's downtrodden and overcomes it it's still a good movie but there there is it's undeniable that there is this fragility is infecting America and that's that's why I wrote this book and it's um you know it's not a political book it's not a sealed book it's not a it's it's a cultural book it's it's a cultural philosophy book and it's it's it's simultaneously an individual kind of self-help book and just how to be mentally tougher in your own individual life but there are much broader cultural implications that are strewn throughout the book it is a it is a culture book and because I fear that we are getting more sensitive more more prone to microaggressions and prone to saying how offended you are and wearing wearing that offense on your sleeve proudly and and and this gets to the I think what's the the next chapter which is who is your hero and we've changed what we look up to like we think that it's good to to scream about how offended we are that's becoming like a a moniker of a good thing you know it's interesting as as you know before we started recording you know we're just talking about kind of life in the games and and if there's one thing that you never do in the teams and ever is show anyone that you're offended by anything that you're saying to you because if you allow that to happen you know you're gonna get torn apart whereas it seems like and I hadn't thought about from that perspective the all the rage in the public right now is if you can possibly get offended by something then it's you're you're the you're the best thing in the world you know jump up and down and point to the person that offended you and why you were offended and and the more offended you are the better off the aggrieved victim status is supreme these days and that's a and that's more of a serious problem than then I think most Americans are giving it credit for like it's a really bad thing because you're changing you're changing our heroes and and when I say heroes I want to want to be more specific cousin and I outlined this in the book in greater detail I don't mean like Jaco is my hero I don't actually and I person when people asked me about who I look up to and my heroes I I will tell them attributes of people that I think are respectable don't think you should have one person that you look up to I don't think that's totally healthy and that's not what I'm talking about in the book I'm talking about hero archetypes you know in an archetype is a is a is a broader set of ideas or attributes that we sort of that we sort of recognize collectively okay that's it's more of a psychological term than anything else and there are certain hero archetypes you know like the Navy SEALs have a hero archetype when we write about that in our in our SEAL ethos it's such a beautifully written ethos and I and I have the entire thing written in the book because it perfectly demonstrates what we believe we should be now what we should do but what we should be and that's a really interesting thing and I and I and I know that you look at a corporate ethos and if you go to people like corporations websites and you read them there they're usually something like we want to be the number one manufacturer on the west coast it's like that's not who you want to be that's just something you want to do if you if you write out an ethos of who you want to be you can you can reach that level of elitism you can surpass mediocrity so that's important that's important thing is here is that we have societal hero archetypes that we look up to Jesus is a is a hero archetype Superman is a hero archetype real characters too you know I put I could name a thousand you know Rosa Parks Ronald Reagan these all of these people embody certain attributes that the American people think this is good okay man we generally agree on these things I tell the whole story in the book about about when I was at Disney World or was it Disneyland it was Disney World and I was at the Star Wars land and I was watching this really cool thing happened where they where they let these kids do Jedi training and of course like in typical Disney fashion everything is really well run the actors are absolutely amazing and they're teaching these kids you know how to work their swords and all that but they're also teaching them really cool things like just little Jedi lessons like like will you let your emotions be driven by hate and anger you know like really simple because we look up to the Jedi as like a hero archetype and so there are certain things that are just viewed as good but that's changing and I and I find that to be an extremely dangerous thing because we're the aggrieved victim the person who talks about being offended the most and who screams the loudest were elevating that person to a higher level in our society and that's dangerous you're flipping cultural norms on their head and you do that at your own peril you know and ends you know cultural foundations based in thousands of years of trial and error and wisdom those are important they're more important than people realize and like that's that's that's frankly what the first I guess well that that particular chapter is about perspectives chapter you know they're all related of course but the perspectives chaffed and the reason I bring up my mom and the reason I tell that story and then subsequent stories of of other guys that we've lost is because you you need to it's healthy to go through life thinking you know what somebody has hard had it harder than me and I'd like to live up to their memory I'd like to live up to that hero attribute the hero that are the hero archetype of my mother and I'm not lying she never complained she just never did and if she did I didn't hear it as a kid and so when you're living in blindness and not sure whether you will see again it's healthy to have that in your head and I mean I say you don't have to uh you don't have to experience a bomb in your face to get some perspective but you can read about it and it's like you said earlier in a world where we're so connected and we can see everybody else's story of hardship you would think that we would have more perspective but but it seems that the opposite is true and first steps of reversing that trend I think is to at least realize it yeah we we recently had on Rose Schindler who was a house where it's survivor and I got many many many messages and comments coming back saying yeah myself in check you know I I don't have it that bad so that and yet we've had many people on here that have been through some really hellacious things whether it's prisoner war camps just devastating situations and it is it's it's it if they weren't here to here I get the feeling sometimes that if people weren't hearing it here they wouldn't be hearing it they wouldn't be hearing it you know they'd just be thinking that everyone is living better than they are and they're the ones that are in the worst possible situation in the world we've got yeah that's a you know I don't bring it too much to politics but it is it is it is one reason that we that we have lurched into this conversation about socialism because fundamentally socialism is as an ideology that pits people against each other you have to believe that somebody else is oppressing you and that they have it better than you for you to embrace socialism it is it is envy it is the ultimate sin manifested into a political ideology not the ultimate sin but it's one of them and that's I was I'm always looking for the deeper reason as to why something is happening and it is natural for for people to want to believe that something outside their own power is fact is affecting their lives because if it's you if it's your fault if it's you who has to step up that's harder it's much easier to believe that there's something else it also is an assault on your ego when you look at yourself and you say well I guess I'm the one that messed this up yeah it is and that's that's a devastating psychological consequence when your ego is hurt that way it is yeah I wrote a book about that called extreme ownership it's good but again it's it's one of those things where you know you wrote this book as you know as you're saying like a cultural philosophy you know life and I wrote extreme ownership as well as leadership principles but I mean it well it didn't take but two seconds for everyone to say oh yeah what you're talking about is you know easily transforms into a into a cultural philosophy of taking ownership and responsibility for what's going on in your absolutely there's no doubt about it and you find yourself in the lot in light and look do people get cancer yes people get cancer to do horrible things happen to people to families yes absolutely how do you respond to those things is the question how do you take ownership of what you do next and and that's the that's the big difference and if what you do next is is you know say it's out of my control and I can't do anything and your get the mentality that you're a victim of what's happening around you that means you're not gonna make any changes to transform your life and move in a more positive direction it's just the way it is and you know I think I think one of these things that happens with you know these ideas behind socialism in America and again it's it's like crazy that we would be sitting here talking about this anybody that anybody that reads anything about history knows that this is just not good but you know it comes across always as hey well what we want to do is help everyone out that's what we want to do we want to help everyone out and okay if that's like the core belief and this is where I think sometimes we could do better or you know someone like myself could do a better job explaining to people look if you care about other human beings so much if you want to help as many people as possible in this country the best possible thing you could do is allow the market to flourish allow people to build businesses that's what you that's what changes people's lives that that's what helps not get giving them a handout and making them reliable or a reliant on the state right it doesn't help anybody it helps them for a week you know it helps them for that pay period but it doesn't help them transform their lives into something more positive when one way I explained that exact sentiment is to ask someone to imagine how they would raise their kid if they love their kid you know would you give them whatever they want would you would you tell your kid that whatever they do wrong it's it's not their fault somebody else made them do it wrong would you tell them that there's no consequences for their actions would you tell them that if they do an hour of chores and their sibling does three hours that they deserve the same reward and would you teach them any of these things there is no liberal who would teach at their kids these things they don't because they love their kids and they want their kids to be successful but that's effectively what we're teaching what we're saying that we should teach our citizens and so I ask people why don't we treat our citizens the way we treat our kids as if we loved them because that's true compassion it doesn't mean we don't have a social safety net right and that's always the counter-argument it's a disingenuous counter-argument well the counter-argument to that is look with your kids and this is an example that I use when I especially when I'm talking to businesses so I say listen like what will be with a start-up right that's grown from you know they were ten people then there are hundred people now they're getting to that threshold and I say listen at some point you're gonna have to put some discipline on what's going on inside of your company you're gonna have to have people come to work and that aligned times you're gonna have to have them eat lunch at certain times not just like you're gonna have to you're to have to have meetings and that are scheduled and look when you've got a company of twelve people you can get away with all that stuff there and it's great there's money coming in and everything's but as soon as you start to grow well you have to start to have discipline inside your organization right and so the example I give people is I say listen have you ever met a kid that when he's when he's born look when a when a child is born you give whatever they want you got to keep them alive right there's your social state like you have to give them food water milk you have to get you have to feed them you have to take care of them if you continue to do that when they're three four five well by the time they're ten you actually now have Satan for a child yeah because this kid is totally out of control do demanding doesn't it not only is totally demanding but doesn't know how to do anything for themselves can't make them solve the sandwich can't tie their own shoes it can't do anything so what you have to do is you have to let people fend for themselves you have to let kids brush up against the guardrails of failure you you have to do that and yes you have to do that with society as well in my opinion and that's what that's what the thing the argument that I don't hear back at people that are saying hey we should give everything away for free is listen for that we don't have enough to give away everything for free right the best way that you can take care of the most amount of people is to allow freedom allow individual freedom allowed people to pursue goals allow people to pursue business allow people to grow things and hire people that's how you that's how we all win it's so it's crazy to me that we still have these discussions and it's also yeah it's crazy to me that we're having these discussions right now like this there's like this belief that they subscribe to which is if only politicians want so mean and corrupt you know there's all these things hidden that we could just give you but they don't want to and I most like does that really sound right like this is that does that really sound like that's that's correct that was just all just extra money just hidden in the in the in the Treasury that we could just give out what we don't want to that everybody that we have all these luxury apartments that we could just give out you know because housings are right or whatever or that or that there's just enough doctors and hospitals to take care of everyone and they're just kind of waiting around like not you know I mean like come on you know it's it's not if something if it sounds too good to be true it most certainly is and again it doesn't mean that we don't want to keep striving for a you know broader access to health care it doesn't mean that we want to keep don't want to keep striving for a or efficient social safety net not saying that but the but they lurch to the to the progressive left and socialism is it's it's it's based upon this idea that that we're keeping something from you and it's just not true it's based on this idea to that that that where do I want to go with this it's it's kind of like a constant escalation of crisis and it's it's it's not surprising that we got there okay and this is what I mean by that if you're a progressive you're generally wanting more progress right change for the sake of change itself is often the case and you have to promise more things than you did last time right because fundamentally it's it's it's based in the sense of compassion you know giving people things from the government they don't think very much they don't think much more about what that does to the foundation of the creation that you talked about it's just giving me four more things and it's almost like they relied on conservatives for the last hundred years to at least to at least be an obstacle to their to their worst instincts right because the goods conservatives are the ones who say okay hold on like ease think of the second third order consequences of that think of what that does to our foundations when I say foundations I mean foundations of a free-market system that creates all this wealth in the first place like you can't you can't just you can't remove the legs of the stool if you want to improve the stool I get it let's work on that but don't remove the legs of the stool it'll just fall same with our political foundations same with our cultural foundations there's three groups that are very important we can I could go on for hours about this but but I'll try and stay on top on this line of thought here and so you promise more things and you promise more things and eventually you're like running out of things to promise and you've got to be bolder and bolder and bolder this is how you get socialism well-intentioned liberalism always leads to socialism it takes years but it happens we're at that point now okay like the the the the well-intentioned liberals maybe the the the smarter you know Democrats that Republicans have often worked with who I think always over-promised but know full well that the Republican colleagues will sort of measure the the policy and I don't think they believe it themselves frankly but they've created a generation that does believe it this is where we're at right now the AOC s of the world are true believers and they've got a lot of followers this is what happens when this this lie of compassion gets told too many times a generation starts to actually believe it and this is the situation we're in now this is why 70 percent of the Millennials surveyed will say they would vote for a socialist now there's good news and bad news associated with the number like that they don't always define socialism correctly which is good yeah true and also I was having a conversation with someone about this is a day I mean in 1968 how many 20 year olds would have said they would have voted for socialism it probably probably 70 percent as well yeah you know there was a socialist candidate I can't remember the name right now but I just saw this quote and it was so interesting because that socialist communist candidate back then in the 60s basically said what I just said you know you've got a I can't remember the exact quote but it was something along the lines of the the the elements of liberal policy are there to eventually create the fabric of socialism for us it's like it's then that is exactly what happens it happens a little bit at a time and here's another way of thinking about it that I help people understand okay so you want to raise the minimum minimum wage okay and you want to raise it to 15 bucks an hour or 20 bucks an hour and that's fine there's it's guaranteed that you will lose jobs when you do that that's it's guaranteed okay and so you lose jobs and depending on how much you raise it in the cost of living in that area you'll lose a certain number of jobs okay well the the well-intentioned liberal and government who wants to control the economy says well we don't want to lose the jobs okay we'll just make people hire more just make make the employers hire more people okay fine so you make them hire more people but they still have to pay that minimum wage well their costs haven't changed and they're their overall budget hasn't changed so so now what well then they have to raise prices right raise prices Jasta cailli well now there's hyperinflation and that's not good and also the poor people can't afford the things that they want to buy so that's not good okay well just make them lower the prices look we're going out of business okay just take over the business so now you own the means of production and I'm not saying it happens that quickly but that's how it happens like there's there's there's oh there's a logical line there well that well-intentioned first step of intervening in the markets has consequences and eventually if you want to control it well you have to really control it and then you're in a really bad place because then you're then you then you're actually controlling productions when you do that then you're in a place called Venezuela yeah and that isn't turning out so well all right little tangent right there hi well it's actually I go into this huge discussion about the minimum wage in the book yeah not because because this actually relates to mental toughness because the way I relate it in the book is part of being part of having fortitude part of being mentally tough is having the ability to think through some questions before you react emotionally very simple and I'm pretty sure I think I think that example is used in the chapter called be still and and I mean that quite literally just be still when you hear something that is emotionally triggering or you disagree with think about that this notion that there might be another side to the story like just maybe if you just ask some questions and at first again the minimum wage it seems like the right thing to do like how people should just get paid more I want them to get paid more they should so I just give the arguments in there like there's economic arguments and there's geographical arguments by that I mean you know why would you have a federal minimum wage that's the same for the entire country when in San Francisco the the rent is thirty five hundred dollars a month and in Lubbock Texas seven hundred dollars a month you know does that that really quickly makes the case against a federal minimum wage not saying that each city can't do their own thing then I go into the economic arguments of who's actually working a minimum wage jobs the point isn't to make the argument against the minimum wage the point is to get you to understand that this issue like many many other issues and questions has many many layers to it and if you stop and you think first assume those layers exist right then the next step is look into the layers and there might be more to it and when you do that you are exhibiting mental strength you're exhibiting the ability to not react but to just ask questions and like I have a feeling I'm just a feeling that the the people really angrily waving those $15 minimum wage signs have not looked into the our treatments yeah but they're passionate yes really um you know I at our factory up in Maine you know this is a class thing like sometimes you need more people to load boxes and who do you get who do you who do you get to load box this is an unskilled job like hey we just need you to move by it's not even loading by it's moving boxes from here in the warehouse to where they're gonna get loaded on trucks to get take shipped out you know you know who wants that job a kid that's a 16 years old that you know does needs gas money and he's gonna work that job two hours a night whatever and make a little bit of cash on the side that's cool we can afford to do that at that our business the minute you say hey instead of paying that guy 10 bucks an hour you got to give him $16 an hour well now it's guess what we're gonna take we're gonna just take some of our other labor and have them fill in you know half an hour your half an hour there and all of a sudden with you've eliminated three jobs that the overall budget of the business does not change just because you changed the minimum wage but there's this like belief and again you know it's I'm always amazed by how little pockets put into some of these you know feel good policy policy proposals like as if there's no second third order consequences to these things and like you just you have to think through that we just have to that would be nice all right let's get back to the book I'm gonna take you back to the you just did you just deep reef the entire book we descend now all right so here we go awake now in long stool I could not move I was beaten and for the moment physically broken I was riddled with shards and debris under under the skin and deep within I was swollen badly suffering from a thousand small cuts everything burned and itched though oddly enough I don't recall any pain in my eyes I said before that I woke up unable to see but this was not entirely true I could see I could not see my surroundings true but I was certainly seeing I was surrounded by constant hallucinations the result of my optic nerve still communicating erratically with my brain the hallucinations were lucid and all followed a pattern I was in Afghanistan I was with the guys I was in an Afghan village mud walls and compounds there was an Afghan man sitting next to me there were piles of weapons in the corner I lived my previous experiences I lived my previous experiences over and over again I knew it wasn't real I was hallucinating but not delusional if I was awake I was seeing these images if I was lucky enough to fall asleep and dream never more than 30 minutes then I would wake up and still wake up still inside the visual reality of the dream that sounds insane that was that was that was insane now was some of that it was some of that drugs that you were you on were you on any drugs that were giving you hallucinations no or this was just all your optic nerves communicating and there's there's some I research this you know later in life and there's there's some history of this happening to people who go suddenly blind that that optic nerve voles continue to do that it couldn't have been drugs I mean the only drugs I was on or painkillers and the wouldn't wouldn't have that effect there was just some weird things that was it was it was so weird and and kind of terrifying and it just it just it amplified the whole experience because I knew it wasn't real I knew it wasn't real there was but I would I would always see them there and I would talk about them and so you know the stranger stories are from my my friends there's a couple seals who came to me with Lance to Landstuhl which was it's such a enormous blessing you know you can't even describe how important it is for somebody in that state to just have somebody they know or at least somebody they kind of trust it doesn't even have to be a team guy you know it could just be somebody who understands you just there and I remember this old Afghan man sitting next to me and it was always like a weird blue light like it was it was it really was like I'm could dream out of the movies you know we're like a band and his face would be kind of melting I just remembered that very specifically I don't remember all the hallucinations but I and I always remember piles of weapons it was really like we were I was remembering the moments which were so many because we would always do two to three day ops on that particular deployment and so we'd holed up in some compound they knew it you know it's like a you know are all the guys are just in this tiny little room together shooting the shit and our weapons are kind of strewn throughout and that's what I would see I was just seeing that experience all the time the mud walls and one particularly weird dream I and I think I do describe this in the book it's uh I was I was like I was in a third world country and like in a department store you know like going through a very crowded department store not with people but with clothes like they're like there did they you know cuz in like a lot of these countries they'd just it's not like Walmart you know where you can comfortably walk through things like they pack too much stuff in because they don't have that much space but they got a lot of stuff and they pack it in there and I'm just like trying to move through these clothes and it's like musty and the lights are fluorescent like again like this is just a very thorough bold country kind of scene you know couldn't say where it was but I've been to a lot of third-world countries so my mind is used to this sort of visualization and then I woke up and I know I'm awake but I'm still there that's what really sucked to not be able to leave the nightmare like I was literally living in a nightmare and we always used the word literally wrong in our modern-day society I'm not using it wrong I was literally living in the nightmare and like it was inescapable not that's what sucks because like you just couldn't you couldn't shake it and that that's all this was just a horrible place to be it finally went away when a nurse an astute nurse an observant nurse just realized what was going on and she started asking us about it and my wife is just like kind of exasperated at this point she wasn't my wife then but she was you know fiance then and she's just you know exhausted and like just trying to deal with this and I think it was like I think it was like right after my first surgery or maybe right before I don't remember but she was just like how long has this been going on and we're like the whole time like ever since I woke up you know so days and maybe a week I'm not really sure um she's like that's not good you should mean her response was like you will have a reparable PTSD if this continues you know because like you just living in a nightmare is not a great place to be it's just and and so she shot me up with a bunch of ativan which was like it's it's a hard anti-anxiety drug and then then it got really weird then the hallucinations chained didn't go away right away they changed to Christmas so I was like in a I was like in like a like a Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer Christmas world this is what you're seeing yeah even though you can't see anything this is what you see yeah it's very Christmas world it's very vivid it's not like when you close your eyes and imagine things it's like it was vivid the Christmas rolled was cool that's cool yeah it was more relaxing it was like it was happier um and then it went black and then black black was the best that was that was good it was like you would know you would never think that you'd be happy to be blind but like that was that was a good it was necessary I could finally take a nap going back to the book here Tara this is your fiancee at the time Tara was there when I finally arrived in Bethesda and never left my side from that moment on most of my family came up to see me as did many friends they were far more worried than I was and their spirits were low this was most likely due to the fact that they were mentally coherent enough to sense the pessimistic expectations of my surgeons the doctor did not think I would see again they said so many times and I simply didn't believe them my optimism my self-deception and my belief that the coming surgery on my left eye would work and that I would see was nothing less than a delusional gift that allowed me to keep my sanity though I am NOT one for overt expressions of faith I will say this I genuinely believe God's strength was working through me then he was allowing me to believe something impossible I prayed and my family prayed and we believed we believe that the military surgeons would pick through a pierced and shrapnel ridden I removed the most miniscule shards and debris and then restore my sight we did not have good reason to believe it but we did it's interesting that you call this self-deception and delusional that yeah it sounds like everyone else was just like hey man you know losing a good horn yeah it really stops a obviously that's exactly right it was it was a necessary self delusion and again I was like I don't know why that was it's in that's why I say Adam could have it had to been God God saying you know I can't I'm not gonna save your eye for you bud lorelei insurgents to do that but I'll at least allow you to believe that it's possible because otherwise you're gonna go to nuts and again it's it's I I think Mike you know whatever you want to call it post-traumatic growth afterwards is is a function of being able to to live through the experience a certain way because it's terrifying to think that you might not see again that's terrifying and you know and I and I'm again because that that chapter is called perspective from darkness there are other veterans who immediately lost both eyes they had no chance of seeing again that's hardship I didn't have to deal with that you know after somebody else has had it worse than you always remember that even when you get blown up in the face yeah the doctors and that continued it wasn't just being able to see anything again it was being able to see well again I was demanding I was demanding the first surgery so the first surgery for my left eye my right eye is gone my right eye was gone in Kandahar they happen to be an ophthalmologist there that enucleated the eye right away they do that early on so that your body will focus on the eye that's you know possibly savable but the right eye was so screwed up and I wish that pictures of it and that's kind of gruesome but you know and people don't want to take pictures of you in that because they're like that's not good to take pictures of you but but uh you know keep in mind that the person might want those pictures later on that it's people don't realize his kirsty edison and she got you know she got in the helo crash in afghanistan and you know she's a beautiful girl and she had pictures of her face where 50 cal like the way that the helo went down I mean it it did some massive damage to her face and she has pictures of it and look at the pictures and you can't believe that you know she was able to recover the way she did it's amazing but you know she's a marine and I will say that she's much aligned with your feelings on this I think she's pretty stoked that she has those pictures of herself all jacked totally took those pictures though was it the kind like Oh after they got into like the medical you know what actually I think it was I think it was if you remember her story there was some a really good plastic surgeon like a bright red the ladies version and female plastic surgeon that I think was probably like oh I'm gonna document this yes he's so there's a difference between that and then like something like a wait guys and busts up the phone and start taking bitches like which is what you think the team guy would do and I think I would obviously go all cool check out fans are there I I'm gonna get some snacks to this and we got some you know so I've only got one picture but it's a good week out I mean it's not it's at least a few days like it's um there's some healing that has taken place but I look bad like it looks like a shock it looks like I'd hit in the face with a shotgun that's what my face looks like it's show it to you right now if you really want to see it just so you can react to it I've never posted it because it's a little it's a little too gruesome for posting blurry doubt but the option yeah the well not I kind of lost my train of thought well yeah so you get that you get the surgery in the book you talk about they removed the broken lens yes oh no copper wire that was in there right bunch of other debris so hallucinations stop and then then your six weeks they got to put you in a position for six weeks to recover right so there's a couple things that happened here that's the picture oh you know that's about a week after so there's there's some healing there but it's not looking great it's yeah that's rough so damn Yeah right eyes gone left eye has a as a cataract meaning the lens which is in the middle of your eye is is destroyed cataracts are pretty normal thing for older folks to get you know just basically means the lens has kind of I don't know the right term is but kind of clouds over you need to replace it in my case it was trauma induced so just bunch of fragments burst through the eye and destroyed the lens you can kind of look at a lens like a window alright and this is an important way of thinking about it because if it clouds over if that windows just you can't see through it anymore we'll just replace the windowpane but if the blast destroys the window then you're trying to so a new window pane onto basically the curtains which are like the scelera of your eye and that was sort of the situation I was dealing with so the first miracle was they removed the lens entirely so okay so that things out because I remember this I think I think it was in Landstuhl I sort of remember them shining a really bright light my eye just to see if I could see light and I could see some light when they did that what I saw was like darkness but there was like a light almost like we're in this room right now and there's this bright light above our heads it's kind of like that but everything else was like a cloud like like being like on an air but like imagine you're like going through a cumulus cloud as you're taking off like that's what it looks like very odd and strange and again so the first miracle this in a battle you know maybe a week later when I finally got back to the Bethesda we did the surgery they removed the big copper wire that had really been destroying my eye so that's good and so we kind of start to see some blurriness after that you know which is kind of what I see now as I look at you now I'm wearing a contact and without if I took this contact out I wouldn't wreck nice you I don't know wouldn't know I wouldn't run into things necessarily but I can't see anything you know it's it's it's I mean I well it's like you know twenty one thousand vision it's I can't really see anything it's just it's just blurry can't see clothes can't see far can't find my glasses if I lose them the glasses I do have four like that thick that's what I wear at night or on airplanes or you know if I don't feel like wearing a contact so that never goes away but at the time I wanted it to go away like I wanted to be like no just make the eye better doctors why can't you just do that cuz I got a I got places to be okay and they're like yeah do you you know it was like I was like yeah I mean I was like okay so you just did this surgery remove the cataract now I want a new lens so that I don't have to wear like Contacts and glasses because I don't look cool in these glasses right I'm not a fan and uh you know I don't really have to contact situation yet and and I actually wouldn't for two and a half years it would take to get a really good contact that's actually comfortable and so I was like just just do the surgery and they're like well and I'm they're like we really shouldn't and I was like okay what's the how much do we have to wait to do the surgery you know what's the what's the minimum time cuz I need to have it as soon as possible because you know I got to get back to the platoon I've got a I've got to go back and they're like well I mean I guess technically six weeks I'm like six weeks it is and like I couldn't see them at the time but they're looking at each other like what the hell are you talking about like this isn't you don't understand what your situation is it's like they were just I mean and my wife tells me all this now cuz I couldn't see them and I couldn't I wasn't self-aware enough to gauge people's reactions I was in you know totally different state of mind I was on a lot of painkillers and drugs and so you know and and and just like full-on seal mode layer get the job daughter must get back to platoon kill bad guys and it's just like wasn't making sense to people like they were just like I don't know what's wrong with this guy and so they just kind of humored me I think like they're just like yeah sure and we'll definitely definitely do that but they would have no and no intention of doing it for good reason and then and then what you're talking about the six weeks blindness that occurred later so at least miracles happened and like we saved my eye and that was really exciting but then they you know but they're but they're looking at it every day and they do this one test and they see this hole in my retina so that's not a big deal because it's just just a hole you know it means there's some blind spots and as I look at you I can kind of see the blind spot it's like right in my face an own but I deal with it it's annoying when I read frankly the problem with that is your retina the anatomy of your retina causes that hole to expand there's a film there's like a it's like a membrane on the back of your retina that creates tension and so anytime there's a hole in your retina that means the hole will just expand slowly so it's macular degeneration this again this happens with older folks quite a bit the way to fix that is remove the membrane we're not really sure why the membranes on there in the first place and so you just remove the membrane and then you're good all right but and that's fine that's actually pretty normal surgery but for me it was a really high-risk surgery because you know my eyes so fragile and so they're worried about the retina detaching luckily it did not you know because well who knows why again God's intervention and but you do have to be face down for six weeks to recover from that so that was just just suck you had to lay face down the entire time for six you have the latest face down because what they do is they they inject this gas into your eye and that creates a bubble which creates tension so and if the bubble is meant to be pressed up against your retina to keep it in place the only way for it to press up against your retina is for you to be looking down and so you just look just sucks you just have to be face down doesn't matter how you're doing it just lay down or walk facedown or whatever it is but just make sure you're facing down for six weeks and you're blind the whole time most of the time they'll do this like one eye at a time so if somebody can see still but you know I'm not a one eye at a time kind of guy anymore you get past that you say when the six weeks were over I sat up and I was not blind moreover with the help of a truly remarkable contact lens from Boston sight to which the Navy referred me years later I was eventually returned to 20/20 correct hole vision in my left eye that's the story of being blown up I can't say I recommend the experience yet even as it was happening even in the moment after the blast I had to admit it could have been worse I still had my legs I had my arms I had ten fingers and ten toes my brain worked even after a severe concussion I was still alive it is impossible not to constantly think of the many veterans who have sacrificed so much more impossible not to think of Seale Petty Officer second class Mike Mansoor who threw himself on a grenade while on a rooftop in Ramadi in Iraq 2006 saving his teammates impossible not to think of Air Force Master Sergeant John Chapman who fought all night against the Taliban coming in and out of consciousness from his wounds eventually succumbing to them on that Afghan Ridgeline but only after earning the Medal of Honor for saving 23 servicemembers impossible not to think of my platoon members and dear friends Dave warson and Pat fix who were killed just two months after I was evacuated from Helmand impossible not to think of their loved ones who had been expecting them home a month later impossible not to think of the eight men whose initials are tattooed on my chest in remembrance Charles Keating the fourth Patrick fix Dave warson Brad Kavner Brett Mary you Kevin Evert Brendan Looney and Tom Falc this is the simple reality others have had it harder than me many many others from that darkness comes realism from that realism comes gratitude from gratitude comes perspective a healthy sense of perspective is an antidote to outrage is an antidote to self-pity despair and weakness it's not a cure-all for your mental state when faced with adversity but it is sure to dull the edges of your worst tendencies toward mental breakdown yeah that's the that's the perspective that you and I already talked about today that perspective that it would be seemed like it would be very helpful for people to think about it is and you know I'm using extreme examples right not everybody can relate to that but they don't have to and I don't I don't want you to go be in a terrible situation just to earn some perspective right like but just the simple reminder to yourself that it exists like somebody else has had it harder that's there's a comfort in that I think and it is an antidote to self-pity self-pity is a gateway to the outrage culture that I think we see all around us and so that is a gateway to the socialistic tendencies I think that we've been seeing as of late and you can avoid these things with some perspective and gratitude and you know it's it's again it's it's hard for anybody the teams to ever feel sorry for themselves when you know because you know of these guys and you know some of those guys I listed of course and you know if there's ever a reason you need to get up in the morning not at 4:30 but like like later you know get a normal human time then then the boys who wish they could get up you know that's a good reason because they would like to be able to get up and they can't and their widows are really wishing they would get up too and they can't you know and the Manus where I mentioned unsung heroes but the widows are here the the heroes of the SEAL Teams III have yet to meet the wife of one of those guys who fell into self-pity and despair I have only met I only know ones who have overcome with the greatest grace it's just amazing I've watched these watch these women just serve as the most ultimate example mothers as well you know that I know you know like Debbie Lee for instance it's absolutely it's just it's just incredible to watch that fortitude we just we just couldn't do it without them yeah it's always one of the things about about marks mom and life and I talk about this a lot is you know when when we called her from Iraq to talk to her and to console her she was consoling us you know she was wanted to make sure we were okay she wanted to make sure we were handling think she wanted to know if we needed anything you know that was her attitude out of the gate now and that shows you you know the kind of people that you're talking about you know someone that's that's taking their own personal worst nightmare that any you know any parent could ever have of losing their kid and immediately saying well what can I do for you guys yeah it is unbelievable he's uh you know it was recent friend good friend I lost was was Chuck Keating the fourth and you know his his wife started a foundation in his name his dad as well and his family's just been incredible but that's not that that's that's not the exception like that's been the rule from what I've seen and it's so much harder to be the family left behind than it is to to be us I think you know we go and we choose to do this thing overseas and we're doing it with our brothers in arms and we love it and we know what's coming the next day we we're in control to an extent to the greatest extent we can be but our family is not there they're their life doesn't change except that we're just not there and they don't know what's happening and then they get a call and I don't actually go into detail and my wife's experience on the perspectives from darkness but but you know she gets a call and so her only consolation is that it's a call and not a guy at the door but you know it's a call that she's getting before 6 a.m. and before she her alarm goes off to go to work and and then there's you know the very typical kind of lack of exact information given to her she's not sure what my face looks like because they're because they don't know what my face looks like they're not sure if it's still there but my head is still there like there's all this misinformation get enough enough information to just plant seeds of absolute horror it's horrible and guess who but but you know who the who you know who went there first was the loony family row you know it's like it's it's it was it's Amy Looney their canoe her husband two years earlier and she's the one there consoling Tara and it's just that that's the type of community that the SEAL Teams is blessed with and you know it's it is it is a true blessing and it's unique I wish were broader I wish we could say you know I talked to other friends and other and other communities that it doesn't seem it's not as good and I wish it was I wish we should all strive to just to take care of each other in that way so rolling into your next chapter and I haven't made my caveat that I always make I'm not reading this whole book right now and so when it skips around it's because I'm not reading the whole book you have to buy the book so that you can hear the whole thing and and then we're just you know you and I are going off of a bunch of tangents and which is awesome but you know the book that has so many great details in it and the stories are so clear and they're real personal too so you got to buy the book to get that got to buy the book you gotta buy the book so the next chapter which you mentioned earlier is called who's your hero and I'm gonna jump to this part right here where you talking about the SEAL Teams it says the SEAL Teams like any like many military units are relentless in the pursuit of establishing hero archetypes doing so is extremely important when the goal is to create a monoculture that operates as a mission oriented team this is a community with a very deep sense of who we want to be we talk about it all the time and we beat it into our trainees Jocko specifically into our trainees I did some here's some of the things that will be beaten into you you will be someone who is never late you will be someone who takes care of his men gets to know them and puts their needs before yours you will be someone who does not quit in the face of adversity you will be someone who takes charge and leans when no one else will you will be detail-oriented always vigilant you will be aggressive in your actions but never lose your cool you will have a sense of humor because sometimes that is all that can get you through the darkest hours you will work hard and perform even when no one is watching you will be creative and think outside the box even if it gets you in trouble you are a rebel but not a mutineer you are a jack of all trades and master of none and then you go into the official ethos which you mentioned earlier I was debating if I should read this and I think I'm actually just gonna read it it's a good ethos so here we go in times of war or uncertainty there's a special breed of warrior ready to answer our nation's call a common man with uncommon desire to succeed forged by adversity he stands alongside America's finest special operations forces to serve his country the American people and protect their way of life I am that man my Trident is a symbol of honor and heritage bestowed upon me by the heroes that have gone before it embodies the trust of those I have sworn to protect by wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life it is a privilege that I must earn every day my loyalty to country and team is beyond reproach I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves I do not advertise the nature of my work nor seek recognition for my actions I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession placing the welfare and security of others before my own I serve with honor on and off the battlefield the ability to control my emotions and my actions regardless of circumstance sets me apart from other men uncompromising integrity is my standard my character and honor are steadfast my word is my bond we expect to be we expect to lead and be led in the absence of orders I will take charge lead my teammates and accomplish the mission I lead by example in all situations I will never quit I persevere and thrive on adversity my nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies if knocked down I will get back up every time I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission I am never out of the fight we demand discipline we expect innovation the lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me my technical skill tactical proficiency and attention to detail my training is never complete we train for war and fight to win I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in o

to see if my body still functions my teammates make their way to me I asked someone to pour water on my eyes to remove the dirt so I can see that doesn't work I can only see light and in some shapes must be a lot of dirt I recognized my Corman's voice as he works on my wounds I say dude don't get blown up it sucks he laughs and tells me to shut up I was conscious throughout our corpsman stopped my bleeding the worst of which was from my knees and wrapped up my eyes it still did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with them I could only hear the situation around me my teammates calling to each other communicating the situation with tense voices I later found out that a foot wearing the typical Salomon boot that we all wore hit one of my teammates in the chest about 50 yards away Rahman was groaning in pain deep deep pain most people's experience of combat wounds is from the movies a soldier gets hit his guts spilling out and he looks down at them screaming in horror but this is not the way it is in reality truly bad injuries SAP your energy and prevent you from screaming instead the sound of wounded man makes is a much deeper more visceral emanating from the depths of his being it's a groan a cry a moaning that reeks of utter desperation it

dude don't get blown up it sucks

shut up

0,5,6

-5,4,8

-5

4

8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"was so heavily damaged that there was virtually no chance I would see with it again my future was a(...TRUNCATED)

hey thank you for having me

"listen do you read that I was like maybe I should have asked you to read my book in the audio versi(...TRUNCATED)

8,2,5

6,4,3

6

4

3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"hope people realize that that's not what you hear from the media you know the media would tell you (...TRUNCATED)

"hope people realize that that's not what you hear from the media you know the media would tell you (...TRUNCATED)

"you sent me the book and you know cracked it open started reading it and immediately was just you k(...TRUNCATED)

2,-1,6

8,4,5

8

4

5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"is that when you got wounded you actually you actually drew strength from very powerful place and t(...TRUNCATED)

"is that when you got wounded you actually you actually drew strength from very powerful place and t(...TRUNCATED)

"I fought back to another time in my life two decades earlier the first time I ever witnessed the ki(...TRUNCATED)

8,4,5

2,-5,3

2

-5

3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"a good movie but there there is it's undeniable that there is this fragility is infecting America a(...TRUNCATED)

"a good movie but there there is it's undeniable that there is this fragility is infecting America a(...TRUNCATED)

"it's interesting as as you know before we started recording you know we're just talking about kind (...TRUNCATED)

2,-3,5

0,-1,3

0

-1

3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"reason I tell that story and then subsequent stories of of other guys that we've lost is because yo(...TRUNCATED)

"I tell that story and then subsequent stories of of other guys that we've lost is because you you n(...TRUNCATED)

you said earlier

6,4,8

2,1,3

2

1

3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"yourself and you say well I guess I'm the one that messed this up yeah it is and that's that's a de(...TRUNCATED)

yeah I guess I'm the one that messed this up

"it is and that's that's a devastating psychological consequence when your ego is hurt that way it i(...TRUNCATED)

-8,-5,-6

2,6,8

2

6

8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"a federal minimum wage that's the same for the entire country when in San Francisco the the rent is(...TRUNCATED)

"a federal minimum wage that's the same for the entire country when in San Francisco the rent is thi(...TRUNCATED)

yeah but they're passionate

2,-1,6

4,5,-2

4

5

-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjrQayR_S8k

yjrQayR_S8k

2020-03-25 00:00:00

"this is Jocko podcast number 222 with\nEcho Charles and me Jocko Willing good evening echo good eve(...TRUNCATED)

"right so here we go awake now in long stool I could not move I was beaten and for the moment physic(...TRUNCATED)

now was some of that it was some of that drugs that you were you on

were you on

0,-3,-5

2,4,6

2

4

6