Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 15 - Questions from the Internet

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Kicking off the week answering questions from social media. My thoughts on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, PTSD in the military, Skydiving and BASE jumping, and the behaviors and traits from the SEAL Teams that DO NOT work in the civilian world.

I am back. Here we go. Three episodes in a seven-day time period. I think I'm setting a new record here, and I'm going to set you up now. I'm not going to do another podcast next Monday, probably because I'm going back to Utah for round two with those damn elk in my bow. So if I am able to tag out before Monday, I will absolutely record a podcast. If I am not able to tag out before Monday, well, I'm going to dedicate my time to crawling around and trying to look like a bush and lure in a forest animal. So, episode 15, here we go.

I put out a request on social media and, wow, thank you everybody who responded. I got some what I would consider to be pretty dang good questions. A lot of these are military-based. the majority of the questions actually were about the military. And I don't like talking specifically about the military, but I'm going to answer a few of them. But thank you to everybody who submitted the questions. It's awesome. This episode would not have happened without you.

And to continue to thanks, I mean, in the last four days, I have printed shipping labels to probably every state in the U.S. I sent a shirt to a guy in the Czech Republic. I sent some shirts to Australia, to Switzerland, to France. it is awesome to kind of sit back and physically see the reach of this podcast. I had no idea. I still have no idea where this thing is going. I just really enjoy doing it. I really enjoy the fact that it forces me to sit down and think, really think about how it is that I feel and hopefully be able to articulate that.

It's really cool. Actually, it's very rewarding for me and I really enjoy doing it. And it wouldn't happen if people weren't listening. into it. Actually, probably still would happen. I'd just be talking myself. But it's cool that people are listening to it. And it's cool that people are kind of flying the colors all over the world. I'm getting pictures. And it's great. So thank you, everybody. And let's just dive right in. Clear it Hot episode number 15. Oh, actually, I'll answer this question real fast. Somebody asked me about the audio that I use in between the cleared hot audio itself. That is from an actual

close air support or CAS in the military, call for fire from a J-TAC on the ground in Afghanistan talking to a flight of two A-10 aircraft. And from my understanding, it was, I mean, those rounds were impacting extremely close. There is, you know, each piece of ordinance that an aircraft has, whether or not it's a gun or a bomb, there's a piece of paper that lists minimum safe distance where it starts becoming dangerous to people that you don't want to injure. And at some point it becomes a danger close fire mission, meaning you're right at the limit of what you can call in, maybe even a little bit inside of it. And that is a small segment of the audio that I used for the bridge between the intro and

getting into the podcast. So it's absolutely not me. That was a call probably from a JTAC, which stands for Joint Terminal Attack controller. basically somebody who's gone to a course and they can talk to any, I think, NATO aircraft and get them to release ordinance, or it might have been an Air Force CCTV guy or maybe a Marine Corps TACP. And CCT stands for Combat Controller and TACP stands for, I actually have to look this one up. Tactical Air Control Party.

Don't have much experience with that, but I'm pretty sure you have Air Force or Marine personnel. So those are the three people you'll generally hear on the radio. It was one of those three on that actual call itself. And that's, it's kind of what it sounds like on the radio when you are, when you're in the middle of it, trying to, you know, save your own life with your rifle and also call ordinance in from overhead. It can get pretty intense. So here's a little sneak peek of it.

Episode 15, here we go. Okay, got the red smoke. Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on, wait a minute. Can't be clear hot. All right. Here we go. Question number one, and I think I did this later on in some of the questions as well.

I sort of combined two questions that had a similar tone to them. But we're going to kick this thing right off with, what are some behaviors and traits that I took from the SEAL teams that I've noticed maybe don't work so well in the civilian world? I'm going to assume that this question came from somebody who used to be in the military, and experienced a transition from military service to the civilian sector. And maybe it wasn't the smoothest of linkups. Maybe there was a little bit of a hitching the giddy up in how he used to deal,

or he or she used to deal with the people they worked with while he was in the military, and was just called the office environment of the civilian world. So I thought about this one. there are every single behavior that was reinforced inside of the teams and every single trait that we selected and trained for inside of the teams I would say has nothing but a positive outcome and impact in the civilian world however you have to the one thing I will say that you need to be cautious with is how you package information. So I would say the number one tool or the number one reinforcement or communication

strategy inside of the teams is negative reinforcement. It is a community of individuals that from the outside may actually appear like the most aggressive, hateful group of individuals forced to work together on the face of the earth. But the reality, is most of the time you really do love the people that you're working with and we're just extremely hard on each other mostly because we know it bugs each other and we'll do anything we can to get underneath each other's skin it is a community that is full of a type personalities and you have to recalibrate your vocabulary if you come from that community or i would say as a as a starting point for anybody leaving military service and getting ready to transition to a civilian job,

recalibrate your vocabulary. I would, I think in the HR world, they would call the way we used to talk to each other abusive language. We called it just being direct. There's the difference between being direct and being an asshole. I personally believe that there is incredible value into being direct and almost no value in being an asshole. So if you're getting out of the military,

I really don't think that anything that you learned, again, as far as the behaviors and traits, the structure, the work ethic, the discipline, the time management, all of those things. I mean, every job and every occupational career path that I had interaction with inside of the military, they had they had those things so those aren't unique to the seal teams at all so there are so many positives from military service that you can take into the civilian world that are going to put you

on a rocket ship past some people that don't come from a community where those things are ingrained use those things but just repackage and maybe dial down a little bit the interaction in the vocabulary that you use with your peers and coworkers when you get to your new environment. Everything, the most important stuff is going to be how you are at your job, but, you know, don't dig a hole with expecting everybody to understand who you are and why you're speaking the way you are because you come from a different background. So recognize that and adjust yourself to the situation that you're in. And then let your work ethic. and all those things you learned in military service,

let those things get you on the express train. And in addition to that, grab as many people along the way and teach them. You know, if they don't have those kind of core values that each military service does, try to impart those things on people. Teach people those lessons. They're awesome. There's no negative consequence or downside to learning those things. So to caveat that first question,

I got to know what it said. How do you make people you work with better? And for the person that asked this question, I want you to go back and take a look at that. How do you make people you work with better? And my answer is, is you can't make people do anything long term. You can make people change their behavior in the short term. And a lot of the times when I'm talking about things like this, this falls into the category of micromanagement. like if you really want to change somebody's behavior and they're not interested in changing it,

you're going to have to be there standing over their shoulder telling them what to do and how to do it. And the second that you leave, that person is going to revert back to their normal behavior. Because you as a person cannot change another person. That other person has to change themselves. So how do you do that? Well, my advice to you would be show them what it is that you want. Be the example for that person. Now, how do you do that?

Start with explaining the impact of this individual or this group of people's performance. You know, ask to help those people. Define the expected standard. You know, it's, I've encountered this one quite a bit. It's not that people don't want to work hard. It's not that they don't want to excel. They're actually just a little bit unsure about exactly what is expected of them. So define the expected standard.

ask, you know, be there. Say, hey, if you need some help, I'm here, ask me for help. But before you ask me for help, try to figure it out for yourself. That was one thing, a great leader that I worked with in the military. He would task me with doing things I had never done before. He'd be like, listen, I'm always here to answer your questions if you have them, but do your best to answer the question before you come to me. And I really like that, right? He gave me a bunch of rope, enough rope to hang myself, but I knew he still had his hand on a little bit. And it was nice to know that I had that backstop. And explaining the impact of their performance,

if people, you know, a lot of people aren't self-aware. I'm not self-aware all the time. I don't know of anybody that's self-aware all the time. So you can get really insular and just kind of get your head down and only be, to use a cubicle is a shitty example. You're only really worried about what's going on inside of that cubicle. And that can happen inside of the SEAL teams as well too.

You only, you know, everybody is assigned a department that they need to work in or a job or a skill set they need to be able to do. And if you're not careful, all you really focus on is your job or your skill set and you lose side of the fact that, you know, there's 15 other people that each have a skill set or jobs or multiples and they're all tied together like the Olympic rings. It's, and they only work if everybody's carrying their load. So take the time to explain to the individual, you know, get their buy-in on why their performance is important, how it affects the team.

And, you know, once you've defined the standard, you've explained to them that they're there for help, or you're there to help, you've explained the impact of their performance. I mean, at that point, if an individual chooses not to perform because they're just not willing to do so. And we had individuals like this inside of the SEAL teams as well, at that point it becomes time for documentation. You know, not everybody can meet the standard. And that's okay. And if you choose to work with people who consistently cannot meet the standard or you run an organization that allows for people to consistently not meet the standard or make the standard, then the results that come from that, they're completely on you. So that's how what I would recommend, especially working with people that you want to try to make better, be the example for them. Don't.

I would highly recommend not approaching the conversation with, hey, you're all messed up. I wouldn't do that at all. Go and get to know the person, go through the kind of the steps that I told you, where I explained, and hopefully it has some type of improvement. All right. The second question. You know, I don't know if I've actually talked about any of the stuff on the podcast yet, but I was asked about the difference between base jumping and skydiving,

the differences and the commonalities between the two. I think for the last probably month, the only thing I've been running my mouth about is bow hunting. and hopefully you guys like it because it's probably not going to stop in the near future. But I spent about half of my year skydiving and base jumping. I have a couple sponsors that I'm very fortunate to have that kind of fund my adventure, traveling around the world, jumping out of and off of stuff. And it's great.

It was my bridge actually to get out of the military. And it's been a journey for sure. And a lot of people, I hate social media. because it's an incomplete story. Like I put up a couple pictures the last few days of some base jumps out in Utah. And the pictures look cool. I mean, I like the pictures, but it really doesn't talk about what it takes to be able to do those things and how long you need to train and practice and the skill sets that you need to have and everything

that goes into making a cool picture. Anybody can make a cool picture. I want to make cool pictures for a really long time as opposed to making a couple cool pictures and, you know, fading into black because I do something stupid. So skydiving and base jumping. They share a lot of similarities. And they both, at least in my opinion, if you want to survive base jumping, you need to start skydiving. So for me, I did my first skydive in 1999.

Absolutely hooked from the first time leaving an airplane. It doesn't feel anything like falling. You do not get the roller coaster sensation of your stomach coming up into your throat because the aircraft, most jump aircraft are going between 80 to 100 miles an hour. So you have that speed kind of throwing you forward as you get out of the aircraft. And that translates slowly into from being thrown forward into a slow transition of vertical fall. And you never have that time where your, you know, your stomach's like, comes up into your throat. Not like riding a roller coaster at all. I hear people often say they're afraid of that sensation of falling.

So if you're going to skydive, don't worry about that. Base jumping, we'll talk about that in a minute. So inside of skydiving, there are, I don't even know how many disciplines there are, but there's a ton. And people, they get into the sport and they kind of, they find their area of interest and they dive in. And for me, for a long time, it had nothing to do with flying my wingsuit. but as soon as I was convinced to try one of those things on, then I still would describe a wingsuit as a combination between a straight jacket and a prom dress. As soon as I threw that thing on for the first time,

man, my eyes were opened up and it was almost like I was discovering the sport again. It was totally different. Instead of falling down really fast, you're ripping forward through the air. Even casually relaxed in the suit, you're probably doing 80 miles an hour. If you really point your toes and drive your shoulders up and flatten those suits out, you can probably do 120 to 150 miles an hour. And your face is leading the way. And I challenge anybody to try it and not smile. I actually cannot control the smile that I have.

It's so much fun. In skydiving is, I'm sure it's, actually I know, it's considered a high risk activity. But there are a lot of safety protocols in place. For one, you know, the aircraft are governed and monitored by the FAA. They're on a maintenance schedule. There's an organization called the USPA, the United States Parachute Association, that has a syllabus for learning how to skydive. And any good drop zone that you go to will be a USPA affiliate.

They have standards for instructional ratings, for taking people for tammums, for teaching people to jump out of an airplane on their own. And I actually did, I did all of these, I did all of these, my initial learning at skydive San Diego, which was mere miles from my old house in San Diego. And it was an amazing experience. I went in on a Friday and did the ground school. You're going to learn, you know, six to eight hours of talking about the equipment and the mechanics and physics of skydiving. You'll learn about emergency procedures under canopy in the aircraft. I mean, everything that could possibly go wrong and how you can mitigate those things. And if,

and if things do go wrong, what your corrective procedures are, So you go through all that stuff. And that Friday, I did my first jump out of an airplane with somebody holding on to each side of me. But as soon as I pulled my parachute, I was steering the bad boy on my own. There's a radio that's on the side of your helmet, so they're kind of talking you through it. It's very wild, but it's very controlled. And eight jumps later on Sunday, I was jumping on my own. So the barriers to entry, they're not really high.

you know as you as you get into the sport the barrier entry they get a little bit higher you need a certain amount of jumps to get certain ratings you need certain amount of jumps before you put a wing suit on but in all if you stay inside of your boundaries and you stay current and you stay proficient and you always give yourself a margin for safety the most dangerous thing about a day at the drop zone will be driving to and from the drop zone. You will, from a statistical perspective, have a much greater chance of being hurt or killed in your vehicle driving to where you're going to go

jump out of an airplane. When you skydive, you have two parachutes. There's a main parachute that is packed by the jumper, or you could pay a rigor or a packer on a drop zone to pack it for you. And the reserve parachute is packed by an FAA rigor. The cycle is now every 180 days, whether or not you use it in an emergency or it just sits there in the back, you know, in the trunk of your car,

which I actually don't recommend storing a parachute in. But if it sits on a shelf for 180 days, it's unpacked, inspected, and repacked by an FAA rigor. And there's also an automatic activation device, which is a small computer with an explosive charge attached to a razor blade. And that computer is constantly monitoring your altitude and your velocity. And if the criteria is met for a certain velocity at a certain altitude, the charge goes off and the razor blade cuts through your reserve closing loop and your reserve fires. And I think those systems have hundreds of saves, if not maybe over into a thousand. So that's kind of the basis of skydiving. When I think about skydiving, I think about jumping.

It's obviously out of an aircraft, could be a helicopter, a hot air balloon or an airplane. but you have altitude and with altitude you have time because you can deal with anything that could happen before you actually impact with the terrain now base jumping is similar in the respect that you're wearing a parachute if you want to do it more than once uh and for me when i base jump most of the time i'm wearing my wingsuit as well so it's the same wingsuit that i skydive in The parachute is completely different, though. One of the big things about base jumping, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about,

the acronym stands for building antenna, span, and earth. It just means jumping off of a fixed object. So this is, and when you do that, you're going to get that feeling in your stomach where that first four seconds you leap off and there is no resistance. And you're, I'm not going to say you're trapped. But regardless of what you do with your body, there's not enough air speed for it to deflect off of your limbs.

So you're kind of just, you have what you have for the first few seconds, especially in a wingsuit as well. So the differences between skydiving and base jumping, the similarities like I covered, there's a parachute and for me, there's generally a wingsuit. Now, on a base jumping parachute system, there no longer is two parachutes. So you're on a single parachute system. and that parachute is packed by the jumper. So I can pack a skydiving parachute in probably five minutes with my eyes closed. Half the time I don't even remember doing it. It's very rote and it's not complicated.

And that's not an impressive thing to be able to do it in five minutes. If you can fold a t-shirt, you can pack a parachute. It's really not that hard. Now on the base jumping side of the house, that thing is packed almost like a reserve and it takes me on a good day, 30 minutes. and if I really want to get in there and be precise, 45 minutes to an hour, but it's the only parachute that's on my back. If that thing malfunctions, I'm going to have a really bad day. So I take my time. And when it comes to, you know, the differences between skydiving and base jumping,

when you jump off of the fixed object, you're not going to have as much clearance from the terrain. So therefore, you're not going to have as much time. I wouldn't say that it's, I hesitate to say, that base jumping is advanced because I don't want to make it into something that it's not. It's just definitely different. And the risk level associated with base jumping, the fact that you are closer to objects, the fact that you have less time and the fact that you have one parachute, that needs to be taken into account when you're going through your thought process as to whether or not you want to start doing this activity.

I just tell people go into it with your eyes wide open and don't take it lightly. You know, base jumping is awesome until it's not. Everything, it's an amazing amount of fun until it isn't. And the switch between being fun and not being fun can happen in literally the blink of an eye. And you have to be prepared for that. So they're very similar and base jumping is built off of skydiving proficiency. And before I go do a, a base jumping trip in Europe and fly my wingsuit. I go jump out of an airplane a bunch and get

used to, you know, I stay current, but I get very comfortable in what it feels like. And then I take that currency and I take it to cliffs that are very overhung with a lot of room to correct for errors. And then I slowly reduce that margin as I start feeling better. But I always leave myself a buffer of safety and a cushion where I can get out and get away if I need to. So honestly, I recommend skydiving for everybody, base jumping, that requires a little bit more commitment. All right, the third question, I would say this one's about situational awareness. So the question itself was, what were some methods used in the seals to tackle tunnel vision during intense operations?

So this question, he said he was a firefighter and he needs to deal with this one rolling up to a large incident. So first and foremost, what I would say is for the person asking this question, you've taken a step in the right direction, right? You understand the danger of tunnel vision. What I mean by tunnel vision, I guess one of the best ways to think about this. If you've ever been in a fight, or if you can think back, hopefully haven't been in a lot of fights. But if you've ever almost gotten into a physical confrontation, if that is something, that is new to you, what you're going to realize is as that event kind of gets closer, the world

around you shrinks. And before you know it, the only thing you can see is the person right in front of you. And it gets really dangerous because I've seen this happen time and time again where you're so focused on the person directly in front of you. And in the teams, we would talk about it as looking through straws, like soda can straws. That's all you can see, but the rest of the world is still going on outside. And I've seen so many people get cold cocked because they're tractor being locked into somebody right in front of them and they don't have the awareness to realize and see the shift in the environment that's going on around them. So first and foremost, understand that that's incredibly dangerous. And for people who work in a military occupation or a first responder

occupation where you need to be able to uptake process and deliver information quickly, the worst thing you can do is view the world through straws. So in the teams, we have obviously recognized that avoiding that is critical. So how do we train for it? Well, we expose our people to it. It's something that is going to be learned over time. When we get people right out of, you know, the pipeline goes, you go to Buds, which is a selection program, then you go to like another 12 to 18 months of training where you learn all of the basics of being a seal.

And then so east and west coast guys go to that same training. And then they split off and they go to their team. If you were to take one of those kids, which most of them are kids coming out of that program, and put them into a very difficult training environment, it's not hard to overwhelm them. I mean, it's actually very, it's very easy to overwhelm them. As a matter of fact, it's very hard to not overwhelm them. So you need to have a structured training program that I would say it does, needs to do two things. The first thing that I would recommend is at some point early on, take them to failure because of tunnel vision for the sole reason of highlighting how dangerous it is.

You can talk about how it's, you know, you can talk to somebody who's never experienced that rush of a adrenaline or that overwhelming of information processing until they're literally unable to do anything. You can talk about that all day long. You can read about it in a book. When you actually experience it for the first time in a training environment and you can see the consequences that it has, it's much more impactful. So earlier rather than later in a manner that's appropriate to their skill set. And a lot of the times we used to do this to junior officers, all you would need to do is while something moderately complex was happening around them, just pepper them with questions that have nothing to do with the evolution

that they're technically in charge and responsible for. A good example is we do a lot of training in urban environments. And a lot of the times when you're in an urban environment, you're not necessarily all working together. So it becomes a difficult challenge to know where everybody is. and you have to know where your people are, especially if you're going to be dropping bombs or coordinating with other units,

you need to know where everybody is. And the officer needs to be able to, you know, explain to higher headquarters and the people below the configuration of his troops or her troops. Well, while they're trying to do that, if they have never experienced failure from being overloaded, and overloaded is the same thing as looking through the straws, right? You're just world collapses on you.

it's hard to see that insidious creep. So we would sit there and, you know, hey, where's this person? Where's that person? What's your next move going to be? What about this? What about that? And just completely overload them until their brain shuts down and then stop it. Like, okay, this is what just happened.

These are the things that you were focusing on that you shouldn't be focusing on. This is the outcome that it had. Recognize that next time. And when you see it starting or you see that indication or that onset, just stop it right there. So getting that overload the first time is super easy. Getting it the second time a little bit harder, the third time a little bit harder.

And eventually, if you keep probing in that training environment, what's going to end up happening is they're going to get inoculated to what it is that you're trying to do. And then you can move on to something else. But the only way that it's really going to reinforce is if they experience it. So once you've taken them to failure and you've put them on the road, to start building them back up. The next step, like I said, there's two steps.

The first one, take them to failure. The second step, make your training evolutions realistic and make them hard. I don't want to say that we did no-win training scenarios in the teams, but I would say we got damn close. And everything that could possibly go wrong would go wrong. It would always go wrong at the moment that sucked the most for everybody in the training evolution. And sometimes you would hear people saying, you know, it's never going to be this hard for real.

And they might actually be right. And that's okay, because that's actually the point. I'd rather exceed the demands of what you're going to encounter in real life and train my people to operate not only physically, but more importantly than physically, mentally in that environment. So if you roll up into a situation, if you're a first responder of any kind, and you roll up to a situation that's exponentially easier than a training environment that you just left 72 hours previous to that, what do you think your performance is going to be? It's going to be through the roof. And you're going to be mentally there and physically there. That's what you're aiming for. I got a question a little bit along the lines with this one.

it was how do you deal with the adrenaline in a situation like the one I described in the restaurant in episode 14. The answers are exactly the same. How do you learn to thrive in an environment that might be adrenaline filled? You train and operate and expose yourself to that adrenaline via the same route that I just explained for situational awareness and the world collapsing down on you. If you want to be able, regardless of of what your job is. If you want to be able to survive and thrive in an environment that has challenges, expose yourself to those challenges until they don't challenge you as much anymore and then look for the next one that's going to. Start throwing variables into your training

that are going to continue to challenge you. Do not do easy training scenarios that aren't challenging. Nobody gets anything out of that. All right, these last two questions, I'm not going to lie, they're kind of my favorite. And the first one is, couldn't be more appropriate because I'm recording this here on Sunday. The day of national football. And this question is not about football, but it's about what's happening in the NFL right now. So the question is, how does it make me feel to see professional athletes kneeling or sitting during the national anthem? I have a lot of feelings on this one.

and I actually guess I should have started this podcast by saying anytime I talk about the military I can only speak for myself I speak from my experiences and I speak from the things that I have seen but I in no way shape or form speak for other veterans or other people who are serving and I obviously in no way shape or form speak for the military so if you're asking me my opinion on this as somebody who is a veteran I don't like it. However, comma, I think they have every right to do it. And I don't think it's a controversy.

I first and foremost wholeheartedly support people protesting. I absolutely believe that it is essential to be able to voice and express how you feel. And the only asterix that I would put on that, and I guess this asterix would be a hope that I have. I don't think it's a requirement. But I would hope that people who choose to protest have an understanding of how their actions help achieve their end state, or the end state that they're protesting for. So when it comes to the NFL, and I see people who are making millions of dollars a year choosing to take a knee at the national anthem, It makes me wonder. It makes me wonder what are they doing when the cameras aren't rolling?

Because it's really easy to take a knee for two to three minutes on a Sunday. What I'm interested in is what are you doing with the rest of your time? Are these people meeting with town and city leaders? Are they meeting with law enforcement and trying to develop a better understanding of what that occupation actually requires? You know, are they donating their time to troubled neighborhoods? are they doing anything other than being a debutante in a spotlight and then going out and playing a game and making millions of dollars and going and living their life in their off time? If they're doing all those other things, I think that's amazing. If all they're doing is taking a knee and thinking that that action is making this country any better or it's affecting any change, then yes, I have a problem.

with that personally, but they still have every right to do it. You know, rights, the rights that we have, they're not defined by whether or not you find them being exercised as distasteful. Do we want to live in a country where you can't exercise your rights? Because I can tell you right now, having spent time in countries where a difference of opinion could be a death sentence, we don't want to live like that. Probably the most common thing that I hear is that the act of taking a knee during the national anthem is a disrespect to soldiers, specifically those that fought and died for the freedoms that we have. So before I see anything else, let me just say this. The flag could be my favorite thing. For my birthday last year, my wife got me like a four foot by six foot.

wooden American flag made out of reclaimed, I think it was either pallet wood or driftwood, but the design of the flag itself was burned in from a torch. And I mean, it's probably my favorite thing. I carried a flag with me on every combat operation of every deployment that I ever did. I think I have six or seven in my house. I have one on my truck. It's made out of arrows, and it says knock on, and it's amazing. it's still a flag.

To me, there's nothing more beautiful than our flag. And I have said goodbye to some of my best friends, men who were far better than myself. And the last time I ever saw them was underneath the flag of this country. but the flag belongs to all of us and right now 0.04% of the population is serving in the military and the military does not have a monopoly on the red, white, and blue. And I know that's tough for some people to hear and I know that not all veterans will agree with me, but the reality is that those who have fought and died for this country fought and died so people could take a knee if they wanted to,

so that they could take a knee without fear of being drug off and executed publicly to prevent that behavior from happening again. The people who have fought and died for that flag fought and died for the choice to stand up or take a knee. Our flag is beautiful, but it casts a large shadow too, and that can't be ignored. I understand that this country is not perfect, and we need to be. to accept our imperfections and address them head on instead of just looking at the flag, you know, waving in all of its glory on a sunshine, beautiful day. Where again, there's nothing more beautiful.

But if you look down on the ground, there's a shadow, right? And that has to be addressed. I don't appreciate the action that they're doing, but I'm thankful I live somewhere where it can occur. So like I said, I don't like it. But at the end of the day, I look at people who play in the NFL, they're performance artists. And if I don't want to watch the game, I can just change the channel or not go to a

professional football game. Problem solved. In addition to that, what I would recommend, and if you really want to make a difference, don't idolize people who wear their names on the back of a uniform. Spend your time supporting the communities. They wear their names on the front of a uniform. And if you're wondering who those people are, those are the people that are serving you. When you have a shitty day and you need help and you call 911, those are the people that show up.

Every military uniform has got the name tape up front. Police, fire, law enforcement, first responders, they all have their names up front. Support those communities. Those are the people that are serving. Those are the people that are answering the bell. And those are the people that are stitches that hold this country. and that flag together. All right, final question.

I'm very glad that this question was asked because I think it's very important. And it read, it seems like SEALs and other specop guys never have PTSD. They always seem on top of their game, sharp, smart, etc. Now, in addition to this question,

I actually received an email probably no more than 48 hours ago from an individual who reached out to me also with a question about post-traumatic stress, but from somebody who was watching a friend from a distance and who was concerned. And their question was, how can they help? What can they do? So I'm going to try to answer both of these things. Like I said, I'm very glad that this question got asked. Let's start with this. Seals and Speckop guys, they're not always on top of their game. They're not always sharp. They're not always smart. It is an issue inside of the community. And it needs to be addressed and discussed. Every time I talk about

this topic, I try to reframe it slightly. So I have a problem with the term PTSD. Obviously, it stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. In my opinion, it is not a disorder. And if you want to make people very hesitant to talk about something they might be dealing with, stigmatize it. Call it a disorder and see what happens. They're going to shut down and not reach out when they potentially need help. A disorder is something happening when it's not supposed to happen. So as an example, when you're sick, you get a fever a lot of the time, right? Because your body is increasing the core temperature to try to fight off whatever it is that is causing the sickness. That's a natural reaction.

If you were to get sick and not get a fever, that would be a disorder. When it comes to post-traumatic stress, everybody has a cup. And everybody's cup is capable of holding. a different volume. Some people come out of the gate and they can hold a ton and some people come out of the gate and they can hold a thimble. But everybody has a limit as to what they can tolerate. There are things that you can do to increase the volume of what you're able to tolerate. Training and exposure are great examples of this. I mean, think about emergency room doctors. They probably see enough trauma on a day-to-day basis that would put people into counseling for the rest of their life.

The ER docs that I've been exposed to, they are extremely calculated and they're extremely professional and they can deal with it in the moment and it doesn't attach anything else to them because they're highly trained and they've been exposed to it quite a bit. So they have increased the volume of what they're able to tolerate. When it comes to the training,

hyper-realistic training helps. and another thing that we did a lot of in the SEAL teams was force-on-force training. You know, shooting at paper targets, it's good for working on your shooting mechanics, but I don't think it truly prepares you for a three-dimensional gun range. When we did force-on-force training, it was realistic, and it hurt, and it changed behavior. But it also, I think, slightly increased the violence. volume of your cup. You could tolerate a little bit more without it spilling over the top. And one big difference, I will say that I think the instance of post-traumatic stress in the

special operations community is less than probably the conventional military because of the differences in jobs and roles. There's a difference between going out the door and seeking and expecting violence and being somebody who is in no control of when they encounter violence. Every time that I was putting my body armor on and we were going out to action at target, I expected violence behind every door.

And then I would come back from that and watch conventional military units tasked with patrolling IED-laden and stricken roads in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And their job literally was to show a U.S. presence on these roads. And it was a coin toss as to whether or not their vehicle was going to vaporize or they were going to make it home to do the exact same mission the next day.

No control sitting in a vehicle just waiting for the world to explode on you. The difference between those two things, in my opinion, has a huge impact on your body's reaction and ability to tolerate those stresses. And there's a couple things, too, when it comes to the cup, right? It's not all about how much it can fill up. It's also how much can you drain out before it spills over the top. And there's some things that you can do to help with that. First one is decompression time, right?

Just taking some time off. The second one and the most important one, in my opinion, is a support network. And that might be close friends, and it might be family, and it might be the people that you work with. but it's a matter of managing yourself because nobody really knows how much you can take other than you and it's managing how close you are to that spilling over and creating problems you know to be honest if you were to if you were to ask me for a precise definition of what post-traumatic stress is I don't know if I'd be able to give it to you I know that there's clinical terms for symptoms but I don't have a great explanation other than it's residual from past experiences that are

impacting your now. And by impacting your now, they're impacting your future. There's consequences to violent and traumatic occupations. There is an inherent burden that comes with those jobs. And that burden can only be born by the individual. it can't be carried by others. And it's surprising, I'm speaking from my own experience, it's surprising for me the things that have stuck with me

and the things that have not. So I'm going to give you an example. And the only reason I'm going to use this example is I've written about it on my blog before. If you're like ever super bored or constipated on the toilet and you need something to read, surf over to Confessions of an idiot.com, knock yourself out.

But it's not always about long, crazy 15, 18, 24 hours in combat and that just, it changes you for life. You know, for me, I've been surprised by the small moments of time that have stuck with me for years. So here's an example. And I'm going to give you this example. And then at the end of the example, I'm going to give you one second to make your mind up because that's how much time I had to make in the moment. So long time ago, over 10 years ago at this point, actually coming up on almost on 15 years. We were in Afghanistan doing what we did.

We had identified a target that we wanted to go action that night. And at the time, the safest way to do this was to park a distance off and walk in, kind of surround the objective, get some people onto the roof so they could look into the courtyard, have some people make entry into the courtyard and just do our job. My particular role for this evening is I was walking point, which means I was the first person in the patrol. I was responsible for navigating us to where we needed to go. And then from there, I was going to go up and be part of a rooftop security element. The patrol was very easy. It was kind of down a dry riverbed, so it naturally led us in the

direction that we wanted to go. The village was very visible. It was the only one in the near area. The entrance that we wanted to take also very easily identifiable, and so was the building. So we got there, no problem whatsoever. We, we as in, we as in, myself and one other guy set a ladder up against a wall that would give us access not to the courtyard that we wanted to be in but to the courtyard adjacent to the one we wanted to be in. I went up the ladder second. My buddy went up the ladder first. As soon as you got over the ladder, there happened to be an individual sleeping on the roof,

which is not uncommon in the summer months there. He was covered up in a mosquito net and he kind of like sat up and, I don't know, honestly, he kind of looked like a ghost. It was quite hilarious in the moment because he was just like his arms were waving around a little bit and it looked like a guy kind of wearing a bed sheet. So my buddy grabbed him up and proceeded to get into a wrestling match as I went over the wall and got onto the roof of the compound that we were going to be clearing. Visually cleared the courtyard.

Everything went as we had briefed it to go. You know, the courtyard door opened, everybody came in. And I was watching the courtyard that my teammates were in until they had made entrance into every one of the doors that were available. And at that point, there wasn't much for me to do in that particular courtyard because all the real estate was owned. So I did 180-degree turn. And at that point, my buddy was having a pretty hard time containing the guy in the mosquito net.

It's amazing how hard people will fight and how much strength they can find when they're scared to death. So he had called for an additional guy to come up the ladder. right before I turned around he made that call which kind of piqued my attention a little bit so I turned around and looked at the courtyard that was originally at my back and what I saw from a distance on the far wall was the shape running up the stairs from my left to right and all I could see was that shape coming up the stairs with an AK-47 at the low ready and he was going to have a shot on my buddy and probably five steps so there's a scenario what do you

you going to do? Time's up. Okay, so I had one second to decide what I was going to do. And in that one second, my weapon got shouldered, came off safe, the laser was on, and I started shooting that individual until he stopped moving and fell backwards down the stairs and never moved again for the rest of his life. I had about one second to make that decision. And if you put me back into that situation today, given the information I had at the time, I'm going to make the same decision every single time. Now, in the moment, I do remember thinking back that the shape looked not like a full, like it was slightly smaller than normal, but I just assumed it was the distance. And come to find out later on, because obviously we then cleared that courtyard as well, the individual

that I shot was probably early teen. and the weapon that he was carrying had a load of magazine and he did not have a round in the chamber meaning if he had pointed the gun at my friend and pulled the trigger it would have gone click so what happened was that the father was sleeping on the roof and his son heard his dad call for help and he grabbed a gun and he was going up to aid his father and he was going up to aid his father and made it about halfway up the stairs. Now, that was one second of my life. And I think about that kid probably nearly every day.

And I think about that kid nearly every day and not even necessarily in a negative manner, but I think about that situation every day because I have sons that bracket his age. I think that kid was probably the age right in between my two boys. I have a boy who's turned in 14 in about two weeks, and I have a boy that just turned 12. And I understand why he was doing what he was doing. And I understand and intuitively know that if my sons heard the same thing, they would do the same thing. And in an instant, I changed the story arc of a family's life.

And it's not that it bothers me, but that will be. be with me for the rest of my life. And that's the burden. One second of your life that you'll think about every day for the rest of your life. And when I was retired from the military, to become military retired, it's all based off of largely paperwork. I mean, obviously, the paperwork is based off of things that have happened to your body or experiences that you had. But they sent me for a month out to Bethesda, to a place called NICO, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence. And by far, the best medical treatment I've ever received. And the reason it was so good is that it was all inside of one building.

So if you needed blood work, it's the second door on the left. If you needed audio work, it's the third door on the right. Full spectrum, all-encompassing medical treatment, the best by far I ever had. and I told myself when I went there, you know, the one thing that I was going to do, and I knew that they were going to do is conversations with psychiatrists and psychologists. And honestly, I don't know the difference other than one prescribes drugs and I don't think the other one does. But I was just going to answer honestly the questions that they had. And then after being medically retired, you have to go through a rating system in the Veterans Administration, the VA. And the same thing.

You have to talk to Sykes and Shrinks, and I, you know, I, I, I answered the questions honestly. And some of the questions, you know, it's not, it's not like, hey, are you, do you have a gun and you're looking at it every morning wondering whether or not you should kill yourself or continue on with your day? It's, do you have thoughts about things from, you know, your time in the military service? Yeah, sure, I do. Do you have the desire to beat people to death when they cut you off in traffic? Of course I have that desire. I don't act on it, but yeah. I go from zero to 10, or I have the capacity to go from zero to 10 sometimes, and it's something

that has to be managed. So I answer their questions honestly, and what it terminated in is they gave me a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress. And I don't know what that means, other than I have residual from my past experiences. And I don't know if it's ever going to go away. I don't think it's ever going to go away, but I really don't know. And, you know, you can call it whatever you want to. You can call it a problem or you can call it, you know, you can call it your demons if you want to.

But the grips that I've come to is that I need those demons because they drive me to make sense of what it is that I used to do and to create positivity out of those experiences. To take it from something that could easily take me to circling the toilet bowl to hopefully helping other people never get to that place or help other people make their, experience in their life better. Those demons drive me to be positive. I need them. I want them. They're a part of who I am and I just keep tabs on them. The only reason I bring that stuff up and the only reason that I talk about myself is because I know a lot of people don't want to. There's like some type of negative connotation of having some baggage associated with being in the military. or experiencing combat and put it down. You don't need to have it.

There's nothing wrong with being human in understanding that, yeah, you're not made of this unobtainium armor where there is no impact and there is no effect. The reason that the person asked this question is likely under the impression that these issues are not dealt with as much in the special operations community

is because, in my opinion, again, the guys are quieter about it. It's a very A-type personality-driven, and it's a lot to live up to, to be a seal, to be honest. Like there's some expectation associated with that, and generally that expectation is that you're bulletproof. But believe me, from my own personal experience in the things that I've seen, we're all human and we all deal with it in our own ways. But it has impact and effect on every single person. So with that, it gets me to the second part of what I opened this with is, you know, what can you do if you see somebody or you know somebody that you think is struggling with this? So what I will say about that is, is this.

The individual that is struggling, in my experience from what I've seen, generally inherently and intuitively understands that something, is off. And very, very often they are hypersensitive and hypercritical about that. So you have to approach this issue with extreme caution. And I would almost say extreme compassion. You may get, well, first of all, don't do this. Don't go up to your friend and say, hey, man, you're fucked up. That's not the way to go with this. You may get from somebody, hey, you won't or you don't understand. Like, I can't talk to you because you're not going to understand. And the response that I would recommend that you go with is something along the lines of, you're right, I don't understand. But I love you and I'm worried about you. And that's a hard thing to say from one guy to another

guy. But guess what? It's harder to be at a funeral. So if you're in that spot, do something about it and reach out. There's some complexities when it comes to service members dealing with these issues because the underpinning point that you have to remember is that the service member has to want it for themselves. You cannot do it for them. And it's 2017. There's millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars waiting to help. There are hundreds, if not thousands of organizations that are standing by ready to help. help, but no one can do it for you. And asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. And I personally know some guys who didn't reach out for help because they didn't want to

be defined by a diagnosis. So don't be. Deal with your issues, deal with your shit, and then move on. Just like you shouldn't be defined by a job title. You shouldn't be defined by a diagnosis either. get yourself to a good place and then turn right around and help others because i tell you right now this stuff is not a one and done it's not like you can go talk to a counselor and you're like hey oh how's it going this is me this is what i'm feeling like you're not going to walk out of there and like the seas are going to part or the clouds are going to part and the rays of sunshine are going to come down it's not a one and done but if you go and you dedicate yourself to helping other people you're going to stay involved in the process so if you're sitting there

listening to this and you think that you know somebody who you're concerned about, who may need help, do something about it. I think I said it in the last podcast. You know, pain doesn't really hurt that much, but regret really does. Imagine the regret that you would feel for the rest of your life if you knew there was something you can do and you didn't. So be there for the person and do the right thing, but don't enable them, right? and you cannot do it for them.

There are so many things that are more difficult and more impressive than being a seal. You know, I hear people all the time, oh, you were a seal. That's awesome. That's so impressive. And it means cool to hear. I'm not going to lie. It's like, yeah, I mean, I'm proud of the fact that that's what I did. But there are things that are way harder.

And there are things that are way more impressive. One of them is asking for help. And that's really hard for guys to do. Embrace your shortcomings and your weaknesses and your struggles. Yeah, that's way harder than being a seal and being vulnerable, especially for guys. If you need help, ask for it. And if somebody asks you for help, be there for them. I'm certainly by no means a perfect human being, and I have my ups and downs.

And when I have downs, I mantra, I guess it would be, I don't know what it is. but you know what I try to tell myself is that nothing lasts forever even the worst pain is eventually going to subside and you know yeah life sucks right now but it's going to suck less tomorrow and if it doesn't suck less tomorrow it'll suck less in two days and you just got to you have to get yourself through that point I can't imagine how bad it is to be in a place to not know what to do and not know who to reach out to. So if you're in that place right now, reach out to somebody. And if you don't have anybody to reach out to me. My email is pretty easy. It's Andy Stumpf 212 at gmail.com. And I'll at least try to point you in the right direction. So not to end on a somber note,

but I think it was important to end on that. That's all I got for this week. Catch you guys next week. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is it. Episode 15. That is more podcast. in a seven-day time period than I've ever done. And it's pretty damn fun. Thank you again for all the questions on social media. That was awesome. I mean, I probably had 60 and I was able to answer, I think, four. I went longer than I wanted to go.

So we'll do it again for sure. Like I said, I'm going to be traveling starting here on Wednesday, but I'll get another podcast in if I can. And then, as always, thank you, everybody, for supporting the podcast, for buying the shirts, for buying the coffee mug. It's awesome. If you guys have them, please take pictures and post them on social media and tag me in there. I want to see these things in the wild.

And if you're enjoying the podcast and you haven't written a review, do me a favor and write a review on iTunes, good, bad or ugly. I want to hear what you guys have to say. And if you have a suggestion for improvement, well, don't be quiet little church mouse. Open your mouth. Let me know what you think. Later.