Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 20 - A small rant, questions from the internet

Episode Date: November 6, 2017

I intended for this episode to be dedicated to answering military themed questions from the internet. After ranting for 25 minutes over my frustration about the handling and reaction to the deaths of the Army soldiers in Africa, I did actually answer some questions. Thank you to those who submitted them, and thank you to everyone listening.

Ladies and gentlemen, episode 20, I'm going to go ahead and call this a milestone. Never thought I would get this far, having a blast doing it. So here we go. I was going to dedicate this entire episode today just to some internet questions. I get hit up all the time about questions on my military career or things that happened inside of the military. Just questions about the military in general. And I'm not a huge fan of answering them. and actually somebody, one of the questions was, why am I not a fan of talking about my previous

career or why am I, I think it was either ashamed or embarrassed of my time in the military. And it's absolutely not that. And if it comes off that way, that's an error on my part in the way that I'm talking about it. It's more that my own personal desire not to be defined by that time of my life. I don't want to be known as that guy. I don't want to be constantly looked at as a person who had an occupation in the past. I'd like to take those things that I learned and I experienced and I saw with my own eyes in that occupation and try to find something to do, find something positive to do with them and hopefully

impact others. And I would rather be known for that and because of that than my previous career. So I'm very proud of it. If I had the choice in front of me again, I would absolutely take it. I just don't want that to be all that I am. Before I get started, there are has been something eaten at me for a couple of weeks that I wanted to do a podcast on earlier and I didn't because I wanted some more time to pass. Not for myself, but for the people that I would be talking about based on what I have seen people in that experience or in the middle of that experience, what they need. What they need is time. And what I'm talking about, to be clear, were the soldiers that were killed in Africa and how the death of those

soldiers became completely, utterly, and absolutely politicized. It bothered me, and it has eaten at me since I first saw it hit the mainstream media, social media, and every type of media in between. But I didn't want to pile on it. And I didn't want to pile on it because I don't care about the people talking on social media. I don't care about the people screaming convinced that they're right. I don't care about the people trying to turn it into a political argument. I care about the family of those that were killed. And the one thing I wish they would have been able to have

is some peace and some time to be able to deal with it on their own. And I just didn't want a heap on top of that. On October 4th, so actually it is more than that. than a few weeks ago. Now we're talking about almost a month. Four U.S. soldiers were killed conducting an operation in Africa. From my understanding, they were not there in a direct combat role. I'm using air quotes as I say that, meaning they were not there on the ground seeking to engage with an enemy.

From my understanding, what happened is they were ambushed on a patrol and they did the best they could to fight their way out of it. And in the course of that event, four U.S. service members lost their life. If you didn't see it, I can't recommend enough going and finding the speech that was given at the White House. Maybe speech isn't the right word. The briefing that was given at the White House by retired general John Kelly, who is currently President Trump's chief of staff. I'll try to find a link to it and potentially put it up when I post this podcast. What I would love for everybody to do is to stop listening right now and actually go and find that interaction with the press corps. And I would love for everybody to listen from start to finish when he's describing what happens when a U.S. soldier is lost anywhere in the world until that soldier is reunited with their family.

And I'd love it if for two minutes of your life, you could put down whatever hat you wear, whether that's the hat of somebody who's a devout on the left, whether that's the hat of somebody who's devout on the right, put it down for a minute, and don't think about it from a political perspective. Don't try to figure out why the individual might have joined the military. Don't try to figure out why the government sent them there.

Just listen as an American. do the best you can to put yourself in the position of a mother or a father or a husband or a wife or a brother or a sister or a best friend or an acquaintance or a distant relative of somebody who's going to be on the receiving end of that knock on the door in the morning listen to the description of what happens to our man or woman that falls in the service of this country from the actions of the individuals around them, to the air crews that carry and transport the body, generally to Europe first, then do the United States, packed in ice to the Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware. The actions taken by those people to try to make the remains as presentable as humanly possible

so they can be returned to the family. And then after imagine filling that role along the way, try to imagine that you're the person. When you're having there, your coffee first thing in the morning, you get a knock on the door. And standing there is a man or a woman in a military dress uniform who delivers to you information that opens up the trap door on your life. I've never been the recipient of one of those knocks, and I hope that I never am. But I've seen the result of those knocks shortly after they occurred. And I don't have the vocabulary to describe what it looks like, what it feels like, and the impact that it has. And the impact that it has on a family. The best I can do is say that the environment is filled with shock,

oftentimes disbelief, the deepest darkest sadness that you've ever seen or experienced. It's overwhelming. It's a living nightmare for the people who answer that knock. What do those families need when they receive that information? They need support. They need compassion. They need space and they need time. Most often, there is an insatiable desire to be surrounded by those that knew the individual that was killed and to hear stories about that person and to hear about the experiences that were shared. So imagine that nightmare. Living through that, having to deal with that in and of itself, and at the same time,

the memory of your loved one is thrown into the middle of a national political squabble. not because those talking about your loved one cared or gave a rip about who your husband or wife was, but because it satisfies a talking point. From my view in the cheap seats, it makes me sick to my stomach. Because to me, it looks like these people who are making the most noise actually care the least, about the soldiers, about you and I, and about this country. They're mouth breathers, looking for talking points and not looking for a way to support a family in need. What's even worse is I think it perfectly defines where we are as a country right now.

Everybody just wants to be right, and everybody is convinced that they absolutely are. I feel like we're at a place where we could not see the forest for the trees of our life depended on it. And I think we might be ready to fall in our face. And what worries me even more is I think that might be what we need as a country. We might need to stumble and fall flat on our face so we can realize the path that we're going down is not correct and we can pick ourselves up again and at least make an attempt to improve the situation that we're in. I cannot believe we're at a point in this country where you will literally see neighbors turn against each other because one person has a sign in their yard with a name on it. and the person right next door has a similar sign but with a different name on it. There's no attempt at understanding.

There's no attempt at conversation. And two people that probably lived together peacefully and harmoniously prior to this election cycle, or maybe they didn't. I don't know. I just didn't see it. But those two people now literally can't even have a conversation. They'll just yell back and forth the things that they believe with an inability to listen. And I don't understand how we got to that point,

where people with a bumper sticker on their car, although it doesn't happen often, I saw it enough, you know, those people getting pulled out of the car and getting physically assaulted, or if you have a hat on, or just a different belief in general. Couple that with the social media warriors, right, who can type all day long in this consequence-free environment, but they refuse to lift a finger in real life and do anything of consequence to help improve the society and culture and country that we're living in. I experienced this the other day.

It's like you're either left or the right. You have to, if you don't define yourself, other people are going to define you. But somebody reposted the link to the podcast I did about Las Vegas. And yes, I understand the gun control is a hotbed issue. And yes, I understand why the Second Amendment was written. I actually assumed most people knew that, which is why I didn't focus on the origins and the need for the Second Amendment. I focused on the gun rights that we have that come from it.

But there was a guy. I'm assuming it's a guy. That's probably a bad assumption. But so an individual disagreed completely with everything that I had to say, which is totally fine. I actually would love to sit down and have a conversation with this person. But the first thing out of his mouth, again, sorry, an assumption, the first thing out of this person's mouth was that I'm a leftist. and that is so offensive because I'm obviously right-handed. But it just cracks me up that it's so fast to to tranche somebody into a category that you think you can then contain with your ideas,

launch information at them, no discussion, and then just blindly disregard anything that that person has to say. The people that do that, I truly believe and think that in their heart that they think they are part of the solution. And in my mind, they're the problem. I'm so tired of political experts who seem to make it their goal in life that regardless of the subject matter that is presented to them, the breadcrumb trail begins back to politics. You can start a conversation about breakfast cereal. In three sentences later, you're talking about how the left after the right has destroyed breakfast cereal and how it's their fault. And then it just goes on and on and on. And they're experts on their opinion. And again, they can tell you exactly where the problems are,

but aren't lifting a finger to do anything in their neighborhood or their community other than sit there and complain about something they have no control over. I truly feel like we just completely lost our objectivity. Starting with the things that I feel make this country great. And that's the diversity, not from a level of skin color or gender, even though all those things are obviously extremely important and those things make this country what we are. We're a total melting pot. But I'm talking about ideas and thought process and challenging what it is that you think and not putting up walls to information so you only hear the things that you believe even just getting stuck in this reinforced echo chamber of ideas that only fit with the narrative

you want to live your life by. To a degree, I can understand why people are upset. There's crazy inequality in this country, as there is in every other country on the face of the planet. And I would love for somebody to provide for me an example of where inequality has not existed in any society since the incestate. of man. We've done some horrendous stuff as a country. Why people turn their back on that? I have no idea. I think we should own those things and constantly be striving to improve ourselves because of

the things that we've done in the past. Because those things, you know, light a fire underneath our ass and keep us moving in the right direction so we don't fall back into those pits. But let's be clear. We have it really good. If you're listening to this and you're in a first world kind of let's maintain just a little bit of objectivity. Okay? What I mean by that is when you go sit down on a toilet to go to the bathroom, the water that you're sitting over is cleaner than most people on earth will have access to the vast majority of their life.

A couple days ago, the new iPhone was released. There were people sleeping outside of retail stores in tents and sleeping bags to spend over $1,000 U.S. on the next gadget, basically a smart computer that they can carry around in their pocket. We pay more per ounce for coffee at Starbucks than we do gas coming out of the pump. We have it so good, so much better than most people in this world will never even have the opportunity to achieve. And we cannot see the forest for the trees. You know, with that lack of object activity comes things like the, I don't know the word, the politicalization. I don't even if that's a word, but that's what I'm going to say, of a phone call between the president of the

United States and a widow of a soldier that was killed in Africa. And from the cheap seats where I'm sitting, all it was about was talking points that satisfied one side or the other. It wasn't about the widow. It wasn't about the soldier. It was about one side of the other trying to be right. And it absolutely drives me nuts. Before I even get into the content of the phone call, which I will a little bit, ask yourself this. Do you think you could have made that call? If you had chosen to, do you think you would have picked the perfect words? Do you think that your delivery would have been perfect? And then look at it from the perspective of a person. receiving that call.

Would you want that conversation about your loved one that you'll probably never see again except under a flagged rake coffin? Do you really want that to bait it on a world stage? Does it help you mourn? Does it help you find peace? Does it help you take a step closer to closure? I can't imagine that it does. If I was on the receiving end of that call,

and the content of that call became the national narrative for a few days, it would in no way, shape, or form. Help me do any of those things. If anything, it might erode away at the value of the service of the individual who was lost. Now, for the content of the call itself, it seemed to hinge around one or two sentences. And paraphrasing it was that the individual, individual knew what they signed up for. Whether or not that truly came up in the conversation with the widow, I don't know. I've seen yes and I've seen no. And I don't even know what to believe

at this point because both sides of that argument are absolutely convinced that they're correct. So for a moment, let's assume that it did come up in the conversation. Now, in my personal opinion, is it tacky to say that to somebody to a grieving widow? Yes, it's not what I would want to hear. It's not what I necessarily think should be said. But in the same breath, I'm going to say that I don't think that that comment is wrong. Wrong in the sense of being inaccurate. When I joined in 1996, I think it is very possible that somebody could have enlisted in the military and not really known what they were getting themselves into or what they had, in air quotes, signed up for. I say that because there was not much military activity from a sustained combat perspective,

meaning these mature theaters of war like Iraq and Afghanistan. There wasn't anything even remotely of that size since Vietnam. There was Panama and Grenada and Blackhawk down in Mogadishu, but those were as far as not to take anything away from those, but as far as commitment from this country of both manpower, money and time, very, very, very small. And there's a variety of ways to serve into the military. Most of the branches, I believe, call them MOS, an MOS or military occupational specialty.

And the Navy was NEC. I think that stands for a naval enlistment classification or code. Depending on which one you pick, you could at that time in 1996 have little to no expectation of ever doing anything from a combat perspective. because the world was completely different. When 9-11 happened, there was a shift inside of the military going forward. If, you know, and pre-9-11, there's a variety of reasons that people would join the military. Economic, you know, it could be an escape from crippling poverty. It could be a way to see the world.

The GI Bill was a huge draw, served for four years and have your college essentially paid for. And then all the other reasons people would want to join from a patriotic perspective. and everything in between. Post 9-11, I think the argument is much more difficult to make that if you volunteered for military service, and again, in the armed services, if you volunteered for that, you had a much better idea of what it is that you were signing up for, especially as we committed to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. there were still some military specialties, by that I mean occupations inside of the military

that had a extremely low likelihood of seeing combat. But as the wars drug on and the strain to manpower increases or increased, they started implementing an individual augmentee program. And people who never thought they were likely going to be going to a combat zone, went there in a support capacity. And it's my opinion that if you go in a support capacity to a war zone, the second that you fly over that country into a war zone, you're a combatant.

You might get mortared, you might get ambushed, you're at war. The world changed after 9-11, as far as the military is concerned. But what didn't change is the enlistment contract. If you signed up pre-9-11 or you signed up post-9-11, you might have three-one. thought about it differently, but you signed exactly the same contract. And if I look at myself

all the way back until I initially signed the paperwork, did I know what I signed up for? Well, let's go through what happened. I volunteered to join the military when I was 17. My parents had to sign on the dotted line for me. I volunteered to go to Buds. I volunteered to re-enlist after serving at my first SEAL team. I volunteered for another six-month screening process. I went to war, re-enlisted again, came back to the West Coast, and voluntarily submitted my package to become an officer, and continued my career until I was medically retired. Now, I'll say this about my entire career. I didn't want to die. And quite frankly, I don't think anybody does. I think if you ask people, they'd probably say that they think it's not

going to happen to them or they always think it's going to happen to somebody else. Maybe that's the way of the human brain kind of dealing with the totality of something like that happening. But I know for myself, I just, I guess I kind of assumed it was always going to be somebody else. If I had died, I think my mom before she passed, my dad, my sister, my wife, my friends, anybody that knew me would agree that I would have died fighting for what I believed in. And I was, surrounded by the people that I wanted to be fighting with. So when I get asked the question, did I know what I signed up for? The answer is, you're goddamn right I did.

And although it might be tacky to say that to somebody, regardless of the situation, it doesn't change the validity. In 2017, when you're forward-deployed to Africa, supporting a special operations force, going on a potentially dangerous combat patrol, you know what you signed up for. And again, it might be tacky to say that, but that's not the point. It should have never become the national dialogue. It should have never been debated in the news because there was nothing to debate there other than political points.

And the left versus the right, trying to prove how correct they. are and how much better ideologically their beliefs are. And while this national discussion and debate was just firing off from the left and the right and everywhere in between, all I can keep thinking about are those family members who now are bearing the burden, the true burden of service and sacrifice. And I can only imagine how they would have rather focused on the memory of their loved one, as opposed to having their loved one and that loved one's service, the subject of a national debate. For everybody who got tied up in that debate and that discussion and the dialogue or however you want to frame it, I would like to think that most people get involved in

those things because they feel like they're doing the right thing. But if it happens again, which it's going to, don't do me a favor. Do the families? that are truly left to deal with those events a favor and think before you speak. And if what you're about to say is not going to do something to provide that environment for that family to heal and to mourn and to recover, then maybe you shouldn't say a damn thing. Because that conversation and that debate didn't make our country any better. It just showed the world how much objectivity we have truly lost. I apologize for the long opening, longest interest.

in the history of podcast probably. That's been pissing me off for a few weeks. I needed to get it off my chest. Okay. Let's dig into some internet questions. Episode 20, if you're still with me at this point, coming at you. Here we go.

I'm looking at danger close now. All right, everybody. It got a little weird. I know. Got a little crazy with my intro. Trying to rain it back here a little bit. I'm just going to breathe. I'm going to go through some internet questions,

specifically from Twitter. all of these are military based. Hopefully you guys can draw something from this and apply it to whatever it is you do for a living. So first question. As an instructor, how did you mentally break people other than trying to get them to become overwhelmed by the enormity or the duration of a task?

Now, I think the language in this question may come from how I've talked about it in the past. I think I might have used the term break when it comes to the students and it was my job to break them. But reality is my job was not to break people or not to break the students. My job was to apply a curriculum that was designed well before I went through and well before I went back as an instructor and to hold the standards of that curriculum.

The tools that I had to do that were mostly environmental. You know, you could play a little bit with hot and cold. I could play with fatigue. I could play with hunger a little bit. and then with those tools, what I was really trying to do is mess around with your own individual fear, your insecurity, your self-doubt, all that stuff that's going on in the soup in between your ears. It really wasn't about me trying to break people or get people to quit. It's about holding that standard. And the reason it's so important, especially in that job,

and I would say in any job, it's because allowing people to not meet the standard in training or early on, it puts other people in danger later. And for whatever reason, it seems to be, maybe because of the horrific sense of humor that the world seems to have or the way things always work out, it's never that individual that doesn't meet the standard that ends up suffering the consequences. It's the individuals that are around them. Now, to go back to Buds, and the standards that we have there, which again were created long before my time, both as a student and as an instructor. It's important to remember that we're not looking for good people.

If I just wanted to populate the SEAL teams with a bunch of good people, I could go down to downtown San Diego and we could do a resume fair and we could probably find some people that are great and that are amazing. There are very specific standards that we need met because of the demands of the job in and of itself. We're looking for people who can meet those standards. And that's why I don't care if there are ever women seals. I get asked that nearly every time that I do public speaking. Hand will come up, usually from a woman, genuine interest and intrigue.

What do you think about women coming through seal training? And my answer is always the same and it's truly how I feel. As long as the standard is not modified and that standard is driven based off of the real world demands of the occupation. I could care less if it's a man or a woman that's going through training because all I care about is that standard. If there are women who can meet that standard, hey, welcome aboard. Let's go get it. People like to look at Buds as an anomaly.

And in some ways it is, it is a filtering and selection program for later on in the military in a specific job and career field. But that doesn't mean that those techniques and that holding the standard and that importance of doing that has no application in business. The curriculum and training, they're designed to do their job. The instructor's job is to hold the individuals and keep those standards honest. And outside of the military world, if you lower your standards, and right now I'm talking about business or whatever it is that you may do, if you allow your standards to be lowered as people come through the front door, don't be surprised by their poor performance later.

It has to be set and it has to be maintained. Question number two. I guess it slightly ties into question number one because it's talking about buds again. And if you're new to the podcast and you don't know what buds stands for, it stands for basic emphasis on basic underwater demolition slash seal. You're not a seal at the end of it. It's a six-month program that puts you on a course or a path to become a seal. But the question is, other than quitting, why do most people get dropped from buds, specific injuries or failure to listen properly.

Now, I wish I had some exact stats on this, so I'm going to have to give some, well, not some, but completely anecdotal, and you should hear that as being my guess as to the stats. But if I had to take a stab at it, I would say 80% of the people who are not successful making it through training do what's called DORRing or drop on request. Literally it's you verbalize that and you're pulled from the training environment.

there is some paperwork that has to follow and then you have to ring a brass bell three times to symbolize the end of your training at the buds compound. So I would say 80% of people go that route, a verbal quitting of the program. The other 20% I would say are split between medical drops or performance drops. And for a little bit of context,

as a student coming through training, and this may have changed, I was an instructor back in 2006. Yeah, wow, dang, that was a long time ago. So we're talking 11 years ago. Some things might have changed. At that time, you had two, you were, as a student, you had the opportunity to be rolled inside of training twice.

You had a medical role, which could be something along the lines of an injury, or you had a performance role, which could be a failure to meet one of the published standards. You did not get two performance. performance roles and you would not get two medical roles. I'm sure that's happened at some point or another, but it would have to be exceptionally rare. As far as the actual injuries go, the most common things that I saw were shin splints, which is overuse and occasionally broken bones,

whether it be falling or the obstacle course out on the sand. People fall on that all the time, but they're actually landing on soft sand, but it happens from time to time. So that'd be the two things, you know, shin splints and broken bones. And on the performance side of the house, you're tested every week. There's a standard for a run, four-mile run specifically, two-mile ocean swim, and then the obstacle course. And there's also academic standards as well. But on those physical time standards, as you begin first phase, you have a benchmark that you have to meet. In second phase, there's another benchmark that times are faster. And then third phase an additional benchmark. And even though some people are an incredible shape when they

show up, that training is designed to find your weaknesses. And in my class, the best runner and the best swimmer, hands down, like we're talking world class, probably, I don't know if I can say Olympic, but high collegiate level competitive ability of both running and swimming, first people to quit. Which was surprising to me, because the confidence and the swagger that they carried with them. But that guy who could swim really well, man, he could not run on the sand. And the dude who could run his butt off, he kind of sank like an anchor in the ocean. And they were challenged with something that they weren't the master of. And I would have to say that they were both came in from an environment where they were very catered to because they were at

the top of their game. And then they got kicked square in the nuts. And they couldn't deal with it. They could not deal with that hiccup on that challenge and that adversity. And it terminated them quitting training. I don't know if they came back later on and graduated, but that performance in Buds is more about being a generalist than being a specialist. Question number three, we might as well continue with the Bud's motif. This question reads,

any advice related to workouts for a Bud's type process? When I read this question, I hear an individual asking, how do I prepare for fill in the blank? That might be my journey to becoming a ranger. That might be my journey to becoming a par rescue jumper or a CCTV. That might be a seal. It might be a green beret.

Fill in the blank. I get this question often as well. The advantage that everybody in this day and age has is the internet. So whatever it is you want to do, whatever selection process that you want to go through, get online and get as much information as you possibly can. In the early 90s, when I was trying to find out stuff about buds, I went to the library. You have more information than that library had accessible for me in your pocket, so use it. You should be able to find all of the physical standards and probably all of the physical tests as well.

And if you're training to do something like this or you think that you want to take your life in this direction, if you have the standard and you know what you're going to be challenged with, I mean, make those things your benchmarks. And when I say that, make sure that you're not reaching to achieve that benchmark. Don't rely on having your best day ever to be able to pass. I'm sure a lot of them are going to be a variation of run, swim, pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups,

something along those lines. Maybe it'll involve a rucksack, whatever it may be. don't rely on a great day for you to be able to pass those things you need to make them easy to achieve now i don't recommend that they become the only training that you do like i said make them a benchmark and check in with them enough and as often as possible to ensure that you are still meeting and exceeding those standards and then beyond that i would get as well-rounded as you could possibly be. In my opinion, there is no downside to being a strong person. So I would not skip barbell and dumbbell and strength training work. And you can call it whatever you want to call it.

You can call it functional training. You can call it CrossFit. You can call it Jim Jones. I really don't care what it is. Do complex exercises with weight at a high intensity, but then also be very careful of making sure that that's not all you do either. checking back in with those benchmarks. And in addition to those benchmarks, you need to put some distance work in as well. When it comes to that distance work, like I already mentioned in question number two, about one of the most common injuries we saw of buds, shin splints, from my understanding that is an injury that comes from overuse.

Consider how many miles you're putting in on your body and really look at doing some high-intensity interval work to replace some of that distance. Make sure you're putting the distance in when you need, but you can really reduce the mileage underneath your feet by doing some high-intensity interval training. With that training, try to find the equipment that you're going to be using. A good example of this would be running in soft sand on boots

like you're going to, if you choose to go to buds. They also use a very specific type of fin in buds, and it's not the same type of fin you're going to find at your normal sporting goods store. So you could go get the... these crazy three feet long fins and have these ridiculous swim times. When you get issued the fins at buds, it's not going to be anything like that. And your feet and ankles may not be prepared for it. So again, do your research and get the gear that you can.

Don't run too much in boots. Run as much as you need to so that you can do it comfortably. And then focus on your training. And the last thing I'll say, regardless of the training program, or I should say selection process that you're trying to prep yourself for, is that do not go into that selection course depleted. I found and still find that most people are overtrained and under-recovered. You need to be physically prepared.

And in addition to being physically prepared, you need to have your brain packed. And what I mean is you need to be prepared for it to suck. And if you can go on there rested and prepared, it's going to take a little bit of that burden off your brain for you. So take it very, very seriously. but don't go too far down the rabbit hole. You got to save a little bit of gas in the tank for what it is you're actually trying to achieve. Question number four. Looking back on your career, what would you change, if anything?

Question mark. What would today's Andy say to first day in the Navy Andy? It's a good question. And the first thing I'll say is that if I had a chance to go back and do it all over again, If I had a time machine knowing what I know now and I could go and teleport back to the day that I left for Navy boot camp, knowing the journey that was in front of me, I absolutely would do it again. But I definitely would have some advice for my younger self. And I think the most important advice looking back on my life and where I am now and I guess where I want to go, even though I'll be the first to tell you I'm not sure where I'm going and necessarily what I want to do. my advice for the younger me would be to never lose sight of the fact that your time in the military

and your time in the SEAL teams is going to come to an end. And regardless of how much you love the community and how much you want to stay involved and how much you want to convince yourself that the team needs you and you should never leave, the reality is that the ship is going to move on without you at some point. And just always keep that in the back of your mind. Not saying don't focus on your job, I guess what I'm saying is just be aware that at some point you're going to have to start thinking in a different manner. Along those lines, one thing I definitely would have told my younger self is to take advantage of the educational opportunities. There are amazing programs in the military, whether it be job occupational enhancement stuff for your job in the military that you

can get college credits for or the tuition assistance program inside of the military that can help you no cost, you know, college educations, both associates and bachelors. I know many people who were able to go as far up the ladder as they wanted to go without going a dime out of pocket. There's language opportunities. I mean, there's plenty there. You just have to seek them out sometimes. As far as things I would have changed, maybe not necessarily professionally, but personally advice I would have given to my younger self. I think the best piece of advice I could have given to my younger self would be to spend more time being present with my family. And I don't mean present as in physically present. I mean present as in checked into the moment,

not thinking about what I'm going to do at work the next day, but literally just enjoying the fact that I have amazing young children in spending that time with the kids instead of spending that time being there with the kid and not being emotionally and mentally available for what it is that they wanted to do. It's one of the larger guts of my life, and it tugs at me every single day. I feel like I missed out on so much stuff, even though that I was right there. And kind of in lines with that, I would take advantage of more of the family programs that the military has to offer. They offer retreats, counseling programs, communication programs, support groups for when the elements are overseas and they're deployed.

and all of those things I look back and I wish some of the programs they have now are amazing and they didn't have when I was in, but there still were programs when I was in and I wish that for the benefit of my family, I would have taken advantage of some of those things. So in a nutshell, I would have told my younger self just to keep a little bit of an eye on the future, make sure I have a plan. The military is going to get their pound of flesh out of you. Just make sure you get your pound of flesh out of them too. Question number five. Please discuss how the SEALs instill leadership skills for all, regardless of rank.

It's a great question. First and foremost, you need to tell your people what you expect of them. And what we expect of our personnel inside of the SEAL teams is very simple. We expect them to be leaders. So we tell them that. We lay out the expectations. And then we teach them. And it starts in day one.

I don't know how many times I heard in my career. in the absence of leadership, you need to step up and you need to make a call. Over and over and over again, it's reinforced that if no one is making a decision, you need to step up and you need to make that decision. So we teach them these things. We explain what we are expecting. We teach them how to do it. And then we give them the opportunity to practice in training.

There's a variety of different ways that this shows its face. one of the ones that I'm sure is pretty common throughout a lot of military training is that they'll take the junior man, the person who has the least amount of rank in the class, and they'll put them in the position of the officer in charge, which would be the person who has the most amount of rank in the class or the training environment. And you're gauging the knowledge, understanding, and ability of that junior personnel. And then the leader can sit back and see and judge for themselves how well they're doing a good job or what type of job they're doing, leading and imparting information on others. We also have it show up all the time by removing leadership from evolutions at decision points. And I know I've talked about this before, but one of the most common ones that we'll do is when we're out in the desert or an environment where you're walking in a group of people. Most of the time this is going to occur when you're doing shooting maneuvers.

And an element will be engaged and the element will start shooting. And if the element is large enough, there's going to be an officer in charge. So if you get up to about four to six to eight people, you're going to be used to working in a team and you're going to get used to whether you recognize it or not the same person making the call because they are in charge of the team. And we'll allow an evolution to go to a point where that person who is generally in charge of making the decision gets ready to make a call and we pull that leader out of the element and we watch what happens. And it's not pretty usually when we first start. and a lot of the times the junior personnel can get overwhelmed because even though they know that they need to be a leader and that's what's expected out of them, they don't have much time in practice actually executing that theory. It's still a theory to them at that point. And we repeat that through every phase of training that you go through. And eventually what you get is somebody that is not really impacted or effective when the leadership position they're used to hearing isn't there to make a decision because what they do is they look around and recognize that that person is either gone, or maybe their time or task saturated, maybe they got killed in a worst case scenario.

And they make the call that needs to be made. What that training does is develop proactive thinkers, not reactive robots. It develops people that will come to you with solutions instead of asking you, hey boss, what do you want me to do? Which is not what you want your people to be saying to you. You want them to come to you and say,

hey, this is what I see, this is what I think needs to be done. And you can go and you can either make a correction to that and send them on their way. Or you can look at the plan they have in front of me, like, hey, right on, go ahead and execute that. And you can sit back as a leader and worry about the bigger picture. That type of training is not specific to the military at all. You can do this, in my opinion, in any sector that you feel that there would be value.

And it's not difficult to do. Obviously, do it in training first. Unless you've exposed your people to this type of stuff, I absolutely would do it in a controlled training environment, but create a test scenario. I recommend putting a time restriction on it, and I recommend making it a difficult time restriction. And then watch as your team settles in to work together, let him get to a point where a decision needs to be made by some of the leadership, and then pull the leader. You're going to get a baseline for how your organization operates when either you as the leader or the leaders that work underneath you are not present.

In my opinion, that's the true baseline of your organization. If you don't get the result you want, change your training, change your culture. But just remember that if you don't set the standard and then hold yourself to that standard, don't expect other people to do it. Question number six. I think this is number six. Through buds and the teams, can you discuss mental preparation versus physical preparation and how that transitioned into the civilian world?

What I'll say about this, to me, the physical preparation was kind of always the assumed baseline. Although I very often say that Buds is nearly all mental, there is a huge physical component to that. What I mean by saying it's all mental is that your mind is the only limiting factor to your body. You have no idea how much you can actually do if you can keep your mind in a position where you're never willing to give up and constantly ready just to continue moving forward. You'll surprise yourself a thousandfold. Having said that, you have to be pretty capable to make it through buds. And then the SEAL teams, most of the training is you're walking around on your feet. It's very physically challenging. So the physical preparation is just kind of a, it's a baseline. That fitness and probably need for mental sanity

to go jack some steel around every single day, it becomes part of who you're. are. I mean, it's certainly part of who I am now. If I don't get a physical release from working out after a few days, my world starts to come a little bit unraveled. I'm sure my wife totally digs it. For physical prep in buds, if you don't have it, you're just dropped from training. And the teams, if you don't have it, your performance suffers, and then you're going to get a little conversation from the people who are working for you. In buds, you're just trying to complete the job, which is get through training. And the teams, You're just trying to maintain your competency and capability at the variety of different things that you have to do.

A lot of that's going to be with body armor on and external weight, so you're training for that stuff. The mental preparation, I know I've talked about probably too much for people to be interested to hear me repeat myself on previous podcasts. So I'll keep it super short and say that the goal and the strategies that I've seen work is just to keep your world small. And focus on the things you can control and the things that are right in front of your face. don't get worried about six months from now or even sometimes six hours from now. Take it a day at a time or an hour at a time or a step at a time if you need to. And get your brain into a position and a place that nothing is going to stop you. That's the key to making it through buds.

Buds is not easy, but neither is life in the SEAL teams. And if I look back at all the training evolutions that we did, none of them were easy. You were never allowed to just mail it in. We would not practice scenarios where everything went right. We would also often not practice scenarios where absolutely everything went wrong. There's a balance. You can reach a diminishing point of returns very easily. And the senior training cadre did an excellent job of being able to navigate that place where you become overwhelmed

and you're not learning anything. And it's too easy and you're also not learning anything. But it was never easy. it was always extremely difficult. And from what I've seen, you become accustomed to what you are exposed to. So you become accustomed to the challenge, to the difficulty, to the grind, to the struggle. And again, we're not talking about physically, we're talking about mentally. Taking that mindset from the military world to the civilian world and being accustomed to looking for the challenge and being accustomed to setting and then achieving what most people would

consider to be unattainable goals, disregarding failure along the way, but appreciating what you can learn from it. If you do those things, you're going to develop a mentality that you will never be stopped. And that's exactly what's going to happen. What I have seen from people who take those philosophies from military service and apply them to civilian life, they are literally that. They are unstoppable. My last question for today, which I'm not going to lie, this one was my favorite. I have to read it verbatim. The 1,000 yard stare, comma, I constantly hear it referred to by team guys. Could you describe it, please? And do you have it? Question mark. So we're going to work this one back to front. Do I have it? What is that? A rhetorical question? If the 1,000,

yard stair was a calendar, I'd be Mr. September of the thousand yards stair, okay? Obviously, I have it. And speaking of calendars, could you describe it, please? It's a calendar look or a look that guys will throw out when they're doing a group photo and they want to look tough. And if you think I'm kidding, I'm going to get some video of what people say right before pictures and when they're discussing, hey, are we going thousand yards stairs? Are we going smiles or no smiles? What what are we going to do? Right? The SEAL teams is a combination of a bunch of monkeys who have the combined emotional age of probably a 10 year old and we do some dumb stuff, like take ridiculous group pictures where people talk about 1,000 yards stairs. As far as to team guys referring

to it, to be honest with you, I don't know. I'm sure everybody has a different definition of this. I think of a thousand yard stair. It's kind of a look of concentration or reflection or just somebody kind of staring off into the distance. And I think a lot of people associate that with maybe having seen too much. Maybe they're trying to come to grips with who they are, the things that they've done. I don't know. I can't answer for anybody else because all I can ever think of when I read this question is watching people try to take tough pictures and get totally busted and then crack up afterwards. So don't put too much weight into the thousand yards stare. It's somewhere in between Latigra and Magnum, best used for a calendar or a selfie. And that's all I got. Thanks for the

questions this week, guys. I'll catch you on episode 21. Thank you everybody for tuning in. I promise in the future I will not have a 25 minute intro, probably. Thank you for everybody who's buying all of the apparel. I'm getting pictures from everywhere, getting pictures at the gym, getting pictures from presentations. I'm seeing the car. coffee mugs out in the wild. I did the order of sweatshirts. I think I have maybe 15, 20 sweatshards left. So if you want to get one, get one.

Considering doing another run, we'll see how it goes. Like I said, I'm not interested in adventures and retail sales. But if you guys are interested in getting them, I'll throw them up there. Thank you for all the reviews on iTunes. Thank you for the ratings. Thank you for all of the feedback. And again, if you have feedback, good, bad, ugly, or indifferent, hit me up with it i am figuring this out one day one episode at a time if you have a suggestion

on how to make this better i'm all ears uh hit me up via email through the contact on the website yeah let me know what you think and you know thank you for all the support wouldn't be nearly as fun if it weren't people out there listening catch you guys next week later