Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 71 - Listener Q and A

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

I asked for difficult questions, you delivered.  My biggest mistake as a parent, and how I dealt/deal with it, and my biggest mistake as a SEAL, and the impact it had on my career.  Why I feel like I was put on this earth to "fight," how one reconciles a calm demeanor with a "savage/kill" mindset. Advice for keeping your ego in check.  How to push through or keep going when you are at your lowest points.  Enjoy.    Audience Survey: http://suhttp://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=4zGlq6bTDFvj&ver=short

What's going on, everybody? Episode 71 is going to be Q&A from you. Those that listen and responded when I put out a tweet asking for specifically. Let me pull this thing up here. Complicated and difficult questions. Specifically, the more complicated and difficult, the better. You guys definitely delivered. So I picked as many as I could to try to keep this 30 to 45 minutes.

Let's get into it. Episode 71 Q&A from your input. Here we go. Digitize me. As a father, what's the worst mistake you've ever made? Why? How did you remediate? And or what were the repercussions of that decision?

Bonus points. Same question for your time as a seal. And what was the delta between those decisions and environments? So I wrote some stuff down. I think I covered mostly what you asked. I might have left out the delta between those different environments. So we'll start with the first part of your question. As a father, what's the worst mistake I've ever made?

I'm going to put this into two parts. I cannot think of like one specific catastrophic thing that just steps out in my mind where I slam my palm against my forehead and go, Do! I wish I just could go back in time and change that. I can think of a few things, but none that are like a volcano erupting. But what I can think of are things that I consistently and constantly struggle with. And I'll put those into two parts. The first one that I struggle with as a father is allowing outside influence or my personal situation or my fatigue or whatever it may be to impact my speech and behavior when it comes to my kids.

which ties into the second part of that is the example that I'm setting for them. So it's the allowing of that outside influence to impact how I behave as a father in front of my kids. First and foremost, I'm not qualified to give parenting advice. I'm anything but a perfect parent. I don't know if that's even possible to be, but I am constantly trying to improve. So back to those two parts, though. I find personally that when I am stressed out about fill in the blank, a requirement that I need to fill a decision that I might be laboring over a little bit, whatever it may be, when I'm stressed out about that, or if I got a pretty poor night's sleep, or I'm exhausted from my day, or perhaps I've had an argument with my wife, or just preoccupied with something that I think is more important, what that usually ends up. up looking like for me as a parent is that I have zero patience with my kids or any issue that

my kids may feel as important to them in the moment. I have zero tolerance to them just being kids. And if you're a parent, you know exactly what that means. I have three kids, 15, 13, and 10. I swear, any two of them generally get along famously. But if you interject the third, it seems often as if it's impossible to get them to not try to pull each other's hair out. So when I say kids being kids, I mean them interrupting each other and then trying to correct each other for that. They're arguing over stuff that is utterly and completely ridiculous, where that's what it seems like to me, or they're being loud in a moment where I'm trying to be quiet. All of those things, whatever it may be, because of those outside influences that I allow, that I choose to allow, I end up snapping.

And by snapping, I mean I end up being pretty quick-lipped, which is another turn. for being an asshole to my children, which there is nothing on earth that I care more about than my children. And I can only assume what it feels like to them when I act like that. I can only assume that to them it feels like I don't care, which absolutely breaks my heart. It's hard for me to talk about this because I can think of examples recently where I fell short of the example that I want to set, and it breaks my heart because they probably feel like I don't, care and the reality is is I couldn't care more. I'm just failing as a dad in that moment. All of the behaviors that I listed are bad examples. Anytime that I allow my emotions to

govern my decision-making process and it impacts my kids, it's a bad example. Anytime I argue with their mother in front of them, it's a terrible example. And it's a teaching point. Nobody is going to agree all the time. Kids need to be taught how to disagree with respect and empathy for the person that they're disagreeing with. They don't need to be taught to yell. I can tell you that much, and I can think of plenty of instances where I set that example instead of the respectful disagreement and empathy, and it sucks. Any behavior I would not want to see mirrored by my kids as something that I need to be cognizant of in myself. Because the negative repercussion, that I have seen multiple times is those or are those behaviors mimicked from my kids.

They follow your example as a parent because you are in the most important leadership role that exists on earth. Good example or bad example. It is your choice with which one you set, but the mimicked behavior is coming directly from the example that you choose to set. So that is not a direct answer to that question because, like I said, it's something that I constantly struggle with as opposed to one big volcano exploding. But what happens when this does happen, what I do about it, the first thing I do is I address it head on with my kids. And there's no doubt when I need to actually have these conversations with my kids because my body gives me all of the feedback that I need. I feel like crap when I behave this way because I inherently

know that it is not correct as a parent. So what do I do? I sit down and I talk about. I talk with him. I explain the mistake that I made. I explain explicitly that the mistake I made had no way, shape, or form was their fault. And I explain and usually end with talking about how I'm not perfect. The only advantage I have on my kids is multiple laps around the sun in comparison to what they have. But I'm human and I make mistakes. They're going to happen. And they are going to make mistakes. and they need to understand what to do when those mistakes occur. And what I would like to see them to do is address them head on. So that's what I have to do.

With all that, after I address with my kids, I do everything in my power to improve and not repeat those mistakes. And like I said, I'm not perfect. Certainly to repeat myself, not qualified to give parenting advice, but these are things that I personally have struggled with and the actions that I take to try to correct for them in the future. Now on the other side of the coin, the same question but applied to when I was a seal. The worst decision that I ever made as a seal also provided with me the most impactful change in how I thought of myself and my career.

And it had nothing to do with combat. So in this environment, my occupational environment, I can think of an instance or one instance that has more gravity. than anything else that happened to me in my career. And I'm very happy that it happened when I was junior and young in my career. I wasn't happy about it in that moment. But looking back on it, it had an impact throughout my career. So a little backstory, and I've talked a little bit about this on the podcast before. So I'm going to give an abridged version of this incident,

but I want this to be able to be standalone. So I won't go credibly in depth, but I'll try to hit the wavetops. So I joined the military young. I graduated at Bud's class 212 in August of 1997. I was 19 years old when I graduated. When you graduate Buds, you are not a seal. It's a selection process. It's not even really a training program.

You don't really know much. So you go to your operational team, or at least this is how it was structured when I was going through this process, you would get to your team, and your team would provide for you additional training that would bring you up to speed so you could join the operational elements.

After that additional time, training you can take a test across all of the skill sets you were supposed to know as a seal if you pass that test you actually become a seal at that point they go into the computer in the military and they enter your n-c which is what you use in the navy other branches call it an mOS and the navy it's an n-c and the n-c for a seal is 53 26 so they change that in the computer and you get issued your trident the metal pin that you wear over your left breast pocket on your uniform. So I had just completed that process. I was on my first trip as a newly minted seal in my first seal platoon. So I was essentially where I had wanted to be since I was

11 years old. I was the top of the hill doing exactly what I wanted to do. We were in Tucson, Arizona. We were out there to work with aircraft from Davis-Montan. We were doing close-air support training. An example of a close-air support call is the intro to the podcast. So, similar back and forth, however, we were not engaged with the enemy at all, because this was well before 9-11. But the asset canceled, and it was the end of the trip. And in these days, maybe, or in those days, maybe still in these days, if you're at the tail end of a trip and your training asset cancels, there's really only one responsible thing left to do, which is, of course, you guessed it, go to the bar. So we went to the bar at a reasonable hour, I'll call it 10 a.

and started drinking throughout the day. And at the end of the evening, we were in downtown Tucson, and a platoon member, a platoon made of mine, I was on my first platoon, this individual was not, and I'll cover how I thought about him then versus how I thought about everybody in that occupation a little bit later, pre-and-post the incident. He got into a verbal confrontation with somebody who was involved

with the ownership of the bar, which terminated in him being a... escorted out of the bar against his will. So he's on the ground with bouncers laying on top of him. The police officers were called. The police officers came. We did our best to explain the situation, and essentially we were told by the police.

You know what? We're not going to arrest this guy. We're going to let him out of the car. But we need you guys to do is just to get the hell out of here. Go back to the base where you're staying, which we told them where we were staying. And just get out of here. End of story.

Call it a night. You guys are done for the day. he gets led out of the car and instead of doing the reasonable and responsible thing of coming with us, he, of course, beelines it to a bouncer. I was probably one of two or three people that saw him beeline it towards a bouncer, so I peeled off from the group that we were with. Now, mind you, I'm young at this point. I didn't hit a growth spurt until later in life.

I graduated high school weighing about 150 pounds. I came out of Bud's probably weighing 165 to 170. and at this moment I probably was at 175 below 180 and I was six feet tall so I was pretty much a beanpole but of course if you're going to go to a bar nothing pairs better with a cocktail than a spider code knife so I had that in my right pocket the verbal altercation continues with one of the bouncers who happens to have a broken leg and a crutch to help him move around a little barking dog from the platoon is harassing the guy he finally has enough maybe he says the things that he felt like he needed to say he turns away from a bouncer and starts walking towards me.

So he can no longer see what the bouncer is doing. The bouncer picks up the crutch from the bottom, with the little, it has a little rubber piece that goes onto the ground. And he gets ready, in my opinion, at least, from my perspective, to swing it at this individual's head. So I did. The only thing that I could think of at that moment because, A, I was scared out of my mind.

And B, I wanted to protect the person that I was with. I took a step to the side. I flipped open the spider coat, put it up against my left, so he could see it and just said essentially, you don't want to do that. He put the crutch down. I put the spider coat back into my pocket. The seas started apart. We were going our direction. They started yelling for the cops. I handed the knife off to a buddy mine. Flashing lights begin, and I make the choice to run. So I ran. I was able to evade multiple cop cars and perhaps a helicopter overhead with the spot.

We continued to drink. The situation got worse and worse and worse throughout the night. It wasn't the only altercation that we were involved with. Fast forward. The end of the evening, we, of course, I think we're the baddest asses on the planet or in a military Ford Econnelline van. We pull up to the gate at Davis Monthon and they say, is Andy Stumpf in this van? And at that moment, I pretty much knew that I was screwed. Shortly thereafter, I tried on bracelets for the first. time, silver bracelets, was read my rights, was actually let go, and sent back to, I was charged with a variety of things, and then sent back to my military command where the true journey began when it came to the shifting of perception about how I thought of myself and my occupation. So a few things. One, I was the first touch point that those officers had ever encountered as

a seal. And regardless of what they had thought of or heard of about seals in 97, which was probably nothing because it was well before the books, TV shows, and movies, regardless of what their perception was before, I threw that obviously into the toilet because the behavior that I exhibited was the exact opposite of what they were likely expecting. So that was one negative right there. The next one was what I had to deal with when I went back to the military command or the command that I was at, I was at SIL Team 5 at the time in Coronado. In the following day, we were called into a classroom and expected to explain our behavior. Specifically, I was expected to explain my behavior.

They commissioned a chiefs board, a variety of senior personnel, and I went in there, and I was grilled about what happened. And I explained my behavior, and I took responsibility for my actions, which terminated in me taking a pair of scissors and cutting a trident. patch off of my camouflage uniform and sliding it back across the table from my commanding officer. I had worn that for approximately six weeks before I had to take it off, and I wasn't allowed to wear it again for another six months, which, although they did not strip me of my NEC, it was the largest catastrophic event that I had been involved in up into that point.

I thought that my career was over. I thought that when I was standing there in front of the commanding officer, he was going to strip my NEC and I was going to be sent out to the fleet or rejected from the Navy. Now, before that incident, I thought that my peers walked on water and I would blindly follow what they said and I definitely would blindly follow their actions. That is essentially what happened that night. I thought, if I'm being totally honest, I thought, looking back, I was a 19, actually at this point, a 20-year-old punk, I thought that I and every other seal was special. So not only did the people who are around me walk on water because they had been to seal longer than me, but we were all special.

We could do whatever we wanted to do. After the incident, what this incident forced me to do was take a critical look at myself and the occupation that I was just beginning the journey of. After that, I never blindly followed anybody again, which is exactly what the military needs. The military needs critical thinkers, not blind order followers. even though that's what most people think the military is about. You know, they'll watch full metal jacket and they'll see the scene with the drill instructor yelling commands, and they think that there's no room for critical thought. The closer you get to the apex of any community or the farther you get into the military,

the more, at least in my opinion, the more essential critical thought is, which is what I displayed a lack of that night. I also realize and spent a lot of time thinking about this, that being a essential, seal is just a job. It's a title. It's not a free pass. And more than anything, it's actually a burden. Those police officers and the civilians that we were interacting with, they expected a much higher level of performance, of personnel, of attitude, and of conduct than we displayed that night. And that's our fault, because it's not a free pass. It doesn't matter how special you think you are. that generally is going to come with a burden, not a hall pass to get away with whatever it is you think you're going to get away with.

That incident changed how I viewed myself, which subsequently changed how I conducted myself. And like I said before, I needed for this to happen. I needed that correction. If it had happened 10 years after that, I can only imagine the amount of trouble that I would have caused for myself and the SEAL community and the people that I was working with, I absolutely needed that to happen at that point in my life. And I've never forgotten that lesson. It doesn't mean I've always lived up to it. But when I fall short of that, because I know where the bar is, when I fall short of that bar,

it is the hottest burning stove for me personally, motivation-wise, to make a correction and make myself and my performance better. So those are my mistakes that I struggle with constantly as a parent, and the single biggest mistake that I had in my seal career and the impact ahead of my life. Second question comes from Vinny Mullen. Username at Vinny Mullen. You lucky you. I tried to get at Andy Stump, but somebody has it.

So I threw 77 on there. Here's your question. You said a while back something like, I feel like I was put on this earth to fight in reference to your time in the teams. This interests me because you come off so calm, and level when speaking. Can you discuss what that meant and what it's like having that savage slash kill mindset and desire? So first and foremost, perhaps I should have said that I feel like I was put on this earth to make a difference or at least try to. And even when I say that, that sounds totally

arrogant and that's not the intent of what I'm saying. I'm completely aware that I cannot change the world as an individual. But what I am capable of doing is stepping in and stepping up to do what is right. And that's not always fighting, which is why my original statement, if I did say I was put on this earth to fight, it's slightly inaccurate. I would much rather characterize it as I feel like I was put on this earth to at least try to make a difference. I believe it's part of the reason I wanted to be a seal. I thought that the occupation had meaning. It does have meaning. I thought it had meaning and then I found out that it in fact does have meaning. You have direct impact occasionally, if not often, in global events.

Now, farther down in your question, can I discuss what it's like having that savage kill mindset and desire? And the answer is no, I can't because I never had a savage kill mindset. There are more misconceptions and stereotypes around military service and specifically life and occupational roles and responsibilities as a seal than I have the time to actually address. And I don't know if it's the books or the TVs or the movies or even if it's maybe just nicer to romanticize, I suppose, a savage and kill mindset, then to actually think about the quite often binary nature of what it actually comes down to. I don't know what causes people to think that it's a bloodlusting or savage mindset, but in my experience, it's exactly the opposite of that. You said in your question, I come off to you calm and level when I'm speaking.

And I applied the same calm and level demeanor I have when discussing this topic or any other topic, as I did to the execution of this topic, was killing and making life and death decisions part of my job? Yes, it absolutely was. Is that why I joined? No, it's absolutely not. I wanted to make a difference. I had over nearly 20 years incredible training.

We had practice and repetition ad nauseum, and most of that practice and repetition, at least in the specific execution of the job as a seal can be boiled down to, is there a threat or no, is there a hostile act or not, is there a hostile intent or not? If any of those three criteria are met, I have largely, there might be some ROE's that might interweave through this, but if any of those three criteria are met, I have the ability to act in defense of myself or defense of the individuals that are with me. 99.99% of the time, that is a very binary decision. I see threat, I engage threat. I see hostile act. I engage hostile act. There's not enough time to work yourself through the morality of the decisions that you are making. The time for that is the rest of your life. But in that moment, it is a binary decision on whether or not there's a threat, hostile act, or hostile intent.

there is no bloodlusting. I'm executing the job to the best of my abilities. And if my criteria was met, I acted. And if my criteria was not met, I acted accordingly. You do not have to take lethal action. There's a variety of escalation of force has to be appropriate. All of these things are taught, trained, and refined over a career. To go back to the, and I know I'm harping on this a little bit, but it's important.

To go back to the Savage Kill mindset, to me, that is much more, that rings of emotion as opposed to logic. And if you truly want to be good at killing, you remove emotion. You think calmly, clearly, and tactically, but not emotionally. So if I were to give you two choices. Your first choice, both of these involve an individual that's trying to take your life. Your first choice is an emotionally charged assailant who is letting their emotions drive their decision-making process. Choice number two is a tactician. Executing a plan, following procedure, and thinking.

Which one of those do you think would be more lethal? Who would you actually want to square up with? And of course, the answer is three. None of those. But if you had to pick one, you'd probably have a better chance of survival if somebody is attacking you, letting a motion drive instead of logic, tactic, and procedure.

Now there was a caveat to this question, or I don't know if caveat's the, oh, it's the same person. He added, for what it's worth, I have a hard time picturing you like that after listening to your level-headed discussion of tough issues and your self-assessments and critiques. So you have a tough time envisioning me in that environment, and I'll be honest with you, sometimes I have a tough time envisioning myself now back in that environment because it's been a while for me. I don't know what to tell you other than I took my job very seriously and if I showed up at your house, you were going to have a very, very bad night if you presented a threat, a hostile act, or hostile intent. It's the way it is. I took my job very seriously and I cared

very much about the people that were next to me and I cared very much about the country that I was there representing and fighting for. third question comes from estan imaza how do you keep your ego in check any advice i do have some advice my advice is find ways to fail and not by accident what i actually mean is seek out ways to fail a great way that i have found to do that is to never stop learning it is so humbling to be a beginner recently what I have found to be an excellent tool is jiu-jitsu i am six months into this so and anybody who is familiar with jiu-jitsu they would be 100% correct to call me brand spanking new nearly everybody that i go into the gym with knows more than i do and nearly everybody that i encounter in the

gym has more skill than i do and this presents me with the choice i could choose to roll or practice with only those that I know that I can beat, or I can choose to roll with everybody and lose often. One of those choices defends my ego. One of those choices erodes at it like a small chisel and helps keep it in check. Find an environment where you have that choice, and then favor the latter choice. Make the choice that keeps your ego in check. Don't be afraid of losing. Seek it out. Find a new skill, a hobby, a new pursuit, and embrace failure in the process. Once you're comfortable with failing and it doesn't bother anymore and your ego is comfortable with that, it's amazing how much more information you can absorb and how much more enjoyment

you can derive from the actual activity itself. Last question from today comes from Ali. Username Ali Maloud 1. When you are at the point of complete exhaustion and whatever you do, how? How do you force yourself to keep going? This is an awesome question and it's the perfect one to end on. I don't know if I have a mantra per se, but there are two things that I say to myself very often when things get difficult.

The first one that I will tell myself, well, maybe it's in a, and I use this all the time. This doesn't have to be like a life crushing issue. This doesn't have to be depression. I'll use this in workouts. in the middle of a high-intensity workout that just is physically uncomfortable, the one I favor the most in those environments is I tell myself nothing lasts forever. So if you're in pain right now, that's okay.

It's not going to last forever. And it's just a reminder that I can push through. And that if I do continue to keep moving, I'm eventually going to find my way out of it. What I pair with that to keep myself moving, as I constantly tell myself, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. If I need to, I will get that deep into the weeds, into the micro level, and literally and figuratively, if I need to, again, talking about a workout, focus on putting my left foot in front of my right and then reversing that process.

Keep it one front of front of the other and nothing lasts forever. I struggle just like everybody else does with the highs and lows of my life, and honestly I think I may struggle more than most. of my struggles are between my ears, whether it's I'm questioning my self-worth or my confidence or a direction that I'm trying to go into my life. There is plenty of uncertainty to go around. And when I get to a place where I don't know what to do, where I feel crushed by the weight, I fall back on those two things. And for me personally, my worst enemy is negative momentum. It's so hard for me to get started again if I truly allow myself to grind to a hard

halt and then I start to surrender and go in the opposite direction. And again, I'll go back to exercise when it comes to this. For me, exercise is a huge portion of my emotional health and my mental health. And if when I'm on a roll, it's great, right? Everything just feels like I'm firing. My brain seems to be working. And then there are situations that will occur where I'm not firing because I haven't worked out in a week, which then becomes two weeks. And then that momentum stops and it goes in the other direction. And instead of working out, I'm going to slam a bag of potato chips. And then I'll probably pair that with a brownie

and a double serving of ice cream just to make sure that I'm throwing the biggest anchor humanly possible overboard. It's hard for me to get started again. So I do everything I can not to allow that, again, by going back to those two things. I'll close today's episode with this. There's a difference between failure and quitting.

Failure is one thing. quitting is another. You may not always be able to control failures. There are some things that will be outside of your control that will determine success or failure occasionally. But you will always be able to control whether or not you quit. So those two things that I tell myself often work for me, but find what works for you.

Don't let the momentum swing in the wrong direction. Whatever you keep doing, keep putting one foot in front of the other. And that's it for this week. everybody. Appreciate all the support. Same thing as I usually say at the end. If you haven't a review for the podcast, go to iTunes and do me a favor. Rate the podcast, write a review. If you want to, good, bad, ugly, and different. If there is a change that I can make or an improvement, let me know. This is a learning process for me as much as anything else. And I'm willing to invest the time to make it as good as I possibly can because I enjoy doing it. And it makes

it easier with everybody's support. And if I make good stuff, I'll probably get more support. I'm trying to run the simple math on that. What else? The new podcast gear is available. If you go to clearedhotpodcast.com and hit the shop tab, it's going to take you some simple shirts, a sweatshirt. I took the hats off accidentally. I'll put the hats back on. Someone hit me up about that today. And I think that is about, oh, one more thing. I put a link in the written description that is basically a survey of the audience of the podcast. The advertisers that I work with are curious about age range and dynamic and all that stuff. And so there's a very, I took it myself.

It takes like five minutes. Pretty sure it strips away. I actually didn't even ask me for a name. It asks me for information. And it just basically gives me an idea of the population group that is digesting this podcast. So if you want to do that, it'll take five minutes. If you don't, totally up to you. And I think that's about it.

Got some good interviews, not even interviews, but some good conversations coming up. But that's all I'm going to say about that. See you guys next week.