Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Rising from the Ashes - Reinventing Yourself After Adversity

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

We are focusing on one theme today, personal reinvention in the face of life's challenges. This episode is a deep dive into the idea that catastrophic events, while often devastating, also hold the potential for profound personal growth and the opportunity to redefine one's identity. We discuss the invaluable life lessons learned through overcoming adversity, the strength found in vulnerability, and the courage it takes to chart a new course when the familiar path disappears. The Speed of War Comic Series: ⁠https://www.thespeedofwar.com/⁠ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/

Oh, we're back. It's Friday. It's going to be a Q&A. I have one question for today because it covers so many different things. One question, but like three or four different ways that we can take this and a bunch of things that I want to touch upon along the way that I draw from my own personal life in the hopes that it can help somebody else out there and their personal life. So let's get into this. Away we go. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, like I said, I have one email. And from this one email, I think there's a lot that we can mind. So let's just dive right in. I hate your Friday's podcasts. Too often, they feel like an attack that I don't want to hear because of my struggle with alcoholism. Too often, yours and other podcasts make it sound too easy to correct.

It is not easy. I'm going to address this first. I never want to be viewed as somebody who, when asked a question and I give an answer, and being portrayed as saying or being heard as saying or the information is being received as, this is easy if you could just do this and follow this step, this step or these steps, that your life is going to be a piece of cake and you can walk off into the sunset. If I am coming off that way, then that is something that I am going to need to work on, because that is not what I'm trying to come off as. Specifically, when it comes to alcohol and people struggle with alcohol or alcoholism, I myself, I don't have an addictive personality.

My relationship with alcohol is casual at times and non-existent at others. I haven't had a drop of alcohol. I actually didn't have a drop of alcohol in probably a week or two leading up to the surgery that I had, and I haven't touched it since. And not because I view it as something that is dangerous or it's going to destroy my life. I'm just really trying to focus on making sure that I get my health and training and recovery in order where I need it to be. And I just haven't had a desire. not even to have like a glass of wine with Lee at night over like a nice steak dinner or something like that. It just for me is a different type of relationship. And right now I am exclusively focused in my own personal life when it comes to my health on riding the ship. Like I talked about briefly and I can talk about in future episodes of people have any interest because I don't want to just talk about what I'm doing for the sake of talking about what I'm doing. If people have questions about what I've changed in my life from a health perspective. I'm more than happy to

answer on the episode with Casey Hildreth. I talked about finally getting my blood work done in a full overview and view of the metrics and where they were in the interventions that Merrick recommended for me. And I've gone down that path, but I'm super early into that journey. my guiding principle on that is complete and utter honest and transparency, but I'm not just going to create something about that unless there is an interest. So put that to the side. Alcohol, though, ties into that because I want to get a really good baseline of where I was, the interventions that Merrick has recommended, and the impact that it has. So I want that piece of paper or template to be as clean as possible. Okay. I know it's not easy.

I know that alcohol or any substance can get its hooks into people. And just like everything else in life, some people have amazing tolerances to things, amazing capabilities, amazing capacities, and others don't and everything in between. So any piece of advice given to somebody on any topic, for some people, it might be easier than it is for others. For other people, it actually might be simple. when I am asked for my advice or when I'm asked a question and I choose to answer it, I do not want to come off to anybody as if I'm saying, you fucking idiot, why can't you figure this out? Just take these steps and your life's going to be perfect because that's not actually how I feel. I was at an event this last weekend and I heard somebody talking about motivations or potential motivations that people can have to change ingrained behavior. And I'm going to throw, alcoholism into that, but you could throw kind of whatever you want to into this mix. And something that stuck with me was that if you can determine your why, if you can find a powerful

why, the how is not going to be a problem. And I think that applies to kind of everybody in almost every situation that they're facing, but it's specifically for you when it comes to alcoholism. If you can really spend some time with yourself or maybe a professional and identify the why. Why do you want to change your behavior? Why do you want to improve your behavior? If you can find the one that truly speaks to you, I think you might have an easier time with the how. And I think we all would. So just food for thought. I'm not saying it's easy. Giving advice to people is simple. but I don't expect the advice that I give them to be easy to implement.

And I'll just leave it at that on that first bullet point. So let's turn into the email here. I'm 29 years old and turning 30 next month. At 18, I joined the Air Force with a six-year contract as a security forces member, which is an Air Force version of an MP, or military police. I did security, law enforcement, dispatch, and even worked in a small jail on base. After leaving Air Force, I did a couple semesters of college and remembered why I went the military path in the first place. School is just not my thing.

While living at my parents' home and quickly running out of money, I applied for the local county jail as a quick and easy job to attain. Initially, I thought of it as just a stepping stone. But I was able to buy a home, rescue a cat, and be independent. All of those things are awesome except for the cat thing. I'm just not a cat person. At this point, I had a little over two years employment with the county when my family addressed my alcoholism. I voluntarily checked myself into rehab for a month and came back with a new. new attitude. Shortly thereafter, I was promoted at the jail to a supervisory role. I have been in a

supervisor role or position for a year now, where I'm not just responsible for my staff, but also hundreds of inmates. Last week, I was requested to come in on my day off and speak to a sheriff's deputy. I had no idea what was going on. I came in and was told that I was possibly being charged for felony level fraud. Apparently, months ago, I made a clerical mistake while paying my mortgage. I'm currently on paid leave. They would not accept that it was an accident. I'm being assured that I won't lose this case, as there is ample evidence that this was obviously an accident, and I had no intent to steal from anyone. However, regardless of beating the case, I don't know if I would want to return to a job that didn't believe me or have my back. And no other law enforcement agency would hire me after

having this indictment on my record regardless of the outcome. I am currently faced with trying to find a new career when I've never considered anything outside of law enforcement. So two things. The second one being I'll kind of answer the question and tie this back to my personal life. I don't understand how a clerical error when it comes to paying your mortgage could net you a felony level fraud charge against you. And because of that, I'm not even going to speculate to what that is. I'm actually going to leave that completely out of my answer going forward because I don't understand it. I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't actually know what happened because you didn't explain it, which is your prerogative and purview. So I'm going to

focus my answer on the last portion of your question, specifically actually the last sentence. I'm currently faced with trying to find a new career when I've never considered anything outside of law enforcement. I know exactly how you feel. You're comfortable what you've done in the past. You've invested your time into the occupation that you have had. You're kind of climbing the career ladder. You are developing a level of comfort, a level of expertise, probably a level of authority. maybe that's perceived authority or actual authority. It seems like you're a supervisor at this point,

so you're working your way up. And now you are kind of looking into the abyss. And you've never thought of anything outside of law enforcement and you don't know what to do. And here's what I'll say to you. First, you're going to have to work your way through and survive this situation. And that might be really shitty. And in those days and hopefully not weeks and hopefully not months that it takes you to resolve this, you might find yourself at a really low point. And I would encourage you to not battle through those low points by yourself. I would encourage you to be very vocal. You didn't mention much about, you know, friends or family other than that you were living

with your family for a bit. And they cared enough about you to have what I'll describe as an intervention and approach you about alcoholism. So you have people in your life that care about you. my advice is involve them in this process not like hey this is exactly what's happening to me and you don't have to give them all the details but if you find yourself in a place where you feel lonely and you feel like you can't go on and you're starting to feel like you know what the answer might be in a bottle let me look in the bottom of this bottle to see if i can find it

please don't and please reach out for help and use the support network that i think you likely have in your life so there's advice on that i can look back on three very distinct times in my life where I have been where you are. And in the moment, as I was battling through it, I thought that this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me in my life. And as I was working through it, that's how I continued to feel about it. And it is only with time in between navigating that issue, however it may turn out for you, positive or negative and then putting some space in between it that you likely will be able to look back at this as something very beautiful and transforming in your life because that is now how

I view these three instances and I'll give you a brief overview of those three and what they changed for me about how I view myself and how I view the life around me and the world around me I guess for that matter first one and I've talked a little bit about this I lost and by lost I mean had my Trident, the pin, the dumb little $3 pin you can get online or in a Navy exchange, that designates you as a seal six weeks after I received it. And I am sure for this person who wrote this email, you know exactly what that feels like. You've put so much time in. This is the only thing that you've ever wanted and it's stripped from you. And you are looking into the abyss and trying to figure out if things go sideways, probably more than you have already perceived

that they are going to. And I'm talking about my headspace, not yours. The moment that the commanding officer slid a pair of scissors across the desk to me and told me to cut my trident off my uniform. What is my life going to look like when I no longer have this thing, this occupation, this job, the only thing that I've ever wanted to have in my life? In that moment, standing in his desk, I wasn't thinking about how this would change the trajectory of my life for how I could be a better person or redefine myself. But looking backwards on it now, that was one of the most transformational times. in my life because that incident, which again I've talked about, I was in Barr in Tucson, there was the way I thought about myself before that incident and the way I thought about myself after that incident. And I don't recognize the person that I was before. And I sometimes

fall short of the person that I want to be post that incident, but is my guiding principle going forward. You know, before that, I didn't feel like I was a leader, I think would be the best way to describe it. I was brand new. I was surrounded by my heroes, for lack of a better term. The only thing that I wanted to do was fit in. I wanted to be accepted, and I was willing to do anything possible to make that happen, to include going along with things that I knew were wrong. And that's exactly what happened. And I admit no way, shape, or form trying to excuse the decisions that I made and the actions that I took that night because they are my fault and my responsibility and my burden to bear and hopefully build something better with.

After that incident, it didn't matter to me who I was around, how senior they might be, whatever their bona fides may be in whatever career they came from. I didn't give a shit because I realized that regardless of who I was with, regardless of what they were doing. My actions and my decisions were mine and mine alone, and I always had to act accordingly. I totally let things get out of control that night for myself. There were so many times that I could have stepped in, and I realized in the years thinking about it afterwards, the reason that I didn't had nothing to do with the people that I was

with and had everything to do with how I thought about myself. And that is what that incident provided for me. a shift in how I think about myself and that the person that you see in the mirror in the morning, how you view that person, what you think of that person, that's going to determine everything that happens in every interaction in your life, how you behave, how you speak, how you think, the actions that you take. It's all tied to that. So that moment for me, I don't want people to get to that place, but it was an awakening moment for me where I, no longer since then have allowed anybody, regardless of who they are, to change how I think about

myself. So the second one where I found myself looking into the abyss was, I'm not going to say it was the night that I got shot because I, you know, my nose was up against the grindstone on that one, still like viewing it directly from, hey, this just happened five minutes ago. I was, I was not thinking about cascading life consequences. But in the hospital, you know, and listening to doctors about potential recovery or how about potential lack of recovery, how I may be able to come back to doing what I had always wanted to do at the level that I was doing it at with the people that I was operating with where the chance that I may never do any of those things was soul-shattering.

I felt like I was a race car going 500 miles an hour. And for whatever reason, instead of being in fifth gear, even though I don't know how many gears race cars have. I actually feel like they must have more than five because they go so fast, or it's at least geared differently. Whatever gear, the top gear that I was in at that time, clutch goes in, let's slam it into reverse and see if we can dump the entire engine out on the track and light the car on fire. I had spent no time, and I mean zero seconds, thinking about what my life would look like if I wasn't a seal. What was my life? What was I going to do? How was I going to provide for my family. I was so utterly myopically focused on my job. And I don't actually say that negatively

because I think a portion of that job, especially at that command, is required. And sometimes it's okay to be unbalanced, you know, to be really good at one thing, to be the cream floating at the top, if you will, you're probably not going to have an incredibly balanced life from an outside perspective. Now, I just don't think you can do that for a lifetime. And if you're able to, you're going to have some really narrow things that you're great at and you're going to have some holes that you could fly a 757 through in your personal and professional lives. And it's not for me to say whether or not that's right or wrong, but I think that you should expect that if you're unbalanced for too long. So it would be easy to look back like, wow, I just took an AK round from about 15 feet,

some pretty shitty pain, the whole recovery process of multiple years, leaving that command, going to a training unit, kind of rebuilding myself. I would say more a physical, not physically, but more emotionally and mentally than physically. People who look at that as being horrible. And in the moment, I thought it was horrible too. And now I look back on it, I am so grateful that that happened to me. Because it forced me to lift my head up and look around and say, what am I going to do next? What is there in my life outside of this?

What other opportunities do I have? Here's a better one. spend some time with myself and maybe like throw a fishing hook into, into myself and see what I come back with? Like, what else am I interested in? I had been so front sight focused for so long. I haven't answered any of those questions. And looking back now, I wouldn't be sitting here answering this question on the medium that I've been working on for, I think, seven or eight years at this point had that not happened to me. Because it changed the course of my operational career, but it also more importantly changed the course of how I viewed my future.

I at least picked my head up and looked around and started looking at things outside of the military. And then when I got to being a Bud's instructor, I had the opportunity to start pursuing those things. By the time I got out of the military, I was able to very seamlessly from an economic perspective, depart from the military and on board into something else. but in the moment it seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. The third situation that, again, has allowed me to recalibrate how I think is very recent. Five weeks and I'm recording this on a Monday because I got a bunch of stuff going on this week and I'm going to get it uploaded. So five weeks and two days ago from today, me sitting in front of this microphone, I was in the fetal position at Spanish Fork Hospital,

or Spanish fork, American fork, one of the forks, just north of Provo, in some of the worst pain that I've ever been in. And then the next day was the actual surgery. And about four hours before that surgery, I was at about a 10.5 out of 10. And it's easy to focus on that. You know, I woke up from that surgery. And I remember the first time that I stood up, they asked me to stand up and I coughed. And it's like, that's it.

this is as good as it's ever going to be. No one's ever going to get better than this. And I had gone from a place literally hours before we had checked into the hospital. I was doing jiu-jitsu with my wife. We were on the same mat. We weren't rolling together. At a seminar she had just done it, Mike Glover's place. Shout out to Mike Glover and the field craft jujitsu program they have going on there with coach Greg Lapin.

If you guys are in the area, total aside to this, but you need to be going there and bettering yourself a day at a time, an hour at a time, a minute at a time. doing jiu-jitsu to no bullshit laying on my side on the tile floor in an emergency room waiting room because I was already starting to sweat and I was so hot that the floor was the fastest way to cool me off I wake up from that and I can barely I can't even sit up unassisted I could walk a lap around the nurses station and I was like that's the maximum effort so going from a place where I thought I was at a moderate level of capability to being completely flat on my ass flat on my back useless needed somebody to literally like towel me off and put ice into a cup for me for the first few days telling me to only chew on the ice and not drink the water I drank some of the water because it would melt and god damn I was thirsty what's my point in all this though even in

the hospital bed I'm in the hospital bed and I'm thinking about it like this sucks but I don't want this to happen again. So what can I actually do? I can change my focus. Full honesty and transparency. I'm in a season of my life right now where stress is high. There's a lot of things going on in my professional life that are providing stress, whether I want them to or not. And sometimes those things physically manifest in me. but I looked at what probably led me to the emergency room that day. You know, looking back at it now, having post-surgery, I was suffering from some digestive issues that haven't popped their head back up since the surgery.

And it's got me thinking, like, how long was I dealing with these things? And I think I've been dealing with them for decades, for the vast majority of my life. and I don't want them to repeat themselves. So in that moment where I felt the least capable possible, I committed myself to viewing what happened, which the doctors described as bad luck, which is actually a really shitty answer because I don't know if I have good enough luck for it not to happen again. And that sucked. I don't want it to happen again.

But what can I do? I can totally shift my focus to where it probably should have been because there is always an excuse to not take care of yourself. there's always an excuse to not prioritize your training there's always an excuse to not prioritize your rest or your diet and just swing by McDonald's as opposed to taking a time on the weekend to meal prep for yourself or you know one of the things god i'm sitting there as they tell me don't drink any water chew on these pellets of ice i'm literally thinking there i am never going to allow myself to be dehydrated again i mean the amount of water that i would go without

I don't know why I was viewing myself as a camel, but in that moment, I was like, never again. I'm never going to allow myself to do that again. Here's a shocker for you. I've been feeling better because I've been drinking more water, because I'm an idiot. And why wasn't I drinking enough water? Because I wasn't prioritizing it. Why? Because I was focusing on the wrong things.

That moment in the hospital, at the age of 46 years old, I do not know how much time I have left, and I don't care. I am not going to sit here and worry about where the Grim Reaper is in the same. swing and then swing with his sickle, I'm going to focus on prioritizing and optimizing the time that I do have left. So even in that lowest moment, I knew that I was going to be taking these micro steps to be working my way back. And I am so far from being back to where I want to be. But I know that every day that I wake up, I'm feeling a little bit better. I'm able to do a little bit more. I'm able to go back to a traditional gym and start working out lightly. Like it is so awesome to see those levels of success. But my focus, because of the people and things that I care about the most,

has to be shifted towards taking care of myself first. I'm not saying it's to the exclusion of everything else because that's just being selfish, but I also need to prioritize my own health so I can optimize whatever time it is that I have left. Now, how does this tie into what you asked me in your email? All three of those situations are, very of those situations are very different versions of getting to a place where you're staring into the abyss. So you said in your last sentence, I'm currently faced with trying to find a new career when I've never considered anything outside of law enforcement. My response to you is that you may not see it right now, but you'll likely see it with some

distance between where you are and wherever that may be where you can look back on this. given the fact that you're just 30, this might be one of the most beautiful places you've ever been. Because it wasn't until all three of those situations that I just listed out in my personal life, did I really lift my head up and start looking for other things? And every time that happened, it presented to me options and opportunities that I didn't realize were there. And again, not in the moment, not when this is sucking right now and you're going through You have to survive the situation that you are in for sure. But just maybe put this in your back pocket because it might help you.

It sucks right now, but it might be the biggest blessing of your life. It might be that point in your life that provides you the ability to lift and shift, your focus, your energy, your attention to something that takes you in a totally different direction that you didn't even know what was there. And after being. somebody who has had that happen multiple times, I'm here to tell you. It's an amazing thing. I never thought in a million years I would have a podcast. And I do because of the things that I realized and recognized after those incidents that I laid out, those opportunities presented themselves

because I broadened my focus of what was in front of me. And I hope, man, and I hope that is what this situation can provide for you or let's go broader than you what could provide to anybody who thinks that they are just trying to eat their way through a monumental shit sandwich right now survive it choke it down and i assure you as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other and lift your head up a little bit you will look back at these times in your life with not regret, but thankfulness, just not in the moment. But don't let the moment consume you. Deal with it in a healthy manner.

Do everything you can to avoid slipping back to your previous behaviors. Reach out to anybody that you feel comfortable doing so and asking for support. Oftentimes people say, well, I don't want to ask for help because it's a sign of weakness. No. Completely utterly backwards. asking for help is one of the strongest things that you can do and you'll be shocked the number of people that'll come out of the woodwork to help you and that's all I can really say um I'm sorry that you're going through this don't give up nothing is permanent unless you make it so

and at some point in your life you will look back on this and be thankful that it happened and that's all I got for this Friday