Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Warrior Tu Lam on Warfare, Service, Survival

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

This conversation is with Tu Lam. Tu is a modern day warrior, respected by his peers to have a very special understanding of elite war fighting. Tu shares how he was raised as a warrior. This conversation will challenge you -- as his world view, his spiritual framework and his warrior craft are beautifully complicated and nuanced. I have an incredibly high regard for those who dedicate their life to noble purposes. There are many ways to live with conviction -- ranging from pacifism to warfighting. This conversation will hopefully help you become more clear on your approach to human rights and freedom. And I'd like to revisit the importance on having clarity on your personal philosophy -- to be able to articulate the framework and filter that helps to align your thoughts, words and actions. Tu has served and fought amongst the most elite units within the United States Military for 22.9 yrs. Tu recently retired, and is now the Founder, CEO of Ronin Tactics, Inc. where he teaches and develops tactical equipment for our military, law enforcement and civilians._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So whatever decision we make as a professional soldier has great effects on the future and safety of the United States. So that's going to drive my mindset to be better, to serve a higher cause. You know, it's not a game. It's a lifestyle. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. The idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, to understand their psychological framework and how they see the world and themselves in it, and to also dig to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft.

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So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this conversation is with Tu Lam. Tu is a modern day warrior, respected by his peers to have a very special understanding of elite war fighting. And Tu shares how he was raised as a warrior. And this conversation will challenge you as his worldview, his spiritual framework, and his warrior craft are beautifully and complicated and nuanced. And as many of you know, I have an incredible regard for those who dedicate their life to noble purposes. And there are many ways to live with conviction, ranging from passivism to war fighting. And this conversation will hopefully help you become more clear on your approach to human rights and freedom and the ways that you want to go about challenging those changes that

we know need to take place. So Tu has a very clear philosophy on why and how he believes human rights and freedoms need to take place. And I'd like to revisit for all of us the importance of having clarity on our own personal philosophy, to be able to articulate the framework and the filter that helps guide and align our thoughts and our words and our actions. So without clarity of a personal philosophy, it's incredibly hard to have conviction. So from clarity to conviction is certainly something you'll pick up in this conversation. Now, Tu has served and fought amongst the most elite units

within the United States military for the past 23 years. Tu recently retired and is now founder and CEO of Ronin Tactics, where he teaches and develops tactical equipment for our military law enforcement and civilians. And in this episode, we talk about his philosophy on the purpose of warfare, the moment that made him believe there was a higher calling, the path to become a Green Beret, and why having an open mindset allowed him to endure prevalent racism and bullying when he was younger. We also dig into the different types of fighting, fighting in sport, fighting for life. And he also unpacks the different types of violence and his method for refueling his mind. Phenomenal, deep, rich.

There's so many insights in here. And I just hope that you can enjoy this very nuanced conversation with warfighter 2LAM. 2, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me on. Oh, for sure. I'm looking forward to this. You wouldn't necessarily know this because we've only had one conversation beforehand,

but I have an incredible respect for the commitment to the craft that you've developed and the people in general that are able to stand for something and be so diligent and caring about developing their craft and doing it amongst other people that they would actually put their life on the line for a noble cause. And I have incredible respect and I'm honored to have this conversation with you. Arigato. Thank you so much for having me on. Oh, beautiful. Okay. So what's the origin of your name? It's spelled T-U, but where does that come from? So my Western name is Tulam. My native country, my name is actually pronounced Thu Thuan Lam. So Thu Thuan Lam, that's my Vietnamese name.

Okay. So, all right. So were you born in Vietnam? I was. I was born in Saigon, Vietnam. Okay. Okay. So then before we go into like the origins of your, you know,

your early experiences that shaped you to this path of mastery, can you, can you just answer like this kind of simple question, but take as long as you want to unpack it is what is your craft? I am a student of war. I have studied war predominantly in my life, and I employed applications of war during times of conflict and war. When you say a student of war, can you keep going on that? Because I've never heard somebody describe it quite that way. In life, you could study a craft. You could study a way of shooting or a way of moving or a way of fighting warfare has no boundaries it has no defined lines so therefore as a student at war i study philosophy i study the history of certain demographics of certain countries the human interactions uh what led them to war and then the acts of war, as in the arts of violence, the

study of lethality. Okay, so when you talk about the study and the application of lethality and violence, I'm going to ask you, and I hope that this isn't, I don't know, I hope this doesn't come off in the wrong way, because I just, I want to get to the center of understanding what really important words mean from your lenses, from your point of view. So when you say violence, what are you thinking is the defining characteristics of violence? And then I'll share what I think about it as well. Violence is the art of inflicting pain on people or taking somebody's very life from them. So how, I would completely agree with that.

And violence is, you can have violence in two ways. You know, the easy way to see violence is the the act of violence but there's also violent thinking and so when you're talking about violence are you more concerned or more interested in the act or the thought or both it's everything man so like the art of war has no no boundaries warfare has no defined lines therefore you need to study the psychology, the philosophy, the mindsets. And that's just equally as important as being able to employ the application of combat. So as a student of war, and the intimacy of the art has to do with violence, how do you reconcile death and harm of other people?

How does that work inside of your psychological framework? I can tell you this, man. It was an evolution of my life. It's just like maturing as a human being. How I felt in my 20s is definitely how different from how I actually feel today sitting you know you're talking to you. It's the evolution in my 20s absolutely I was scared you know first gunfight absolutely scared throw me in certain missions or countries and I think the reason why I was kind of scared was you could talk about war

until you actually see it, smell it, and see what it can do to you and your teammates, and you have a different respect for it. So during my 20s, I was more – if you ever read the book of five rings by Miyamoto Musashi he was born Ronin back in the 1600s he writes it okay so stop there for just a minute it's a foundational book for those who haven't been able to read that yet 1643 by the same samurai and you you just captured an important word which I know is the name of your business which is he was ronin and so walk us through it's a beautiful concept so walk us through what ronin means to you so during the process of war the process of education um you know when all the bullets fly and then when everything settles man you know when you walk away from this entire causes this serving a higher purpose you know you're left with yourself you're

left with your thoughts you deal with the aftermath of the war yourself and what when I found out after the war is I was left with all these experiences emotions and truly nobody understands you know, not even the teammates that kind of been the United States? And who was the master before that? Was it the chain of command? Was it the cause? You know, you could have a certain belief. You could have a cause.

But unless the United States agree, you're just really a multi-purpose tool for the military. You're going to do what the government asks you to do. Did I believe in the Holocaust? Yeah, absolutely. There are certain things I've done in the military that I 100% agree with, but I'm going to execute because it concerns the bigger picture, the safety of my fellow Americans. So you have to put aside those personal beliefs. Okay, so two. You were born in another country.

I want to get to that, I think, in just a moment because you just said something really important, which is serving my fellow Americans. So your patriotism is strong, and I think that's connected to much of your decision-making throughout life. But I want to understand, before we go to the journey from young to now to, is how many warfights have you been in? Or how many combatant experiences that could be lethal or were lethal have you been in just to give us

some level setters and context so being a team member within special operations and working with different tiers here you're exposed to a lot of gunfights I I can't tell you how many missions or gunfights I've been in but I could tell you this I've worked in every continent in the world and hunting down our enemies you know you quickly become the terrorist terrorists you know you're going to rage unconventional warfare and killing them in their safe haven and how long how long did you do that for what was the duration of that phase of your life 14 years 14 years and when i mean i think you're being humble most of most of the tier one guys that i know and i think you would say yep that's me but i i haven't asked you that

question most of the guys at the the tip of the arrow are most of them are incredibly humble and don't want to, um, you know, come off in this way of arrogant or bragging. But so I, can you, can you shape the level of hierarchy that you experienced in the special forces? Uh, of course there's different tiers, you know, within special operations, um, you can become a national asset if, um, So it's pretty much what the United States will call upon if they need a very elite military force. Within these organizations, you have different jobs, ranging from special reconnaissance to seeing interdictions to lethal operations so did you just call it a

national treasure a national asset a national asset oh my goodness so is it that's a complete need to me and is that is that um the group that you're in or that's what people refer to you and your colleagues? I mean, there's certain organizations that are, I'm trying to dance around certain things. So there's certain organizations that there are tier one units that the United States or the world would call upon for high risk operations. Okay. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. So I know it's hard to say that I'm a stud, but the people that you and I both know have, and I called some of my friends to just say, Hey, do you know too?

And they're like, Oh yeah. So, so, so I know it's hard to say that you're, you're kind of a stud, but flat out, the people that I know that know each other, you're so highly respected. So I'll just say it because sometimes it's awkward to say it, is that you've been in the amphitheater and not only have you survived the amphitheater, but you've dictated the pace and speed of the environments that you've been in. And you've been a consummate grounded leader in very hostile terrain. And so that's why I want to learn from you, right? Like I really want to learn how you reconcile your life efforts with thoughts and actions that 99.5% of the world will never even smell or would want to do

and have a difficulty understanding violence at that level. So, again, with the greatest respect, I want to learn. And I'm honored to be able to learn from somebody who's dictated the experience of war for many of us. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so can we shape the way that you were born? the experience of war for many of us. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So can we, can we shape the way that you were born and where you're born?

And then I'd love, I keep forgetting to like prep people on this kind of thought. Like I'd love if you could break up into maybe five, seven, nine, two, three, I don't know how many chapters of your life are there.

And if I put you on the spot in that kind of way, how many chapters of your life are there? And if I put you on the spot in that kind of way, how many chapters of your life have you written so far? So I think my chapters now is, you know, how I was born, how I escaped from the war, from the war to my country, my upbringing into my early years in the military and and how I define my way through into the Special Forces A-teams and how each I would define my military career as each continent each continent has as I serve in each continent or I hunted down the enemy in each continent it further defined who I became

to be and then eventually how I broke away from the military you know and how I developed my mind and body after so many years of warfare beautiful so you've got three chapters that led you to be an elite war fighter. Then each continent would be its unique chapter. And then like post post military service. And maybe that's where you became Ronan. Right. And so maybe that's kind of the way that you would do your chapter heading so far. Absolutely. Brilliant. Brilliant. OK. All right. So let's go. Let's go early chapters. Let's get those three under our belt so we have some context, and then we'll probably pick one continent as one of the chapters to learn more about that part of your life.

Okay, absolutely. Okay, so let's go from birth. So, you know, the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon, I was born in December 74 in Saigon. Our family was with the South Vietnamese. Some of my uncles were pretty high-ranking officers within the South Vietnamese. Some served with the American Special Forces. So after the fall of Saigon, Americans pulled out and the country fell to the communist regime.

So if you ever watch the movie The Killing Fields or you read about the aftermath of the Vietnam War, people were murdered. They were really gunned down on the streets like animals. My family, being tied to the military, were pulled out into the streets of Saigon and gunned down. My grandfather took his life savings, which was like little gold bars that he gave my mother to smugglers out of country.

So we escaped on an over-cramped wooden boat as a refugee. How old were you, two? I was around two. You were around two. Okay. So all of these experiences are really pre-verbal it's hard it's hard to put memories and words into them yeah okay yeah to even grasp what's going on or even remember anything is there a word or phrase that like captures that what it might have been like for you like clueless or sheltered or you did you, do you think you saw and felt stuff that were,

was heavy or? Yeah. So it's flashes of dreams, you know? So, um, like, uh, I had dreams of, uh, lights going through the cracks of, uh, a boat, you know? So I had these repeated dreams while I was growing up and I would ask my mother Some questions and then she'll reinforce but you know certain history But you know growing up. I see my mother, you know half her family Jesus was gunned down on the streets, you know and And imprisoned so my uncles were in prison in re-education camps is what they call it. So basically it was a prison camp, re-education to the communist doctrine. I could tell you this, you know, they, you know, see my uncle, you know, to this day he's still suffering

from PTSD where they skimped the bottom of his blood and beat him to the end of his life. So he had roughly 12 to 13 years of this imprisonment. In Vietnam? In Vietnam after the war, yeah. How many years? 13 years of imprisonment? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Jesus, okay. And then so he stayed, obviously, when you were, so that was your, yeah, your mom's brother?

Yeah, my mother's brother was imprisoned as we, my mother grabbed my brother and I, because my grandfather said over his dead body to his two grandsons, wherever grew up, to the commonists. Ah, okay. So now did grandfather have wealth? Was that wealth or was that just like he worked his ass off to be able to save enough money for a special reason? And this was the reason. He had a condo that he rented out. So yeah, I guess you could say that he was a little above me in wage when it comes to the

enemies okay so he pulled his resources together and said hey honey to his daughter uh you it's time for you to go and then she was like oh yeah it is time okay so you guys left now did you leave with your dad no my dad was killed during the war he was killed in the war okay so okay so between ages of zero and two so your grandfather saw your daughter's husband killed and his son be imprisoned and he said you got to get out that's right so we uh we got on these wooden boats it was probably around two to three hundred people pretty much laying on top of each other you know over cramped uh you think about vietnam's a tropical environment as asia um so it's really hot humans uh so anybody who left country

kind of had some kind of resource some kind of connection some kind of money okay so if you think about like you know all these fleeing refugees leaving Vietnam, almost at the same docked area, we had a lot of paitri going on, a lot of bandits from Thailand, from Vietnam, that would pretty much interdict these escaping boats and would get on, rape, kill, and steal from the fleeing refugees. So that was our first obstacle. We somehow navigated our way through to the piety. Okay, so is mom crafty or is she a fighter? And I want to try to conjure up some sort of story about mom. Like if there was danger in her way,

would she figure out a way to slip away from it or would she just kind of rear up and be like, you're not coming near these two cubs? How would you imagine mom navigated that experience? And the reason I'm asking is because even pre-verbally, you were learning from mom in a really dangerous environment, like how to survive. And I'd love to get some context there. So you believe in Eastern philosophy, and you believe in the years that people were born in, where it relates to some kind of animal. My mother was born in the year of the tiger. So naturally, she's an aggressive fighter.

I was born in the year of the tiger. So she's a fighter if she was cornered in a room she would fight for her life she would never give up okay so you you probably felt mom at a young age just being like just a radical presence in your life and she was taking care of you she was my strength okay there you go all right cool so then so then uh you get to the states you're two years old well so we we escaped past the pietry okay and um we ended into the coast of indonesia so then the uh the security force the coast guard the indonesian coast guard shot at us and uh demanded to stop. So we stopped, and they anchored in two other refugee boats. So imagine there's three refugee boats anchored in,

so tattered from their boats to a single point on the Coast Guard boat, you know, in the back. Okay, got it. So as they started pulling us back out in the ocean because they didn't want anything to do was they didn't want the refuge they didn't want any of the issues that uh you know our country was facing but no my native country was facing okay so the u.s coast guard that that's who we're talking about they didn't want anything to do with you no no the indonesian. The Indonesian. Indonesian. Okay. Yeah. They're like, oh, what are we doing? Okay. Got it. And you think about what's going on with Syria.

You know, all the fleeing refugees, nobody wants them. Nobody trusts them. So they didn't want our problems. So basically, they anchored us on. They tattered us to a single point. Now, these two outer... I didn't even notice until my mother recently went to my retirement in May. And she told me this story.

And so the three boats, we were the center boat. And as they started pulling us, the two outer boats started, because they're tattered to a single point on the Indonesian Coast Guard boat, they actually flipped and they sank so oh my god okay yeah i asked my mom i say how many how many people perish and she goes thousands

oh thousands yeah thousands and um isn't it too isn't it crazy like how things take place i i can't even really fan them like i've seen you know i i hear from my mother growing up as i matured it had really you know it hit me in a different way yeah as you're speaking it's like that the way that we you and i even arrived at meeting each other in conversation, and the storied paths both of us have, and the storied paths of all the people that are listening to be fascinated and interested in a point of view about war and being a master of a craft and walking the path of mastery from somebody who, come to find out, at age two was fleeing their country and then became maybe a national asset asset you know for um for america like phenomenal phenomenal journey okay so keep us going yeah so uh as they pulled us back out into the pacific ocean and this vast open ocean right um they cut our anchor line loose the other two boats people perished lost their lives um you know they were scrambling to get on your boat too. You could just see that image, right?

Oh, absolutely. So as they pulled us back out in the ocean, they cut the line, shot our engine, so now we didn't have a working engine, so we were just a piece of drifted wood out in this Pacific Ocean and left us there to die. So what my mother said was, you know, weeks turn into almost months, you know, and they were dying of dehydration, starvation. I think about whatever you need to do to survive. There was, My mother talked about people drinking their own urine. People died, they had to push them off the boat because they didn't want to deal with the smell of a dead person. So my mother said that we were dying. We had no hope. And somehow we got caught up in a storm. Like it was a real massive storm.

Now, you know, I don't know if our listeners are, you know, has a spiritual belief, but I'll let you know this. I'll let you know that it was a higher calling in my life. There was something that navigated us. So during the storm, it took us into a supply route, a Russian supply route that's making its way into Singapore. So I think the unique story of this is that this is a Russian supply boat. The same ideology that took away my freedom. These Russians had the humanity to save us. They picked us up and docked us onto their boat where they took us back into Indonesia where there was a refugee camp. they are the leftists in Indonesia, but what I'm saying is if What is the likelihood of a storm bringing you into a Russian supply route?

at that lat long at that Certain time and so then you the way you attribute that is to a spiritual happening. Is that right? I believe in everything comes first circle. That's why I chose my path to serve humanity, not just saving Americans, but saving humanity in general. Okay. All right. So do you still have a spiritual background now or framework now? Absolutely. I think that's a process of healing. If you fight in a war so long and you don't have some kind of spiritual background, you're going to succumb to PTSD, combat fatigue, stress, whatever.

Okay. And is that deity-based? Is it Christian or Islam or is it, um, one of the other non-deity? I'm Christian, but I believe in the worship or respect of every religion that is not extremists in their beliefs. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus.

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You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Bring us into like, you get to America and where you land there. So the reason why we got to America is my aunt married an American Special Forces lieutenant. Him being able to be in the service, being an officer, he was able to expedite the paperwork for us to get to the United States. We flew into Fayetteville, North Carolina. How did your aunt get to meet an American military personnel? The Special Forces were pretty rooted with the community, with the South Vietnamese Army, Unconventional Warfare. You know, John F. Kennedy is the one who started the Green Berets during Vietnam.

So they really were deep within the community. And that was your first training? Some of your first training was in the Green Beret as well? I went through long-range reconnaissance training, which was a small amphibious ranger type of assignment. They came from a ranger LURPS unit and then activated into—after the war, they were disbanded and reactivated as a LURS long-range surveillance company specializing in amphibious reconnaissance that's that was what I

my specialty when I first came in okay bring us back into how you got to the states so we you know we we got the endorsement from my uncle and my aunt. We flew into Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is a small military town outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is the home of Special Operations, the home of the Green Berets. My mother eventually remarried. She remarried to an American Special Forces Sergeant, who eventually, when I was eight years old, we were doing PT. We were raising the flags in the morning, reciting the National Anthem. We were speaking our native tongue and also speak in different languages. We were learning how to navigate using the stars. So basically he was teaching the way of the Green Beret at a very young age. I just didn't know it. So the strategy of learning about war and the experience of war happened at a

very young age for you absolutely yeah okay all right cool keep us going so as I was getting older South America became a hot spot for my father during that time they're fighting the drug wars Ronald Reagan under Ronald Reagan administration he declared war on drugs The Green Berets were moving into these foreign countries in South America and fighting the drug war, doing a lot of interdictions and stuff like that. So that was his era know Panama it was out or that was his air so when I started getting into high school I was very influenced by my father respected him or anything and back then it wasn't the information age

right so the 80s were never really the information age and I I was interested in being a Green Beret. I just didn't know how to get there. So my father really didn't talk about it because back then it was really hush hush, right? And nor did I ever, you know, I'm too young to understand. So he would go into the libraries and I would pull books on the history of the OSS, which was our grandfathers, our forefathers within Special Operations during World War II. I would read about that, I would read about Vietnam, I would read about past wars and I knew this was my route. This is what I wanted to do. Can you go into a particular time when you're like, this is what I want to do?

Like what that was like or your thinking around it? Because there's a million different things that all of us could do. And I could create thousands of stories of different potential paths that we all could take. So can you illuminate how you knew and what it was like when you knew? And I don't want you to make anything up, but if you have a memory of that, it would be fantastic. I do. I was roughly around 11 years old. My father was packing to go to South America. He wouldn't tell me the country. I knew he was going to war or a conflict in a certain area. And I asked him if I can go.

And he laughed and said to me, son, you're too young. But I tell you this, I remember he kneeled down to me and he said, if you really want to walk the path, one day you will be tested. You will be tested. And if you pass the test, then you'll be tested you will be tested and if you pass the test then you'll be welcome to the brotherhood and you know that's that's really deep for somebody to say that you know because you're so young you don't know what the hell he just met you know all I did is just shook my dad and hugged him and and uh wish his safety but what he was talking about, which echoed when I was going through Special Forces selection, was if I pass this test, if I'm able to carry this load, if I can pass this three weeks, then it will qualify me to go to the year plus qualification course. If I pass that, then I go to foreign training. If I pass that and I can go to 18, then this is the brotherhood.

The brotherhood is the collision course on the path I was going on to a collision course with other warriors. And that's the brotherhood. Okay. So how old were you at the time when your dad knelt down? Around 11. time when your dad dealt down around 11 and were you more attracted to the brotherhood or being close to your dad or what was with the being the being tested part no i was attracted to the surface layer i was attracted to his physical uh physique his physical fitness i was attracted to his cool equipment his green beret how he looked at the soldier. You know, just the surface layer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, brilliant. Okay, so then you made a decision, age 11, this is where I'm going. And he gave you a piece of insight that you'll be tested. I don't have an expectation on your response to this, but how many times have you been tested? Oh, a lot. So, I mean, I've been through the majority of the military training,

and the majority of it was the high-risk, high-nutrition, fail-rate type of training. So they definitely do test you physically and mentally to your breaking point. I would imagine that you might not know this but probably have a sense of it that you're better at being tested than most people and so can you teach us about the test and the moment of test and can you teach us about you know how to be successful in times that you haven't been successful what gets in the way what supported something can you can you unpack that for us, those moments of test? And I'll tell you why I

think this is so important, is that I think we get tested every day. Like at a very spiritual level, we get tested every day based on thoughts and alignment to our philosophical code and actions as well. And I think that there's the obvious test that we have when, you know, it's like other people are watching, but there's the less obvious when we're just have ourselves. So can you talk to us about or walk us through strategies or ways to navigate the test of quote unquote pressure? So I'm going to attack this, this question by kind of giving a little insight of my upbringing. And I think that's going to fuel— Love it. Love it. Yeah.

So I didn't have—so we came from very humble—I came from a very humble upbringing. My father was a blue-collar worker. He worked with my papa, which was a World War II vet and a Korean War vet. And my father, even though in the service, he would help my papa, my grandfather, out as much as he can. But this is where – so he taught me the meaning of hard work, actually manual labor at a very young age. But this is what I think really shaped me, was that when I was growing up, I dealt with racism almost on a daily basis. Now, people throw the word racism out there a lot, but I'll let you know this.

Racism still happens today. You can see the aftermath of the election. You can see during the election, racism is still there. Multiply that by after the Vietnam War. All right. So the Vietnam War, you know, we ended the Vietnam War in the mid 70s. So during the 80s when i was raised it was post vietnam in a military town they didn't see the colors they didn't see if i was north enemies or south enemies nor did they even understand the difference they saw me for my face value as hey this guy is different his uh his eyes look different his skin is different. He speaks with a little bit of an Asian accent. So I was picked on, beat down on a daily basis.

What does beat down mean? All jumps. Boots to the face, kind of beat down. How old were you? Back in my elementary school days all the way to the beginning of high school. So when you would wake up in the morning and it happened, say after the first time that happened or the 20th time that it happened, how would you wake up in the morning? Dreadful. You know, I didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to deal with it. I didn't want to deal with it. I reached out

to my father. My father, I'll let you know, he went to go and speak to some of these parents. Unfortunately, a lot of these parents were condoning what their kids were doing. It was a different time, a different time, post-ietnam, and they viewed me as the enemy. They viewed me as Charlie. That's what they called it. If they only knew that it was truly the North Vietnamese, the communist regime, that killed the majority of my family and destroyed my native country, then maybe they'll understand. But a lot of people don't care. They don't care.

They just, you know, they're kind of immature in the order they seek to understand. So how have you dealt with that level of racism and abuse, like with yourselves? Did you become racist at some point? Did you go into survival mode? Do you love people more deeply because of it? Do you have to stain for people that are past judgment quickly? Like how have you worked with that? And I don't, I mean, I can't imagine what that's like.

So I really don't know. My father gave me a very structured upbringing as in education. I had to deeply involve myself in education. I had to deeply involve myself in education. We had a dress code. I couldn't wear jeans, blue jeans to school. I had to wear slacks. He was very strict on his own. But that structure allowed me more foundation

than a lot of these other youth groups right so a lot of these other groups uh a racist that would pick on me they really didn't have any foundation there's just okay so dad helps you say listen son that's going to happen the way that we're going to do it's the right way and this is how we're going to do it so you had that pillar at home it sounds like of strength and structure that allowed you to figure some stuff out right and also i accepted at a very young age that life would never be fair you know just get over it you know life will be fair and you have to deal with it so and i you know for a young child that really comes to grasp with that i think that was a

lease imbalance on top of my peers. Okay. Okay. So then I'm going back in reverse order. And I know that we started down this path for a particular question, but how did, when you woke up in the mornings and you're dreadful, there's so many of us that have fear and pervasive fear that gets us stuck. And it could be small, like I don't want to blow it in front of other people, or it could be big, which is like just terrifying to get out of the morning due to just panic attacks or general anxiety. How did you manage that as a young kid? Because I bet you have something to unlock here for us.

So, you know, as a young child, you know, obviously I didn't want to go to school. But like I said, you know, I dealt with it. I knew that life wasn't there. Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is just head-on face the problem. That's what I did. I went to school. Even though I get picked on, I concentrated on my education. I concentrated on my martial arts. That's my foundation and after school I would go

to my father's work my papa's work and I will help them and on the weekends I would work at my dad's my grandfather's factory so I didn't really have you know time to to play with the neighborhood kids or whatnot i had a structured foundation you know an upbringing did you fight back oh yeah yeah i fought back uh because i had a martial art background uh my father definitely wrote me in and uh he told me that there is okay to fight uh for what you believe in, but you're not going to walk down the route that these kids walk down. You have a set of skills through your martial arts for your age,

and I don't want to see you employ those martial arts, your techniques. I want you to think things through, walk, talk it out, or deal with it without the act of violence. Wait, so when you were getting jumped, dad was saying don't use a defensive posture or even an aggressive posture. Like think your way through it, and if you get hit, go to the ground? No, no, no. So thinking your way through is avoiding the situation for yourself, right? Don't go around.

Yeah, say that again. Thinking your way through is avoiding the situation for yourself, right? Don't go around. Yeah. Say that again. Thinking your way through is avoiding. Is that what you said? Yeah. The best way to avoid with violence or danger is to avoid it. Don't get yourself in that predicament in the first place. Got it. Don't get yourself in that predicament in the first place. But if you find yourself in that predicament, then if you're forced to use the act of violence,

then you use it right. You don't abuse that skill set because then you're ruining the art. You're ruining the lawyer path, the mindset so with with all that bullying and everything that's said um if i'm able to look past that hatred if i am able to put their hatred aside and forgive them right for their ignorance and still respect humanity, the human race, that was the foundation of the special forces. In order for you to influence a country, in order for you to positively affect a country,

then you first need to put yourself in their shoes, their hardships, right? So, and serve humanity in general, not just, you know, United States of America. The open mindset I had was it allowed me to infiltrate or allowed me to move into every continent. Some of my missions were de-mining mission. It was education,, uh, education, you know, teaching, uh,

to better, uh, to better their way of life because a lot of these guys will eventually become terrorists. If you don't have an education, you don't have anything else. So why not give them an education? Why not build schools and churches so they can have whatever foreign religion, uh,

freely and peacefully, uh, in their country. You know, so that open-mindedness, that sense of drive is what allowed me to, I think, be very effective as a Green Beret. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So now let's get into, not necessarily your missions, because I know the response that you'll say if we go down the path of talking about missions, is that it's all classified, or the majority of it's classified. But let's keep pulling on this thread about who you are and your philosophy. When did you first notice that you thought differently than your peers, or differently than others, most others? Was that early early or was that later i would say it's pretty early you know i um my young 30s yeah so my young 30s i was combat proven uh already uh i was combat proven during my young 20s but in my 30s, it allowed me time to really mature that thought and really seen it in more than just one situation. So, yeah, in my 30s.

Do you remember your first live bullet combative experience where there's hostility, true hostility in the environment, and it's well beyond training? Yeah. hostility in the environment and it's well beyond training yeah so in the philippines um you know combating abusa f um we would uh go into countries and conduct fit operation which is um it's pretty much training their their military force or standing up some kind of counter-terrorist capability in that country. Foreign internal defense is one of the hallmarks of being a Green Beret. This was your first gunfight or warfight? First combat, yeah, in a hostile area. I know it was a while ago, but do you have any i know it was a while ago but do you have

any memory of that kind of of that first experience when you're either yeah uh just leave it blank do you do you remember that the moment yeah so as a as a green beret or any uh as a special forces uh 18 guy we we we go into country in very limited numbers. So first you have to worry about overall the country itself, right? So the local populace, how do they feel about you, pro or anti-American? This can form an underground or zero unit supporting whatever rebel force or whatever force we're trying to eliminate. So if the locals don't support you, they are going to provide intel to your enemy.

Right. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, of course, the group of people we're hunting down. And then also the group we're training. So they can get superior military training from you, and then they can turn on you at any second. And I'm looking to understand that moment in time where you either had your weapon pulled or you were in an intimate hand-to-hand combat.

Something along those lines, because I'd love to learn how you translated serious training into a real environment. And so that's what I'm trying to sort out. And I'd love if you could capture the first moment or one of the early moments in your career where you weren't quite sure if your training was going to match up to what was about to take place. Obviously, you always have doubts, right? But the more seasoned you get, the more you can handle situations because your brain processes things at either a slow pace or a fast pace, depending on your level of training experience. In my younger days, I processed things at a very rapid pace. Sometimes I almost lose memory of what

happened, actually happened. I know I got shot at. I'm seeking cover. The eastern, the Japanese stated that in training, there's no other state but a state of motion.

That's the state where your training kicks in. when all thoughts and emotions are eliminated and your fine motor skills kick in. So that's what I could tell you. In a gunfight, in some kind of high threat raid, depending on your level of training, that's the state that's going to kick in. What percentage of the time do you find motion or no mind? What percentage of the time is your mind unfettered in combat? I would say

in my young 30s is when I started seeing the state of motion. It's just because of the climate we're in. We're in Iraq, so we're fighting in very confined, closed spaces. So you're making split decisions in less than a second if somebody's going to live or die.

If you make one false move, if you went left when you should have went right, that can cost the life of your teammates. So you really need to be switched on because time is something you don't have in close quarters i love that phrase and then so what what challenges are the most in your craft and possibly in life uh now that you're no longer in combat uh the first challenge that i faced was boredom. Yeah, boredom. And a lot of team guys do. When you have released those endorphins so much, when you have experienced that fight or flight for so long, you're so in tune with your body and you're used to this adrenaline you know free falling falling out 120 to 160 miles to the earth you know um high risk commander raids repelling you know triple canopy jungle you these endorphins are released and you're so used to it so that was the first thing i faced was, wow, this is kind of boring.

This is life, right? So once I got over that, it was channelizing my knowledge into a positive path. Okay. So was your path before that not positive? I was facing the troubles of my past. Okay. So haunted memories? You know, it started first starting off as I miss my friends.

I miss the guys that fell. I miss the conversations that we have, and they're no longer here in this world. And you get a sense of somewhat of a guilt. But then you remind yourself that this is the path we chose this is the lifestyle we volunteered for okay so that was the thought that moved you through survival guilt and ptsd or whatever it might be the emotional response of loss and boredom and not being as stimulated as you once were and you know feeling the uh emotional consequence of death. So you would have that thought was the one that would pull you through that I chose this.

We chose this together. We did. And we're not the first group of warriors throughout history. You have the Spartans, the Samurais, the Nysa, the Tempers, the Zulus. There's so many different warrior tribes. How did these guys deal with this on the

aftermath? I'll tell you this. This is what my conclusion is. The world in general, not necessarily the tribal regions like in Africa and the Middle East, but the world in general in the Western world, I could say, is becoming softer as a generation. Our underbelly is really soft. Right.

War is a natural thing throughout history. Yeah, let's think about this. Would you want to see a world that was war-free, that was peaceful? I would love to, but I know that through war comes peace. Through war comes peace. So that's a philosophical statement, is that we have to fight our way to get peace. Many great leaders have said, no, you can't use violence to find peace. And so the pacifist approach, right? So many of our great leaders have also been pacifists, not passive, but pacifists in their approach to conflict. And so, and I'm not saying right or wrong, but that's, you've got a real strong point of view right so let's just talk about my native country

vietnam through war came peace so now they're at uh yeah they're they're still underneath the communist regime but they're not pulling out people in streams and gunning them down so they have i mean i i you know been to vietnam my my mother's been back there the country has evolved you know it modernized think about japan you know they had internal conflict our country how we fought against this superpower's time and then went into internal conflict and where our country is today you know through war comes culture peace different religions okay brilliant so let's go back up to one of those early conversations. Now that we understand your journey and your context,

you were literally born into war and then was raised in war, was inspired by the warrior. I think you call him your father, but he adopted you, right? Okay, so you were inspired by a warrior, you became a warrior, and you became a world-class warrior. And so part of the warrior path has to do with violence of others, back to your original idea, and death to others as well. So how do you reconcile that? And the reason I'm so curious, how do you deal with that? How do you think about, like, my actions are going to cause death to other people?

And then figure out how to be okay with it. When many of the world religions talk about, like, death isn't okay. And then many of the world religions also are at the center of war, which is the act of violence. So can you help teach us that? Teach me about that? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as samurai, as any warrior, as a soldier, you went on your path for a higher purpose other than yourself. You know, put aside your emotion and look at the higher purpose, the higher cause. And I'll tell you this, man, you know, and to this day, to this very day, after, you know, 15 years of war, since we've been to war as a country, the

screams of Americans jumping off the Twin Towers, you know, the images of our Americans dying on a battlefield and what we face internally from the threats abroad. That's my drive. That's my motivation. My motivation is to give people hope when there's no hope. As going into a country where these people are being oppressed and really wiped out. They want to wipe them out of existence because they're tied to a different tribe or whatever or being born in some kind of a race, a group

where you'll never progress. My hair just stood up listening to you speak because I can imagine you've had many experiences where when people would see you, one group of people would probably be terrified, but so many times people would see you that they, uh, one group of people would probably be terrified, but so many times people would see you and say, Oh my God, there's, there's the person that's going to save us. Or there's the four men that are going to save us. I don't know if you, you fought with, with women or not, but you know, there they are. Oh my God, there's hope. And then now you're translating that into teaching and training. Um, I think operators

or military personnel or people that want to learn how to defend and have combat skills I think that's right yeah it's really me educating my students on the mindset of a warrior and a path because I can teach you techniques all day long but I can really can't teach you the way the way of bushido the way of the warrior the mindset of a warrior you only understand the branches and not really understand the roots of my teaching so what what I try to teach my approach is mindset techniques can be varied and changed depending on environments and groups and situations, physical abilities. But mindset is something that you can't teach. Okay, keep going.

So me dedicating the next evolution of my life is to give, right? So it's not necessarily just training law enforcement, military, and civilians on how to defend themselves, but it's giving a piece of me. It's giving a piece of my teachings and my learnings so they can seek better and prove themselves, not just in the art of war or the art of the trade or whatever they're trying to do, but also to change their life with the aim to be better every single day. Okay. So that's, that's your current mission. And there was a phrase that you said that obviously my antenna is going to come up is that you cannot teach mindset.

And I bet you wouldn't think this knowing that the field that I'm in, in performance psychology, I 1000% agree with you is that you cannot teach mindset. You can teach mental skills but a person has to identify their ideal mindset and know how to be able to access mental skills to activate it and train it so that mindset becomes more familiar so that they can access it on a higher frequency or a higher rate do you agree with that or do you have a different approach? Oh, no, man.

I absolutely agree with that, Mike. You influence a lot of professional athletes, and their mindset is, you know what? I'm going to make or break this game. This is my play, this and that. But in the end, and not to take away from that, I highly respect them, but in the end, it's a game, right? In the end, it's a sport. And yet, it takes a lot of life dedication to be a master of that sport. But the, I hate to say it's a sport, but the game that we play is a game of life and death. The game we play will change and influence you,

you sitting there and your freedom and our listeners. So whatever decision we make as a professional soldier has great effects on the future and safety of the United States. So that's going to drive my mindset to be better, to serve a higher cause. It's not a game. It's a lifestyle. Perspective is so real. It drives me flat out nuts. And anyone listening knows this. And most of my friends know this. It drives me flat out nuts when people say in sport, like, we're going to battle. I said, no, you're not. We're going to war. We're warriors. No,

you're not. Maybe you're going to have an inner battle, but the game that you're playing is going to be over and there's going to be a referee that says you can't do certain things. And so you and I are nodding our heads right now in the same kind of clip saying, yep, that's right. So how do you train people? I want to go to the source with you right now like how do you train people i can tell you what the books say i can tell you what i figured out you know working with um uh in high stakes environments where people do die in in some of the sports i'm talking about when they're pushing the frontier of uh adventure and you know the adventure-based sports such as backcountry skiing or base jumping and blah blah blah so i can tell you from the science and applied standpoint but i would love to go straight to the source what do you do and what have you learned to do to train people's mind to be fully present to be calm and to generate confidence first you need to lead by example you need to show them truly who you are and your mindset, not just thumping chess and saying, look how fast I can shoot or look how athletic I am.

No, no, no, no. The mindset as in this is my mistakes and this is the path that I chose. These are mistakes I made a long way. These were the losses. But this was my chosen path, and I dedicated my whole life to this chosen path. And if I can give them that, my mindset, just like in our podcast today to the listeners, if they can leave away from this podcast and go, you know what? I'll never be on the battlefield.

My chosen profession is an engineer, a doctor, or whatever it is, a teacher at engineer a doctor or whatever it is a teacher at a high school whatever it is whatever your chosen profession is master it you know master it and be the best at it and that's a mindset that's what's up that is you're so on the money there because it is you know i'm now I'm animated right now with you too, because these ideas that are populating our culture right now, that there's seven steps, there's six tricks, how to hack, shortcuts and tricks and tips, it's nauseating. No, it's a fundamental, fundamental orientation in life to dedicate one's full being, both mind and body, to develop and learn the thing that is most attractive to that human being. And it's a fundamental orientation. And

if we don't have that fundamental orientation, we'll never experience potential because we're looking for shortcuts. That's what a hack is. There's no hack. There's no hacks. Tell me you have a hack. I'd love to know if you've got a hack to swordsmanship. Yeah. And I blame it on society. And I blame it on the current generations or the generations that came before us. It's that we evolved in technology. We evolved.

You think about fast food chains. If we want to eat, we run to a fast food chain because we don't want to wait. You know, you don't want to cook because you don't have time nor you want to spend the time to cook. Same thing with learning. People want to quickly get the answer and then they call themselves masters or they call themselves proficient when you really didn't dive deep into it but the surface layer. Do you think it's possible to be a high performer or a world-class performer in many different domains at the same time? I don't think that our lifespan will allow us the amount of time to really deeply understand. I agree.

I totally agree. There is that thought in the world that if you could learn faster and better and more proficiently and know the shortcuts to be able to find the most effective pieces of information, that you could become world class at A, B, and C crafts at the same time. And I think it sounds sexy. It sounds wonderful. It sounds something like, wow, is that possible? And then when I really get honest with myself, I say, no, no, no. I'm actually not interested in that. I'm way more interested in mastery to learn about myself

and the relationships with nature and others through the demonstration of command of the space between the nuances i know that's a mouthful and what i've seen in the tactical industry is that a lot of guys they tend to doctrinize or crystallize a belief so much that it stops their ability to progress and growth. It clouds their ability for personal truth. So if I tell you something, if I say, you know what, Doug, this is the way it is in the Philippines, and this is how they work and so and so. Is that truth? Is that gospel truth? No, that's my opinion. But truly to understand it, then you would need to go into the country, you know, into the islands of Zamalong and the Philippines, a whole island,

and see the people, how they live. And then formalize your own personal truth instead of sitting back behind a computer, reading about something and being so opinionated and doctrinize a belief so much that you can't even change it okay so so how do you deal with frustration uh meditation okay so what's that practice look like for you um so physical fitness uh is absolutely must um almost every day of my life and a healthy body builds a healthy mind, but then you need to exercise the mind to clear the toxins that we face almost

every single day. You know, we face toxins by, you know, for me, if I get on the news and, you know, if I see a soldier die overseas,

if I, if I hear about it, it bothers me. It bothers me to my very soul, my core. You know, people being so opinionated to tell you what they think about something. And so one-sided. So you have to clear these toxins. You have to re-energize your mind.

How many minutes? Is it a breathing mindfulness training? Is it an observation of thought and emotion and sensation? What is your primary go-to strategy to meditate for mindfulness? I do have my days where I need to clear the mind. So then I go into the deep breathing meditation to bring me to the state of Zen, to clear my mind from floating and thinking about other things, to bring me to the very current moment and stay in Zen. And how many moments or minutes do you,

or do you look for a certain target sensation before you end your mindfulness practice? Yeah, absolutely. So it's like if you think about an iphone right you plug it into the wall and you re-energize that power well that's why i'm kind of doing with my mind i i do it long enough to clear my mind some days i have a harder day it takes me longer to clear that mind Is your mindfulness practice in the morning? It sounds like it's in the evening. It is. It's in the evening. Yeah.

And then, like, practically, it sounds like you're doing single-point mindfulness, which is following one breath over and over and over again. When your mind wanders, what do you do with it? I bring me to here now. So current state of breathing. I focus on the temperature in the room. You know, that's why, like, seen buddhist monks meditating underneath the water so the wall the water is actually hitting them to bring them back to the current state of mind their current situation yeah and you can come back to anything single point you come back to anything now over and over

and over and over and over and over again so that you can recognize when you've left now and that's the essence of the training. Are you doing this for, if you just threw a number out there, is it two minutes, six minutes, 20 minutes? What is the average duration? I would say 20 to 30 minutes. Do you do it sitting, laying, standing, walking? I sit in the uh the japanese sitting position and do you have any um eating

mindfulness practices have what eating mindful mindful eating practices do you ever try that as a meditative practice no oh it's phenomenal like yeah what is that so um it's a it is a it here's the zen story if you will or the story that comes from zen traditions is that? So here's the Zen story, if you will, or the story that comes from Zen traditions, is that a husband and wife go on a long journey across the desert, and they are bringing their only son, and they get halfway across the desert, and the man looks to his wife and says,

we've made a terrible mistake. We no longer have enough food to make it. And so if they turn back, they'll die. If they go forward, they'll die. And so he says to her, we have to make a decision. And the decision is either we eat one of each other or we eat our son. And so they make the most difficult decision that they've ever made in their life, faced with peril. And they make the decision to eat the flesh of their son.

And so then the Zen master who stops the story at that point waits for the response for the students. And you can imagine all the students are like, the way that they typically respond or when I tell that story, they look like, are you crazy? Like, that's disgusting. This is awful. This can't be. And then, so then the Zen master goes back into the story and says, imagine what it would be like preparing that meal that was the flesh of your own self and your son? How mindful would you be in the preparation of that flesh? How mindful would you be while you're eating that flesh? And then there's a pause and allowing people to digest that thought, really, which is, oh my gosh,

you're right. And then, so in modern times, we're eating, we're shoving food down our throat, and then looking at the TV, looking at our phones, worrying about the future, and we're completely mindlessly connected to the consumption of what once had life. And even if you're a vegetarian and don't eat meat, the lives that dedicated themselves to preparing that wheat or chaff or that wheat or grain. And so I think it's a really powerful practice, which is mindful eating. So the practice is as simple as consuming, being completely connected to what you're putting in your hand.

Let's say you're eating a sandwich. You would notice the lettuce. You'd notice the meat. You would notice the bread, like the colors and sensations of that and then when you take your first bite you would just be so grateful for the life that had been been given for the sustenance and you would follow every flavor and texture and nuance for that bite and you would observe it going down through your esophageal system into your stomach and you'd watch and observe the life that you're

getting from that bite and then when you're done you would take a second bite and so that it's mindful eating out of the out of the uh orientation of gratitude for life that you're living and the life that was given to be for you to be sustained. And it's hard. I feel like I could talk about it. I've never talked about that with anyone, too. I've actually seen that during the Japanese tea rituals. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly it.

You were saying it there. Yeah. Yeah, it's really hard. And socially, it's very awkward if you're eating publicly. So I suggest try, like, the way that a beginner would try that is try to do two bites you know in the privacy of your home then try the next meal to two three bites and then kind of a stepwise approach that way i think i'm gonna try it tonight yeah oh okay so maybe all of us can try it today you know and and then we can jump on and talk about that experience together.

It's funny that you said that, man. It brought me back to – you'll probably be interested in this story. We were in the triple canopy jungles of Malaysia, right? So we're tracking. We're conducting – we're pretty much tracking down humans and uh the malay force that we had at with us uh they we had to get off the jungle so we it's called rod rest over day so when you're moving so long uh for long periods of time uh you may want to rest over day because you have a night operation going on that night right so what we

do in the jungle is we actually hoist ourself off the jungle floor right because there's a lot of things that will kill you on the jungle floor so uh there's these monkeys uh i was on a hammock a swimming hammock suspended from the uh the jungle uh triple canopy jungle and this monkey uh came in and as i was taking my nap i had a pistol on my chest hold on hold on hold on too you i don't know if you have any idea like these are the stories that are like radical i mean you know like these are those moments right and you preceded the whole thing like we're hunting humans and and and i i know that you would put an adjective in there like humans that are destructive and evil and bad and whatever, right?

Yeah, but okay, keep going with the story. They're great images. Keep going. So one of our SOPs, our standard operating procedure, is that we put suppressors on our pistols in case somebody comes comes up to us we can quietly uh eliminate that threat right so as i was swinging suspended from the the jungles um there's this monkey that made his way and uh he he was digging through my backpack right so i heard this heard this noise going through my backpack, and the backpack was near my head. So imagine laying on a hammock and your backpack suspended behind you where the head's at, right? So I saw the monkey.

I basically glanced off my peripheral, kind of moved my head and saw the monkey, angled my pistol towards the monkey. So I'm in my 20s. I'm full of fire. Right. So, um, so the first round went off,

missed the monkey. Um, the monkey got pissed off, started swinging around and literally, uh, the jungle came alive. So you woke up, you woke up the dragon,

didn't you? The dragon. Oh yeah. So all the cousins and brothers and nephews of all those monkeys came swinging in and they're defecating in their hands and throwing shit at us you know and um you know they said hey i can see your your boys going too what the hell are you doing dog the team was pissed off. So we had to rappel down. So I'm standing on this jungle floor.

I'm looking at these monkeys throwing their feces at us and said, what are you going to do? Now, we had people in the jungle that wants to hurt us, you know, so we're hiding for a reason. What are you doing shooting your gun? What's that? Why did you shooting your gun? What's that? Why did you shoot your gun? Oh, I was stupid and I wanted to kill a monkey. So I'm in my 20s, right? I didn't know any better.

And so I never killed anybody at that time frame. So I wanted to kill something, right? So yeah, it's stupid. It was immature. But anyways, long story short is that the monkeys got pissed off. We rappelled down off the triple canopy jungle. I'm on the bottom of the jungle floor. My team's looking at me.

They're pissed off. And I say, hey, I'll handle it. Don't worry about this. So I called the Malay commandos that was with us and, they circle me, um, took out their AKs and gunned down these monkeys. So these monkeys are dropping like apples, you know?

And, uh, if you ever see, the story just got awful for me, like awful. Oh yeah. Yeah. So now rattling of an AK 47 and triple canopy jungle,

echoes through the jungle. So they shot these monkeys, and the monkeys fell. And if you ever look at a monkey or you ever been to a zoo and see a monkey, they have a lot of human characteristics. I mean, if you believe in evolution, that's kind of where we came from. So they have these you know these emotions on their face and the way they move after he got shot that later on you know kind of looks like a human being right so um needs to say we ate monkey that night right so here i am standing by a campfire

uh a slow little fire because we have tigers and wildlife in the jungles that would love to come out of the jungle and kill you at night. So we had to make little small tactical fires to keep these wildlife away. And I'm gnawing on this monkey's paw and this monkey's arm. And it's so funny because I was gnawing on the monkey's paw and I thought about the story, the monkey's paw. Have you ever read that story, the monkey's paw? No. Yeah, it was a quiet reading for us in high school where this guy, he got a monkey's paw from overseas and apparently you can make a wish and his wife died. He made the wish that she comes back alive. And this is back in like the 1800s right so he he was in his room and uh he heard the front door

open and you hear somebody walking up the stairs and um he looked underneath the door he saw the the dress of his wife that he buried so it needs to say the monkey's paul gave him his wish but kind of cursed him. You know what I mean? So as I'm known as Monkey Paw, I'm thinking back to my high school required reading. It was kind of funny. So you dropped it. So kind of a story of mindful eating, but not really? No, no. It was a mindful eating story. So, you know, having survived off of wildlife before, like in northern India, we had to shoot mountain goats just to survive, you know. We're hungry.

You can only carry so much food. After the war, after taking lives, human lives, I find myself not being able to hunt. I can't hunt anymore just for recreation, right? I'll hunt if it's survival. But this is where it comes full effect for me was the appreciation of life, right? So if I shoot something, yeah, yeah I'm gonna have that mindful thinking I'm going to say hey this thing gave us life in order for me to live now do I really need to hunt now that I'm a civilian or I can go down to a grocery store yeah if

I want to keep up with that skill set that sport there's nothing wrong with it but what I found when I looked through the radicals of my scope towards the end of my career was that the eyes on these animals, if you really look at an animal, look at a dog, look at whatever, whatever animal, and see, truly look into his eyes or its eyes and see the purity, the peace. They don't know violence. The only way that they hunt is for survival. They've never seen the cruelties of the world. So these kind eyes, I couldn't get over it. So when I say that, trying to relate to your mindful thinking is every life that you take, you need to account for. Every life that you take when it comes to survival, you need to cherish that

because it gave us life for you to live. So is part of your approach to life that there are evil people and or are people inherently good and they go wrong? How do you think about the life efforts of people i think the human race in general um in general has evil characteristics uh i've seen it magnified throughout my 22 years in the military i've seen it through every continent of the world i've been in so it's really hard for somebody to come at me and say, the human race is a good race. They've just been misdirected. Think about history. We enslave people. We kill people over things as spices. We went to war for food and terrain and natural resources. You know, God gave us a brain and what did we do with it? We made the art of killing more proficient.

So as a human race in general, I think that everybody has comes kind of primitive, evil side to them. You know, I think with today's society, we're trying to change that and you can see it. But in the end, businessmen,

you know, have their certain agendas. You know, you don't have to just put it into my world, the warrior's world. Think about how many cutthroat industries, you know, or how many people you have

to step over to try to get in certain positions of power to look at our politicians you know i mean so i guess you can use evil in that way okay gosh too yeah there's so much rich information that you shared with us you know i i want to i want to honor our time but i also want to ask you um you know how do you think about mastery? You've dedicated your life to be a student of war and the student of strategy, I would imagine, mentioning the five rings. How do you think about mastery, the concept of mastery? It's deep, right? So it goes deeper than a surface layer. So to me, mastery is the complete

and deep understanding as it pertains to a subject or an art. You can only achieve this by truly dedicating one's life to the complete and ultimate understanding to that art with the mindset of never crystallizing a belief so much that it may stop that forward progress and growth or cloud you know uh your personalized truth you know so it's it's truly the deep understanding of not just education but the employment and the application uh of whatever art or subject you're trying to master. Beautiful. What gets in the way?

Life can get in the way. All right. So other priorities, if you have kids, that can definitely get in the way. If you have a wife, that can get in the way. So let's say you're trying to master… Dude, that's going to come off really wrong if we just… Oh balance right yeah i'm agreeing with you but if there was yeah if there was just a little snip of that you know it would be in trouble but i agree that like um there is a selfish requirement of the pursuit to dedicate all of oneself into a particular craft.

Part of the dark side is you can get lost in that selfish pursuit. I think you're right on the money with what you said. Can you give me one way that we could train our minds? I know you talked about mindfulness training, but maybe one other practice to help generate confidence or the ability to be calm or focused um the drive you know some people call it the fire some kind people call it the storm within um you have to keep that fire you have to keep that. No matter how long you've been studying this subject, you have to continue to drive to continue to educate. And once you kind of reach to a senior point in that subject, and now it should, it should take a personal, uh, a personal expression.

Like you, you have to personalize that knowledge to you, because if I give you a subject expression like you you have to personalize that knowledge to you because if i give you a subject how you take that subject off of your background will play on the way you perceive that art i love it you know in my background the way i was raised and how i was born you know greatly influenced you know my art of war my my study of any art of war so okay i love it i'm flat out yeah so this is complicated subject matter this is very complicated subject matter when we're talking about life and the art of killing and the the learning of uh being a student of war is very complicated and so i want to thank you for your sensitivity and your honesty and your openness and the challenges you face through racism and loss of loved ones. Two beautiful conversations.

So thank you. Thank you. How can we find out more about what you're doing? Where can we find you and be connected with your business efforts? Yeah, so I have – I develop and engineer my own gear, equipment, and I also run tactical training and mindset and consulting. My media handles, my social media handles is Instagram at Ronin Tactics, Ronin and then Tactics. Ronan and then Tactics.

My Facebook is Ronan Tactics and my website is www.ronantactics.com Brilliant. So you've got your own tactical gear. You also are consulting with people that want to learn about mindset and strategy.

I'm looking forward to following what you're doing. If there's any way that our community can be part of what you're doing, I'm sure they're going to be switched on to it. So again, thank you for the sensitivity, the accuracy, and the care to spend some time together to talk about mastery and your path on it. And so for the rest of us, you know, thank you so much for being part of the Finding Mastery community. I love the social engagement at Michael Gervais. And then too, would you be okay coming or would you be interested? You can always say no, but would you

be interested in going on the Finding Mastery community page and answering some questions that people will have after this conversation? Oh love to man in life we need to share information right so we need to take our our learnings and share with others that's how the world gets better and i'm definitely willing to do that awesome that's what's up so i'll see you on social too and then we'll connect on the finding mastery uh the community page is findingmastery.net forward slash community I'll get you sorted up on that page too and then yeah check out his work Ronan

Tactics and yeah love it thank you and I'm looking forward to another conversation with you too oh absolutely alright have a great day I'll talk to you soon take care you too thank you for having me bye Thank you for having me. Okay. Bye. All right.

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