Jocko Podcast - 407: Never Give UP. Never Quit. Bounce Back. With Travis Mills

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Retired United States Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills of the 82nd Airborne is a recalibrated warrior, motivational speaker, actor, author and an advocate for veterans and amputees. Travis’s New York Times bestselling memoir, Tough as They Come, is currently available on sale in bookstores everywhere. Despite losing portions of both arms and legs from an IED while on active duty in Afghanistan, Travis continues to overcome life’s challenges, breaking physical barriers and defying odds.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 407 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. We all face challenges. We all have setbacks. We all suffer. When these difficulties hit, some people break. They surrender.

They let circumstances, fate, and events that unfold, control their attitude, dictate their emotional state, and determine their destiny. They adopt a defeatist attitude. of negativity they accept failure they curl up in a ball and wait for the clock to run out they quit but there are other people who are diametrically opposed to that attitude people who in spite of incredible challenges adapt and overcome of every person I have ever met in my life Travis Mills has faced the most traumatic intense and brutal challenges a human being could face and he faces these severe challenges continuously every day over and over again and yet he has the best attitude of anyone I know or have ever known his emotional

state is always positive his humor is always on point his mentality is pure strength of will despite suffering of the most horrific wounds a mass He chooses his own destiny and is unstoppable in his drive and commitment to live life Travis Mills is one of my friends one of my heroes and the most inspiring human being I have ever met Travis received injuries beyond all comprehension While serving in the US army in Afghanistan an improvised explosive device big enough to destroy a vehicle Ripped off his arms and legs leaving him a quadruple amputee.

In that moment of shock and despair, when most people would be focused on themselves, Travis' first response was directing the medics tending to him to care for his fellow soldiers instead. He thought he was going to die. Against the odds, and thanks to the skill and determination of those medics, he lived. his battle was far from over in fact it was just beginning upon returning to America he started an almost unbearable journey of recovery and recalibration countless surgeries excruciating pain hallucinations fighting to stay alive then he had

to learn how to live again he had to learn to utilize prosthetic limbs he had to learn how to walk, eat, and accomplish seemingly ordinary tasks like getting dressed and brushing his teeth. He also had to recreate his identity now that he could no longer serve in his beloved army. And most important, he had to recalculate and reimagine how he could be the husband and father he knew his family deserved. This was not an easy path. I cannot think of anything in life more difficult to overcome yet Travis has achieved exactly that he has excelled in every aspect of life he is an author a business owner the founder of a powerful charity organization a speaker and a devoted family man he is a

recognized source of laughter and light to all who encounter him without question Travis Mills has turned tragedy into triumph and victimhood into victory. In the game of life, Travis Mills is the undisputed champion. And that right there is an excerpt from the forward, which I had the honor of writing to a new book, which is called Bounce Back, 12 warrior principles to reclaim and recalibrate your life, which is written by Travis. the man himself Travis has been on this podcast before over six years ago actually episode 90 where we discussed his first book which is called tough as they come and if you haven't read that book or listen to that podcast go listen to that podcast

and read that book to learn about the life of Travis Mills where he came from what he went through but if you want to learn how he got through it and what he learned from it and the principles that he has to pass on then get this book bounce back we can all learn so much from Travis and it is an honor to have him here with us tonight to discuss his life and some of these lessons learned Travis I mean that was so good I don't know what I should say because you always I mean it's impressive I'm I'm over here with goosebumps thinking like, man, this guy sounds awesome. Whoever he's reading about.

What a cool. I mean, I want to know that guy. Hey, I'll tell you what, man. To be honest with you, I almost never talk in like absolute terms. Think about it. You know, it's really difficult to say someone is the most inspirational person you've ever met in your life. I don't throw those things out there lightly, but this is the truth, man. Like, I have never met anyone that inspires me as much as you do.

And so like I said, I don't speak. If you listen to Claudeau, I'm always very careful. You know, because when you say someone's like the best, you're basically dissing everyone else. Like if I'm doing Jiu-Jitsu with someone and they're really, really good, they might even be a world champion. I'll still be like careful about saying, oh, they're the best person I've ever trained with.

Because there's some other people who are, you know what I mean? I mean, I did. And I appreciate that because obviously you wake up every day and look in the mirror yourself. I mean, everybody gets motivated. my wife today, before we flew out here to Old California, IA. She took a picture of her watch. It was 4-54. She goes, who am I, jocco? She's a little late. But either way, no, and I appreciate that. And I'll tell you, I'm pretty good at Jiu-Jitsu myself. I was at the camp. I started on

the white belt mat, day one, you know, not knowing what I was doing. By day two, I was on the black belt. So, I mean, it's a pretty big deal. How did you feel? Have you kept training? I went one other time just because of scheduling. I plan on going next, nope, not next week. No, no, maybe next Wednesday. But no, I do. Was it fun? It is fun.

But what I, you know, there was people, one guy in particular did not like when I tapped him out. He actually was pretty upset. And I saw him the other time, went and trained, and he didn't really make out of contact with me. But he was upset. And I get it because I'm handicapped. But what people don't realize is, like, we used to do ground fighting tactics, like three days a week when I was in the military. So, like, I understand the concept. And with me, it's so hard.

You either got to choke me out. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's not, you're difficult to leg lock. Yeah. You're difficult to arm lock. Yeah. You got to choke you. You know what I,

what I realized when we were talking was for you to do exercise is like, there's only so many limited moves that you can do. And so like, doing jihitsu. You totally were doing jiu jih Tzu. And that's got to be so much more fun than the kind of normal. I mean, for me, jiu jih Tzu is more fun than running.

More fun than swimming. It's more fun than lift. It's more fun than any echo Charles. support. It's more fun than any form of exercise. Yeah. Yes. Oh, definitely.

And I used more muscles I haven't used in years. Oh, dude. Will you sore the next day? Yeah. But I was like playing it off. I'm like, I don't know. I was sore. You know, I'm like, oh, let's go again.

I'm ready. But then I go to Pete's and where he trains in his gym there, he has a, he's like, I want to feel like it's Brazil. So the doors are closed. The windows are closed. He's probably had the, I think he had the heat on pumping humidity in the air somehow. And then he plays, did he play Brazilian music too. Oh, he did.

And I'm like, and I'm like, okay, how do I get more air in my life? Like, I was going against Ian. Yeah. I got to the point where I'm like, Ian, you're not going to tap me, but I'm telling right now, like I can't breathe. Like, I'm going to need to take a minute here. Yeah. That's tapping, by the way.

Just saying that counts. I understand that. I'm just saying he didn't choke me. He didn't choke me out. Okay. But you're right. You're right. And then, and then, like, I spent like $50,000 on a brand new gym at my house.

You got a sauna. My wife's got a Peloton. I got a tonal machine. And let me tell you something. the two times I've worked out there for the gram those posts have went very well so you know what I'm saying like do it for the gram and for my health I need to do it for my health yeah no it's it's awesome and I know you were an athlete again go listen to podcast night if you were if you haven't or get the book tough as they come because you were an athlete growing up and like you it's real obvious that you

were an athlete growing up when you train when I trained with you like when I trained jihers with you, you can just feel you have, like, you're strong as hell. And the way you move is like a little crazy. I think I actually punched you with my left, uh, right, right, my nub. Yeah. And your eyes went like red. That's like, oh, this is how I die. Because the way you snap from like, oh, yeah, try this.

And then to like, I'm going to eat you. Um, it scared me. I'm not going to lie. I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. And you see the film, actually. They have the video where I'm like, I, I'm sorry. You just keep going. I'm like, uh,

I just punched him right in the forehead. That's the way Jiu-Jitsu is. Jiu-Jitsu is a full-contact evolution. Like you're going to get, you're going to get jacked. You're going to get punched. You're going to get hit in the face, head-butted. Like, everything's going to happen. And it's just kind of the way it is.

And I mean, I just got my little arm, like a little bone there, that secret weapon. I love it. Yeah. You definitely have some techniques to develop because, like, in echo, like in his arm, his shorter arm, there's like a bone in there. Yeah. And it's like, it's like having an elbow at the end of your heart. arm or something like that so when you grind it in there it was not it didn't feel good

you'll say that it's a that I show you when you were there and did I put it push it push it in your but it's it's it's some formal H.O. that like when your bone breaks it grows funny and they were supposed to like it grew so hard I mean so pointed that it was bruising my skin from the inside out when I was putting my left or my right prosthetic arm on and then they wanted to like cut you open and grind it down and it would took me out of my recovery for like two weeks or something like that And I said, no, I can't do that. So my buddy was like, just hit it on the table.

And it'll chip the bone. So I just like hit it on the table repeatedly for like 45 minutes until finally I was like, I think I might have rounded it up. And I did. I mean, it rounded out enough. Like it doesn't bother me anymore. Where are the chips? They just float around, I think.

Just in there. Just got consumed. Yeah. So we were talking before you hit record, like your reason behind writing this book, 12, did I read the 12 warrior principles to reclaim? Okay. So that's like the sub. title 12 warrior principles to reclaim and recalibrate your life, which can we say you took that

from Jordan Peterson who had like the number, like the bestselling book for the last like 10 years. This is the second time I heard this today. And I was like, I don't even read books. So I have no idea if that's what they did because I didn't pick that. The publisher was like, hey, we're going to do this. And I was like, if that's what you think, but I don't know who that guy even is. Okay. And here's the thing, like I should because it's embarrassing because I'm the drive down.

My buddy Max, who lives in Temecula, he's a Paralympian in track and field and Navy Corman, and I called him up to see how far he was away and whatnot. He goes, did you steal that? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, okay. And I'm like, no, seriously, I don't like read books. If it's not audible. So like now I feel embarrassed where I'm like, well.

Well, not only do you write a book called 12 Rules for Life, he wrote another book that's called 12 more rules. Well, this is, yeah Well, did he cover the, you know what? I have no idea. I didn't do that. But I mean, look. The cool thing is, he would like, he would love this book. So we'll, I'll send him a copy of this thing.

I mean, I don't want to get mad at me because I didn't, I didn't even know he existed before. That's probably what he'd be more mad about. Yeah, but it's because I'm not a learning man. He's been one of the most covered figures in the news for the past like five, five years. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, we had him on this podcast.

He's been on a few times. The first time he was on, he wasn't really popular yet. Yeah. And so, you know, he came on and it was sort of like cool. He wasn't quite, then after that one, he just went Richter. He did an interview with the BBC. And this woman was kind of questioning him. And he was just kind of calm, cool, and collected.

And she kept saying, so you're saying, and she would like take his work. and kind of try and make them sound a little bit different. Yeah. And he was like, no, I'm not saying that. And it was just, it really was it was an interesting interview to watch and it and it got tens of millions of views. And then his book came out and then it just all went crazy and he became like a really, really popular guy.

He's a super nice guy. He's even to this day like he's a super nice guy. He's always been cool to me. He's been cool to us the whole time. Like he didn't change like when he became from just like a normal kind of person to a he's got to be the most famous psychologist, Echo. Yeah. I mean, before this book comes out on November 7th.

Yeah, I don't want your book comes out, obviously. But so here's the thing. Like, yeah, I don't know. I didn't know this coming down. I catch your guys' podcast when I can when I have time to drive, but usually it's a lot of windshield time. So I catch the ones that I can. But I don't read a lot.

Just like flipping pages is hard for me. And that's like a total excuse. I know that. Do you do audiobooks or something? I do. I catch them audio books. Listen to this book of stream ownership. I did.

I heard that one was good. Yeah. Oh, real good. Real good. There's two guys that narrate. They're just fantastic. But I do a lot of audio books just because it's, I can't, like, flip pages that well. And I mean, I don't sound soft to me.

Like, I probably can figure it out, but then, I don't know. Reading puts me to sleep. Yeah, reading. I read because I have to read. Sometimes I want to read, but, like, when I was growing up, I didn't read barely anything. Like, when I was in high school and stuff. I didn't read barely anything. I don't think I completed a book in high school.

I read one. I read one when I was. Do you remember where it was? Oh, I do. What? Where the red fern grows. And then we tell you something. I want to ruin it for everybody, but I'm going to.

When those dogs died, it wrecked me. I walked across the hall to my sister's room, full tears. Dan Little Ann died? Are you kidding me? And I quit reading books. What's the book about? I don't know what the book is about. Like, backwoods, something they're like,

Is it about dogs? Is it like, is it about humans or is like the dogs or humans? No, no, no, it's humans. Then these two dogs are like hunting dogs. Can they talk and stuff like that? No. No, I don't think. I don't remember it.

It was fifth grade. But I do remember like, I'm done reading. Like, this just ruined me. I'm out. You know what I mean? Like, if you read my first book, you're going to find out, I got blown up. You know, it's sad. I didn't even see it coming.

But, you know, it's weird being 36 now because I got two feet in the grave. You know what I mean? But like, I mean, sorry. You were, yeah, I was, you know, just reviewing, like I said, I reviewed, re-reviewed the first book. I listened to when you were on the podcast again. And, yeah, you were 25 when you got blown up. Yep.

Yep. And I didn't even see it coming. I know. I mean, I always thought I retired from the military, but I didn't know I could just do it that fast. Do not pass, go straight to medical retirement? Yeah, just there. Just there. I just, you know, I want it.

I got it, you know. So going back to the question that I veered off on, what was kind of the reason that you ended up writing this book? You were saying this because people would ask you like, dude, how do you, basically, which I could see,

you probably could ask that thousands of dead. Yeah. Like, how do you do it, man? Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean,

the worst, that, yeah, people are always like, how do you do this or like, I don't know, like how you're so able to, like,

how you're able to just be so, you know, how you're able to just be so, well, I have to, you know, like, real simple to the point,

like I have to. It's kind of like, and it's, you know, veering off, but like at my foundation there, we bring out the, I sounded very, very Minnesota right there, at my foundation there, but I didn't mean to. But we did the veterans that have been through. You do, do you? Yeah. Oh, don't you know.

So we bring out the veterans and their families, physically injured veterans, and we show I do things adaptively, but everybody's always like, what do you do for post-traumatic stress? And I was like, well, there's these two programs that I highly recommend, home base and Warrior Path. and they have their own thing set up, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, we became a chapter of Warrior Path program, so we offer it now. And when people were asking me, like, how do you do it? Like, this would be miserable and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, well, I have to. And I was like, maybe I should break that down. And not only break it down, because I feel like a lot of times people will look at me like, oh my gosh, why have this going on? But there's nothing compared to your situation. And I got to remind them, like, your biggest problem is your biggest problem. You know what I mean? You can't compare what happened to me to what you're going through.

So I took stories of, you know, drug addiction. There was a sexual assault, like a child sexual assault case. There was a widower, cancer survivor, things like that. People go through every day, a house fire and a divorce, and how they got to the very bottom and then how they like climb their way back out. And then because I had a collaborative author, Kathy Huck, who's a research author, she went and found the medical because I said, you know, there's got to be medical research and theories on why your mind does this

or your brain's able to think a certain way. So we put those at the end of the chapters that we had in there. Yeah, no, that was clever how you got someone that was smart. Smart to help you in this book. Because, you know, I left college because I just couldn't focus on the whole schoolwork. Yeah. But then I found as long as I get blown up and I look handicapped and people are like, oh my gosh, he can walk and talk.

That's amazing. I can find someone to do the work for me, you know. Guilt trip of me too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's all my life. I get pulled over all the time. I'm like, oh, my foot got stuck.

I'm sorry. I just couldn't feel it. You know, heck, the state troopers in Maine gave me in my own bag. Like, I got my own badge. What are you driving? Are you driving a Bronco? I have the Bronco.

Is that thing like a Raptor Bronco or is it? No, they didn't have the Raptor right when I bought it. But it's all, you know, the wild tracks and Sasquatch dance. It's all souped up. It's awesome. I like it. I drive that just in the, you know, it's going to sound boogie, but I only drive on the summer. I don't want to get it.

Like, I don't want to get it like any salt on it. Yeah. So I drive it with the top off. Here's a dumb thing. I know we're veering here. The dumb thing is I waited. They were like, hey, for the 20-21s, we can get you a soft top, not a hard top. I'm like, I want the hard top.

That's what I put in for. And I'm going to wait, so I got the hard top. And then I take the doors and top off all summer long, so I don't even use it. And then when the winter comes, I have a UCon that I drive, an older Yukon. I got American Flaggill and it all blacked out. It's tinted illegally. But again, I got that special badge. In my registration, I keep inside the badge that this.

State Trippers gave me. So I'm like, oh, it's in here if you can just find it in there. Get out, Joe Free card. Monopoly's a game, but this is my life. Fregan awesome. Sorry. All right. So let's go into the book a little bit and start with this section here.

You say, we all have a moment in our lives. We'll never forget. A moment that completely changes our life's trajectory. For me, it was not the blistering hot day in Afghanistan on April 10th, 2012. I dropped my backpack and inadvertently set off an IED intended for a truck. It was not the day that nearly killed me and left me seriously injured, although I will say that day was a really, really bad day at the office. No, my moment came some 18 months later, sitting alone at my in-laws bedroom on a small Texas ranch. As I sat on the edge of the bed, I looked at a young soldier staring back at me from a small sterling silver picture frame, sporting a bright orange baseball hat and a toothpaste ad-worthy.

The soldier stood proudly in uniform flanked by his squad, grinning in the Afghan sun. That soldier was me. U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills of the 82nd Airborne Division. The picture was only taken two years earlier, but it might as well have been another lifetime. I was no longer that man in the image and never would be again. That was the moment I felt helpless, enraged, despondent, afraid. All at once. And we all have those moments.

I had a hard realization. My military days were over and I would never wear a uniform again. I would never give orders to my men again. I would not fight for my country again. I was no longer staff sergeant Travis Mills serving on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. In the army, everything had been laid out for me. There was always a clear mission and a thorough strategy to execute it. I always knew what I needed to do and how to get it done.

Now it was all just so unknown. I know I am not supposed to admit this, especially as a former member of the 82nd Airborne, but my eyes welled up. I blubbered between deep gulps of air trying to catch my breath. Luckily, my wife, Kelsey, walked in at that moment. I used what was left of my right arm to wipe my eyes as she sat down next to me. As soon as I, as soon as she saw my blotchy face, she looked into my eyes and rubbing my back reassured me. Everything is going to be okay. We have each other and you know we can get through anything.

It's all going to be fine. She didn't say much else. She didn't have to. Just being there helped. I knew she was right. Kelsey and my daughter had been with me every step of the way while he recovered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. My parents, her parents and my extended family were also so supportive. My fellow soldiers had my back and still do.

I knew I was one of the lucky ones. There were plenty of fellow soldiers who didn't get to go home. There were others who had made it but didn't have the kind of support that I had some still carried the weight of war which seemed nearly impossible to get past in that moment in Kelsey's arms I made the conscious decision not to let the enemy win I had to grieve for that person in the picture or I couldn't move forward I thought okay I am no longer that Travis that's the old Travis the whiteboard has been erased I have a pen in my hand and I can totally start anew I began to see life as two choices you move forward or backward what I wanted in my life was in front of me not the one in that photo anymore though the man in that photo was gone to me the choice was clear damn if I don't hate

that I will never feel the skin of my wife's hand in mine or throw my son in the air to catch him but there was only one direction to go and that was forward you know what What struck me about that is, I mean, you have such a clear, distinct moment where you talk about that. But like, that's where we're all at. Like, everyone. We're all at this point where we, we, you have to go forward.

You can't wish for what was and what could have been and what a shoulda coulda. That stuff doesn't help and doesn't move you anywhere. You had that, like, distinct moment. Boom. You know, and my thing is I'm always a guy telling jokes, making people feel comfortable. I'm always having a good laugh. And at the hospital, I became a mentor, right?

I was an older guy. At 25, I was an old guy that got injured. I was a staff sergeant in a lot of privates. And, you know, when I was in the service, I had a clear, this is my job, with my role, people look up to me. When I got injured, this is my job, my role, people look up to me. I wanted to retire. I fought to retire. I wanted to gather as quick as possible.

you know, within the means of like I can do everything that I need to be able to do we're required to do, but it's time to move on. And then I did, and I got home and that pitcher was up there. And I never, I mean, this is, honestly, this is the first time I've talked about. Like this book coming out,

is the first time I've talked about this moment because I never showed that side of me. I don't know why. You know, everybody thinks like, oh, it's okay, whatever. But no, Kelsey walked in, and I was just tears just down my face. And I was like, I'm just not that guy.

I'm no longer Staff Sergeant Travis Mills leader of combat soldiers. You know, best job I ever had. And I just didn't know what I was going to do. And, you know, I wanted to retire. The military, good, bad, or different people here on the news and all the stuff, but the VA, like I have a very, very, very, you know, well taken care of, like, plan of care, and I have a pension and things like that.

So, like, I'm good, and I appreciate that. But just I was lost. I was lost completely, and I didn't know what I was going to do. and and you know luckily i mean i had some sort of foundation of okay well we started the foundation we have speaking that's starting to pick up for me and my documentary was being done by recent katy norris and reese was there helping me along as well as my father-in-law who works with me every day and we lived in my in-laws because our house in Maine wasn't built yet but but yeah i um i play it off as you know we joke we have fun but when you think back i'm like you know

even taking a step further like i'm always like oh yeah nine 19 months I recovered at Walter Reed and then I was like out. It's like, that was 19 months. There were some days that were terrible, you know. The first day I walked was great. Second day I tried to walk. I couldn't. I fell over. My legs cramped up. I was my muscle spasms and I couldn't move. And I felt so defeated that day. And then, you know, after 19 months of being at Walter Reed and then you forget. I don't know if you guys have that in your life where you forget the tough times. You're like, oh yeah, no, that was terrible. But it's like, I can remember just sitting at the end of the bed saying like, who am I and what am I doing? You know, and this is, I mean, maybe on top, maybe not. I had a lady that came up to house sit across the lake from us at the foundation. Their friend was like, hey, you know what, by the way, you're a traveling nurse, but you should know there's a guy over here who's in the service.

He lost both arms and legs, and he's made something out of it. And she goes, who's this guy? And the nurse was very, like, very over the top of like, who is this? And she goes, his name's Travis Mills, but here's a picture of him. and she recognized the diamonds on my arm. She worked on me in Afghanistan. And now she has moved up. She's a volunteer.

And I've had her speak a few times for the foundation. And she's admitted openly, she's embarrassed about it, but she admitted openly when she was working on me on the table, she was in her head saying, like, why don't we let him die? He can die with some dignity. And it's the same thought I had when I woke up in the hospital. It's like, you know, this is my lieutenant, Dan, right? My moment, like, why didn't I just die?

How is this going to be better? but then I get out of the hospital I met every requirement they put in front of me to retire and it's time to go on with my life okay you're out go forth and do some you know good stuff and I don't know what I'm going to do and it was a hard realization of like

okay I've done everything the military needs of me now what now what you know yeah and it's interesting I was just thinking about by chance this part of the book is in the forward of the book. It's not chapter one, it's in the forward. And it's like the lesson is

you have to be moving forward. You have to be like thinking about where am I going to go now. And you know, I'm always talking to guys that are getting out of the military and you got to find your next mission, right? And so this is a classic case because when you're in Walter Reed,

you have a mission. It's like, oh, I'm going to freaking learn to walk. I'm going to get on my big legs. I'm going to do that. You got a lot of mission every single day you're trying to get something done. And then all of a sudden you did it all. Yeah.

And you're like, okay, you're out. You're retired. out of the military, what are you going to do now? You know, and I relied on my military training because when I was becoming an NCO, they said, what's the job of an NCO, not a commission's officer, and to provide purpose and direction?

And I forgot that, right? Somewhere along the way, I forgot that I need to have my own purpose and direction. And then slowly but surely after I got out and retired, was at my in-laws house for the three months, then been to Michigan for three months, just tried to escape the hot summer, you know, and then moved up to Maine to our house.

I had to find my purpose. and my direction I was going to go. And, I mean, luckily, luckily I, you know, was able to, you know, kind of rely on a lot of my military training for that stuff, just like the mindset stuff they teach you and things like that. Get some. All right. Now we're going to roll into these principles a little bit.

And again, there's, this book is, I'm going to read like a few little tiny sections of the book. The book has got all kinds of, like you said, there's a lot of stories in here that people that you've met, people that have overcome things similar to years. And you kind of, you align and explain what they did to get through something, how you did that thing to get through it. And then you've got this sort of, what is it, the academic side explaining why that's happening. So it's an outstanding book to explain these principles, give multiple examples,

and then tell why it's happening. So it's an awesome book. Did a great job. The woman that helped you did a really good job. Oh, yeah. I'll tell you what, the research authors. they are very thorough. Yeah.

Like I literally hired a PR firm for like, oh yeah, I'm having a book. I'm going to hire a PR firm with some of the advance or whatever. And then year two hit and I was like, what? I thought I was going to take six months. The first book took like five months, I think, and we had it done. Yeah, she had to research some stuff. Oh, yeah. But it pays off.

Oh, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying I was surprised at. Yeah. She's going to be thorough. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I would have been. I would have, like, check the ground a little better.

Not just been like, man, this bag's heavy. screw this, you know, pop it down. All right. Principle number one, that dog don't hunt. Stop torturing yourself and stop asking why. And you go into a story here. You got a buddy named David Vibora. Is that my saying that right?

And he's got a thing called the Adaptive Training Foundation in Dallas, Texas. And you went there and you were kind of hanging out. It wasn't, I don't think you did some training sessions, but you end up crashing a barbecue. There's like 20 guys that are going through this week-long workshop and you're sitting around You know having some burgers and some beers and then the conversation starts to get a little bit heavy And you go into this section here. It says one guy named Bruce who had been injured in a car accident and paralyzed from the waist down spoke up Quote I just have to keep going because if I slow down I'll just end up crying The worst part of it all is that I don't understand why why it happened why it happened to me

Joe, the head counselor, replied, let's dig into that. Oh, no, we won't, I thought. No, no, you don't, I said this time allowed my outburst surprising the group. I surprised myself too. I meant to be lying back just enjoying the bonfire. The counselor shot me a look and asked, what are you talking about? There's no, there's no digging into why because you're never going to get the answer you want. What do you mean?

I get it. Bruce wants to understand why. This was meant for him at first I did too but the truth is that dog don't hunt What I mean by that is you're never going to get that answer so why harp on it you're only slowing yourself down from accepting something you can't change and moving on as I live and breathe I will never know the answer to why I had stood in that exact spot where there was an IED buried in the ground waiting for me It's a fight you are not going to win ever so why not make peace with it? And you go on to explain, you know, talk more about that, but that principle right there,

like people will, will tear themselves apart asking that question over and over again. And there's nothing you can do about it. No, there's in like, and I have admitted this openly, like some nights, you know, like, you know, I'd say once every three, four months, not continual.

There's nights when it's dark and there's no sleep. be had right then and your mind starts saying like I can't believe this rest my life I have no arms and legs like what in the hell like how how is this something that I was you know supposed to have happen to me or why this happened and and you have those those nights and all I do is get up and go watch sports centers I'm like well this is getting me nowhere because you're still going to have some doubt and things like that and some wonder but to sit there every day and to sit there and think well why this happened could it because of this did I do this like was it because of

and you never get the answer. Like, nobody's going to tell me why I got blown up. I mean, I know why I got, I mean, the bomb was here, right? But I'm saying, like, there's no rhyme or reason to it. And any time I get thinking about it, that's when I'm just like, stop. There's nothing to be had here. Yeah. Just misery, you know?

You know what? So I did a podcast a long time ago about Lewis Puller Jr., who was the son of Chesty Puller, the Marine, Lewis Puller Jr., got wounded to Vietnam, lost both of his legs, had his hands jacked up really bad. He lost his legs at like the hips. Came home, had a really hard recovery. Just, you know, got addicted to alcohol, got addicted to painkillers. Just really had a hard time. And he ended up writing this incredible book, which is called Fortunate Son.

The book comes out. It gets a Pulitzer Prize. It's just like an incredible book. We covered the book on the podcast. and then he's participating in helping with the Vietnam Memorial Wall being built and judging the design and all this stuff. And then that thing gets dedicated. And he's kind of straightened his life back out.

And then he falls out of his wheelchair. He gets hurt. They bring him to the hospital. He had stopped drinking and they put him on like painkillers again. And he goes right down and a spiral. He ends up killing himself. This is Chesty Puller. Chesty Puller's son who joined the Marine Corps like his dad ends up killing himself.

I did that podcast and then like a year later I had another guy in my podcast, a guy named Jim Surlesley. Jim Surlesley was a guy who was in Vietnam. He had volunteered for the army. He didn't get drafted. He joined the army. And when he got his orders after Basic and when he went to school as a tanker, he gets sent to Germany.

Like in the middle of Vietnam War, they sent him to Germany. And he's like getting done with his tour. And he says, hey, I feel like I should go to Vietnam. So he volunteers to go to Vietnam. His sergeant major is like, you need to think about this for the weekend or whatever. And he thinks about over the weekend, it's like, look, I'm a soldier, I need to serve,

goes to Vietnam. He's in Vietnam for 11 months. Last month that he's there, he's got his squad out and they're checking security, and he's checking their perimeter, and he steps on the landmine, gets blown up. Loses both of his legs, loses one arm. He comes on the podcast,

and this dude just lived like an awesome life. Like he came home, he came home he spent nine months in rehab learning learning to use his wheelchair learning how to operate things learning how to function and then goes out gets his real estate license starts a roofing company gets married has kids like hunts just lives an awesome life and you know we go through his whole story and everything and we get done with the podcast and we're down here but we're downstairs talking and he says uh we're talking i said i said i said i said you know like how did you progress like so much and he looked at me he goes have you ever heard a

lewis puller junior and i said yes sir you know tessie puller sonnet and he said i was in rehab with them so they were both got wounded about the same time in vietnam they were both in rehab together and he said i accepted 100% what had happened to me and i moved on and he said lewis never really accepted it. And it just tore him up for his whole life. And this story that you tell here, like I wish somebody would have been around to tell like Lewis Polar like, hey, that dog, that dog don't hunt, man. You ain't going to get an answer.

So it's weird to have a big smile and I shouldn't have a smile. I have the same kind of story in a way. So there's a gentleman who got both legs taken. One hand kind, like lost like a top of a finger, you know, nothing. But he lost both legs. and he was pretty bitter, right? Angry, kind of like not somebody that the therapist really like hanging out with. And we were out this barbecue one day. And I was talking, we were joking and everything. And he told me, you know, you know what, Travis? You're part

of the Everything's Great Club. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well, everything you do, you just act like everything's just so great. And I mean, and I was kind of tired of this guy, I'd be honest with it. He was always just a whiner. And I looked at him and said, yeah, no, you're right. You're right. I act like everything's great because I realized I was giving a chance. to live through my injuries. I know that I can't go back in time to change them. And being, you know, 25 years old, I hope I have 50 years left. And I'd rather be me than be a miserable SOB and not be able to get over it like you're acting like right now. And you have been all this time that you've been here. And I don't think anybody could have punched this guy harder in the face

than those words hit him. And, you know, and again, I mean, I normally tell a story a lot like, oh, you know, I told him this. And he was like, oh, that's so amazing. But really, it like hit him. because I was tired of just kind of his attitude, and he was telling me, like, everything's so great, and I'm like, dude, it's not that bad. Like, I get to be here with my daughter. I don't think I'd be the same person than my daughter wasn't there.

And just letting him know, like, dude, I have 50 years left. I'm not sure how long you think you have luck, but I'm pretty sure I got 50. I make the most of it, and I realize the gift that it was given when a lot of my friends didn't make it back home. And I can, you know, whatever. And then he, I hope, he's doing a lot better. It seems to do a lot better now.

And we're not, like, at each other. Yeah. He's been to the foundation and stuff like that. It's no big deal, you know, but I think maybe he just needed to hear that that day because he was so bitter and like, dude. I would venture to say that the Everything Greats Club is better than the Everything Sox Club. Oh, yeah.

Right? Yeah. I mean, I think 10 out of 10 times having the attitude of like, oh, I'm actually thankful that I got to come home. And not all my friends did. And yeah, I got to deal with what I got to deal with, but I get to deal with it. Yeah. And I think maybe you probably have a lot of people that you know that,

not to put in spot here, but survivor's guilt's huge. And it blows my mind because it's like you can feel bad that they are no longer with us. You can be, you know, sitting there and think about what the situation was and maybe what you could have done differently. But at the end of the day, you couldn't because this is what happened. And I take it as I'm going to do the best I can every day, not just for my family, you know, not just for my kids and my wife. But I'm going to do it because they didn't make it back.

home and they would hopefully live life to the fullest if I would have died over there in my honor as well I think it's selfish slap in the face if I gave up myself because I was given this opportunity and it really is a privilege to like be given life I mean those doctors worked on me for like 14 hours and they could loosen up one turn again said they gave blood from their veins right into me and they did a mass call over the PA system in Kandahar anybody with A positive and universal blood run to the doors and they just they had to keep giving me tests because they didn't test the blood.

They just needed it. They needed it now. But anyway, I mean, Survivor Gil gets me because I feel bad that people can't get out of their own way and accept like it's what happened, but you have the ability now to make the most out of life. It's kind of like the saving private of Ryan. Yeah.

Like tell me, you know, I'm a good, you know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, there you go. Get off my soapbox here. No, all good. Ego, what are you thinking there? I'm taking it all in, but, yeah, it's funny because like all these concepts and you always talk about these concepts

in these circumstances that are so heavy, you know, but then when they trickle down to like everyday stuff too as well. So it's like interesting to get that little remind, huge reminder. That's what I'm thinking at this time. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I'm going to fast forward a little bit.

There's a book, like I said, this is like a pragmatic book. This is like a field manual almost of sorts. If you would have consulted me on the name, it might have even been called the field manual, but you didn't. So whatever. I'm the worst. I'm the worst.

Yeah, I'm the worst. But some of the stuff that you got in here is like this section here, it says, are you ruminating too much? And you introduced the idea of ruminating a little bit earlier in the book. But it says, it says some signs that you may be overthinking what happened. Do you ponder? Why did this happen to me and to my family? Do you think, what if I didn't do X, Y, or Z? Would there have been a different outcome?

Do you often wonder what life would look like if this hadn't happened? Do you play out the accident or incident in your head repeatedly? Do you feel that what happened was unfair? Do you blame yourself for doing something or not doing something that could have been done to avoid the trauma? So again, these are like pragmatic things to ask yourself if you find yourself going down this spiral, the what if spiral or the why spiral. You know, and that's exactly Jim Sorosley, unfortunately Jim Surlesley, he passed away. like a year and a half ago or so. But that was the thing that he said is like,

you can't just keep asking like, why me, woe is me, why me? And this is the exact same message that you've got in this book. So, yeah, if you find yourself. Is that the second time he said I plagiarized? I didn't plagiarized. Well, Jim Sturzley didn't write this, didn't write a book. Okay. But, you know, he, he definitely, I mean, he clearly,

had a very similar attitude as you and clearly like made it through with with some similar thoughts along the way so it's pretty it's pretty interesting I didn't really think of that until I didn't think of it until actually right now we were talking I was like oh yeah this is the same stuff that that Jim Serlesley was saying I don't I don't think I put a principal in there called yolo but I'm telling it right now like people wonder why I do so like I have I started a restaurant you know recently and I have the marina that I bought just drinking whiskey one night I thought let's go on Good decision making. Yeah, why not go in debt?

And a few other things, and people are like, why do it? And I'm just like, well, they already say, Yolo, obviously. But I think I'm not afraid to try new things. And I've given the chance to live through my injury, so go after it. But, but yeah, I just, again, those questions and all that. Like, I don't, you know, I tell people with some of my biggest regrets,

you know, I quit college football. I wasn't going to play college football like that much. Like, I should have probably played baseball. but I was so good at the position of sideline because I was there all season and last chance you if that was a documentary we would have been on it

because we actually won the championship I didn't even get the rings I'm just like a red shirt freshman so I don't even want the ring should have go at it and then I had a Ranger contract but all my buddies were going to go to the 8th second they're like hey let's just go to the 8th second

they're letting his shoes and I was like oh that sounds great so I went to the 8 second 21 guys went to 1st Brigade to Iraq one guy I went to 4th Brigade to Afghanistan so I lost all the 8th my basic training buddies. And then just like the gentleman we were talking about that wanted

to go overseas. My orders took me in Fort Hood. The big army said, hey, you got over two years combat. But I had a newborn baby that tax-free money at Staff Sergeant ain't a bad thing to have to plus up my bank count. There's a nine-month hitter, and I was a weapon squad leader. So I'm supposed to be theoretically the most protected because I have the two big, you know, 240 bravos. I'm in the middle of everything, like in middle of the formation. Not that I ever cared about that. I was actually getting in trouble for being the first one in the door,

but that's because I love to fight. But I guess the point is like, I don't have those questions anymore. My big questions are like, my wife gets pissed too. We're having our coffee. I'm like, hey, so what are you having for dinner? And she's like, are you serious? Dude, that's a, are you serious?

That's a hostile question. It's the same thing at my house. I have to like set, I have to be disciplined. because when I come home like I've been podcasts, record the podcast, we get done, we train Jiu-Jitsu, get done Jiu-Jitsu, it's now like 6 o'clock at night.

I didn't eat lunch, so I've been like fasting all day. Come home. Yeah. And bro, there's what, there's literally one thing in the world I want to know. And that's what's for dinner.

You know what I mean? Yeah. But if I come through that door and I don't talk about four other things, four other things before. And sometimes now I just investigate, bro. I'll be like, look in the oven,

see if there's something in there, what is it? Can it be P-I-D, you know? Because that what's for dinner? Man, that, does this what you echo? You're not in your head. I can see how that could be for sure. But it doesn't, no issue. I have learned that.

This is just total avoidance. Long time ago, yeah, yeah. Okay. Oh, geez. We said to have our coffee in the morning. She's just getting in the room. And I'm like, hey, what do you want to do for dinner, you think? You know?

And she's like, are you serious right now? And I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, I go to the room. go to store if you need or we can go to the restaurant it don't matter but that's yeah that's that's not a question you should have to be careful especially at 730 in the morning I'm a coffee dude only dudes think about like what's for dinner at 730 in the morning right am I right mostly dudes my wife she's going New Zealand right so like I'm gonna start just using the crock pot I think do you not have Uber eats where you are well I mean it's we do it's like

I mean I can just go down I'll be honest with I just go the restaurant oh yeah you got your own restaurant right you're going to start you're going to You're kidding me? Yeah, but, but I'm telling you, I love the crock pot. I'm so fired up because at the grocery store, they already cut up all the onions and the peppers and the tomatoes, like everything I need. There's the thing for me. Just toss it in. When you eat, do the crock pot thing, to me, everything kind of tastes the same.

The meat tastes the same of everything tastes the same in that big bucket, right? That's, that's spices. You got to add spices in different meat. My wife's from England, so. Okay. Some things like spices are a little bit unfamiliar. I'm going to burn for that. That's getting it.

Echo edit that out. All right. Principle number two. Unpack that rucksack that rucksack. Process what happened so you can grow from it. When I tell people to stop asking why something bad happened, I don't mean shut the door on everything. You still need to process your experience and make sense of it. There's a difference between rumination and reflection as well as merely overthinking

and understanding. So this is again, as soon as I got, you know, open this one, I was like, oh, what does he mean by that? Because he just said, don't ask too many questions. And now he's saying unpack it. So right out of the gate, you made a reference. It's something that I say is like when people deal with loss, I tell them remember but don't dwell, right?

Like, hey, man, you want to remember your friends, but you don't want to dwell on it. And that's all you think about. And it's a similar message that you put in this chapter here about unpacking the rucksack. Like you want to unpack the rucksack and make sure you comprehend what you went through, but you don't want to just like keep repacking it and unpacking it, repacking it and unpacking it type thing. Yeah.

And what I do is actually I tell people when I get off stage, I got two life lessons I live by, right? The first one is this one. Don't dwell on the past. Just reminisce it. I mean, you know, wake up in the hospital bed, hope and wish and pray this never happened. Close my eyes. This nightmare is going to be over. I'm going to wake up right now.

And I never did wake up from that nightmare. Every time I opened my eyes, I was in the hospital bed. And I realized early on, stopped dwelling on it. Just reminisce. I had 25 years of arms and legs, you know, 25 amazing years with arms and legs. And then I didn't have any more. But I don't dwell on the fact that I got blown up. I just, like you said, I remember, right?

Again, that's basically, you know, that's just what I do. Like, I'm like, hey, I played college football. I joined the military. I jumped out of airplanes and got paid to do it, you know? like led some of the greatest guys overseas and had some of the most fun I'm ever going to ever had but just because I got blown up doesn't mean my life was over I just remember what I used to have and and I've you know this has been now over 11 years being injured and I've had pretty incredible things happen since then too you know oh yeah for sure I mean like being your

your guys's friend oh you mean echo's friend okay don't I grab my self-esteem I can't seem to reach it down there um coming from a little short over here but it's okay it's really they can just stay down there that's cool uh little section in here i'm going to fast forward a little bit again i'm fast forwarding through like most of the book obviously i'm not going to do the audio book did you do the audio book uh did not this time you had an actor do it yeah yeah i'm not angry i'm just disappointed i would i don't want to buy i told you i don't like look i like being your friend you know there's there's something uh some people have a hard time reading stuff. Did you do the audiobook for this one? I did. Did you not like doing it?

It sucked. I was in, so you know, so I, I don't remember if I explained this on the last podcast, but my body overheats. I get hot. So they stuck you in one of those booths to read this thing? Yeah. AC had to get turned off so you went here the thing. I had to read a book three days in a row. Yeah. And they actually, after I was getting decent, they were like, okay, well, we got to read the first third of the book again. And I was like, awesome. Let's just, let's just knock this out. And you know how you write something and you think like, okay, I wrote it. I know I wrote it. I was there when it was written.

So I should be able to read it. And then you're putting like, instead of we are, it's like, yeah, so we're, and they're like, nope, that's not how it says it. I'm like, yeah, I'm trying again. So we, ah, son of a. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of blooper outtakes where some words came out. It's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to do for some people. Like for me, it's honestly, it's easy for me to read stuff.

I don't know why. But like, I've seen people that are the most conversation. just really good to go, and you put him to read something, you hand them like, hey, read this right now, and it's just like brain lock. Yeah, I mean, I do okay with it. Like, I can do the teleprompter.

And I could have done it, but I just think that time-wise, it didn't make sense. And they gave me like five voiceover people that I choose from. So we picked the one that I think was the most interesting. I mean, look, I've already said, I appreciate just being your friends.

So, like, I don't just be like, Hey, can you do me another favor? You know, that time I got blown up and you feel bad for me. So, no, so like, I would have bothered you, but next time bother me, I'll read it. Absolutely. I got to write another book. I got to figure out what other thing I can see was successful out there. Well, you know, Jordan Peterson did 12 more rules, so you can do 12 more warrior principles.

I might do, I might do 11 or 13, you know, maybe just go one up or one down. And then I'm just going to do like seven minute abs, abs, six minute abs. Yeah, like, recap, yeah. I'm all about the eight minute abs. have you know what I'm saying people don't really like this this physique this core is strong I'll tell you right now it's strong it's all I know that from rolling with you yeah that's like your main body but I was surprised that the FX cameras that you guys use for for origin and everything for the camp they record in slow motion because I mean I was

moving so much faster than those videos on Instagram that were posted look I mean I don't know I was I was going a mile a minute but I was like man those those cameras slow the frame down for sure it is a little bit weird like how fast you move like on the mat it's kind of like a weird like kind of alien sensation did you get that yeah because you there's a lot of stuff you're not used to yeah yeah with yeah with me oh yeah it's a weird I can make like a weird growl sound too like like yeah yeah it is a weird thing to like when you start moving fast it's definitely like you say I guess it's because you're not used to it you're not used to seeing like a body move in this really fast way it's kind of it's kind of

freak kind of freaked me out a little bit and and like with the Deco he was saying and his birthday just hit so I have birthday at him but he was saying he was trying to reach for my wrist and just oh yeah coming up short of my wrist because it's not there it's real yeah yeah I saw when I was watching him roll with you I could see his like arm moving to grab or like to underhook your arm and it's not there it's definitely it takes some adjustments for the other guy as well uh going back to the book here that's right yeah talk it through there are all there is a lot of benefits that comes with sharing your struggles with another human. The biggest being you find out you're not alone.

When something bad happens to us, we tend to feel that we are the only ones dealing with it. And if you focus on the traumatic event itself, then yes, of course, you are alone as you literally, as you were literally the only person experiencing that very event. However, if you change your perspective and focus on what comes with experience, what you find is that everyone has experienced similar effects to some degree. When you share our feelings, you discover that you aren't really alone. That realization alone can lift the tremendous weight off your shoulders.

Dude, it's like everybody's been through some trauma. I got two stories for this. The first one, you know, like, is it Goodwill Hunting where he just has to sit with a therapist and he won't talk to him? And he finally breaks him. Well, they had a social worker named Christy that they made everybody talk. You know, you had to go to see her for an hour. And I went there and talked to her

And we talked about football She was Green Pay Packers fan I'm a lion's fan You know whatever Clay Matthews his hair And then she'd ask me a personal question And I'm like yeah no And then we get talking about other stuff And then we did it again

And I sat there for the hours Like all right well time's up I gotta go Came back next time About 20 minutes in I said I'll be honest with you We're never going to discuss anything Anything of real substance

I said I didn't talk to mental health When they came into my room And I literally gave her my name I gave her my name ranking social Like mental health came in the first time I was sleeping Geneva Convention only So second time they came in

I was like Kelsey goes Mental Health here talk to you I was still in the hospital You know I just shut my eyes I'm trying I got to sleep in Third time

Eating a bowl of cereal With a makeshift arm Like duct taped Like with a spoon And I'm eating And I see her come in And I know who she is I saw her last time

And I said Oh shit I don't know if I can swear I can believe it or whatever And that's exactly what I said And I fell back in my bed Like from sitting up Fell right back

And I shut my eyes And I just said What do you know you doing and I gave her name ranking social and she said what and I did it again she was I don't understand so as we tell the enemy if they capture you I said take you and leave or just leave I don't care like we're not we're not going to do this so that's my first time and then I had a social worker as I got to outpatient and the second time I went there for 20 minutes said look never going to happen said this isn't the movies I got nothing to say to you I appreciate what you do for

people that need it I don't need it and that was it and I got thinking about that and I tell people probably not the right approach and blah blah blah so wait did she never get anything out Are you? She released me. No, she never was going to. We were not going to be on that level. But I got thinking about it. So did she didn't go full Robin Williams Goodwill hunting and like get you crying or anything? No. What can she do? I mean, she was a nice person. I said I appreciate what you're trying to do. Yeah. But what I realized. I'm just an asshole. Or other side. I realized I had a community of my own. And I had Taylor Morris, who was a quadruple amputee. I had Drew Mully, single leg amputee. And I had Bo Rackenbach, Navy. seal, right, double-legged amputee as well as Josh Wetzel and Andrew Smith, both double-legged amputees. And not just them, their spouses. And we were all the best of friends. We all dealt with everything together. We hung out every day and our kids hung out, you know, those of us that

had kids at the time. And I realized in that, you know, looking back, because yeah, you're right, that was probably a jerk. I didn't want to talk about feelings with her. I wasn't mean to her, by any means. I was never rude. She would never later, like if you asked her day, she wouldn't say I was a jerk or anything like that. I was just very like, hey, look, this is not the movies. This is not going to happen. But I got thinking about it, and I realized I had my community. And it wasn't just my community.

It was me and Kelsey's community. Kelsey still is on a text chain with all the wives. They talk every day. The one lady Jen just had twins, that kid number four and five. But her husband's only missing one leg, so it's like a paper cut, so they're fine. But I had my community to talk to every day and hang out with and go out to dinners. And we always ate, you know, together and go around and talk and things like that. take a step further. My alive day, I was hated my alive day. You know what that is?

Maybe people out there listen to don't, but the day you get injured, like car accident real bad, or like me, got blown up, or whatever, that you almost died, that you live, they call it your alive day. They want to celebrate it. Some guys drink heavily. Some guys enjoy it. Other guys don't pay much attention. For the years, I hated it. I was like, I don't want to talk about it. My birthday's in four days. You know, I'm fine. I'll wait for the actual day I was alive. But then by year eight, I think it was. I did an Instagram live, and I got talking, I teared up, I said, you know, at the end of it, I used to be pissed. I used to hate this.

I used to think this is the worst day ever. Why would I want to remember any of this? You know, instead of just, you know, move on. And I said, but then you realize how fortunate I am. And I look back in the years I've had to recover, to have my family, to have my friends, and to be here to watch my daughter grow, to be here and have my son, which would have never happened if I would have just died. I said, so at the end of it, for the alive day, I'm just more grateful than anything.

And then Taylor, he's another quad, he's very dry, very quiet, and Navy EOD guy. Great guy. He texted me, he goes, nailed it, you know, and that meant a lot. He said it because he doesn't. We don't talk feelings. And the thing is, with my community, we didn't talk about feelings in general, like, oh, those sucks I got blown up. And it was like, he's just like, understood that we all thought it sucked.

You know, so we were all just like. Baseline level suck. We've all been there. And that was like my community. So that's the important thing. Well, you find a lot of guys that won't engage with somebody. that's not military or don't they're like they're not going to understand me so I'm going to talk to them and that's why the foundation the Travis Mills Foundation the shameless plug for my foundation here

we have the path program the warrior path program for first responders and combat veterans because it's led train the trainer style non-clinical and it's one of the top in the nation it teaches people how to struggle well because we're all going to struggle and about post-traumatic growth you know how to how to understand what's going on and to fight through and to come out the other side better when you have an episode or when you feel that stuff and I'm way off topic probably no no all good that's that's what we're here for but I think you know with the community I had I had a solid community of some of the greatest friends I'm ever going to have you know and I get to see actually Danielle we picked up today on the way here

Taylor couldn't come I saw him from the plane we talked a little bit through the door and then Andrew and Toryer come with their kids as well so pretty cool yeah fast forward a little bit you just again I'm not gonna read the whole book but it's says focus on what's in your control and what's not in your control. Let's use what is in our control to grow from. This is something I always have to refer back to. Always have to refer back to like, hey, you got some things you can control in life and you've got some things you can't. Usually we can control more than we think we can, but there are absolutely your things that are going to be totally out of your control.

Yeah, like the five today trying to drive down there. Oh, yeah, and I'm hour late. You have control over the five. I was so mad. I was like, oh no, I'm letting them down. I'm an hour late. I was, but my driver was so sweet to take me because the car service, I screwed it up somehow. So like Uber down from whatever.

Was it an Uber you took down here? It was. Good times. I gave the guy a big tip. Like I was like, dude, I'll tip. Like I gave him as much as, like I tried to do 100 and like, you can't do 100. You can only do 98. I'm like 98 to this.

Jack. You can't do more than 100? Said I couldn't. Huh. Maxing that thing out. Principle three. Point the finger and three fingers point back at you. Don't blame others, but be compassionate to yourself.

You go in here, you talk about your program director, James. Is that at the foundation? It is. He's a Marine that runs a path program. Marine Corps, 2009 to 2013. He was like one of the guys working on IEDs, finding IEDs. He got, you know, explosions, got some blast damage along the way. And I'm fast forward a little bit.

You say he came back from a second deployment. He says, I was super angry. I woke up pissed at the world. And that's just the way I stayed, 24. I don't know why I didn't know why I just knew that I was pissed I was getting violent at work with junior Marines and verbal fits at home that just kept escalating This among other things ultimately led to divorce I left the Marine Corps in April 2013 But at that point I've been diagnosed with PTSD TBI and a bunch of other crap and was forced to seek treatment doctors put me on a zombie cocktail of medication

Eventually it came to a total of 17 different meds some for depression some for anxiety Some for TBI related headaches and a bunch of other pills to counter the side effects of the medication. I mean, this is just like kind of one of those horror stories you hear just getting medicated He ends up start drinking. He's he starts feeling out of control No matter how mad I was he was it I was it myself I project anger on someone else. I think who am I going to blame today because it can't be me and you say that right there is a victim meant He ends up like Suicidal and again this is a long story that you tell in the book But then you say the biggest aha moment when was was when James realized he was accountable for himself

And this is one of the best definitions of extreme ownership I've ever heard If I don't change my diaper then I'm gonna have shitty pants That's on me I stopped looking outward to blame and started to look inward. Change that diaper. And, you know, the thing, not funny, but the thing is with James, he actually, he's our coordinator for Path. Like, he's like a big wig, like, and there's like 10 locations around the nation

for Path program, and we, our numbers are very well where they use us for a lot of examples. And, I mean, where James was at, I think he tells a story, does he tell a story about throwing a turkey? He was at work at a grok. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He threw a turkey. At a customer. At a customer.

He pissed him off. He tells that. Yeah. You could see he's come a long way. Oh, yeah. But again, yes, he has a great guy. I mean, truly just a great guy. But he's getting remarried and they just moved into a new house.

They just built a brand new house. But he's that community that we're talking about too. Like he's the one that leads this program for people. that faces every day. So he's been there, lived it, done it. And he still works on himself every day. You know, it's a constant, it's constantly a recalibration in a focus or refocus. The contrast that you talk about in the book, and this is really important,

I've talked about this as well, because this is clearly this is this same principle as extreme ownership. You know, this is like you point one finger at someone else. There's three pointing back. It's the same thing. And then you talk about forgiveness. This is, again, something that I address. And you say this, essentially everyone has regrets for things. things they did or didn't do, but you can't get hung up on these regrets or you will never get

peace. Repeat after me. I am human and I make mistakes. Show yourself some grace, accept the mistakes and learn from them. Instead of dwelling and letting them hold you back, use them to propel yourself forward in a new direction. Life is trial and error. There's no handbook on how to live your life. Every time that you feel you may be beating yourself up, stop reflecting the situation and ask yourself, what can I learn from this situation and how can I do better? And the big thing when I talk about forgiving yourself, if you think about like your relationship with your wife or your kids or whatever, if you don't learn how to forgive like when they mess something up, it's never going to work. So if you can't forgive yourself for some mistake that

you made in the past, you're going to have problems for a long time. To get a learn to get over it. Yeah, I mean, that's what I do. Like my son, he'll do something stupid, you know, obviously. And I'm like, Look, you little six-year-old, you little turd. Actually, you know, it's hereditary. I kind of, I blame myself, right? I got to take the extreme ownership. He's a mama's boy. And so am I, but I hate it.

Oh, my daughter, me are best friends. Well, he's only six, right? Yeah, yeah. He's going to be that way for a bit. I know, but here's the thing. I took him to a birthday party to his cousin's house, and he had to pick up, like, the Nerf gun we brought his cousin. He picks it up, it's a big box, hits himself in the neck.

He's, oh, it hurts. And I'm like, it doesn't hurt. It's probably unpleasant for a second. You're fine. He goes, you're just mean. You're a mean dad. I'm like, no, I'm not. You're soft.

And then we had a whole conversation. And he's like, this is this how you want your friends to talk to you if you hurt yourself? And I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I do. He's just mean dad. He's getting a car. And then, you know, later on, he was fine. But I'm like, I also, my daughter, like, hit her head at school in kindergarten and had

huge goose egg on her on her head. No factor. Yeah. She went out. The school calls, oh, well, she hit her head. Probably she come get her. I came to get her. We're going out in the parking lot.

She's dancing and twirling. I said, do you feel fine? She goes, yeah. All right. So I take her back in school. I said, look, I know how it looks, right? I was in an explosion. I'm probably like a hard ass.

Like, my kid's fine. I went through a bomb. What was this? I said, but she's fine. And she passes out or something and give us a call, but she's going back to class. Sure. And when my son, he had a thing at school where he got sick or something.

And he just wanted to get out of school, I feel like. Yeah. And my wife got the phone call. And she called me, and she beat me there for five minutes. And she let him get out of school. fired up, going to turn on this and play this and whatever. And I said, you know what, Kelsey, if I would have got there, I would have told them, Dax, you can come home, no problem.

You're going to sit in my Yukon while I go to all my meetings today at all the different various places I got to stop and you're not getting my phone, you're not watching a movie, you're going to sit there because you don't feel good. You can go out to class plate of friends or you can come home with me. He would have took option one. She's making them soft job. Here's some advice that I've given to like a lot of my friends that have kids. I've given it to Leif. Leif is super fired up for this and he takes advantage of it.

Every chance you get to pull your kids out of school and go do something cool, do it. Oh no, we're in California until Tuesday. Okay, cool. Yeah. She's going to New Zealand for 16. There you go. That's what I like to hear, man. The kids will never remember like some day at school where they learned about whatever. Yeah. But you go do something cool with your kids, take him to work, let him hang out, go to wherever, like take them fishing, whatever you're going to do with them. Yeah. It's going to be a thousand times. better and they're gonna learn more I just don't want him to go to the nurses office that's what I was mad about yeah yeah you're fine that's that's a different thing

that's that's also like the kids are learning to manipulate right they're learning to work the system they're human beings that are learning to navigate through the shit you know what I mean like well if I go here I can come home I can watch TV or whatever yeah dance around or whatever you're saying he was doing up the stairs just like going upstairs petting the dog like having a good old time yeah five minutes after I got home good smart kids Right kind of you don't feel good. Yeah, I just yeah. Yeah, you're right. You don't feel good. Yeah, there you go. Kids are crafty, but no, yeah, we, yeah, we, uh, my parents were like, every day, you're at school. That's it. I'm like, I think, I think I'm dying, you know, you're fine. I broke my, I was out in the woods with my dad and we were cutting down wood for the fire and the, the tree fell on my leg because I was an idiot. And, and so I was like, I think I hurt my leg. And my dad was like, you're fine. fine, tow the sled back.

So we had like a sled filled with wood. So I had to like drag it back. And I was crawling kind of like with my hands and one leg because my leg really hurt a lot. And, you know, I get back and like three days later, they took me to the hospital because I was still hopping around. And yeah, I had a broken leg. Yeah. You know, our parents were tough. My dad, I broke my wrist.

He's like, you're fine. He smacks it. And like, boom. He goes, well, he goes, you know what? I think we're going to check that out. But he had to like make sure by just like I was holding my my left arm. I was like no I think it's broke. He's like you're fine.

You're fine. He's like yeah we're gonna check that out. Yeah. Yeah. When they clear their throat like that you know if something's wrong. Uh, principle four snap your fingers, wiggle your toes and get the out of bed. Create small achievable goals for moving forward. When dealing with trauma, there may be days, weeks.

that you don't feel like doing anything. You may feel so depressed and depleted that you may feel too paralyzed to do anything. My friend, that is called collateral damage, to which I say, snap your fingers and wiggle your toes. I can't do that for obvious reasons, but chances are that you can. The idea behind it is simple,

do one small thing to get you moving. That one small thing will get you motivated, go on to the next thing, the simple act of getting out of bed and getting out of bed will curtail whatever you got spinning, in that mind of yours. The mere physicality of these actions should spur a mental shift as well. Once you stop being physically and mentally stuck, this is when you can start to take responsibility for your behavior.

Choose to see something in your life that you can find a positive in every single day. Snap your fingers, wiggle your toes, get out of bed. It's a simple act that can remind you that life isn't that bad. Now we did, we did take from the idea of. make your bed. Yeah. But it was like, you know,

making your bed, like, setting goals, maybe you just got to get out of bed first. So like, we didn't, you know,

you made Admiral McCraven, you know, you made him look bad here. No. Oh, hey, hey, Admiral,

hey Admiral, oh, you're just making your bed. What if you can't even get out of bed? Well, you went one step deeper. We just wanted to include

everybody. Okay. It's very inclusive here. I'm just saying, it sounds like you're trying to one up him. I can't even snap my fingers and look on my toes. I mean,

Sorry. You got, you continue, like I said, this is really a pragmatic manual. You got a whole section on keeping, you section on goals and creating goals. And then,

once you have a goal, you'll need some tips on to keep you going. You've got things in here like be flexible. Be kind of yourself. Don't judge. Be patient. Visualize achieving your goal. Have a support system.

And you got expansions on all this. I'm just kind of burning through them. Celebrate the wins. Yeah. So like, right, look, I'm not silly. Like, I'm fortunate to know you outside of the podcast. Do you visualize all the success that you were, like, do you reach out to Pete? Hey, Pete, like your geese.

Want to do something? And you're like, then now look at like all the drinks and all. Like, I'm drinking life's drink just because I like the flavor. But like, did you visualize? Do you do that? Like, all the success. I mean, I'm sure people know, obviously, Chiaco products are successful and then origin and everything like that. Yeah.

No, I would say this. So like when I try and make something, I don't over invest or over index or think it's going to be successful. I just try it. Like the first thing, like Ashland Front, like Leif and I weren't like, yo, like we got to build a giant consulting company. Like we were like, hey, let's see if anybody wants this information. And then as they wanted the information, it's like, oh, cool.

people want disinformation they need to learn how to lead okay cool how many people okay well let's hire another instructor jp come on board by the way it does a fantastic job well thank you i'm able to sit through a couple of his yeah he was in my restaurant oh jp he spoke for a big energy company that gives a lot of money the foundation yeah and i walked in i was like joe are you serious like i'm a speaker too you know but no i'm kidding uh joe parenting he actually um he got to do a lot with you when he's in new hampshire yeah jp's phenomenal yeah it's what jp came on then dave burke like we just Expand it expand it expand it same thing with you know origin like we were making geese Okay, that's like one product how are they doing they were doing good well let's make rash cards no gear okay cool

Eventually it's like hey don't a lot of people wear jeans because it seems like everyone wears jeans let's try making jeans did we buy a gene factory immediately no we took a few years then we bought a gene factory but so for me I don't like visualize blindly like this is going to be great I'm going to take a huge step in this direction. Same thing with all those supplements. It wasn't like we didn't come out with a line of supplements. We came out with two supplements. Right. And then did people like them?

Are they effective? Do they give people the benefits that we are saying? Like, yep, look at the growing. More people want them. Then we bring out another supplement. We bring out protein. So doing it a small way so that you don't have to be able to see really far in the future to visualize, for me, I'm just looking like, oh, there's an opportunity. Let's give it a shot,

type thing. Make sense? Yeah, but I'm just like, I visualize like, yeah, we're going to, I'm going to do this. It's going to be awesome. Let's go big. And my business partner Bill is always like, hey, let's just start small. I'm like, no, no. I wanted to build this 200-person event center with a brewery underneath and a tasting room. And it was going to be like $1.6 million project. And then like one of the guys that's one of the partners is like, oh, it's kind of big, blah, blah. So now we're putting in a little four-bay garage. And like a, a about the vibes. I don't care about the vibes. Dogfish had brewing sold for $180 million. That's where I'm going straight to the top. Yeah. But we're going to slow it down a bit.

Have you had any, have you had any big failures yet? Oh yeah. Yeah, I got one right now. What was your biggest failure? Well, I went, okay, well, Mars and legs. I lost those. But didn't lose my ass on it. Your biggest failure was looking for IEDs? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I found that. Okay. Yeah. Big success there. No, I wouldn't say failure. There's the closing line I'm trying to do right now is not I'm not putting much time and effort into it have you how much of you invested in it like like a huge amount a medium amount I mean I'm not sure what a huge amount is for me is a huge amount it's like 100,000 okay and uh I'm not too like you know I don't work on it hard enough that's why I told my wife she's taking over so again to me that's a lot of money to put into

something when you may or may not have something that people really want and there's only one the only the only group that can tell what the public wants is the public so you You know, you can make something that every, you think is the best thing, you know, the greatest thing in the world. And people are like, yo, we don't want this. When I promote it and stuff, I sell. But my problem is I have a million different things going. So, like, it's me. Like, I understand, like, it's the three fingers point back at me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? What's the name? Where can people buy the stuff so we can at least sell a little bit of it. Maybe you can get some of your hundred grand back. Well, it's rebel for good. Well, I mean, what I did was I, because, okay, so the military will give you a certain amount of money when you get blown up per limb. They cap it at two limbs total.

And what? Yeah. They cap it at two limbs? Okay, so it's, it's public knowledge. It's 50,000 per limb, but it's capped at 100,000. And with that 100,000, I flirt. I know. I know.

That is the most freaking ridiculous thing ever. I don't know. I'm not trying to start a flight with anybody. There was some talks about going and saying, like, no, no, it's not right. But the point is, as appreciative, and it's tax-free, and what I did instead of buy an escalate or go out and buy some dumb, you know, something stupid, I flipped houses. No, no, no, I like escalates.

I'm just saying at the time, at the time, I was, like, number one podcast in America, like, able to, like, buy an escalate, you know what I'm saying? I'm just saying, Echo, you have the clout. I didn't. So I flipped houses, and I had some real home runs. I flipped eight houses. Some were just, like, nothing. Just like, okay, bought it for $80,000, sold it for $180,000, you know, like nothing to it.

Before it got saturated. So then I bought the marina and I bought a cottage. And I've done investments, right? And I've worked and stuff like that. So what I did was like two years ago in February. I decided I was going to better myself. So I took money out of the stock market because I didn't like where it was heading.

Great time to take it out. I bought an investment property in Florida and I put money to this company. But I just don't dedicate enough of my time as I need to. So it's on me. But we have a store, main local store that's like in 17 stores that's going to go into. That's cool. So we'll see it. We'll start there and see you happen.

And if people want to order something today just to like trying to maybe help you stay a phone a little. I don't take away from origin, you know what I'm saying? Bro, what is it? It's just rebelfor-good.com. It's all about, so Rebel for good is like, here comes the pitch. What we came up for. Yeah, hey, I don't want to sell anything, but Rebel for Good is a, go ahead.

The idea was you go against the grain and you be a Rebel, but you do good with it. Like, you know, you, I don't know, that's just what came up with. So, so yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not upset about because I have another company that I'm doing some contracting with. That's, that will, it'll work out. It'll all work out. Which company is that? Or it's just called one alpha outdoors, but it's like, I'm doing like government bidding. Oh, okay.

Awesome. Because they give, you know, disabled, I get all, whatever. Yeah. I'm more quiet about it. Not quiet, but like, I'm disabled veteran, so I have a status. You're disabled veteran. Okay. Well, cool.

They put out my paper. I mean, I'm handy capable, though. All right. We good. Does that answer your visualization question? It does because I sit there and I visualize a lot. And I'm like, okay, cool, I'm building this, I'm building that. Like, when I'm on, like, airplanes and stuff like that, that's what I'm doing.

I'm, like, staring off into nothingness. You know, Echo and I just did, like, a little recording. And I was talking about being paranoid that I'm paranoid. I'm a paranoid person. Not in a paranoid, like, oh, I think everyone's trying to get me. But, like, paranoid, like, when I was in the SEAL teams, I'm like, I'm paranoid. I'm going to forget a piece of gear. So I'd, like, check my gear five times.

And I would never forget anything. I paranoid that's going to be late. So I'd have three alarm clocks. So I was never late. I'm paranoid that like oh I'm gonna make horrible business decision so I'm more cautious. Well, I shouldn't say that I'm not cautious, but I'm but I don't over commit to things. So I don't think I don't have an idea and think like dude. Dude, I just I thought of the best you know widget ever and I'm gonna build a factory to make this widget like we have what four factories now at origin but we started with one you know what I mean and grow we didn't. We didn't. Pool all of our money and borrow a bunch of money and leverage my house and I'll do this all this other stuff to get Four factories in one shot No re-built one then another one then another one

So that's kind of same thing with that's on front like there's a lot of people that work at us on front We have office building we have like we got a lot of stuff at our some from a lot of things going on But we didn't start that way We started small and grow and that's what I recommend people to all the time to do with business is start small and grow That's I should do that you know here's the thing I should have probably did that when it came to like hitting a bomb but I just dove right in you know I could just took one leg below in these see if I like it especially if you knew you're only gonna get if you're gonna get capped at two limbs yeah they didn't tell you that no they didn't say like

hey listen if you're gonna lose limbs just trying to hold fast at two don't you think okay so everybody out there listening like working hard and going about like don't you think like that's a little bit like even arrogant for me to tell people in a way bro I would have probably at this point written a book said you're capped at two limbs and the whole book would have been about this shit. This is freaking ridiculous. Okay. The U.S. government, I mean, the amount of guys that lose more than two limbs is not a freaking big

number. And it's not like we can't pay the guys the other 50 grand or the other 100 grand for four freaking limbs. Come on. Well, if you're listening to this, and I'm kind of out some money right now. So, I mean, if you want, no, I'm just kidding. No. I believe it's going to, like, we have made some money on it, right? I'm not

like out 100,000. But I also I realize, like, it was stupid to me to not give my own. Do you have a bunch of t-shirts or whatever sitting around that you already made? We have some stock, yeah. Okay, we have some stock, yeah.

Shirts, there's hats, there's stuff. Hey, everybody go to Rebel for Good.com and buy some stuff from this broke-ass veteran. That's right. That over-invested. They didn't give me enough for my arms and legs being gone.

I was just trying. No, no, I just, I'm not saying it's a failure. I'm just saying I don't, I think maybe I visualize, I visualize that I don't attack. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I'm like, oh, hey,

We're going to work on Rebel for Good today. And then I was going to do it tomorrow, but I got to fly to Vegas. And then I got to fly to, you know, just my schedule gets me. So my wife would love me to like slow down. Chill out, chill out a little bit. Well, just figure out what I want to actually do. So like, do you know? Yeah.

Your purpose? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Driving purpose. There's a song about it. And I plan on just being a billionaire. I'm not sure I'm going to do that.

That's what you're visualizing. I don't even know why. I mean, I just like this song. I want to be a billion, you know, they're so, you know what I'm saying. Yes. Do you know some? Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, everybody.

No, I don't know. I don't know. I just, I like being busy. Actually, I was talking with Pete just yesterday. I was driving and I was talking to Pete and I said, you know, he said, oh, man, I've been meetings all day and I'm sure maybe you were in the meetings with him or whatever, but they had meetings all day and it's been a couple days. He's like, yeah, you know, I was like, now I'm just going to go home and maybe relax a bit.

I'm like, yeah, but you liked work. Of course. He was like, I love it. It's what I do. I'm like, I'm the same way. So like, I call it work, but when you're the boss, it's not really work, you know, you show up. Everybody's nice to me, you know. I go to the foundation.

I was going to, hey, hi, Travis. How are you doing? I'm doing, well, how are you? No one's like, hey, you're going to get this paper done? They're like, oh, can I eat a piece of the chicken and customer relations, you know, employee relations. But anyway, anyway, no, I just, we got way off topic there. Rental, all good. My bad.

All right. All right. Going back to getting back on track, going back to principal number five, stay within the guardrails. Manage your emotions and control your attitude. And you got a section in here that I got to run through. When Robert was in grad school, he took an adaptive leadership class that always stayed with him. And it came in handy when he's in danger of losing his job. At that moment, over lunch, he had so many emotions consuming him.

I really wanted to scream. Hey, you've set me up to fail. This is a guy that had lost his job or he no he was he wasn't hadn't lost a job yet But he was going to get fired they told him he's gonna get fired he wanted to scream hey you set me up to fail You didn't even communicate what you wanted for me I felt we didn't have an agreement on what I was supposed to do yet here I was being told I was failed But I didn't scream I remember what I learned in that class as the adaptive Leadership class to get up on the balcony get up high and look from above at a situation get that perspective to get out of your head and leave your emotional on the floor so you can be more objective and resist having a hasty reaction.

Going up on the balcony gave me the space and the presence of mind to get a broader picture and figure out a good plan forward. There may be something you want to say, but that doesn't mean you should say it. And being on the balcony gave me that time to think on my feet and respond the right way. This is something that I talk about all the time. Just being able to detach is what I call it. Being able to detach, not get caught up. take a step back pay attention to what's going on so what you're talking about in this section of the book is like getting control of your emotions and you've got a bunch of like things to uh that you cover in here i mean per our last conversation i just i literally realized it's my fault for i don't spend enough time on the product right now i detached to look from above and i was like you know what actually as i'm telling you guys this it's my fault i suck yeah well you also probably get like emotional about like hey this

going to be a great product and you don't take a step back and go okay hold on a second have i tested the market do i understand what people really want because you think you do we all think we do we think in our gut like everyone's going to love this well i thought i had some stuff lined up too where he's going to go into a big retail store automatically and i had it all lined up and then last minute did not work out that way i was like okay because i remember telling my wife like hey i'm just going to bet on myself you know just i'm going to vest in myself there's a weird two thing like sometimes people have and you probably have some of this too is like people that are so good and convincing that they convince themselves

and then they convince everybody else that they're right. Like I have to be careful that. Like I don't, I can be pretty persuasive about stuff. I can be so persuasive that I can persuade like echo that like we're going to do something and it doesn't make any sense. So I'm always like checking myself.

Again, I'm paranoid. I'm paranoid that I might be wrong and that keeps me a little bit more in check about things. You've got a couple things in here about, when you talk about emotions like breathing, you say practice mindfulness. Again, this is the research that was done. No, but when I was reading it, I was kind of like, okay, here we go.

But then you said, here's a typical initial conversation with many former Marines. Hey, so we're going to do some mindfulness work before we work out today. Oh, so we're going to go full on hippie? Ever shoot between breasts when you were behind the scope of a rifle? Well, that's mindfulness. So you kind of brought it down for us freaking knuckle-draggers. I like that. You talk about that mindfulness stuff.

You talk about humor, using anger as a motivator role. playing you put in there just freaking awesome something we do all the time and then just making sure and again you go into this get the book get the book out there because it talks about like the actual methodology from going from like a negative thought to a positive thought and this is some of the really good stuff to take away from the book uh principle six make the time to be grateful for what you have and then this is when the science you have a little thing in here it's called you've got creative It's called science lesson number one. We tend to be negative nancy's.

I got a little excerpt here. It's called negativity bias. We tend to remember and dwell from stressful negative experiences more than a positive and to base our behaviors off of them. Which is interesting, it goes into it here like if you are out on the, you know, Serengeti planes and you watched like your family get mauled by a lion back in the day, you'd be like lions. bad I need to stay away from them so that makes us dwell more on the negative than than on the positive and I think that we do that as just as our humans we do that like we've had that the foundation thousands of families or thousands of people come right hundreds of families and I I tend to imagine or I tend to like

relive like the three or four that won't get invited back out of all the success stories we've had all the the spouses and and the crying and like this is a best thing ever. My husband, this is the guy I married, exactly like the guy I'm married, and I haven't seen this guy since before he deployed. And it was like four years prior. And I'm like, remember that one family that came here? And like, they let their kids just ruin everything. They used our brand new tiles with the kids poopy butt. And like, just, you know, it's like the dumbest thing ever. And I do that. And I focus on that. Or it just, it's irritating that I do that. And then I had one comment made to me when my house got built, Garrisonese Foundation,

Karen Trayable Foundation, and Tonin Towers were all together. They built it. Very, very grateful. to have the adaptive home. And I had an older gentleman to come out because I had an elevator in my house. The elevator was donated, but I had an elevator. And the guy said, how many ramps could you put on veterans' houses

and you have an elevator in your house? You said, you're just building a shrine for yourself out there with their foundation. Damn. And that sticks in my head because I'm never taking a dollar from my foundation.

I mean, I've never taken a bonus. I don't use any of the money for myself. And if I did, nobody would say anything if I had a salary, but I don't. And like, we raise quite a bit of money. We're very fortunate people's support and believe in us.

But I literally go out for two hours now during a Tuesday lunch. I don't even eat lunch. I meet the families. I say hi. And then I take off and I go to a different, I schedule other stuff. Because I don't want people to think I did it just so I can be out there and like, look at me, look at me. And like, just some old guy. Matter of fact, he's a Vietnam vet.

And he happened to be business partners with a friend of mine that I met my plumber. I called my plumber. That's a bitter dude. That's a bitter dude. Well, let me tell you something. You want to see a Facebook troll? You got one in front of you. People give me a bad review at my restaurant, they're going to find out.

You talk bad about my marina. We're going to have a conversation. This gentleman, I got his phone number. I called him up. I said, hey, I'm not sure why you're saying this, but we're going to have a conversation about it. How did you get my number? I'm like, I know people. Don't worry about it.

And he just couldn't get over. They didn't understand what I was doing with the foundation. And now to this day, I still always think about that. I want to make sure people know, like, and I don't know why. But I'm like, hey, look, we raised, you know, I think we're going out $40 million dollars of incanded nations and donations and we're building and we're helping and supporting and building programs out and I make sure every chance I get just like right now I don't know why I feel compelled but everybody knows like I and Kelsey we have never taken a dollar a salary

a bonus nothing and we're never going to but I want people I don't know why that guy just got my head that was like when I was moving in my house dude that's case in point people focus of all the people that have praised and been thankful for all the families that you've helped and everything but You think about this one dude that talks shit about you. Oh, I tell you what. So case in point, sometimes we focus on the negative. I know. Your book is correct.

Science lesson number one. Science lesson number two. This is your brain on gratitude. Studies have shown that practicing gratitude can have incredible results on the brain and mood. People reported feeling happier, more motivated, and more content after adding the practice into their daily life. So you got that in there. Gratitude breed resilience.

You give some science behind that. you give science lesson number four really believe it and you talk about Andrew Huberman Dr. Andrew Huberman and just the fact that he's like talking about when when you go into a what is it an ice bath you're talking about here yeah yeah for it to really work you have to believe that it really works you have to think that like this is good for me and then it then it's like more helpful I should I should know this about you but do you do the ice plunges and all that yeah I thought so. Why did you think so?

Did you ever post about it or did we talk about it? I don't really post about it a lot. No. All right. Well, I didn't mean to bring it up here for the world. No, no. There's like a whole thing. There's a whole thing around like doing ice bath and posting about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like you can do that. Okay. You know, hey, if I don't post about it, did it really happen? That's a question, you know? But no, I do.

I do. I do it every day. I have a sauna and a ice bath. So, yes, I do that stuff. Every day. We have a sauna. My wife wants to get an ice bath. I'm not sure if I can get out of it, though.

That's my problem. You would need to get some kind of modifications or something to it. But they're not deep. You wouldn't drown in it. Actually, you know what? You know what? You could definitely get out of it. Because I'm thinking about when I was rolling jujazzu with you,

you have like this weird upper body mobility. You'd be able to hook onto the side. yank yourself out. I'm not so sure it's weird. It's just, it's just how I am now, but it's fine. It's cool. Dude, you'd probably like that ice bath because I know you run hot because you, because you don't have the, like, as much radiator as the rest of us have. My blood circulates faster through my body. Yeah. Yeah. So you would probably, it would probably feel really good to you. Yeah. Like refreshing. It does feel good. I mean, you know, all the stuff that you hear about it is true. Like you get in there. It sucks when you get in there. And then you're just like, yo. And, and,

I used to not dunk my head under because I have like real bad something called surfers ears. Have you ever heard of that? I mean, I know what californ are. I don't surfers. So surfer ears, it's the inside of your ear canal. You expose it to cold water a lot and it gets, it starts to get bone growths and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So like my ears, my ear canals are like 85% shut. And so I get ear infections easily.

So, but now I just like plug my ears with my fingers and just, go under and it feels really good. But yeah, my son, when my son was like nine years old, we were at a surf contest and they had a person there selling like earplugs because everyone gets surfers ear and it's really bad out here in California. And he looked at my ears and he's like, dude. And then he goes, well, let me take a look at your son. And my son's like a maniac in the water.

He would be in the water his whole life. And he like looks at my son's ear and he goes, I have never seen a child with ears like this. His ears were already like 40% closed at age nine. Yeah. It was like, yo, bad father coming in hot. Next principle, get up battle buddy. Never underestimate the power of a support system. We have to realize that while our individual experience may differ,

the struggle is the same 99.9% of all human beings struggle. It's just what we do. And then you call to Harvard study. Yeah, that's what I, I have three doctorates. I'm a doctor three times over. Bates, Unity and University of Maine, Augusta. What, what? My mom monitors.

Check. I showed up for a day for one of them. The other one, I showed up for a dinner and a day for the. And they gave you like honorary doctorates? You know, they still count. But yeah, I got, you don't have any honorary doctorates? I'm so impressed, bro, no. No.

No. When I got done with the University of San Diego, I was like, I'm, ever going back to school. No, no, no, I just went, I went for the graduation ceremony. No, I don't, I don't know. Maybe I have too many arms and legs to get honorary degrees over here on my side.

Hold what you got. It's up to me, if you're taking advice for me for anything, hold what you got. Harvard study, apparently the longest study on human behavior has found that overwhelmingly people who have deep personal relationships with others are happier than people who don't. Translation, you could be a billionaire

and have all the material things you want life and still be miserable. Money will not bring you happiness, status will not bring you happiness deep personal connections you have will it does not just affect emotional health it also affects your physical health health one recent study found that seniors who consider themselves lonely have a 59% higher risk of physical and mental health decline and a 45% greater risk of death other studies likened loneliness to smoking 15 cigarettes a day check what about dogs are dogs in the

game for that like I don't dogs make don't dogs make like pets make you kind of happier too yeah I hear good things yeah you got dogs I do I do I got dogs but I don't have a service dog I don't want a service dog I don't want to take a dog everywhere everybody's got a service dog now yeah you go into the airport and there's people that are like walking around with a service dog you don't know why they look they seem to be healthy and you can't question it that's the only thing you can't question is a service dog is jumping up peeing on everything but no I have I have two dogs and they're at my house

My wife made me I went to at a golf tournament Out in Iowa And our old dog We had to put them down And I was like You can just do without me It's cool

She's like yeah no So I had to fly back from Iowa That's when the army soldier slips Slips out sometimes You're like I gotta put the guy Go ahead take care of it I'll be back and I'll be back next week

So I had to fly home knowing I was like oh yeah So I'm gonna land get home And vet's gonna come to our house And we're gonna kill my dog So cool So like I had to do that And then I always joke around like about service dogs.

I'm like, everybody's like, you should get a service dog. I'm like, I got a dog. His name's buddy. They're like, yeah, but we can get your dog that listens and I get offended. Because my dog, buddy, it was so good. I used to look at my dog and say, hey, buddy, sit, like when you want. You know, and eventually he would sit down. Yeah, when you want it.

Yeah. But no, we have a Fox Red Lab and a Havannies. They're good dogs. Sure. But do you think they help people live longer? Echo Charles assessment. Well, I hear good things. I've heard about, you know, they give people all kinds of random pets.

And, yeah, they get, they get, like, happy. Because they have more of a purpose. They can take care of it, all this stuff. But now the fact that they don't live past, like, 12, 13, is that when they have to go? Is that a bad thing? Yeah, that feels like they might beat jam somebody up for sure. Yeah. I've heard it with, like, dogs, cats, rabbits.

You know, people just have a pet to take care of. Yeah. Kind of companionship scenario. I think that, I think there's some truth of that. Yeah. Feels like. And some people like dogs better than people. Yeah.

Yeah. My wife was saying the other day, um, we were, my family was having a discussion about like, what you would pay to like keep the dog alive and everything. And I think my oldest daughter who's kind of cold blooded, she was like,

no more than thousand, you know, or something like that. And then, you know, my little daughter was like, oh no, my son was like,

dude, that's crazy. And then my wife says, um, I view our dog, I view Odin as one of my children. And I was just like, you, if this dog gets sick, I'm going to be bankrupt.

Yeah, yeah. One of my friends, their dog had like cancer, a three-year-old dog, and they spent like, I think, eight grand on it. Yeah. And I'm like, why? You bought it for $300 probably. You can buy another lab, you know. You can buy a lot of labs.

And then I'm like, I would never do that. And Kelsey looked at me. She goes, oh. Oh, yeah, you were. Oh, yeah, you were. And like, she was on their side. And I'm like, nah. Shut down.

Yeah. You got shut down. What would your number? Look, my wife's, you know, she's gonna make the call on that dog. You know what I'm saying? Same as my number. Get it back out of that conversation real quick. And my dog, you know, I'm the alpha.

You know what I mean? In the house? Yeah. You know, like I get, he listens to me the most, but he does like her more. Now, let me ask you a question. It's because I don't, I didn't ever been to your house. Like, do you live in the country a little bit? I know where we're at.

No, I live by the ocean. But like, do you, like, I live, you've, you've been. in my house? I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, you did. Didn't you come for dinner? No. Okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that. No, thank you. You invite.

I did. You didn't fly in quick enough. I remember because Laif and the ladies came up. Yeah, anyway. So I can go out my back door on my porch and I have 20 acres with no neighbors. So I tinkle outside. That's what I do. But when my dog walks over and peas on top of mine, that's when I get angry.

I'm like, excuse me? Dude. You know what I'm saying? And the funny thing is, it's like the little dog first. He's just like a little 30-pound. So he kind of alphas you, your dogs? He probably tries to. But then, you know, then I let him know.

It's just, I don't know. That's a weird thing to bring up, but I get pissed. I'm like, what are you doing? Wait, that's a flex, right? For dogs? I think so. Pee over your pee. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. So, like, I. Dude, there was a M.M.A. A while ago that his nickname was Shownuff, the master. Yeah. Remember that dude? Yeah. What was the real name?

Oh, the MMA fighter or the real show. No, there was a MMA fighter whose name was, you know, Bill show enough the master Smith or whatever his actual name was oh like a wait I thought it was a regular martial artist like tradition no there was an MMA fighter yeah whose nickname was show enough the master I have to say is like one of the top nicknames I saw I saw a thug nasty one again yeah he did right yeah yeah I didn't get to meet him yet but he seems like a pretty decent guy oh yeah he's a character and that was a really good scrap dude he looked sharp and he's down there got hit pretty good I

Yeah, he got cracked in the eye, but dude, he, he, he looked really good in that fight. That guy could not defend the take down. And dude, this is a dude that's like the wrestling he's doing is like with chickens right now. My boy, Bryce, dude. That dude's out wrestling chickens and going in the cage and jacking people up. God bless him. Ty and Ian went out there. They had a great time.

Oh, yeah. They think they FaceTime me, actually. Yeah. But they had a great time hanging out with it. Yeah, no, Bryce is a maniac, dude. Yeah. But, yeah, he looked really good in that fight. Yeah, his nickname's good, thug nasty.

Douglas. Well, show enough is from an old movie. Yeah, I kind of vaguely remember that. Yeah, it's called The Last Dragon, which was the black, you know how they do like the black version of a like movie? It's like that's a black version of one of the Bruce Lee movies. So instead of a Shogun, it was Shownuff. Oh, that's legit right there. Yeah, and that part, that movie is actually pretty, it's a comedy movie. So it's like like Robin Hood and Robin Hood Men in Tights?

Yeah, kind of. Like a spoof kind of. Kind of. They scream and the screen. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. Is it a spoof? It's like kind of a spoof.

Yeah. Oh, it's a spoof, yeah, for sure. No, I don't mean the bad way. No, no,

it's a funny movie. It's old school, though, but that's where Shoneff came from. In fact, I always thought that, too, that name is pretty dope.

Shownuff, The Master. Yeah, is that his full name in the movie? Yes, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.

Man, I was a little kid. But the thing is, it's real problem if you try and give yourself a nickname, that's that badass, right?

Yeah. You know you can't give your nickname you can't give yourself your own nickname like Nighthawk Which I think I just took from step brothers. Yeah Step brothers he says like you call me night hawk or something call me dragon dragon Yeah, you can't give yourself cool nicknames doesn't work that way Principle 8 yeah back on back on one that I am familiar with from the seal teams never give up never quit ever push past your own personal best. So when I came up with this,

like my slogan, if you will, never give up, never quit. I was doing sit-ups. After I got blown up, I was doing sit-ups, and I was 140 pounds, right? I lost 110 pounds, my injury. And I was doing sit-ups,

and they were recording me. And as I was doing these sit-ups, the occupational therapist was like, hey, do you want to take a break? And I'm like, no, I'm never going to take a break. I said, I'm just never going to give up, never going to quit. And I just kept, like, ripping these sit-ups.

out and I mean I was so weak I mean drugged up looking like a crackhead and I was just like that's where I came from so I'm never gonna stop yeah I just like ripping them out freaking awesome man you I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here you say having a growth mindset psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth is the best-selling author of grit power of passion and perseverance in it Duckworth defines grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. In her words, quote, grit entails working strenuously toward challenges,

maintaining effort and interest over the years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus and progress. People are born with various levels of grit, but Duckworth contends that it is a trait that develops through experience. One key to improving it, as she points out, and her TED talk is by shifting your mindset from a fixed to a growth orientation.

So you also have some tips in here about how to stick it out. Don't overthink it. And again, you get the book. Take your time. You keep saying I have these tips, but you wrote the forward. It's we. We have these tips. We have these tips in our book.

In our book. Am I getting a cut? Well, I tell you what. I didn't. I didn't do that in the contract, bro. Yeah, well, I think it was if you would have narrated. I think that's what was in the contract. Yeah, Chuck.

Take your time. Always be curious. Be a one. one percenter the one percent rule is the theory is making tiny changes that add up but we just covered us on something like that on the podcast uh be careful about perfectionism and then you get to the fixed and growth mindsets here from care another psychologist you got all these psychologists in here but you don't have jordan peterson i just yeah well i didn't i didn't know if he would want to be in my well you didn't know he is 24 until 15 minutes ago he's like hey this is my 25 through 36 what the

hell and i'm like oh i didn't realize this is extension People with a fixed mindset, those who believe that abilities are absolute are less likely to flourish than those who believe that abilities can be developed. In other words, with a growth mindset, you see challenges as learning opportunities rather than as obstacles to overcome. That's one of those things, man, you know people that are like that. Like, do you know people? Like, I know people in my life. Were they like anything? They like look at it.

They're like, I can do this. I can figure this out. I can make this happen. That's a good thing to have. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, that's what Pete really, I feel like, you know, Pete Roberts. I mean, I thought about a little. I feel like he did that too with like the, hey, we got to bring manufacturing back.

Let me go get this old piece of equipment that hasn't ran in 40 years. Let me just figure this out from nothing. Which is freaking crazy. Well, I was going to say that, I was thinking about that too when we were talking about like growing businesses. Like origin started with one sewing. Actually, I think it was started with two sewing machines. Two like broken sewing machines that didn't work, you know? Like make them more.

work the loom bro the loom is crazy now we got six looms I think one of them five looms one of them broke but yeah that's some growth mindset right it's like a lot of people were like oh you cannot manufacture here you can't do this here oh yes we can't watch this you know and and not to like to my own horn here but let me just sounds like we're about to beat beef okay so I was the guy that would always like help somebody like I look I couldn't change the brakes that well I could figure it out but not like I wasn't mechanically inclined person. But when you lose your arms and legs

and you have to literally explain to people what you need, like, you have to figure some shit out. So like for me now, after my injury, I have to break everything down to like how am I got, even like making, like as simple as like making an egg sandwich in the morning. Not even egg, I can't crack eggs. So I'm saying like a ham cheese, you know,

like I'm like, okay, I got this out first. I got to make sure I have this set up. And like, I never did that before, right? I just like run to a wall and just try it like, ah, I can't figure it out. Let me just ask, I'll phone a friend and I'll Google it. But after being injured, like, I have to, like, think every single step of how I need to do something out before I do it because if I don't, it can go real bad real quick. So you got to be more patient and what's that word, like proactively thinking about way you can execute things.

Yeah. Yeah, because you can get, you can get, like, tripped up in a situation that's going to be shitty. Well, like, you know, it's funny you said shitty because I wasn't going to say that. But, like, say I got to use the restroom, right? I got a hook I have. I got to make sure I get my legs off the right way. My shorts got to come off the right way. I got to make sure I'm all set up so that after I take everything off,

I can put it all back on to like make sure I don't have to call someone to help me out. You know what I mean? And it's just like it's all a process now, which is fine, right? It's fine. It's like your new normal. I talk about you find your new normal. But it's just I never had that before. But now it's like I can only get frustrated so much if I can't figure something out

or someone, I can't get someone help the way I need them to help because what's it going to do for me? Yeah. Dude, your patience must be like level ninja. For myself. Other people, not so much. You know what I'm saying? Not for your six-year-old son, Dachshundas. Patience is thin.

My daughter, I call her, she's like, yeah, be right there. One sec. I hear talking to her friend Ashley or Emily still. And I'm like, I don't know what you didn't get about when I said, get over here. She's just, geez, dad. Just calm down. I can do it faster than you. I'm like, you know what?

You're a little tur. This is 12 This is 12 It's only gonna get it's only gonna get it's gonna get worse before it gets better I'll tell you that much right now Uh Principle number nine Swim with the sharks

Walk with the horses Make fear your friend I'm a real little section here For me the fear of failure hits home When I was growing up and playing a lot of competitive sports I never wanted to fail And I took that fear to my military days As it folded in nicely with the military's

Hard-ass philosophy of always having a game face. I always wanted to make sure that I led from the front and never showed any weakness because if I did, my guys would lose faith in me. I knew that if that happened,

they wouldn't follow my orders that were meant to keep them alive. That fear drove me. When I became injured, I was confronted with a new, seemingly impossible, insurmountable fear. How the hell was I going to take care of my wife and daughter

with no legs and arms? Who did I think I was? Because I was certainly no longer Staff Sergeant Mills, fearless leader of combat soldiers I was instead lying in a bed helpless limbless and jobless That immediate fear I had in that hospital bed lasted for weeks months even No one saw it though I wouldn't let them I wouldn't let fear win I probably didn't handle this perfectly But in the military you're taught if you stop moving forward you die

So even though I couldn't physically move forward I knew I had to move on emotionally I use this fear as a motivating factor to help me Yeah Here's getting into some steps that you've got here to help you overcome fear. Number one, know what your fear is. Is there something in your life you want to change, but don't knowledge is power. Number two, acknowledge that a bit of fear is good. It means it is taking you out of your comfort zone, getting comfortable with, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Know that it is normal to feel this way. And many people feel fear. You are not alone. These two right here making sure that people know that like that's okay and Acknowledging that it's good I've had that I originally had that conversation with guys in the teams like especially like young guys Like you could see like before an off like it was first couple ops on deployment You could see they're like real nervous and just being like hey dude got some butterflies in your stomach there home You just went to the bathroom four times in the last 15 minutes and it's like no I'm good. It's like hey bro it's all it's all it is good

Like you should feel afraid you should be like nervous because you're gonna get getting ready to go out into combat and I had that same conversation with with quite a few MMA fighters before fighting in like in the UFC where you know they might have all those guys like you don't get to the UFC without having competed your whole life in wrestling or in Jiu Jitsu or in whatever and so they're they're they're they feel real comfortable and then all of a sudden you get to the UFC dude it's a hundred percent they're gonna be nervous because it's the UFC and And you see them get nervous and just being able to tell them, hey man, you're feeling nervous, huh? Dude, I don't know, man. It's like, hey, man, it's good. That's your body getting, your body and your mind getting ready for combat. It's okay.

Well, it's heightened senses too, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's your body and your mind getting ready. Yeah. It's freaking, it's how it should be. Number four, share your fear with others who will understand what you are going through. Number five, stop negative thinking in its tracks. Number six, plan.

Number seven, call it. Realize that you have a choice to get over fear or not. Number eight, give yourself a big hoo-ya for going for it. Now, you use the term who-ya. Why did you use the term who-ya? Super great question for my collaborative author, Kathy. Okay. Just because we know that in the army, you say hoo-a.

Yeah. I say airborne. I never said hoo-a. And as a matter of fact, the only place they say who-ya, is in the SEAL teams. They've started to say in other places now in the Navy.

Maybe that's because the SEAL teams are the best. You know? Maybe if they had a movie out, you know, that I would have been able to see, I would have tried to go for a SEAL team. If only there were more books about the SEAL teams.

You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? I'll get right to work. Yeah. Thank you. Well, no, I'm not in high school anymore. I mean,

had my choice. Navy didn't have the best reputation when I was looking at the services. Did you even know what the SEAL teams were when you were looking at the services? No, I was looking at Rangers and Special Forces. And then I had the Ranger contract,

and I feel like I could have did it, but they were just like, they got me. You and I had that conversation on the first time. Yeah. Is like, you were definitely a way better athlete than I was, like, not even close. But for some reason, I was, like, cocky enough to think, like, I'll make it through that training.

And for some reason, you were like, oh, I'm not sure, which is a weird thing. Yeah, it was just like, they were like, oh, hey, we send you whatever unit you want because they were just trying to plus units up to go overseas. And they were like, you're going to go there. It's going to be six months wait here. And I was like, we're all like, well, we've got to get in the fight right now. I shipped out a week later. Like those guys went like the next day.

And then we still hung out with them like at UNC Chapel Hill, all my friends. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. It's weird that in 2006 you thought you needed to like hurry up and get in the fight. The war had already been going on for five years. And it was going to go on for another 15. Well, you know, that one time I got blown up. I didn't know the future. It's kind of the same situation there.

Like, I didn't know how long it was going to be. But the drill starts, like, you got to get over there. In 2006, bro, I mean, there was no slowing down in sight. It wasn't like this. You know, 10 foot tall and bulletproof. Yeah, that's what happens when you're a young kid. Yeah. But how old were you, so were you like 19 when you were enlisted or were you 20?

I was 18, but then I turned 19 and basic. Because you went to one year. Or no, you only went to like one. A semester and a half. Well, yeah. Yeah, semester and a half. Jack. I only have a year and a half left.

Like, if I would, now it's probably expired, but I only had a year and a half left for, like, a degree. if I would have because I did college I kept re-enlisted to go to college But you got three doctorates Why do you care anymore? Oh I don't

Yeah no I'm not going I literally had my daughter Doing like she was doing math Like last year And they were doing this common core thing And I'm like what is this? Yeah And it's like well Danny does it this way

And Susan does this way I said Chloe cross out Susan's name And put my dad And I showed how to do long division She's like this is so much easier I'm like yeah So next day she got to show her class Like the teacher goes

That's what we're trying to get guys to do And Chloe's like Yeah this is my dad said This is his philosophy Yeah, he does it. The common core thing is definitely strange. Yeah. It's like, have you seen it yet?

Echo? You might, your kids might be too old or too young. No. So you're like, wait a second, just subtract one, you know?

And they're like, well, no, what you need to do is add two and then remove three and then you're going to get the answer of minus one. Like,

it's just real strange. Yeah. I don't like feeling dumb at sixth grade or fifth grade math, you know? And I'm just like, nah, just cross it out and say,

my dad says this is how he does it. You're going to have a fun time at the parent teachers conference. I did get yelled at with my wife because I said, Chloe, when you go to school tomorrow, like this was last year, sixth grade. I said, when you go to school, just tell him that your dad, you know, owns a few businesses. He's, you know, and in my 35 years of being alive at the time,

was 35, I said, I've never used this once a day in my life. So just let them know that I own these businesses, and I've never used this crap ever. So I'm glad you're learning it. And Kel's because, you can't say that. I'm like, okay. I would go to a parent teacher night. I haven't done in a while.

But last time I went, I like took selfies with all the teachers, you know, like with a crazy face and sent him to him. Because then my kids were like, what are you doing? My daughters, my son didn't get any to do it because it wouldn't like phase him. He'd just like whatever, you know. But my daughters, I took crazy like selfies with all their teachers. You know, like, let me get a selfie with you. Number nine, debrief.

Think about how you would improve. show a growth mindset. Oh, I was going to touch on something quick with the previous one when it says like, you know, I wouldn't let anybody see what was going on. Like I had my community. But I thought it was a Japanese philosopher that said like, there's your friends that know you, there's like your spouse that knows your intimate friends. There are people how people know you, how your friends know you,

and actually who you really are. For six months, I couldn't look in a mirror at myself. I just wouldn't. literally would brush my teeth off to the side because I couldn't see just this little arm as I was brushing my teeth with a prosthetic and it was like so hard for me but nobody knew that because I was in the bathroom by myself

when I was doing that. And like I said, I probably didn't do the mental health thing the right way but yeah, I wonder if like the prescription would be like oh you should have told your wife or you should have told your friends or something like that. I mean I'm sure somebody else is feeling like now you're deformed like I was deformed mutated in a way I still am but I can accept this isn't who I this is my body now

You know, but, but I mean, as far as, like, have the community and have people you rely on and stuff like that, like, that's advice I need to take because at the time I couldn't even, I didn't look in a mirror at all. If it wasn't like neck up, I wasn't looking. Damn. Yeah. And it took you like six months you're saying to like where you're like started to accept it. Yeah. Kind of like, okay, well, this isn't changing. I went to bed every night hoping it's going to change.

It hasn't changed yet. I don't think it's going to grow back. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hate to bring the mood down. I mean, I didn't mean that in a bad way. No. But sometimes, you know, it takes time.

You were talking earlier about like that feeling like, okay, this must be a dream and I'm just going to wake up and it's going to be over. And, you know, we've all probably had bad dreams where we're like wake up and you're so relieved that it was a dream. And you're just like, after a while you keep wanting to have that feeling it ain't happening. And I was okay. Like I was accepting my injuries and I was getting better. I was working out. but it was like just there was different things

you know there's different things like I actually think in this book in the picture section like the picture with orange hats in there yeah yeah you know and I like the picture now at the time I was like no I can't I remember having that

kind of go viral with Jenna put me on Fox News and and all that stuff that picture and my sergeant major called me and I was in Lawnstool and I said sergeant major I'm so sorry that pitcher I shouldn't have that hat on and I was out of regulation

I understand if I got to get a demotion And like, best job I've ever had. I appreciate it, but I apologize for her. He's like, Mills, you crazy, some of a bitch. What are you talking about? I was like, well, I have a baseball cap on outside. Like, yeah, I shouldn't have had that on. I'm sorry.

And he was just like, I think you're good. I'm like, oh, okay. And never mind, forget what I said then. Jenna, trying to get you in trouble. Principle 10, a new normal. Your vulnerability is your strength. Vulnerability is defined as the ability or the chance of being physically or emotionally wounded

In the military, we don't like vulnerability since it can imply that you're in danger or you're in a weak position. Being vulnerable is the very thing you didn't want to be as a soldier after all. When a soldier is in a vulnerable position, you can get killed, vulnerable to the enemy, vulnerable to attack. We were trained to not be vulnerable. Yet in real life, it takes on a different meaning. While being vulnerable on the battlefield means weakness.

Being vulnerable with yourself doesn't have to mean you're weak. In fact, it can mean the opposite. being vulnerable is strength. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, like opening up, like, I mean, just when I was saying my alive day, how I hated it, it irritated me, and everyone wanted to celebrate it, and then all of a sudden I said, you know, but after the last eight years or whatever it was, whatever alive day it was, I realized like, it's a thank you for all the hard work that went

in in, my recovery, doctors, nurses, staff, therapists at Walter Reed, you know, prostheticists, Everybody got me back where I was at. And it was a more gratitude of what was done to save my life rather than anger of being injured or thinking about the day I got blown up as like a positive. And then like having Taylor like, hey man, nailed it. Like that man. And Taylor doesn't save very much. Like he's a good guy, but he's pretty dry, quiet, hilarious.

But, you know, and him's just saying that, like just nailed it. I think it's all he texted me. I was like, man, that's cool. That we can, you know, have that. Like he felt the same way, but we never voiced it. But, you know, I like, you know, I say I was negotiate from a position of strength. You know, I don't know if that's true or not because a lot of times I feel like I'm just trying to be on the same level. I don't want to be above or like do this because I'm in power.

But I find myself using my story and having me to like help mentor people and talk to them. So like I use the vulnerability of my story. But it's never like on the same level of somebody where I'm like, I'm not asking people for their, you know, advice on my injuries and maybe I need to do better about that because I'm more of like I want to be the mentor not the mentoree if you will you know unless it's you I talk you know you too I'm like I know you feel I sprained my ankle last week so I kind of let me give you some some advice on mental toughness right right no I get it I get it that's right you did crawl with a broken leg eight miles and then walk yeah then walk up the hill to school and back up the hill home with a broken leg for five years I heard the whole story. I get it. I know about, I know that you know about.

You don't know about vulnerability like I do, bro. Well, I tell you what, I tell you what, have your arms legs taken away and have to use the restroom and have the corpsman have to help you every time. Yeah. You are vulnerable.

Yeah. And that was like the worst, like literally the worst time, like the worst part of my life was having to do like that part. As soon as I got my arm is like never again. Yeah. Because they have these surgeries out there,

like they'll put steel rods in my arm and they're like, it's called osteo integration. But I'd be without an arm for like, Nope one day's too long What would the purpose of the seal rods Going on your arm be Gets rid of the socket completely

And then the hand hooks right into it And they just They do it with the legs too A lot of people who see with legs like that They have steel rods come on their leg called Oh no kidding And like it helps with the overheating Because I have three layers on my legs

That like don't sweat You know like it's up my inner thigh So you're saying there would be a metal protrusion Coming out of your body Yeah Yeah How do they like keep it sealed And not getting infected

Well there's a ton of medication that you got to take just in case. But they're trying to redo the dermatology. The dermatologists are doing like skin and they're trying to make it like your skin on either your fingernails skin or your gums. Try to change it to that. But I'm not going to go.

But you're not doing it because you're not going to go without an arm. Yeah. Without arm, I'm not going to go without legs for nine months. That's what it takes usually. So it's cool. But this is what it is. Plus things are advancing so fast now that you could probably wait like another two, three, four years. They'll have some new advancements.

Well, stem cell, they're actually regrowing people's limbs. They just can't figure out how to make it stop. Crazy stuff going on right now. So you just grow like the biggest arm ever? Well, I mean, I don't want that. You like Echo over here? Look at this guy. Look at this guy.

I think that's length. I think you just won't, you have a real long arm. Yeah, right? After a while. Yeah. Do the best pair of hugs ever. So wait. So for real, they can take stem cells and your arm will keep growing?

I met a Navy doctor that was at, I think, NIH doing that. And he was like, hey, this is coming in the next like 10 to 15 years. years and like it's your nerves it's your body but I don't know I mean two of the two of the guys that are quadruple patis got double arm transplants so like there was five of us now there's only three so two quit our club and the arms are functional and working and yeah can they grab things kind of uh-huh kind of they do a lot more sandwiching you know like pinching um if they're happy I'm at great they're happy happy happy for them I just know I just replacing nerves or connecting nerves is really freaking hard.

A centimeter a month for 18 months and that's it. So like this little guy, what are you going to do? This one, I'd probably get something. But then I was like, I guess someone else's hand on, which really kind of freaks me out. And not talking bad about the people that do it. Like please, if you're listening and you're like, well, I have that done.

Good for you. But I don't know. Yeah. And again, probably if you wait like three years, five years, stuff is advancing so quickly now that, things will probably just improve a ton like I got neck surgery many years ago and

just after I got neck surgery they came out with like replacement discs like a little vertebrae that you can put in there and it was like experimental and I knew a couple guys get it got it and everything and one of my friends got pretty bad problems

with it didn't work out good and but now like a bunch of people have gotten and it works really good and this was over the span of 10 years So the advances that and things are improving so much faster right now like just with technology is just improving so rapidly because like AI you can have AI working on some problem while you're not having to do anything. You know, you're just like run the, run the protocols or whatever. What's like they're doing 3D printing now for socket fits.

And they're like they fit better than the molds that they're doing. Damn. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't have it, but that's what I've been told. But you might eventually get something like that. You know, let me tell you something. There's Vietnam vets. They come in with their old sea legs and they come in with their old, you know, body-powered hooks.

You're like, hey, check out this. Like this hand spins three. Oh, my gosh, look at that. Isn't that cool? You want that? No. What I got works. And then I get told like, hey, they got this new thing.

I'm like, cool. I'm that Vietnam vet. Now I'm like, no, what I got works. How long did it take you to learn how to work the hand? So it took me, well, I mean, five weeks to get a hand. and they have like this the sensors hooked to my arm so I like have to flex a certain way

for it to make it work the sensors that are hooked to your arm they're like are they like pads that you push into yeah that you push into basically kind of like I yeah so like it's like a button in there yeah of sorts

have I know make a fish real quick make a fish we have the engine like on a motorcycle so this muscle right here I have that and then the muscle down if you go down the muscle down here so if I twitch this muscle slow it opens if I flex it like

if I flex it towards the ceiling If I flex it up fast, it rotates around to the left. And then if I go down slow and then down fast. Got it. But you don't think about that anymore? I mean, kind of. But like people, because I can't feel. So when I grab something like this can, I have to like watch what I'm doing.

Okay. You know what I mean? I was in the VA bathroom, like when I first retired and I was taking a pee, not paying attention. I just grabbed right to hold of myself. And I about passed out from the pain. And I had to like breathe through it. Like, okay, we got to breathe this out because I need to, I need to unflexecis.

this, I need to flex his hand up slowly. I really got to stop grabbing my weiner at the urinal right now. Because I almost passed out from the pain. I mean, it was, I was like, oh, sorry. So if you like tense your arm because you're in pain, that it does it grab harder and all of a sudden you sit a real pickle. Yeah, yeah, it's not good. It's not good.

But I remember like in the bathroom, like breathing it out, like, okay, like talking myself off the edge, like this, this, This is not good. I'm just happy no one walked in on me talking to myself at the journal. Like let go. Just like we're just going to let go right now. That's off the wheels. Anyway, sorry.

Okay, so yeah. Go. Things happen, right? Like the other night, my one arm, I have a couple arms. And I usually put one on the charger and I wear one and I switch them out. Well, I had the one on longer than I thought, so it died. So I had my arm on with a hook. and I had to go upstairs at 10.30 at night, right?

Everybody's already in bed. I'm up watching college football or something. I grab my other arm. I go out to the elevator. I try to switch the hook out. The hook falls on the ground. Okay, now I don't have. So now, right, what I have is my hook on the ground.

I'm in my wheelchair, and I can't reach it. Well, then I switch out the hand. I switch this arm out, and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to switch it out quick and get the one that's powered. So I put the one that has a power on it. I can't get that. I knocked the other arm onto the ground. So I'm like trying to fall in my chair, like brushing it over against the wall.

I got to go downstairs. I got to drive over and get my hand, put my hand on this arm, get to work, pick up the other arm, pick the hook up, take the hand off, put the hook on. But again, this is all like I'm banging and clanging stuff where I'm waking everybody up. But like that's where you guys stay patient, right? I mean, it wasn't like grabbing myself, like, passing off from pain, but I was mad. And that's when you're like, why is this my life? Like, are you kidding me right now?

But I made it work. Mm-hmm. You know. How long does the power in the arm last for? About a day and a half. Okay. Day and a half, two days. And you got two of them on rotation?

Yeah. Yeah. I have a few of them. Jack. All right. And then when I go to get them, they're like, sometimes like, well, you want another one? I'm like, well, yeah. And then they look at me funny.

I'm like, you ever had no hands and then have one not work? And then you need one because you don't have them? Yeah. They're like, no, no. I'm like, yeah, well, that's what it was to me. Give me another one. So I'll take another please. Within the guideline.

Principle 11. Serve. Find your voice, build on your strengths, and live meaningfully. So this is where we start talking about this is a PTG, post-traumatic growth. I'm no expert, so I point at Path founder, and this is P-A-T-H-H founder, Josh Goldberg, who wrote Struggle Well to better explain how this happens. A great deal of the time, people who go through these difficult life experiences, these traumas and these losses often reported in the aftermath of that experience going through the

process of post-traumatic growth. This leads them to report that their life had changed for the best. in terms of it being more authentic and more meaningful and more purposeful than it was before they had the experience. They talk about growing in terms of their sense of hope for the future, a recognition of the value of deeper relationships with other people, a sense of personal strength, the idea that nothing can be permanently, the idea that nothing can permanently knock us down, an appreciation for the small and big things in life and spiritual and existential growth, the idea

that they are now asking and reflecting upon the deepest questions that life can offer us. Why am I here and where do I belong? And that's what post-traumatic growth describes and what the entire science and concept behind it are all about. So this is just like the opposite of, well, maybe it's not the opposite of, but it's a different take on post-traumatic stress disorder.

Which is like I got a real problem because of this bad thing happened to me. This is, hey, this bad thing happened to me. And I'm actually better because of it. And then did I not spell out what path, Matt in there? It's not in here. I found it on your website, though. It is progressive and alternative training for helping heroes. So

that's the nonprofit that we partner with, and there's like 10 facilities around the nation and that's for combat veterans and it's for first responders and it's a week long course. We get a big grant,

Avalon Action Alliance. Anyway, we get a grant for it, and then there's places throughout the nation that do it. And it's one of the best in the nation. And I look, I know we have it in my foundation, so I'm like, oh, it's the best in the nation. But really it is. I mean, the amount of letters we get from either the person that came or the family members, spouses, mom's, dads, about the change they actually see in the person that came to the program. It just lift you up.

You know, I mean, we had a few people say, like, this is my last thing. I was going to commit suicide after that. this. It's the most effective one that you've seen. There's this one and there's one out of Massachusetts called Home Base that I believe in as well. It's a two-week program. This is a one week, and then follow-ons. And, you know, it's cool because it's train the trainer. I mean, everybody wants to train the trainer. It's people that have been through the program that actually did serve, whether they're, we have some state troopers as well as combat veterans that lead it. And I, you know, the thing is you have to fill out the paperwork yourself. Like if say,

say your wife thinks you should go and she hits up. the website, she fills it out, doesn't matter. This person has to want to go. And if you sign up, you'll get in, but they're on a little bit of a back order, so they're expanding right now. I mean, yeah, and this isn't like any big secret. I think we're buying another facility to actually run just path out of. Where?

Just down the road, actually. So actually, it's down the road from the camp, the emerging camp. Okay. So we're talking like three, like, no, not even three months. It's probably a mile and a half from where the emergency camp is. Will it be a year-round camp? Yeah, oh, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. But we're, I think we put the, we're about to put the offer in. Okay. Awesome. I mean, it could fall through, but we're trying to find a facility so we can do, instead of the 12 weeks we do now, at least 24 weeks, because there's nine days that is total for the path guides, but we're trying to do that full time because it's, there's so much need right now.

Yeah. And they're open in the program for a few other. I don't think I can go into that right now, but they're open the program for more people to be able to do it. Good, good. No, just reading about it sounds like an awesome program. And again, you got more information here in the book about it,

so that's cool. Going back to the book here, it says, like I said, at the end of the day, you get one go around in life. You get one chance to make your mark. How do you want to leave your mark on this world? The answer should give you purpose. If that's being a coach and giving your all

to the students or being a parent and being the best darn parent, there is then how can you be better at that every day and that leads to the the final principle principle number 12 make it a daily practice ask yourself what is stopping you from recalibrating resilience isn't something that you get like a sticker or a badge and then you carry around for your life you need to continue to work at it and you will want to because we all need it again and again hopefully by now you have learned that pain is good

and important never fun or easy but we can learn from it and build a resilience for it science shows that we can develop and improve our resilience but it requires practice and consistency yeah I think this is you know the the biggest message or the underlying message in the book is like we all have the ability to get better stronger and recognizing that the pain and suffering that you have, first of all, you're going to have it. You're going to have it in life. It doesn't matter. You're going to have it.

There's going to be pain. There's going to be suffering. You're going to face disease. You're going to lose people. You're going to lose. You're going to have to freaking fly home and put down your dog. Things are going to suck sometimes. And you've got to be able to deal with those things.

And this is another interesting point on that. Every day is a choice. Humans make about 35,000 conscious decisions each day. Each decision, of course, can change your life in big ways and small. malls for better or worse. While I couldn't stop that IED from doing its job that day, I can stop it from detracting from the rest of my life. From those decisions, you have a choice of how to react. Do you choose to be angry, isolated, fearful, untrusting, or do you choose to be hopeful, fearless, and trusting? Yeah. I mean, that right there, recognizing that you have the ability

to decide which way you're going to go. And, you know, the thing is with the book is we, like you said, we have other people's stories too. You know, people go through divorce, house fires, cancer. You know, we all face something in life. Like you said, there's, you know, there's just things that happen to us. And it's how we want to react to them. It's how we want to get through them. And it's not like unheard of.

Like, I'm not the only person to get blown up, lose my arms and legs. As unique as it is, I'm not the only one. And I had a guy that came to the hospital. to tell me I'm not a bad person. God doesn't hate me. Nothing I did in life made me deserve this. And that I was going to be A-OK. I was going to learn how to walk, try, feed myself.

And he was a second ever quadruple-a-pit. You know? And moreover than that, he was a Marine. So I was like, man, if he can figure it out, I can't be that hard. No, good guy. Good guy. Todd nicely. And that's the thing.

Like, people have all, you know, it's probably bad to say, Ben, they've done that. But people, they face the same problems. whether they think they're alone or not or they believe that no one's out there like them. There's somebody out there that most likely been through it. And that's what I was trying to do with this is try to highlight my story in my outlook,

but using other people's stories in their outlook. And then, like you said, I got all the psych. I missed out in the most important psychologist, apparently. I apologize for that. But, you know, maybe next time. Maybe next book. Yeah. The next 12 rules of warrior resilience can get in there.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's what I said. It's like such a good guidebook. And you're right, I didn't, you know, when I was highlighting what to read and after I read the book, I wanted to kind of focus on the principles themselves today, but the stories that you've got in the book, and they're not all your stories. There's are your stories, but a lot of them are stories of people that you know, people that you've worked with, people that have come through and they've got their struggles that

they've been through, whether it's losing a spouse and they're. then losing a child. Like you got a woman in there that suffered through that. You got, you know, victims of disease, people that have been through, you know, got severe PTSD. So there's the Sergeant Major that he lost a lot of guys. Yeah. Yeah, I think you said 22 guys. Yeah.

A lot more wounded too. Yeah. Yeah. He had, he's one of our path guides actually. Yeah, that's like what better guy. Yeah. To be able to talk and help help people out for that. And I wasn't criticizing how you did this.

just meant oh I appreciate the fact you're highlighting this I didn't want to be yeah you sound like Chris no it didn't come across that at all you just reminded me you grabbed your knife when I said it when I said it when you mentioned that I remember thinking consciously like okay there's these stories

that will definitely be able to show us examples but it would just be like I might as well just read the book might as well just do the audio book which is apparently what you wanted me to do anyways well yeah sorry you know what I'm the worst as my wife she'll tell you um

Only when I ask it was for dinner at 8, you know, 7 in the morning. Yeah, it's not a good move. Don't need path to tell you that. Every day is about control. A major plot point in this book is that you can't change what happened to you, nor make it go away, but you can control your attitude. After all, you don't want to fall into the category of learned helplessness or victimhood. Here are a few ways to stave off helplessness.

And you've got a bunch of them in here. Be optimistic. Have a creative outlet. Get walking. Any exercise is good. You got this thing, practice a Japanese thing called forest bathing or shin ring yoku, which is like going out into the wilderness, which is awesome. Yeah, I think that was my idea probably.

Yeah. For sure, sure. While you're at it, walk to the gym. Be grateful. Like, these are the key components that you've got. So much about gaining and maintaining resilience is about practicing it. And life gives us many opportunities to practice. Am I right?

Once you make resilience a daily practice, it will become second nature. And with that inevitable next crisis or challenge, you will be that much stronger and prepared to take it on. It will be about how to put the next foot in front of the other and keep you going. Always bounce back. And just to close out the book, I want to read one little section from the epilogue. It just says, as you finish this book, I want to leave you with this message. You are a lot more resilient than you think you are.

And there are things that you can choose to do to allow that resilience to bloom. Are you ready to make that choice? Man, I sound like a genius whenever you guys do this. I'm telling you what. A little bit of a miracle worker over here, I guess. Yeah, I'm telling you what. Yeah. No, man, it's it is.

It's because honestly, think about what you've been through. Think about where you're at now. Like you've got some freaking lessons learned to pass on and you pass them on in the book Are you ready to make that choice? And that's that's like the question, right? And like I said, you're living proof that it truly is a choice. Yeah Our attitude our perspective our ability to bounce back. That's on us, you know? So this book is going to help a lot of people and it's going to look. You don't need to be in one of these severe moments right now to be like, oh, well, I don't really have any trauma right now, so I don't need this book. A, this stuff is effective for, as Echo pointed out, like every day, what like what little, oh, you lost your job. That's not, that's probably not going to leave like some big traumatic

mark on you, but guess why? You got to make some adjustments in life, right? You got some things you have to get through. Uh, you might go through like a relationship issue. Like maybe you get, you know, you split up from your girlfriend if you're 19 years old. That can be traumatic when you're 19, right? Or you're getting a divorce, like things that may not. seem as severe as like what guys in the military might go through there's still the principles in this book are going to be able to help you out and what's really nice is when you do face something that's more severe when you lose a loved one when there's some horrible disease that enters your world you'll you'll definitely have some tools to work through that stuff and I think this is going

to help out so many people well I appreciate that also I was thinking what is what is your nickname because I was about to call you Big Mac because you're the secret sauce baby. You know what I'm saying? Is that? No, my nickname is just, my nickname is just Jocko. Just Jocko. My parents gave me that nickname before I was even born.

I know two other nicknames, by the way. For me? Yeah. Oh, what are they? Mothra. Oh, that's an old school one. Yep. And the other one is Way of the streets.

Dang. So I remember Mothra. Yeah. Why did I come up with that? I don't know. I forget what it was. Well, Mothra is the bad guy on who Godzilla or something. He was like the bad guy on Godzilla, but there was, so Echo's brother had a social media

platform before any of these other social media platforms were around. And it was almost, it was honestly, it would seem like there was 30 people on it. Right? That's what it seemed like to me. Yeah. There was probably thousands, but like, yeah, they're the like we would kind of all interact with each other. There was just a small group of people that I actually knew the people.

And for some reason. It's a true story. There was some like probably some shit talking about like being Godzilla or something and then I came back with like well a mothed right. So he's probably something stupid like that and then what was the other one a way of the streets where did that come from? I forget where it was but to me that one was like the one that I would use from time. Oh yeah. The streets. Just way of the streets.

I forget where it might be because we made that old advertisement for Victory M.A. Yeah. Where I was like in the streets. I was saying that Jiu-Jitsu is good, like on the mat, in the cage or in the streets. Okay, so to correct Jocko, because I remember way better. So he said, his closing line in one of the videos was, uh, ghi, no ghi, or in the streets. And then it says, dun, dun, then he says, uh, making things work, making people hurt.

That's what Jocco said, his closing. And then, no, but then it came up later. I forget what, um, like what we're doing or what. I don't know, but it was written like way of the straight out. You signed something on it. It was like way of the streets. And one time you said when we're going to go train and you were like, oh yeah, I'm going to be there at noon or whatever. And then I would like talk some trash or whatever.

And you'd be like, whatever then I'll see you at noon. Gee or no gee. Then period, period, period, wait for a little while. Or of course, in the streets. In the streets. There you go. So I don't know if I'm secret sauce, but I can make some stuff work, make people hurt in the streets. That's right.

In the streets of justice. You know, I've found that as much as I really appreciate the ghee that I got at camp, it's better be no ghee because no can geat choke me. Yeah, well, you're at a disadvantage with ghee because you can't grab. You can't grab the ghee. So you're much better off the no ghee for sure. Yeah. Well, I don't mind if they wear a ghee.

I'm just saying I don't want to wear one. It sets me out for failure. Yeah. No, ghee is not good for you. I thought I'll go naked, you know, just like see who's really dedicated enough. You can claim victory. I'm not going to. Getting into the-shot the old self-esteem, but okay, that's cool, cool, cool.

And I've been slim fasting. I don't know if you noticed. You've been what? Slim fasting. Sun fasting? Slim fasting? Slim fasting. Yeah.

No, actually, I tried to do the RTDs, but then I just, I drink too much of them. Like, this is not reducing any calories. Well, I did like the crush, like how crushable these are. I knew that story because I find myself, I'm like, I'm on my third, my third jock I'll go and I haven't had any water today. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm like, I know. Yeah.

You're going to be awake for 19 hours. Yeah. Yeah. There's the electrolytes. You definitely got to be, you definitely got to be a little bit careful on that. That's what I find. Like, I had one. Normally I don't drink them like after like maybe two o'clock.

Occasionally during the week, if I'm going to train that, then I'll drink one on the way here. But then you exert so much energy, you're just going to be tired. But if I'm just not doing anything and I drink one, bruh. That's basically what I just ride around and do a bunch of phone calls and conference meetings. and stuff and I just drink them. Yeah. Because, you know, I work out for the gram, but that's it.

Yeah. And then it looks like the one video that you guys put out, looks like I actually am choking you out, you're telling me what to do. And it looks like, I'm actually getting you. People are like, oh my gosh, can't even choke them out. I'm like, yeah, I know. Yeah. I know.

That was all, that was all make believe. Yeah. So you got this book, man. Order it. What? Did we hit everything else? You got the Travis Mills Foundation, right? Yeah.

You got the campus up in Maine, Travis Mills Foundation. dot org. This is a, I've been there. I've met a bunch of people that have been through the programs. You do everything up there. Cooking, baking, martial arts, ropes course, cycling, horse riding, shooting, hiking, golf, massage therapy, ice fishing, yoga, archery, kayaking, canoeing, boating, flying, fly fishing, bass fishing, pottery, painting, and snowshoeing to list a few of the freaking activities that people can do up there. They bring out a dog sled in the wintertime, let people ride on a dog sled. That's actually pretty, it's pretty legit. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I mean, I don't I mean, the other stuff's kind of cool, too, I guess.

Yeah. But, no, look, I appreciate just the chance to hang out with you guys. You guys are always awesome. And, you know, with the book coming out, I'm fired up for it because I get asked all time how I do it. And I thought, let me just figure out how I can show people how I do it or how they can do anything that's hard in life because we all have, you know, we have struggles and things like that that we go through where you could use a little guiding light.

And, I mean, I got tired of just saying, like, well, I just do. You know, I have to. You have two choices, right? The real Oliver Twist situation. Get better or don't. What's the Oliver Twist situation? Isn't that? No, that's a Robert Wright.

That's a forest. Damn it. Oliver Twist. Bro, he just made. He just, Oliver Twist. He just made a metaphor you didn't. No, it wasn't Oliver Twist.

I'm thinking about Robert Redford. Damn it. I'm a doctor. Okay. I'm a doctor of three. What? I wonder what metaphor you could have been thinking of. You know, the,

uh, the, the, the, forest, both paths in the forest. It's like Robert Redford, maybe. Robert Redford's an actor, isn't he? He says it.

No, it's Robert Frost. Oh, Robert Frost. Two roads diverged in yellow wood. Yeah. What path I had to take, get better or not. Oliver Twist. I'm like, please sit. I want some more.

Shit. Just like Oliver Twist. And of course, I'm over there like, yeah, just like Oliver Twist, bro. Oh, yeah. You know, it was just like Oliver. That's a brilliant metaphor. I did not think. Oliver is like Annie, dude.

Yeah. Just like, fiddler on the roof. Yeah, the sun come out tomorrow if you want it to, you know, if you let it. Just if you let it. Bet your bottom dollar. What else you got going on? You got Rebel for Good. So we talked about that.

Everyone's going to buy Rebel for Good.com. They're going to go and buy it. They're going to love these shirts. They got the backwards hours. They're going to turn the life around. Yep. There you go. Yeah.

So you can see that you got the Marina. You got the Marina. The Lakeside Lodge and Marina in East Winthrop, Maine. It's just like a, we just named it Lakeside Lodge because you've called Lakeside Motel. And Norman Bateswagent help us out with the whole motel thing. Yeah, yeah. But we're actually doing a remodel right now.

But it's going on watch. It's fun. It closes down like two weeks. We have like the main building open, but. So lakeside lodge.com, but people come in there in the springtime start coming back up to Maine for vacation land. Yeah, but it's like number one like fishing lake. So we have a lot of fishermen that come.

Like number one Bass Lake in Maine on a lot of charts. No kidding. Yeah. I don't fish. So when people come in the office, like, hey, where are they catching the fish at? I'm like in the water. They're like, yeah, but where? I'm like, between the top and the bottom, I'm pretty sure.

They're like, What do you know? What do you catch? Like, what do you? I'm like, I catch a buzz on my boat sometimes. But like,

it's accidental. I don't try to do that. But they get, they get a little irritated. And then, and then you have the restaurant. The restaurant. Yeah,

the restaurant's going pretty well. The white duck pub. Dot pub.com. What do? Uh, white, yes, it's white duck pub. I looked it up.

Sure's not white duck brew. No, no, no, but I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure. Anyways, I'm with it.

I'm with it. You'll find it. Yeah. What's the main deal going on there? It's just American Bistro. Open year round. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

11 to 9 every day. And we're made from scratch kitchen, so nothing's ever frozen. Like our wings take like 13 hours to make. We sell a lot of them. We sold over 10,000 burgers the first year. This year we're like crushing that. Damn. And we have a burger of the, like, we have only one burger on the menu.

It's not like you can get like this kind of burger and that kind of burger. It's like we have the white duck brew pub burger. What's the, what is the deal? What's just really good? But like, what is on a white duck burger? That's tomato onion. But it's tomato onions, just like it's a basic deal. It's not basic.

It's not gourmet. Oh, it's gourmet for sure. It's like how you cook it. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And it's made with love. That's the kicker.

And we have butteen. So like our number one seller is actually the burger. Second thing we sell most of is actually bacon. And third is potatoes. Do you eat your breakfast or no? No. So how do you sell so much bacon on the burgers? I think we just,

I think that's why everything tastes good. I think we just bake on everything. It's like thick cut, delicious. just organic, whatever, bacon of awesomeness. And then, yeah. And then up the hill, I own, well, it means them. It means them buddies. We own a couple more buildings.

We're putting a brewery in. And then eventually a distillery. I was in Arizona. Where JP was speaking, actually. I was with JP. And I was speaking as well, but I was with JP there. And we had a booth right next to Mamalese booth. We actually split the fundraising.

Sweet. $150,000 to each of us. It was really nice. Tarle Yarber put it on. Nice. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this guy walks by, he's all tatted up, and he's pretty buff, and he walks by. I'm like, hey, look, I'm not a piece of meat.

Stop looking at me like that, okay? My wife's a jealous type, too, so it's not going to happen. And the guy wasn't even looking at me. He's like, what, what? I'm like, I saw you checking my legs out, okay? Looks are free, but that's all you're going to get from me, bud. And just, like, hit a conversation off. Turns out, his name's John Peasley and his wife, Sarah, fantastic people.

He is the biggest independent brewery and distillery owner in Arizona. He has Grand Canyon River Brewing and Spirits. And he's like, dude, I'll show you how to do it all. So he's like, give me like, he flew out in my gala. He hung out for a week. That's awesome, man. Good dude. So you're going to build a vet.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, and he does jihitsu. He met Pete and Amanda at the at the gala. So you're going to do a brewery making beer? Is it just beer? Is it like whiskey or something else? So here's the thing. You take beer

When it goes bad You can turn it within two weeks into vodka, gin Whiskey takes four years for whiskey But you can turn it all into that As people do So You can go to the local distribution centers That got to send all the old beer back

And instead of them paying to send it back They'll just give it to you No kidding Then you get a crushing machine You crush it down You crush the beer down Right so they crush the cans Oh okay

Then you take the cans Turn those in for the aluminum prices and then you get all this old beer and two weeks later you got all the stuff made for vodka, gin, whatever. Are you the first person to think of this? No, that's what John told me. And people do it all the time.

But like this guy, Pumpkinhead is a big beer that comes out and this guy had so much surplus, he didn't know what to do with it. And he made ice pick vodka. Boom. Yeah. So that's what you're going to do going down that path as well.

Yeah, but here's the beauty, right? Like I'm not, I'm an equal owner. Right, but I know my value is in these pearly whites. I smile, shake some hands, I put some money in. Right, so out of the owners of the brewery, we have one guy that his son's a brewmaster, and he's going to help out and work there. We have the other guy, he's putting money in. He's a builder.

He's going to build it all. The other guy is me, and I'm just going to like shake hands, make deals and say, drink my beers, I have arms and legs. People just feel bad for me. Yeah, yeah. I spoke to, like, the National Whole Billers Association or something out in Vegas, and, like, they love me. And they'll bring me back. And I'd be like, hey, guys, I need all of you guys to buy my beer and sell it.

And all of a sudden, dogfish had brewing is not the only one that sold for $108 million. What? But then I visualize. Do you know the name of your brewing beer or whatever? They're going to call it Castle Island brewery. Castle Island. No, that's a lie. That's a lie.

That's a different road that I drive on. It's going to be called Island Park Brewing. I got to get that out of my head. Island Park Brewing. Island Park, because right across from wherever my restaurant is, there's a bridge. Make sure you get the URL for that, like, immediately. Yeah.

Because otherwise someone's going to buy it as soon as they hear this and they're going to sell it back to you for $100,000. All right, because I want to be called Humble Beginnings anyway. I want Humble Beginnings Brewery. Okay. So I might buy that too. We'll see. Buy that both.

Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know. I just, my wife wants me to slow down, but this is all stuff that I have business partners in that we all know our role, kind of. Like, I'm not going to go there on lug kegs. You know, I would. I'm just handicapped. But I definitely will promote it and try to get more people to drink it.

But you won't lug kegs. I mean, I'm like kick one over and kind of, you know, push it. That's my ability. Awesome, man. Well, does that get us up to speed? Are we there? We up to a little... I mean, I just hope everybody wants to come hang out with me in Maine

because it gets lonely up there. Winters are long. Best time to visit's not in February. If you guys go there in February, I won't be there. but you're more than welcome. Where do you go? Do you go somewhere else for real? For like, yeah.

Arizona or something? No. Florida? Florida. Yeah, just like for a week. Yeah. Like the kids get a school week off. When I say a week, I mean, my wife pushes it to like 10 days, which really turns into like two weeks.

Good. But I like it. We have a rental property outside of Disney, so. Sweet. Hey, where can people find you? So you got Travis Mills.org. That's you. That's you.

You got Travis Mills Foundation. dot org. And then you got Lakesidelogging.com. You got the white duck pub or pub and brewery something. dot com. We're really not sure 100%.

I think I'll, yeah. Just Travis Mills.org, the website has all the little tiles I believe on there. I don't know. Then you got, you're on Twitter. You're on Facebook. You're on Instagram.

I've been growing. I've been doing some fun videos. Yeah. Taking a page out of your guys' book. I was like, hey, Ian Dow actually set me up with Evan. Ian's like, yeah, yeah. Look, this guy's, he's talented.

You're going to love him. He's my roommate now. And he's going to come do videos for you. And I said, look, all I want is reels. I want shorts and reels. And he's been doing pretty well. Yeah, no. He's cutting some good stuff, man.

But that's at SSG. Yeah. At SSG Travis Mills. And then you're on Facebook. You're on Twitter. And you're apparently, you're in love with yourself on the gram. That's what I just heard. I'm not in love with myself.

I want a bunch of reels of myself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you know how much, let me tell you something. Before I see any of my videos on Facebook, Instagram I see you sitting talking to a mic given motivation like every day oh but you

don't want that okay I see the difference yeah I'm like hey I want that in my life and you're like I don't want it just kind of happens I guess is gonna happen I just gonna happen so you're I don't know what Echo's doing over there because you got a camera it looks like maybe maybe he's gonna do something with it's not I'm just I'm just here to say what I'm gonna say in the microphone just saying it dude yeah I don't know I don't know what's gonna happen I do my part you know you're not lugging kegs I'm not turning on the camera this you're doing what I'm supposed to do Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Check. Echo Charles. Yes. Any questions? I don't. Oh, how do you power your arm? You at like USB? So it's...

See the little gold things in there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a magnetic charger. Oh, the special one. Yeah, yeah. It lights up green. When the little lights on is green, it means it's charging when it shuts off, it's done.

Is that carbon fiber? It is, yeah. I love carbon fiber. Go ahead. You can touch it. It's not right for me. If you notice, the Mango Mayhem can, carbon fiber.

The old one. The old one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, not the new one. We got denied the carbon fiber. It is what it is. Good to see you, always. Good to see you too.

And I'm not sure. Are we supposed to talk about any of the beef stuff or no? Yeah, man. Yeah. I was showing some steak, man. I was just so fortunate that you were like, hey, yo, I'm going to start this beef company. You can be a part of it if you want. And I'm like, I'm all about it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't start it. But luckily, actually, actually, you know, Actually, Brian kind of spearheaded that thing. And he made connections with Jeff and they put together. So Colorado Kraft to Beef. That's right. Colorado Kraft Beef.

I have that going on too. Yeah. I'm saying that because the last investment I did where I told me I liked to believe in me, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Rebel for good.com. No. You're trying to recover from that.

Yeah, man, it's awesome. Great people. Great company. Great steaks. The steaks are freaking delicious. Did they do jitsu before or they just tried it that time? when they came to the camp. No, I think he's kind of like into training now.

Yeah. You know? And everybody out there listening to those when they come to the camp, the jitza camp over there in Camp Laurel in Maine, I'm only 20 minutes down the road. So I will, I come out on a heckle, you know? We should do something like where people can swing by.

You know, we'd go by the factory. We should do something like just like come by or something, come by the facility at some point. Like every Friday, because I'm not sure what days you guys are doing it now, but every Friday, like the families always leave. So like it's just open, getting clean. It's open, check it to. That'd be cool for people to come and check it out.

Maybe, like, get to meet you and stuff like that. That'd be pretty cool. I mean, you come down to camp, so people can meet you there. Well, I felt bad. I didn't even go to the purple and the blue belt. You know, mats. You straight to black. Yeah.

That's how you roll. That's how you roll. Some people were, like, it took me 20 years to get over here. I took me day two. Yeah. You know. So Colorado craft beef, look, you're going to be. You need steak.

Get yourself some steak, people. There it is. Travis, any closing thoughts, bro? You know, um, look, Everybody's biggest problems are our biggest problem. My problems don't outweigh anybody else's. Whatever, Jocko or ECHO go through, don't outwey anybody else's. And we're all in this together.

So I hope that this podcast has been fun as well as, you know, maybe opened your eyes to new ways to think about your situations that you go through or love ones go through. And if you want to get the book bounce back, by all means, go ahead. But if this is enough information, take it. Take it and run with it because you got legs to do that. I got running legs, too. It just takes me while I put them on. Well, I can tell you that if you got something out of this podcast,

you should definitely get the book because the book has infinitely more information, infinitely more stories, details that are really going to help everyone out. So yeah, man, get the book. And Travis, man, thank you. Once again, it's always an honor to be able to talk to you, be able to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for writing these books. Both these books are awesome.

And, you know, thanks for your service. thanks for your sacrifice. Thanks for the service and sacrifice of your family. And most of all, bro, thanks for being an inspiration to everybody. I appreciate you. You guys are so awesome. You say nice things. I'm telling you what, you've got the secret sauce, all Big Mac over there.

But on top of that, on top of that, I will say, I appreciate the fact that you have the book and it's all like went through and highlighted because I talked with Jenna and said, hey, so yeah, she's like, you're going to come promote your book and come down. I was like, yeah, absolutely. What did you think about it? She goes, I've got it on a PDF. I'm like I gave Leif like the like the third or second edition ever handed out he goes yeah it's buried on my desk she had no idea he even had it since camp oh so just saying when are you

going down there well I'm gonna try to line a few things up so okay so she'll she'll have time to read it yeah oh yeah no she's already read that on the I think a PDF oh I sent her like the manuscript but the point was I'm glad that you actually care about it and Pete was like talking about how he cares about it but then I talked to Laif and he's like yeah it's on my desk I'm sorry Sorry, I didn't tell you. Dude, I was, my dad was at my house. This was like a few years ago. When I only had one book, the book Extreme Ownership,

and like my dad was over my house. And I don't know what he said or whatever. And he's like, yeah, need to take extreme ownership. He said to me. And I was like, have you even read the book? And he was like, yeah, I could see immediately. He hadn't read. And I was like, bro.

I was like, hey, dad, you might want to check it out before you start trying to talk smack to me. That's like my, my wife, someone will say like, oh my gosh, your husband, when he said this in his presentation, and she just goes like, yeah, she's never seen me speak, ever. Oh, really? Yeah, she don't care. Yeah, she doesn't care.

She's out by the pool, just hanging out waiting for me to go on another work trip. Oh, man, awesome. Yeah, man, like I said, thanks for coming. Appreciate it. Appreciate everything you do, man. And you're my hero. Quit it.

Thank you, bro. You're my hero. You guys both are so awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks, bro. And with that, Travis Mills has left the building. Yes. And left us with some lessons and some leadership and some inspiration.

Yeah. Literally, nothing to complain about on earth. You know which one's stuck with me? Which is like in day-to-day. That dog don't hunt. Sometimes, bro, you got to just got to let it go. And, you know, you get, and I get it. And I said that thing earlier for a reason where it's like it trickles down to your everyday life

because that's what most of us are dealing with most of the time. And I tried to make that point at the end like just because you might feel like you're not going through any major problems right now, it's still there's, you are going through things and these things will help you with everything that you're dealing with. And one of those things for sure is that dog don't hunt. Even the small problems. And even Travis, he does such a good job in saying, hey, I realize my situation is very extreme compared to other people's bad situations.

And really, he's all even go one further and be like, hey, these principles apply to things that you wouldn't even look at and be like, oh, that's a bad situation. Just like you, it's a way to choose to look at certain situations if they don't go the way that you wanted them to go in that moment. Super small situations. If you just, the idea, if you just take that one or that dog don't hunt, bro, the idea of just let it go, bro, the idea of just let it go, just let it go. Instead of looking, you know, how they say, don't look behind, look forward, you know, move forward. Brad, that's a big deal when you can remember it. It helps you a lot. For sure.

For sure. And when you can do it with something as severe as what Travis has been through, it means that the rest of us can do it over some much, much smaller things and medium things and big things. And that's the point that he made was like, oh, your biggest problem is like your biggest problems. I remember that what the lesson I learned from that or the time I learned that was with my kids. Yeah. And like, I was in the teams. We had war going on.

and people were getting killed. And like my daughter, you know, whatever. One of my daughters was like, oh, like a C on a test in school or whatever in third grade. Yeah. And I'm at my attitude like for a split second is like, well, this doesn't matter. And then I realized, oh, this is the biggest problem that she has in the world. And this is her world. That's another thing I was trying to remember.

Pete, we look, essentially, are we all in the same world? Yes, we are sure. But everyone's in their own world. Yep. And whatever's going on in your world is what's going on in your world. Well, the rest of the world doesn't even matter compared to what's going on in your world. So especially you get those teenage years, like you're 16 years old and you get dumped by your girlfriend. Those dudes get broke up, bro.

Yeah. Mentally. So for those dudes and females, too, girls happens to them too. So tons of lessons. You know, we forgot to mention that also, you know, Travis Mills was talking about all the different things that he's involved. He's also in Jocko Fuel, by the way. Yep.

You know, so he's one of the, one of the shareholders over at Jocko Fuel. So if you want to support Jock Fuel, it's going to help out across the board. All aspects, hydrate, greens. The greens, man, underrated. Maybe they're not even underrated. Just maybe I need to do a better job of telling people about the greens. The greens are the best. Yeah.

Hands down. We got Go RTD. We already talked about that. milk can't drink too many echo just pointed out I think you got to really try because I think I think if you are drinking for a day you're good yeah well yeah so and what I really meant because only because I rethought about it the whole thing when I said it too I was like wait that I don't even know if me saying it the way I did is as accurate as the message I was trying to say given what Travis said because he was talking about like oh I want to stay slim and you know when you're

when you're running a calorie deficit right you ever heard of that yeah yeah run a calorie deficit because you want to lose weight, right, the right, the correct way and all this stuff. What I'm saying is if you're not necessarily quote unquote focusing on a calorie deficit, or if you are focusing on calorie deficit, but you're like, oh, I'll just drink these mokes because they're, you know, it's better than eating like a whole freaking, uh, double burger with cheese and bacon or something like this from the white duck in or where, yeah, or what have you. Um, you just got to be careful with that. Because if you're pounding, yeah, four or five mokes a day because they're good and you're like,

Oh yeah, I'm cleared hot. Yeah. I got the green light. The cool thing about a milk though, and I experienced this today. No, I experienced it last night. I got home like kind of late from Jiu-Jitsu from training. And so I had a lunch, late lunch at like 2.30. And my late lunch was just like, I was like, oh, I'm just going to have something like

because we're going to have dinner in a little while. And we're going to have steaks. So I was fired up. So I was just, oh, I'll just have a mulk. So I had a R2D, mulk. And honestly, I had a protein cookie. I had a mold cookie. But then three hours go by, and it's time for a rib-eye steak, by the way.

So I'm fired up, you know? And I didn't eat the whole thing. I ate like half of it, you know? Got that primal beef. I was all fired up. Primalbeef.com got myself a rabbi. You know what I mean? So I'm all fired up.

And it's delicious, but I was full. Already full. So anyways, joccofuel.com go there, get your stuff, get what you need. Get, it's cold season coming. Get your immunity gigs back up. Get your cold war on. Get your vitamin D. Make sure you're taking that.

You can get this stuff at Wawa. You can get a vitamin shop, G&C, military commissaries, Afees, Haniford, dash stores, Wake Fern, shop right. H.E.B. down in Tejas been doing us right. Same with Meyer up in the Midwest. Harris, Teeter. lifetime fitness, shields, small gyms all open to place. Jiu Jitsu gyms, if you want to sell Jocco Fuel, CrossFit gyms, you want to sell Jocko

Fuel.com. J.F. Sales at joccofuel.com. Give your clients what they need to get better. So we got that going for us. Also, you're just talking about origin USA tonight. Talking about origin USA. Making stuff in America. We got factories in America.

That's what we got. We don't have slave labor over. seas in dangerous factory settings, breathing chemicals, dumping chemicals into the atmosphere and into the water, which is what they're doing in the clothes that you're buying if you're not buying from Origin USA. So go to origin USA.com help the national security of this country by bringing back manufacturing. What else you need to know?

Oh, you want to know what we have? We have workout gear. We have jih T-sigua gear. We have rash guards, geese. We have t-shirts, hoodies, heavy hoodies. Light hoodies, medium hoodies, kilo hoodies, jeans, heavy jeans, factory, light jeans, Delta, boots, hats. You can just go there, go there and get some American-made stuff. Oh, yeah, that's true.

Help across the board. We also have another store that's been very creatively named Jocko store. Oh, yeah, jocco store.com. That's the discipline equals freedom branch of this whole representation thing that we're doing on the path. So yeah, disqual freedom, good. You know, all that type of stuff. So jocco store.com is where you get it. Also, there's a subscription scenario.

Don't want to forget about that. You want a new shirt every month. New design, a little bit more, you know, interesting type designs, little layers in there. That's where you can get it. Can you get the old shirts? You can get the past shirts. Yes. If you subscribe, like if you subscribe, shirt locker, you subscribe right now.

But you also want the shirt from last year, I don't know, October, whatever, last year, yes, you can get it. The reason I ask that is because I believe there were some backdoor channels utilized by my children to get past shirts. And I thought they'd pulled some strings. Yeah. Which they did apparently. Yes, they did. So my point in saying that, though, is the designs are at a level of coolness that even my own children. Yep.

We're like, yo, got to represent that one. Represent. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a few. There's a few of them. And it's interesting because it's been going on for what, I don't know, a while, more than a year. So there's like a backlog of designs that people just kind of are not familiar with. So they'll see like me or someone, you know, someone from the beginning days or whatever wearing.

We'd be like, hey, where'd that shirt come from? Like, oh, what did I get that shirt? Where do I get that shirt? That's where you get it. That's going to be the answer. The first world problems, good shirt. Yeah. The toxic.

Productivity shirt. Oh, yeah. So there you go. Some good shirts, a subscription, shirt locker jocco store.com. Primalbeef.com. Get that beef from the Shenandoah Valley or Coloradocbeef.com. Get that beef from the Colorado goodness. We also have underground podcast jaco underground.com. We answer your questions. It costs $8.18 a month. That's what we can only own. It's a platform that we own. If you can't afford it, we still want you there. Assistance at jocco underground.com. Check it out. YouTube, subscribe, psychological warfare, get it. Flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. A bunch of books.

Obviously the books for today, bounce back. 12 warrior principles to reclaim and recalibrate your life. So get this book. Going to help you with everything that you're doing. Also, the last book that you wrote, which is phenomenal. Tough as they come, man. Just check out. Podcast 90, but get that book as well.

And then obviously I've written a bunch of books. You might want to check those out as well, especially those kids' books. Come on. Look, you want to stay on a crappy path and not get books for yourself. Don't want to get discipline freedom field manual. You don't want to get leadership strategy and tactics, revised, expanded edition. Okay.

Okay. That's fine. You don't want to do it. You want to stay on a rut. Okay. But don't do that to your kids or the neighbor's kids or your nephew, right? Get them the warrior kid books. You know, Mikey and the Dragons.

That's what we're talking about. Eshlamfront.com. We have a leadership consultancy. We can help your business. We can help your team. We can help you in life and everything that you do by teaching you leadership. We can come into your organization. Go to ashlamfront.com to check that out.

We also have the Extreme Ownership Academy online. It's Extreme Ownership.com. That's going to help you in life. It's going to help you in business. It's going to help you with your family. It's going to help you interacting with other human beings. It's going to help you lead yourself. to victory,

Extreme Ownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She got a charity organization.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. She is helping out so many people with that program. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink, taking people into the dang backwoods of Montana

where they get lost so they can get found and Jimmy May's got his organization beyond the brotherhood.org and obviously obviously Travis Mills Foundation dot org you heard what he's doing

and if you want to connect with us Travis is on Instagram apparently making his shorts reels and he's on Twitter at SSG Travis Mills that stands for staff sergeant and echoes there as well as am I echoes at

echo Charles I'm at jockel just be careful because there's an algorithm that's trying to grab you by the back of the neck and kill you that's what's going on so don't let it happen thanks once again to Travis for joining us the ultimate human being honor to talk to you and have you as a friend thank you for being who you are and thanks to all the men and women in the military thank you for your service especially I'm especially grateful for all of the recalibrated warriors who have served and sacrificed so much. Thank you all for our freedom. And also thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders.

Thank you for your service here on the home front to keep us safe every day. And to everyone else out there, I know life is a struggle. Struggle. You're going to face struggle. And it can be rough. It can be really rough. But don't forget that while you can't choose the trauma that you are dealt, you can choose how you respond to it.

And if Travis Mills can carry on like Travis Mills carries on, then I think we can all stuff. up every day and get after it and until next time Zekko and jocco out