Modern Wisdom - #666 - John Lovell - How To Defeat Your Inner Coward

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

John Lovell is a former United States Army Ranger, firearms instructor and founder of Warrior Poet Society, known for his expertise in tactical training and philosophy. It's often quoted that “it’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war“, but how should you cultivate this state of readiness? How can you become capable of standing strong when there is a battle to be fought, and sufficiently peaceful to be in touch with your emotions once it's over? Expect to learn what it means to live free and die well and how to do so, how the Army prepares soldiers to face challenges once they integrate back into the real world, what happened when John came closest to death, why America needs more warriors despite a lack of a war, how people can express their vulnerability without feeling weak and fragile, what it means to be the most dangerous man in the room, why it’s important to face death before actually dying and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on Bubs Naturals at https://www.bubsnaturals.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 15% discount on Mud/Wtr at http://mudwtr.com/mw (use code MODERNWISDOM)  Get 15% discount on your first order from Collars&Co at https://collarsandco.com/ (use code: MW15) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is John Lovell. He's a former United States Army Ranger firearms instructor and founder of the Warrior Poet Society. It's often quoted that it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. But how should you cultivate this state of readiness? How can you become capable of standing strong when there is a battle to be fought and sufficiently peaceful to be in touch with your emotions once it's over. Expect to learn what it means to live free and die well. How the army prepares soldiers to face challenges once they integrate back into the real world, what happened to John when he came closest to death?

Why America needs more warriors despite a lack of war? How people can express their vulnerability without feeling weak and fragile? What it means to be the most dangerous man in the room, why it's important to face death before actually dying. And much more. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Bubs Naturals. Bubs Naturals make my favourite collagen protein powder. I used collagen protein when re-growing an entire Achilles three years ago. It was a huge part of my recovery, it was taking every single day for the entirety of my recovery, which took six months, and I was a massive, massive fan of it. Bubs Natural has 20 grams of protein, all seven amino acids,

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Head to collarsandco.com, use the code MW15 for 15% off your first order. That's collarsandco.com and MW-15, a checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome John Lovell. What does it mean to live free and die well? Sure, so it's wrapped up in our whole warrior bodhithos that's living for higher purpose, being ready to sacrifice in the defense of others. Ultimately, to live well in the present, you have to really start with the end in mind. Lots of folks just go through life

in an extremely reactionary manner. Things happen, the tearing of the urgent comes up. And before you know it, all of your waking hours and even your kind of off hours are spent stressing about stuff though, if you were given a death diagnosis, you know, you are terminally ill. Much of the stuff that we drool on with every single day would immediately sift to the edges of our attention as not important in what can happen in the tyranny of the origin is the most important stuff gets shuffled to the back. Being

able to die well means that you live the life that was worthy of your calling, so to speak. And in so doing, you're able to live well with that end in mind. And so, in my estimation, having faced death many different times, it really allowed me to focus on what I wanted to do in life. And so it turns out that you'll die the exact same way that you live, whether that's poorly or well. I love the tyranny of the urgent. I absolutely love that. I think it's so accurate for how many people live their lives. There's this meme that I saw floating around a while ago that said, adulthood is just one series of weeks after the next,

saying after this week, it'll calm down and then you die. It's such a trap, you know, folks think of like me and my nine to five sucks. And if I can just get through all the chores and the tasks and I fix up the house and I pay that off and I work and you know ultimately one day I'll have a nest egg big enough and then when I'm 65 years old I'm going to really start living. That's when it'll get really good. And what you don't realize is that is overrated once you even get there. Look back of, no, no, let's start living well right now. All there is is today. You're not promised tomorrow.

And so I don't want to delay living and having a meaningful impact on the world around me for hoping that one day I can start living right. You mentioned that you've faced death. You were in the armed forces for a long while. You did a number of tours and you were in the armed forces for a long while, you did a number of tours and you were in some kinetic encounter, I guess you could say, what was the closest that you think you came to death? I wasn't in a long while. I did a packed a whole bunch of combat into a shorter

period time, so I did five combat tours, but I jumped around and did a whole bunch of stuff in my life closest. I've gotten to death. Who knows? I was in a near ambush. You're not supposed to live through those. There's a really, really awful. I got an afar ambush as well.

What's the difference between a near and a far ambush? Well, proximity, but a near ambush is supposed to be 35 meters and in. It's basically hand grenade range. And so the idea is you're moving, you're moving, whether it's on foot or through vehicle, we happen to be stripped down humvee. So we didn't have doors, we didn't have ceilings or anything, no armor, so we were able to range us, jump out and in a moment be ready to fight. So we didn't like all the armor stuff. It just ends up being just a metal coffin to us,

but we got hit. I was the lead driver. It's kind of like a fire breathing team leader. You want somebody who is gonna react well under pressure. And so that was kind of a nice position because I'm target number one in something like a near ambush. If you take out the lead driver, all the vehicle stop, then you kill the rear driver, and then it's just a

massacre kill box. And so your job in an ambush is to punch out. And that's what we did. We're able to punch out at like a 50 cow ammo from up top came out of its, came out of its ammo box. It's like hit me in the head. And I'm supposed to drive, but some RPG or IED blew out my front right tire. And so it takes two arms to rip my steering wheel over. And I'm going down this road, which is really just this horrible dried up creek bed that just, I mean, you have to really plan your route to figure out how you're not gonna

high center somewhere. And so it's just a mess. And this 50 cowaymos hit me in the helmet. And I'm wanting to get in the fight and shoot at the same time, but I'm supposed to punch out. And so man, it was a mess. It could have been that or it could have been, you know, that sucked. You never know how many things where you were kind of in and in me crosshairs and nothing went wrong. They could have shot you, but you didn't. So you don't really county any of that stuff. Gun fights, rating, terrorist training camps, or one of my very first and closest

interactions that I ever got into. It's like room on room gun fight. And that was real close. And after coming through a doorway and putting this joker down, we looked and right over my upper left shoulder, were SKS bullet holes in the wall that one that one's kind of that improved my prayer life Yeah, I've always been fascinated by this in scenarios like that what is the balance of fear or being scared

compared with a more tense encounter where it's more protracted, maybe it's at night, maybe you're creeping up on an enemy location, maybe you're moving from room to room. I'm always interested in this because I think when people think about that being scary, I'm not sure if that's an accurate representation of the flood of hormones that your body's going to dump into you.

I would imagine that that's just kind of hectic and intense, but there will be more scary situations you get into that are less kinetic immediately. Great question. I wish I could take fear and put it in this polished, nice box where it's kind of like, here it is. But truth be told, it's a lot of lunging forward and doing well and then all the sudden being set back and you're kind of like, I thought I was over this.

Because even looking back, I remember a couple different freezing points where the terror was so stark, I just locked up, I couldn't move and it could have happened that something had gone bad in that moment. And I would have had to carry that my whole life. Thankfully, you know, those moments, though I remember two different freezing points where it was just so horrifying, I couldn't really handle it. I think, you know, in my head, it was like I was, my legs were concrete for

minutes at a time. It was probably just a few seconds and I was able to kind of get out of that and press forward other times. I've been able to just, I should have been scared, but I really wasn't. Sometimes I got just pissed like you try to kill me. How, and you just go to work. How dare you try to kill me.

I'm gonna kill you back. And so sometimes it's rage. Other times, and this is the best one, is it's not horrible, fear and it's not rage, it's just calm, cold, math. And that's where I really wanted to live and work. And that was really the goal is, though the world is on fire and falling apart around you

and you're pretty sure you're about to eat it, you're just gonna do the right thing and make the next right decision and calm cool waters on the surface and raging hard underneath. And so I want cold, hard math. And that's really, I think, the most ideal goal. Would you mind telling us those stories that you said when you froze?

One is, one is kind of stupid because it was a nothing mission for me in that there was hot stuff happen around like I had my buddy had his leg blown off and we were raiding a terrorist training camp and I was just coming to kind of the edge of this ravine and there was tall grass. We had just come in on some birds and rotary wing that had just dropped just like half a click out and we had hustled over and my night visions fogging up and whatnot and we're looking out. And, you know, I'm doing pretty well, but then somebody says, hey, they're climbing up

the cliffs. Maybe someone said it. Maybe I imagined it, but I realized as if just the way the terrain was, if they kind of climbed up and popped up, we'd be face to face, you know, just, and I wouldn't be able to see them coming. It was just too much noise and fire and smoke and guns and you just couldn't hear a lot. Yeah, I realized, man, I'm really blind here. And if I am to sneak out a little bit farther, so I have visibility down, I'm going to be perfectly backlit because of the illumination.

And so I knew better tactics than to make that mistake. So it's a very good topic. Yeah, you'll be skyline, you'll be silhouetted. And so you've got to be able to read lighting conditions even undernaughts, night vision. And so I knew enough to be like, many, if you skyline yourself right there in the ravine, anybody in there is gonna see me

and light me up like a Christmas tree. And so I was just kind of stuck in an awkward place. I'm like hated my terrain I hated my position and we already got dudes screaming and we got a medevac going over but it wasn't I Should have been able to do better than that for so whatever reason it just freaked me out I just I couldn't handle it in the moment, you know, and I'd handled other stuff that was scarier before that and after that. And so here's a lesson I learned is no one ever masters fear. Every single day you got to get up and their fear will manifest itself in a million different ways.

There it was kind of gunfighting and it's more sexy and glamorous to some of the viewers, but I mean like, hey man, getting out and getting in a small business, that's scary. Confrought in your friend about something or having an uncomfortable conversation or risking being canceled or losing your job, there's all kinds of ways that fear can come up and get you, but I've performed everywhere on the scale of absolute hero and absolute zero. And just because you have performed bravely in the past is no guarantee you will behave bravely in the future. Every day you've got to keep earning it, which sucks because I'd like to be like, yep, I have arrived. I'm amazing. And it's just not true. It sucks. Yeah, I think a lot of people

who see guys like yourself with, you know, a heroic past serving the country would presume that what he's been in firefights, he's been shot at, there's been bullets, a couple of inches above his shoulder and across from his head, therefore the normal vicissitudes of life is just going to, it's going to be water off a duck's back. How much have you found the bravery or your ability to overcome challenges and fear and freezing in those scenarios crossover to fears of being cancelled you've got a Huge huge YouTube channel that you're in risk of losing that if you say the wrong thing You've got the stresses of coordinating a team. You've got concerns. Am I saying it right? Am I saying it right? Is this serving the audience in the right way? Just how different is that?

It's different and it's not. Fear management and being able to inoculate yourself against all the fear stuff. That's all usable stuff, but a lot of vets get out and they don't make the jump. Case in point, I have a buddy at 19 or 20 combat tours. I had five. And that's a lot. I did a lot. He did 19, especially forces,

is like this guy's a hero. A lot of guys are, they know one thing very well. And it's a terrifying and scary thing the most, but it's familiar. This is what we do. We go out in a hot bag guys, and they hunt us back, and we see how it goes. But they're very terrified to get out in the civilian world. They don't know how to do just basic, some basic life. So there was this one guy,

a special forces guy I'm talking about. He got out in the civilian world. He's finally done, and he was wrestling with this contract, and he couldn't do it and he listened like, John, I can run toward gunfire, but contracts freak me out. That's a quote. And so, I mean, fear, just because you've done well in one sector doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna be able to effectively and seamlessly

pull that over into all other areas. You know, you have some grizzly soldiers, and seamlessly pull that over into all other areas. You have some grisly soldiers not afraid of al-Qaeda terrified to speak to girls. And girls are scary in their defense. That is true. You know that's going to go. Girls are scary, so I'm not cast and shade. I've been married 16 years.

I love my wife. I lead my wife. I'm in charge, but she can be scary. So. Yeah, okay. I think that's really important to remember that you have to earn it every single day. You know, there are new challenges that are going to face you and you can't rest on your laurels.

You know, I've noticed periods in my life where I've started to take my foot off the gas and I've started. It's not even foot on the gas necessarily. It's being less intentional. I think that's the main predeterminate. That's the lead measure of what happens and the lagging measure is my sleep's off or I don't feel so good or I'm not not eating well, or my relationships are suffering, or I'm not showing up on the show as well as I should do.

The lead measure is not being intentional, and a lot of the time that is born out of fear. Are you okay? Well, what if this goes wrong? What if I look stupid? What if I, whatever? There was this, we recently hit a million subs on the channel and I did this video,

sort of reacting to it live. And it was a little bit emotional, but then I felt silly about it being emotional. And I thought, well, you know, it's just a number on a screen. This is lame, getting emotional about, you know, hitting this subscriber milestone, even though it's been, you know,

tens of thousands of hours over half a decade and started in my living room. And now it's this, you know, this big thing and we get to travel all over the world and it's been tens of thousands of hours over half a decade and started in my living room and now it's this big thing and we get to travel all over the world and it's a dream life and I've brought one of my best friends along with me and all this stuff, but it still felt silly. And I was like, okay, well, that's another opportunity to try and lean into fear. It's not the same sort of fear of being shot out in a homevy, but it was fucking terrifying, you know, to think, I'm going to put this video out and what if people are going to laugh at me, what if people think that it's it was fucking terrifying you know to think i'm gonna put this video out what if people gonna laugh at me what if people think that it's stupid um so yeah every single day there are different challenges and i think you're right you can't just um rely on the momentum of the inertia of having previously been brave and presuming that that's going to carry you through things in future well hey congratulations to you turn a million that is big accomplishment. I think that is absolutely awesome.

And I didn't know much about your channel. Now I'm a follower. I am tuning in. I like your style, bro. You're all right. And so I'll be tuning in, bro. Got the seal of approval. Okay. So why do you think the world is in need of warriors at the moment? Not everybody needs to be an active duty. We don't have anywhere near as many kinetic altikations across the planet, you know, unless you're Russian or Ukrainian. America seems to be pretty peaceful at the moment. Why do we even need warriors? Right. And so I know the military recruiting is 25% down off its mark. And so the military would say we need warriors. But when I use the word warrior, I don't mean everybody needs to wear multi-cam and get nods. Sidebar, multi-cam is really fun. Yay for guns, get lots of that stuff,

and all right, but really, I think warrior has to do with more of the heart of a man and who he is. I think men are made to be strong and we're supposed to be protectors and providers, and those warrior-like attributes are absolutely critical to be successful as a man. It's part of your calling. I'm supposed to be able to be a leader and bold and fearless and courageous. I'm supposed to have grit so that I can carry heavy burdens.

That's all the good warrior stuff. And so even if you're not getting shot at by Charlie Heiden and the bushes, all the good warrior stuff. And so even if you're not getting shot at by Charlie Heiden and the bushes, all the virtues and the strengths of a warrior are absolutely critical for men to succeed in. What does a poet have that a warrior does not in that case? All the important stuff. So I like to like in it. Well, so, you know, there's the first and second amendment and we'll use that as a metaphor for what I'm about to say. The second amendment is the right to bear arms and it's absolutely critical

because it is the big bodyguard of all the other amendments. If you don't have the right to bear arms, ultimately, you're gonna lose your first amendment, which is packed full with all the good stuff. That's, you know, freedom of press and religion and freedom of speech and do process all that stuff. And so second amendment is the only thing that will ultimately keep tyrants at bay, not maybe way far in the future, or maybe whatever, but ultimately all laws are protected and sustained by force. And so if all forces abdicated to a government,

even if the government is super swell and sweetie pies, one day tyrants will take over. That's just the natural progression of all nations over time. And when that happens, the people will have no recourse. And that's why our founders put a second amendment in. I am doing my second amendment activism thing. I'm getting on a rabbit trail. I'm pulling back into frame here. Second amendment safeguards the first amendment. The first amendment isn't a means to an end, like the second amendment is, it's a means in and of itself. So there's the protection of freedom, and there's the enjoyment of freedom.

And it is the free man's duty to both protect and enjoy. And so all the stuff that matters most in life is packed in to the poet archetype. And so that's loving my wife and raising my kids. It's searching out truth and finding truth, having the courage to actually face facts and then be able to bring that in my heart and tell the truth boldly in daring and interesting beautiful ways. In this is philosophy and its religion and it's all the stuff that brings in of meaning and hope and morality, all that stuff, that's in the poet area. And so warrior and poet must be embodied in the same man. Men are supposed to be both. We're supposed to be lovers and

fighters, not one of the other. In every single one of our brides or girlfriends wishes, perhaps they don't have the words that we're using here, but they want you to be bold and dare they want a leader. They want your strength, but they also want your heart. They want to be able to be emotionally able to connect with you. They want to be swept off their feet with strong arms that is romantic. And so they want the romance too. They want the whole thing. And so it's not lover or fighter. It's both. It's lion and lamb warrior and poet.

What are we missing more of at the moment? Because it seems to me, you know, the hard time soft man meme that kind of is being shared a lot at the moment. I'm not convinced that soft men are necessarily loving men. I would go as far as to say that there's some pretty big lacks on the loving and the hot side from guys as well. I think that a lot of men are floundering with regards to their position. What is it that I'm supposed to do? I'm scared of being seen as a tyrant if I try to enact anything that's too overbearing or masculine, but without that, if I try to do the polarity, which is the living soft sort

of cuddly side, that makes me feel weak because I don't have anything to contrast that against. So what's your conception of the topography of current modern masculinity and manhood. I think passive men are neither warriors nor poets. They're, they're weakened both areas. And so yeah, it's not that, oh, we're too poet-esque. I've like, no, you're not in poet, poet enough. Passive men are not active in pursuing their brides and dating them for life. They're not romantic.

They're not vulnerable. They're not seeking out capital T truth. They're sitting on a bean're not vulnerable, they're not seeking out capital tea truth. They're sitting on a bean bag chair playing video games eight hours a day. They're just log in time at work. They would do anything to self-preserve and stab someone in the back if they need to. They'll be nice guys, you know, maybe they're polite, maybe they're real funny, but they're not making a mark in any area of warrior or poet. So I think men today need to grow in both aspects. However, I do think men are predisposed should be one more of the other. I'm naturally more lion. I'm naturally more warrior. I had to learn

through a painstaking process how to save my marriage, which was really rough for the couple of years and first couple of years. And now it's really awesome. I'm 16 years in, bro. And I wish I could just take what's in my head and heart and put it forth and say, guys, you have no idea how amazing a flourishing wife is and the power and passion and depth of that safe monogamy. And it is incredible, incredible, but you got to fight your way into that. And so I wouldn't change that for anything in the world. My faith as well of like,

it grows over time. And so that right there has become the most important aspect of my life. But passive men don't pursue those endeavors. And I had to really, I mean, it's like the heart stuff. I feel like just a dumb idiot, where I'm pretty good at taking a punch. I'm pretty good at pushing through pain and limits and sucking it up. I can do all that stuff when I need to foster boldness and aggression. I know how to flip those switches as well, but being able to turn down the dial in,

be loving and affectionate and emotionally vulnerable and really know what in the world's going on with my heart in the first place. You know, it's like, I'm the dumb, I'm the last one to know. My wife knows when I'm off way before I know when I'm off. And so, and then even when I'm off, like you'd mentioned before of like,

how do you get in that kind of fog? And hey, maybe I'm not performing well on camera and something's off with me. And I don't know exactly what it is. And perhaps it's fear or apathy apathy. When I start getting apathetic about stuff, I realize, ah, there may be fear under there. There may be some type of tension.

Any delineate and see what in the world is going on with me? For the guys that are listening who think, that sounds a lot like me, the guy that is able to embody more masculine virtues, maybe they're not a fighter, maybe they're not out there taking punches and kicking indoors, but can lean into that more stoic, resilient nose against the grindstone type of person. Tactically, what did it look like, or what were the most powerful practices or things that you did that allowed you to open up

without feeling weak or fragile. Yeah, and so I think there is a terrible misunderstanding about what strength really is. When I think a strong man, I don't think you got lats growing out of your ears down to your shoulder of like your deadlift is 700 pounds, but if you do have a 700 pound deadlift, bro, I'm going to buy you a beer. That's amazing bravo. I mean, there's all kinds of different areas where a man needs to be strong. One is physical.

It's the least important unless you're fighting Vikings or something like that. There's emotional strength. You have like if somebody cuts you off in traffic and you lose your mind over that, you're pathetically weak, dude. You're angered too easily. Really, that sets you off. You can't even control your own stupid temper, your weak man and your weak, and you need to grow in your emotional stability and faculties, right?

I think your spiritual strength is more important than any of it. And from that, your character, your morality, all your meaning and purpose is really. And from that, your character, your morality, your, all your meaning and purpose is really going to flow from that. I think mental strength, pick up a book, brother. You got to be smart. You can't just work really hard, grind it out and expect your life to go really well. That life is a series of all kinds of different puzzles. And you got to be smart to be able to figure this out.

Like, for instance, you don't talk to chicks, the same way you talk to dudes. And if you try to, you're gonna destroy your life. You'll feel tough, but you're an idiot. You're gonna destroy all your relationships because you're an idiot. And so we need to get stronger in all those different areas.

I wrote a newsletter a couple of weeks ago that I think's very similar to this. I'm gonna read it to you now. So I did a podcast episode with Chris Bumsted. He is the Mr. Aliep Olympia Classic Physique Champion four years in a row. This guy is, he looks like he's carved out of stone. He's the modern day Arnold Schwarzenegger people

are making a lot of comparisons. And during it, we spoke a lot about vulnerability. So, quote, never be vulnerable in front of your girlfriend is common manned, fear, advice. The guy that I was talking to is more alpha than pretty much every other human that's ever existed. And yet, he told me a story of how he sobbed on the bathroom floor in his girlfriend's arms when the pressure got too much for him. Then he got up, dusted himself off, and went to dominate his challenges and become a world champion. Here's the thing, hiding your vulnerability from the world doesn't make you any less vulnerable, it just makes you less honest. You don't change

the way you feel by hiding your feelings from the world. Limits on speech are just limits on sincerity. If you believe that being vulnerable makes you a pussy, how do you arrive at the conclusion that feeling vulnerable and also not being able to open up about it somehow makes you less of a pussy. I love that. I would probably agree with it. I love it. However, I'd probably replace vulnerability with something like humility. Humility would be something that would be better outward facing to the public of everybody watching the screen. Let me model humility, but I don't know you. I'm not necessarily going to be vulnerable with you. I may have enemies out there. I'm not going to show you my soft

underside of that. That would be a mistake. You know, you're vulnerable with wolves in sheep's clothing at work. And one day, they're going to crush you for that. And it'll be your own stupid folly. You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have been vulnerable with those people, but you should be humble with those people. Now, the people you love, love risks, love allows somebody to be able to wound you. You can't love and also safeguard and protect yourself at the same time. It opens up wide arms and bears it soled to someone. And so in the aspects of that, I think you should be vulnerable to those who have your trust, but that's kind of a sacred thing.

Now, I'll be vulnerable in some other more superficial ways, and I don't mind doing that on the internet. In some ways, I'm being vulnerable right now, just speaking about some of the stuff. And so in some ways, we can get into semantical traps, but I do like the word humility just a little bit better. Yeah, interesting.

I'm not familiar with using humility in that way. It's probably something that I should look at a little bit more when I think about humility. I think about not being too big-headed, reducing the ego, but it seems like you're using a different conception of it. I think humility is the very center of morality and pride is the very center of immorality. Interesting. Why? Well, I was one over to this way of thinking. There's a book called Mirror Christianity by CS Lewis. Ultimately, you will conflate through the moral architecture. It's ultimately morality is something that's authored by a moral law giver.

If you don't have a moral law giver, then you don't have a real moral law other than something we just make up. That means whether it's the individual that says this is what's moral or whether society that makes some type of social contract still morality in this case would be something that we just make up because it's helpful, but it's not transcendently real, and the heat death of the universe in a million years from now, and we're all just gone, whatever moral musings we'll have now will be just washed away, and it'll be meaningless in a godless universe. And so ultimately, morality would start by a moral law giver. And so if God is there, then everything is about God and not about us, in which case pride

would say things are about me, and humility would say, no, things aren't about me. I should live a selfless life, and humility then becomes this root that grows out into every single other virtue, so that you can actually live selflessly in every single respect. And so that's why I think people naturally intrinsically know this, and that's why if you ever find somebody arrogant, you hate them. But if you find some, you know, your hero and some story is kind of like a humble suffering that against insuperable odds ends up winning the day. People root for that underdog. It's because naturally pre-programmed in, we recognize humility as praiseworthy and pride goes before a fall. Very good. Yes. So why is it important going back

to the warrior archetype? Why is it important to be the most dangerous man in the room? Sure. So really, if you check out that chapter, it looks like that chapter in my book is going to be about, Hey, the most dangerous man in the room, be the most dangerous man in the room. And really, it unwinds this tale of when I thought I was the most dangerous man in the room. And then I got my butt handed to me in a way that I still haven't recovered from Chris. I'm still limping that one off. Can you tell us the story of it? Yeah, there was the girl soccer coach at my high school came in one day into our wrestling room. He was going to be my sparring partner. I was a very good wrestler. I was the school's wrestler. I had all kinds of records. Some of them are probably still standing. I was a good wrestler at the school. And so they didn't really matter if you were much bigger than

me. I would beat our heavyweight even though I was 130. And so I say all that to say that when this middle aged kind of partly dude came in, I knew that he had some martial arts background. He was put with me, which I thought was really insulting of my coach to do. And we're kind of going through some just different moves and warm-ups in this guy. I'm like, man, he's got a little bit of a dough belly, but this dude moves slick. And he was in, he was fast, and we're just chatting while we're going. And then we start pushing into more of like free wrestling and I mean at this point I'm starting to get a little frustrated and I'm going a hundred percent and the dude just took me apart and so he just while he was chatting with me too so it's like he didn't know I was in the fight

of my life and so anyway I realized something about kind of pressing back into Pride Ghost before a fall. I noticed that the most dangerous men on the planet who I've worked with, whether they were Rangers or Seals or Delta or three-letter agency contractors, SAS, SPS, I worked with all kinds of really, really dangerous dudes. And at the very tipi top of those guys, they're always these more humble, unassuming guys. And I'm like, what is that? What is that? And you realize the arrogant guy can only get so tough

and it can only get so far. But you have to be teachable. And to be teachable, well, arrogance will only let you get so far in that respect. So I saw a lot of guys who were kind of PT studs, they'd get into Ranger battalion, and then they'd wash out. And then some other guy with less impressive physique, but he's got a longer, suffering grit and character under the hood.

He had deeper reservoirs and a soul to tap into. That, dude, didn't quit me with the distance. And so that's really what more of the chapters aiming at is we find incredible strength through humility. And I do press in, it's not all fluffy metaphorical stuff. I go into some real brass tax of like, hey, let's be tough guys in the more obvious and traditional sense as well.

Yeah, I, what do you think it is about the guys that are the most dangerous being more in assuming? Which way do you think that arrow of causality runs? Do you think it's because they're so dangerous that they choose to be in assuming or is it in the other direction? You know, I, I am not sure, but I think humility opens up. Humility is a seed that will reap a harvest of, I think, blessing on the other end.

And so a really arrogant guy is very hard to teach anything too. And so that's part of it. So that could be really pragmatic and easy. His ability to progress, to continue to grow. I think that's definitely it too. And I think God's against him. Yeah, there's one of the things that Chris, that bodybuilding guy that I spoke to said on the episode was he doesn't have the tyrannical self belief that someone like a Michael Jordan does. So, you know, Michael Jordan is he wouldn't even dream of losing if anybody slited him, there was this sort of rage fire that was lit underneath him. But Chris's approach is very different. He's

like, I think about losing all the time. It's like I'm scared of losing I'm scared of losing to my opponent, but his idea was that by Because he has accepted the fact that he may lose He believes it's given him the potential to be able to put it all on the line in a way that someone who hadn't considered the possibility of losing wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah. I would be more like him, and I really hate losing. Logically, I have to entertain the idea and through thinking through wargaming

how I might lose or what would happen if that. I can, there's all kinds of useful nuggets. And then me that can fuel my preparation and I can find some fuel in there for training and game planning, war planning. It also keeps me from not underestimating whatever I'm up against. I just know at an early age, especially on the wrestling, I hated, hated losing. And so I want to run the race to win. So, yeah, but I'd also say, I don't want my identity wrapped up in that. I hate to lose just because

I'm competitive like that, but I'll be quick to say, I am not one that is chasing after the that golden carrot of greatness. I think greatness is significantly overrated. I would far rather pursue goodness. Yeah, you talk about men being on a quest to achieve something beyond fame and fortune. What is that? I think it's full of gold, man. That of, man, if I get this much money and chicks are all about me and I got the dream job and the dream car, a lot of folks, if you really pay attention, there's plenty of people that have that. You can look in some of the most miserable people you know are extravagantly wealthy or

in dire poverty. And so, I recognize also that people on their deathbed aren't calling for their stock market portfolios or looking at pictures of all their vehicles or something at the end. I think it's hollow. I think what will happen is the CEO that checked out of his kids' lives for decades, hoping that he's just earn enough and be enough, realize that he missed the most important things all along. And all he really cares about is making things right with the kids that he's just earn enough and be enough, realize that he missed the most important things all along.

And all he really cares about is making things right with the kids that he's estranged from. And he missed it. He missed all the good stuff. And I would far, far rather downgrade my quantity of life so I can scale up my quality of life. And so I would rather be a good man. Good men's, good men can make rippling,

wonderful impacts on the world around them. They have terrific legacies where people's lives were changed for the better. That they weren't just out pursuing some gold medal and some huge bank account. And I'm not against those things. I'm like, no, I'm going after that stuff too. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm going to try to kill it at work. And I'm not going to have a loser mentality either. I'm just recognizing as I go forward toward

all those good pursuits, I'm going to keep the main thing the most important thing. My relationship with God is more important than my bank account. You'd know that if you looked at my bank account because you'd be like, holy cow, son of a gun, John gives away a lot. And like, yeah, I do. I think it's the most, I think that's more important. You would see that I spend a lot of time pouring into my kids and I'm making memories with them all the time. And me and my wife were doing fantastic, as I'd said before, and I've got deep relationships that are growing around me. And I've got joy and I are growing around me. And I've got joy, and I've got peace, and all that stuff builds a wonderful legacy. And so that's what I'm

after, not writing my name in the sky. Going back to what we were talking about before that sort of fear of failure, your acceptance of it, even though you have a desire to win and sort of Chris's almost embodiment of his fear of failure. I remember I played cricket. That was the sport that I played growing up very British. And I remember I was so afraid of disappointing my coaches or mum and dad or whatever. The way that cricket gets played, each different type of player is quite tactical. And if the either game conditions or the weather doesn't suit it, a lot of the time certain types of players, of which I was one, can turn up and not contribute to the game massively. So you just end up in field. Maybe you didn't bat because you were batting down the order and the weather

wasn't appropriate so that you didn't end up bowling. It's called a TFC, a thanks for coming. And I remember each Monday, I would have a call with the coach from the county that I was from, and this is the equivalent of, you know, whatever playing for your MLB or a team. And I was on the youth set up for Durham, which is the northernmost county set up in the UK, where I'm from.

And I would have this call with my coach, and he would say, how did you get on over the weekend? And there would almost be a degree of relief in me when I got to say, oh man, you know, the pitch, the conditions, they weren't right. I really wanted to bowl, I really wanted to get myself out there, but the captain, he's not playing me, he's not putting me out there, blah, blah, blah.

And there was a degree of relief. I remember blah. And there was a degree of relief. I remember I know that there was a degree of relief in me and I realized looking back that that was me being scared. It was me being cowardly because I would have sooner assured my inability to fail through not being put onto the stadium floor, rather than face the potential defeat. Yeah, and that interesting. We waste so much time and energy and stress so much

because we really just get the definitions of words wrong and we give so much, we give so much ground in our lives to things like fear. I tell my sons all the time, I'm like, boy, it's okay to be afraid. You're just not allowed to let fear stop you like, boy, it's okay to be afraid. You're just not allowed to let fear stop you. It's okay to cry.

We just cry about the right things. Like, hey, you stump your toe, suck it up, but are cut. Men don't cry when they're physically hurt. We're gonna be tough, and that's what I teach my boys. But if you cry because you're overcome with love for somebody or something that's your hardest move, and like the toughest dude I've ever heard of, absolutely is the one who

split time into Jesus Christ. Tortured that doesn't cry out, you know, and just absolute moral strength, spiritual strength, intellectual strength, physical strength. You had to absolute the whole package there. And where was that? Where was I going of that? I got distracted. I talked about it.

Talking about family and the children and crying. Yeah, but Jesus, that's right. But Jesus wept. I'm like the strongest dude weeps. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, those are strong tears. Those are strong tears. I'm like, what you're overcome because you love someone so much so that you cry. I'm like, well, that's not weak.

That's strength of like, no, no, a guy who never cries, that's really weak. You must love very little, how sad, how weak. And that's how I think about it now. What about someone that resonates with that story, they may fear that they do have an inner coward inside of them. In fact, I've got another story that I want to tell you that I wrote in a newsletter a little, a few weeks ago. This is so good.

So I recently got to speak with someone that's been curious about for a long time. He went through a difficult period many years ago. Even though he's beyond it now, he came very close to losing everything, financially, reputationally, psychologically. I asked him how he had dealt with the darkest time he'd faced. He told me that he'd had a concern in the back of his mind throughout his entire life. He was always worried that deep down he might be a coward.

That secretly he might not be the strong, capable person he thought he was, that when the rubber met the road, he wouldn't be able to stand up and face whatever the world threw at him. See, many of the challenges we face in life are largely under our control, which use jobs we apply for, the house we try to afford, the partner we try to seduce, the weight we even left. These things can still be hard, tough and challenging,

sometimes unbearably difficult, but it was us who chose the flavor of that difficulty. So what happens when absolutely everything comes crashing down, the single worst possible scenario that you can imagine happens? Well, you get to see what you're made of, what you're genuinely made of, when all of your forces are marshaled to a single challenge, and he said that he'd had faith in himself, but he'd never been pushed hard enough to prove that his faith was justified. And this is a quote from him. He said, I could always hear my best self clearing his throat in the room next door.

But when he never knew if this self was able to come in when it was needed, it turns out that he did. I love the quote and I love the story because I think many of us are uncertain about just how capable we are. Maybe a couple of times in your life, all hell will break loose, and your best self will have to stop his coughing and come to say hello. Well written, Bravo. It resonated immediately with him. It was like, there's the fear of the inner coward.

I'm like, well, yeah, of course, yes, yes. Say it out loud, yeah, you got a coward inside you. And so do I, you know, so do I and that there's Okay, I recognize where I'm at I recognize I have the propensity to cowardice in all kinds of areas of my life And just because you're a hero in one area doesn't mean that you're not cowardly in another area I want to be strong across the board, You know, if you're a castle, you want every single door around the castle closed.

And if you don't do that, then you risk being overwhelmed, overcome, and then you are just on the ropes of life. You can be overthrown by life. And so it's not good to just have three really strong doors and one week one. I'm like, guess where the chain breaks at the weakest link. And so we want to be heroic in every single respect. And so I think there's great stuff that you can do to grow amidst the fact that, hey, we could be cowards. I mean, one is to just run at whatever makes you afraid. Just make yourself do it. Your afraid of heights,

well guess what? You're going to bungee jumping. Close spaces, splunking brother. I'm like, but I'm scared. I'm like, yeah, but this is a great opportunity to kill fear, run at it. Whatever you're afraid of, that is where you're going to have to grow. Go turn around and face it, stop running and face it. And that's one way we can do it. Another way, and I find this very effective as well as, there's a place in the book of First John, and this is the Bible, it says, Perfect Love casts out all fear. And it's absolutely true.

Perfect Love casts out all fear. Of like you draw, you know, your kid goes overboard, five year old kid in a shark-infested water, Mama Bear's gonna jump in. You know, it's like, you're afraid of stuff like this man, mama bears are not afraid of anything is that that perfect love of to protect, you know, of oftentimes the soldier is ready to fight and face death because they're desperately trying to protect their dudes, they're left and right. It's about the soldier that loving camaraderie.

And so I think if we're perfected in love and character and righteousness, then you're not gonna be afraid. The right person is bold as lions. I wanna have a quick story because there is a gal, I talk about her husband or her late husband in the book, the Warrior Pot way. He'd become one of my first mentors in Ranger Battalion.

And he was, he was into the Jesus stuff before I was. And so I didn't really understand much of that. I, Kevin died years after getting out of the military in a motorcycle wreck. And I was very close to him. He was the one that officiated me and my wife's wedding. So very, very close to him. And that was really hard. And I remember getting the call. It was real, real early in the morning, like two in the morning. And I remember his wife, then she's just like

John, John, and I knew something was wrong. I'm like, oh, Kelly shouldn't be calling me so early in the morning. And she told me what would what was happening. And she this girl so strong, she was trying to take care of my upset the night that she learned. I don't see Kelly very often, but she's on her way flying to spend the weekend with us right now. So anyway, she'll be in this room here in a couple hours. I haven't seen her in a very long time. But I remember in the midst of that just brokenness and we are both weeping, we cannot keep this together at all.

Loved Kevin deeply, deeply. I said, Kelly, what is God doing? And she said, I don't know, but he's sovereign. Basically, what that means is, I don't know, but he's in control. It's going to be okay. That's what she said to me. That's what that word sovereign meant to her. And I'm like, holy smokes. Talk about fear. Talk about brokenness. This girl was strong and brave in ways that I wasn't. She's better than me. She's stronger than me. And I love Kelly for it. But anyway, and I noticed that her faith was what made her so strong. So there you go. You talking the book about the importance of facing death before you die. Why? So if you face death,

it will immediately push all the vain pursuits to the left and right and all that you're left within the middle is what matters. If you face death, if you realize what's worth dying for, you know what's worth living for. What does facing death look like from a tactical perspective? What is a way that people can practice doing this? I mean, I'm understanding how you use the word tactic. Oh, now to me, I see like battle. Trilogy. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Strategically, operationally, how do we get this to? How can we get it to grow corn? So I have some prescriptors, some recommendations in the books. I don't want to give everything away. But I'll say of man. Yeah, sure. All right. I like you. I like your audience. I'll go ahead and give you a juicy one.

There you go. But guys, now you got to get it. You got to go by the book because I'm going to show notes below, brother. Thanks, brother. So before I ever went off to combat, one of the very first things I had to do when I got to range of battalion is they packed me for war. Day one at range of battalion, they packed me for war. But then I immediately had to write a death letter.

And your death letter is your last words to family, friends, whatever. Put it in an envelope, you seal it, and you hang it in your wall locker. So that if you never come back, your buddies mail the letter. And, uh, yeah, they're like, okay, well, all right, you're right, a death letter. No big deal. Yeah, right. Especially you shipping off for war, you're like, I may never come back. These may really be my last words. Uh, and I had, um, I had some blurry letters and words on that document where I wept over that. And so I had to really do an audit of those relationships and I told people what they meant to me.

And I tried to take any business that may be unfinished and make sure that it was finished. So even after that letter of like, I'm going to make some calls. I got to tell some people some stuff. I got to offload some junk that I've been dealing with. I need to be completely unshackled, unfettered, ready to die for a cause. And so it was really remarkable. And so in the book, I lead people to do just that and go through that exercise. You can't be ready to die if you have unfinished business, if you have unresolved conflict, if you've withheld forgiveness for some people that you should have.

If you owe someone some apologies and you don't realize it furthermore, you're not ever ready to die. If you haven't settled the hardest questions of life Is there a god and if so if there's a god, what does that god want from us? Am I right with that god? And am I ready to am I ready to die? Am I ready to kill? Am I really really ready to kill over this if like if somebody goes to car jack you're ready to shoot him for it? Like the John Wick one movie had a real problem with

I love John Wick movie by the way, but he murders like 130 dudes because they killed his dog He'd had for two weeks and they stole his car which is Probably insured and they're like no, no, no, you don't get it He loved the dog and it was sent him in a blah blah blah. So like a hundred and thirty henchmen you killed some of those guys Or just you know working a beat. It's like, hey, I got a new job today. And then you got whacked. You had no idea about the puppy killing situation thing.

You just whacked a whole bunch of people. And now he gets to limit limitless rage. Wow, this is quite a, quite a rabbit trail. But what is worth dying for? What is worth killing for? I don't care about my wallet here. Take my wallet. I'll have my credit cards canceled within the hour. It's not worth killing you over. I'd rather here. Here's my car keys. I'm buying your life so I don't have to kill you for this. And so settling all those most important philosophical

and theological questions must be done because if you ever do face your own demise and we never know when that's going to come, let's say you have to act heroically, you got to push through and do something, you got to be brave, you got to protect somebody, your brain can be ambushed by those greater questions and unresolved conflicts and things in your life that are still in disarray and you'll find yourself distracted by those items and not able to keep your mind on the ball and the present. In effect, you can get ambushed by all these questions and it can rob your ability to do what needs to be done. Does all that make sense? It does. I also imagine that the unresolved conflict or the un-given thanks and gratitude

to the people who need it that have shaped you and helped you, that just probably ambiently sits somewhere just in the back of your mind mind it just floats around behind you and it'll surface just a tiny little smidge and every week every couple of weeks every month and it'll just remind you and it's going to be slowly just eroding away your experience of life. And on top of that as well you know you have the opportunity by reaching out to somebody who deserves it with an olive branch or with gratitude or with thanks or with whatever it is, by doing that, you get to live the wonderful opportunity of bathing in the reflective glow of making somebody else feel good while

you're both still alive. That's good. Yeah. I love that. If for me, I can be so stupid, kind of in my heart of hearts, that I may think something doesn't bother me. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, I'm over that. I'm over that.

And really, I'm not. I don't feel, I'm not thinking about it. But as you said, it's kind of back here. It's someplace sitting, brooding, and growing in my subconscious. And my conscious brain just doesn't know anything about it. But I know that, you know, dysfunction, maybe you got a dad that really did you wrong

or something else like that. And you're not going to forgive him because he doesn't deserve it. Just understand that that root, even if you're not thinking about it consciously, that root grows and it becomes bitter and it infects and poisons all kinds of different area, parts of your life.

And so being able to forgive people even sometimes when they don't deserve it is good even for a myself preservation standpoint. Now forgiving someone isn't the same as trusting them, you know, they wronged you. Like, I forgive you. I release that. But I'm not going to trust you anymore. Trust is slowly earned and quickly lost. I'm not going to trust you anymore. Trust is slowly earned and quickly lost. I'm not going to trust you. So anyway, there's some thoughts.

John, let's bring this one home mate. I really appreciate you. I love the fact that you're trying to marry these two worlds. I really think that we could probably do with more warriors and more poets and less of the passivity that we're seeing at the moment. If people want to check out the book and all of the other stuff that you do and your courses, where should they go? The Warrior Poet Way is the best place to find the book, the warriorpoetway.com. That's going to land you on our website too. So you can kind of hunt around, but our website is warriorpoetssociety.com. From there, you can find our YouTube stuff and our social media. Good luck, they're gonna censor that like crazy sense.

So even if you click on the stuff, who knows whether they'll serve it up to you? They hate us because we tell the truth and so, yeah, party on, man. John, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Use well, yeah, oh, yeah, offends.