Modern Wisdom - No One is Ready for This Coming War - Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf - #1089

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

Andy Stumpf is a former U.S. Navy SEAL, extreme sports enthusiast, public speaker, podcaster, and author. What will the future of war actually look like? As AI accelerates and warfare rapidly evolves, the stakes feel higher than ever, but how worried should we really be? Timestamps: (0:00) The Surprising Danger of Fighting Under a Full Moon (0:51) Is Technology Making Warfare More Dangerous? (2:46) Can We Predict Where Warfare Is Going? (5:00) Should AI Make Life and Death Decisions? (7:18) Is Ghost Murmur Technology Just a Myth? (10:28) What Really Happens When You Eject From an Aircraft (14:51) How Soldiers Are Trained to Survive Capture (18:51) Is Pulling the Trigger Harder Than It Looks? (23:20) The Dark Virality of Charlie Kirk’s Death (26:00) Are Special Operations Glorified By the Public? (29:48) The Unique Learning Points of a Special Operations Instructor (37:20) How Much Does Failure Cost You? (38:27) The Most Expensive Lessons of Andy’s Career (41:46) Why Walking Away is So Difficult (44:21) Don’t Make Yourself the Victim of Your Own Life (46:41) The Reality of Marrying a Special Operator (51:07) Was Bin Laden’s Raid Truly a Success? (57:40) How America Really Sees Its Military Today (01:08:32) The Dangerous Divide Inside the US (01:13:20) Is Guns For Hire the Way Forward? (01:17:01) Why Do People Quit? (01:29:12) The Most Important Traits in Life or Death Situations (01:31:08) The Brutal Truth About Drownproofing (01:34:40) The Top Scaring Tactics Used in Training (01:40:05) Are Deaths in Training Necessary? (01:41:40) Why the Grind Is Everything (01:44:24) The One SEAL Lesson Everyone Should Learn (01:48:48) Why You’re Never Truly Alone (01:52:22) The Truth About Making a Real Impact (02:02:45) Andy’s End Goal Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - 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

I'm going to play a little trick for the first time ever in this studio to make you feel a little bit more at home. So you're a man who operated largely in the dark when you are doing raids, when you would have been operating, I imagine. Some stuff would have been by day, but other stuff would have been by night. Unless there was an extremely compelling reason

to do so exclusively at night. Oh, nice. Here we go, transitioning, evening. And now we're in a blood moon. We usually didn't go out at full moon. Oh, okay. because there's too much visibility. Elimination.

So, you know, even though you can see at night with night vision goggles, we constantly were looking at the illumination, the external illumination, because at some point people can almost see you as well as you can see them with the technological advantage. So we would avoid the high illumination nights and obviously aviators and things that fly that could be backlit against those. They try to avoid it as well.

What are you surprised by what's happening with warfare over the last few years? Like, I can't work out whether technology is making things more humane or more dangerous? I think an equal measure of both. I've had a lot of conversations about this with guys during the time period that I served. I'd never for a single second thought about the danger of drone warfare. And I don't mean drones to us was predators or reapers or overhead surveillance platforms that had great, you know, sensor pause and they could pipe stuff down and you can have

the ability to look at what they could see. It was great for situational awareness. I never once was concerned about somebody essentially. ordering a drone on the internet, not that that's how it's being built or made in Ukraine, specifically in Iran, has some smaller ones as well. But having that be a kinetic option on the battlefield, didn't think about it a single time. And I am glad that I am not a part of that, because, I mean, I have an internet connection just like anybody else. And I don't go searching for those videos, but sometimes they find you and people running away from basically a DGI drone

that detonates. the hard pass, the hardest of passes being involved in there. I read that field medics are not getting the same sort of trauma training that they used to because the kind of injuries that soldiers are getting on the battlefield are totally different now. Well, towards the tail end of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was very IED heavy. So it would be explosive wounds, which are really gnarly. not that any kind of wound is particularly great but it just tears things to pieces

and most of the stuff I'm seeing with the drone warfare is kind of the same, it's explosive base, so maybe? I don't know. I'm not sure, it might be more aggressive, it might be able to be more powerful, I don't know, but yeah, well, what have you been surprised by? Would you've been able to predict the direction that warfare was going to go in?

No, because at the same time, like, let's take Ukraine as an example, at the same time that they're at the cutting edge, of what's going on with electronics. There are videos of guys running through trenches, fighting at distances between you and I, like just putting AKs around a corner, which, by the way, kind of a fan of clearing a corner that way.

Like, hello, is anybody here? God, not advisable, honestly. I mean, maybe, like, peak, I know. A high-risk strategy. It is controversial. I'm not here to tell anybody how to party, so you do you. But, I mean, so we're talking back to World War I and World War II,

but at the same time, the leading edge of electronics, in the same battle space. What? So it's this blend of innovation and evolution, and then humans getting it on like eye to eye. Do you think we're over-hyping AI in warfare? Because each technological development

is basically touted as the end of one era and the beginning of something different. I don't know. The way it's been described to me is that there's phases that AI is coming in. Right now, there's a human in the loop, meaning a human in making the final decision may be assisted by AI.

Then there's human on the loop, meaning kind of just overwatching the AI. And then the phase that I think terrifies everybody is human out of the loop. And I think that's where a lot of the stuff when it came to mixed clot is at anthropic. I think that I want to believe that they stood their ground. And again, I only have information based off what I can consume on the internet, which, you know, take all that with a grain of soul. but it seems like they stood their ground morally from an intelligence perspective or the ability for mass surveillance and then getting to that point where humans being off the loop. Because if we take humans off the loop, I don't know how you combat that as an adversary without doing exactly the same thing. Because if it can think and make decisions faster than any human that's any of those earlier phases, then you're already at a tactical disadvantage.

And then we end up working for robots for our daily water ration. and I don't think that's great. I don't want Terminator to become a documentary, which we might be on that trajectory. Yeah. Coming from a sale background, how do you feel about AI basically being involved in life and death decisions for operators?

I don't know how it would be at the level that we operated at. I mean broadly, to speak broadly. And again, I am dated, so I don't know exactly how they are interfacing AI right now. The job was to, at some point, a lot of other entities would find fix, locate an individual, fix them in a location. And our job was to get to that location and then finish. And that doesn't mean kill.

Sometimes it does. It largely depends on the actions that the individual would take. But solve the problem, which means cross the threshold of a door somewhere. I don't know how AI does that for you. I think AI can do a lot of stuff, especially in the electronic spectrum. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess you could, you know, those those Raytheon dogs or whatever they are, the robotic types. I mean, maybe it gets to that level and maybe that removes the operator from that or they're controlling him like the drone operators are now.

But I don't think it's at that level yet. So I think it helps more in the planning and analysis process than anything. But as long as there's people still crossing thresholds of doors, I don't know how much impact AI is going to have. Could choosing to cross the threshold of that door or not or the time to do it or not and targeting. in planning, the fact that that's done by AI now puts operators at the mercy of the decisions that maybe humans weren't involved in. It'll never make the decision as the go-no-go criteria. It will spit, like, intelligence, the intelligence community can present packages, and you can,

in your mission planning process, you're looking at every phase of the operation, you're planning mostly on contingencies, but you're looking at all of those things. the go-no-go is not based on an intelligence package. It's based on essentially the ground force commander saying this meets the criteria. Now, there are exceptions to that I would say. Let's say if you are looking for somebody and there is a trigger, a cell phone pops up on a network. And you've been looking for that thing? That's like, hey, we might need to go like right now.

But other than that, the decision is going to be based off when you think it is best suited for you and least suited for the person that you're going after. Tell me you saw this ghost mammoth thing. Oh, I mean how we can find heartbeats from space? Yes. Yeah, I'm sure missing hikers would have appreciated that got used for them as well too. You know? This is the wildest shit.

Yeah, but that's because you found it on the internet. I saw Bigfoot on the internet one time, too. That doesn't mean it's real. You don't think that this is what they did? No. Wow. Okay, no. Does it sound awesome?

Yes. Do I want that tech to exist? Now, was it from space or was it supposedly from an aircraft? Supposedly from an aircraft. I do not want to tip my hand. Again, I am very dated, but I don't want to tip my hand on any of the, like to me, it is essential to maintain the TTPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures. There are ways and means that I think aviators have to identify their location that would be picked up by aircraft

and probably the higher you are, the better you would have for line of sight and things like that. Do I think it's capable of doing it at a heartbeat? Maybe, but I don't think we're there yet. They're really dope. There are other less complex ways to do that. You mean instead of quantum electrodynamics fixed to the front of an Apache helicopter, detecting a heartbeat and getting rid of all of the gerbils and dogs and enemies that are out there, zeroing in on this one guy from 40 miles away to pick him up and extract him? So when the episode comes out, can you just dub me saying what you just said? bit all

because yes that's exactly I don't know why you think that this is unrealistic this is just it's fun here's the thing

I want stuff like that to be true but can you the funnest story is the truest story that's the way imagine how pissed people would be

who had lost family members in the back in like back country and technology like this existed

and we didn't use it for our own people because we were trying to it's like we wanted to

we wanted to wait for this one guy what's he called like dude 44 bravo or something

what was his code name? I don't know dude 45 bravo That was too good of a code name to be honest or a call sign. Most of them you'll notice they're, they are from mistakes or things that the person who the call sign is associated with are not proud of, which is exactly why they need to be what they are. Like if you make a galactic mistake in training and they can associate one word to that, that's what you're known for for the rest of your military. What was yours?

No, it's only aviator-wise. Okay, okay, okay. I was just Andy. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Super Lane. What are some of the most stupid ones that you've heard? Oh, God. You'll hear people, you know, when they're trying to make them up. Because, most of the time, this is involving alcohol to be like, oh, yeah, my colson was bone crush. I'm like, you're 142 pounds soaking wet.

Shut the fuck. Stuff like that. You know what I mean? Like, you know, Reaper or just like, take it easy, dude. Take it easy, you know? So you did, you think that this ghost murmur thing, at least the explanation of its bullshit, and the way that they managed to find this guy in the middle of the desert was something a little bit more. I think there are easier ways to do it.

Okay. And when pilots eject, they sound like they're ejecting with no tools. So part, you know, there's an entire department. Like the aviators don't maintenance the aircraft, right? So there's people making sure that the aircraft is good to go. There's people making sure that survival equipment is good to go. All of those things. So when you, first up, I've never punched out of an aircraft.

I've talked to some people who have. It seems to be a spicy ride. How so? Well, I had a guy on my show who ejected at about three. knots under the speed of sound about it. So, and I might be, I might be getting this exact detail incorrect, but he was doing a maneuver and was nose down in a hornet, looking at the Atlantic Ocean rushing up and punched out.

And it basically, how did he describe it? Took all of the bones in his body that weren't broken and did the opposite of that. And the only reason he's actually alive is because the water was so cold. He was in the hospital for months. Kegan Gill is his name. Why would the cold water help? Because it shunts your blood vessels. He was going to bleed out otherwise.

Hang on. So the force of ejecting a few knots under the speed of south. Because the air that was, that immediately slammed it. Oh, because it wasn't the force of the ejection. It was the... I don't think that feels good either. It's going to say, because people can get concussed, I think, just by doing that. Oh, I think if you do two, you're done.

they medically retire you if you get two ejection. It'll shorten your vertebrae. I mean, it's, I think you go. Did, I used to be 5-11. Yeah. I think it goes zero to double-digit Gs like that. And so, yeah, he was, and he was flying. But that was a real one-to punch.

Yeah. The jab was the ejection. He basically said he almost got liquefied on departure from the aircraft. I'm like, okay. Yeah. And his aircraft just vaporized when it hit the ground. Yep. Well, water. Yeah. Well, the water. There happened to be, I believe it was a Coast Card vessel nearby that he was flying with his boss. They were doing like some early air combat maneuvers. And he's like, I initiated a maneuver outside of the envelope that I should have. Put the aircraft into a position where it was not going to recover. And can you imagine that visual? So he's probably like $600. miles an hour. And he said a second and a half from impact.

Can you imagine that visual coming up here? Fuck. Yeah. And then if you missed the little ejection of him, it was not stuck it. He didn't take the safety out. Oh, shit. Yeah.

Yeah. No, thank you. Hard pass. Wow. But when they go out, not in that situation. You have tools with you. And so the ejection seat itself has some stuff that comes with it. Like a little life raft, but for existing in a...

For sure. You can have a firearm. Probably. You're going to have a radio. You might have a beacon type system. Maybe some food. probably yeah um it's not going to be awesome and people forget that aviators so that we go to the same school the basics year school that amators go to they're specialists that guy was a weapon system officer so he was in the back seat of an f15 i believe so he wasn't flying and i actually don't even know if they're pilots my guess would be that they're not so the guy up front is completely responsible for manipulating and the controls i don't even know if they have controls in the back actually remember been around an f15 cockpit

so he's doing all the weapon stuff their world is very high off the ground. And so I've done a backseat ride in an F-18, and I'm like, this is ridiculously uncomfortable. Like my head was bouncing off the canopy, was sick for about two days, felt nauseous because of the GAs we were pulling. But then earlier in my career,

I went to Sears School and I was paired up with an F-18 pilot, and you want to talk about a duck out of water. Like, how do you read this topographical map? Like, how do you know, now, to me, I'm like, oh, yeah, we just will celestially navigate or this is east and we're just going to do that, and they're like, where's my airplane? Right? It's the complete inverse.

Like, if you were to throw your average special operations dude in an F-15, they'd be like, oh, my God. So just to imagine the reverse of that when these people punch out and now they're on the ground. I'm supposed to be in three dimensions. I'm now in two dimensions. Yeah. And it's real. You could maybe see you in your sensors people looking for you trying to shoot at you

at 25,000 feet. And now you're at 250 feet and those same people are down there. they're looking for you. I don't know if anybody got that close to him, but I would like to believe that tech exists. I think that's a far stretch. Probable? I don't, well, possible, not probable. Yeah, it's crazy to think that these guys that have been, will they have training to be able to evades? Limited. So like I said, we go to the same school. It's about a week of in-classroom stuff, and a lot of it, at least when I went through, was based off of Vietnam. A lot of studying the Hanoi Hilton. and the POWs there and the, you know, the tap codes that they, they created an alphabet system that they would teach each other through doing it.

And it was a five by five. And a lot of it is what to expect if you're captured, how you're going to be questioned. You need to, you know, stay. You're supposed to do the best that you can to stay inside of the boundaries of releasing particular information. But the reality is with enough pain, people are, they're going to break, you know. And then you go out to the one I went to is in Warren. Springs, which is in east of San Diego by not very far. The one you went to?

The Sears School. Survival, escape, resistance, and evasion. You go out to the, and this was aviators and largely people who might find themselves on the ground. So special operations, personnel, anybody that might find themselves on the ground in, like, a theater of war. I don't think you would need to send, like, traditional Navy people were going to be on a vessel to Sears School very unlikely, but that would be a rough day if they ended up getting

rolled out. I don't know. You're like, wow, they swam out here and took you out of your bed. Really far from home. Totally. Yeah. God, that would suck. And then you would really wish you had gone to that school. But, you know, you got to play the odds on that one.

So it was a couple days of group navigation. And then they start off a simulation where now you're on E&E, escape and evasion, and you're paired up. And you were trying to evade an enemy force that is looking for you, probably very similar in concept to Iran. And then everybody eventually gets caught because you spend about two and a half days in sloppy camp where they slap your. around and they introduce you to being, I don't know if they would say interrogated, but it's

essentially what it is. And you're in this little, you know, it's just, it looks like dog kennels that human beings are in. And they're way too small to be in there so you can't find a comfortable position. There's music playing all the time. It must be very hard for you to get comfortable with the erection that you heard. Just stay hard. You know what I mean? Just the whole way through. That's actually a great way to warn the terrorists off you. Like we can't go in. Don't go in kennel number five. He's just permanently erect. That's the problem.

And some people, they let it go. The key is, go heart state. Always got to be honest. I mean, if I put myself on the other side of that, I coin, but I'd just leave that dude alone. Clearly, there's some psychopathy there. I'm terrified of him. But it's a couple days.

And then those people go back to, if you're an aviator, your job is to aviate. And so they're going to go back and master that craft. And I don't think. Don't keep on top of their handguns. Probably not. I don't know what level of minimum training that they're required to do. It's probably currency at best.

Competence in currency are not the same thing. But again, they have to be competent and current and flying a multi-million dollar aircraft in a place. Prioritize your training appropriately. Totally. Yeah. So I can only imagine that that guy, he had a hell of a day and a half or two days, however long he was on the ground. Someone said, I can't wait for Mark Wahlberg to play this guy in a movie. Yeah.

Yeah. It's possible. That's basically what you're doing. You're like, I don't want to be picked up after 12 hours. If I get picked up after 36, then there's a movie. Mark Wahlberg gets to blame me. Especially it's like 48. Yeah, now we're talking.

Yeah. Yeah, don't turn your beacon on. Yeah. Just wait. Like looking. Really keep them guessing. Wouldn't it be cool if you had like a little chart. And on the chart, it's the different actor levels.

And for the longer that you stick about it, you go, it's 36 hours. But at 36 hours, I only get Marky Mark. But at 48, I get Brad Pitt. How did you get such insight into how the U.S. military office? I don't know. Seventy two. It's Chris Hansel. I'm like, I'm going to make it to 72.

I want to hand me to play me. He's a handsome man. Yes. Better in person? Yeah, unbelievably handsome in person. Yeah, that actually was where I got the permanently erect idea from. Okay. It's terrifying.

So technology in war, is it making soldiers more fragile or more effective? Do you think? I think two things can be true sometimes. I don't think you should outsource kill it. And killing through a screen, even though I think that that's the way that the world is probably headed, I think that removes the burden associated with that. But at the same time, some of those tools can help you kill people a lot more effectively.

So you mean there shouldn't be a flippancy with pulling the trigger or the equivalent of on another human? No. I don't think so. I think you should scramble your eggs for maybe the rest of your life. Not like destroy you, but it should change your optic. on humanity in the world. In other news, Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce companies in the US. They are the driving force behind Jimshark and Skims and Allo and Newtonic,

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You actually came here to do designing and selling the thing that you love. So upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use with Newtonic with Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to Shopify.com slash modern wisdom or lowercase. That's Shopify.com slash modern wisdom. Wasn't there a stat around the number of soldiers who either didn't fire their weapon or fired their weapons in a direction that wasn't basically toward the enemy in World War II? Yeah, SLA Marshall did a study on this, and it's why they went from shooting its circular accuracy

targets to silhouette type targets. Now, there's some issues with SLA Marshall in his data collection, though. So as they've looked at this in hindsight, he claimed, to have interviewed a substantial number of people. And somebody finally just got out a calendar and a piece of paper and said, how many did you say that you did? And how long were you over there for? The math doesn't math on that.

So they're come to find out. There's some BS involved in that section of military history as well. But that is a lot of where Grossman got his on killing information as well, too, and walking through that. They claimed that there was a statistically very small amount of people that would actually aim their weapon at another human being and pull the trigger. And they associated that probably with two prongs. One, just the morality of humanity, but two, only practicing shooting at things that didn't look real. Not that it's like a green type silhouette.

It doesn't look that real, but it looks more human than a circular bullseye. So they swapped that out. And then I believe SLA Marshall and Grossman, their theory. was that the percentages went up. I don't know how you actually measure that. You know, I talked with some guys who surround in Vietnam, they're like, oh damn, man, I was shooting everything I could give up. Well, one thing that stopped me is I ran out of bullets.

I'm like, whoa, dude. You're at a 12. Can I get you back at an 8 also? Are you okay? Have you talked to anybody about this in your life? Are you just, like, waiting for me 60 years later to ask you this question? as my dad, by the way. Jesus Christ.

Look, I mean, the technology might enable people to get around that if that is an issue. Should we allow that, man? Killing is so romanticized in so many ways, and it is something that I, God, it should be a measure of last resort. And I don't know if you should remove the complexity and difficulty associated with that. with certainly the flippancy that people can find around that it shouldn't be there well look at it you can if you're on any social media platform i mean did you see charlie kirks death uh how would you say uh unconsentingly yeah so all three of my kids did too that was the hardest conversations i had to have was with all three of my kids

especially knowing what that dad did they i am the most resoundingly uninteresting human being to them. I think they have maybe asked me about my old job five times. I don't know what they know or don't know. I don't talk with them about it. I have nothing military related at the house. It's just, I'm just, I just try to be their dad. But all three of them in four minute of years of their life, scrolling on social media because their generation is, of course, almost terminally online at this point, saw that. I saw it as well too. And on any of these social platforms. If you go deep enough down to Rabiddle, there's no way that these filters can be as effective as we want them be. You're going to see people who are dying online. And that is not

something that most people ever actually see in their real life. And I don't know if that reduces your, you know what I mean? It's like this, this barrier that I'm very thankful that almost nobody is willing to cross. Like people might talk a big game about that, but almost nobody is willing to cross that barrier and I'm very thankful for that because it's not something that should be talked about flippantly. I don't think we should remove barriers to making that easier. That was really, I mean, I'd see it into my brain. Think about how many videos on the internet you've seen, like tens of thousands of videos that I've seen on the internet. Looky numbers. I know. I fucking baby numbers, too. We're talking about a week? Yeah, yeah. That's just,

that's just born, no. And that one, it's not the, it's not the main angle that everybody saw. It was the second one that was much more graphic. And I didn't mean to see that one either. That's not my idea of a good way to spend an afternoon to see that. And yeah, I didn't mean to. But then you're contending with what does freedom of speech mean? And freedom of exposure? Is that the same thing as freedom of speech?

Freedom to be exposed to these things? And how much should we... There's certainly things that we don't want to be insulating people from. But then there's stuff that almost universally, like a guy being killed in a really, really graphic way. That's one of the ones that, who needs to see that as a part of their human development?

I completely agree. And the fact that that stuff exists and will for the foreseeable future, I don't know what that does to the psyche of people who see that when they're in those developing ages. What's something about special operations that you think civilians glorify that's completely wrong or misconstrued? The people. legitimately. So I, I truly served with people that I consider to be just tremendous in every regard. And not like a person that was tremendous in every sense, but I could look in somebody and say, oh my God, I wish I could do what you're able to do to fill in the blank. I could find inspiration in those people and look at them and say, okay, I know what's possible. And if you can get to that level, I can at least try to get to that level because I want that to be the standard.

You could apply that across the board. But they're all exceptionally normal people. The Special Operations community is not comprised of people that put a cape on and go to work. They are very normal people that are tasked with doing some exceptional things at times. But they suffer from the same ailments of life that everybody else does. And you can easily create this unrealistic expectation that they can do anything, that they can tolerate. anything that they are impossible to knock down. And that isn't the case, man. They're normal, exceptionally average people. I wish I could take people and introduce them to the first day of

Bud's training where you'll have a couple hundred people lined up. And just look at the physiology of these people. There is going to be like a D1 college athlete, which guess what? That fucker's not going to be able to swim. So see you later. Right. And there's going to be a marathon runner. And that guy's going to have a really hard time swimming. So that stuff kind of sorts itself out. the rest of it, you would look at their physiology and anatomy and just be like, really? Like you look like the dude who was checking me out at the grocery store. And that's like, yeah, that dude's a savage, but still also a normal person. And I think that's forgotten often.

And you can actually lie to yourself when you're in that community. Because if people expect that from you, you start expecting it from yourself. And then you're headed into a really deep, dark place. You got a line, we are not as unique as we think. You just struggle in different ways. Yeah. I'm guessing that's what you're talking about here. Yeah.

I mean, you have more in common with a guy who's bagging your groceries and a special operation soldier than you could possibly think. And nobody wants to believe that. Why did that I want to believe that? I don't know. Because then I think it makes it easy for people to say, well, I can never do that because that person's different. And I'm not saying take the grocery bag or two. I ran, you know. Maybe take the guy.

can fucking survive. Actually, we really want to make a movie about you with mopped Waltberg. You can put whatever you want to in this brown paper bag, but it's all you have to survive. Like 72 hours. Only if you want Chris. Yeah. Yeah. Now, it's easier to, if you can say, well, they're different, then you give yourself

an excuse. So I can't do that. And I went back as an instructor for 18 months and I watched these kids. And I'm sure the instructors watch my class and said the same thing. Like, God, I work with retarts. That's clearly what they were saying about my class. But it was not a group of people that are on baseball card decks. It was people from all over the U.S., from the Midwest to coastal cities who would probably have politics aligned a little bit more blue and some align a little bit more red and people who joined the military to get out of their socioeconomic position because they had no upward mobility.

And legitimate people had probably generational wealth and they're all there. And they're all so ridiculously, the differences are on, it's just, it's roundoff error. The similarities are, yeah, they're just average people. What did you learn as an instructor looking at selection that you didn't learn being part of selection? Yeah, let me just tell you, it was a different experience. Right there, yeah, because you were warm. Did you play into the fact that when you went through it, you saw some bastard with a big anoracca on holding a hawk of cocoa. You're like, ah, now it's my time. Well, with all generational trauma,

the goal with it should be to pass it downhill. So, Lisa, that's what the military uses. No, there are definitely people who play like roles in caricatures. I was it, I went back about 10 years after I had been in and I was rehabbing from getting hurt. So, and also, we were well into the global war on terror. So when I went through in 1997, the concept of the real world application of the job was exactly that. It was a concept. I volunteered during peace time. And there was a generation of seals that had served post of Vietnam all the way up into that point that had never seen the gun. No, but I mean, that doesn't change though how hard they trained and how much they focused on the job. It's either good luck or bedlock,

depending on the optic that you're looking at it. And people will tell you it's both like, oh, it's good luck. I didn't get that. Or I feel like I have horrible luck because I didn't get those experiences. So it was a different world for me going through training. A lot of this stuff, as a student, it's really weird. So my class started with 180 people, and we graduated 18 of the originals. So every day, you're peeling people off. Mostly in the first phase of training, that's where the vast, vast majority of people are going to disappear. But you don't get to talk to them because your training day continues and they're just, they're gone.

And they are shifted over to another division and they're housed in a different area. And that's not demeaning by any stretch. They just, they lift and shift them from the class that is going through training. and you're back to the needs of the Navy. You can come back, and that's something that people don't often know. You have to go back out to the fleet for a couple of years. You're going to have to re-screen to come back in. But some of the most legendary seal operators are guys who didn't make it through buds their first time.

And I don't know why people don't understand that. Like, oh, you fail one time, I have to go, you know, my life is over. I'm like, I don't, you know, if I had to list my successes and failures, let me just tell you, the failure list is multiples. Magnitudes of order greater than my success list. But when I went through as a student, nothing made sense because you would have an instructor one day. You would do something that they would ask and they'd be like, good job. And the next day, you'd do something that they would ask and they would just hand you your ass.

You know, like, what is going on here? So it was very chaotic. And it didn't make sense. Like, why are we so focused on some of these things? It was always attention to detail, attention to detail, attention to detail, and follow procedure regardless of how you feel and what is going on around you. As an 18-year-old kid, some of those things are very difficult concepts, right? And I also, again, the lens of, I mean, this is just training, right? Like, nobody's been to war in a really long time.

Like, you guys take it easy a little bit? I'm there like, my God. Then I go back in 2006, so we're five years into the GWAT at this point. And I looked at the curriculum and I saw what we were doing. And it was constant aha moments of like, oh, this is why we do that. Attention to detail has nothing to do with the knife that I'm inspecting to see if it can cut hair before you go for an ocean swim or the CO2 cartridges that you twist into a life jacket that was produced in 1918 that I don't even know would save your life if you fired the cartridge.

But you're sitting there as an instructor and you're looking at each one of the screws and all of the little crevices. Is there any rust in there? Is there any sand in there? It's not going to matter when it comes to functioning. You're focusing on attention to detail above everything else because that's what's keeping you alive when it comes to following a tactic when the entire world around me was falling apart. So that type of stuff. Time management, emotional control, decision making, all of those things going back as an instructor. Okay. Now I get it.

And the way I viewed it was this. I'm going to be an instructor for two years, maybe on the far end, 18 months, and I do want to continue my career. And if I do so, I'm going to go back to a SEAL team. And guess who I'm going to end up serving with? all of these people. So it is probably even to my own benefit and perhaps survival if I try to pour as much knowledge information into these people as opposed to treating them like the redheaded stepchild that you'd like to forget, which is technical description of how my class was treated. Not that I harbor any resentment and bad feelings. You think you had a particularly bad one? They hated our class. They hated the leadership of our class. We did. So Hell Week is the fifth week of training and it opens with like M60. fire and blanks and smoke grenades.

It's supposed to be like this intro into combat. Sounds like fucking Coachella's opening party or something. I've never been to Coachella, but I like where your head's at. And probably less alcohol at this party than Coachella and Molly. But for our class, they just walked out to the beach because they put you out in these huge general purpose tents. And they just walked out to the beach and with a bullhorn, they're like, hit the surf, which just means run out of the tent and just go get into the water.

That's all we got. They hated our class. They beat the shit. it. Why do you think they hate you so much? There's the leadership. Do you have a leader during Hell Week? You have a leader at all times. Right.

So they did not like me. Were you the leader? No, no. I was going to say, I totally understand them if so. No, no, I failed in my leadership goals much later on. After I had enough knowledge and experience and just not the technical capacity to do my job. It's not everybody's great. And there's another thing that a misconception that people have.

you come from special operations, you're just naturally this leader. You're going to be awesome. You can lead in any situation. It's not true. The best leaders that I ever was around was in that community. And in the same breath, the worst leaders that I was ever around was also in that community. But nobody can tell that from the outside, because we still will be successful. Get the job done. Right. And then so people look at that community then. They say, well, okay, if you guys always get the job done, then your leaders must all be awesome. Why don't you go ahead and canvas the group and you'll find out, right quick, which leaders are liked and appreciated and are actually doing the jobs, and which ones are lucky that they might not have a dick rubbed on the inside of their coffee

cup. So you had a strong headwind. Does that mean a dick on my coffee cup? Yes. Yeah. I did the best I did. I've never claimed to be a good leader, man. I have made, I'm not joking, I've made more mistakes in my life than I've had failures. This episode is brought to you by Jim Shark. I have tried pretty much every brand of gymware over the years. Most of it looks good on the website, but very little of it survives real world training, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Jim Shark. They're hybrid shorts, especially in Ony's gray and navy, are basically my uniform in the gym at this point. They move

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You have this line about failure being tuition payments. Yeah. I've refrained how have you failures. I now consider them tuition payments. Some of my tuition payments have been relatively inexpensive and some have taken me to the brink of bankruptcy. Yeah. It's just an easier way to get comfortable with consistently failing, just lying to yourself and reframing that, hey, maybe this is a good thing. Cost of doing business is a great way to look at this stuff, though, dude. Yeah. It really is. Legitimately, I didn't view it like that for many, many years in my life because you want to sit there and blame every external circumstance. And maybe you do fail because of an external circumstance. But by reframing it as a lesson

that I learned then that I can apply moving forward, the tuition payment that you really don't understand the cost of, I mean, I'll take a, to put it in business terms, I'll take a $5,000 mistake that would save me $500,000 later on. And that's really all it is. It's failures are rough. I mean, it doesn't make it any easier by reframing it to that. But I also am sitting here today, the person that I am because of the failures and hopefully what I've learned from those as well. What are some of the most expensive lessons that you've paid for? Oh, man. So earlier in life, my entire life was based around this concept of being somebody who was

incapable of quitting because that's the community that I came from. And because of that, I put my children and and myself through probably 10 extra years in a relationship that I'm still working my way out of and the impact of because I would look at myself in the mirror and say, today's the day, huh? Pussy, you're going to quit? I literally talked myself into staying in something that demonstrably and objectively, almost everybody from the outside, after I made the decision to leave was like, hey man, good job on that one. Wish you would have done that. about a decade ago because of how I viewed myself in that situation. That shift, and I write about it,

it's, I'd actually at this point in my life rather see people fall a little bit short of their goals and know when to walk away than destroy themselves because they don't ever want to quit and they end up having nothing in their life. There's a fine line between resilience and suppression with this. And a lot of the time, I think we are, we compute, confused suppression for strength. And I'm kind of fascinated about the line between giving up too soon, leaving it on the table, sandbagging a workout and stopping because you're about to get injured. That is a tough one because how do you measure that?

There's no external tool that somebody can look at you and say, hey, you should keep going. Because they don't actually, you know, like they don't know how your body is. What your limit is. Yeah, and especially, you need to use an exercise as an example, like the tension that you're under, like you're actually getting physical feedback. Like, no, no, I'm not going to put that down so I don't blow my, you know, my spine out. But the emotional one's even more difficult because, yeah, for sure. What does it mean to say that you went past your emotional limit? Yeah.

What does an injury relationally or comically or psychologically mean compared with, yeah, dude, I put 380 on the bar and tried to do 20 back squats? blew my MCL out. Yeah, that was a bad idea. But what does that mean? Because it's, you erode psychological well-being in small chunks, typically over a very long period of time. So you can always go one more day. You can always go until you get to the stage where you've accumulated sufficient damage.

Yeah. I wish I would have been able to recognize that point earlier in my life. It would have saved a lot of hardship for myself and I think for my children. children as well too. But if I'm like anybody else, I'm almost always my own worst enemy. You know, my mastery of negative self-talk. I have no education beyond a high school diploma that I barely got. I think they gave it to me just so I would get out of there, but a PhD in negative self-talk. How does that encourage you to stay in situations that you should leave earlier? The reason I stayed is because the entire currency of my life up into that point was being known

to somebody who wouldn't quit. And that's very common inside of that special operations world. Again, you know, what are these misconceptions that people may have? And that's why, to me, it's so important to at least try to pull back the curtain a little bit and just explain that these are absolutely average people. Like, yeah, and God, so many guys will say this. I hate the term always and never. But most guys would tell you, like, listen, the job will always suffer last.

The boys will always suffer last. but the family will absolutely suffer before your job performance does. I mean, you put everything for that pursuit of who you are and what you're doing on a pedestal, and everything else around you in life is falling apart, and you still have to deal with that at some point. And it's just that unwillingness to let people down and that unwillingness to admit, like, hey, man, like I'm falling apart at the seams here. Like, I might be performing at work, but absolutely every other metric in my life is trending in the wrong direction.

the guys won't say anything. It's dangerous. I think it has a lot to do with what happens when, you know, guys get out and the struggles that they have when they get out as well, too. I found out that of professional athletes who get divorced, 50% of the divorces happen in the first year after they retire. It's a different universe when you stop going to work and you actually have to physically be there.

The world I came from Two 170 days a year On the road, easy I mean, you're living independent But make hopefully parallel lives And then you switch to

365 home Hey honey, do we know each other? Do you still like me? And you've lost your purpose I think that's a big one Like you are trying to deal With the deceleration of your own identities Hopefully you guys put the brakes on a little early

You know, lift their head up a little bit realize that however long you want to stay in the military, the end is coming so you can kind of keep an eye on the horizon on the future. The longer people wait for that, I think the tougher the transition can be. But yeah, it's a shock, man. You got to be careful that it's not who you are, that it's just what you do. Given that it's so all-encompassing, that's got to be difficult, though, extreme. And I think that's why, I mean, the stats don't want. Statistically, veterans, special operations as well, suicide rate is statistically in all. in comparison to the rest of society.

You've got this line, until you view yourself as the author of your life, you'll be the victim of it. Yeah. What's that mean? It means until you stop blaming everything else around you for the course and trajectory of your life, you're just going to be a flag in the wind

going with the direction that the wind is blowing. And for clarity, you have almost no control over what happens in your life, but you have complete and total control and how you respond to it. And that is being the author of your life. So life sucks sometimes. Cool. Are you going to suck with that? Or are you going to take control of who you are and work your way through that and maybe even be better at the end of that, right? And that's the difference between somebody who will sit there and externally, instead of doing anything about what's going on, they'll sit there and complain about what's going on and point fingers at everything. The author of your life, not that is any easier, but you accept what's going on and you focus on what it is that you can control. which is largely going to be your actions, your thought process, your internal monologue, and what you do with it? I suppose an interesting challenge that you have here is you are the author of your life,

and that means that you need to take responsibility for how you have contributed to the problems that you're facing. But that also includes how your traits, even the ones that in a different world or a different environment, were strengths, you are having to pay the price for now, too. Also, you are your own responsibility. Your traits are your own responsibility. If you take a no-quit attitude to everything in life, you are headed towards failure. You have to control those tools as well, too. And again, that from coming from the community where that was the currency and equity is your ability to never quit.

Let's apply that to alcoholism. Like, I have a drinking problem. I should never quit. Okay. Maybe it'll just pick up heroin then, too. See how far I can push that? one like you know what I mean like you there's easy examples of where that can get completely out of control and it's just god it's so god it's so dangerous and that's why I say I would rather have

people fall a little bit short of their goals and understand that not everything is worth destroying who you are or killing yourself for there's just so few things in life that I think actually rise to that level what's the classic avatar mold of a special operators relationship with their wife. Man, that really varies. I don't know if there could... Some guys like to marry Stivers.

You know? I mean, we're not even talking about the same community anymore. So, I mean, that's a weird avatar, and I'm not here to tell anybody how to party, but, I mean, that relationship dynamic often involves Chinese food getting thrown at you for some reason. I don't know why, but I've seen it.

I've seen it. It's weird. So it really depends. The divorce rate in special operations, I would say, hovers at 80 to 85%. Fuck. That's an estimate. Like, I have no, that it's anecdotal based on my experience. But the other side of that is, so let's say it is 85. 15% of those people are making it.

And I have seen it where it's been high school sweethearts, legitimately high school sweethearts. And they have the ability to grow together, even though they're apart and they can reconnect. I mean, a lot of that has to do with, too, the what was modeled for you. you when you were young, right? Because a lot of people will replicate the avatar of what was shown to them when they were growing. That's what they think a relationship looks like. That's one of my regrets for staying 10 years longer than I think I should have is, and I got to the point where I was asking myself, like, would I want my own children to follow my footsteps in this? Relationally.

Yes. And if the answer, like, and you are imprinting them. Yes. And like, what am I modeling here? I'm saying, you know, I am the most influential person in my children's life, especially at that point in time in their life. What am I modeling? And it's like, that's a tough conversation here to have like, oh my God, I'm actually, even though I view myself as somebody who can never have quit and this is the only currency that matters, I am actually modeling something. I would never want my children. Would you want that for your kids? Yes. Before we continue, I wish someone had told me five years ago to stop overthinking nutrition and just find something that works. I've simplified mine down to one scoop a day and it's made hitting my nutritional bases an awful lot easier.

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That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. I mean, I spent a good bit of time with Jocko over Christmas. He's an autonomous robot. Dude, he was just extolling the virtues of his and his wife's relationship. Yeah. He's like, yeah, I think that's an example of one that did work. I think we've had about one and a half arguments in three. 35 years.

I however long they fucked it. Oh, that just means they lie to be choked. No. Or she's too scared to do it. Chalko is a teddy bear. Yeah. He's cute. He's been,

he was nice. I saw him fucking roll on the floor with Mark Zuckerberg. That was a scene that I never thought I would have observed. That's not, why is it Mark? No. No. That, no.

That's not good. It's about half the weight and size and about a tenth of the experience of Jocko. But it was fun. It was fun to watch, especially while they were on their feet. It was really fun. Yeah. It was like watching UFC one.

happen. Is Zuck? Is he a wee? Is he a tiny man? Not small. He's definitely packed on some muscle in size and he's been training a good bit. How tall he did he is? Uh, five, nine? I would try it for one, but... Hey, look, I mean, it was, it was good to see Jocko lie on top of another man. That was, that was a great way to spend it.

That's the best part about you, Gilles soon. Yeah, getting to lie another man. Or have them lie on top of you. Hmm. You know, we're not all tops. Sometimes we'll bother. Sometimes we'll bother. Dude, what happened with this Rob-O-Neil conversation? Because me and you were texting about it, and I saw an absolute tsunami of bullshit occur.

Man, I don't know how to accurately answer that, because I don't know. It's the first time he and I ever had sat down and talked. When we opened the conversation, he reminded me that I had taken him for his first tandem when he went to the tandem course. I didn't remember that because on that day, I was there as an instructor.

You probably take six or eight people for a jump, and that's how you're trapped to you. Correct. You're a bottom. they would be the bottom. Ah. They're front riding. Power position.

Yeah. Actually, it is power bottom, yes. PBA, power bottom actual. Yeah. I didn't remember that because I'd always said I'd ever met the guy and he was like, dude, you took me for our first hand. I'm like, fuck. Sorry, man. I didn't remember that.

I've taken 1,500 people for the first hand up. So it definitely wasn't intentional. I have never seen a military operation that has... More tentacles going out with divergence in relayed experiences or stories, whatever you would want to call it, than that particular one. And I don't know what to make of it. I know a lot of people that were there. I was not.

And not all of their stories align with the most common narratives as well, too. This is the Osama bin Laden, right? Correct. Yeah, the operation was called Neptune's sphere. So, dude, I don't know. He didn't deviate from his story. You know, he added some things in there that definitely surprised me about what they included in the debrief and what they left out of the debrief. What would those things? From, again, I was not there, so I'm relaying this. There was the first floor, the second floor, and then bin Laden and his wives. and I believe a few children were on the third floor. The stories or the relayed experiences seem to start deviating at the stairs that go up from the second floor to the third.

And very, very few people were actually on those stairs. I don't know how wide the stairways actually were. But stairways can actually be really dangerous from a tactical. You don't want to get a bunch of people in there. It would take one guy to pull a pin on a grenade and roll it down a set of stairs and you're having a real shit day. So you want to have enough people, but also the minimum amount. And the way you described it is that they were getting a little bit thin on bodies. But the first person saw movement, took a shot.

They went into the room. Rob encountered bin Laden, shot bin Laden. And then essentially before they went to the debrief. And then after that, I mean, Rob said that as he was getting ready to take pictures, a guy walked up and shot him in the face multiple times right in front of him. that essentially before they went down to do the debrief, that the people who were on the third four got together and decided what they were going to include in that

and what they weren't going to include in that. And again, the conversation was a while ago, so I don't know the exact specifics of it, but it was the initial shots and then the follow-up shots from that as well, from Rob and the man who was in front of him. Why is shooting an enemy combatant that's dead in the face? It's a worker. Mutilation of an enemy combatant.

Correct. Yeah. not advisable and if you are going to do that and I mean it's just that stuff happens

I mean bottom line you also sometimes I mean there's a difference between the way he described it is there was an immense amount of time between essentially the target being called secure which is where you can kind of unwrap a little bit from a tactical perspective

but you like that call come over the radio and then you start a process with basically gathering as much information as you can. That's where you get the cameras out and you start looking for stuff and bagging things. You know, when you're clearing, you don't want to leave uncertainty.

If you engage somebody, you don't want to leave uncertainty as to whether or not they're going to resurrect themselves and come. And so what you end up doing is you inflict wounds that are incompatible with life. So if you can put the inside of their head on the outside of their head,

that's usually a good indication that that problem is solved. There's a difference in doing that as you were a clearing instructor in his structure and actively engaged. And then after, you know what I mean, after that happening, it happens. It's a fucking ugly occupation. And it will show you the best of who you are and the worst of who you ever thought you could be. And some people get lost in that. And you put people on the front lines who have been sharpening their teeth for decades. fighting the same people in the same places, it happens.

But... Does that feel like righteous retribution in the moment, perhaps? Probably in the moment, but... And almost immediately regret. I don't know if there's always regret. Sometimes I don't think there ever is. To me, my personal opinion, and I only speak for myself, we need to be better than that.

If we want to be a beacon to the world, we need to be better than that. and that's tough. Because it means that you need to play by rules that other people are maybe not going to? You need to respect certain boundaries. You need to play. I mean, the Geneva Convention, get it, totally understand. Rules of engagement, totally understand.

Law of war, rule of war, totally understand. There is a lot of flexibility inside of all of those things. You can do everything that you need to do and be accomplished the mission you need to and dominate people on the battle of field. inside of those things. Just imagine, I mean, and a lot of times all you have to do is flip the coin. How would the American people react if, let's say,

pilot and Iran, all right, we'll go to modern day, got captured, got killed. And then they put on the internet, a guy walking up with an AK and unloading a magazine into his face. That's not going to go over well. If we do that to other people,

oftentimes that'll move the barrier for what they're willing to do to us as well. And I think that our country and our flag needs to stand for board of that. Well, there's already a level of contention over the U.S. entering conflicts at the moment. And I don't know what you think this does to how attractive military service looks at the moment.

But at least for me, you know, in the UK, for instance, you've spent a good bit of time in the UK. There is no, we would like to invite first responders and active military personnel to board the plane early. How come? Because no one gives a fuck about our military. I've flown hundreds of flights around the UK.

They may have changed it now, but I have never once heard. Do they have a special group that they invite on early? I'm fascinated now. I don't know. Maybe your friend that ejected himself out into liquefied, perhaps he would get to go on first. Being in Gil, look him up, man. Holy. Can he walk now?

Yeah. He's like running half marathons. Okay. I mean, I'm not saying there's gates good, but it's loping down. A little so worse. Yeah, so the UK doesn't revere the veteran community in the UK. I have no idea what that. To me, it's the sort of shit that I just learned about in American movies and then since coming here.

For instance, I once was wearing a Black Rifle coffee t-shirt and I think it had the American flag. Yeah, and it's sort of a military green kind of color. Yeah, it's really nice t-shirt. I wore it until it was fucking Fred back. And I got on a plane and a gentleman who was sat in one of the earliest rows. said thank you for your service to me as I went past. What did you say? I was like, as I'm like being fucking convey a belted along.

The movies you say, you're welcome. I did it for you. There's enough about stolen valor already for the British to come in. Not only stolen valor, it's stolen patriotism. Holy fuck. It's stolen passing baller. You were being pushed along. That's correct.

What? I'm like desperately trying. I needed to get my British out of the way first so that I could apologize for him getting it wrong. I'm so sorry that you seem to be mistaken. Allow me to say my work. But even within that, there's just so, there's a reflex response in this country. Not always, though. So my dad served in Vietnam.

They didn't get that. Most of my dad's generation that served in the military, they'd be the last person to tell you that they actually did. His experiences were completely different than the, yeah, yeah, than the modern era veteran. How do you think he would change in the UK, though? like let's transport 9-11. Do you guys have Twin Tower? Are you guys allowed to build that high? Are you capable of it?

I think we're capable of it. I mean, look, Christopher Wren. I thought five stories was the maximum. Christopher Wren was, dude, we had the 7-7. We had the 7-7 bombings. So, let's say it was something, okay, well, for whatever the analogy would be, if 9-11 had occurred in the UK, and the UK had responded in the way that the U.S. had an Afghanistan already,

I was taken to, in fact, differences in size and all that. Do you think it would have changed the mentality, though, of the citizens in the UK and how they viewed it? Perhaps. I mean, look, are you saying to me that the turning point around how the military was interpreted and the level of warmth towards people who were veterans was 2001?

I don't know if that was the, I don't know, I can't claim causality, the correlation certainly exists. That seems to be a prior to then, not quite so revered, after then, pretty revered. But okay, so maybe it's just recency bias for me talking that what I know from my memory of how people respond to American veterans is that. It's thank you for your service, special dispensation, a variety of different days and parades and all sorts of other stuff with rainbow flags. And then you get to now where I don't know if the same thing is quite so true. I feel like there's a lack, there's a dearth of.

Pendulums always swing. And so maybe it's going back to what is more typical. Perhaps that was the aberration. Perhaps that was the anomaly, the last 30 years or so, 20 years. Perhaps that was what was strange. I would say 20 years is the anomaly. And honestly, I think the, again, to go back to misconceptions. Sorry, World War II.

Yeah. Guys came home. That was a big part of. of the baby boom was off the back of dudes that were just revered by every single person who hadn't been to war and all of the other people that had as well. Yeah. I think revering a community above all others can also become incredibly dangerous as well. It becomes a manipulatable system. It becomes a system that you can gain. And then poor examples or expressions of theft, start that pendulum going back in the other direction. I think it's a naturally correcting thing.

But, yeah, I think it has more to do with the previous 20 years than anything else. That would be my guess. Yeah, I would just, you know, if there's the potential for boots on the ground being needed in the Middle East, which every day, it just, however low the likelihood was or is, that likelihood increases each day. I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It is pretty wild. How so? I thought that we were in the end the worst phase of politics and don't start any new ones, even though technically we're not at war, right? Of course, there's that lovely little caveat of how the authorized use of military force

has been completely bent by every president that has been in office since it was created. I don't know how well the checks and balances are currently working. I don't know the conscription thing, like registering for the draft. I mean, there's a difference between registering people for the draft and then, like, executing a draft. I would actually really like to see two years of mandatory service for young men and women. It would give people such a different context on the world around them, as opposed to just experiencing world through Instagram at that age. You'd go out and just, if you could leave where you were at and go to an area that was perhaps more impoverished or just get a different view of it. And serve something bigger than yourself for two years, I think it would help a lot.

But, I mean, I don't know. I get really wary when there's no definable end state, and that's on my own experience in the global war on terror. I mean, we accomplished our military objectives in Afghanistan, and this is people way more steeped in military knowledge and understanding than myself in about 90 days. We saved for 20 years. Our exit probably could have been better. We left a few things behind. Did you see the video of like the day after we left? They were flying a black hawk with a man hanging from his neck underneath the rope underneath it, literally the day after?

No. Oh yeah, not really. We left a lot of stuff behind. Iraq, you know, what's our definable end state? How long, sorry, how long ago was the official withdrawal? Five years? I think so, yeah, we have to look that one up. My point is, however long ago.

that was. I don't know. It's like you and a toxic X. You're just not able to stop going back. She's not good for me. She wasn't good for me for a long time. God. I've had a few cocktails, though.

Damn it, dude. I had to send the U.S. WhatsApp. You know what's wild to you is... Where was? August 30th, 2021. So not even five years. And here's what's wild.

We're talking about... The talking point now is that Iran has been our enemy for 47 years. which I'm not going to argue. Like death to America is a thing for a certain segment of the population and ideological belief there. Got it. Why are we choosing now over the 47 years?

Where was people, I mean, we had a robust, for people who don't know where Iran is, it sits in between Iraq and Afghanistan. We had Oreoed that fucker. They were the delicious, creamy center. This analogy is getting wild past of the U.S. military. Terry. But what we did is bailed when we had an immense amount of infrastructure there. And now we're going to go back. And I just, give me some, give me some metrics by which we're measuring or, like, what are we using as our metric here? We destroyed their entire anti-air system. But we just lost

two F-15s and two A-10s. We just nukeed four of our own A-8-6s in the C-130s that they flew in there on. I thought we had air superiority. We can't get, we can't let him get a nuclear weapon. Well, then what do we strike for last year because the President of the United States got up there and said we completely annihilated their ability to enrich uranium. But now we're saying we can't let him get a bomb. I'm like, were you not telling me the truth then? Are you not telling me the truth now? Or are you never telling me the truth? That's probably the better question for politicians. I just, it's such, it is such a horrific thing to ask of people to go do those things that I wish the people that made the decisions. To some degree, I wish they had more skin in the game. I wish they had to go with

something, you know, which it's never going to be the case, but... We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, maybe you even supplement. You feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside of their body, which is why I partnered with function. Function gives you access to more than 160 advanced lab tests spanning hormones, heart health, metabolic markers, inflammation, thyroid, nutrients, liver and kidney function.

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what's actually happening inside of your body. And right now, you can get $25 off, bringing it down to $340. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that additional $25 by going to the link in the description below. I heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What's that line about wars being chosen by old men so that young men go out and die? There's some, yeah, some pithy aphorism around that. But I mean, I think what's been fascinating to me is watching the commentariat and the supporters and the critiques, criticizes of both sides, like contort themselves into knots trying to work out what their position is on this.

people who didn't like Trump still don't like Trump and have more reason not to lots of people who did like Trump also now don't like Trump I don't know of anybody who has been converted over to the support and I think this is shown in the polls he's had over the last two years

check this out Jared I'm pretty sure over the last two years what's happened to Trump's approval numbers I think he's had the fastest decline in approval numbers maybe in American history historically when you tell people to go fuck themselves on Easter that may happen or what did he end the Easter post with

praise to Allah oh yeah yeah what the fuck was going on with that you're asking me what's going on with that a little bit of us to you as Trump's approval has followed a pretty clear pattern a modest bump then a steady decline now persistently low and polarised

46% approval and 43% disapproval in January 2020 which is higher than 2017 team. Keep going down. Recent polling shows 55 to 60%. So a net negative approval of 14 to 20 points. Maybe that's not as low as I might have thought. But I mean, still not great. But that's a big drop. And what was the fucking, I was in Australia for this. I kind of saw it third hand. Why did you say the LR thing? I love that you're asking me for an export to that. You psychoanalyzed Donald Trump for me for a second?

Oh, yeah, good, there you go. Psychoanalysis. I have a theory about why Donald, hey, look. Oh, is it glass this time? Yeah, yeah, yeah, put these on. And now that you've got... Okay, so why did Donald Trump say praise to Allah? Because we elected a TV star to do the president in the United States.

I'm going to have to condition myself to use this. Yeah, well, I don't know what the fuck is what you can say the current U.S. administration's plan is. I don't know if they have one. And I think that might be the scariest thing. I people get so wrapped around the color of their team's jersey and I just I want whatever administration is in office to do the best they possibly can so that we all can benefit from that and I don't know where it leads us when people forget that the goal should be like hey like thriving of this country but they'll choose alignment of their colored jersey over but to the exclusion and I don't understand that I don't know why it got that. way. I also don't know how to get out of it either. They'd rather their side win but the country lose. I don't know if they would verbalize that, but their actions seem to be in line with that.

And I don't, that's not great. It really does. At the moment, dude, it really does seem just like, I don't know, own goal after own goal. And then even inside of the Republican Party, like the whole thing that J.D. Vance ran on was America first. Like the whole, his whole philosophy was there. The next Republican candidate for president is you have a very interesting character. trying to fucking unwind this? Well, they're going to have to run at a time

while he's still president and answer for a lot of the policies. You mean throwing him under the bus? I don't think they'll be able to because I think he would cut his own nose off despite his face when it came that. I think... And not support them? I think so.

So you've got to walk this tight rope of... And how do you do that? Well, this was the issue that Kamala had, right? Where she was being asked... Putting it down to a single issue or... To throwing... That's right. She was being asked.

to under the bus Biden while still being his VP. Yeah. And that was something that she struggled with. I mean, something I thought about, you know, did the Republicans win the last elections or did the Democrats fuck it up so much? You know, like, hey, we're not even to let you choose which candidate you're going to vote for all because of all the money we would have to get back and not be able to fundraise with. So, yeah, we're going to strip away your choice and like, this is the person you got. Get on Team Blue. Like, what?

What? Yeah. What do you think about the, um, the future of mercenary organizations of sort of guns for hire, increasingly I'm seeing. It depends on who you ask. Some people are saying it's the way forward. Usually those people own those companies, but that's a tough one. I don't think you should be able to rent the American flight. I think it should be issued on your uniform and that's it.

If you want to do things, if the military, not capable of doing the things that you're filling those gaps with, then do me a favor and restructure the military and develop those capabilities instead of outsourcing it, because there are some ways to cut corners outsourcing it and paint outside of the lines that the military isn't supposed to be able to do. And I think that's a dangerous thing. I think if the military is inserted the rule and isn't capable of doing it, then let's solve that problem. because you're using this buttress performance enhance thing to compensate. Yeah, it's, and there's also risk in that too.

I mean, the Iranian pilot as an example, dude, we nukes some assets to go get that guy, which by the way, people complain about the price of that. But to go back to like being issued in a flag on your uniform and being asked to do exceptional things, it kind of helps to know that if shit goes sideways, like the chariot will be lit on fire it might not be pointed in the right direction. Like you might see you go off a cliff, but like, we're going to come do something. Send another one. Totally.

Send more chariots until we get you. It's, that doesn't exist in the contracting world. I mean, if you're out there and you're doing a contract and, you know, a kinetic contract in an environment that is maybe less newsworthy, but you're still, and there is no, like, red button, like, hey, send everybody. So there's a lot of risk involved in that as well, too. That's interesting. I didn't know that.

How could there be? I mean, the C-Star combat search and rescue response, that was all military base, right? I thought that there would be something that was a part of that ecosystem inside of it. I suppose it's much closer to a market. It's just a capitalist. Correct. Yeah, I mean, they're talking probably minimum manning at times. You know what I mean?

How many bodies do we need to be able to do this? What can we charge? They're not going to have, like the assets that we, no pun intended, metaphorically and literally burn to the ground. those organizations don't have a stable at those things to be able to do that. So, yeah, it's, I don't like the idea of outsourcing military type roles, specifically when the underlying motivation behind it is to skirt rules that prohibit military behaviors and activities. What are those sorts of rules? Rules of engagement.

meddling in affairs that the U.S. military is not supposed to be meddling in. Because it would cross some kind of diplomatic or legislative. Yep. Right. I don't think we should be doing that stuff. I think they get real murky, real fast. I'm not saying there's not a role for private military contractors, PMCs, which are most of those organizations. I don't think outsourcing war is a good idea.

But it suddenly opens up the problem of who's got the biggest bank balance and who can continue who is going to pay the most. Yeah. And if allegiance is basically to whoever's got the biggest paycheck. That's a problem. I don't know much without Bitcoin, but there's a lot of people out there with a lot of Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't we have our own private military contract? That would be nice.

Yeah. People quit when they focus on how far they have to go. Yeah. Where'd you lend that? So interestingly enough, going back as an instructor, I was there for 18 months. I did not want to go back. It was global war on terror.

That's a sure duty command, non-deployable, meaning regardless of what's going on, your job is to be an instructor, which if you are in a profession of arms and arms are being used in your profession, you're probably going to want to be over there, not at a schoolhouse, wipe the noses and asses, right? We didn't actually do that.

We let them do that for themselves because they're adults. but it ended up being the most rewarding 18 months of my entire career. I look back on it and I learned a lot about myself and it gave me an incredible understanding of the community and I realized it was like the world's best laboratory on why people quit. Like all of this, there have been so many millions of dollars and I don't have an exact, I'm going to say it's safe to say millions of dollars had been spent trying to figure out who makes it through seal training. Psychological assessments, looking at your sporting background.

Did you come from a nuclear family, a broken home? Where'd you come from socioeconomic status? All of these things. Pre-training programs that existed for a couple of years. The attrition rate just hums right along. All of this stuff, it might have bumped at a percentage point. For people who don't know, the attrition rate in the summer months is about 75%, so three out of four students aren't going to make it. Winter months, a little bit colder, so more exposure to the elements, 80, maybe sometimes 90% attrition rate, which is... You did winter, right? Winter Hell Week, yes.

For sure. My class was the last hard budge class that there ever was. Documented. It's written somewhere probably in my handwriting, but... The winter is just... It's just colder, and the cold sucks more. As a student, when you're going through, you don't get a chance to talk to the guy who is next to you who quits,

because they're gone. and your training day continues. And especially in like hell week, if that's a five-day evolution starting on Sunday and ending on Friday, if they're gone, most of the quitting occurs between Sunday and about Tuesday morning.

They're already moved out of the bear. Like you'll probably never see them again. So as a student, you're just like front-site focus. As an instructor, they're there for a couple of weeks. They have to process out. They get put over in a different birthing place.

A lot of times they have medical issues that they're working their way through. and you are around young men who probably a week before you have a conversation with them would have told you that it is their singular goal and focus in life and that there's nothing that you could have done to make them quit and that they were going to be there on a graduation day and that this is the only goal that matters to them and then eight to nine out of ten of them quit and you can sit there and you can talk to them about why and I try to be very kind in talking with them because most of the people who have regret is the largest emotion

that just is kind of outpouring. It's, uh, they want to go back. It sucks. I've met students decades later are people who have quit buzz. I'm like, hey, man, I'm not trying to be dead, but I'm just curious because I have a theory. Like, how do you feel about that decision? Regret every single time. They wish they had been able to see it through because it leaves a really large question mark in their life going forward. So in spending time with the students, I would ask them, you know, well, why did you quit? And in that kind of fragile state, they were really honest with me. And they kept saying the same things. There was a couple categories and one of them was huge. The small one was like life happened. My dad died and I got to get the fuck out of

here. Like, dude, I wish you the absolute best. You know what I mean? Like that's not the data set that I'm looking for. Injury is another one. Can't control that because that wasn't necessarily a consensual choice. So boom, they're gone. Everybody else who rang the bell. why'd you quit and they would all say the same thing i couldn't be as cold as i was for as long as i thought i was going to be cold i would say well how who told you how long you were going to be cold for well nobody but i told myself i couldn't be cold for as long as i thought i was going to have to be we're tired or hungry or the culmination of all of those things or in physical pain or it was too hard.

What they are all expressing is a moment where they became overwhelmed by the situation that they were in. And they started looking at time, literally time. How they viewed time was the determining factor on the decision that they made. If they could only see where they were, like this is the startup Bud's first day, and this is graduation. on average 180 days. And the only thing that they can see is the gap between my two fingers. Dude, that's a lot. Especially on your first day, when you get your shit absolutely kicked in. And let's say you had a 3M stack of little notes on the first one. It said 180. And at the end of that day where you're barely able to walk back to the barracks, you rip that off. And it says, 179, how pumped are you? Not that pumped. So that's a person who became, They're creeping towards becoming overwhelmed.

Hell week, the same thing. Starts on a Sunday, ends on a Friday. But if all you can see is this gap and how far you are from your goal, you're getting into a really susceptible position and a really malleable position from an instructor's state. And that was literally like that's the secret sauce. This is the most important thing that I learned in my entire career. If you can identify that that is the main reason why people give up on their lifelong, goals you should be able to reverse engineer that so how do you do that you think

about everything other than that so instead of trying to get from here to here and only looking at that distance you slam these two together so there is a microscopic step that you can take and you only focus on that step and then the next one and the next one and you don't have to keep track of your steps because as long as you keep making forward motion this bridge will be gapped at some point in time the muscle that fails at buds is not below the neck it's between the ears. So they focus on that distance. They become overwhelmed when they make a decision that they'll regret for the rest of their life. So the key to that is to chunk your

goals into the most digestible piece that you possibly can, and they consistently put those one on top of another. Is there a difference between stress and overwhelm? Can somebody force you to be overwhelmed? Is a better question? I don't think so. You can't actually, and I would have some interesting conversation with this. You'd be like, well, instructor so-and-so made me quit. I'm like, standby, please. I have additional questions. What do you mean? Well, they made me quit.

I'm like, so they interlaced fingers, like the movie ghost where they were doing pottery, and they put your hand on the bell and rang the bell. They're like, no, no, no, man, that's not what I'm saying. But they were like in my face and they weren't going away because it told me they weren't going to go away. And I couldn't take it anymore. So I quit. Okay. And again, these are people in a fragile state.

so I'm not like trying to have an argument with him. But I would try to, you know, maybe reinforce a little bit like, listen, that instructor facilitated an environment for you where you became your own worst enemy. And you made that choice. And here's how I know that this works. As soon as I understood that concept that the view of time was the most dangerous thing for the student,

I gave up on all physical tools that I had, whether it was the ocean or the watch, or food or physical exertion, and I would just talk to students like you and I are talking right now. Like, dude, what's going on, man? It's like you're having a shitty day. This is only the first day of Hell Week.

And it was Be Like the Third, but they're already hallucinating and I had set my watch to the incorrect day in time. You've got to last it. How, you look like you're really cold? How long do you think you can be this cold? I'm on shift for the next 12 hours. I'm going to sit here with you for 12 hours.

I'm going to keep you in this water. for longer than you thought was even possible. And you could see it in their eyes. The students are like just, whatever, dude, I know the game. Fuck off. And so what they're chunking in that moment is just surviving the interaction with me. And I can recognize it to him, like, lame. Next.

Then you go to the other student and you start seeing the self-doubt and you just water the self-doubt. It was the single most effective tool to get people to quit training. Had nothing to do with anything in the physical world. So you can reverse engineer that. So by reminding them how much further they had to go. That's all I focused on is I tried to get them to focus on where they were, how much more work they had to do to get to their goal. It's not just going to be the next minute.

No, I try to get them to think of anything but that. The kid was thinking about the next one, like, Lane, get out of here, you're going to be fine. And as you're walking me, you're like, good job. You wouldn't say that, of course, but you don't think it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you outfox me. You saw the game that I was trying to play. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. That's, I mean, it's for clarity, for people who are hearing this, they're like, yes, I'm going to start doing this and everything in my life is going to be easy. No. It doesn't make anything easier. It makes it more digestible. Pain still hurts. Suffering still sucks. But little bites of suffering, focusing on that little bite and not letting yourself get overwhelmed to make an emotionally poor decision, that's going to make a huge trajectory distance in your life.

Yeah, the being paralyzed by. indecision thing is something that I've been pretty fascinated by. I know it's something that you are too. That line, many a wrong move was made by just standing still. It's the worst thing you can do. I wrote about that too. You get ambushed. Actually, the worst thing that you can do is just stay in place, which is a really hard one

because sometimes you find awesome rocks to hide behind. They're like, hey, dude, get over here. This thing stops bullets. And your body will be screaming at you. Stay behind this rock. Because it currently is stopping. It's ballistically. It's cover.

Cover is something that stops bullets. Concealment is something that hide you. Both work in hide and seek. Both do not work in a gunfight. Don't confuse the two. I've actually seen it happen. It's pretty gnarly. Mostly it was the enemy combatants

thinking that bushes were cover. It was not. And also I can see you because you keep peeking your head up. So like, dude, you suck at hide and seek. If you stay there, though, because you're scared, because you don't want to die. both of which legitimate emotions,

and your enemy starts to come around a corner, it's going to be where you die. Your indecision and inability to control the fear that you are experiencing and being shot at and somebody trying to kill you is scary. It's another one of those misconceptions people have, that there's this fearless nature of people in that community that is not my experience.

I actually don't want to work with somebody who is fearless because that either means you're not paying attention or you're a sociopath or a psychopath, about neither which are a good model for that world. So if you just stay there because you're scared and your enemy starts to maneuver on you, it's going to be where they find you. It's actually where we're going to be there, you're going to find your dead body. What you actually have to do is even knowing that you could potentially absorb risk, you could get hurt, you have to move and you have to switch that on the people that initiated the ambush on you. The fastest way to get

out of an ambush is to either, depending on the type, there's linear ones that look like lines or elves oftentimes is to punch through it or to flank. But that requires movement. And that's the same thing as that indecision, right? If you're paralyzed by indecision, you're not going to do anything and the world is going to continue to shift around you and then you're even farther behind the eight ball. I'd rather have to see people take, maybe even take a step in the wrong direction, but get some momentum going. Obviously, correct for your mistake as quick as seemingly possible. But dude, get the wheels run it. Like, get the wheels spinning on the road. What are the other traits that matter in life or death situations that people overestimate or underestimate.

Emotional control, as ridiculous as that is to say because it is an emotionally scary event, you have to be able to detach your emotions from your decision-making process. You have to be able to function. And that is what the test I administered in second phase was a diving test. And it was 20 minutes long, you're tying a bunch of knots in the student's gear. And they have to get the knots out in an appropriate procedure. If you deviate from procedure, you fail. We'll pull you out of the water.

You get four attempts at the test. So even if you do the knots, but you do them in the wrong way. You have, at a broad level, the mouthpiece that you were breathing out of, if it is in your mouth and I leave it in your mouth as I tie a knot, you have to start from the mouthpiece and work your way back. If I rip it out and tie a knot, you have to start all the way from your manifold and trace it up. And some people will just reach up and put the mouthpiece in their mouth. Like, dude, it's like fail right there. Yeah. but they can't breathe.

And I know that because I can see the inhale and exhale. And if you want to be a dick instructor, you wait to all the bubbles come out and go like, my mouthpiece, right? If you don't want to be a dick instructor and you want to teach the students, you just tap them on the mouthpiece because it's a one-to-one ratio. This is a one-to-one test. Tap them on the mouthpiece. Let them get a big breath.

And then I take the mouthpiece and I tie knots. And there's a variety of different ways that you can do it. And I'm sitting there as an instructor just floating in a wetsuit with a mask and snorkel on. And you start see it. they start like, like it's insane. And it's like, cool, I've been there. I know it sucks. Are you going to follow procedure?

And at the end of that week, if they pass that test, you sit them down. You know, like, for the love of God, please do not go recreational scuba diving. Because you guys don't know a fucking thing about it. This test had absolutely nothing to do with diving and everything to do with stress management and following procedure, regardless of what's going on in the world around you. What's drown proof? Drownproof is an evolution that does not make you drownproof at all. Plenty of seals unfortunately have drowned. You get introduced to that in first phase.

The final evolution, which is the picture on the front cover, is where you have your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together. And I believe this is 30 years in the rearview mirror. You bob up and down for an hour. You then have to transit the pool all the way to the end and then back after now. after that, which if this is one of the most relaxing, hold on, hold on, what I'm about to say is not a recommendation for people to do in their own personal pool. What I'm saying is as a student, you can only hear them yelling at you as your head is above water. So if you're comfortable,

if you're comfortable in the water, I get, if I stay down here, I can't hear Andy shouting at me. It's, yeah, well, I had a bullhorn. So it's like talking at a normal voice with an extremely high decibel level. Yep. Which, talking to somebody from six inches from their face with a bullhorn, let me just tell you. It's pretty fun. What are you thinking about right now? They're like, oh, my God. Again, generational trauma, it has to be passed downhill because instructors did that to me. It is for an hour, I play a water pole in high school. So for me, I was comfortable in the water. And although on the picture on the book, their hands are tied, their feet are tight, but this is also a one-to-one ratio.

Half the class is watching the students in the water, and there are instructors in the water for safety. So you try not to kill Pindor. We do our absolute best, even though I will say it is essential people diet trading from time to time. And we can touch them that if you want to after I describe this. But the first time they do this, their feet aren't tied together and they're just holding their fingers behind their back. It's a crawl, walk, run approach. Then we'll use like some Velcro right, or maybe just do the legs and then the hands. If you bob up and down, it's honestly, you bounce out the bottom, take a deep breath, and you slowly exhale to become negatively buoyant and you bounce.

It's really not that bad. The swimming isn't that bad either. Then you get back and they throw a mask into the water. And you have to go down, bite it with your teeth, come up and then bob with it for a bunch of times. And then the test actually ends. Because that limits the ability for you to breathe or it's just a fucking awkward thing to do? I feel like it's the latter. I have no explanation as to why. And I think there's honestly a somersault in there somewhere too. This is scientifically this isn't justified at all. No, it's not at all. Again, this is just a rolling rock of generational trauma. It's going downhill. And so that is. drownproofing. The concept being though, like before thriving, let's learn how to survive. It's about control and comfort to the best of your ability in an environment that you can't control

and probably shouldn't be comfortable in if you have your feet tied together and your hands tied behind your back. Some people are like, oh man, this is so like, if you guys are taking a hostage on a boat, you can just go do like a dolphin off the side and pour Pouss out and like, uh, no, that's not what that's for at all. So it's so great. And again, I didn't, I didn't understand a lot of this as a student. This was just the evolution of the day. Like, okay, cool, let's go through it. Let's get it done.

One of the evolutions of a 50 meter underwater swim. Like, why? Why do we do this? Because it freaks people out. And that's exactly why we do. Do you really need to be able to do a 50 meter underwater swim? I don't think so. I hope not.

That would suck. I don't want to do one. But you do it in training because it scares the shit out of the students. And again, it's a one-to-one. Instructors are doing the best they can to make you nervous beforehand. How are they doing that? We have many tricks and tools. Well, here is it 2026?

Okay, statute of limitations that's probably expired on this. So we would often grab the foreign students first that were augmenting trading. They were paid to be there by their host country and we couldn't really get rid of them anyway. And so like the diving test. So the 50 meter underwater swim is a great example. But the diving test or even the tread is even better. We have scuba tanks on your back. You have your fins on, a weight belt on,

and you have to tread water to the wrist or about where the watch would be with your hands out for five minutes. Five or six students are going in a time. Everybody else is on the pool deck, but their back is to the pool. So you can only hear it. So if you were to grab a subpart performer, And they were to lose their shit.

And everybody else had to hear that, wondering what in the absolute fuck was happening, knowing that they have to go next, thinking that they were prepared, sounding like, and then somebody sounds like they're just like talking to a dinosaur and then is being pulled unconscious out of the water and being slapped back to life by a dude with seven years of medical school. That's one way. the noises you could just see people just like oh god and you're like god i love my job it just it warms your soul like a candle that starts a forest fire you know uh-huh uh-huh and what about the underwater swim same thing just people struggle with that they make good noises

when they come out well only when they pass out of all the evolutions in training that is the only one i'm aware of that if you pass out so you jump into the water front somers Swind. Front somersault. I don't know. I don't know. Well, it's just, it's weird. It interrupts because anybody could like run and jump and dive and carry the momentum, right? And it like screws with your ability to hold your breath, like just enough, right? Like, we know you can do this, but can you do it the way we ask you to do it for no reason other than we're asking you to do it?

So you jump in front somersault. The smart students dive down to the bottom of the pool because it compresses your lung a little bit more. It makes it easier to hold your breath than maybe six inches above the surface. or below the surface. You get the other side, you touch the other side, you have to do another fucking front flip. And I think this, just so you can't push off, actually, now that I think about it,

you start coming back. This is also a one-to-one instructor ratio. So anytime it's one-to-one, it's considered more high risk. This is the only evolution that I'm aware of that as you are, if you can stay down there and do like this last Herculean breaststroke

in your four momentum, your head touches the wall. As you are unconscious, we will pull you out and you go to the pass line. But the noises that students make when they come out of the water, I don't know how to describe it. And it's like a drunk elephant trumpeting or a blue whale surfacing.

Is you trying to get water out of them? No, because they're just unconscious. They're only unconscious for a few seconds. Right. But they're just like, whoa. And meanwhile, all the other students are just like, oh, my God. It's wild. And yeah, because people are like, oh, man, they make you hold your breath in training

until you pass out, right? Like, no, actually in every evolution in the water, if you pass out, you're going to fail for not following procedure. Because there's a hand signal you can put out if you need to come down and get you. But does that not mean you fail too? It means you fail. So if you get to that point, it means you either didn't follow procedure or you didn't control your, you know what I mean? Like something went awry and that's why you don't get just one and done. You get four attempts at the test. Most people pass it on their third attempt, the dieting test that I administer. Oh, okay.

Yeah. You get two attempts on one day and two attempts on the next day. Right. With a really probably great night's sleep. That's fucking rough that you have to know that you've got to go back and do it again.

As somebody who passed on their third try, you don't sleep very much. It sucks. And then that night, I slept way better. But to go back to chunking, the reason I failed the first two times, the first night I remember 30 years ago,

I remember there's a knot where your head can get turned to the side and it's just an exhalation, not, meaning you can still inhale and get air, but your head is crimped to the side and you can't blow. It's a regulator much like Jacques Cousteau would die with. It's two rubber hoses that come to a bit, essentially. So your head is yank to the left and all you have to do is breathe out of your nose. But down there, you're like freaking out because this happens within 30 seconds of starting and a little bit of water is coming into your mouthpiece too because your head is to the back. And I remember the first time that happened to me, I started thinking about the exact thing I was telling myself,

I can't do this for 20 minutes. All I started thinking about was the gap in between the two. Same thing on the second test. By the time I got in the third one, the only thing I was thinking about was the problem that was introduced at that time, which again was the head yanked to the left. I'm like, whatever, no problem. Just went back to crawling, meaning as the student, you accept the malfunction. It's not a critical malfunction. You're ready to continue with the test. I'm like, why didn't I just do this first. That's the only thing I changed was I was like, one problem at a time, we're going to work it. And that's the only thing that exists in my life is that one problem at a time.

Why is it important to have a proper attrition rate for people to actually die? Because the job is very dangerous. And I don't want people to die. But if nobody ever died in training, you are not training hard enough. The training has to be a reverse engineering, downstream, real world. requirements of the job that you are expected to do, and it is a dangerous job. You cannot prepare for that by avoiding danger and training. Because if no one ever died, there wouldn't be anything on the line, ultimately. There wouldn't be a sufficient risk for the guys to know that this is, you wouldn't be

pushing it hard enough. There's a reason to fear it. Yeah, you wouldn't be pushing hard enough. What's the most common way that people die, drowner? That is not uncommon. Well, the last one I think in the pool was somebody who vomited and then aspirated it while they were underwater. The last soon-to-die training was post-Hell Week. And I don't remember the exact medical term, but it was fluid into the lungs. And he made it to the hospital, but still expired. You are destroyed at the end of Hell Week. It's the only week afterwards were they letting walk in tennis shoes.

I mean, you're wearing lifejack. Like, you are... Sand is abrasive for people who didn't know this. Imagine just basically wearing sandpaper for a week because you're wet and sandy the entire time. It does things to the body. And yeah, you're just absolutely destroyed. And most people are nursing and injury anyway throughout training.

But yeah, that won't get you. What role do you think hot shit plays in people's lives? I'm at a place now as I'm getting closer to 50 than 40 that I actually think the pursuit of an easy life is a mistake. I think that the grind. is actually what life is all about. It's not a matter of whether you're going to have a hard life or an easy life. It's an ability, your ability to determine how well that you can suffer along the way and trying to enjoy the journey. Okay. So as somebody that has either endured or doled out

quite a bit of suffering, how do people deal with suffering more effectively? First, by acknowledging that sometimes the answer is you are going to suffer instead of looking for a way to avoid it altogether. You know, you don't have to nerf all the corners on tables. Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe it's okay to ban your knee every once in a while in the middle of the night. So I think it actually starts with accepting that if you really want to accomplish something in your life, there's no hack to hard work. I think you should hack as many, like for efficiencies. Like, hack your Gmail inbox, but totally, go to town. Hack your business systems. There's no, there is no substitute for hard work. Do you have anything in your life that was truly

given to you that you didn't work for at all, but you accept, yeah, invalid, right. And then I look at the things that I worked the hardest for and the goals that I set where I'm like, am I out of my mind? Like, can I actually do this? That's the stuff that I value the most. And then I'm trying to, trying to, emphasis on this, learn how to enjoy that journey more because it's harder. And enjoying hard things is, it's difficult. What gets in the way of enjoying it? Usually just myself. You know, my biggest enemy throughout my entire life has been myself. You know, waking up knowing your day is going to be difficult or more difficult or choosing to have it be more difficult to do the hard work up front.

So maybe you can enjoy an easier day later in the week. It's not, you know, it's challenging. I think that's where people struggle. That's where I struggle. It's strange to think that as you get older, you try to make things hard and not easier. Yeah, my goal in life for sure up until, let's say, exceptionally recently was, Let's make things as easy as possible. Everybody's searching for that.

And then you just, you know, you realize that all the stuff that you got easy just doesn't matter. It's the stuff that sucks, especially if you could share that with your friends. That's the biggest thing I would say I probably miss about the community is that we would do the dumbest, most painful shit ever and laugh about it while we were doing it. Because you were doing it with somebody else. Yeah, totally. It would suck by yourself. I mean, you could do it, but watching somebody else suffer with you and finding, joy in that, yeah.

If you could take one lesson from the SEAL teams and force every young man to learn it, what would it be? Hmm. One lesson. Be cautious and make sure you know what you're willing to die for, because not everything's worth it. Same all. Many times in my life, the things that I thought were the most important ended up being inconsequential

because I didn't put enough thought or time and effort into understanding why I wanted to do them. and killing yourself from sacrificing everything in your life and trying to achieve that, you might get it at the end of the day and be the most hollow shell of a human being non-demand. And how do you do that assessment without having to go through it? I think you have to slow down a little bit. We seem to be in a world where speed is one of the most important metrics. And I think that's important at times, but do all decisions have to be made in a moment's notice?

But for me, it's one of the things I really, like, if your house is on fire, get the fuck out of your house, right? If your house isn't on fire and you have time to make a decision, think about the decision, think about your available options and make the most educated one at the time. And then on that journey, keep asking yourself, is this, you know what I mean, like reinforcing it along the way as opposed to just one decision and then your full back dive straight ahead. I don't think you can get to that point that without making sense. some mistakes on your route. People always ask me, what would you say to your younger self? The truly honest answer is buy Bitcoin, you dip shit. Yes. Buy Bitcoin and do 531. That's it. But here's the problem, though. If I was 18 and my 48 year old self went back, I'd be like,

shut up, dude. I got this figured out. All right, granddad, sit down. Yeah, totally. I'm pretty, pretty sure. I'd like to invest in new cars. I like to buy high and sell low. It's not a big deal. It's a new investment strategy. Yeah, I wouldn't have listened to myself, but I also probably would not remove the mistakes. I wouldn't remove some key mistakes in my life just to make sure that I learned the lesson from them. I would remove some for sure because they were uneaseless pain and suffering and don't worry. I mean, they were repeats of mistakes that I was already making, yeah.

but you have to have those mistakes. The fascinating thing about the question, what would you tell your younger self, what advice would you give you your younger self? If you answer that, it is almost always the exact advice that you need to hear right now. In the same way that you've got the same feat

that you did 30 years ago, you have the same patterns, the same fears, the same coping mechanisms, the same responses when things become stressful or overwhelming. And that means that you're going to be driven by those unconscious, unalchemized trends. Those are going to be the things.

They're going to be the shit that you dealt with when you were 18 and you got cut from the baseball team or the way that your first breakup felt and how you coped with it after that. For the most part, those are going to be the dynamics that are going to drive the rest of your life too. So when you think about, so for me, it would be fearless. Like just stop fucking fearing so much.

What do you fear the most? Not doing it right, not getting it. right. What do you use as your yardstick for that though? It totally superfluous, ethereal, fucking fluffy big cloud of like something going wrong. Things will go wrong and you'll be in the wrong and something will be taken away from you. I don't know what. I don't know by who. But not doing it right, not getting it right, not being enough. I don't know who for or why. All that's going to happen though. Of course. So isn't the juice then in just preparing yourself for that and working your way through it. And then overcoming it. Yeah, of course, which I've done

throughout my entire life. But the... I'll be the judge of that, sir. Yeah, yeah. Interesting, we have a pool and a bunch of knots for you to get stuck into after bit. You know, all of the things, everybody that's listening, whatever the challenges that you thought was going to destroy you, by virtue of the fact that you're listening to this, it hasn't. Can I add one thing to that too? And this is one thing that I wish... I know people hear this, but they don't believe me. Whatever it is you think you're going through, please. Please do not convince yourself that you are the only one struggling with it. My God.

If COVID taught us anything that it should be that isolation or even perceived isolation is one of the most damaging things to the human brain, we are, every person I've ever met in my life is more defined by their similarities than by their differences. And it is so unfortunate, again, statistically, the world that I come from has a much higher suicide rate than many other. occupational fields. And for those that have chosen to leave things behind, oftentimes, there are deep sentiments of being isolated and alone in feeling like they were dealing with something that nobody else would or was or that nobody else would understand. And it's not true. You can't, nobody knows what's coming on behind your eyes, right? Like, I guarantee you and I are probably spend our mental bandwidth worrying about the vast majority of the same shit.

But in my mind, I'd be like, cut down the nails. They're like, who could I possibly talk to about this? Because I'm the only one on earth dealing with this. And the reality is almost everybody is. So we lie to ourselves, you isolate, you don't say anything, and it ends up getting worse. And it's interesting you said, I don't think that I can do the thing that I need to do for as long as is going to be required of me. And that's not too dissimilar to one of the most common thoughts that people have before taking their own lives, which is that the world would be better off without me. Or I can't take this anymore.

The people around me will be better off without me and I can't continue. Yeah. And it's the combination of those two things. It's the isolation that's in there too. The wonderful line, the feeling of being alone is one of the most dangerous lies we tell ourselves. I have never asked for help and not received it. And I have been like in tears overwhelmed with a number of people who saw that I needed help, but didn't say anything because they were waiting for me to ask.

Well, this is a curse of being competent. The sort of people that listen to this show and read books like yours, they're the kinds of people who, usually in their friend group, are the ones that have got it figured out. You know, they're the ones that are working on their diet, they're thinking about their sleep pattern that are reading and doing meditation. They're everything maxing. Like Thor.

He just genetics maxed. And what that means is that if you're the friend that always seems like you've got your life sorted, people tend to not want to come to your aid because, oh, fuck. Like, you know, Andy's the guy that I go to. Like, who am I? Who am I to help him? Like, he's good assorted. Like, it's not on me.

Like, it's going to be embarrassing. It's going to be whatever. And it's a weird inversion of things that are going to. of there are lots of ways that competence is great, but this is one of the ways where competence can hold you back. And, yeah, I think it's... It goes back to the misconceptions about special operations. Defined by their competence,

a country calls upon that community to solve problems when they can't figure out another solution. And by the way, they're not looking for a negative result. They're looking for success. I wrote this essay. This came to me. me when you were talking about the fact that you stayed in a marriage for longer than you should have done and that you'd used a skill that had got you a lot of accolade in your military career,

but it had damaged you when it came to your own relationship. The curse of psychological strength, everyone has a limit, an end to the amount of discomfort that they can cope with. This is obvious physically, some people can lift more and run further than others, but how much emotional pain, upset or disappointment a person can endure is subtler and harder to detect. It's not apparent in the size of someone's arms but the capacity of their nervous system. It's not a weight that you can see on squat rack. It's their ability to carry a heavy emotional load. This psychological strength can be a good thing.

We're able to handle more than most. You don't bulk at pain. You keep pushing through regardless of how you feel. But too much strength can be a weakness. High performers are particularly vulnerable to this trap. Psychological strength is rewarded almost everywhere. In the gym, it's discipline, in business, it's grit. in public its composure.

You become a person who can handle it, who doesn't complain, who pushes through when others would quit. Your ability to ignore how you feel and keep moving forward and admiration builds your career and creates momentum. But what you are praised for in public, you often pay for in private. Relationships don't reward endurance.

They require attunement. If your default strategy in life is to absorb discomfort and override warning signs, you will do exactly that when someone repeatedly hurts you. You'll rationalize. it, reframe it, decide it's your job to make it work. And the stronger you are, the longer you can stay. What looks like strength from the outside becomes self-abandonment on the inside.

You've trained yourself to believe that struggle is noble and difficulty is meaningful, so when love feels destabilizing, it doesn't register as a warning, it feels like a challenge. And challenges are your thing. But a relationship isn't a marathon to be endured, it's a place to feel safe. The qualities that make you formidable in the arena can quietly make you miserable in your living room. Let's say that you're dating and feel like a side character in your own relationship. You put them first and they put you sixth. The rupture is regular and the repair is absent. Lower resilience, less stubborn people, would have broken long ago and said, I'm out. But not you, you're the jocco-willing of psychological suffering. Forget carrying the boats.

you'll carry the whole fleet forever. In these situations, you're faced with a much tougher problem. Not how much can you tolerate, but how much do you want to tolerate? Perhaps this is what you had to do as a child. If your needs weren't noticed, your sadness was ignored and your feelings didn't matter, then you become accustomed to pushing through disconnection in order to make those relationships function. If child you learns, I need to work hard to be loved,

then adult you believes if I am not loved. I just need to work harder. You've achieved 10,000 hours of ignoring your own needs. You can't tell people how you feel without first worrying about how it'll make them feel. You unconsciously believe that suffering is the price of connection and that silent subjugation is noble. You basically think I should be able to tolerate the intolerable in order to make this work. What inspired you to do you right then? Thinking about some of the ways that I'd denied myself prioritization.

that I'd pushed through discomfort because I could, because almost everything that was valuable in life had come on the other side of working hard and going through difficulty. So there's just this implicit belief that, well, if something's hard, that must mean that there's something valuable on the other side of it.

But there is such a thing as kind of pointless suffering. Yeah. It made me think about, yeah, the curse of psychological strength Let me think about what you were saying. It sounded very self-reflective as you were writing it. Massively. I could have easily, you have a better grasp on the English language than I do probably

because you guys, and you guys don't use it properly, but you guys might have. Kind of embedded it. So yeah. No, that's, say more. It's good, man. I can hear a startling amount of myself. Yeah. In that.

It's tough. Yeah. What people see from the outside isn't always what. what's going on on the incident. I like that line, you know, what you are praised for in public, you pay for in private. And it's one of the reasons why,

when you look at anybody that's a high performer or somebody that's in the seals or, you know, whatever, anybody that's got unusual results typically has unusual inputs and an unusual environment internally too. You know, normal people get normal results. Weird people get weird results.

And the most successful popular in the world, your first response shouldn't necessarily be envy. A lot of the time it should be pity. Like what happened to you that caused you to do that to yourself? Or at what cost? Yeah. What did you have to go through in order to get there? Man, that message is so not put out there. That be careful what you wish for and, you know, envy may not be the first thing that you cross your mind when you see somebody who has something you want. It's the, it's the question that I've been most fascinated by on the show for probably about five years now.

Unfortunately, it's an anti-meam. If you tell people that the view from the top of the mountain that they are still climbing maybe might not be worth the rest of the journey, it feels to them like you're sucking the oxygen out of the fuel tank. Because it is, it is,

fuck your feelings just work harder, you will get there and glory is waiting for you. The total addressable market for that is 99.999% of people. the people who get there or got close to the top and said, I think this is a false peak, I don't think that what's up there is going to be worth it, or they got there and said, no, there's a very small number of people who got there and went,

ah, it's two mountains. That's the problem, as opposed to this entire game is kind of rigged against me and I actually need to look deeper. I'm not going to fill an internal void with external accolades, etc., etc., etc. It's an anti-meam. It's an anti-meam,

And it is always going to lose to a much more simplistic. No, no, no, it's just more. The answer is more. You should push for more. Yeah. Well, especially in a society that celebrates more. It's radical to say that you're satisfied. The most radical thing that you can do in a meritocracy that's capitalist is say,

I'm good. It's to be in Montana as opposed to downtown New York City. It's to, I kind of like my life. It's kind of enough for me. and uh yeah dude it's it's it's fucking fascinating and what's more fascinating to me is how many guys have come out of special operations and uh turned their hand there's still always the fucking glint in your guys's eyes the little yeah that one what do you mean the tell me more i'm scared you're going to pin me down after we finish up which actually is my request um

it's the the turn to fuck like I really did a lot physically kind of in these three dimensions and then you know this is you trying to turn that mirror around I guess on yourself and then then start to show it to other people too the most common thing people say to me when they find out about my background they'll say first off dude you must be crazy so I skip that part of it But they'll say those experiences must have been, like, unbelievable. And the reality is they were. And they are statistically out of reach for almost everybody. But if I end up doing nothing with that and only it only impacts my life and I'm on my deathbed, I will regret not doing something with that.

And I think that there is a way to take those experiences. and package them in a way that can help people. Because at this point in my life, all I really actually want to do is make the world a little bit better than it was when I came into it. Like, that's literally, funny's cool. I like nice things as well too, but I'm also to point in my life like, okay, I get it.

Like, I might want the nice thing, but there's no actual happiness from the nice thing. Teaching somebody something or giving them a tool that they can use to just attack a problem in their life, that's fucking awesome. and it is so much more rewarding than a thing that you write a check for. And that's what I'm trying to do with that is to take experiences and tools and lessons that people think they don't have access to. And I will be honest with this too.

You can learn or be exposed to those lessons in organized sports. It's not like the military. There's no unique creations inside of the military. Yeah, a lot of things are reinforced to a higher degree because the consequences of the environment can get pretty gnarly pretty quick. but if things work in that pressure cooker environment, you're telling me that they're not going to work in your personal and professional life. It'll help you just crush whatever it is that you're trying to do.

And that's, I resisted writing something for many years. One, because I talk so much shit about other guys who were seals that wrote books and now well deserved and deserving of the other people who are talking shit on me. But I just, I want to try to take those, to create tools, to get people a foundation and a framework to throw it at whatever it is is going on in their life so that they can maybe suffer better.

I don't know, that's a great way to put it, but just to attack whatever it is is going on in their life. Suffer better is a wonderful tagline, dude. If the world went completely sideways from a zombie virus outbreak and we had to put together a militia to save the human race, Andy Stunf would be my top draft pick. Can you imagine how retarded the rest of the militia would be? Oh, exceptionally.

you're the first guy the tip of the spear well the base of the shaft product Andy you're a fucking legend dude I appreciate the hell of you congratulations on this it was awesome

worked real hard on it yeah it's uh I don't know if you get emails like this I'm sure you do it because the internet's a weird place right we hit upload and I don't know where anything goes your platform is massive and I could not be more

proud for what you built. Thank you. But I bet you get emails from people that you'll never meet and they say, you know what? Something I heard you say or a guest say changed the course and trajectory of my life. And that is, I don't, I save those emails. I have a folder, about a dozen people have reached out and said they chose not to kill themselves because it's something they heard on the podcast. Books are measured by bestseller lists. Fuck all that. I want to hear about people who change the course of their life because it's something they got from a place that they never thought

that they would have access to. But pick this up and realized, holy shit, we are way more simpler. And I can use this, and I will use it. And you're still going to make mistakes. And I hope you do, because you need them. But it'll help you suffer better. Fuck yeah.

Dude, you're awesome. You're awesome. Congratulations. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. All right. Goodbye, everybody. Dude, it's fucking go.

So good. Unreal. Thanks a head, if you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page

without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful, and entertaining that I've ever found. Fiction and nonfiction, and there's real life stories, and there's a description about why I like it,

and there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's chriswillex.com slash books.