Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Jeff Struecker on the Importance of Being a Person of Your Word EP 212

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Today I talk to Jeff Struecker (@jeffstruecker) about the importance of being a person of your word. Jeff is a pastor, podcaster, author, and featured keynote speaker. He enlisted in the US Army at age 18 and served for almost 23 years before retiring with the rank of Major. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2017 and holds many decorations and recognitions for his military service, including the Silver Star from his service during Black Hawk Down. Jeff now leads the Unbeatable Army, the faithful followers of his top-rated podcast. Purchase Jeff's book Start Here: https://amzn.to/3t7Bvoq  (Amazon Link) Brought to you by Shopfy. Discover the number one eCommerce platform for all Businesses. Start, run + grow your business with Shopify®. Sign up for a FREE trial at SHOPIFY DOT COM SLASH “passionstruck”, What We Discuss with Jeff Struecker If you're looking for advice on achieving your goals, you need to listen to this episode of the Passion Struck Podcast. Jeff and John discuss the importance of being a person of your word and how it's critical for success in life. Jeff provides his perspectives from Black Hawk Down and the two discuss the importance of having a strong sense of moral conviction and how it can help you act in accordance with your commitments. Armed with this knowledge, you'll be able to take control of your life and achieve your dreams! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/jeff-struecker-being-a-person-of-your-word/  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/gzeDw3OqhEU  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Did you hear my interview with Robin Sharma, one of the top personal mastery and leadership coaches in the world and a multiple-time number-one New York Times best-selling author? Catch up with episode 209: Robin Sharma on Why Changing the World Starts by Changing Ourselves ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

Coming up next on the Passion Struct podcast. And I don't mean this as an exaggeration. I have told people for 30 years the toughest job in the military is serving as a private in the range of regimen. It's not getting into the unit that alone has an extremely high attrition rate, but the first year in that unit is brutal. And there's well over 100% turn over that first year because the leaders of that unit don't really And there's well over 100% turnover that first year because the leaders of that unit don't really know what they're getting until they start to put

into the test in that first year. Welcome to PassionStruck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener

questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 212 of PassionStruck, which was recently ranked as one of the top 50 most inspirational podcasts of 2022. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, had a live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for joining us.

Or you would just like to recommend it to a friend or family member. We now have episode starderpacks, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we put into convenient categories. Just go to either Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed my episodes from last week, I did two great interviews. One with Robin Sharma, who is one of the top personal mastery in leadership coaches in the world, as well as a multiple time, number one, New York Times best-selling author. I also had on Juliette Font, who is the author of a minute to thank. Please go check both those

episodes out in case she missed them. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your continued support, your ratings and reviews. They go such a long way of growing this community, improving our rankings, and the overall reach of this podcast. And I know our guests love it when they read reviews from our listeners. This week I am featuring a couple veterans on the show in honor of Veterans Day, which is coming up. I hope you take the time to remember those who served and risked it all so that we could all live in a free country.

Now let's talk about today's episode. When Jeff Struker was a teen, he had a crippling fear of death. Thanks to the evangelistic outreach of a neighbor couple who instilled faith within Jeff, he went on to become the army's top ranger and a black hawk-down hero in Somalia. Despite the fact that he thought he would die in Mogadishu, the author of the road to Underfraid had a supernatural peace. Subsequently, Jeff's fellow soldiers were desperate to know how he felt at peace and to understand his fate. Listen to this special Veterans Day program with an American war hero who understands the true meaning of the word sacrifice.

Jeff Struker is an author, pastor, and retired U.S. Army Ranger. At age 18, he enlisted in the Army as an infantryman and retired after 22 years of active service as a major and chaplain. His combat experience includes participation in the invasion of Panama, Operation Desert Storm, a black Hawk Down firefight, and rescue mission in Somalia, and more than a dozen combat twers in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2017, he was inducted into the US Army Ranger Hall of Fame. Jeff holds a PhD from southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina and is the lead pastor of Two Cities Church, which is based in Columbus, Georgia. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an

intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored today to have Jeff Struker on the Passion Struck podcast. Welcome, Jeff. John, it's so good to be with you, buddy. I did want to say, and I try to say this to any veteran who comes on the show. Thank you for what you did and for feeling that my life was worth serving and putting your life on the line for. Yeah, man, it was my honor to serve in the military. I'd do it all over again tomorrow. If somebody asks me to and I want to reciprocate, I want to say the same thing to you, man.

I do the same thing when I see veterans, I stop going out of my way and try to thank them for their service. I thought maybe a good way to start today would be to talk a little bit about the reasons that you ended up not only joining the army, but why you ended up joining the special forces. And people have different reasons. My father, for instance, is a force recon Marine. And I asked him, why did you end up going force recon? He goes, honestly, because they paid me more money. That's a pretty good reason. Yeah, for me, it's not much different than that. I didn't really have plans to join the military,

and I didn't come from a military family, so nobody was pushing me in that direction. But I had a buddy while I was in my senior year of high school that just on a whim joined the army. And then he came by and basically started to try to push me towards the army. He didn't tell me my buddy in high school that the recruiters were offering him more money if he could get his idiot high school friends to sign up.

But I went to Dr. Recruiter and the real answer to the question, John, is twofold. One, I was getting in some trouble in high school. I knew I was heading down a bad road and I knew I needed to make a change. And I already knew I needed some trouble in high school. I knew I was heading down a bad road, and I knew I needed to make a change. And I already knew I needed some discipline in my life if I'm going to turn things around. So that's what caused me to go talk to the Army recruiter in the first place, but I wasn't sold.

And then the recruiter asked me, okay, what do you want to do in the Army? And I had no idea what the options were. So my buddy's father, the guy who joined the army, his father was a seal who served in the Vietnam War. And he grabbed me and pulled me off to the side and said, listen, my son didn't ask my advice before he signed up, he's already made a commitment.

But if you're thinking about this, Jeff, I've got a piece of advice for you. This is the second reason. He said, there's basically two types of people in the military. There are the people that join the military because they need the paycheck or they need the assistance. And there's nothing wrong with that. They're amazing guys and gals. But then there's the kind of people that join the military because they want to test themselves or they want to see what they're made out of. Jeff, if you're thinking about joining, go work with the second group of people. And man, I cannot tell you how many times I found that piece of advice to be true over the time that I served in the military. So that's why I showed up

at a recruiters office and said, tell me about the army, tell me about the toughest job in the army and my recruiter turned, steered me towards the Ranger Regiment. I didn't even know anything about those guys. Speaking of the hardest job in the army, many of the listeners aren't veterans. So can you explain to them what the difference is between the missions of the Rangers, the Green Braze and CAG or Delta Force? Yeah, people suddenly. Yeah, for the people that really don't understand this phrase, special operations forces from all branches of the US military, they have different roles from one another. They all fit under the same umbrella. The units are tailored by training and equipment to go do a thing

for the military. And all branches of the military have special operations forces that are exceptionally good at what they do. Nobody in the world can touch what the Air Force pair of rescue guys do. Nobody can touch what the Navy seals do on the water. Nobody can touch what the Marine Special Operations Command. And then the Army, you have several different kinds

of Special Operations Forces. So you have Army Green Berets that have this quintessential mission of going and preparing a foreign military force for combat operations. I like to refer to them as and this is not supposed to be derogatory, it's kind of foreign drill sergeants that help prepare warriors in another country doing this foreign interdiction mission. You have Army Rangers that when I first showed up they had one foot in two different

worlds. They were part of the time conventional infantry force that did raid, ambush, movement to contact, kind of conventional infantry missions, but they were supposed to be able to do it better than any other infantry force on the planet. And then they had a foot in the other side of the world, which was doing special operations missions with special operations and forces from all across the military. There's been a big transition and now Rangers are pretty much exclusively working on the special operations side of the House, but they bring a lot of people to the fight because it's pretty much the only combat force in the Army, special operations command that you can go into it

as a private, right out of basic training. The other forces, you gotta have a lot of experience, the only direct action force, let me put it that way. Now the Marine Special Operations Command is similar. Now the Ranger Regiment is tailored to special operations missions. And John, you and I know these terms, but under that broad umbrella of soft special operations forces, you have guys that are kind of white

soft, meaning everybody in the world knows who they are, everybody knows what they do, and they pretty much know where they're at when they're doing it. You have the black side of soft, which means the military doesn't acknowledge their existence and when they go somewhere nobody is supposed to know who they are, where they're at, or what they're doing. And then you have a handful of forces in the middle that are the gray side of special operations, and they can work on the white side of soft doing very public missions, or they can work on the black side of soft doing very private clandestine missions. For the most part, the Rangers have operated in that gray part of the special operations community for many decades. And now they're much, they lean more on the black

side of stuff than they do on the white side today much more so than when I first showed up. side of stuff than they do on the white side today, much more so than when I first showed up. That's probably more than your listeners wanted to know, but that's all very basic special operations in the US military, all branches of service. Okay, I appreciate it. And one other clarifying thing I wanted to put out there is people have heard of SEAL Team 6. In the inner circle, it's called Dev Group. To be a part of that, you have to be a SEAL to go into a Delta Force. It's my understanding, you don't necessarily

have to be infantry or in the Special Forces community. You can be pulled in from any part of the Army, even the Coast Guard and other services to serve in it. Is that accurate? That's correct. And again, those forces, you've proven yourself, you've well established what kind of a war you are before you even get a chance to try out for those organizations. And in the range of community, because they're taking what's called skill level one, privates in this community, you have to approach a mission set differently and you have to have a very different assessment and selection process because many of the guys assigned there, guys and gals are untested, unproven, and you'll figure out in the training cycle whether or not

they can really handle it. So it really is, and I don't mean this as an exaggeration, I have told people for 30 years, the toughest job in the military is serving as a private in the range of regimen. It's not getting into the unit that alone as an extremely high attrition rate, but the first year in that unit is brutal. And there's well over 100% over that first year because the leaders of that unit don't really know what they're getting until they start to put into the test in that first year. And, man, my son went into the unit, and I told him, you're about to do the toughest thing

that there is to do in the military. And it choose people up and spits them out because you got to see what somebody's made out of and the only way to test that is to make it really rough. Yeah, it's interesting. My first cousin just graduated from West Point, and he's currently going through Ranger School. And he said nothing in the world prepared me for this. And I think he's in the beach phase right now. Yeah. Nice. I always think the mountain phase is worse, but I guess it's

pick your poison. Depending on what your weakness is, mountains is brutal, but then again, so are those swaps. Yes. I wanted to give that overview because I wanted to talk a little bit about defining moments and we all have them in our lives. You had one that the vast majority of people will never have to experience. And that was being in Moga Dischu. And for the listener who's not familiar with you, Black Hawk, Down movie was based on your life and many others, but it involved people from the Ranger community, Delta Force community, et cetera.

I was hoping you could talk about that experience, but I wanted you to do it through the lens of the importance of being a man of your word. Oh, man, you just asked a great, I'm impressed, John, because most people just want me to recount the stories that's already in the book in the movie Black Hawk Down. And I'm happy to do that. But you just asked the question for a warrior on a battlefield. And I don't know if most people understand this going into the military, even especially those that have never served. So by the time that I went to Somalia, I was a squad leader in Bravo Company Third Ranger Battalion.

I'd been in the Ranger Regiment for about six years, and I want the listener to know that before going to Somalia, I had already taken part in the US invasion of Panama in 1989 with the Ranger Regiment. Arnie went with the Rangers to Kuwait as part of Desert Storm in 91. So by the time I get to Somalia, man, this is not my first rodeo. And in the Ranger community, being a 24-year-old that's already been to combat twice makes me a really old timer. And I mean, that literally, like you're a really seasoned guy at 24 years old with that kind of combat experience. So I get to Somalia, I've got a squad that I'm responsible for and our job is primarily to be the ground reaction force

on a humb these for all of the missions that task force ranger, the community that you just described, for all of the missions that Task Force Ranger, the community that you just described, for all of the missions that we do, most of them will go in by helicopter. The Humvees will arrive as the helicopters are pulling off, and they'll all go out by helicopter. There's one mission that we did

that was only on Humvees, but there's always a Humvee element to the fight. And my job is to lead the Humvees, to be the first couple of Humvees in the city streets, which means the one that attracts the most gunfire. Black Hawk Down is our seventh mission. We have been successful, but it's taking us much longer than we thought to go kill or capture Muhammad Farah ID and the high ranking leaders of his organization were getting lots of pressure from President Clinton's administration. I don't have time to get into the national command

authority and how this special operations force works when they go overseas, but they basically work for the president and for the secretary of defense, and they don't really answer to anybody else when they're overseas. And now we're getting hammered by the Clinton administration about how long this is taking. And our big boss, the Joint Special Operations Command, Commander, is on the ground leading the whole force, a leader that I have the utmost respect for, Major General Bill Garrison,

and Garrison launches the force to go get these two bad guys in Sunday after the October 3rd. Without going into the whole battle, I will say that the movie Black Hawk Down portrays these events very well. It's still a major motion picture, but man, they're very accurate with what they describe. We go in on humvees and immediately get notified, hey we've got a critically wounded Ranger, Jeff I need you to put them on your humvees and take them back to our surgeon, get them immediate medical attention because blackburn has fallen from the helicopter, missed the fast route landed in the city streets. And I make my way back to the base and on the way back come through intense gunfire and Dominic Pella is shot and killed just inches away from me. Literally

takes around in the forehead and and dies just a few inches away from me. And just so I can break here and my understanding is you were the senior most ranger. So most likely you would have been in the first Humvee and the Come on in the first home. There are other more senior Rangers with more rank than me out there that day, but I'm the guy who has been Navigating the vehicles through the city streets every time we roll out So I'm the guy who knows where we're at and how to get to where we need to go And that's why they dispatch me

in my squad. I am the lead home fees. And me and my squad are taken blackburn back to the base. We come through this intense gunfire vehicles are riddled with bullet holes. And most of us should have died on the way back to the base. And John, this is a long answer to your question. But I want to set up the answer so that your listener understands how important that question you just asked was. Because when I get back to the base, my boss comes up to me and he says, hey Jeff, second black hog just got shot down. We've already put the Ranger Search and Rescue Force in at the first crash site.

We don't have anybody else out there. We need to get you back on your homies and you need to go out to the second crash site. And I'm thinking to myself, everybody's going to die if I do this. And here's where being a man of your word comes in, John, because the Rangers swear their lives to one another almost every day. They do it quite literally in what we call the Ranger Creek. And one of the phrases of the Ranger Creek says, I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.

And now I'm at my humvees getting ready to roll back out in the city streets with a guy whose dead body is being pulled off of the back. And I'm thinking, if I go back out there, I'm gonna die, all of my men are gonna die. But if I don't go back out there, the guys at that crash site are gonna die, and I've sworn my life to them. I gave my word and said,

I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy. And now, keeping my word, probably going to cost me my life. And I'll just be honest, man, I had this moment where I had to wrestle with, are you going to be a man of your word or not, Jeff? And if it cost you your life tonight, are you going to do what you promised your brothers and sisters and arms that you're going to do? promised your brothers and sisters and arms that you're going to do.

And that really, that moment and my strong faith gave me the courage. My faith gave me the courage to get on the homies, but that moment is what pushed me in that direction because had it not been for the Ranger Creed, I don't think I would have gone back out there not once, but multiple times all night long that night. And for someone who doesn't understand what this is, this is not one of these battles that you see where people are shooting at each other from hundreds of yards away. You are within at times 10 to 20 feet of your attackers. Yeah, the best way to describe this is,

and we didn't have the real solid intelligence when we launched the force that day. It was a, we know there's a lot of bad guys. We know they're gonna be all around you. We just don't know how many. So we put a couple of hundred guys in the streets that day by helicopter or Humvee. We fought against probably 10 to 12,000

armed Somalis and as you said the entire fight was done from 20 feet away. It wasn't across the hillside or it wasn't across an open field. It was from me to the alleyway next to me, from me to the building across the street. So almost the entire night, not just me, but everybody out there was fighting point blank range against 10 to 12,000 armed simoles. And that's why the next day roughly half of us were killed or wounded. Yeah, having done some breaches myself, I can tell you, it is one of the most nerve-wracking things that you can experience because you're completely walking into the unknown.

Yeah. I wanted to ask a follow-on question to this, and that is, as I was looking through your books, I heard this phrase, the difference between being a coward and a hero is not whether you're scared. It's what you do while you're scared. What is your advice on overcoming fear and maybe you can explain where that came from? Yeah, so no kidding.

In the book Black Hawk Down, there's a pivotal moment that everybody wants to go into the movie Black Hawk Down. And it's when I'm having a conversation with one of my men. This is probably more than your listener wants to hear, but when the movie black hawk down. And it's when I'm having a conversation with one of my men. This is probably more than your listener wants to hear, but when the movie is being made, there's a lot of arguing back and forth

between a couple of the prominent actors about this line in the movie. And the line ends up going to a different actor than the guy who plays me in the movie. But the real world scenario does show up in the movie. I'm getting ready to go out and try to go to the Durant crash site, see if anybody's alive. It's a high probability that all of us on the Humphies are going to die if we roll back out in the city streets and go through what barely escaped with our lives.

And one of my rangers comes up to me. His name is Brad Thomas, who to this day, I have the absolute utmost respect for. And Brad says, Hey, Sergeant, I can't go back out there tonight. He and I are the only two guys in the unit that are married right now. And he says, if I go out there, I know I'm going to die. And my wife is going to be a widow. And I just can't do it. And, John, I don't know where this phrase comes from. I honestly, I didn't come up with it on my own. I probably read it in a book, but it just came out of thin air. I pulled Brad off to the side and I think most of my men thought I was going to become the typical Ranger Sergeant and just go berserk on one of my men.

And instead of doing that, I was just very calm. And I explained to Brad, listen, man, I get it. You're scared. I'm freaking out to order you to go back out there. If you choose not to get on those humbies, I'm not going to force you. But Brad, I need you to understand something. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen.

It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that may happen. It's not fear that understand something. It's not fear that makes a coward. All of us get afraid in circumstances like this. There's something psychologically wrong with you if you're not afraid right now. But what you do when you are afraid, that's the real difference between a hero and a coward. And then just like you see in the movie Black Hawk Down, I left it at that and I jumped on the Humvees,

and we were getting ready to drive away when I watched him in the rear view mirror, reached down, pick up his squat automatic weapon, and jump on one of the Humvees behind me, and stay with me all night long, stay in the Army, stay in the special operations community, and do incredible things for the next 20 years. What an amazing warrior. But your question asks, what about the guy or the gal that's listening to this episode right now, and really struggling with very real fear, and not sure

if they have what it takes to handle it and are really freaking out about what happens if this thing goes south on me. And I don't have any magic words here. I don't think that there are any magic words here. I have trust in something someone actually that's much bigger than me that controls the universe and that's got all of the circumstances of life in the palm of his hand, but that doesn't make, of want you to ask yourself the question 20 years from now when I tell stories about what I went through and how it turned out ask yourself the question what kind of a man or what kind of a woman do I want to be 20 years from now when I tell this story. And then let that drive what you do next. And I got no promises for you that everything is going to turn out roses because it might not. But if you can decide today what kind of man you want to be or a woman you want to be on the other side of this, it ought to force you to handle this circumstance and face your fears, basically.

Thank you for that advice. I interviewed a friend of mine, senior chief William Brannum, 25-year seal, and we were talking about many of these activities that we would go on, and there's getting to the helicopter where you're trying to assist the wounded soldier, but we talked about the transition points in between, and there are these transition points that we have throughout life. And I know you're a writer, you've written five or six books, and there are the transitions between paragraphs

and the transitions between chapters. But what we were talking about is so often our mind is on that point when we're reaching that wounded soldier, but we're not in the moment, in the transition points leading up to it. Yeah. And oftentimes that leaves someone most vulnerable when they're in the service, but it also is those choices that you're making along that journey that you're trying to reach

this output that oftentimes so many people screw up because they're not mindful about them. Right. What's your perspective on that from your experience in the military and now with what you're doing now? I was gonna say you absolutely nailed it. I think some of those moments that you and I've been through in combat, where the bullets are just flying around you,

you're on autopilot and you're reacting. And that's what you're supposed to do. You're well trained. You are responding to the threat that's around you. And to some degree, I don't want to use this phrase lightly. It's not that you're mindlessly responding. In other words, I'm not a robot. I'm taking in what's happening around me. But stuff is happening so fast. I don't have time to process it. So I'm just responding. And what I found is the worst moments in combat for me. We're always after the

bullets were done flying, right? Like, after you're done, after you're back, after the operations over with, and you're taking your kid off, and now you're starting to process what you just saw, what you just went through. And that's the transition point where you start to realize, wow, that was really bad. And I didn't have a chance to process how bad that was. But now that the threat is gone, I'm processing it and it's not easy. And this is where some warriors get stuck. They're really good at fast on the trigger and responding to a threat that's right in front of them, but when the dust settles and the bullets are done flying

and having to now learn to live with what you just saw, man some warriors get stuck there. And one of the things that I've devoted the rest of my life to is helping the guys and gals that are stuck and don't know how to process it to help them work through it. And inevitably what they're asking me is Jeff, how do I make the dreams go away? How do I go back to the guy or the gal that I was before the firefight? the dreams go away. How do I go back to the guy or the gal that I was before the firefight? Fortunately, it answers. There's no going back, but you can figure out a way to go forward. You can figure out a way to handle it, process it, and get better because of it. You just can't undo what you've done. You can't unsee what you've seen. And I think when the transitions are

handled well, man, the future is bright and life is great, but if you mess up the transitions, man, you can really throw away a huge opportunity. You can actually throw your life away and flush your life down the drain if you don't handle the transitions well. And for me, what I've seen repeatedly is it's not when the bullets are flying, but it's when the dust settles that you really have the hard work to do. That's the hard work of dealing with it, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually,

with what you just saw or what you just did. This is the Passion Struck Podcast with our guest, Jeff Struker. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Shopify. Hear that little chitching. That's the satisfying sound of another part by Shopify. Here that little chitching, that's the satisfying sound of another sale on Shopify.

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Thank you so much for listening to the show. I love hearing from all of you. And I love the fact that you all have been great to our sponsors, because there are the ones that keep the show going as well. You can check out all the sponsors at passionstruck.com slash deals. You'll find all the codes in URLs, all those things are there. So please consider supporting those who support this show. Now, back to my conversation with Jeff Struker. Yeah, so I'm going to come back

to that. I did want to add just another story to illustrate this point. My last mate from the Naval Academy is a Navy SEAL turned astronaut Chris Cassidy at one point. He was the chief astronaut. And during one of his space walks on the ISS, he's doing this, I don't know how you call it routine, but he's doing this routine space walk. And he's out there at the, at my think it was with the Natalian astronaut who's out doing the space walk with them. They're pretty much done with their task and Chris has made his way back to where their lock is and is about ready to enter in.

When he hears a call coming over, I have water in my helmet and it's metallic tasting. And so at this point, if something is not done quickly, this astronaut is gonna drown to death, because he has a major malfunction. And then there's this really sharp piece of metal that they have to avoid. So he has to do this maneuver where he flips himself upside down and when he does, his entire helmet is filled with water.

And Chris tells me he doesn't know what happened, but in that moment, all the training, all the past experience that he had been with just took in. He said, I don't know how I got out there and rapid speed. I don't know how I grabbed him. I don't know how I got him into the airlock, but I just did. And the point I'm trying to make here is the reason he was able to do all those things were because of the transition points that he had leading up to that. So when that moment hit, his body knew exactly what to do. His mind was in control and he took action. And I just think that's another good way to represent what you and I are talking about here. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm thinking water in your helmet when you're flipped upside down outside the International Space Station does not sound like a good scenario. No, I did want to touch a little bit more on the second part of what you talked about,

and that is the mental health aspect, because when I have both been exposed to trauma, and I try to be very vulnerable here on this podcast, because I made some major mistakes in the way that I personally handled it. I was in overlapping many of your years 1989 to 2000 and during that time, I worked for the NSA and a clannicine portion of it. Much of the time going out with special forces units and I'm not sure what your experience was. I had two things hitting me.

One was I was constantly told that if you seek mental health care, they can take your security clearance and give him the height of it. And the other thing was the more macho thing that you didn't want your peers and the units to see that you were having these difficulties. And so I ended up just bearing this for what ended up being decade plus. And when I try to tell the listeners, when you do that, it magnifies the issue so much because you reach a point where ultimately it catches up to you. And in my case, I became emotionally numb,

just lost purpose, lost kind of my will to do anything. And I know for many people, when this happens, it's led to many service people and non-service people taking their own lives. I wanted to ask, from your perspective, as someone who themselves have gone through a lot of trauma, what is your advice to a listener on how they best can handle it? Yeah. First, I want to compliment you, John, for being very open about this with your listeners, because not everybody is, as you and I both know. And like you joining the army in the 80s,

staying in there until 2011, I saw lots and lots of warriors that did incredible things on the battlefield, but they also went through really rough stuff and they all stuffed it down inside because of the two factors that you just mentioned. If I lose my security clearance, they're gonna kick me out of this unit, which is the worst thing that I would rather die than leave the unit. And secondly, I don't wanna let my buddies down,

so I'm just gonna act like there's nothing wrong there. And in reality, there really is. And so there for many years, for decades, actually, there was this mystique in the special operations community that you could go through the most horrific events and you would be untouched by it. And I think there's something very inhuman phrase literally, not human trying to expect

somebody to see what you and I have seen, but not be touched by it at all. And over the last few years, there's been a shift, a massive shift here in a really good direction of leaders at all levels in the special operations community looking at people in the eye and saying, when you need help, stand up and ask for it. And the whole unit will support you and nobody's going to kick you out. It's not going to cost you your security clearance. And we want you to get healthy. If you broke your leg, we would go out of our way to help set that bone and get you strong again.

When stuff happens inside you, We're going to now go out of our way to help you get strong and healthy again. But if I could go back to this moment, I watched, I lost count of my friends, killed themselves by putting a gun in their mouth. by putting a gun in their mouth. I have watched hundreds, no, thousands of my friends kill themselves slowly by using the bottle or pills. And they're both doing it for the same reason. They can't live with themselves because of what they've seen or what they've done. And so they either take the fast route to killing themselves by putting a pistol in their

mouth, or they take the slow right to route to killing themselves. They're on marriage number five, or I should say divorce number five, and they've been a raging alcoholic for the last 20 years, and that's the only way that they can actually sleep. And I'll try to challenge them, and I'll look them in the eyes and say, you're not helping yourself. You're not helping anybody around you by trying to handle it on your own. So the strongest men and women that I've ever seen in the military are those that say, hey, I got a problem. And it's taken me a great deal of courage to say this, but I need help. And if you will make that statement, what happens next will be beautiful. If you're going to be the

idiot, and I'll just call you out right now, if you're going to be the idiot and I'll just call you out right now, if you're going to be the idiot that tries to portray like you just went through something massive and it didn't impact you at all, I'm not sure that you're mentally the kind of person that we want in the special operations community. So when you're struggling, as soon as you start struggling, tell somebody and start to get the help you need, and that may make it possible for you to hang around this community for a lot longer than the average guy or gal, but also for you to be very emotionally and mentally healthy for the rest of your life, not just while you're serving in uniform, but long

after you leave the military. Yeah, and I'm just going to give the audience four or five different ways that you can tackle this. One would be through going through cognitive processing therapy, which is a component of cognitive behavioral therapy and helps you get through your stuck points. Another one which for me was a real barrier to get through was prolonged exposure therapies. You're sitting here and reliving the worst trauma of your life again and again until you can deal with it. There's EMDR and then there's two new things that people are working that are going

through phase two and phase three trial. And that's the use of sex for a very limited time. And MDMA is in phase three and Silasibon is in phase two and there are many different organizations out there veterans or not who are working across this entire spectrum. I'm just going to give a few of them, camaraderie fund, will give any veteran money to help them find the mental health professional of their choice to seek help. There's the Warrior Angels Foundation, which is led by Andrew Marr, former first for Supreme Brea. There's a, and they specialize in PTSD and traumatic brain injury treatment.

And then there's the heroic art patient, which is led by a former ranger, and that's, which is led by a former seal. So those are just a few resources, but there are many more people can use both in the military or not. Yeah, and John, can I just interrupt for a second? I wanna jump on the bandwagon one more time here and to tell all of your listeners,

if you think you're tough enough to handle these really traumatic moments and not have to tell anybody and not need any help, I'm telling you there's something wrong inside of you because every guy, every gal that I know reaches out either for a little bit of help or a lot of help. So don't try to be the one person

who can handle it all on your own because that guy or gal just doesn't exist. Yeah, so I thought it might be important for the listeners to hear your story as a 13 year old of how you came to find your faith. I happened to hear it on a podcast that you did in Nashville. I'm not sure if you ever found the people you're gonna talk about, but I never had found them.

Nope. Yeah, I'd love to tell this part of the story. For me, I had an amazing group of guys that I worked with that I knew I could just bear my soul too and they weren't gonna Sean me. In fact, most of them had as much or more combat experience than me and they were willing to hurt me, just cheer my with them. But I also had this rock solid faith community and for me, this faith community found me. I didn't find it. It found me. I grew up in a house, a hold that didn't go to church. There was no mention of faith, no mention of God or the Bible at all when I was growing up. And at 13 years old, I was really wrestling with life

and death. And quite literally asking questions about the afterlife that nobody in my family could answer because nobody had any kind of real faith or real knowledge of the Bible to talk to me about. So my neighbors came by to talk to me one day and my neighbors were a young married couple. I was living right outside of Nashville at the time and they were newly married and they were in their early 20s so they just treated me like a little brother and they always wanted to hang out, they always wanted to do stuff with me. So they just treated me like a little brother. And they always wanted to hang out, they always wanted to do stuff with me.

They were just really cool. And we spent lots of time together. And one night, months into this relationship, they came over to my house and wanted to talk to me. And I remember, John, that they were acting really weird. I also remember, they were acting different and they were acting nervous. And I thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe I'd done something wrong, but they said Jeb. I guess something really important

We want to talk to you about can we come in can we sit down can we talk to you? So without going into all of the details for the sake of time They sat at my dining room table and they started to explain to me their faith and what was beautiful about this couple and I to this day Don't remember their names because I moved just a few weeks after this. But what was beautiful about this couple is they didn't shove it down my throat, they didn't beat me over the head with the Bible. They just said, Jeff, can we tell you what we believe and why it's so important to us? And in the course of this conversation, I had some questions like some really hard questions that my family

couldn't answer that I thought, okay, I'm going to ask these guys because it sounds like they have some answers. And I asked them some hard questions that they had the courage to look me in the eyes and say, man, I don't know the answer to that. But I do know this. And then they made this statement about the afterlife that caught me off guard. And they basically said, Jeff, if you will turn your life over to Jesus, he will radically change you. He will change your life right here right now. It's called the abundant life. You can read about it in John chapter 10, verse 10. He will change who you are and your life right now. but he will also give you eternal life. And I don't think I've ever talked to them

about my real fears at this point, but they said, Jeff, if you will turn your life over to Jesus, he will answer forever what happens to you after you die. And for me, John, that was like a bell just went off. It was literally like a light just went off. And after they left, they't put any pressure on me. They didn't try to strong army. But after they left, I started thinking about what they said. I was in my bedroom 13 years old. I got out of my bed. I knelt down and I prayed and I don't even remember the prayer. But it was basically Jesus, I want what they just described. Would you change me? Would you forgive me?

Would you fix me? And the next day something was different about me. Now, I mention this because when I was in the firefight in Somalia, for most of those 18 hours, like for 17 and a half of those 18 hours, I was 100% convinced that I was gonna die. And I had perfect peace. Wasn't that I wasn't afraid, but I really wasn't afraid of dying. I was just afraid of what happens to my family, what are they gonna have to go through?

So God gave me this incredible sense of peace in the midst of this battle. And after it's over with, when my buddies were really struggling with what they just saw or what they just did, I had this faith foundation that gave me the support that I needed to process it. And I think to this day, one of the reasons why I handled Somalia, the way that I've handled it, is because of my faith, more than anything else. I have a follow on question of that, and this comes from one of the listeners

who requested that I bring you on the podcast. All right. And they wanted to know, how did you make the transition from Ranger to Chaplain? Yeah, this is a one instant in time moment for me. So I love being an Army Ranger. I love Jesus. I just thought for the rest of my life, I'm going to get up, go to church, go to work, and kick indoors and kill

back guys. That's what God made me for. And for my first six years in the Army, I was completely convinced this is what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life. I'm in Somalia, I'm going through this big firefight. And I didn't get scared to death and found religion over there. For me, my story was the opposite. I found this total sense of peace in the midst of what I was 100% convinced was going to be my death tonight.

And the next day, my buddies started coming up to me and they were asking me, now we had a unit chaplain that was over there with us, but they started asking me questions and the questions were basically Jeff, what happens to you after you die? And my buddy who just got killed last night, where are they? And what's it like? And Jeff, if I have to get on a helicopter or a Humvee and roll back out there tonight, and I don't make it, what's going to happen to me. And not one or two, John, they were lined up waiting to talk to me like, I got woke up all night long that night.

People waking me up at the middle of the night in this cot in a giant hanger on the airfield of Somalia, Mogadishu Somalia saying, I need to talk to you right now, Sergeant, about faith and about God. And I don't want to sound super crazy right now. I've never really heard an audible voice from heaven. But the next day after the battle was over with, I felt this overwhelming sense that I have never expected in my life. I didn't see this one coming for a million years. But the next day I just felt overwhelmingly, Jeff, you were ready to handle the enemy last night because you were ready for eternity, and they're not. And they need somebody to get them ready for eternity.

And Jeff, I wanted to be you. And I didn't even want to hear that. That was not on my radar and not what I wanted to hear. But it was unmistakable the next day. And that set me on the path to becoming an army chaplain. I didn't even know what to do with that. So when I got back from Somalia, I went to my unit chaplain and I went to my pastor of my church and I asked them both, what do I do next? And both of them almost fell out of their chair when I asked them this question, but they were like, if this is true, Jeff, then you need to go to school, you need to study, you need to get some education because maybe God wants you to go become a minister or a military chaplain. And that's how it all happened. And for me, it was one instant that I can remember vividly this moment where it was overwhelmingly clear to me what I'm supposed to do next.

By the way, that moment's only happened like twice in my life and I didn't see it come in either time. Yeah, I have a personal experience that maybe someday I can share on your podcast. I'm not going to do it now, but it's a similar context. My follow-on question to that would be, of similar context. My follow-on question to that would be, you did all these deployments as a ranger, but after this, you've done a bunch more to Afghanistan Iraq. What was the difference like between going on a deployment as a chaplain versus as a ranger?

There were some days that it was the greatest honor of my life serving as an Army Chaplain in combat in the Special Operations Community in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there were some days that it just sucked because there were some moments where I remember what it was like to be a Ranger doorkicker on the battlefield and we're rolling out on target and I'm the unit Chaplain now and I'm thinking to myself,

I know exactly what to do and how to handle myself. If I've got a rifle in my hand and there's a bad guy around the corner, but now I've got a Bible and now I have to figure out how to handle myself. What my role is, this is air quotes. I have to relearn everything

and I have to relearn what my role is on the battlefield and my role is no longer to be the first guy in the stack in the door. Now my focus is no longer the enemy. Now my focus is on these warriors that I serve. And for me, there was a moment where I had to really radically relook why I'm in the military and what my role is on a battlefield. And it was a pretty traumatic moment for me until I got past that Jeff, your focus is no longer the enemy, which is really hard to tell a ranger not to think about the enemy anymore. Your focus is on your warriors, your war fighters. And after I made that transition, it was an honor of a lifetime to serve lots and lots of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the special operations community. By the way, I did one long deployment, my first one over in Afghanistan with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. And I had a chance to serve with some amazing guys and gals in that unit

while I was over in Afghanistan. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever crossed paths with this gentleman. I'm going to bring up but a friend of mine, Colonel Bob Adams spent 11 years with the SEAL teams and then interesting story. He wanted to become a doctor because he felt this calling that he wanted to serve and the Navy would only pay for 18 months of his medical school, but the Army would pay for all of it. So he ended up going into the army and at one point he was the flight surgeon for Delta Force and then he became the flight surgeon for Ranger. Yeah. Teams as well, but spent 30 years in the military. I don't know if you cross pass, but he's another one who saw that same column that he wanted to serve. You can tell Colonel Adams, thank you for the decades

of service. And tell him, I totally get where he's coming from because when I said I'm gonna become an Army chaplain and eventually went to school, the US military said, we don't pay for theological education. So I had to pay for that whole thing out of my pocket. I will let him know that. I have a couple more questions from the audience.

One of them is, what do you think Christians can do to make the biggest impact on the world? Absolutely. Great question. The answer is easy, and it's actually Jesus' words. He says that your role on planet earth is to be salt and light and salt is supposed to change the taste of the environment, right? Like salt does no good to anybody inside the salt shaker, it has to get out of the salt shaker and get into the food to actually make a difference. And light doesn't matter when it's surrounded by other light, but you take that single point of light, a match or a candle and you put it in a very dark environment and all of the

sudden every eye in the room is drawn to that light. So I've had people ask me for many years like Jeff, I'm a Christian, I live in a really dark or a really bad environment and I'm struggling to try to live out my faith and I'm a Christian. I live in a really dark or really bad environment. And I'm struggling to try to live out my faith. And I'm like, do you realize that you're right where God wants you? Really? Literally right where God wants you. Because the darker the environment around you, the brighter your light can shine, the more wicked the environment that you work in or that you live in, the more of a salt impact that you can have on them. So don't run away when it gets dark. Man, stand strong and stand up and show your faith and watch what God does next. And it's not you doing it. It's God taking the life that you're living and using it for His glory.

And John, I still get responses from people that I had no idea that I had any impact on them. And they'll start off by saying, Jeff, you don't know the difference that you made. But 20 years later, I could not forget a thing that you said or something that you did. And it eventually led to a radical change in my fate. It just took 20 years to get there. But it was a thing that I saw in you that I just couldn't get out of my mind for 20 years. And my response is I didn't do that. If it's still in your mind 20 years later, obviously God did that, and I'm going to give him credit. I'm not going to take credit for something that he did. Okay. The other question that they wanted me to ask you is

it seems now more than ever fewer and fewer people are attending church and they're choosing to go in different directions. What do you think the cause of that is and what do you think is the answer to bringing them back to the fold? Oh, great question. I'm this may offend some people but I'm just going to say it because I'm a guy who just says it and I'll try not to be rude in the way that I say it but during the global lockdown because of COVID many people left the church and Some of them didn't come back and my pastor friends and I'm a pastor. So this is right where I live

Some of my friends really lamented. They were broken over the fact that a percentage of my church didn't come back. I'm using air quotes now for my church. And I've told my pastor friends they weren't part of the church to begin with. They left you. This is from the book of 1st John 2nd John. They left you and went out from you because they were never one of you in the first place. And maybe they were showing up because it was a country club or they were thinking that they were going to be able to advance their business or find a spouse. But they were never really there because of their commitment to Jesus. So I look at it the opposite way like COVID did the world

of favor and it just thinned the herd. And thinning the herd if their faith wasn't genuine in the first place, that's not a bad thing because now you know and they know, it was never really that important to them in the first place. First thought, second thought is the idea of getting people back. Here's what I would say, let's don't as the global church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's don't try to go back to who we were and what we were doing in 2019. COVID forced the church to start to relook is what we're doing effective. And if you look over the last 50 years, the church would have to say, world wide, whatever we were doing over the last 50 years, the numbers were going downhill every year. And then in the year 2020, it just free-falled downhill. So now we have a, I think a strategic opportunity. Man, I look at this as a good thing.

Okay, we have to figure out a way to do church in the year 2022 and 2023. That's different than 2019. And that's not a bad thing because if we kept doing what we were doing in 2019, every statistic tells you where this thing is going to end up in the future. So let's do stuff different, not different just to be different, but different so that we can engage the community in a way that really makes an impact.

And let's look at it as a strategic opportunity instead of crying in our beer or crying in our milk over what used to be. Yeah, and I just wanted to bring up a side point on this. One of my most influential books I've ever read was The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. And I think it was written in the early 1980s, but one of his observations in it was that if you look at these major religions, whether it's Muslim, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Catholicism, they each were created at that point in time to serve a purpose of people losing their way at that period of time. And his point is since Christianity came thousands of years ago, there hasn't been an update to it. And this was in 1982. And his point was the reason so many people are starting to leave is because they can't relate to a message that's a couple. millennial old. And so I think you're on to something here with trying to change up the way we're doing things to make this more relevant for people on our time and space. If I could just add to

that, what you have is a message that hasn't changed in 2000 years and there's still billions of people on the planet whose lives have been radically changed by this message. But unfortunately, Christians have attached a methodology to that message. And I'm telling people, the message must never change, but the methodology has to change. It has to change every generation. And if it doesn't change, you'll become irrelevant in one generation. So let's keep the message, but let's radically change the method and do whatever it takes to reach the next generation in a way that they would respect and they would understand it and be very relevant to them. And that's why I'm not afraid to toss everything out as long as we hold the essence of the message, everything

else in my opinion is negotiable. Yeah, thank you for your perspective on that. And I want to tackle another issue with you. I feel like this podcast and what I'm doing is to serve people. And last week I did a solo episode on a topic that a lot of people don't want to talk about. I did it on the epidemic of chronic loneliness. And I want to put this out there because if the listener doesn't understand this and maybe themselves are feeling lonely, you are so not alone.

Hey, ARP surveyed tens of thousands of people across the United States and found that 45% of all adults are experiencing this. There was another research project that went on for a period of 20 years, and they found 33% of all humans across 113 countries felt lonely. So we're talking billions of people are in this state of loneliness. Is this something that, as you're guiding your church, that you're seeing as a problem? And how are you trying to tackle this? And what would be your advice to an individual who might be feeling this?

The easy answer to the question is, yes, absolutely. It's everywhere, as you just described it, John. It's an epidemic in every country, no matter how developed or no matter how remote in every culture on the planet and the mental health challenges that go along with chronic loneliness has caused this crisis, mental health crisis to go through the roof. Worldwide, like literally, nowhere in the world is there enough mental health professionals to handle that loads right now that people are experiencing. And what I've tried to tell people is first, let's recognize we have deceived ourselves.

We've allowed ourselves to be deceived. And we are the most hyper-connected society in the history of the human race. If you were to put all of history together, no one, all of it together didn't have the connectivity to another human being that we have. And we're also the loneliest society or the loneliest generation in human history. That's telling us that you're 50 or 500 friends on social media. You really can't call them friends anymore. And real relationships, they don't have to be in the same room at the same time, but you and I only have the capacity for a couple of real relationships.

So here's what I'm telling people, get rid of the 500 friends on social media. In fact, if you can't discipline yourself, then delete the social media accounts and trade those 500 air quote social media friends in for three or four real people in your life. Maybe they live on the other side of the country, maybe they live in another time zone, but they're people that you talk to, that you spend time with, that you engage with on a human heart to heart level and stop deceiving yourself because all of the people that you spend time with, that you engage with on a human heart to heart level. And stop deceiving yourself because all of the people that you're connecting with on social media, they're just as lonely as you are. And those connections don't meet the

hearts longing to be with a one or just one or two, three or four genuine brothers and sisters. one or two, three or four genuine brothers and sisters. Genuine friends, our church takes this radical approach to what we call groups. And we say we want groups to be three to five people, no more than eight. And we want you to go really deep in each other's lives. And it's not a meeting one time for one hour a week, but it's real relationships all week long. So there's a group of ladies right now that are meeting in our church and these ladies are rock solid and all up in each other's business, but they're also helping each other live life together. I appreciate your words of wisdom on this. My conclusion was the biggest need we have is to feel love and to give love.

And if we're not doing those two things, we're at a whack with how the creator created us. And when we're so involved and out of touch with people on these digital devices and other things, we're not getting that genuine human connection that makes the rest of our world come together. And it's interesting. Some of the listeners may have never heard of this study. It's called the grant study, and it was done at Harvard. And it started over 80 years ago, and they took a group of hundreds of, they happen to be white men, but they followed their lives, did every conceivable test to them, blood work tests, they looked at their cognitive ability, and then they followed their lives,

and they wanted to understand what brought people happiness. Was it money? No. Was it success and fame? No. They went through all these lists that you would think. Was it the person who had the most? No. Was it the person who had the least? was the person who had the least know what they found throughout the study was that it was human connection that it was having relationships that regardless of how much wealth you had dictated how much showing happened as you felt in your life. So I just wanted to emphasize that point. Yeah. I just wanted to emphasize that point. Yeah, John, there's a statement that I heard. I was on a mission trip right after international ecological disaster in the country of Venezuela, and we were there to just help out the tens of thousands of people that died because of a monsoon and mudslides.

And I was at a school, and the school principal said to the teachers and to the parents because the students still hadn't come back to the classroom after this huge human tragedy. She said, probably one of the most profound things I've ever heard in my life, she said, no person is poor, who is rich in friends. And if you lose everything on the planet and it gets swept off the side of a mountain

in a mudslide, but you have one or two friends, you have all that you need. And I was sitting there thinking this woman who's in this remote village of Venezuela has more wisdom than most of the world's leaders that I've heard from. She's absolutely right. No one is poor. That'll stick with me for the rest of my life, who is rich and friends and has just one or two people that are there for you regularly. Yeah, I love that. Mother Teresa said something pretty similar while she was still alive.

I wanted to give you an opportunity. I thank us, podcasters, Art and Competition. I think we each have our own flock. So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your amazing podcast. Yeah, unbeatable started less than a year ago. And it actually started because when I get I get the honor of speaking at audiences around the country and around the world. And when I'm done speaking, I try to save a lot of time for some Q&A or for people to come up and talk to me after it's over with.

And inevitably what they'll say is, hey, Jeff, you went through something. And when I'm done speaking, I try to save a lot of time for some Q&A or for people to come up and talk to me after it's over with. And inevitably, what they'll say is, hey, Jeff, you went through something really intense. Can I tell you about the thing that I went through? And I sit back and I listen to these hundreds of stories of just regular people that have gone through the most intense things imaginable. And they held on and they didn't give up. And it occurred to me. I get the privilege of hearing stories that most people will never hear. And man, I'm a much better guy because of the stories that people tell me after I talk when I'm interacting with the audience. So then I decided,

man, I want the world to hear these stories. And so the idea behind the unbeatable podcast is to just say, regular people, just like you, went through incredible circumstances and they made it through and the word unbeatable. They were demonstrated that they were unbeatable because they didn't quit. And I want you to hear from these stories and I want you to learn from these stories. So, man, I've had some incredible guests on the show for the first year. And I'm looking forward to year two. It's interesting that you brought that up because a lot of people come to me and they say, how is your podcast been so successful? And my whole approach has been, yes, I could bring on people

in my role at X who are billionaires and this and that. But how well does an audience member relate to Tony Robbins and where the crap that they're experiencing in their life and seeing this billionaire who faced that when he was 18 or 19 but isn't living there at that moment now. So I've tried as much as I can to bring on what I call our everyday heroes because these are people who are making a profound societal impact, but they're just like you and me. And I think the audience can relate to their stories a lot more. So I applaud you for what you're doing. Thanks, man. I was going to say, get up after hearing those stories and think, if they can handle

what they're going through, then I can certainly handle what I'm going through. And I hope that's what the listeners here too. I was happy when I looked at your most recent episode that you featured an everyday hero who is a friend of mine. Absolutely, there he is right there. Yeah, right there. So you did a great interview with Mike. Yeah. Man, I love that guy.

He is in what an incredible leader he is and everybody can learn from him. I was going to ask you a couple of questions on these lines. And the first is, why should you never forget your impact on people? Yeah. So like I said just a few minutes ago, I had people who email me and say, Jeff, it's been 20 years. I never said this to your face, but for the last 20 years, something that you said or something that you've done have stuck with me. And I'm reaching out to you now because it's been such a big impact on me. I want you to know it.

And honestly, sometimes, John, when they tell me this story, I'm like, I don't even remember doing that. I'm not even sure they got the right guy. But maybe I did that. And if I did that, I didn't do it for the recognition. I just did it because I wanted to follow the golden rule, right? I wanted to do for people what I would want them to do for me. And they waited 20 years, but it was that big of an impact on them. And I want your listeners to know, just simply be in a kind of guy or gal that's there for others and treating them the way that you would like to be treated,

you may be making a massive impact right now. And nobody says it to your face. But one day, they'll come up to you later on and say, hey, you don't know this, but you left a really big impact on me. And man, I didn't do it to hear those comments, but man, when those comments come in, I sit back in an amazement. Like, I didn't do it to hear those comments, but man, when those comments come in, I sit back in an amazement. Like, I didn't even know it was that big of a deal. For me, it was just doing with, for somebody what I wanted them to do for me and look at the impact, the legacy or the lasting impact that it had on them. Another question would be, how do you nurture the freedom to fail?

Yeah. For me and guys like you and I, this is really hard, right? It's not that I'm a perfectionist, but it's just, I don't want to let my buddies down. And I learned early on that some of the things that you're going to have to tackle, they're so tough that you're going to have to learn some painful lessons along the way. You're in order to get great at this job as a special operator, you're going to have to learn some hard lessons and the most biggest lessons in my life always came from failure. The times that I succeeded and stood on the top of the platform, those moments were great, but they didn't leave the scars and the

life lessons that I failed. I gave it everything that I got and I didn't make it. And it caused me to say, wow, that hurt. I don't want to do that again. I need to make some serious changes and failure became one of my best friends instead of one of my most feared enemies. And saying this, take it for me, this is coming from a guy who doesn't want to let people down. I don't try to be a perfectionist, but I don't want to let people down. But I learned the day that you stop learning and the day that you stop growing is the day you're no longer fit to lead. And you're going to have to fail along the way if you're really going to learn, if you're really going to grow. So take

the shot and maybe you miss it completely, but you won't know until you take the shot, and if you miss it, figure out what you did wrong, so that the next time you take the shot, you don't miss it. Okay, great advice. In your newest book, Start Here, you created a way for how readers can navigate Christian faith. I wanted to ask you,

how do you make sure that you're on the right path with God? Yeah, the whole reason for the book is to help people make sure that you're on the right path. In fact, I describe a relationship with God like a four-lane bridge. There's two lanes going his way and two lanes going our way and you need to examine these four lanes in your life and make sure these four things are there. I won't spoil it. Go get the book, start here. By the way, I sell the book as cheap literally as cheap as you can on Amazon. I tried to give it away free and Amazon said you can't do that. You've got to charge for it. So it's for the minimum price possible because I want to get it into as many hands as possible. But I also answer a

lot of very practical questions like a hundred questions at the end of the book, because there are people that just say, hey, I'm still trying to figure this part out, or hey, I don't understand this. And I offer some really practical answers to some very profound questions at the end of the book. Okay, great. And I was checking out your blog,

and I ran across a couple that just struck my eye. This one probably more than any other one. In it, you covered the topic, what are the three most difficult words to say in the human vocabulary? Yeah. John, thank you for being one of two people on the planet that read my blog. I blog regularly for many years now. I do it because I just want if people want to hear my thoughts on a topic or whatever. And for me, the three hardest words to say is, will you forgive me?

It's to ask for and extend genuine forgiveness because forgiveness comes at an extremely high cost. And it's easy to hang on to hurt and to get bitter because it's gonna cost you less than genuinely forgiving somebody. Because in order to forgive somebody, you're gonna have to put away your right to get even, you're gonna have to even set aside some of the hurt that you've gone through.

Real hurt from real problems that you've gone through, but relationships stop. They get stagnant and then they start to die where there's no forgiveness. And all of us mess up as I just admitted and all of us need forgiveness. It's just really hard to get and even harder to offer where to give forgiveness. And the blog is My Thoughts. From a guy who does thousands of hours of marriage counseling, My Thoughts on Powerful Forgiveness is and why these three words are so hard to say.

Okay, I think that's great. And I, yesterday just interviewed Dan Pink and we covered his book, The Power of Regrets. And I asked him him what are some of the biggest ways that you can confront your regrets and he brought up this as one of them. Admit what you just said to get it off your conscious. Forgiveness is hard. Really hard. Let me put it this way. Genuine forgiveness. It's easy to act like a three year old and tell somebody, I forgive you,

but in your heart, you really don't. Real forgiveness is really hard. I saw you and I both covered another topic. I did this a couple of weeks ago, it was on excuses, which is not a topic that a lot of people want to talk about, but we sure do like to give them. I'm just as guilty as anyone else. Yeah, so am I. But my main message in this is excuses are one of the worst things you can possibly do

if you want to live your best life. And I think you agree with me on this. Yeah, absolutely. Excuses are your way of looking yourself in the mirror and explaining a way why you didn't live up to your own potential. And man, we're really good. I'm really good. Most people are really good at making excuses, but every excuse is just a way of holding yourself back, especially from being the guy or the gal that you were created to be, that got intended for you to be. So don't run and hide behind excuses. It's dangerous. Okay, and then the last one I wanted to ask you about is, I love this saying,

why can't you grasp your dreams with a closed fist? Yeah, there is a children's book. I don't even remember the title of it, but there's the soul children's book of the dog that has a bone and then he sees in the reflection in the water that there's another dog with a bone and then he sees in the reflection in the water, that there's another dog with a bone, and he wants two bones, but he's already got a bone in his mouth, and in order to get the bone of the reflection that he sees in the water,

he's got to let go of the bone in his mouth to try to reach it. I found that people are reaching for their dreams, but they're also holding on to something, and this is something that they're holding on to, they think it's really important in their life, and they think, if I let go of this, I'm going to give something up. And the truth is, you probably are going to give something up. But there's no way to grab a hold of the thing that you really want,

unless you're willing to let go of a thing that you want. So if you're clenching onto a part of your life with a closed fist, but your life isn't going the way you wanted to go and you're not living your dreams right now, chances are you're gonna have to give away or at least offer up what's in your closed fist. And now your hand is open and now you're able to latch onto what you really want,

your goals for your dreams. So we used to say this in the when I was teaching marksmanship to Rangers, you got to learn how to fire with a loose grip because that weapon is designed to do its job and the tighter that you grip at the more you may make it, you may pull it off when I was leading a machine gun squad, the tighter you grip that gun, the more you may be pulling it you may pull it off when I was leading a machine gun squad. The tighter you grip that gun, the more you may be pulling it off target. So you might have to leave it a little bit loose if you really want to hit the center of the target. And if you really want to grab your dreams, you may have to let go of some important things to grab onto the most most important things. Okay, I also wanted to showcase that you are a professor

and you teach PhD level students leadership. If there is one lesson that you wanted to convey to them, what would be the number one leadership lesson? Yeah, take the risk. I have the honor of leading or teaching leadership to church leaders. And I really believe that man, God created us to live and adventure.

And most of us settle for this mundane, very safe, very antiseptic life, where if you were willing to step out a little bit and take a big bold risk, not foolish risk, but calculated risks, but take a big bold risk, your life, your future, the ministry, the impact that you make for God may be radically different. So if you're sitting there worried about the consequences, and that's preventing you from taking the risk, my one message would

be if you're a leader, take the risk. Bet it all. Just be very careful and very calculated in the way that you do it, but take the risk. Don't live the safe life, because I don't think we were created by God to live the safe life. I think we were designed to live an adventure, and that means taking the risk. Yeah, and the research that Dan Pink did verified what you just said, boldness risks or boldness regrets for one of the biggest categories that people had, and he has gotten inputs from tens of thousands of people. I have this fun question I like to ask, the audience loves it. I haven't had a chaplain on the show before, so it'll be interesting

to hear. Oh, good. Here we go. I talked about my friend who's an astronaut. So you are entered into the astronaut program. You are on the first mission to Mars. And when you land, you are told by the powers to be on Earth that you can establish a new Bill of Rights or new laws that will govern this new planet. What would be the one that you would choose? Wow.

Great question. And honestly, I didn't expect that one, John. I think the thing that I would, one of the rights that is most precious to me is freedom, but not freedom in excess. So freedom within very healthy human relationship boundaries, which means I don't have the freedom to run into a crowded movie theater and shout fire that ought to be a criminal act. I don't have the freedom to take somebody else's possessions

without with no remorse. But I prize my freedoms because of how much has been paid for, how much blood has been shed for my freedom. And I think the thing that I would want, if we were gonna establish a new colony on Mars, and I was a guy that had a chance to help draft the bill of rights for it, I would be zealous for the freedoms

that people have on that new planet. And I freedom of speech and the freedom to demonstrate and the freedom to have your own representation, the kind of freedoms that the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution affordes. But not, I hope your listener hears this, not freedom to its excess because that alone is the end of society as we know it. So healthy freedoms within the law. Jeff, you are such an inspirational person if the audience would like to know more about you or check you out in more detail. What are some ways that they can do so?

Yeah, well, I'm all over social media and all of the big platforms, but the easiest way is to just go to JeffStroker.com. Okay, Jeff, it has been a profound honor to have you on this show and it's humbling, have a person of your reputation, everything else. So thank you so much and thank you for honoring our fans' request for coming on and doing this. Yeah, thanks, John.

It's been an honor for me to be part of the show today. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Jeff Stricker and wanted to thank Jeff for the honor of interviewing him. Links to all things Jeff will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use the website links if you decide to purchase any of the books that come from our featured guests.

It supports this, it goes to support the show and making it free for our listeners. Videos are on YouTube at JohnRMiles, we now have over 400 of them. AvertiserDeals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstark.com slash deals. I'm at JohnRMiles, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. And if you want to know how I book amazing guests like Jeff, it's because of my network. Go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struct Podcast interview I did with Scott Delusio, who is an Army veteran who served in the Connecticut Army National Guard as an

infantryman between 2005 and 2011 and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. Scott is the author of Surviving Sun and the host of the Drive On podcast. When you're at that point where you're not at that 100%, you're not 100% there as a leader for your soldiers. You're not 100% there as a husband or a wife or as a father or a mother or whatever it is that you are. You're not operating at 100%. You just can't. It's impossible. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or that is interesting. If you know someone who really wants to understand what it means to lead a passionate life, definitely share this episode with Jeff. Definitely share today's

episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give this show is to share it with those who you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life passion struck. you